News Map: The Bare Essentials of Aggregated News

Allow me to present, Newsmap.

"Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.

A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.

Newsmap's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media." (from Marcos Weskamp, creator of Newsmap)

Consider it a new use for Piet Mondrian's principles of design.

Personally, I can see myself using it quite often. As little time as I'm usually able to allocate to reading up on world events, I can't afford to be distracted by ads, trivial news items, or other obstacles posed by the standard design of most news sites.

The two news sources I check out the most are BBC News and The Daily Beast. The BBC is always excellent, but when I'm in a hurry, I check out the Daily Beast's "Cheat Sheet." Though sometimes, the Daily Beast can border on sensationalism.

This News Map, however, would be the perfect thing to drop in on when I need a quick fix. The heirarchy of information isn't set up by any agenda from an individual or organization. It's actually relevant. It's mathematical. I could definitely get used to this setup. I don't think it would carry too well on a large scale, though. I think people, for the most part, like their pictures right there for them to see on whatever news aggregation site they frequent. I do, too, most times, but this is just too convenient to ignore.

Musicovery.com

MUSICOVERY

I really like where this site is coming from, but its music selection is weak, the interface is awkward and the sound quality is poor. It says you can get Hi-Fi quality if you pay $4 a month, but with Pandora.com being as top-notch, intuitive, and FREE as it is, well, Musicovery might want to think about adjusting their set-up if they want to compete.


Wait a minute, what's this? Down at the bottom of Musicovery's page?

Really, Time.com? You think this is one of the 50 Best Websites of 2009? The smorgasbord of ingenuity and design prowess just flowing all over the web and you think this is one of the best?

I mean, don't get me wrong I can appreciate the creativity involved in coming up with the idea. The fact that you can pick a song by your mood (Calm to Energetic, Dark to Positive) is very cool. But it's very poorly executed from what I can see.

Time.com says:
"The interface is so radically different from Pandora and Last.fm that it seems like it was beamed from an ultra-sophisticated, über-arty future utopia."

That's a bit much. If the "uber-arty future utopia" means we get the same awkwardly placed cleavage ads on our web pages, then, I'm not too excited for the future...

Seriously, guys, look at it (not the cleavage, the webpage). The awkward blank spaces. The mismatched lettering. It's an extremely lazily designed site. All the effort obviously went into that little player and the interactive spider web of songs that appears when you choose your music.

I guess this is just an example of an idea transcending poor execution. But that doesn't mean that better execution wouldn't make it even better.

The Lets Play Archive

(from the home page of The Lets Play Archive):

A truly devoted display of games

If you're looking for game playthroughs online, you've just found the most compelling and entertaining collection. This is why we at PokerListings have decided to give our full support and thanks to everyone behind the Let's Play Archive. As we do to with all the poker online games, the Let's Play Archive focus on giving you the full experience of the games in an informative and entertaining manner. Just look at some of the great playthroughs below and you'll see what we mean. Awesome job guys!

At first glance, the whole point of The Lets Play Archive seems kind of ridiculous. People play some video games, record their entire gameplay experience via video camera or screen shots (with written or audio commentary) and then upload the files to this site, for people to come by and experience the game vicariously through them.

It's an unbelievably geeky thing to do, but that's okay, because I'm pretty damn geeky.

Gamers can drop by the site and use the playthroughs as either a guide for parts they're having trouble with, or just watch them play it. It sounds lame, but, if you're a gamer, you get it. I've just perused a few of these and the commentary they provide isn't annoying or intrusive. It's like what you and your friends would do if you were taking turns playing a single player game. You crack jokes and figure out the puzzles together. It can be a very communal experience and this site offers a little of that for you, as a spectator.

Another reason this is something to geek out over is if there is a game that you've always been curious about, but haven't had the means to play, you can see what it was like on this site.

For me, there is one game I hear great things about but probably won't ever get to experience for myself. That game is System Shock 2.

System Shock 2 and its predecessor are pretty widely known as two of the early masterpieces of computer gaming, but both of them were released at incredibly unfortunate times alongside two games that overshadowed them in popularity (Doom and Half-Life, respectively), so they got lost in the shuffle. This means that there haven't been any efforts to port the System Shock games to current hardware, which also means that unless you still have your old mid to late 90's PC, you won't be playing either of them. The creators, however, recently expanded upon the gameplay elements of System Shock with the modern classic, Bioshock, which I have played and can absolutely vouch for its reputation. So, in a way, System Shock has survived.

But I'm already planning on setting a side a couple hours one day to see the abridged version of this game. Thank you, Lets Play Archive. You crazy bunch of uber-geeks, you.

Cooking for Engineers

I consider myself a creative person, but when it comes to cooking, I require strict directions, exact quantities of time to heat or cool and exact amounts to add or not add. Without them, I become lost, confused, unsure of everything and completely useless in the kitchen. Because of this handicap of mine, along with my general impatience when it comes to preparing food (let's just eat it, already!) I never cook. At all, really. This is something about me that my girlfriend, Lori, is very keen on changing very soon.

Well, she may not have to wait long, because I have found the perfect site for someone like me. I can't believe I found it and I'm incredibly grateful that it exists. It's called Cooking for Engineers.

