Something to make the inner geek that is inside your inner geek do the boogie-woogie: "Weird Al" Yankovic announces that thanks to digital distribution, he will begin releasing songs as he records them, while the parodied song is still fresh in the public's mind, instead of waiting for an album release every three to four years. The first one will come out on October 7. iTunes will have first dibs on the new singles for the first 14 days, after which they'll go to other online music retailers. (via /.)
posted on Oct 3, 2008 - View this thread

The Futility of Flogging Music "I was pondering the other day whether I actually have a field of expertise. I thought for ages, and couldn't come up with anything, and then in a blinding flash I realised, with a slight sense of despondency, what it might be: being in bands that people have never heard of." Actually you may have heard of Rhodri Marsden if you're caught the current Scritti Politti line-up in action, if you've ever followed the broadcasts of the late DJ John Peel, or if you've read Rhodri's technology column in UK newspaper the Independent. This week, in a speech to the Oxford Geek Night, Marsden shared his caustic yet heartfelt observations on DIY music from the early 90s through to the digital age, sighing "I can think of nothing more soul destroying" than social networking and quoting post-punk icon of Pere Ubu as saying musicians should "screw the audience".
posted on Aug 29, 2008 - View this thread

This is a collection of the National Archives stored in the Digital Vaults. You can browse through hundreds of photographs, documents, and film clips and discover the connection between some of the National Archives' most treasured records. With the Pathways tool you can see the unique and surprising connections between events and people and test your knowledge of history. As you travel through the site and collect documents, images and films, you can then merge the objects to create your own poster or movie from your collection.
posted on Jul 17, 2008 - View this thread

Our wonderful nature is a hilarious 5-minute animation about the mating rituals of the water shrew. The action starts at around 1:30. Other gems found at the bitfilm 08 Digital Film Festival include "The post-it note prison".
posted on Jun 27, 2008 - View this thread

ReBoot's back! A new online comic book is now available*, and three feature-length films are in development. Remarkably, the comic was developed as a combined effort between producers and fans; fans voted on five different stories and even contributed art. ReBoot was one of the first TV shows to feature 100% digital animation and has a warm place in the hearts of many children of the 90s.
* sign-up required and their web-viewer is a pain, be warned.
posted on May 30, 2008 - View this thread

An analog textual clock - An analog textual clock
posted on May 16, 2008 - View this thread

If you are reading this post on a computer attached to the Internet, you can thank Claude Shannon (1916-2001). It was his work, starting with A Mathematical Theory of Communication, that first enabled humans to extract digital perfection from the analog world by creating the field of Information Theory. Like most computer nerds of his day, who often had to program their computers by moving wires around or even mechanical linkages, he was also an electronics and mechanical whiz who could create a juggling robot and The Ultimate Machine.
posted on May 6, 2008 - View this thread

An Illustrated History of Digital Cameras until 1998.
posted on Apr 25, 2008 - View this thread

More accurate than any piece of film has ever been in all of recorded history. (Youtube)
posted on Apr 9, 2008 - View this thread

Three columns on technology and eduction by Robert Cringely: the clash between those who grew up with computers and those who didn't in War of the Worlds, Amish Paradise looks for learning models in unexpected places and Ozzy knows best talks about how important digital games, not video games, could be to education.
posted on Apr 4, 2008 - View this thread

Nerve-tapping neckband used in 'telepathic' chat A neckband that translates thought into speech by picking up nerve signals has been used to demonstrate a "voiceless" phone call for the first time. Video. The technology has previously been demonstrated for guiding a wheelchair with thoughts. Company website.
posted on Mar 15, 2008 - View this thread

The ultimate in nerdy tattoos? "Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin."
posted on Feb 27, 2008 - View this thread

Lyfrau o'r Gorffennol or Books from the Past is a growing online collection of books of Welsh cultural interest which have long been out of print. Some are in Welsh, some in English, all are available to download in a variety of formats or to read online. Found as the collection includes a book on the Adventures and Vagaries of Twm Siôn Cati, the famed bard, genealogist and bandit trickster supreme from Tregaron. It's one of a host of well-presented digital archives built using the multilingual open source Greenstone software suite.
posted on Feb 8, 2008 - View this thread

