EXP: September 2009 Archives

Visualizing Information Flow in Science

By Craig Kanarick on September 30, 2009 10:59 AM | No Comments

Well-formed.eigenfactor.org is a clean interactive visualization that explores emerging patterns in citation networks. Using citation data from Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Reports, the application analyzes the most influential articles from 1997-2005.

The system was built in flare, an excellent open-source resource for making data visualizations that supports data management, visual encoding, animation and interaction.

Nearness

By Craig Kanarick on September 29, 2009 11:27 PM | No Comments

Nearness draws its inspiration from The Way Things Go but with a digital spin -- this machine uses digital technology to communicate between many of the objects in the sequence, mostly by RFiD.

Nearness from timo on Vimeo.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Two Weeks in September 2009: Open Innovation Madness

By Craig Kanarick on September 28, 2009 9:29 PM | No Comments

The past two weeks have been giant for Open Innovation.

One particular highlight was Armadillo Aerospace in Texas, who twice successfully flew a Scorpius lunar lander rocket in a two hour time frame on September 12, officially qualifying them for the top prize (which could be worth a cool $1 million) in the NASA Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. Requiring the simulation of such tasks as landing on, refueling on and lifting off from the moon, they had to fly horizontally from the launch pad to another pad 50 meters away for at least 3 minutes, then land on a simulated moon surface, then takeoff and fly back to the launch pad.

Even more exciting developments in the field include Netflix, who awarded a $1 million prize to the first group or individual who submitted an algorithm to improve their movie recommendation system by 10% or more. Coming out on top was a team called "Bellkor's Pragmatic Chaos," a 7-person team who met in person for the first time at breakfast the day the prize was awarded. The final stages of the competition spanning nearly three years are worthy of a movie, with teams combining and splitting apart, with the winning team submitting their answer just 24 minutes before another team. Netflix promptly announced their next $1 million prize will be awarded in two $500K payments to the team with the most progress at 6 and 12 months.

Philips announced they've submitted an entry to the US Department of Energy's $10 million L Prize for a significantly more efficient 60 watt bulb, the most popular bulb in America. Amost half of the billion light bulbs sold in America each year are 60 watt incandescent bulbs, so a sustainable solution would have a huge impact. You can read more in this New York Times article.

As you can see, the last two weeks have indeed seen huge acheivements in open innovation. So much so, in fact, that the Wall Street Journal called the awarding of the Netflix Prize a "Turning Point" in Open Innovation.

I agree.

Our Former Manhattan Terrace Garden

By Craig Kanarick on September 24, 2009 12:39 AM | No Comments

I recently read a great article in the New York Times about the downfall of taxonomy. I agree that we don't know as much about the natural order as we used to. It seems the current mind has replaced that knowledge with an equal number of complex taxonomies including flavors of candy, models of cars, sports teams, celebrities and operating systems.

Last week my family moved from our home of the last 10 years, the highlight of which was the 350-square foot terrace half-filled with plants. For us it was a small act of sustainability, not just in terms of ecology, but also culturally by instilling nature-based taxonomies to our children. Avid eaters, our guests enjoyed the many species the kids would identify, pick and taste. Here is a visual tribute to that garden:

I'll miss it.

Obscura CueLight Pool Table

By Craig Kanarick on September 22, 2009 12:24 PM | No Comments

No sooner do I write about a digitally augmented air hockey table than I come across this: a $80,000 digitally enhanced pool table light. Motion sensors track the balls and project video accordingly.

What other digitally augmented table games are out there? Digital ping-pong, anyone?

Obscura CueLight from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Trippy Air Hockey

By Craig Kanarick on September 22, 2009 11:17 AM | No Comments

Over on Geekologie today I read about a crazy new Sega air hockey table that has a video screen as the main playing surface. By integrating digital technology into the previously only-analog experience they were able to add new features such as a variable sized goal and automatic scorekeeping.

While I appreciate the new functionality, it seems like the actual design is more distracting than helpful.

How long is it before tennis players play on giant video screens instead of clay?

Tim Schwartz's Command Center, 2008

By Craig Kanarick on September 18, 2009 10:47 PM | No Comments

Fine art holds a great deal of potential opportunity for smart data visualization installations that integrate with analog elements. Tim Schwartz's Command Center is an elegant example of this, combined with a serious message. Tim has written a very useful tool for data visualization -- a graphing interface for a dataset consisting of every word written in the New York Times since 1851. This huge set of data drives the Command Center by displaying the frequency of certain words (weapons, war and others) on old-fashioned analog gauges and the year on a red LED counter.

The content is a loop that starts in 1851 and progresses one year every few seconds. Over time viewers develop a sense of a slice of history as translated by the Times and Mr. Schwartz.

AT&T "You Will" Campaign, 1993

By Craig Kanarick on September 17, 2009 2:33 PM | No Comments

My friend Joshua Walton send me the following email this morning:

It is amazing how many of these things are part of our lives now. It makes me believe whole heartedly in the idea of self-fulfilling prophecy.

I agree with him. I loved the You Will ads when they came out back in 1993 not just because they were so inspiring and accurate, but because I was lucky enough to design one of the Web's first banner ads as part of the campaign. I can't find the original, which had cleaner graphics, but you get the gist.

Here is the original banner:

It doesn't seem like 1993 was so long ago.

Today in History: The Vin Fiz

By Craig Kanarick on September 17, 2009 10:23 AM | No Comments

On September 11, 1911, Calbraith Perry "Cal" Rodgers, 32, left Sheepshead Bay in New York in a small plane to try and win a $50,000 prize for being the first person to complete a transcontinental US flight.

His story is a fascinating one. He completed the journey in a month but was past the deadline for the prize that William Randolph Hearst put up. What makes this story crazy is that the pilot had only 90 minutes of flight instruction (from Orville Wright) before he made his first solo flight. Since there were no airports, navigation maps, control towers or beacons, the flight across the country was certainly a risky move.

You can read more about this on Centennial of Flight and on This Day in Tech.

Note: EXP slowly returns

By Craig Kanarick on September 15, 2009 12:23 AM | No Comments

My family and I have finally moved into our new apartment so EXP is slowly getting some of my attention. I apologize for the brief pause in publishing. Watch this space for more soon.

-- cmk

EXP is moving

By Craig Kanarick on September 8, 2009 8:36 AM | No Comments

Well, my family and I are moving, but that also means that EXP's server is moving as well so this week the posts will be a little light, like last week. Next week, however, stay tuned for some exciting EXP news and many more posts!

September 2009 Archives