The Shaggy, Cute, Eco-Friendly Lawnmowers of Paris

in Random, Technology | April 4th, 2013

They toyed with the idea of a don­key, but they went with four sheep instead, and now four ewes are mow­ing the grounds of Paris’ Munic­i­pal Archives. It’s all part of a pilot pro­gram where, if suc­cess­ful, sheep will trim the grass of Parisian pub­lic spaces and burn no fos­sil fuels along the way. The New York Times has more on this old school solu­tion to a mod­ern envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem.

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Roger Ebert Talks Movingly About Losing and Re-Finding His Voice (TED 2011)

in Film, Life, Technology, TED Talks | April 4th, 2013

Film crit­ic Roger Ebert, like Pauline Kael before him, leaves behind a great tor­rent of words. Those of us accus­tomed to seek­ing out his opin­ion can com­fort our­selves on the Inter­net, where his thoughts on the great (and not-so-great) films of the last four decades live in per­pe­tu­ity.

After a rup­tured carotid artery robbed him of the pow­er of speech, words assumed an even greater impor­tance for Ebert. Even though he felt lucky to be alive in an age when most home com­put­ers come equipped with a text-to-speech option, he mourned the loss of inflec­tion, tim­ing, and spon­tane­ity. Cere­Proc, a Scot­tish firm spe­cial­iz­ing in per­son­al­ized com­put­er voic­es, cre­at­ed a cus­tom ver­sion he breezi­ly referred to as Roger Junior or Roger 2.0, a Franken­stein’s mon­ster assem­bled from hours of tele­vi­sion appear­ances. A noble, but flawed attempt. Despite his Mid­west­ern attrac­tion to Apple’s com­put­er­ized British accent, Ebert returned to its Amer­i­can male voice, “Alex”, as the most expres­sive option.

In 2011, the speech­less Ebert gave a TED Talk on the sub­ject. “Alex” was giv­en his moment to shine, but there’s no way the tech­no­log­i­cal mir­a­cle can com­pete with the human spec­ta­cle onstage.

Rather than rely on the rel­a­tive­ly autonomous voice sub­sti­tute, Ebert arranged for his wife, Chaz Ham­mel­smith, and friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, to read his words from pre­pared scripts.

For­get W.C. Fields’ caveat about per­form­ing with chil­dren and dogs. Ebert stole his own show, shame­less­ly upstag­ing his loved ones with jol­ly pan­tomimed thumbs ups and oth­er antics. When he’s on cam­era, you can’t take your eyes off him…as he clear­ly knew. A 2010 Esquire arti­cle by Chica­go-based the­ater crit­ic, Chris Jones, described how the removal of Ebert’s low­er jaw gave him the aspect of a per­ma­nent smile. The dis­fig­ure­ment was shock­ing, but espe­cial­ly so on one whose face was so famil­iar. It led to fre­quent mis­as­sump­tions that he had been men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed as well. Ham­mel­smith’s tears when she gets to this part of her hus­band’s elo­quent TED Talk speak vol­umes as well. His will­ing­ness to place him­self front and cen­ter, where peo­ple who might think it impo­lite to stare could not help but see and hear him as a whole per­son, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary act.

“With­out intel­li­gence and mem­o­ry, there is no his­to­ry.”  — Roger Ebert, 1942 — 2013

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a writer in the Big Apple.

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The Popular Science Digital Archive Lets You Explore Every Science and Technology-Filled Edition Since 1872

in Archives, History, Science, Technology | April 4th, 2013

popsci

Pop­u­lar Sci­ence is the fifth old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly-pub­lished month­ly magazine—a long way of say­ing that the mag­a­zine has done a fine job of main­tain­ing a niche in a crazi­ly fast-paced indus­try. Found­ed in 1872 by sci­ence writer Edward Youmans to reach an audi­ence of edu­cat­ed laypeo­ple, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence today com­bines reviews of the lat­est gad­gets with sto­ries about inno­va­tion in design and sci­ence. It’s an orga­nized mish­mash of news about “the future now,” lib­er­al­ly defined. A recent issue includ­ed sto­ries about the military’s use of 3‑D print­ing and an astro­physi­cist who ques­tions whether Shake­speare wrote the entire Folio.

With that kind of breadth, the magazine’s archives cov­er just about every­thing. And it’s easy to browse through back issues, dat­ing all the way back to 1872, since the mag­a­zine teamed up with Google to put a search­able archive on the web. The ear­li­est issues, like this one from Feb­ru­ary 1920, fea­ture col­or cov­ers that bring to mind sci­ence fic­tion with a fas­ci­na­tion for the imag­ined future.

One of the cool things about the mag­a­zine is its equal atten­tion to new and old tech­nol­o­gy. Search for “scis­sors” and you will find this 1964 arti­cle about the mechan­ics of sharp­en­ing your own scis­sors. The archive also offers anoth­er search tool that returns results in a visu­al word fre­quen­cy grid, which is espe­cial­ly cool if you click the “ani­mate” but­ton. Any social his­to­ri­ans out there able to explain why the word “scis­sor” would appear so often in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry?

Inter­est­ing­ly, although the word “inter­net” dates back to the 1960s, the word did­n’t appear in the magazine’s pages until 1989.

Peri­od adver­tise­ments are includ­ed, which adds to the fun. This issue from Sep­tem­ber, 1944 includes a house-adver­tise­ment on the table of con­tents page call­ing for all col­lec­tors of back issues to con­sid­er sur­ren­der­ing them for the war cause. “There’s a war going on and this is no time for sen­ti­ment,” the ad urges. “Grit your teeth and dig out those stacks of back num­bers. Then turn them over to your local paper sal­vage dri­ve!” Enter the archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

NASA Archive Col­lects Great Time-Lapse Videos of our Plan­et

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A Gallery of Stanley Kubrick Cinemagraphs: Iconic Moments Briefly Animated

in Animation, Film, Technology, Web/Tech | March 16th, 2013

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Type “stu­pid ani­mat­ed gif”—or words to that effect—into your pre­ferred search engine and you’ll be reward­ed with an abun­dance of ger­mane mate­r­i­al.

