Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

For those unfamiliar with SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), you must read and dig into this crazy Act that can and will pretty much screw up any freedom and innovation like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Reddit, etc if it happens. Please sign up to petition against it HERE. Learn more about it from the video above from Chris Hayes.

awesome!

“Sebastian Schmieg of the Netherlands created this video by feeding a transparent image to Google Image Search and asking it to find similar images, and then taking the top result and feeding it back into the similarity algorithm, 2951 times. It’s a wonderful look at an evolutionary process.”

via boingboing
Search by Image, Recursively, Transparent PNG, #1 (via Kottke)

Over the summer,  at my first FooCamp, I was asked “What does Education mean to you” by the amazing team over at Vittana which you should look into.

I knew Education was incredibly important in my life and one of my thoughts made it into the Vimeo video above (with some other awesome individuals), but I thought this would be a good time to reflecte into this question a bit more for the holiday break.

What does Education mean to me?

Education is the opportunity to learn from the world and discover myself to share with others.
Education gives me the ability to breath,  to grow, to be curious, to be wrong, and at times be right.
Without Education, I’d never learn, I’d  never try, I’d never know myself, nor would I  even question if I were wrong or right.
Education enables life.
Education is what makes us human.

If you have some thoughts on What does Education mean to you, drop a note over to the team at Vittana… I’m sure they would appreciate it.

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that a rubbish dump being created would, in the space of a century, become a protected area.  Yet that is exactly what happened to what has come to be known as Glass Beach, just outside Fort Bragg in California.

The residents there had no refuse collection so, with the sea so close by the solution seemed obvious – throw the garbage over the edge of the cliffs above their local beach.  The burgeoning population of the town proceeded, with abandon reckless if not gleeful (after all, it must have been more fun than the usual taking out of the garbage) to do just that.

Image Credit Flickr User Meganpru

They did it with relish and in great volume: glass, household appliances and even motor vehicles went over the edge until the place acquired a new name – The Dumps. It was not until the 1960s that city leaders and the local water board forced the closure of the beach as an illegal dump.

Image Credit Flickr User Mikka Skaffari

Image Credit Flickr User Teeping

Cleanups followed to remove the largest pieces of detritus, but decades of wear had done their work on much of the glass which had been thrown over the side of the cliffs.   The waves and the weather had smashed, pounded and ground the glass in to smooth, small, rounded objects – million upon million of them.

Image Credit Flickr User Mamojo

Image Credit Flickr User tofuart

It was not long until the name Glass Beach was adopted instead of the previous, less attractive appellation.  In the early years of this century the beach and the surrounding twenty acres were bought by the California State Park system with a view to incorporating it in to the surrounding MacKerricher State Park.  After a final cleanup exactly that happened.

Image Credit Flickr User thats

Image Credit Flickr User Bruces View

It is not the only glass beach created by human activity.  There is another in California (Benicia) and one in the Hawaiian bay of Hanapepe. Most curiously perhaps, there is one that exists at Guantanamo Bay. They are all testament to the power of nature to correct the mistakes made by humanity.
It seems that every color of glass can be found on the beach. Those original tippers would be suprised, perhaps, to see what had become of their garbage.

Glass Beach has become very popular with tourists, many of whom scour the beach for the most attractive pieces of glass they can find which they plan to take home as mementoes.  Ironically, where it had once been illegal to dump glass on the beach – now, it is against the law to remove it.

“[Video Link] This is a fascinating 15-minute video that shows a hunter-gatherer tribe in Papua New Guinea meeting with people from the outside world for the first time. They are very cautious, but also very curious, about the man on the other side of the river. They eventually cross the river to meet Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, the producer of Tribal Journeys: The Toulambi. When the men see Dutilleux’s clothing, they then look at the clothes they are wearing, as if for the first time. When they stroke Dutilleux’s hair, they then stroke their own hair.

It looks like all five parts of the documentary are on YouTube.”

I’ll post all 5 videos after the jump.

