Evolving the Google design and experience

Evolving the Google design and experience: "Starting today, you might begin noticing that things look a little different across Google products. We’re working on a project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you’ll continue to see more updates to our look and feel. Even our classic homepage is getting a bit of a makeover:

New Google homepage with a smaller logo and links moved to the top and bottom edges of the browser for a cleaner look

The way people use and experience the web is evolving, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and consistent online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you’re using or what device you’re using it on. The new Google experience that we’ve begun working toward is founded on three key design principles: focus, elasticity and effortlessness.

• Focus: Whether you’re searching, emailing or looking for a map, the only thing you should be concerned about is getting what you want. Our job is to provide the tools and features that will get you there quickly and easily. With the design changes in the coming weeks and months, we’re bringing forward the stuff that matters to you and getting all the other clutter out of your way. Even simple changes, like using bolder colors for actionable buttons or hiding navigation buttons until they’re actually needed, can help you better focus on only what you need at the moment.


• Elasticity: In the early days, there was pretty much just one way to use Google: on a desktop computer with an average-sized monitor. Over a decade later, all it takes is a look around one’s home or office at the various mobile devices, tablets, high-resolution monitors and TVs to see a plethora of ways to access the web. The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from one device to another and have a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness.


• Effortlessness: Our design philosophy is to combine power with simplicity. We want to keep our look simple and clean, but behind the seemingly simple design, use new technologies like HTML5, WebGL and the latest, fastest browsers to make sure you have all the power of the web behind you.

Constant revision and improvement is part of our overarching philosophy. For example, last year we introduced an updated look and feel to our search results, and if you compare the original Google homepage to today’s version, you’ll see that a makeover every so often can certainly be refreshing:

Original Google homepage in 1997

Starting today and over the course of the next few months, look for a series of design improvements across all our products, including Google Search, Google Maps and Gmail.



Posted by Chris Wiggins, Creative Director, Digital

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Parkour for Lazies: The Bizarre British Lying Down Game

Parkour for Lazies: The Bizarre British Lying Down Game: "[ By Delana in Guerilla Action & Art, Urban & Street Art, Urbex & Parkour. ]

It’s happening all around the world: people are taking pictures of their friends awkwardly lying face-down in all sorts of unlikely places. On top of statues, in the middle of roads, in front of famous landmarks – absolutely anywhere you can conceivably fit a horizontal human body, you’ll find someone playing the bizarre game. The weirder the place and the more people looking on, the better. You may ask why, but the people behind The Lying Down Game would rather ask “Why not?”

Lying Down Game creators Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon describe their creation as “Parkour…for those who can’t be arsed.” In other words, this is the lazy person’s urban navigation sport. There’s no dangerous jumping or athletic climbing required; just the ability to lie down and stop moving for a moment along with the bravery to tolerate people staring at you as if you are crazy.

Feel brave enough to participate? The rules are simple, according to the creators: “1) The more public the better.  2) The more people involved the better. Please be aware that the palms of your hands must be flat against your side and the tips of your toes pointing at the ground. Just as if you were standing, but vertically challenged. FACE DOWN!”

The game has been around as a Facebook group since 2006, but the meme really reached its peak in the summer of 2009. Mainstream media picked up on the story and the game was featured by news outlets around the world. After the attention, participation soared and the submitted pictures grew more and more outrageous. The game was at the center of a few controversies as people were caught lying down at work and in some rather unwise places, but lying down enthusiasts continued to play.

Aside from being a silly thing to do to amuse yourself, the Lying Down Game strikes us as a brilliant public art project. Seen separately, these photos suggest thousands of weird people all willing to do something a little crazy. But taken together, the photos of people all around the world lying face down in odd locations looks a lot like collective performance art. It helps that they all seem to be having fun while lying down.

The Facebook page for the group is still going strong after all this time, and it has now reached well over 100,000 members. Want to play? Be prepared for some stares and the occasional “Are you alright?” – and don’t forget to bring a friend with a camera to capture the ridiculous places you find to lie down in.

