solsken's traumplatz » Technology http://www.solsken.com/blog Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:36:43 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Last.fm Graphs http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/09/07/lastfm-spiral/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/09/07/lastfm-spiral/#comments Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:35:39 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/?p=171 I’ve always loved finding new ways to visually explain information, whether through maps, diagrams, charts or other graphical models. Edward Tufte is an old favorite on this very rich field of study — if you haven’t already, be sure to check out his latest book, Beautiful Evidence.

In similar fashion, Sha Wang’s nifty spiral generator creates a visual portrait of your musical tastes. By using your scrobbled Last.fm music tracks, Wang’s simple script whips up a sweet spiral graph of your listening patterns over the past year (see my spiral below). Want to try it out? Make your own at www.diametunim.com/muse, or view other spirals at http://datamine.tumblr.com.

Another colorful graphing tool for Last.fm users is LastGraph, which renders your listening history in the form of a wave graph. It’s just as pretty and clearly marks artists using varying color fields:

]]> http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/09/07/lastfm-spiral/feed/ 0 Tenori-On http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/14/tenori-on/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/14/tenori-on/#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:38:13 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/14/tenori-on/

Yamaha is sponsoring a free event at 1015 this Friday, April 18, which includes live performances by the likes of Pole, Robert Lippok (of To Rococo Rot), Sutekh, Safety Scissors, and I am Robot. This event will serve as a launch party for a novel instrument that wowed the crowd at SIGGRAPH in 2005: Tenori-On.

A touch-sensitive sequencer with a LED matrix interface, Tenori-On offers a fun way to visually represent music while you make it. It’s easy to create and manipulate loops, manage layers and and even import samples via an SD card slot. Tenori-On looks like a fun piece of gear for live shows too — you can string a few of them together or hook one up to your laptop, mixer, etc. via MIDI. Best of all, friends and audiences can actually see the music progress with the dancing LED lights on the double-sided tablet. Designer Toshio Iwai will give a live demo of the instrument at the party.

]]> http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/14/tenori-on/feed/ 2 Yuri’s Night http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/12/yuris-night/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/12/yuris-night/#comments Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:29:02 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/12/yuris-night/ Superdraw  

A great lineup is in store for Yuri’s Night at Nasa Ames. Of note on the audiovisual side is a psychedelic drawing interface installation by Joshua Ott, Ezekiel Honig, and Morgan Packard (see screenshot above).

Other artists like Jon Tejada, Lusine, Deru, and [a]pendics.shuffle will keep the tunes going alongside all of the technological wizardry that one can expect of a Bay area geek spectacle. See you there!

Yuri’s Night Bay Area website
Upcoming.org post

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2008/04/12/yuris-night/feed/ 1     Jeff Han’s Media Wall at Neiman Marcus http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/10/07/jeff-hans-media-wall-at-neiman-marcus/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/10/07/jeff-hans-media-wall-at-neiman-marcus/#comments Mon, 08 Oct 2007 05:49:57 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/10/07/jeff-hans-media-wall-at-neiman-marcus/ Neiman Marcus has teamed up with Jeff Han to offer Han’s multi-touch media wall in the luxury retailer’s 2007 Christmas Book. Han’s company, Perceptive Pixel, Inc., designed the eight-by-three foot surface for effortless, hands-on interactivity for work and play. Here’s the promo video for this offer:

    Jeff Han

    Han’s touch-driven wall can be exclusively yours for a starting price of $100,000, far less than other lavish holiday gifts from Neiman Marcus — past offerings include a charter space flight on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo for $1.76 million. While hardly an example of technology for the masses, it’s an exciting peek at the future of intuitive design.

    If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Han’s demonstration of the interactive wall at TED in 2006.

