Hey, remember that movie Space Camp, where the kids get accidentally launched into space? Well, I came close to that cinematic glory on my recent vacation to Florida, when I went to (watch) the Space Shuttle Atlantis launch in Cape Canaveral.

It was the perfect experience for an ex-Space Camp Nerd-turned-writer, and a sad send-off to the space program. Needless to say, it was an incredible day. The viewing area was set up about 6 miles away from the Cape Canaveral launch site at the Kennedy Space Center, so we entertained ourselves with Astronaut Ice Cream, flight simulators and IMAX movies about the Hubble Telescope while we waited for the countdown. There was also a “Rocket Park” filled with to-scale models of nearly all the aircrafts throughout NASA’s history, including a replica of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, as well as one of the Mercury capsule, Freedom 7, that sent Alan Shepard to space in a compartment about the size of a bathtub. (FACT: did you know the outside of the space shuttle is made out of silica tile that can be safely handled at nearly 2000 degrees Farenheit, only ten seconds after removal from a high temperature oven?)

The launch itself was really impressive, and the day was so clear that we not only got a great view of the shuttle as it went up, but also got a glimpse of the external fuel tank as it fell off the shuttle, and the after-burners diminishing into space. It was pretty cool to be able to simultaneously watch the flight video on a large flat screen, hear expert commentary, and watch the actual shuttle taking flight. NASA has obviously created many checks, balances, and procedures that go into such a large, complex, and carefully choreographed production. Enjoy some of my own photos of the venue and the launch below. (The shuttle photos were taken with a telephoto lens–click on them to get a larger resolution.) Or for some really breathtaking ones of liftoff, check out this photo gallery.

I have to say, even as I get older, space exploration (like dinosaurs and costume parties) really doesn’t get any less mind-blowingly awesome.

The Launch:

This screen showed the different steps to Countdown, and then video feed of the launch:

it’s like Woodstock for aerospace afficionados:

Zoomed out photo of the stream of smoke:

The Venue:

“Astronauts” attached the roof of the Kennedy Space Center:

The Rocket Park:

To give you a sense of the size of these rocket boosters:

You: e-mail, iChat, add Greasemonkey to Firefox, send out Google Wave invites, edit code, write macros for Excel, add blog posts in WordPress, tweet, update Facebook, Photoshop images, design, mech layouts, obsessively organize typefaces, tag MP3s, subscribe to RSS feeds, download Breaking Bad torrents, fire up MacTheRipper, run VLC, run sudo, rebuild directories, comment to Gizmodo, snipe ebay auctions, calibrate your 27″, download MAME ROMs, upload to the FTP, and crack with Resourcer.

Your mom, your cousin, and everyone else you know: e-mail, Web sites, iTunes (for music), and photos. Maybe an ebook or film someday. Does Apple have that mall cop movie starring that guy who plays the UPS driver on that show?

The end of the year is a big time for lists, and publications, and publications that make lists.  It’s kind of like VH1, except instead of Carrot Top commenting on MC Hammer’s pants or how hot Brooke Shields was in the 1981 Calvin Klein campaign, we have a tweed-coated columnist telling us about the year’s best…everything.

Although I normally skim over these lists skeptically (did Adventureland REALLY make it onto a list for the ten best movies of the decade?), I was blown away by the New York Times Magazine’s’ “9th Annual Year in Ideas” list. It’s full of discoveries that are cool (face-detecting digital advertisements that move and respond to passers-by), relevant (a beer bottle is more effective at cracking the human skull if it’s empty, rather than full), and futuristic (the development of an ethical robot; a Google algorithm applied to the analysis of animal extinction). From start to finish, the list offers a broad and refreshing look at the innovations that will likely shape the kinds of technological, cultural, social and artistic strides that will be made in 2010.

Oh, and for whoever got my name in the Secret Santa pool, I wouldn’t say no to Ruppy the flourescent dog. (It sure beats my invisible one.)

To begin, would you like to introduce yourself: who are you, what do you do?
Ciao, my name is Francesco, I am from Venice, and I’m an interaction designer. Currently I feel very lucky to be working on Thounds, a startup born from my passion for music.

Can you tell us more about Thounds? What is it?
Thounds was born while I was in school: it was my thesis project at Iuav University for a masters degree in interaction design. Back then it was called Riffle. It is a social network, and it’s the ideal place for those who want to express their creativity in music without feeling embarrassed. The main feature is to capture your musical thoughts by recording it directly from your browser, and sharing it with your friends.  This collaboration can lead to a real music track. Actually, “thoughts” is the origin of the name: Thounds is the combination of the words ‘thoughts’ and ‘sounds’.

How long did you work on it? What was the process to get this project done as a thesis?
For my thesis I worked on Thounds for six months, following a really tight deadline. I started from the concept, and went through interviews, discovery, design, prototypes, and user testing.

What happened then?
I got the chance to present my thesis to H-Farm, who really liked it and offered to create a startup to help make my project become real.

