Suwappu: “

Dentsu London and BERG are developing a suite of augmented-reality-enabled toys called Suwappu:

Suwappu is a range of toys, animal characters that live in little digital worlds. The physical toys are canvasses upon which we can paint worlds, through a phone (or tablet) lens we can see into the narratives, games and media in which they live.

The first part of this film imagines and explores the Suwappu world. Here we are using film to explore how animation and behaviours can draw out character and narrative in physical toy settings. The second part is an explanation of how Suwappu products might work, from using animal patterns as markers for augmented reality, to testing out actual Augmented Reality (AR) worlds on a mobile phone.

We wanted to picture a toy world that was part-physical, part-digital and that acts as a platform for media. We imagine toys developing as connected products, pulling from and leaking into familiar media like Twitter and Youtube. Toys already have a long and tenuous relationship with media, as film or television tie-ins and merchandise. It hasn’t been an easy relationship. AR seems like a very apt way of giving cheap, small, non-interactive plastic objects an identity and set of behaviours in new and existing media worlds.

Also, the badger is fucked in the head. Suwappu:

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Andy sends this amazing vintage advertisement. Apparently it was…: “

Andy sends this amazing vintage advertisement. Apparently it was part of his American Studies curriculum – a segment on the insanity of advertising parables. Still, even seventy five years later, this is a pretty good argument for over-the-calf socks, I’d say.

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Matt Ridley’s talk at Long Now: “The story of history is of more for less.”: “Here’s Stewart Brand’s recap of science author Matt Ridley’s (The Rational Optimist, Genome, The Red Queen) talk at the Long Now’s Seminar About Long-term Thinking in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Hominids had upright walking, stone tools, fire, even language but still remained in profound stasis. What led to humanity’s global takeoff, Ridley argues, was the invention of exchange about 120,000 years ago. ‘That’s ten times older than agriculture.’

The beginnings of trade encouraged specialization and innovation, which encouraged further innovation, specialization, and trade, and the unending virtuous cycle of progress was set in motion. The quality and speed of the progress depends on the size of the population doing the exchanging. ‘It’s not how clever we are but how much in contact we are with each other.’ Thus the 5,000 Australians who became isolated on Tasmania 10,000 years ago didn’t just stop progressing, they forgot how to make and use bone tools and even how to clothe themselves against cold weather. Their individual brains were fine, ‘but there was something wrong with their collective brains.’

What really is being exchanged is ideas. The Pill-cam (for shooting video of your gut) was invented, Ridley points out, when a gastroenterologist had a conversation with guided missile designer.

The acceleration of progess can be measured in objective terms such as the amount of labor it takes to earn an hour of reading light. In 1997, with CF bulbs, it was half a second. In 1950, with incandescent bulbs, eight seconds. In 1880, with kerosene lamps, fifteen minutes. In 1800, with candles, six hours. In every decade various intellectuals keep saying that progress has stopped or is about to stop, but Ridley showed chart after chart chronicling constant improvement in everything we care about. Life expectancy is increasing by five hours a day. IQ keeps going up by three points a decade. Agriculture gets ever more productive, leaving more land to remain wild. Even economic inequality is decreasing, with poor countries getting rich faster than rich countries are getting richer.

On the subject of climate change, Ridley has a similar set of detailed charts showing that sea level has been rising slowly for a long time, but it is not accelerating. The same with the retreat of glaciers. Overall global warming is proceeding slower than was predicted. Humanity has been decarbonizing its energy supply steadily for 150 years as we progressed from wood to coal to oil to natural gas. A few years ago it was thought that only 25 years of natural gas was left, but with the invention of hydrofracking shale gas, the supply is suddenly 250 years worth, and it is a hugely cleaner source than coal. (Among nuclear innovations, Ridley is particularly intrigued by thorium reactors.)

‘The story of history is of more for less.’ Paul Ehrlich’s formula (I=PAT— environmental Impact equals Population times Affluence times Technology) is better stated as I=P/AT— Impact equals Population divided by Affluence times Techology. As affluence and technology increase, and population levels off, environmental impact can go ever down.

An historian once wrote, ‘On what principle is it that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?’ That was English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1830, even before the industrial revolution.

Matt Ridley on ‘Deep Optimism’

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Stingray X-ray: “

This is an x-ray of a newly discovered species of stingray, native to the Amazon. You can’t tell from this shot of its innards, but the Heliotrygon gomesi actually resembles a “pancake with a nose”—big, round, flat, and beige. Read more about this creature at Our Amazing Planet.

Image: Ken Jones

Submitterated by Ajourneyroundmyskull

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Manifesto Manifesto: a recipe for manifestae: “

The Manifesto Manifesto is a recipe for writing manifesti. I tried to follow it for ‘bananas,’ but it just didn’t sing. Can you do better?

