Well what is it? Basically it’s a liquid crystal display without the logic to adress specific pixels. So think of it like taking the liquid crystal part and leaving out all the transistors and logic to actually display something. Then add a pen or even your finger nail and you can “write” on that display – what’s happening is that obviously the crystals get pushed aside and the background of the “display” shines through – this background is white so when you write on the boogie board everything is white on black…

The only button on the tablet is named “erase” – and that’s what the button does: the whole display flashes two times, one white, and then black and everything is back to where we started. You cannot save. You just press erase and start over. It’s truly a replacement for post-it-notes…

Of course there’s a battery inside, and it’s said to hold for tens of thousands of erases. You cannot change the battery when it’s empty, but on the other hand this gadget is less than 30 Euros and it does look like you can break it up and try your best to exchange the battery yourself. Since the battery isn’t needed to display anything I don’t think I will run out of juice just yet.

Source: http://www.improvelectronics.com

One way to draw a sequence of actions would be a sequence diagram. There are a nbumber of tools to draw them but now I came across a web service that would allow me to write my sequence diagram in a easy textual representation and then it draws the diagram for me. Great stuff!

Source 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_diagram
Source 2: http://websequencediagrams.com/

This campaign was subject (not only this campaing…) to a documentation called “BOMB IT The Movie”

“Featuring street artist and top graffiti writers from 5 continents the acclaimed documentary.
Bomb It is the first film to update the story of graffity with a truly international perspective. Each month we will presenting portraits of the artists from around the world in never before seen footage and interviews.”

You can watch the whole documentation online now! For free!

Source 1: http://www.babelgum.com/bombit
Source 2: Obey the GIANT

thx to Kristian.

Source: http://www.incompetech.com/graphpaper/plain/

“The Microsoft Visual OpenType Layout Tool provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface to add OpenType layout tables to fonts with TrueType outlines. It is licensed free and can be downloaded from the online community set up for it. The community hosts an active discussion forum, version history information, a wish-list and related downloads. Links to VOLT’s release notes, as well as tips and tutorials are also posted.”

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/VOLT.mspx

“The other day I had this idea, what if I were to take all the concepts I write, speak, and consult about and turn them into a concept map. That might help me explain how things like messaging, unit of work, and exception management work together and why. It also shouldn’t be too much work. Or so I thought.

I started out with a blank piece of paper, and this is what happened:”

Source: http://www.udidahan.com/2008/08/04/distributed-systems-concept-map/

“In Melbourne I developed a way-finding-system for the Eureka Tower Carpark while working for Emery Studio. The distored letters on the wall can be read perfectly when standing at the right position. This project won several international design awards.”

Source: http://de-war.de/eurekacarpark.html

The first tool is called “phun” and is Windows and Linux only. It’s a small tool that allows you to draw circles, boxes, springs,… and when you finished: press the “play” button to start the simulation. You can interact all the time with the objects and the simulation by draging and manipulating everything.

There’s even a video available of phun in action:

It’s serious fun…that phun tool… yeah I had to write that, you know?!

The second tool I want to write about is called “Chipmunk” and is available for OS X only. To be fair: this is not a real drawing tool like phun – it’s more or less a game physics engine that cames with several samples in sourcecode that you can play with if you can… You need XCode and some Objective C knowledge.

So now go and play!

Source 1: http://www.acc.umu.se/~emilk/index.html
Source 2: http://wiki.slembcke.net/main/published/Chipmunk

For a better understanding, look at the pictures and the video:

Source: OLE Coordinate System

Source: http://www.xkcd.com/c195.html

Yes boys and girls, this is an Atari logo tattoed on her back. In fact it’s looking great Find more pictures here.

Source 1: XboxLive
Source 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evil_angela/

“Microsoft has forty seven thousand-odd employees, a huge percentage them very determined to change the world, and often suceeding. And millions of customers with the same idea.

Basically, Microsoft is in the world-changing business. If they ever lose that, they might as well all go home.

I chose the monster image simply because I always thought there is something wonderfully demonic about wanting to change the world. It can be a force for the good, of course, if used wisely. It’s certainly a very loaded part of the human condition, but I suppose that’s what makes it compelling.”

Source: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003388.html

Oh..just in case you’re wondering:

“This is a rendering of SongHyeKyo, the Korean actress.”

Source: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=39949…

“This drawing was done entirely in MS Paint with a Logitech laser mouse. I did not use the copy and paste tool, or the text tool. There was no color sampling or pasting from other images, but I did view some seperate images as reference, as do most artists. ”

it’s 700px x 10.000px in the big version

Source: http://www.ubersite.com/m/84167

“Fountain of Youth is a fan-made adventure game by a team of both Indiana Jones and computer game enthusiasts. A playable demo has been in development and has experienced quite a few delays, but is expected to be available soon – and the design of the full game, (after much revamping) is nearly complete – for development to begin by Fall 2005.

We also hope to send out free DVD-cased editions of the demo and full-game once they are available to anyone who donates enough to cover the shipping. We also hope to create a special boxed edition of the game with a printed manual in the future.”

There is a demo available and the full game is expected soon.

Source: Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth

Source: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/03/13/ascii-art-1948/

If you ever wanted to know how these great pixel graphics are made or you ever wanted to create some by yourself – take a look at this great tutorial. A ten step guide to pixel-art:

Source: http://www.derekyu.com/extras/pixel01.html

I would like to thank Tim for his awesome work. This gifted guy is working on the final version of the official Technology-Ninja.

Source: Mumblebeast, Tims website

Did you ever search a font? I am searching the correct font several times a week. It’s everytime like this: I’ve got a picture with text in it. And I would like to add some more text to the picture. But this is impossible if you don’t know which font was used in the picture. Then I start the fontbook and compare the font in the picture to my fonts on the computer…this takes time… And now I found the solution for this time problem. It’s called “WhatTheFont?!“. You throw a picture into this search engine and you get font samples and names that are close to your reference font. Priceless!

Source: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Ink it baby! As more and more people are using tablet pcs it’s going to get really really – oh well – confusing.

I personally really like the idea of handwritten notes on webpages or especially like in this case in a web forum. BUT only if the information of the handwritten text is also available as machine readable, not to say searchable text. Because the tablet pc incorporates a really great handwriting recognition it wouldn’t be that hard to get that done…

And now take a look at Channel9. They lately added the Ink-Feature to their forum. And it looks great.

Source: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=57600

it’s quite been a time since I noticed this campaign. And I don’t want to keep it back from you:

“The Obey campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenamenology. The first aim of Phenomenalogy is to reawaken a sense of wonder about one’s environment. The Obey campaign attempts to stimulate curiosity and bring people to question both the campaign and their relationship with their surroundings. Because people are not used to seeing advertisments or propaganda for which the motive is not obvious, frequent and novel encounters with Obey propaganda provoke thought and possible frustration, nevertheless revitalizing the viewer’s perception and attention to detail.

The Medium is the message.“

elGono told me that there two Icon Sets available…groovy:

click to download

Source 1: http://www.obeygiant.com
Source 2: The Icons

Just found this site. Unbelievable what this guy does with just an etch-a-sketch…

Source: http://www.gvetchedintime.com/set.html

today I had a quite frustrating encounter with something called “policy”…

first: I’m very bad in drawing… but I had to test it… B-)

So by the way: I noticed that the quality of the drawings I made on my PDA are not that bad (as you can see for yourself)… maybe I can copy this guy a little bit.