I’ve been waiting to visit Jay Walkers incredible “Library of Imagination” for several years now and in about 12 hours I’ll be inside pondering, wondering, imagining, and wishing I could take everyone along. I’d write more about it, but the 2008 TED video above or the Wired article will explain it best until after I return, though I’ll have no photos as this is not allowed during my visit. I’ll have to thank TEDmed for arranging this visit, which is also a must go to conference I highly recommend.

According to Wikipedia:
“Before its acquisition by Google, the gmail.com domain name was used by a free e-mail service offered by Garfield.com, online home of the comic strip Garfield.”

Interesting how things work out. I wonder what the alternatives were? goomail, gomail, Omail, etc

“Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.

For more details see this link

The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.

Our apparatus was built from a design published by Richard Berg [Am J Phys 59(2), 186-187 (1991)] at the University of Maryland. The particular apparatus shown here was built by our own Nils Sorensen.”

via youtube

Amazing! Just a reminder in how breath-taking and beautiful nature is. I still need to watch the documentary movie Oceans as well which I posted about 2 years ago.

“In 2008, Sandra Critelli shot this excellent photo of Golden Rays off the Mexican coast:

She said: “It was an unreal image, very difficult to describe. The surface of the water was covered by warm and different shades of gold and looked like a bed of autumn leaves gently moved by the wind.

“It’s hard to say exactly how many there were but in the range of a few thousand.

“We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school and we could see many under the water surface too.

Golden Rays grow up to seven feet across and migrate within the Caribbean.”

Photo Link and Article Link via reddit (via Neatorama)

youtube video
via boingboing

“James White made this poster, which you can buy at the Signalnoise store. All profits go to the relief effort.”

via boingboing

Ha. Your fingerprint trails show what you were last doing on your iPad or any touch phone to some degree.  I can usually tell what someone is doing just by their finger movements standing in front of them, especially for Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, and chatting.

via design language
(thanks  ray)

This reminds me of the NounProject. Both look great:

“Icotrip.com is like a road movie in the world of icons. Every day, you will discover a new (ico)trip experience! Don’t wait for a conventional icon because you will be disappointed! Icotrip is the world of the offbeat humour! Be strong, I trust you dear visitor…”

I started Designverb on January 18th, 2006 as a quick experiment to jot down the many things I found to share with my friends and anyone else curious. Today, August 1st, 2010,  marks my 1000th post, and this one being the 1001′st.

I’ll admit the the opportunities, friendship, community, and insights I’ve received throughout the years has been amazing and it has surely kept me busy after a long day of work and on weekends.  There are times where I’m flooded with work and have very little time to post, but I started a Facebook Fan page where I post quick  fun links and have recently found some extra contributors to help find more great things to post about.

The Above picture is of sushi at O Ya here in Boston. I tend to eat sushi to celebrate  so maybe I’ll go there this week again.

Anyhow, I had no plans to really celebrate, but I thought I’d share some of the most popular posts since starting Designverb.
1. Tunnel House
2. Stuck At Heathrow Airport
3. Paint Chip Card Holder
4. Red Bull Headquarters
5. Mark Khaisman Brown Tape Art
6. Stefans Stormtroopers a Day
7. Heineken World Bottle: Beer to Bricks
8. Creepy Snow Globes
9. Color Changing Mini-Cooper
10. Burj Al Arab: Tennis Court in the Sky!
11. Non-Metric Countries
12. Shoes That Make Everyone the Same Height
13. How 315 Billion Dollars Looks
14. GadgetOff 2007 and 2009 Recaps.
15. TerraCycle Inc

And one of my fun little trips came from GM here.

I’ve been incredibly busy helping organize the TEDxCambridge event occurring May 16th at the MIT Stata Center. The theme “How do you eat”  is based off of this year TED prize winner Jamie Oliver in regards to Food and education. If you are in Boston May 16th, apply to get an invite and let me know. We can only invite 300 attendees and registration will close soon. You can learn more on tedxcambridge.com

Also, if you are in a position to sponsor any food, funding, or gifts for the event, please contact me asap. (now! =) ).
We will have 2 break sessions followed by an evening event in eating, drinking, and idea sharing!

