Alex Biem of Vancouver-based Tangible Interaction has engineered what he calls a “Tangible Graffiti Wall.” The Wall, which has been present at a number of events including the Vancouver Winter Olympics, lets people “spray” or “stencil” onto a projected display surface using an infrared can.
After users are done, they can email or upload their artwork to Twitter directly from the Wall.
Watch the video:
Digital Graffiti Wall + Stencils from Alex Beim on Vimeo.
Via PSFK
This tool, called EnVision, aims to achieve an interface similar to Google Maps, making the visualization process easy and helping to make scientific visualization a more common activity for researchers.
EnVision is a tool to remotely visualize dataset through a web browser. It allows you to transparently user remote visualization resources through a thin web based client from anywhere in the world.
Via VizWorld
Graphics.com has a good excerpt from O’Reilly Media’s “Beautiful Visualization“, providing some guidance on how to take default boring data and make it not only beautiful but informative.
Standard formats and conventions do have their benefits: they are easy to create, familiar to most readers, and usually don’t need to be explained. Most of the time, these conventions should be respected and leveraged. However, the necessary spark of novelty is difficult to achieve when using utilitarian formats in typical ways; defaults are useful, but they are also limiting. Defaults should be set aside for a better, more powerful solution only with informed intent, rather than merely to provide variety for the sake of variety.
Via VizWorld & Graphics.com: The shared resource for creative design.
Iron Man has a fun website online where you can view yourself wearing the Iron Man or War Machine helmets, or see the “Heads Up Display” seen in the movie with all of the overlays and elements. Works on both Mac & PC, but requires a lengthy download of plugins and assets.
Iron Man 2 | Augmented Reality Experience.
Via VizWorld
FORM+CODE is a new book about computational aesthetics to be published fall 2010. It is written by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams and LUST and the list of featured artists reads like the who-is-who of the generative design community.
With works ranging from Maeda to Sagmeister the publication seems to span from data driven visualizations to generative approaches in design, art and architecture. The publication will definitely be more source of inspiration than visualization best practices but I am looking forward to have such a wide rang of designers distilled in this book.
We have to admit that e-books can, indeed, do stuff that paper books cannot. A good example of this is Alice for the iPad, Lewis Carroll’s story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turned into a children’s storybook but with an interactive twist.
This particular e-book is not meant to be read sitting still; it’s meant to be shaken and stirred, forcing many interactive elements on the screen to move around, fall down or jump up. And I bet the kids will love it.
Alice for the iPad is $9 in the App Store (there’s also a free, lite version), but if you want a taste right now, check out the video below.
Via Mashable!
Motion Theory follows up their interesting IBM Data commercial with two new offerings, Data Transportation and Data Energy.
The new spots continue to build on the innovative way IBM gathers and analyzes information and utilizes it to create efficiencies in everyday life. They are striking in different ways – “Energy” features beautiful holographic images flowing from energy sources while “Transportation” is an abstract visual metaphor for how people move around the world.
See both spots below.
Via VizWorld
TimeSpace is an interactive map that allows you to navigate articles, photos, video and commentary from around the globe. Discover news hot-spots where coverage is clustered. Use the timeline to illustrate peaks in coverage, and customize your news searches to a particular day or specific hour.
During your presentation, be sure to elicit responses from your audience using live, real-time polling. You can invite audience members to respond to questions via text message or tweets, then incorporate their up-to-the-minute responses directly into your presentation.
By using services like PollEverywhere, presentations evolve from one-way lectures into conversations with the audience. This keeps people engaged and focused on your message.
Via Mashable!
BumpTop is a 3D, multitouch desktop that’s been made available for both Mac OS X and Windows. What’s interesting about this acquisition is that it puts Google in command of technologies (and, presumably, patents) which might challenge Apple’s multitouch hegemony.
Things like double finger touches, pinch and zoom. User interfaces which are likely to be part of the definition of future tablet and mobile-based computing, in the post PC, mouse (and Flash) age.
We’re interested to see how this goes. Meanwhile the company is making its BumpTop Free software available for free download to Mac and Windows users for one week.
This is April’s fifth purchase by Google which also recently acquired, Episodic, Plink, Agnilux and Labpixies.
Via 9to5 Mac