What is H-farm? How are you working on Thounds there?
H-Farm is a venture company located in Treviso Italy [yes, where De'Longhi is from too!]. Its aim is to invest in ideas and develop them, and then try to sell them according to the position they have on the market. There are about 200 employees and besides the Italian headquarters, H-Farm has offices in Seattle, London, and is coming soon to Mumbai. The “incubator” process of an idea requires that for the first 3 months the project is refined and defined with the help of a venture partner, an experienced manager. It then goes on to follow an operative roadmap. For one year I’ve been working with the great support of Davide Bartolucci. Besides being the CEO of Shado, a company specialized in TV formats, he’s a manager with a lot of experience in business models focused on monetizing content and internet entertainment.

So it took 18 months from the concept to the beta version. Do you feel Thounds is different now from how you originally envisioned it?
Well, after one year of working with developers, and re-concepting it, for sure the product is different from my original sketches. However the spirit didn’t change. I am extremely happy to have been able to maintain the core concept of this project which was to create something simple that could help people spontaneously collaborate through music.

I read on your twitter that just after a few days there was already a sort of user-made-orchestra on Thounds. Are users participating? I have to say it felt like Christmas when I saw and listened to the first reply to my thound!
Some users are still shy, but those who started to experiment are recording really interesting tracks, and have started to collaborate with people that they didn’t know until a few days ago.

What will be the next steps?
Our task now is to stimulate the users community, perhaps by inviting some famous musicians… we’re working on it.

I know that you were really busy to make the final steps of the beta version, and I know that going online with it was crazy. Is the storm gone by or are you in the eye of it?
For sure in the next moths I’ll still be very busy with Thounds. I am also presenting it around with lectures and demos at festivals and events. So right now I am not thinking about new projects, but for sure I want to play… maybe I’ll build an instrument then.

Is there any chance to meet you or Thounds in the States? And, while we wait, can you make us a thound?
I really hope to come to the States, it would be great. Go to thounds.com and add me (ID: francescofraioli) as a band mate. I uploaded a thound for you, named 160over90. And if you want to be updated on the latest developments of the network, follow it on Twitter or on the blog.

Working with type, I think it is always interesting to see how far letterforms can be forced before they become unreadable. Add too many details or abstract the form too much, and you have an unrecognizable mess. Rachel Young, of  Goollery.org started from scratch and made her letterforms out of google maps. Presenting all sorts of interesting experiments, Goollery showcases inventive ways to push google’s technologies to the edge. This typeface is just one small portion of the site. I’m just wondering when I can get this as a TrueType.

Rachel Young's google map typography

Rachel Young's "A"

Rachel Young's "C"

Rachel Young's "O"

The 2D matrix bar codes were developed in 1994 for high speed content decoding purposes by the Japanese corporation Denso-Wave, a global automotive components manufacturer. It is an open royalty-free format that allows the storage of content such as phone numbers, text messages, v-card data and URLs.

So, if you want to send someone from a public wall posting to a big brand landing page it’s not a big deal to type in a URL into your phone but if you want to drive traffic to a specific page somewhere buried deep within the interactive architecture the squared codes come in handy. No one ever types a 20 character URL into a cell phone browser let alone the looks of such an URL in print.

Finally it seems like the use of codes here in the US catches up and people are interested in it. With 27000 google searches for the keyword “QR code” in July (US) it shows there is some interest. Ok, it can’t compete with 151000000 US searches for “Michael Jackson” in July but QR codes didn’t die a tragic death – yet.

Big brands like Mountain Dew, Nike, Pepsi, Louis Vuitton (picture below) and others did already or slowly start getting into using the codes for various marketing reasons. A good example how to use them was set by online toys retailer MyToys.de earlier this year (click on link to see video documentation). They created a successful campaign to promote and sell a specific LEGO kit.  Or part of a current marketing initiative for Tim Burton’s new film “9″ for example connects you from a poster on the street to an exclusive quicktime movie about the film online.

Hend S. Al-Khalifa from the King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia suggests to utilize the codes to guide blind or visually impaired people. Reading the code off from an object would trigger the phone to fetch an audio file with further information.

And this should be just the beginning. It’s not hard to imagine that once more and more in use it will infiltrate all kinds of areas in our daily live going way beyond just advertising. About 92% of all cell phones nowadays are equipped with a camera –in combination with a free mobile reader application– the most fundamental tool to decode the squares.

On top of all the QR code development a group of researchers from the MIT just introduced the bokode. A tiny code system that consist of a LED, and a tiny mask with a lense. But that is a separate story for another time (or check out the link for more info below).