Virtual Morphologies - the dark surreal stylings of J. Karl Bogartte. "In 1973 I accidentally discovered that by moving things around on the ordinary copy machine (and in effect, subverting its intended purpose…), strange conjunctions revealed themselves. At the beginning of 2000, I just as suddenly abandoned this process and leaped into the 21st century, exploring the computer and the realms of digital surrealité."
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - View this thread

Like to faire une photo? You're not alone. The inimitable (but perhaps for not much longer) National Geographic magazine has advice for taking portraits, travel photography, landscapes, excitingly vague 'adventure' photos and even plan old digital photography. After you've created magic how about selling it or getting published? Sharing is so 2007.
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

What is the monome? A sequencer? A trigger? A sampler? A trippy rave machine? A general-purpose turing device? Just a toy or the open-source future of digital music?
posted on Sep 27, 2007 - View this thread

First the Sub Pop Single of the week club brought us Nirvana, then the Moshi Moshi Singles Club, brought us Kate Nash; now more and more labels are having a go. What's more, the kids are buying seven inch singles again. Is this a backlash against digital downloads? Or just nostalgia for the 45?
posted on Aug 28, 2007 - View this thread

Filipino-American artist Jhoneil Centeno is a painter, photographer, digital artist, game developer, and bow and arrow maker. He explains his art and his technique. Title quote from Lucid Skin review (NSFW).
posted on Aug 16, 2007 - View this thread

What is the relationship between the optical groove in a record or wax cylinder and sound, and how can we use this to recover analog recordings from the past? Dr. Carl Haber explains IRENE (.pdf; begin at slide 44 for audio samples).
posted on Jul 16, 2007 - View this thread

Temple of Zoom. Adding a twist on Flash-based stick figure games and physics-oriented platformers like N-Game, comes Matsushita/Panasonic's followup to Toshiba's "Tobby" line of promotional games. Collect dots Pac-Man (Java) style, in addition to powerups resembling digital viewfinder icons. Jump atop camera lenses which double as elevators, while dodging the occasional Red-Eye sensor. Your "prize", should you choose to accept it, is a bottle of soda pop coupon for the new Lumix camera. via
posted on Jul 13, 2007 - View this thread

"In this film, director Shanker wanted to change Rajini's wheatish complexion to a white European complexion. It has taken 25 dedicated CG technicians almost a year to achieve this 6 ½ min. feat."
posted on Jun 26, 2007 - View this thread

Ten years ago, video editing (especially nonlinear editing) was the realm of professionals [youtube]. An Avid System cost close to a $100k or you could rent an editing suite by the hour. i-Movie, and mini-dv camcorders lowered the price barrier quite considerably. Times have changed. By 2007, all you need to cut video is flash. Will Youtube's new video editing application stir things up? Maybe Walter Murch ought to have a look.
posted on Jun 20, 2007 - View this thread

Rome Reborn is a digital model of ancient Rome as it might have appeared on June 21, 320 AD, including the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. More info.
posted on Jun 11, 2007 - View this thread

(Spoilers in most links). So an SNL digital short, Dear Sister spoofs the second season finale of the OC. Now the internets just don't know when to stop, with parodies (of the parody) playing on everything from the obvious like The Departed, LOST, Snatch, The Matrix, Reservoir Dogs, and Predator to the not-so-obvious like Lord of the Rings, Raging Bull, Monty Python, Duck Hunt (my favorite), Looney Toons, LazyTown, Smash Brothers, Office Space, and Bio-Ooze Super Soakers.
posted on Apr 28, 2007 - View this thread

A Special Christmas Box (youtube) might get pulled, but here's the official NBC video (which wants to resize your browser) of the newest SNL Digital Short, featuring Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg, two guys who know when a gift needs giving.
posted on Dec 17, 2006 - View this thread

