This might be little more than an amusing hack, but it looks like it could be a neat little thing while on a train or whatever.. and given the generous size of MacBook Pro / MacBook trackpads, it could be quite workable, even.

A British company has been working for a number of years constructing an e-paper like screen, based on polymer transistors, rather than silicone ones – this means that the transistors have the same characteristics as polymers, and are flexible: i.e. a bendable , light-weight plastic screen!

WANT!

linkie

If Apple aren’t actually going to launch that damn tablet, there sure is a LOT of hype going around the intarweb these days… a few links from 9to5mac below, all from the last couple of days. One notable bit of news that lends a lot of credibility, is that devs are being asked to prepare their apps so they can be demoed at the January event. I’m not really sceptical about the device itself – I think there’ll be plenty of cool things made, if you give them a platform with a new, great interface. We’ll see

Developers being asked to ready their apps for fullscreen use / january demo

“tablet event” in January, launch come March? Apple has rented a venue for an event

NY Times source: you’ll be surprised how you interact with this tablet

I like the idea – and more specifically, I like the analogue nature of it. Take a bunch of snaps, have them printed and stick them onto various physical objects, then photograph it all again. You could’ve just done that on the computer, but to be honest, all the purely digital art does tend to get a little fucking boring sometimes.

Linkie to more stuff here

Ever since Zbrush came onto the 3d modelling scene, it’s given rise to a whole new style of characters. Great, stylized, edgy characters that people just didn’t seem to do previously. It’s really great – and a great example of how a tool affects your art, based on the possibilities and limitations inherent in the tool.

Here’s a render:

and here’s a link to the post on CGTalk by the Nexus guys who did the animation.

Okay, this isn’t exactly new or anything, but going for a stroll down memory lane, this still cracked me up

There are more shows on zefrank.com – Also: check out Ze Frank’s TED talk from yesteryear.

Product pimping time!

I feel a little weird writing about this because it’s just so geeky, but I seriously think this is one of the best gadgets I’ve EVER bought. It’s a 12 cm wide, discrete black box, with both HDMI and component/phono output that you can connect to your HD/SD tv .. and it’s capable of playing a variety of formats from USB storage. You ripped your DVD’s and put them in the attic? No problem, this thing will play VOB’s. It’ll also play MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, H264, MKV, and a lot of other stuff. Furthermore, it can play music and show photos from same USB storage.

All in all, it’s an incredibly well-functioning little unit. It plays anything you throw at it (anything I’ve tried, anyway), and the user interface is brilliantly simple: basically there are four icons: photos, music, movies, settings. Those four menu items contain what you would expect, and there is a small remote included with the unit, meaning you can lean back in your sofa and watch your holiday snaps.

The price? Roughly 600DKK. ‘Tis a good replacement for the Mac Mini I had stolen earlier this year.

give me this over modern art any day… just. do it. I love those curves, the way parallel snake lines curve across her abdomen, into her belly button, and upwards. And how does that slender waist come in so much? There’s something not quite picture-perfect about that, but that’s what I really like as well.

How was that ancient Japanese saying again? “For every temple built, you must leave one room unfinished, for only Gods are perfect”.

I found this on Tetris.

I’m curious what this tablet business is going to become. From all the mockup videos and ‘real fake’ videos I’ve seen, it appears it’s going to largely become a platform for big business to advertise stuff. Case in point, that Sports Illustrated tablet demo that was knocking around earlier this month – but there have been others.

Looking at this, it seems so nice and responsive – but to be honest, it’s a little TOO perfect. You notice how there’s never any mistakes in the way the user interacts with the touch UI? Seems too good to be true, so it’s probably just a mockup. Anyway … I would welcome a lightweight book reader such as this, with a distribution system as easy and user friendly as iTunes, and a touch user interface as pleasant to use as that of the iPhone. I on the other hand wouldn’t welcome it if the tablet is as closed a platform as the iPhone is. Frankly, the closed-off nature and proprietary content delivery system is making me consider other smartphones, but for now I can’t think of one that delivers as the iPhone does.

Despite those misgivings, imagine all the cool games you could do with a larger (say maybe 12″) touch area. I imagine another thing that would crop up REAL fast is a piano application.. because obviously this phantom tablet Apple are supposedly probably actually making, will have an app store similar to the iPhone. There’s talk of a 70/30 revenue split for content suppliers, and presumably this same ratio will apply to application developers. Maybe one should take a look at this emerging market and join the throng of would-be gold-diggers? Then again, let’s see what we get come March 2010

The concept is this: a hotline was set up, and people encouraged to phone in and talk about something that cause them pain. These monologues of pain were then sampled and processed by musicians, and compiled into a set of samples, to be used in making music – sounds like something to check out

http://www.zefrank.com/pain_pack/