Lots of awesome speakers in the line up!
- Wylie Dufresne: WD 50
- Chandler Burr: Times Scent critic
- Dan Ariely: Behavioral Economist
- Richard Chisolm: Filmmaker
- John Gertsen: Mixologist
-  many more!

update: Photos on flickr, via eddric(350),Tino(40), JB (60), millie(16)

Gadgetoff 2009 unleashed an intense series of kabooms,  zaps, chomps, and kerplurks rattling 400 attendees on the beautiful 83 acre Staten Island grounds September 25th while slinging Lenovo laptops with a trebuchet,  cooking hot dogs with Telsa Coil Towers, riding jet fueled 5g merry-go-rounds, writing code drunk for autonomous cars legally, and thrashing a series of incredible lectures and demos throughout the day! Welcome to the Gadgetoff 2009 Experience: Boom!

Robots rumbled in every corner ranging from dancing tai chi robots to tiny micro toy hex bugs that jittered their way into everyone’s pockets. The gigantic mechanical Mondo Spider chomped it’s way through the lunch gardens while on lookers enjoyed delicious alcohol infused sorbet.  Dean Kamen of DEKA brought his breathtaking and ingeniously engineered “luke” arm (video) and toy inventor Brian Walker tinkered with large crossbows and rockets made to launch humans 20 miles across the air! Invisible inks, toys, gadgets, art, fire, illusions, magic, and disruptive ideas scorched the island while participants roamed in excitement and curiosity!

Just as I experienced last time, Gadgetoff invited the coolest hand’s on creatives to celebrate the Smart and Useless for an unforgetful day in disruptive goodness!

My adventure brief after the jump! (lots of pictures and videos)

Gadgetoff 2009, Friday  September 25th, 8am start!

I took a red-eye bus from Boston to NYC which arrives way earlier than expected. 3 hours of sleep on the bus. Oh boy, this is going to be a long day.

Welcome to NYC! I love it here!

Welcome aboard the ferry to Staten Island. Let the craziness begin! Gadgets a go!!

Gadgetoff 2009 starts off with spectacular weather on a ferry ride over to Staten Island.  Friends gather, smiles echo, ideas ripple, and newbies are warned of the chaos to come. Buddies Fred Graver, Designer Stefan Sagmeister, crazy man himself Dan Dubno,  David S. Rose, and friends from all over the world catch up!

Our friends Fashion Nerd Diana Eng (RISD ’05) gets introduced to Graphic Design Disruptor Stefan Sagmeister!

I catch up with conference photographer Gene Driskell who has a great set of Flickr image of Gadgetoff 2009 here.  Gene is literally at every conference I go to. TED, Poptech, GEL, Gadgetoff, EG, and a few others!

Welcome to Staten Island!

Whoohoo! Gadgetoff Helpers in every corner directing us goofy techs walk about! Awesome suits, destined for fun and danger!

Here’s the Music Hall where all the main presentations are located. There is another large outdoor exhibition space for the larger fun stuff and another indoor space for hands on demos!

Lasers scattered above everyone’s heads on first entrance lighting up the space with geeky excitement for trouble! As far as I know, several attendees whipped out their own lasers to blast about the room as well!

Dan Dubno, Mike Dubno, and Greg Harper kick off the conference as usual! What a great trio!

Greg starts off with the classic bag of gadgets. One in particular is a nifty little Sony Party Shot Dock stand which automatically pans around looking for photos to take. With smile detection and such other software, just set your camera down during a party and come back with a few hundred awesome photos! Set it and forget it!

Here’s the Sony Party Shot Camera. I need to get one of these, set up a few around the house, and see what it takes! I wonder if they also track movement and just follow you without taking pics!

Sebastian Thrun talks about building autonomous smart vehicles and remarks how “it’s illegal to Drink while Driving, but it’s okay to Drink while writing code for a car that’s suppose to drive around by itself!”  ha!

William Gurstelle of book Absinthe and Flamethrowers shows attendees what not to do, though most of the slides were about the benefits in risk taking.