Insect views from If You Could See How Praying Mantises Hear.
The first picture is of a Phyllocrania paradoxa.
There's more about mantid ears at Yager Labs.
See also Picture Perfect Insects for the how to of it.
posted on Dec 7, 2006 - View this thread

Avalanche transceivers have become an essential piece of technology for people who spend time in avalanche terrain. Beacons, as they're also known, operate on an international standard frequency and can be used to find other transceivers (hopefully still attached to people) buried under snow, giving rescuers a chance to find victims before they suffocate. [more inside]
posted on Nov 16, 2006 - View this thread

Will Vinyl Survive? Is vinyl on its last legs? Or like Gloria Gaynor, will it survive? Most home listeners chucked out their turntables years ago, but are DJs finally giving in and following suit? DJs face off in a pair of articles discussing the merits of vinyl vs. digital...
posted on Aug 24, 2006 - View this thread

Sex in prehispanic times. Cuba Chronicles. The arrow of time. Brazilian homosexual culture. The sword and the cross. Very similar. Bestiarium. Mini-descriptions of the many varied exhibits. Essays in English and Spanish by the artists with their images from ZoneZero.
posted on Aug 14, 2006 - View this thread

Among his collected works, in the few, short years before mathematician Alan Turing was driven to suicide, he published "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis", theorizing how a standing wave-like distribution of "cannibal" and "missionary" chemicals might explain how plants and animals develop their shape and pigmentation. Blogger Jonathan Swinton focuses on this more obscure aspect of Turing's research, and reviews some of his posthumous and unpublished efforts — including one of the earliest known examples of digital computation applied to the field of biology.
posted on Aug 7, 2006 - View this thread

Q, a sort of digital art hack of Quake - from Nullpointer, where you can find all sorts of cool digital art-type stuff. The game world is twisted unrecognizably yet the feeling of motion and action is preserved - . Download here and run (8.5mb, Windows only, I'm afraid). It's successor is QQQ, a similar effort done for Quake 3. No download but movies here. Also on Nullpointer is the fantastic WebTracer, a tool for visualizing websites as 3d networks of nodes. Here's what MeFi looks like with 1000 nodes tracked.
posted on May 14, 2006 - View this thread

A Cello Rondo A cello piece digitally combined from 37 different cello parts all played by the same musician. With funky video. [Qucktime, 45mb], [Quicktime, 22mb]. Other formats available through the link. via Digg.
posted on Feb 26, 2006 - View this thread

Oranges & Apples Digital photography is amazing and impressive in many ways, but if you choose it over film, expect to make sacrifices. I've assembled articles here exposing these sacrifices. I do this not to make a case for film, but to temper the popular view that advances in digital photography have now made film obsolete.
posted on Feb 26, 2006 - View this thread

Well over 100 universities around the world have set up searchable digital repositories to make available journal articles, datasets, theses and other academic materials using the DSpace repository system. DSpace at MIT alone hosts over 11,000 theses. Also, the software running the sites is freely available and open source.
posted on Feb 22, 2006 - View this thread

New milestone in digital photography: The ability to refocus a picture after it has been taken. Gallery and technical data.
posted on Nov 18, 2005 - View this thread

Traditionally, (video) a DJ uses two turntables, but recently a series of new products has challenged the primacy of vinyl. While local record shops have been closing left and right, online stores have begun offering digital downloads. One digital-only outlet recently sold their 1,000,000th mp3. And now, a new store has taken the DJ completely out of the equation by making mix cds on demand.
posted on Nov 14, 2005 - View this thread

Seen something like this on one of your credit or debit cards recently? 09/25 DIGITAL AGE 888-529-98 CYPRUS, SE $24.99 Join the crowd. You might remember something from earlier in the summer, when CardSystems Solutions reported a security breach that had gone on for months. Or maybe you remember a bit of more recent news, when "a California judge ruled Friday that Visa USA Inc. and MasterCard International Inc. don't have to send individual warnings to thousands of consumers whose personal account information was stolen during a high-tech heist uncovered earlier this year."

