What's Cool Today

2010-03-09

• The Parrot AR Drone - indoor/outdoor R/C helicopter with two on-board cameras, gyroscope and sonar... It basically flies itself, but you can tell it where to go! The whole thing is controlled over wifi from an iPhone; I wouldn't normally link to an Apple-related product, but this is just too cool...
• http://www.perceptivepixel.com/ - touch-screen technologies for specific visualization tasks / industries; extremely cool demo/introduction video, although the applications are maybe a little more "niche" than they are implying...
• Google is taking on Trendalizer; widespread access to and analysis of public data sources can only be a good thing, right?
• Boox 60 ebook reader, by Onyx International: a Wifi, touch-screen (stylus), linux-based, open platform ebook reader to take on all those nasty proprietary systems like the Kindle (recently got mine,it's awesome!).
  • Boox Power Pack, the first open-source project, also very cool (lost some sleep getting a linux instance working on my netbook just so I could compile this thing with tweaks)
• jQuery - the Javascript library of our times. I know I'm late to the party, but I just have to mention it - it makes a lot of things much easier.
  

2010-02-01

2010-01-27

• The touchstream lp, an absolutely amazing multi-touch input device combining keyboard, mouse and macro device in a beautifully simple pair of touchpads. No URL/link, because Apple bought the technology, scrapped the interesting products, and basically buried the interesting technology and applications. Some "dumbed-down" elements of the technology have eventually turned up in Apple's disturbingly simplistic multi-touch interfaces, but nothing even vaguely as cool as the touchstream lp keyboard. (I own one but never trained myself to use it properly, I dug it up and am having another go now).
• Other input devices that could really revolutionize things for frequent typists:
  • Datahand, a solution that at least looks like a serious contender for fast, strain-free typing to surpass the best of existing keyboards... but the company doesn't look lilke it's doing so well and the design does not appear to have changed in the last 10 years. USB is listed as a great innovation, which is really not encouraging.
  • Alphagrip, a more recent and portable version of the datahand concept (but with a 50 wpm speed, not a very useful keyboard repacement...)
• Optimus Maximus, the keyboard that has a screen intergrated into every single key...
  • Optimus Tactus, the (in design) multitouch keyboard that would be looking to replace the touchstream lp in the distant future... Same concept of a single configurable surface for all input, additional display concept (this would essentially be a tablet/slate device dedicated to feeding input into another computer), but much larger, heavier, less portable and unlikely to have the incredible refinement of the touchstream...
• The idea of building your own custom fit ergonomic keyboard or Alphagrip / Datahand-style device, combining an arduino or other simple controller with a set of contact switches, and printing the housing to fit your hands, on a RepRap or similar home 3D printer... This would be worth learning all these technologies for... If someone were to open-source the design of such a device, that would be worth buying a RepRap kit for, right there...
  

2010-01-26

• RepRap - an open-source project for the building and furthering of a cheap, replicating 3D printer. And it actually exists! That is just outrageously cool, and I want one. I'm pretty sure it's beyond me and I would have no use for it, but it's just too cool not to want one. Don't you want one??
  • Thingiverse, the site where 3D printable designs are shared by enthusiasts worldwide
  • The Penny Shooter, one of the more amusing products available for download and printing. (note, you need a laser cutter in addition to the RepRap!)
    

2010-01-25

• Accelerando - My favorite Sci-fi book to date. It's just too good not to mention (and I re-read it this weekend)
  

2010-01-22

• A pretty convincing argument for privacy controls, by Cory Doctorow (10-minute video)
  • Probably the best set of xkcd comics - the story of (fictional) Elaine Roberts, Bobby Tables' sister. Related only in that Cory Doctorow features in the last strip :)
    

2010-01-21

• LadyAda's Projects Page - exceedingly cool electronics projects page, largely focusing on Arduino projects.
• OAUTH WRAP, a new take on "on behalf of"-style API authentication which looks simpler to implement than the original OAUTH 1.00.
  • (and the rant accompanying it... interesting read)
    

2010-01-19

• Google Visualisation API, free web graphing
  • Motion Chart in particular, a flash-based bubble-chart animation component that was originally developed by the creators of the awesome Gapminder.org
• Dokan, a framework for developing user-mode filesystems in windows (similar concept to FUSE, except WinFUSE appears defunct and all the other alternatives I can find are commercial)
  • Dokan.NET - the .Net bindings (apparently quite buggy at the moment, beware!), making it truly trivial to implement a filesystem... the registry filesystem example is just brilliant in its simplicity...
  • (the idea of making a simple encrypted drive system, exempt from the 2-GB Fat32 file size limit by actually using separate files on the filesystem...?)
• CSV Reader class for .Net - the built-in "Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser may be a better option in some or all cases, I'm not sure, but this at least looks pretty neat.
  

2009-12-29

• MandelBulb (thanks Patrick!)
  • 3D fractal rendering programs
  • zoomable rendered Mandelbulb image
• Microsoft SeaDragon smooth zoomable very-large-image viewer
• Microsoft Pivot entity collection analyser
• Tamás Nepusz's Last.fm artist similarity rendering
  • The idea of a 3D explorable version of this visualization (and others)
    

2009-12-28

• GovTrack.org, a site that tracks the law-making process for the US; what government should really be like...
• Copyright-Watch, tracking changes in that ailing law worldwide.
• EFF "Take-down Hall of Shame", highlighting some pretty amusing copyright infringement claims.
• Photoshop Disasters - probably more fun when it was first created, it's still quite entertaining (and a really good place to go before you start thinking of retouching photos for public consumption).
  

2009-12-27

• TrueCrypt, software-based disk encryption that can be used on several operating systems and, to a certain extent, on removable media in "portable mode" (requiring admin rights on a windows machine, limited to 2GB volumes on Windows Fat32 drives) or
• FreeOTFE, software-based disk encryption for Windows, also limited by Fat32 and admin rights but with "Explorer" program available for non-Administrator use.
• Hardware-encrypted USB drives in general
  

2009-12-26

• RESX Synchronizer, for .Net projects with language-specific RESX files.
  

2009-12-21

• Windows AIK, enabling you to create USB boot disks really really painlessly (assuming you have a Vista machine handy for the partitioning).
  

2009-12-18

• Tableau, a visualization-oriented BI tool attempting to combine the ease of Excel with the graphical power and interactivity of something like GapMinder.org
  

2009-11-25

• WakeMate, a little gadget that would track your movements at night and help you understand sleep patterns... maybe?
  

2009-11-18

• Ambient Music Player, the only (surviving?) open-source media player for Android as far as I can tell.