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[ WebUrbanist - By Delana in Guerilla Action & Art, Urban & Street Art, Urbex & Parkour. ]

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The Dipr is an Oreo Dunking Spoon

The Dipr is an Oreo Dunking Spoon: "

Ice cold milk and some Oreo cookies, it’s a classic combination, when a dark, delicious cookie meets an icy-cold sensation. One crafty inventor has come up with a way to dip your Oreos in milk without the cookie breaking or getting your fingers in the milk. It’s a patent pending Oreo dunking spoon called the Dipr. Just put your Oreo (or Hydrox or Newman-o’s if you prefer…sidebar but holy cow I just found out they discontinued Hydrox in 2003, so maybe don’t dunk your 7 year old cookies, stick with fresh ones) on the Dipr and dunk freely without fear of breakage or cookie slippage. It can even hold the cookie upside down.



It kinda looks like a toothbrush with a funky curve but they do plan on making it in crazy colors and 3D cartoon animal head fun versions for kids. Right now the product is in the development phase and they are looking for more funding to get these produced so if you like it, help them out. Here’s a video of the inventors showing how they came up with the idea and using a prototype in full cooking dunking action:

Between the Dipr, Spoonachos, and Trongs, the future of dipping is bright.

The Dipr is an Oreo Dunking Spoon

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Inside the Teen Hacker War Between Tumblr and 4Chan

Inside the Teen Hacker War Between Tumblr and 4Chan: "This weekend, one of the most disruptive hacker hiveminds on the
Internet, 4Chan.org, was briefly humbled by users of the blogging platform
Tumblr. For those who aren't familiar, 4Chan is an anonymous message
board site famous for creating Internet memes (e.g. The Rickroll, Lolcats) and waging effective hacker attacks on the Church of Scientology and Gene Simmons. Tumblr, on the other hand, is a relatively young platform for sharing images, videos and links across the Web.

The
feud began with an orchestrated plot by 4Chan users to flood Tumblr's
blog network with violent and pornographic images while using software
to overload
its servers. For days, 4Channers spread leaflets and
detailed instructions on 'Operation Overlord,' the campaign to take down
Tumblr. The casus belli? Tumblr users had been appropriating memes and
other Web humor ephemera for their own use—'stealing' 4Chan's creative
work.



Interestingly, a number of Tumblr users
caught word of the impending attack and organized a counter-attack
dubbed 'Operation Overkitten.' In lieu of porn, Tumblr users would flood
4Chan's site with images of adorable kittens and stage denial-of-service attacks.



To
the surprise of many, Operation Overkitten succeeded briefly on Sunday.
According to the Silicon Valley news site TechCrunch, 4Chan's site was
down for at least 15 minutes, the same day Operation Overlord was scheduled. Others reported slow loading times and '404--Not Found' errors across the
site. However, today, 4Chan users waged a second attack, which has reportedly shut down Tumblr all day.  At this point, it looks like Tumblr users may have picked the wrong fight.

Here's what other bloggers are saying about the hacker war:

• The Cause for War Here Is Ridiculous, writes Adrian Chen at Gawker:

There's
a lot of overlap between 4chan and Tumblr, as each is comprised largely
of teenagers who spend far too much time on the computer. (And old
media organizations
trying to seem hip.) 4channers constantly gripe that Tumblr users poach
their jokes and memes, which, while true, is not much of a complaint
when you consider the material they're talking about: Cat memes,
lolspeak, Pretty Cool Guy, etc.

• The Gender Element Is Interesting, writes James Nixon at Thinq:

[This]
is shaping up to be a girls vs. boys clash, with Tumblr users – many of
whom are female, and noted for their whimsical fascination with all
things cute and cuddly – facing off against porn-obsessed counterparts
of the opposite sex from 4chan.

• It's Getting Ugly, writes Cole Stryker at Urlesque:

As
these things tend to do, the feud has taken a dark turn. I was browsing
/b/ on Sunday night at 10:30 and found the thread featured above, where
a user posted the addresses and phone numbers of Tumblr founder David
Karp's parents and the Tumblr office, which is the sort of antisocial
creepiness that brings 4chan their unsavory reputation.