Steve Dennis presents some advanced X-ray bomb surveillance technology  from AS&E.  They have this little box about the size of a fridge that is driven on the street which detects anything inside cars, trucks, spaces! Woa!!! Scary.

Here are some X-ray shots. Pretty incredible considering the scanner is moving at the same time! I want one!!! They should install this into airports… forget x-ray lines, just walk down a x-ray-hallway.

Funny man and successful entrepreneur (ICQ)  Yossi Vardi introduces his next project, called Six Degrees Under… internet for the  dead! A continuously growing population and high demand. Very entertaining as usual!

Master in visual Illusions Al Seckel fools us with some visual trickery inside, outside, up, and down!!

Adventure man Brian Walker talks  about his success, collapse, and recent restart in a new project to make a human crossbow-like device (RUSH) with rockets attached hoping to launch him some 20 miles!! Oh my, sounds like dangerous fun! I’m in!

Gary Lauder talks about ShotSpotter which tracks  gun shot locations in a city.  3 beacons triangulate  sound waves to give an approximate reference point within 25 some meters of a shot location.   Incredible!

Sculptor, Artist, Engineer Bruce Shapiro brought some of his motion controlled toys to show everyone. Check out his  great work!

IFI  (Innovation First International) throws down a small bucket of little HexBug vibrating robots premiering at Gadgetoff 2009! These bugs stole the show finding their way in every attendees pockets! Pretty simple design which launches a bugs movement forward from the rubbery legs. Add vibration, and you have constant forward movement…they even bounce off their own backs. www.hexbug.com.

Watch the hex bugs I had in action below:

Connor Dickie, kameraflage inventor, unleashes the  invisible wavelengths in inks. Pull out a camera, and boom, you see hidden inks such as this shirt with a cloud on it…when you look through a camera lens, you see lightening bolts under the cloud which are invisible to the human eye. He showed me a pretty wild future version not yet public on his laptop. Carry your cameras around and lookout for some cool things!

A demo in a device Marvin Minsky was suppose to present, but was not able to attend. The device took a snapshot of a piece of paper with text then the camera vocally replied back the angle of the paper to the camera lens, then started to read the text out loud. Gosh, where do I get one of those!

Some awesome Adlebaran robots from France breaking out some sweet Tai Chi moves while talking! VERY VERY COOOOL! Watch the video below!

Dan get’s pounded with a few paint balls from Mike while recording the fun with a high speed camera!  The one in the face was great! Splawack!

Dean Kamen of DEKA demonstrates the unbelievable “Luke” arm project from DARPA that he’s been working on for the past few years.

“Affectionately dubbed “Luke” (after Luke Skywalker), the robotic arm is a DARPA funded project intended to restore functionality for individuals with upper extremity amputations” -DEKA

You MUST watch the video above of the LUKE arm!!!!!

Micro helicopters smaller than a penny. In fact, you can probably fit 3-4 of them on a penny! Add a wireless cam looking downwards and you have spy flies! Imagine having a handful of these, tossing them up in the air, and instantly having surveillance of space without anyone knowing!

Gadgetoff goes outdoors! Through to the gardens, to the open greens we go!

Gadgetoff isn’t only about gadgets but classics such as this car! OooOooOo! Amazing! Too bad they didn’t leave the keys inside for me to give it a test ride!

ahhh, the here’s the Jetbike from last year! A bit pulled apart, but wait wait….

Caution: This may Kill you! Awesome! Let’s go!

Whoohoooo! They took the Jetbike and strapped  a pair of  them (pulse jets) on a pole to make a jet merry-go-round!  Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixels and myself took the opportunity to hop on, though they couldn’t fire it up at the moment.

Several people at other conferences mix myself and Jeff  up for some reason… perhaps we’re Asian, so hopefully this ride didn’t help solve the confusion any less!

Jeff stands proud with the pulse jet horse with the goofy eyes!

Whoohooooo! Rock on! (imagining the merry-go-round horses flaming while launching us up in the air)

Here’s a video of it in action:

After lunch, came the  carnival ride known as the Regurgitator! Supposedly it’ flings a human around up to 5 g’s… that’s when the face goes pale!

