From the TED website:

‘Speaking at the first TED Conference in 1984, Nicholas Negroponte waxes prophetic on the converging fields of technology, entertainment and design. Years before anyone was using the word “convergence,” Negroponte was thinking about TV screens as the “electronic books of the future” and computers as the future of education. In excerpts from his 2-hour talk (this was before TED’s 18-minute time limit), he foreshadowed web interfaces, touchscreen kiosks, the multitouch interface of the iPhone, and his own One Laptop per Child project. Oh, and there’s also a fascinating project called Lip Service, which … well, let’s just say it’s still ahead of us.’

Disclaimer: The schedule has been hectic, so I’m a little behind here.

Started off Sunday in “Responsible Web Design,” but it felt like a dry run of Adobe feature sets through the web space. Making a safe exit, I headed over to “Meet the Architects,” which was essentially my first choice anyway, since I’ve been a fan of architecture since I was 7 years old.

The panel was mid-stream when I entered, talking about how architecture relates to digital media through a variety of ways. From using tools like Flickr to creating elaborate 3D fly-throughs targeted for wide, public consumption. Although, this panel seemed out of place for SXSW, it was quite fitting as it fundamentally poses the question to the audience of how to apply their skills to any discipline. While I couldn’t immediately make the connection from architecture to what I do, it became clear that there is a heavy reliance on digital media artists to help support a virtually unlimited array of arts, crafts and sciences. This was one of the better panels at SXSW.

Data as Art was another winner with digital media visualists Peter Kirn and Joy Mountford. Most stunning were the displays of data served up in a pastiche of ways. A continuously updating “live” data stream of Yahoo Mail was captivating as it showed the traffic on a global scale in it’s purest form, a rotating image of a gleaming, white globe with blue towers rising up and down as time zones and the hours spun by.

Arriving late, and not finding our party who were holding seats for us, we opted to take up residence on the floor over on the left side.

From the moment Daft Punk roared up on the P.A. directly in front of our noggins, it was apparent that the crowd was clearly electrified for what would be the pivotal event of SXSW circa 2008. The electricity transferred itself to the feet of a few individuals, who turned the front of the auditorium into an oversized and well-lit dance club. It seems Julia Allison was one of the instigators.


Once Mark Zuckerberg and interviewer Sarah Lacy of Business Week took the stage, the crowd settled in for what would be hoped to be an insider’s take on the world of the Facebook founder. In a sign of things to come, Lacy took her first hit when she replied to Zuck’s tale about how FB was being used to organize resistance to Guerilla armies in Columbia. As someone grumbled behind me, she stated it was against the “government.” It was already clear she wasn’t listening. Her constant wiggling around and overuse of the word “right” came off as indicators that she was just feigning interest. In reality, she seemed more interested in spinning her own take on her “relationship” with Mark by reminiscing about past interviews and encounters, which was clearly beyond the scope of what the audience came to hear.

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The University of Arizona’s HiRISE program showcases ultra high-resolution photography, consisting of a “0.5 meter reflecting telescope, the largest of any deep space mission, which allows it to take pictures with resolutions up to 0.3 m resolving objects about a meter across, or the size of a beachball.”

According to a description, “launched in August of 2005, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) is flying onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission. HiRISE will investigate deposits and landforms resulting from geologic and climatic processes and assist in the evaluation of candidate landing sites. By combining very high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio with a large swath width, it is possible to image on a variety of scales down to 1 meter, a scale currently afforded only in glimpses by landers. HiRISE will offer such views over any selected region of Mars, providing a bridge between orbital remote sensing and landed missions. Stereo image pairs will be acquired over the highest-priority locations with a vertical precision of better than 25 cm per pixel.”

As a rail/Metro commuter, I am now faced with filling up my time. Books. Check. Newspapers. Check. Magazines. Maybe. Music. Definitely. Video. Yes. While I’m hesitant to watch movies on my iPhone (I’m a purist), I’m OK with watching things educational and even the occasional bite-size morsel of entertainment. YouTube videos are too hard to sift through on the iPhone, so that leaves TED. Perhaps I’m missing some other good sources. Note: If you know of any, please email me or comment below.

TED is the Super Bowl of tech conferences, so who knows if I’ll ever get to attend. They book up way ahead and the tickets are a bit too cost-prohibitive for the average Joe/Jane. So, it’s a good thing TED offers their videos in a Mac-friendly format (yes, they’re available to PC’ers as well) on their website. There are some truly fascinating talks available, which open the senses and engage the mind in ways you may have not thought possible. Once you’ve purused subjects you find interesting, you might start to explore categories you may not have considered before — like, oh, the study of ants, for example. Who knew they had lazy ants who sit around and do nothing? Sounds like the real world.

Ranging from high science to film to music to architecture, TED has something for everyone. A few worth checking out are J.J. Abrams’ “Mystery Box”, Philip Starck’s “Think Deep on Design”, and John Maeda’s “On The Simple Life”, for starters. Get on in there and start watching. It will open your eyes.

A fairly close prediction of the future from a Disney video that suggests ecommerce transactions, email and browsing for products online. This is probably still the future of the internet. Highly interactive video interfaces are next up. The static web browser is a dying emblem of yesteryear and certainly won’t be here forever.

You guessed it. No DVD slot. Why? Hmmm….form over function, perhaps. I might be alone in my opinion that Apple’s new Air laptop is not a winner, but I’m sticking with it. I can only guess they skipped over the DVD slot to go for the gold in terms of Steve-ness, but they’ve sacrificed usability in the process. Who can install anything with a DVD drive? I’m supposed to use the WiFi feature and “borrow” a drive from another machine? Um, no..

As someone who recently moved thousands of files to accommodate the latest Mac OS, I’d be mighty unpleasant if I had to do that without the aid of my trusty DVD slot. Sure, they’re targeting a specific audience, but I think this time they’ve gone too far to make a “statement” piece and launched someone that wasn’t ready for primetime.

On the other hand, the move on the AppleTV front with the addition of downloadable movies is a solid win. They may not necessarily knock down Netflix and Blockbuster in one fell swoop, but that, dear reader, is a statement.

If you’re not already familiar with it, go visit the Astronomy Picture of the Day and then come back to visit it again every day. It’s worth a stop just for the imagery, if not also for the accompanying text description, which gives insight into whatever went on to capture the scene. I’ve been visiting every day for as long as I can remember.

Run by NASA’s Goddard Flight Center and Michigan Tech University, it has been in operation since 1995.

Folkert Gorter, who is one of the web’s top designers, has collaborated with filmmaker Rene Daalder, recently launching the beautifully-designed and thought-provoking ideas community Space Collective.

I remember getting er…geeked about this site after seeing the hypnotic, gorgeous animation on Folkert’s site. I thought it would be a private community for astronauts or something, but am pleasantly surprised by the outcome. The old standby and poorly executed Space.com doesn’t really excite me in any way, but Space Collective stimulates the imagination and educates the mind.

Described simply as a “cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan, forward thinking terrestrials,” it is rife with visionary conceptualists and projects, promising to serve as a launch-pad for progressive ideation and research.

Projects:

Looks like most of the projects are being run by universities, a smart move as they will continue to feed data down the pipeline and keep the contribution quality up. They also offer public ‘projects’ as well, so dust off your old concepts.

Time Capsules:

Time Capsules are a good alternative to the standard profile found on most community sites. They offer a way to collect media in a blog-like fashion, though never either feeling completely like a blog or a profile.

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