Nothing serious will probably come of it other than maybe some prank calls and a few pizza deliveries (and a fax!),
but who knows. It feels like it's only a matter of time before some
weirdo from one of these raids does something stupidly criminal in real
life.

• Think About It: These Kids Will Run the World Some Day, writes Joe Coscarelli at The Village Voice:

Teenagers who are using the internet more and more
are committing with virtual blood and tears to the sites where they
will spend their attention dollars (a currency I just made up) to the
point where they're willing to fight with competitors. And while it is a
niche, the web is made up of niches and they're not really that small
when you look at the numbers. These kids live on the internet, grow on the internet and will eventually run the world.

• This Is Just Bad For Everyone, writes Keith Dsouza at Techie Buzz:

In the end, these types of attacks are really not worth it and will just make the internet
more inaccessible to everyone. Imagine the millions of regular users of
Tumblr and 4Chan who will not be able to access their services thanks
to the feud run by people who aren’t even concerned about them.

In the end everyone is a loser, including both Tumblr and 4Chan users themselves.

• 
  4Chan Downed
  James Nixon, Thinq
• 
  Site Gets Fugly
  Cole Stryker, Urlesque
• 
  Everyone Loses
  Keith Dsouza, Techie Buzz
• 
  This Is Terrifying
  Joe Coscarelli, The Village Voice

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Kinect – OpenSource [News]

Kinect – OpenSource [News]: "

There have been a number of exciting developments in the last few days related to XBox Kinect. For those that may not be aware of what it is, it’s a brand new interface to their Microsoft XBox games console. Kinect brings games without using a controller. By using projected infra-red light, the device is able to map the environment and via xbox built in software recognise gestures of any kind (see video below).

Only few hours after the worldwide release of Kinect, guys at NUI Group, who posted results first, planed to only release the driver as open source once their $10k donation fund was filled up. In the meantime, Hector Martin performed a quick and hack of his own (three hours into the European launch) and released his results and code into the wild – named ‘libfreenect’.

Within a few hours of that Theo Watson ported it, making Kinect run from OSX for the first time. Most of Hector’s code was left unchanged but with some hacks to the libusb which were needed (and a few extra libusb commands ).

At the same time as Theo was posting the work, Kyle McDonald was working on his point cloud app to make it work with Kinect by just using the saturation value (close range). manually aligning the texture to the depth.

Working together with the rest of the oF community, Kyle, Theo and Joshua Noble, the work they have done has now become an openFrameworks addon and available for download here.

This was quickly followed with openCV blob detection working with ofxKinect, allowing for detection of elements such as hands in real time.

Memo Akten wrote a little demo to analyse the depth map for gestural 3D interaction. One hand to draw in 3D, two hands to rotate the view. Although just an early prototype, very impressive nevertheless. You can download the source for the below demo (GPL v2) here.

Simultaneously, Kyle continued with further point cloud experiments and in his words “you can never have too much DOF” this was the image posted on the forum (download).

and this work by Jason Laan, creating a colour point cloud (download).

Now, using OpenKinect + OpenCV + FestVox + some basic image processing by yankeyan, Kinect is recognising objects in real time on the PC.

Amazing work by the communities and clearly an example of the power of opensource. Daniel Shiffman is now working on the port for Processing and undoubtedly many more are playing with what’s already been created. What is also amazing is that this is just the beginning. It’s only been few days and some truly amazing work is being created. When  it comes to arts/installations and innovative utilisations of Kinect now that different ports are available, makes me wonder how many people will buy Kinect not for their XBoxes but to experiment on their PCs – many for sure, myself included.

/// UPDATE: Nov 15, 2010

With the help of Hector Martin and various members of the openFrameworks community, Daniel Shiffman has just released Processing Kinect library. You can download it here.

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Kinect – OpenSource [News] is a post from: CreativeApplications.Net | Follow us on Twitter - Facebook - Flickr - Vimeo

Related Posts:

• 100 Abandoned Artworks [Processing]
• Faceless Void [Processing]
• Brownian Motion [Processing, Inspiration]
• Voltron [openFrameworks, Processing]
• The Root Of The Root [Events]
• Toxiclibs 2010 Showreel [Processing]

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