This gals helmet flew off half way through the ride! Yikes! Hold on! Once these pulse engines are lit up, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them!

The Mondo Spider lurks around Gadgetoff!

CRuuuunnnkch, CRuuunck, chunnaaaa chuunnnn, Crunch, Chomp Chomppp!

Dean Kamen of DEKA and Dave Matthews of G4 TV share a bubbly dry ice delight.

How about some Wine Cellar Sorbet. Perhaps some Mimosa, Sake, Riesling, Champagne, Rose, Sangria,  or Pinot Noir.  It has .5% alcohol, though founder Bret Birnbaum spoke about a version he used to make at 3.5%. This was absolutely incredible, refreshing, zesty, a keeper! Bret mentioned Wholefoods caries his sorbets currently! Go get it!

Yum Yum Yummmm, Rose sorbet!

The Uno Bike makes a visit. I think it’s fans out for faster speeds. Goes uni up to 15 mph, and 25mph when spread.

Some water resistant sand from the Inventables crew. (it’s  silicon sand)

Artist and gravity man himself Tom Shannon rocks out his pendulum painting demo!

I’m not sure how this happened, but Lenovo decided to drop test their notebook with this trebuchet conveniently sitting around the yard. Notice the Lenovo laptop strapped to the watermelon with the guy in the blue shirt! Okay, 3,2,1….

Wheeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzz….      Kerplurk!!!!! crack!

Look pumpkin stuffed Lenovo!

The screen didn’t fair too well… does it turn on?!! Let’s do it again!

An rare close demo of Dean Kamens Luke hands with user Chuck!  Unreal! Unbelievable,  pure awesome!!!

Testing out the Eye Writer. Draw with your eyes!

The addictive IFI Hex Bugs in action. They brought thousands and gave them out to attendees! They will be in retail stores starting this October.

Here it is again! Incredibly addictive!

tracks for the hexbugs!

robotic creepiness! The terminator brought to life perhaps?

yar…is this a projector or the terminators skull?

PrivateEye Security screen protection. When the camera recognizes your looking away, it’ll blur the image… the version on the left, scrabbled the text, but kept the text you were reading still as you read. Pretty amazing!

OoooOo, Vurtual Reality Sphere!

I’ve gotta try this out!

Woa! I’m walking inside a sphere, but virtually running around a battle field! I got a bit dizzy inside! I tried running, but I think this one was made for walking! I stumbled a few times!

View from inside the Sphere!

James Patten shows off his tangible AudioPad project from several years ago. He’s made several adjustments to it since I first played with it in 2004 at the MIT MediaLab.

Bre Pettis introduces us to his very own DIY home made 3D printer. Assembled just like an FDM printer which is basically a hot glue gun printing thin layers of an object at a time. This one doesn’t print supportive structures so it is a bit limited on printable shapes.

Bruce Shapiro brought over some of his classic egg shell printers. Plop a pen in, create a design, and watch the magic unfold!

Obama egg print! Sweeet!

Check out Bruce Shapiros  work on this video:

Michael Dubno made his own  Sand Table piece . Awesome job Mike. I’m going to make one now..maybe with that wetless silicon sand stuff..perhaps an under water version =)

Sweet Heather Knight shows off her Sensate Bear project exploring touch and social behavior. Yah!

A stroll through the Chinese Garden before Dinner!

Zap! Cooking hot dogs with two Large Tesla Coil Towers! Crossed off my list! Crunchy on the inside, chilled on the out, but just so damn cool!!

ZiiiziiizaaaapP!

The Gadgetoff 2009 Giftbag with tons of goodies and books! Thank you Gadgetoff!

Quick fun picture of Heather Knight and Jeff Han hanging out in the rain while we wait for a taxi after dinner. Heathers saying “look its raining, yah!” and Jeffs thinking, “multi-touch rain, hmmm, the pixels come to you, what can I do!”.

Good times all! The BEST Gadgetoff ever! Looking forward to Gadgetoff 2010 when more chaos is revealed!

