MAYA

For the rest of us.
I can’t even begin to list the ways that you’ve disappointed me this year, and unless you pin me down, it isn’t over.

The history of the holiday.

————-Top Five———-

1. Well, any aluminum pole would do, but Google’s got something chrome which I think would also technically work… Plus it just seems like these clips are so nicely crafted I can’t really resist linking to them.

Ok, if that doesn’t work (it won’t) you can get the right kind of pole here. Or really at any lumber yard or hardware store in a pinch.

2. I brought one of these along to the celebration this year and it made life much easier during the feats of strength portion of the evening.

3. The person fighting with themselves about halfway down the page in the red shirt is very much like what things look like if you have a good holiday and succeed in the pinning down of someone.

4. This is distracting, much like tinsel, it also has the benefit of being entirely useless

5. Although this uses the same basic technology as the last link, it extends the core idea into the realm of holiday-based computing. Think of it as a gift from us to you on our twentieth anniversary! By the way you probably won’t be able to figure it out… but find a small child, some scissors, maybe a scrap of cardboard, and a computer with a printer and a webcam, and it’ll all come together into a delightful cloud of digital 3-D snow doodles.

————-The Rest———-
A Maytag holiday!

Nice example of HCD in action. Designing a better experience in healthcare.

Your brain on checkers.

Infoporn du jour…

Nice claymation-look (but all done in CG) animation for Cartoon Network…

Self-control.

Light write app…

The Copenhagen Wheel…

The GE Wheel…

This reminds me quite a bit of every ID students portfolio project for futuristic computing devices. Look, it’s a flat piece of paper! But with a circle! And green! The only thing they’re missing is the part where it rolls up. Oddly I don’t doubt this will be the sort of thing that will actually be made and for far cheaper than $75 at some point (more likely this sort of computing device will be given away with happy meals). Note: The first version of the OLPC was impressive for it’s effort to do something important in the world. But it was pretty painful to try to open, or use in any way.

A short little documentary about a part of London that never was.

The enemy of the great?

A holiday short film (only available to disturb you for a short time) by one of the animators from Pixar

The year in Biomedicine.

The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored.

The biggest stories of the last little while…

Philco PC.

Ah, finally a good excuse for ordering a 3d printer!