Graffiti lane gets new canvas for Melbourne artists - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): "That really is the lane where our next generation of artists will learn their craft and learn the culture of street art and the respect that goes with it," [the mayor] said. "Hosier Lane though is the highest expression of street art in Melbourne and has to remain that gallery space for our street artists."
The Best Map Ever Made of America's Racial Segregation | Wired Design | Wired.com: The map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, is stunningly comprehensive. Drawing on data from the 2010 U.S. Census, it shows one dot per person, color-coded by race. That’s 308,745,538 dots in all–around 7 GB of visual data. It isn’t the first map to show the country’s ethnic distribution, nor is it the first to show every single citizen, but it is the first to do both, making it the most comprehensive map of race in America ever created.
cortesi - Introducing choir.io: The most succinct description of choir.io is that it is a service that turns events into sound. Why would you want to do that? Well, I believe that there are compelling reasons to make sound part of your monitoring stack. (have a listen to the soundscape based on github activity: Choir.io github soundscape)
Impetus | Dominik Johann: Here’s the gist of Impetus: the game is, in fact, only 10 seconds long. After its countdown timer runs out, it’s over, permanently. There is no way of restarting or playing it ever again. The catch: most prominently placed on screen is a button that lets players reset the countdown, instantly and for everyone else to see, stretching the timeframe again and again. Sustaining the game’s life.
Everything you know is wrong: Oranges aren’t orange.: Since most people associate green fruit with unripe fruit, most green oranges in the United States and Europe have to be colored to be sellable. In some cases they are exposed to ethylene gas, which breaks down chlorophyll. Some are shocked with cold, or covered in wax. Some are scrubbed down with detergent and some are just dipped in dye. Anything for a sale. ...because educating people was just way too hard. Seriously - a sign "these are ripe!" vs gassing perfectly good fruit... are people truly unable to learn what things really are? Have we trained ourselves to be *that* stupid that we can't?
AquaTop Display: AquaTop Display is a projection system that uses white water as a screen surface. This system allows the user ’s limbs to freely move through, under and over the projection surface. Using the unique characteristics of fluid, we propose new interaction methods specific to the projection medium: water. Our system uses a depth camera to detect input on and over the water surface to allow for interactions such as protruding fingers out from under the water surface and scooping up the water with both hands. These type of interactions are not normally possible with current impenetrable rigid surfaces. For example, by floating one ’s limbs on the water surface, it is also possible to fuse one ’s body with the displayed objects for further augmented interaction by ’becoming one ’with the screen. (by 'white water' they're talking about a bath with bath salts, apparently common in japan)
A Drinking Glass That Can Prevent Sexual Assault - Core77: Abramson, who had studied engineering in his undergrad years, resolved to make it detectable. After enlisting the help of two of his former professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he formed DrinkSavvy, a company dedicated to producing cocktailware—cups, straws, cocktail stirrers, and drinking glasses—that would change color in the presence of date rape drugs.
Instagram and self-esteem: Why the photo-sharing network is even more depressing than Facebook. - Slate Magazine: So far, academic studies of Instagram’s effects on our emotional states are scarce. But it’s tempting to extrapolate those effects from the Facebook studies, because out of the many activities Facebook offers, the three things that correlate most strongly with a self-loathing screen hangover are basically the three things that Instagram is currently for: loitering around others’ photos, perfunctory like-ing, and “broadcasting” to a relatively amorphous group.
Use your words | Christian Heilmann: Words are powerful, they spark a theatre in the head. People reading your words make their own pictures at a speed pictures could never be transmitted. Instead of giving one image you create a gallery, one that you will never see, but your readers do. And this gallery is very personal to them and thus gets remembered much more. Of course words can cause controversy, misunderstandings and can hurt. But even then they can spark a conversation and make you realise the effect of your actions much more than a “like” or an “upvote” could ever do.
Murdoch sends trusted general 'Col Pot' to bring down Rudd over NBN: Why Murdoch wants Rudd to lose the coming federal election is not merely political, it is commercial. News Corp hates the government's national broadband network. The company has formed a view that it poses a threat to the business model of by far its most important asset in Australia, the Foxtel cable TV monopoly it jointly owns with Telstra.
Murdoch has declared war on Rudd by dispatching his most trusted field general, Allan, whose reputation is built on his closeness to Murdoch and his long history of producing pungent front-page splashes and pugnacious campaigns. Given the front pages the Tele's been pumping out since this guy arrived (dodgy photoshops and attack opinion pieces), it's clearly all out war on Rudd.