Wanna play around with tons of cool synthesizers, effects pedals, beat machines and mixing boards?
There’s a Flash-based simulation for that. Tip from Sam.
Somewhere, far off in the distance, a drone may or may not be dropping 50kg units of hellfire on some yet-to-be-named combatants. It’s not even post moral … it’s a Zen algorithm that melts steel. •
4.659 acres
That, according to a seriously shaky Wolfram|Alpha calculation, is how much land that each person would get were the Earth (minus Antarctica and the Sahara Desert) split 6.67 billion equal ways.1
Here’s the equation:
For comparison, 4.659 acres is about the size of 2.6 FIFA-sanctioned international match soccer fields.
If you’re thinking, Gee, that actually kind of sounds like a lot, bear this in mind: the actual Earth is not a flat grid of equally habitable cells—inevitably, many millions of people would get stuck with parcels on mountainsides or in toxic waste dumps, swamps, deserts and Siberia. The above figure is clearly on the generous side.2
That said, I’m on the borderline of horror with this one. It either makes the world seem very small or makes mankind seem very stifling.
Either way, this much is certain: the fact that Wolfram|Alpha can help be indulge in such childish things is undeniably cool.
- A side note: one of mankind’s greatest inventions is the technique of building vertically. But, for the sake of this hypothetical, I’m talking straight-up land ownership. [↑]
- And no, there’s no easy way to further refine the equation, short of making an exhaustive (and totally subjective!) List of All Terrestrial Hellholes Known to Man and plugging each item in one after another. [↑]
Chinese researchers from the year 2240 have created software that transforms a freehand sketch (with text labels) into a realistic photographic composite of images found by searching the Internet.
It sounds a lot more impressive after you watch the demonstration.
You enter topics and it spits out a custom RSS feed comprised of related New York Times stories.
Really cool.
It is an attempt to loosen the mental blockages to recording information and to scrape away the tartar of convention that handicaps its retrieval. The solution is by nature nonconformist.
It’s actually just a cool app for people – like me – who save/make a lot of text notes.
Not new, by the way. Notational Velocity came out in 2006. I’m just late to the party.
Intrepid young graphic designer buys an All-You-Can-Jet pass from JetBlue and sets out to visit and see – from tarmacs and terminals – 43 cities in 30 days.
He made a site, The 30-Day Flight and intends to chronicle his journey.
Yesterday – Day 10 – the guy sitting next to him was the guy who designed the ambient music system at Walt Disney World.
Two days ago I made a post about Google Fast Flip.
Today, I found out that Google is actually sharing Fast Flip ad revenue with participating publishers – the first time they’ve formed such a direct partnership with the publishing industry.
This is great news!
Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to “flip” through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine.
Google’s newest offering. Especially cool if you’ve got an iPhone – paging through is as easy as a swipe.
Christopher Fahey with a helpful anecdote about why, when it comes to recording ideas, we should just leave the iPhone in the pocket and stick with pen and paper.