Check out the whole of this awesome collection over at Visual Punker
Futuristic GUI
Now, I have to admit I have have something of a penchant for sci-fi movies and always become distracted the plot and often jealous of the cool interfaces the characters in these movies get to use. So you'll understand that I was pretty excited when I stumbled across a tumblr created by a Czech person (I don't know who they are, very mysterious) who shares this interest in futuristic graphical user interfaces and has gone through the trouble of collecting the best examples and turning them into gifs. I've shown my favourites from the collection below:
Check out the whole of this awesome collection over at Visual Punker
Check out the whole of this awesome collection over at Visual Punker
Microsoft Viral Search
What does it mean for online content to “go viral”? An analysis of almost a billion information cascades on Twitter news, videos, and photos has produced the first quantitative notion of whether something has indeed gone viral, thereby enabling further research into topic experts, trending topics, and viral-incident metrics.
Read more at Information Aesthetics.
Read more at Information Aesthetics.
Automated Storytelling
We live in the era of Big Data. Never in modern human history have companies and individuals had more (and more complex and reliable) numbers, statistics, and metrics at their disposal: from box scores to earnings reports to housing prices to placement-test results, we are at sea in an ocean of numbers and awash in spreadsheets. As artificial-intelligence pioneer Kris Hammond explains in this film, the great challenge in the Big Data era is understanding the stories those numbers tell and, just as important, connecting the right people with the right stories.
“This is what Hammond and his company, Narrative Science, do: create fluidly written, micro-targeted news stories from massive amounts of raw data—and do it hundreds of thousands of times, and slightly differently for each reader or listener. The recipient could be a fast-food franchisee seeking to understand what menu item sells best at what moment of the day, at what time of year, even in what weather, so he can optimize point-of-sale strategies. “
“Our entire job,” says Hammond, “is to humanize data. It is to be a communication bridge between the numbers and the knowing.”
Read more on the Future of Storytelling.
“This is what Hammond and his company, Narrative Science, do: create fluidly written, micro-targeted news stories from massive amounts of raw data—and do it hundreds of thousands of times, and slightly differently for each reader or listener. The recipient could be a fast-food franchisee seeking to understand what menu item sells best at what moment of the day, at what time of year, even in what weather, so he can optimize point-of-sale strategies. “
“Our entire job,” says Hammond, “is to humanize data. It is to be a communication bridge between the numbers and the knowing.”
Read more on the Future of Storytelling.
Sorry, that username is already taken
That classic online problem; finding a username that's both memorable and not already been taken.
This is a fantastic collection of (often hilarious and ridiculous) user names that have already been taken.
sorrythatusernameisalreadytaken.tumblr.com
This is a fantastic collection of (often hilarious and ridiculous) user names that have already been taken.
sorrythatusernameisalreadytaken.tumblr.com
Why ugly interfaces work
The Bloomberg Terminal is an integrated computer system and service feed offering real-time financial data and trading. It has made its inventor a billionaire, and users often go for a multiscreen setup. So, it works but it is also incredibly ugly. So, why not redesign this clunky GUI?
Simplifying the interface of the terminal would not be accepted by most users because, as ethnographic studies show, they take pride on manipulating Bloomberg’s current “complex” interface. The pain inflicted by blatant UI flaws such as black background color and yellow and orange text is strangely transformed into the rewarding experience of feeling and looking like a hard-core professional.
The more painful the UI is, the more satisfied these users are.
The Bloomberg Terminal interface looks terrible, but it allows traders and other users to pretend you need to be experienced and knowledgeable to use it.
Read more via Core77
Virtuix's 360-degree treadmill
Virtuix have developed the Omni, an omnidirectional treadmill controller for virtual environments. Virtuix is aiming to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the Omni around the end of May or the beginning of June, and it's targeting a price of $400-600 for the device. Very cool immersive experience but as any gamer knows, the ability to crouch in a FPS is crucial..
The age of mega-viral content
Gangnam Style became world famous for its South Korean creator Psy's extreme electro-pop soundtrack, neon stylings and novel dance moves. What really made me take notice was the fact that it was the first YouTube video to top 1 BILLION views (currently at 1.5 billion at time of writing). A billion views is an almost unfathomable number but this video has (amongst many other things such as paving the way to creating mega-viral content) provided a benchmark in 21st century history for us to look back and remember the age when people who were online were collectively consuming the same content in near real-time.
Psy's new video called 'Gentleman' is another noticeable piece of online content since it has managed to secure 60 MILLION views in 2 DAYS purely because it is the next piece of content to come from Psy. 60 million views in 2 days is a ridiculous statistic and one that is often overlooked in articles elsewhere given its predecessor's success. 60 million in 2 days is mega-viral. But it will become a perfectly normal figure within the next 6 months. The rate at which content can go viral and then mega-viral is increasing as networks of people are able to share content faster and faster. Ultimately there will be a point in time where there will be one channel online, the mainstream, that plays the most viral piece of content for that day / hour / minute. We can already see the first steps of this in Twitter's #hashtag trending list.