THE MANIFESTO MANIFESTO
(via Futurismic)

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Clock powered by dead flies: “

[video link]

This prototype clock, designed by James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, is powered by dead flies. A conveyor of fly paper catches the insects and then drops them into a microbial fuel cell where they become feedstock for bacteria to consume. As the bacteria munch on the dead flies (or most any organic matter), the chemical energy is converted to electrical energy. The same technology powers the sewage-eating robot I posted about last year and also appears in the video above. (via Daily Grail)

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CamelCamelCamel: “ This site allows you to track price history and has price drop and price watch alerts. Ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago, I’ve looked at it before I bought anything on Amazon just to make sure I was at or near a historical low. The price charts are intuitive, and allow you to see highs and lows for the past year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month. You can set your tracker to include just Amazon.com, 3rd party sellers, or Used. The best part? It’s absolutely free.

If you need something immediately, there’s not a whole lot this can do for you. But, for example, I’ve had my eye on the MEElectronics M9P headphones. It’s currently $15. Hopping on CamelCamelCamel, I can see that historically, it has run at about $23 until early December, took a dive to $15, a dip all the way down to $10 earlier this month, then popped back up to $15. I don’t want to pay 50% more than what it was a few weeks ago, so I’ll set up the Tracker to notify me by e-mail when it gets back down to $10.

While I’ve found some bugs, such as hours-behind updating, and while I wish it incorporated shipping costs, it’s still allowed me to save cash. More than that, I learned a long time ago I get a great deal of satisfaction from knowing I got a great deal.

CamelCamelCamel give me the data I need. If used car salesmen could hand you data-rich, neutral third-party charts like this every time they told you you were getting a steal, it’d go a long way to negating that sleazy image.

Alas, we can only dream, as it only covers Amazon.com and Newegg, BestBuy, BackCountry and Zzounds.com through sister-sites.

— Doug Wong

CamelCamelCamel

http://camelcamelcamel.com/

Don’t forget to comment over at Cool Tools. And remember to submit a tool!

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Microsoft switches off privacy for Hotmail users in war-torn and repressive states: “For reasons unknown, Microsoft has changed the settings on Hotmail to disable HTTPS for users in several countries including Bahrain, Morocco, Algeria, Syria, Sudan, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Hotmail users in those countries can now be readily spied upon by ISPs and their governments. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some good perspective:

Microsoft debuted the always-use-HTTPS feature for Hotmail in December of 2010, in order to give users the option of always encrypting their webmail traffic and protecting their sensitive communications from malicious hackers using tools such as Firesheep, and hostile governments eavesdropping on journalists and activists. For Microsoft to take such an enormous step backwards– undermining the security of Hotmail users in countries where freedom of expression is under attack and secure communication is especially important–is deeply disturbing. We hope that this counterproductive and potentially dangerous move is merely an error that Microsoft will swiftly correct.

The good news is that the fix is very easy. Hotmail users in the affected countries can turn the always-use-HTTPS feature back on by changing the country in their profile to any of the countries in which this feature has not been disabled, such as the United States, Germany, France, Israel, or Turkey. Hotmail users who browse the web with Firefox may force the use of HTTPS by default–while using any Hotmail location setting–by installing the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox plug-in.

Microsoft Shuts off HTTPS in Hotmail for Over a Dozen Countries

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Incredible video of Aurora Borealis: “

Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd spent one week around Kirkenes and the Norway-Russia border, in -25 Celsius temperature, to make this magnificent time-lapse video of the Aurora Borealis.

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“Tsuchinoko” by Gaka (dir., rakudasan / music video): “

[Video Link]

Boing Boing reader Ayahiko, who is a member of a visual design team in Japan called rakudasan, writes in with word of this cool music video they created for a band called Gaka:

Gaka is a unique 16-piece band working in Japan and growing more and more popular. Now, as you know, we are in a critical situation here in Japan after the earthquake.

But we think that one thing we can do now is to get more positive attention for Japan and Japanese creativity. We need positive news to get energetic power, because we are showered with negative news.

This music video is called pantomime music video created with a help of
performer called maimuima. Theme of this song is man powered techno music, so we decided to use pantomime to make fun of man-powered expression.

We shot with a fixed camera and angle. Performer themselves’ movement change angles, speed and distance. Without using wire and CG, we succeeded shooting action scenes.

Rakudasan does VJ in an unique style called Surrealistic Synchronization. It is the style that we select unrelated movie with music, but this makes unique and unusual togetherness and atmosphere in clubs. Gaka’s jam music and pantomime are not related, but we combined them to create this music video. This is our style.

Credits:

Gaka (家) Official Website

Performer： maimuima　

Director： rakuda-san (らくださん)　

Photographer： Atsuhiro Shirahata

Special thanks to Yusuke Nomiyama

Editor’s note: As an aside, note that the video was created and published on March 3. The theme of running/escape evidenced in the first portion of the video was not a reaction to the March 11 disaster, though it does sort of strike a resonant chord now, in hindsight.

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