David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may just change the way we see the world.
Hello, Professor Falken. DARPA is a division of the U.S. Department of Defense tasked with developing new technology for use by the military. Their most famous project was called ARPAnet, which eventually became the Internet. They define the term “scary smart,” and while some of their technology trickles down to the civilian sector, most of […]
Large corporations in California have been testing a new device that can apparently generate power on the spot, without being connected to the power grid. They’re saying it’s efficient, clean, and saves them money. The Bloom Box was recently featured on 60 minutes. Check it out:
One of the geekiest moments of any year, the leap second, may be under threat. The International Telecommunications Union, the organization that governs global communications issues including how computers deal with time, is calling for feedback on the idea of dropping the practice. The leap second is designed to correct the disparity between the rigid […]
You may have heard Peter Molyneux’s “virtual boy” Milo. He’s the uncanny valley’s answer to the Tamagotchi, and the latest project to take advantage of the Xbox’s “Project Natal.” You can see Milo in the video below: Here’s what I find particularly interesting about Milo. Milo learns. According to James Orry at VideoGamer.com, no two […]
A Belgian internet user downloaded 2.6TB of data in the space of a month according to his (or her) internet service provider. And amazingly the ISP is happy about it. Telenet recently launched a service known as “Vrij Downloaden”. It translates as “free download”, but rather than referring to the price, it appears to be […]
Thanks to ArcAttack, rock and roll concerts no longer need to be postponed by massive thunderstorms. All they need is the new lighting proof MIDI guitar, and of course, a giant Faraday cage suit to keep from getting cooked. While ArcAttack has had guitars in their act before, this is the first time the Tesla […]
The people behind a new challenge/response test say their video-based system is both more legible to humans and trickier for computers to defeat. NuCaptcha is the latest incarnation of the Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, a particularly convoluted way of producing an acronym that sounds like “capture”. The idea […]
Well, duh. While the rest of the world may find such information, courtesy of CNN, to be rather surprising (or something?) the geeks just nod their heads. Do we get points for being forward-thinking? Probably not. Either way, apparently—shock of shocks—the iPad has given comics a major boost. While everyone’s been busy talking about the […]
Yes, in concept a solar roadway would be amazing, but I see a few problems with the idea. First, these roads could almost only be installed in countries where there is no snow and where the temperature doesn’t get too cold. Oh, the road’s surface could be heated, but wouldn’t that cost more energy than […]