My family was hit on three different cards from three different banks in less than a week. Doesn't seem to matter if you ever used the card online or not. Any guesses where "Digital Age" is getting all these valid credit and debit card numbers? Anyone? So, please, check your statements and be prepared to cancel your card immediately if you've been hit, too. Nothing good will come of these criminals being able to make additional charges against your accounts, using different shell companies to hide themselves, continuing to do this sort of thing for years
posted on Oct 13, 2005 - View this thread

I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by "picking up" and drawing with them. Video here.
posted on Oct 12, 2005 - View this thread

Nothing fancy — except, perhaps, the multidimensional sacred geometry.
posted on Jul 30, 2005 - View this thread

Sonido y Energía: Sound games, interaction, movement and energy. By Santiago Ortiz.
posted on Jul 18, 2005 - View this thread

I waited to see if anyone else might post this. I saw it on Future Feeder. Photron's model ultima APX-RS is a high speed video camera - 250,000 fps. Here's a quick link to the gallery of video (flash interface). apparently that's not the fastest. That appears to be Shimadzu’s HyperVision HPV-1 at 1,000,000 fps. They also have a gallery - but with only 3 mpg clips each a little more than 2.5 MB (1, 2, 3).
posted on Jun 24, 2005 - View this thread

"Disposable" digital video cameras. Now available at CVS drugstores in the US, from the same company that last year introduced disposable digital cameras. The video is processed onto DVD at the store in an hour. But at $43 ($30 purchase plus $12.99 for processing) for 20 minutes of footage, is it really worth it? Walt Mossberg says, "Meh."
posted on Jun 8, 2005 - View this thread

Scattered Leaves In the early decades of the 20th century, a Cleveland book collector named Otto Ege removed the pages from 50 medieval manuscript books, divided the pages among 40 boxes, and sold the boxes around the world. Now the University of Saskatchewan plans to digitally remake the book.
posted on May 28, 2005 - View this thread

Wonderful Town... Director Ryan McFaul (whose music video for Gay Boyfriend was previously seen in this MeFi thread ) is back with a dizzying MGM-meets-digital-compositing advert for a Broadway production of Wonderful Town. (Slightly less dazzling, but still worth seeing, is his ad for a San Francisco production of White Christmas.) Somebody give this man a feature film!
posted on May 2, 2005 - View this thread

Capturing the Unicorn : How two mathematicians helped the Met to digitally stitch together the Unicorn Tapestry. (via)
posted on Apr 28, 2005 - View this thread

Levitated: the Exploration of Computation Digital flash art ranging from generated poetry to evolution. I could waste hours on this page.
posted on Jan 28, 2005 - View this thread

Love in a cage. All Iranian filmmakers working in their homeland have to face the trials of the censor, but if the subject matter includes abortion, adultery and lesbianism, the chances of gaining official approval in the Islamic republic are all but zero. Actress Mania Akbari, the lead of Abbas Kiarostami's "10", explores this territory in her first feature film as a director, "20 Fingers", which unspooled in the new "Digitale" section at the Venice Film Festival (.pdf file) and won the first prize as Best Movie Shot On Digital. The film's use of digital video was also invaluable in getting around censorship: the only way to shoot in Iran on 35mm is to hire equipment from the central authorities, which means script approval and a government minder attending the shoot. Shooting on digital video requires script approval, but no minder is sent along. So 29-year-old Akbari, in an amazing display of courage, gained approval for one script and then duly shot another (she could now be barred from working or from screening her films or from even leaving the country, but she insists on working in Iran, to challenge the system from there and not from abroad). The film is coming soon at the Vancouver Film Festival. More inside.
posted on Sep 24, 2004 - View this thread

Chapter 3: Digital Creations
posted on Sep 23, 2004 - View this thread

Music & photography. How to soup up that digital camera.(via coolios)
posted on Sep 16, 2004 - View this thread

Chimping: The Real Story (4 min. streaming QT movie) Whither goest thou, photojournalist cool, in the digital age? Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Rick Rickman knows about the business of photography, and his SportsShooter.com has videos of pro shooters (not just sports) talking about freelancing (more QT streaming).
posted on Jul 22, 2004 - View this thread