Mechanical Computing In The Navy

These vintage mechanical computing machines are ingenious solutions to quick lookups of values in a known table. They're so elegantly simple, and yet not intuitive to imagine in the first place. It's a multi video series, but here is part 1 if you're interested!

Augmented Reality Magic Tricks

I'm not going to say this guy's story is compelling or the graphics are particularly impressive, but the combined effect of him drawing out each card in turn even after shuffles and the overlaid effects is fun to watch.

Intel Desktop Chase

This creative short video takes place not in one scene but all the way across the desktop of your computer, jumping from program to program and through tons of different mediums. Its a clever way to showcase the idea of multi threading your processor. Nicely done Intel.

Blackberries And Apples

God I love British humor. It's good to see that the classic art of Monty Python and the like hasn't gone the way of the Dodo on us. I'll have to check out more of this guy's work.

Linked To By: Vandy S.

DJing With A Multi-Touch Light Table

I know what you're thinking. "Man, I'd love to get into DJing but hauling my gear from club to club after all that partying would just be so tiring." Well fear no more, this fellow has invented a brilliant multi-touch light screen program so that all you need to bring is your flash drive with your music. Well... that and you've got to get all your clubs to buy one of these for ya...

Space-Time Distortion Cloaking Design

This is a new and very interesting way of approaching cloaking. Instead of trying to hide yourself in space, instead hide yourself in time! As cool as this idea is though, I must point out how incredibly impractical this kind of system would probably be. You need to somehow get this light slowing machine between you and the viewer without them seeing it, and to get any practical amount of cloaking time it'd need to be super deep. (With light going 30 mph, it'd have to be half a mile thick to get 60 sec of cloaking). Still, its pretty bad ass in theory.

Hatsune Miku Sings Live

Hatsune Miku is the personality given to a piece of vocalization software made by Yamaha. The place you've most likely heard her before (if you trawl the net) is from the famed Leek Spin meme where some user made her sing a traditional Finnish polka. Its an impressive piece of software and its figurehead had even been to space. Check it out.

Linked To By: Sarah K.

iPad Future Magic

These creative guys have come up with an awesome way to use the iPad. The movie explains their process, but basically by playing cross-section animation on it while moving it through space in front of a long exposure camera, they can 'extrude' the light into space. Its a trippy effect.

Linked To By: Claude M.

Arcade Fire Browser Made Music Video

Its pretty hard to describe what you're about to see, but I can confidently say you've never seen something like it before. Well, unless you're from the future and/or reading this blog's archive. I'm sure this shit is all the rage on the moon.

Note, you HAVE to have to use the Chrome browser to view this incredible dynamic art, so if for some reason you're still stuck on some other wannabe "thing", here's a good reason to go try it out.

Linked To By: Frank V.

Trouble With Buying Apps

There is something hilarious about the reality in this comic. For anyone who has been faced with the difficult choice of purchasing an app for their smart phone should read on.

... (click to see whole comic)

A Real Thinking Cap

I love when science tells me that things I would have assumed were crazy are actually useful. Case and point, see this article describing some tests where they zapped peoples brains into being more efficient. Thats right, targeted electrical pulses to the head made people perform over twice as well on some pattern recognition tests! Perhaps "put on your thinking cap" will be literal someday soon.

Artificial Evolution Creates Stupid Intelligence

Some scientists have put together a cool virtual environment where little pieces of actually evolve to compete for 'food' which in this case is time on the processor. They certainly haven't become any kind of sentient code, but they have actually developed basic 'intelligence' such as remembering where they've been and how to sense where there is more food. AI is perhaps that much closer.

Automated Lego Builder Made of Legos

If you've ever wondered how the Germans got their reputation as amazing engineers, its probably because they invented the rocket, fission, electron microscopes and decaffeination. Or if none of those sold you, check out this factory built entirely out of Legos that builds Lego airplanes. You can even pick the colors you want! Also check out this Lego auto factory and printer!

All they need now is a Lego factory that builds Lego factories, and our rule as the dominant species is over.

I recommend playing some music in the background, the sound is rather dull.

Stand Inside A Collapsing Building

Have you ever wanted to stand in the middle of a building as it was demolished but found yourself discouraged by the whole mortal danger thing? Well Immersive Media has solved that issue by providing his awesome footage from the inside of a Texas stadium being demolished. What makes it really cool though is that you can look around 360 degrees throughout the entire video! You can even stare upwards at the massive girder that ends the poor camera.

Linked To By: Steve K.

Aviary Browser Tools

This release took me entirely by surprise, and I like to think I'm at least a little on top of developing technology. Aviary has released a set of 6 free fully featured tools that run entirely in your browser. In case you missed the salient point, these things run entirely inside your mother f***ing browser! They've got a lovely tool that simply for taking screen shots (Falcon) and marking them up, all the way to a Photoshop clone and a remixing board. Thats right, I composed and distributed a song entirely from within Chrome. Considering it took me about 15 min from my very first time booting the program to finished product, thats impressive.


Its available for Chrome and Firefox, which should cover everyone... right?

Post any cool stuff you make in the comments!