I'm sifting through their recipes now and I'm excited. This is so freakin' perfect. I just found a recipe for a Chocolate Pecan Pie that I may be able to cook for Lori this Christmas. Oh, she'll swoon, for sure.

Thank you, internet. Why I never asked you for cooking advice all this time, I'll never know. But I hope this is the beginning of a long and fruitful arrangement.

Google Building Maker

Google Building Maker

Pretty smart of them to outsource such a massive project to a world of users. I'll admit, I'm curious to try it out. I want my apartment building on there. My parents' house. My friends' houses, my old schools, all kinds of stuff.

I think that feeling I have is what they're counting on. Our inherent vanity. To see pieces of ourselves up in places that the whole world can access.

But then, also, there's our curiosity of the world. That's part of the fun of Google Earth to begin with. To spy on places we'll probably never see firsthand.

I wonder if the Great Pyramids have been Google Built?

Discovering the Demoscene

You know those computer graphics demos, where some trippy computer generated imagery animates to music? Well, apparently there's an entire underground scene of programmers and CG artists that get together in conventions, and contests and parties and just make demos.

www.Demoscene.tv

It's all pretty obscure and hard to appreciate if you're not a demohead and have a pretty extensive knowledge of the challenges that come with coding the demos. But it's fascinating, nonetheless. Especially seeing how many demos are made using really old technology.

According to the site, the demoscene started when programmers would encode their own imagery on the Commodore 64, or hack existing animations and images. That, along with Atari software, still gets heavy usage from these guys. Apparently, it's the challenge of the limitations. Seeing how much you can pull off with ancient tools, or, with the newer stuff, seeing how far you can push the limits.

The key is real-time computing. Now, for a long time, I've been under the impression that I knew what that word meant, but here's the definition (according to Answers.com):

(computer science) A system in which the computer is required to perform its tasks within the time restraints of some process or simultaneously with the system it is assisting.

and from Wikipedia.org:

In computer science, real-time computing (RTC), or "reactive computing", is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"—i.e., operational deadlines from event to system response. By contrast, a non-real-time system is one for which there is no deadline, even if fast response or high performance is desired or preferred. The needs of real-time software are often addressed in the context of real-time operating systems, and synchronous programming languages, which provide frameworks on which to build real-time application software.

This is getting harder to understand. The narrator in the intro to Demoscene.tv says that real-time graphics are different from the norm in that the things you usually see (say, in a Pixar film) are all pre-rendered graphics. This makes the concept easier to understand, and now I'm slapping my forehead. Of course. This analogy covers it:

Pre-rendered : Animated Movies :: Real-time : Videogames

D'uh. Okay, jeez. I get it.

Maybe.

So, let's see if I've got it: the videos you see on Demoscene.tv are all reacting to coding that sets a specific set of rules for various outcomes. Unlike a CG-animated film, in which things are molded to happen within a framework of pre-set rules, then played out and essentially recorded (read: pre-rendered), a demo, in the sense of the Demoscene, plays out "live," as the coding works with the hardware to render what you see as it's interpreted. REAL-TIME.

I think I got it.


So, I've watched a handful of them. Like I said, they're hard to appreciate without a full understanding of the challenges the creators faced, but even with the very basic (and probably still inadequately informed) understanding I have now, this one is my favorite:

Delicious Monster and the Comfort of Collecting

DELICIOUS MONSTER.COM

One day, all of us media junkies will probably have our entire catalog of movies, music, books and games compiled into one handheld projector/stereo/gaming device thing-a-majig, but until that time comes, we can at least pretend it's all in one place.

Delicious Monster is an application for collectors and obsessives. Namely, someone like me.

Though I've been using a site called Listal.com to obsessively catalog and rate everything I own and want to own, Delicious Monster offers the enticing ability to log down UPC numbers (Universal Product Codes) so that in the event that all your precious DVDs were stolen or lost in a fire, you would be able to provide the insurance company with the exact amount of and dollar worth of your collections.

Obsessive and paranoid, or thorough and prepared?

It's a personal preference. There is an undeniable attraction to cataloging my interests. I can't quite pinpoint why. A lot of people get it, but a lot of people don't, too. There are all kinds of personal factors that determine whether or not you're that type of person, but for me there's something comforting about it. Maybe it's the enforcement of order and sequence in an unruly world, if that doesn't sound too pretentious. There's a scene in High Fidelity that really nails this sentiment, in which John Cusack's character, Rob, is undergoing a massive reorganization of his record collection after breaking up with his longtime girlfriend...



Maybe it's as simple as nostalgia. Collecting and maintaining a collection is like looking at a time line of your life. You can clearly see where you've been, and where you are, and, maybe, be reminded of where you've always planned to go.

Ikea Hacker

IKEA HACKER

The Ikea Hacker blog is such a great idea. Apparently there have been so many great ideas for alternate uses for Ikea furniture that someone decided they needed put all the ideas in one place. Ikea's products are all build-it-yourself, and the directions they provide have been known to be notoriously frustrating:

People can upload their hack instructions using video or pictures. All the ones I've seen are fairly ingenious and very helpful. I found this one particularly useful, since I have pretty big cat in an apartment with very little storage space: