Looks interesting.

I’m a huge fan of Stamen Design out of San Francisco. One of the things they excel at is data-driven map presentations. And SF Crimespotting (pictured above) is a terrific example thereof!

I do a lot of map-based presentation, and I’ve leaned heavily on their work in the past (particularly their open-source project ModestMaps).

For those of you in the East Bay, you might also check out their original work in this genre, Oakland Crimespotting.

Stay safe!

An oldie but a goodie from my archives, recently resurrected. (Full-size version).

Some songs never get old. People, on the other hand, do. And, given that I’m now older than I’ve ever been^*, I still like some of those songs, but I like ’em slower:

[audio:MusicSoundsBetterWithYou_MuxMoolRemix.mp3|titles=The Music Sounds Better With You (Mux Mool Remix)|artists=Stardust / Mux Mool]

Picked that one up over at the excellent ISO50 blog.

^*(and now I’m even older!)

I like italics.

Apropos of this post, this:

(h/t: Mutt)

Enjoy the artwork of Mark Weaver.

Enjoy the beautiful design and music at ISO50.

Enjoy the generative art of Robert Hodgin at Flight 404.

Enjoy the inspirations and artwork of James White at Signalnoise.com, who compiled this collection of design inspirations from the 70’s and 80’s:

Allowing for the identical Apollo guidance computer (AGC) in the Command Module (CM), containing a program called COLOSSUS, it is correct to say that we landed on the moon with 152 Kbytes of computer memory.

That quote, and the link included in it, are from a paper by Don Eyles, introduced by the BBC as “a 23-year-old self-described ‘beatnik’ who had just graduated from Boston University and was set the task of programming the software for the Moon landing.”

These days it’s rare to find an icon that fits in 152 Kbytes of computer memory!!! Those guys wrote all the software that got a spacecraft to the moon and back.

I walk by the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory every day… but today I have special respect for the kind of work those people did, and do.

Xconomy magazine calls it the technology that might have saved Polaroid: a small, portable, low-power, inkless printing system. It’s basically a special paper that’s got embedded crystals inside of it that turn from white to either cyan, magenta, yellow, or black when exposed to heat. The printer itself is a little thermal print head that can deliver microbursts of different temperatures at very precise locations.

Just like with the old SX-70, the real money is in selling the paper. The first commercially available devices using Zink are on sale now.

I upgraded my phone to the new Palm Pre this weekend. Being a Sprint customer and having a phone that was starting to seem antique made the choice pretty easy (I’ve had only two cell phones in the last seven years that I’ve been with Sprint). Honestly, I was done with T9 typing and no web browser. I actually waited in line for an hour to get one of the 50 phones delivered to Santa Monica, CA. This was a new social/cultural experience for me (waiting in line for the newest block of silicon and plastic) and I was able to handle the ordeal by telling myself it was an anthropological learning opportunity. Interestingly, the people in line seemed pretty normal and friendly. There were no strange Pre fanatics or obvious hard-core geeks. In fact, I don’t recall anyone even saying anything about the Pre, but it was obvious that people were excited about it.

My take on it? I think it’s fantastic. It’s intuitive, has all the touch screen capabilities introduced by the iPhone, comes with all the apps I will every actually use and it’s smooth and quick. It’s also a bit smaller (length x width) than the iPhone, which has always seemed a little unwieldy to me. One of features that really proves itself is the ability to have multiple applications running simultaneously (load a web page, a large file from an email, get a software upgrade or download an application all at the same time). The applications are sorted into visual “cards” that you can easily navigate by flicking your finger left or right. Close an application instantly with a flick of the finger.

The Pandora application works perfectly. Signing up my work email (Microsoft Office Outlook with Exchange from saveonit.com) literally took 10 seconds, required no email to our IT department and all of my calendar events automatically started appeared as notifications. The notification system is nice: it pops up a stack of transparent notices on the bottom of the screen. The MMS application makes it easy to navigate between conversations you’ve had or are having. And the camera takes crisp three megapixel shots with almost no noticeable delay between button press and when the phone is ready to take another picture.

So, if you’re like me and never really wanted an iPhone, but felt like you were missing out on some cool features then I would highly recommend the Pre to you. I’m loving it.