A lot of people love exploring with Google Maps/Earth but the problem is the data isn’t real-time. It would great to see cars driving the streets, planes taking off, the sea lapping the shoreline. The BBC have noted this and a new series called Britain From Above looks set to give us a glimsp of life in England from the air. There are some lovely looking visualisations of aircraft flight patterns, the movement of cars etc in this sample video which I really hope will be in HD.

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Later today Firefox 3 is being released and you can help set a world record by downloading it free. Mozilla, the creators of Firefox hope to set the world record for the most software downloaded in one day.

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The 3G iPhone was unveiled yesterday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Apple have addressed some of the issues with the original iPhone such as the battery life which is now comparable to other 3G phones on the market with 24 hours of audio and 5 hours of 3G talk time. It also comes with integrated GPS with Google Maps live tracking but best of all it’s less than half the price of the original iPhone starting from only $199 for the 8GB version and climbing to $399 for the new 32GB version.

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Swedish furniture design company Front have developed a technique for producing unique pieces of furniture from sketches drawn in air. The technology they have developed translates freehand sketches drawn in a space into 3D furniture using laser setting technology.

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“With the help of a GPS device and DHL, I have drawn a self portrait on our planet. My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing.”
Eric Nordenankar - Biggest drawing in the World

Everyone loves labeling things. As a designer I like things in the right place and I like to be able to get to those things quickly. To achieve this order a label seems to work, especially when I’m organising my video collection, Jam Jars, Facebook galleries and desktop folders.

Other label systems are not so efficient. If I was just searching the Internet to find a photograph of a elephant with some peanuts it will come up with a lot of unrelated images. When using image libraries such as Getty, iStockPhoto and Veer the such results are often very good. Internet search engines on the other hand aren’t organised by a photographer/company, they are searching under the users image file names.

This is all hopefully changing, I am talking about the Google Image Labeler. The perfect mix of competition and labeling. If you own a Dymo Label machine, a Badge-It or a collection of pens and over sized black markers then this is for you. Read more

I don’t usually drool over cars and am far from a Top Gear fanatic but must admit to being rather impressed when I caught sight of these two concept beauties on display in Paris recently (although the Peugeot would definitely suit Guernsey’s weather rather more than Hyundai’s futuristic open air version!). Wonder when either will (ever) make it off the production line.

Way back in 2000 Sodaplay was let free to roam the internet. I remember seeing and being amazed by all Java the creations that people had made; wire-frame, mechanical/organic constructs that ‘walked’ by way of perpetual motion. Anyone could create their own creature, adding limbs, movement and changing the psychics, it was fun and playful as well as educational.

However as the years past I forgot all about Sodaplay until I saw the Kinetic Sculptures called “Strandbeests” (Beach Creatures) by Dutch artist, Theo Jansen. They are Sodaplay creations in the wild, large skeletal works powered by the wind. Beautifully engineered their wings flap and legs scuttle, as they walk across sandy beaches, traversing both the wet sand near the shore and the softer dry sand higher up.

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If you’re at all interested in cutting edge design and technology, and how it’s being combined take a good look at the TED website. It has a wealth of interesting videos for your viewing pleasure.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

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Microsoft recently released a beta version of Silverlight 2 - their Flash player rival - and they’ve incorporated some features from Live Labs very cool Photosynth. Deep Zoom allows users to to view and explore very high-resolution imagery, ‘from a 2 or 3 megapixel shot from a digital camera to gigapixel scans of museum pieces’, in a smooth, fast and slick interface. As it’s a beta release it’s worth regularly checking for updates that might fix any bugs, or improve performance.

Wanting to have a little play I set about making my own Deep Zoom image using a photograph of our beautiful office (left). If you have Silverlight installed you can use it to zoom in close the the photograph below.

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