The content delivery model is still based on the old-school method of users being fed the latest information from an authoritative source. People currently look to content-hub websites (Reddit, Buzzfeed, news websites etc) or to tastemakers for what's hot since they are considered the authority on what should be watched right now. Incredibly, some mega-memes like the Harlem Shake have even been jumped on as a direct way to make money for the man.
However that is changing as online social groups are becoming more fragmented and specialist. The opinion of a known friend is more valuable than an entertainment source and online social groups are now evolving their own tastemakers, those who are always posting the latest videos in their feeds - we all know one person like that. The fact that they still look to get their content from entertainment sources is irrelevant. What is relevant is that there is now someone, a real person, a trusted person who is filtering this content and then sharing the stuff that they think you'd like.
This TED Talk from Kevin Allocca neatly explains “Why videos go viral”. Put simply, anything new that consists of the magic three ingredients will go viral: to gain recognition it must be noticed and promoted by a select few people (tastemakers) with a large number of followers, then it must allow anyone to participate creatively in their own way, and lastly it must have complete unexpectedness.
Although that video describes how how quickly the music charts can change based what’s popular with online communities, it is also listing the founding pieces of content that were around at the time that people started to all tune into the same content together. The ancestors of mega-memes.
Very soon there will be a very strong sense of community online as a whole, and it will become comforting to all be online together, all consuming the latest content together. This will reflect humanity online; what people currently find funny, sad, interesting, shocking, and so on. This already exists but it's in various places and is very disparate - to say the Twitter community, or the Reddit community, or the Guardian online community who comment on articles is representative of humanity online is incorrect. Those are still relatively small groups of people who have been drawn together by a common interest. What still needs to happen is for people to come completely together online in one place. This is essentially a hive mind and in its early stages is one that is only used for watching Gangnam Style, but imagine a future with the power of that many people all focussing on the same thing together at the same moment in time. It'll happen once the platform for it is available, and when it does it will dwarf everything else that came before it.
Psy's new video called 'Gentleman' is another noticeable piece of online content since it has managed to secure 60 MILLION views in 2 DAYS purely because it is the next piece of content to come from Psy. 60 million views in 2 days is a ridiculous statistic and one that is often overlooked in articles elsewhere given its predecessor's success. 60 million in 2 days is mega-viral. But it will become a perfectly normal figure within the next 6 months. The rate at which content can go viral and then mega-viral is increasing as networks of people are able to share content faster and faster. Ultimately there will be a point in time where there will be one channel online, the mainstream, that plays the most viral piece of content for that day / hour / minute. We can already see the first steps of this in Twitter's #hashtag trending list.
The content delivery model is still based on the old-school method of users being fed the latest information from an authoritative source. People currently look to content-hub websites (Reddit, Buzzfeed, news websites etc) or to tastemakers for what's hot since they are considered the authority on what should be watched right now. Incredibly, some mega-memes like the Harlem Shake have even been jumped on as a direct way to make money for the man.
However that is changing as online social groups are becoming more fragmented and specialist. The opinion of a known friend is more valuable than an entertainment source and online social groups are now evolving their own tastemakers, those who are always posting the latest videos in their feeds - we all know one person like that. The fact that they still look to get their content from entertainment sources is irrelevant. What is relevant is that there is now someone, a real person, a trusted person who is filtering this content and then sharing the stuff that they think you'd like.
This TED Talk from Kevin Allocca neatly explains “Why videos go viral”. Put simply, anything new that consists of the magic three ingredients will go viral: to gain recognition it must be noticed and promoted by a select few people (tastemakers) with a large number of followers, then it must allow anyone to participate creatively in their own way, and lastly it must have complete unexpectedness.
Although that video describes how how quickly the music charts can change based what’s popular with online communities, it is also listing the founding pieces of content that were around at the time that people started to all tune into the same content together. The ancestors of mega-memes.
Very soon there will be a very strong sense of community online as a whole, and it will become comforting to all be online together, all consuming the latest content together. This will reflect humanity online; what people currently find funny, sad, interesting, shocking, and so on. This already exists but it's in various places and is very disparate - to say the Twitter community, or the Reddit community, or the Guardian online community who comment on articles is representative of humanity online is incorrect. Those are still relatively small groups of people who have been drawn together by a common interest. What still needs to happen is for people to come completely together online in one place. This is essentially a hive mind and in its early stages is one that is only used for watching Gangnam Style, but imagine a future with the power of that many people all focussing on the same thing together at the same moment in time. It'll happen once the platform for it is available, and when it does it will dwarf everything else that came before it.
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