Millions of registered users have played with MIT’s Scratch, the interface that helps you learn to code by snapping Lego-like colored blocks together. The new browser-based version will include blocks for making surveys and Webcam-based games. But will the fact that it’s being written in Flash repel its target audience?
The brave new world is full of technological innovation. It’s also full of people trying to grab onto the profits they generate. So when new products come out, companies holding patents that fringe on their concepts file lawsuits. Are many of these lawsuits frivolous? Sure. But defending against them racks up major expenses. Discussions on [...]
You won’t get your next copy of Photoshop on a CD or via download. Adobe has announced that its popular suite of editing apps, including such graphic design workhorses as Illustrator and Dreamweaver, will be sold by subscription only.
The 2013 New Media Night opens tonight from 6-8pm at the University of Maine to celebrate the unveiling of a new center for whiz-bang art and innovation. Funded by a $3.9M bond in 2009, IMRC (pronounced “immerse”) is chock full of cutting-edge toys, from 3d printers and laser engravers to 360-degree projections and moveable walls. [...]
I found myself at Los Angeles’ Wilshire Blvd and Fremont Street, at night and without my normal point-and-shoot camera. Therefore I took pics with my iPhone 5 — which produces a certain burnt style — of an area that had me very surprised. Among the South LA community, here were private, gated communities, church headquarters, [...]
Typical Los Angeles “food desert” photo along Figueroa Corridor. Getty Images/David McNew Walking through the Figueroa Corridor in South Central, Los Angeles, it is difficult to overlook the wave of urban developments. If you haven’t visited the area, you may have already seen it through popularized photos of fast food chains between Jefferson Blvd and [...]
Sure, there’s no paycheck in the mail every two weeks, but look around your home. Do you have a car? A computer with Internet? A backpack and good pair of shoes? You could be paying the rent as a micro-entrepreneur, piggybacking on a new wave of platforms that connect people who need stuff done with [...]
Video of the lecture Lessig gave at Harvard last Tuesday about Aaron Swartz. In the wake of the tragic death of social activist Aaron Swartz, many, including some in Washington, are asking how the law should respond. In this lecture — radically personal, deeply non-disinterested — Professor Lessig reflects on the life and work of [...]
New media provocateur John Bell remixes famous book covers to show what they would have looked like if this year’s big literary merger had chosen the name Random Penguin.
It’s not uncommon to see an UFO fly through a home video. Sometimes there are telltale signs of forgery such as fishing lines holding up the ship. More recently computer graphics have removed those strings, but close examination can reveal the ruse — maybe the lighting is off just a little. Enter Aristomenis “Meni” Tsirbas. [...]
Internet, meet hierarchy. As Felix Salmon points out in a timely article from earlier this week, “How capitalism breaks the web,” the dream of an internet teaming with non-professional blogs, open content, and online identity is now lost to a small consortium of “web-hostile” hubs such as Facebook and Instagram. The cause? As Salmon describes, [...]
Just in time for the 2012 US elections, Wired lets you finger your politician’s sponsors–NASCAR-style. Try it before you vote!
Now that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned of a possible Cyber-Pearl Harbor, it’s time to change your passwords. And guess what: a more secure password is actually easier to remember, if you follow a very simple rule.
Having trouble reading the news on your Samsung Galaxy while juggling a coffee cup? If you must use your tablet with only one hand, this demo shows users using only their eyes to interact with their tablets. Plus Microsoft is looking for a few good ideas for Surface apps.
As reported in numerous outlets today, publishers at the Ontario College of Art and Design realized their art history book would have cost $800 if they secured the rights to every image. So they chose the nuclear option, replacing each illustration with a white square and instructions to look the photos up online. Not to [...]
A rundown of stuff you can now make with 3d printers includes eagle’s beaks (there’s an eagle wearing one now), Escher buildings, the world’s fastest shoe, iPhone cases, and yes, pistols.
The world’s most innovative animation and game companies have just put their video software in your hands.
Are late-night TV and backlight videogames a cure for insomnia, or the cause?
Summer may be over, but there’s still time to get some action footage while the weather’s nice. Wired reviews your options for point-of-view cameras–and yes, shows an electric skateboard holding its own against a Corvette.
New York Stock Exchange, 15 January 2012 This is the third in a sequence of Public Spaces essays that I’ve been compiling here on NMDNet. The first essay began at New York’s Wall Street not long after the police there shut down Occupy Wall Street and noticed how the streets in downtown had become “dead [...]