A few weeks back, I attended the TEDxBoston event which I wanted to post about, but had no videos to share. As of today, TEDx videos from around the world can be viewed and shared on the TEDx YouTube Channel as well as play lists from each location like TEDxBoston. I’ll post the TEDxBoston videos after the jump, and make sure to watch the last video with our favorite Ben Zanders conducting the Youth Orchestra of Americas.

TEDx YouTube Channel

Intro Video

John Hoffman:

The Alzheimer’s Project with HBO’s John Hoffman: While there is no cure for Alzheimers disease, The Alzheimer’s Project shows there is now genuine reason to be optimistic about the future. This HBO multi-platform series takes a close look at groundbreaking discoveries made by the countrys leading scientists, as well as the effects of this debilitating and fatal disease both on patients and on their families. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009 (http://tedxboston.org).

Ryan Chin:

Smart Cities: Sustainable Urban Mobility-on-Demand. Ryan Chin explains how a fleet of sharable, collapsible, rechargeable CityCars, GreenWheel bicycles, and RoboScooters can transform transportation in our most congested cities by operating within an intelligent, wireless grid that understands when, where, and how we want to travel.

Alexa Scordato:

Alexa Scordato: Reverse Mentorship: How pairing digital natives with seasoned executives is the fastest way towards bridging the digital divide and creating a truly social enterprise. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

Bill Jacobson:

Bill Jacobson: MuseTrek transforms how well explore museums, cities, and cultural resources around the world. It is a collection of ever expanding ‘Treks’ created by anyone from renowned artists to the person next to you . . . all available on the web and your own iPhone or iPod Touch. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

Carrie Fitzsimimons:

Art Science Prize – Carrie Fitzsimimons. How to catalyze a renaissance generation among Bostons public high school students by helping them develop the intellectual tools for cross-disciplinary learning and creative thought. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

Tom Hadfield: le whif

Le Whif is a revolutionary new way of eating chocolate – by breathing it! Imagine, chocolate without the calories. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

Philippe Crettien, Casey Berman

Jazz Education and Innovation – Philippe Crettien, Casey Berman. An exploration of Boston’s vibrant culture of innovation in jazz theory, improvisation, and composition — both past and present — and local conservatories that honor the classics while unlocking the creativity in jazzs next generation of rising stars. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

Melissa Withers:

Nursing Home of the Future: Redesigning the Elder Experience – Warehousing the aging Woodstock generation in todays elder care institutions simply won’t do. Melissa Withers from The Elder Experience Lab reveals insights into how seniors prefer to interact with caregivers, utilize private and shared spaces, care for body and mind, and ultimately, what they think the nursing home of the future can (and should) look like. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

Dave Edwards:

Culture Lab: Catalyzing Innovation through ArtScience – Dave Edwards explains how a philosophy and a practice of fusing art, science, experiential learning, and social impact are catalyzing innovation in todays students by igniting their curiosity and giving them the freedom to pursue their creative inventions. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

George Whitesides:

Diagnostics for All: George Whitesides explains how the complex science of micro-fluidics combined with the simple process of ink jet printing can easily detect early signs of diseases and dramatically change the way health care is delivered to millions of underserved people around the world. Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009.

Ben Zanders and the Youth Orchestra of Americas

Finale: Creating Hemispheric Unity through the Arts. Benjamin Zander conducts the Youth Orchestra of the Americas. How bringing together young, energetic musicians in the pursuit of excellence and the celebration of cultural diversity can serve as a powerful model for creating unity and catalyzing social change.
Presented at the 1st TEDxBoston on July 28, 2009

- Travel: Jetblue offers a all you can fly month pass, Sept 8-October 8 ) for $599! hmm, I do need a break, perhaps each weekend!
- Graphics: Incredible digital flowers by Macoto Murayama! very cool, I want the larger images!
- Fashion: Socks are fun, go get happy socks at happysocks.com
- Tech: Nerdy cool web2 pillows! haha, I want I want!
- Fun: Colored bubbles! yah, colored I said…and no stains! its magic!