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/10/07/jeff-hans-media-wall-at-neiman-marcus/feed/ 1     Last.tv http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/05/23/lasttv/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/05/23/lasttv/#comments Wed, 23 May 2007 15:41:17 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/05/23/lasttv/ last.tv

    Cool that last.tv has come around, fusing the music listening charts generated by the popular social music site last.fm with their matching music videos from YouTube. The site is still fairly basic and doesn’t offer much in the way of choosing specific artists’ music vids, and the video player’s selection appears rather inaccurate. The first few video plays from my last.tv experience included a lot of older Warp artists – Aphex Twin, Autechre, funkier live videos from the Detroit Grand Pubahs, plus some more random tidbits like Shin Chan, “Stem Cells in the Adult Body (Part 3 of 4)” and someone’s re-enactment of Law & Order (I don’t watch that show, so not sure where that one came from!). Kudos for the clever idea, though.

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/05/23/lasttv/feed/ 0     So long, Apple Computer… http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/01/09/so-long-apple-computer-incorporated/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/01/09/so-long-apple-computer-incorporated/#comments Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:52:52 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/01/09/so-long-apple-computer-incorporated/ 512
    It’s another gorgeous day in San Francisco, Macworld is in full swing, and Steve Jobs’ keynote address has sent fans everywhere raving. Both the iPhone and Apple TV, whose development has been rumored for months, were announced this morning.

    I’m less moved by the prospect of my cell phone and iPod being combined than by the exciting potential of the iPhone’s multi-touch technology. I’m curious to see how Apple might implement this into future products, as it radically changes the way people interact with data, media and the web through breakthroughs in interface design and intuitive technology. It also reminds me of other recent advances, including Jeff Han’s presentation at TED.

    These new directions signal Apple’s move away from the once defining “Computer” in its name — it’s now going for Apple, Incorporated — and its rapid conquest of the digital media market. Macworld always brings me back to my first introduction to computing, the 512K (“Fat Mac”, pictured above). Lightning fast at 128KB with a whopping 8MHz processor, it came with not one but *two* 400K floppy disk drives (the family splurged) and a black and white screen sporting 512 x 384 pixels for then-advanced graphics and gaming. All for $4000. Guess it’s never too late to start becoming nostalgic…

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2007/01/09/so-long-apple-computer-incorporated/feed/ 3     Hello world! http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/10/03/hello-world/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/10/03/hello-world/#comments Tue, 03 Oct 2006 07:25:34 +0000 solsken I just finished installing WordPress on my website. As I continue to tweak it, feel free to peruse my older Tribe blog postings, archived below. :)

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/10/03/hello-world/feed/ 0     Crazy midiGUN! http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/09/27/crazy-midigun/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/09/27/crazy-midigun/#comments Thu, 28 Sep 2006 03:53:46 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/?p=5 minigun

    Shhoooo — I’ve never laughed so much at audio hardware!!! Check out this midiGUN: it’s a midi controller designed to be held like a hand-held weapon to be used with Ableton Live, Traktor DJ, and other audio software. The midiGUN comes with 16 controllers which you can program in 16 different sets, a mini 2-D joystick and even a laserbeam which you can shoot at your “audience” while shaking in front of your computer… enjoy!

    More action shots here: http://www.midigun.com/midiGunchart.htm

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/09/27/crazy-midigun/feed/ 0     Multi-Touch Interactive Environment http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/02/15/multi-touch-interactive-environment/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/02/15/multi-touch-interactive-environment/#comments Wed, 15 Feb 2006 08:27:59 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/?p=22 From my ever-insightful bro:

    http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/~rdivecha/archives/2006/02/the_world_of_sm.html

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/02/15/multi-touch-interactive-environment/feed/ 0     King Henry VII, Macworld, and Net Tuesday http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/01/10/king-henry-vii-macworld-and-net-tuesday/ http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/01/10/king-henry-vii-macworld-and-net-tuesday/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:04:57 +0000 solsken http://www.solsken.com/blog/?p=26 Yummm… King Henry VIII (pictured left), caught on 24th Street in Noe Valley. Sooo delicious I can’t stop looking at him!

    Even yummier… Macworld. Will they finally unveil the new Intel iMacs or plasma displays?

    Triple the yum with Net Tuesday… swing by Varnish tomorrow (Tuesday) from 6-9 pm for drinks + chat with other techies and social changemakers.

    Deets/rsvp for Net Tuesday

    ]]>     http://www.solsken.com/blog/2006/01/10/king-henry-vii-macworld-and-net-tuesday/feed/ 0