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QR code usage in Japan

MIT Bokode

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During my studies, we briefly discussed the Apple Newton Brand Community. In a nutshell, the Newton was introduced by Apple in 1993 as the first PDA but never really reached a critical mass. It met strong competition from Microsoft’s Palm Pilot in 1998 and was subsequently cut by Apple. However, the product and the strong brand community that had formed around it did not die.  Researchers Albert Muniz and Hope Schau studied the online brand forum where Newton users share stories, aid fellow users and attempt to recruit new Newton users.  They found that this brand community in particular was defined by powerful and transformative experiences members had with their product that created an almost cult-like following of the Newton device. Through their research, Muniz and Schau discovered some major themes in the narratives, two of which include:

Tales of Persecution: Members of the Newton Brand Community often feel persecuted for their affiliation with the product.  They compare their community to that of a marginalized religion where they are being stigmatized because they use the Newton.  Members stick to the mantra: The Newton product did not fail, Apple failed to market it correctly and the mainstream consumer failed to “get it.”

Tales of Resurrection: Here the overarching theme is that the Newton will one day return.  Users call for the community to create a new product on its own or they go into lengthy predictions of a reintroduction to Apple (iPhone?). An optimistic tone is seen in this theme as members of the community feel they deserve the “return of their creator.” (Wink, Wink Steve Jobs!)

If you were to ask me, I would say that most of this is a little far-fetched.  Tales of Persecution and of Resurrection seem to be a little over the top when referring to an outdated piece of technology. Nonetheless, the strength of the Apple Newton brand community can not be overlooked. The special thing about this community that sets it apart from others of its kind is that the Newton Community is entirely self-sustained. The community narratives play a significant role in acts of consumption allowing users to understand, structure and share their experiences’ with the device.  The stories reinforce the bond between community members and the parent company, even though they are no longer directly affiliated with Apple.  This strong bond will keep the customers going back to Apple time and time again, thus the importance of strong branding!

Here is the full report from Muniz and Schau if you would like to read more…

I love music more than most things. I also have an insatiable thirst for information and statistics. A few years back I was referred to a service called last.fm, which basically keeps track of your listening habits (at a computer or ipod) and makes sense of these, as well as serves a role as a social network and resource for concerts and artist information. In December of 06, Lee Byron put together his Listening History project, collecting his personal last.fm listening data and using Processing to create a visualization of his habits. A few months back, I started to see ads across the top of the last.fm page from HP, making these visualizations available to any user. LastGraph now offers a these visualizations in several varieties.

The “Poster” iteration is pretty, and perhaps shows a great deal of info in a timeline sort of way. Above is my past year in music. [Go ahead, click it and take a look at the whole huge thing in detail!] To point out a couple interesting spots, in the middle of August I was on the open road driving to Seattle, so as I probably still listened to plenty of music, the plays were not recorded by Alison’s car. [Yes, that first image way up top^^^]

Also, in my transition to Philadelphia, not having internet for a week or so made a significant dent in my listening stats.

In a strange way, these visualizations serve as a bit of a diary — spikes and drops often correlate to shows I attended, acquisitions/releases of albums, and even making new friends.

I eat this stuff up. Last.fm provides charts showing frequency of artists/songs at varying intervals of time too, for a more number-driven information. I’m at 94,914 plays since October 2005.
(and counting!)

The screen graphics of the classic video game Tempest represent a kind of summit of design and beauty—the finest expression of a very limited language. In the case of Tempest that language was vector based rendering. Vector monitors were used in video games from the mid 70′s to the early 80′s. The technology was derived from oscilloscopes—the image is projected by an electron beam onto the glass. Imagine a laser light show sped up to produce a lasting image and you’ve got it…

Many classic games were made using this technology—Asteroids and Battlezone as well as the first Star Wars game. While they all had their aesthetic charms, Tempest is in a class of its own. All vector games have a certain elegance and simplicity. The problem arises in the crudity of the renderings—the poor approximations of tanks, asteroids, and X-wings forever marks these games as primitive gestures of an evolving technology. Tempest is exempt because it is derived from the technology itself. What would a world defined by glowing geometric unshaded lines look like? Pretty much like Tempest.

Its beauty lies in the fact that it is in harmony with its own rules and limits. Hence the extremely elegant compositions—uncrowded, with a well balanced sense of scale. The color scheme is vibrancy itself, strong underlying blues, wonderful pops of pink, green, red, and yellow. And the physics of the electron beams give everything a deep saturated glow.

That same harmony extends to playing the game as well. Most games rely on clumsy and stunted translations of real-world movements like running, jumping or flying an ostrich. Tempest moves in accordance with its nature—spinning and firing. That’s what makes it so satisfying. Once you understand its strange parameters you have a complete experience on its terms—a dynamic, I think, that is fundamental to the idea of art. (via shepelavy.com)

This is a crop of a photo of Lena Söderberg, the centerfold of the November 1972 issue of Playboy. In 1973, engineers at the USC Signal and Image Processing Institute used it as a test image in their research. The data they collected from the image, specifically the red, green, blue color channel data, have become the standard benchmark for image compression quality ever since. That research also built the foundation for the image compression algorithms used in JPG and MP3s. It adds, I think, a nice resonance to know that the quality of much of what we listen to and see online is tuned to this fetching image. (two great geeky observations and articles on Lena here and here) (via shepelavy.com)