Thanks Adam "MCA" Yauch


The Beastie Boys with Adam Yauch, rear center

The eye half-creates what it perceives

Watch this video by by Stuart Anstis from the University of California, San Diego, and Clara Casco from the University of Padua, Italy, and note the motion of the two flies. Then read an explanation of the two flies in the New Scientist:

Hello Internet, meet World

About four years ago I spent an evening at the NYC Hackerspace. It was walking distance from where I live in Brooklyn. Up 4 flights of stairs I found a group of people sitting around a giant table. To the sides were lasers, oscilloscopes, vices, clamps, routers, and all kinds of glue and electronics. Later I learned this was the embryo of the MakerBot.

Making things clear, understandable, honest, and delightful

Whether you are designing an FM radio, an editorial product, or a software product, good design is largely about about making things clear and understandable. It's about sharp priorities and radical simplifications that reveal shocking truths: you don't need sixteen controls when one will suffice.

Mind the gap: income inequality in America


Source: The Economist's Daily Chart

Last night I walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge, just like any other work day. The Manhattan skyline rose up over the East River, the boats and ferries shuttled commuters to and fro much as they did in Walt Whitman's time, but this night was different.

Steve Jobs showed us how to marry technology with the liberal arts

Steve Jobs was a performer. When I worked at a university, I remember being called over to Alex Kluge's desk: "Steve Jobs is going to be streaming in a few minutes. Alex has it set up." This was back in the late 1990's when Apple was struggling, and it was not clear how they'd make it. We gathered around the largest monitor I had ever seen. Alex made sure the video was working, then he went full-screen. We all stared and saw Steve deliver something so advanced, so unexpectedly lovely that I heard some engineers and professors swearing and cussing, and saw them squint in disbelief.

On the Web's 20th Birthday

Yesterday was 6 August 2011. Exactly 20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee posted a message to a newsgroup called alt.hypertext. He introduced the group to a new project, something he called the WorldWideWeb.

See for yourself (link via http://twitter.com/HD41117) http://groups.google.com/group/alt.hypertext/tree/browse_frm/thread/7824...

File under holders: Map of US Sovereign Debt

Map of US Sovereign Debt by Development Seed. Last week a company called Standard & Poors, one of the companies which famously flubbed the ratings of mortgage-backed securities in 2008, downgraded the US Government's sovereign debt. Here are the countries around the world which hold that debt, not including the USA.

How to design for status-seeking, collecting, and the urge to complete, without making everything into a silly game

I'm not a gamer myself. Just not my thing. But I am an observer, and I constantly see status-seeking, collecting, and the urge to complete all around me. These are the building blocks of many games, and many useful applications. Since I'm a designer of how things work, below I've collected a few examples of how we can design with game mechanics in mind—without trivializing the user or the experience.

A few examples

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