Tag Archives: digital

Microsoft’s Dope New Tool Is Like #Autocomplete for #Drawing | WIRED #digital #animation #interactive #media #tech #software #design #art

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CREATING EVEN A few seconds of a hand-drawn animation—think old-school Looney Tunes, or earlier Disney films like Snow White—is a painstaking process that requires artists to draw hundreds, if not thousands, of frames. Over the years, advances in digital animation tools have streamlined that process and, in doing so, created a new aesthetic best seen in the faces of Pixar’s canon of characters.

Microsoft Research, along with the University of Hong Kong and the University of Tokyo, just unveiled a proof-of-concept technology that could bring back the charm of older, hand-drawn cartoons, with the speed and fluidity of today’s animation software. “Autocomplete hand-drawn animations” debuted at the Siggraph Asia conference, and it’s an interactive system that watches what the artist draws and then predicts what frame or line might come next. READ MORE: Microsoft’s Dope New Tool Is Like Autocomplete for Drawing | WIRED

The First Great Works of #Digital #Literature are Already Being Written | The Guardian #gaming #video #storytelling #art #tech

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Video games could be the greatest storytelling medium of our age – if only the worlds of art and technology would stop arguing and take notice…READ MORE: The first great works of digital literature are already being written | Technology | The Guardian

Typewriter-Inspired Mechanical #Keyboard | QWERKYWRITER #gadgets #devices #typewriters #digital #tech

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We spend a lot of time on our digital devices and we should be able to express ourselves through them. Unfortunately it’s all beige and brushed aluminum these days. We at Qwerkytoys are about to shake things up with our first product, the Qwerkywriter. Qwerkywriter connects wirelessly via Bluetooth to iPhones, iPads, iMacs, MacPros, Macbooks, Android Tablets Devices, Windows Tablets, and more. MORE: QWERKYWRITER | Typewriter-Inspired Mechanical Keyboard

Related: Qwerkywriter’s retro iPad keyboard is a flawed masterpiece | Engadget

RePhone Lets You Turn Anything Into A #Phone | TechCrunch + Finally, Game Cartridges You Can Plug Into Your #Smartphone | ARSTechnica #makerspaces

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RePhone Lets You Turn Anything Into A Phone | TechCrunch
The project is actually a tiny circuit board with a SIM slot and an optional screen. It also supports Bluetooth. You’re going to want to get the $49 Kit Create, a tiny watch-like system that includes a little case and all the modules. It’s like getting a tiny unlocked cellphone for under $50. This is obviously an experimental board but I checked it out a week ago and it seemed to work fairly well. It includes programming libraries in Arduino IDE, Lua and Javascript that allow you to connect the phone to the web and even IFTTT…

Finally, game cartridges you can plug in to your smart phone: Pico Cassette sends data through the headphone jack using audio signals | ARS Technica
Enter Pico Cassette, a Japanese outfit that says it’s bringing back “the next retro” with tiny game cartridges that plug in to a smartphone’s headphone jack. The tiny “cassettes” (the general Japanese term for cartridges) are built on PlugAir technology, which uses a specially designed iPhone or Android app to draw power from the headphone jack and send data using specially modulated audio signals…

Hands-On With the World’s First Flexible Wearable | WIRED #wearables #digital #tech #displays

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PHIL INAGAKI DOESN’T like to call the Wove Band a smartwatch. The CEO and co-founder of flexible electronics company Polyera would rather call his team’s creation a “device” or a “digital canvas” than evoke the mental image of a wrist-worn timepiece. READ MORE: Hands-On With the World’s First Flexible Wearable | WIRED

Will #Digital #Books Ever Replace Print? | Aeon #eBooks #reading #tech

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Digital books stagnate in closed, dull systems, while printed books are shareable, lovely and enduring. What comes next? READ MORE: Will digital books ever replace print? – Craig Mod – Aeon

The Evolving Landscape Of Recommendation Systems | TechCrunch #tech #products #digital #UX

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Everyday decisions, from which products to buy, movies to watch and restaurants to try, are more and more being put in the hands of a new source: recommendation systems. Recommendation systems are changing the very ways we make up our minds, guiding us through a new digital reality whose evolution is bringing us closer to exactly what it is that we want — even if we ourselves don’t know it yet. Recommendation systems (or RS for short) are intelligent information filtering engines that narrow the decision-making process to just a few proposals, and they’ve become an integral part of the user experience within some of our favorite platforms. READ MORE: The Evolving Landscape Of Recommendation Systems | TechCrunch

Secret Confessions Being Displayed in Train Station + 9 #Innovative Methods for Modern #Storytelling | Mashable + Storytelling in the #Digital Age | TechCrunch

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British people’s secret confessions are being displayed in a train station | Mashable
The deepest fears and emotional confessions of strangers are being anonymously displayed at a busy train station in the south of England. “The Waiting Wall” allows commuters travelling through Brighton train station to submit anonymous confessions that are then projected onto a large screen for fellow passengers to read. The display is running from September 21 to September 27 as part of Brighton digital festival.

9 Innovative Methods for Modern Storytelling | Mashable
When an author set out to tell a story in years past, he or she typically did so on paper, a typewriter or by typing at a computer.

But today, storytellers find imaginative ways to share their ideas with interactive and visual elements. On modern mediums like Twitter, Vine, YouTube and other mobile applications, storytellers are crafting tales in ways that would have been unfathomable a decade ago. Offline, too, authors have begun rethinking the traditional concept of the book in ways both innovative and unorthodox.

Storytelling In The Digital Media Age | TechCrunch
Recent studies have shown that attention spans for millennials – those who have grown up in a digital world – are 60 percent shorter than previous generations when it comes to media. They’ve essentially emerged from birth staring at smartphones and tablet computers – with endless entertainment options just a screen away. As this attention span continues to shrink, brands must identify new ways to break through the clutter and establish meaningful emotional connections with their audiences.

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The 3-D Printed Violin That Could Lead to a New Stradivarius | WIRED #music #3Dprinting #violins

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This video of Laurent Bernadac, an engineer and lifelong musician, playing the violin looks and sounds very little like a person playing the violin. For one thing, he’s also using a looper and effects pedals to jam out something funkier and jazzier than you’d expect from an instrument more commonly associated with classical and country. But, more ostensibly, Bernadac is playing something that looks more like an avian skeleton than a stringed instrument. It’s like the ghost of a violin.

It’s a 3Dvarius, a 3-D printed electric violin. It’s based on the renowned Stradivarius violins crafted by the Stradivari family in the late 1600s and early 1700s, but you’d have a hard time sleuthing out the shared DNA between the two machines. It is, as Bernadac says, “a new kind of musical instrument,” one with an algorithmically optimized weight and a digital sound. READ MORE: The 3-D Printed Violin That Could Lead to a New Stradivarius | WIRED.

#Stream 58 Hours of #Free #Classical #Music Selected to Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax | Open Culture #streaming #spotify

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Lovers of classical music have a third online option, thanks to an enterprising digital curator who goes by the name of Ulyssestone and who compiled the Spotify playlist above of 58 hours of classical music — from Sibelius to Satie, Bach to Debussy. It’s designed for anyone who wants to study, work, or simply relax. READ MORE: Stream 58 Hours of Free Classical Music Selected to Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax | Open Culture.