Mean­while a search on “ani­mat­ed gif of Stan­ley Kubrick rolling in his grave” fails to yield any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance.

Pity. I guess we’ll just have to imag­ine how the late per­fec­tion­ist and cel­e­brat­ed direc­tor would have react­ed to a gallery of his most icon­ic images, down­loaded and doc­tored into infi­nite­ly loop­ing, min­i­mal­ly ani­mat­ed snip­pets.

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Per­haps I pre­sume. Per­haps he’d be pray­ing for some­one to rean­i­mate him, so he could haunt the realm of the late night cha­t­rooms, his every obser­va­tion and opin­ion punc­tu­at­ed with a lan­guid Sue Lyons lift­ing her head in Loli­ta, or a dia­bol­i­cal Clock­work Orange toast.

Admit­ted­ly, the longer one watch­es George C Scot­t’s Gen­er­al Turgid­son work­ing over a mouth­ful of gum, or Jack Nichol­son act­ing four kinds of crazy, the more tempt­ing it is to put togeth­er a cin­ema­graph of one’s own. That’s the high fly­ing term assigned to the form by artist Kevin Burg and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jamie Beck who alleged­ly invent­ed (and lat­er trade­marked) it while cov­er­ing New York Fash­ion Week. To quote super­mod­el Coco Rocha, as they do on their web­site, “it’s more than a pho­to but not quite a video.”

Be fore­warned that it’s not a project for the Pho­to­shop new­bie. Maybe the instruc­tion­al video below just makes it seem so.  (Though if you’re look­ing for an instruc­tion­al video on how not to make an instruc­tion­al video, this is very instruc­tion­al indeed. If not, stick with a more straight for­ward, non-film-based how to. Stan­ley Kubrick, this guy ain’t.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Cin­ema­graph: A Haunt­ing Photo/Video Hybrid

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Ayun Hal­l­i­day rec­om­mends Stan­ley Kubrick­’s “Paths of Glo­ry” in its orig­i­nal form.

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Artist Robbie Cooper’s Video Project Immersion Stares Back at Gamers and YouTubers

in Art, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | March 8th, 2013

What if that screen you’re peer­ing at was some­thing akin to a one-way mir­ror? There’s a def­i­nite aspect of dress­ing room hor­ror, view­ing artist Rob­bie Coop­er’s Immer­sion project, a video col­lec­tion of the alter­nate­ly grotesque and dull expres­sions appear­ing on peo­ple’s faces as they play video games and watch YouTube. (The view­er is nev­er privy to what’s show­ing on the sub­jects’ screens, but one sus­pects it’s like­ly less rar­i­fied than a short ani­ma­tion inspired by physi­cist Richard Feyn­man’s remarks on a flower or film­mak­er Miran­da July’s lyri­cal advice to the pro­cras­ti­na­tion-prone). But before we denounce the most­ly under­aged par­tic­i­pants’ dead eyes and slack jaws—an effect made more dis­turb­ing by the sound­track­’s high inci­dence of gunfire—perhaps we should turn the web cam on our­selves.

That’s exact­ly what Coop­er is hop­ing will hap­pen, as he pre­pares to expand the pro­jec­t’s scope to include peo­ple of all ages and nation­al­i­ties. “Babies being born right now arrive in a land­scape where com­put­ers, smart­phones, the inter­net, and social media already exist,” he explains, “While the old­est gen­er­a­tion alive today can remem­ber a time before TV was a fix­ture of our liv­ing room.”

To widen the net, Coop­er is turn­ing to crowd sourc­ing. Whether some­one who know­ing­ly trains the cam­era on him or her­self can achieve the pre­vi­ous par­tic­i­pants zoo-like lack of inhi­bi­tion remains to be seen, but the Kick­starter cam­paign to fund this next phase lays things out on a grand scale. The plan is for the pub­lic to con­tribute via uploads and a social media aggre­ga­tor. More excit­ing­ly, they’re encour­aged to seize the reins by cre­at­ing a series of instruc­tions and prompts for those com­ing lat­er to fol­low.

Let us hope this will lead to a more heart­en­ing vari­ety of expres­sions, as well as the book, doc­u­men­tary, and  inter­ac­tive exhibits Coop­er envi­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Kid on Tele­vi­sion

Art in the Era of the Inter­net (and Why Open Edu­ca­tion Mat­ters)

The Cre­ators Project Presents the Future of Art and Design, Brought to You by Intel and Vice Mag­a­zine

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s lap­top is direct­ly respon­si­ble for two ver­ti­cal creas­es between her brows.

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“The Bay Lights,” The World’s Largest LED Light Sculpture, Debuts in San Francisco

in Art, Technology | March 7th, 2013

On Tues­day night, the San Fran­cis­co-Oak­land Bay Bridge out­shined The Gold­en Gate Bridge for the first time in 75 years. That hap­pened when artist Leo Vil­lare­al flipped a switch and illu­mi­nat­ed 25,000 lights, turn­ing the 1.8‑mile expanse into the world’s largest L.E.D. light sculp­ture. Accord­ing to The New York Times, the pri­vate­ly-fund­ed project, esti­mat­ed to cost $8 mil­lion, “has become a dar­ling of mon­eyed Sil­i­con Val­ley types.” And, it’s not hard to see why. As Vil­lare­al explains in the video above, “The Bay Lights” instal­la­tion runs on cus­tom-designed soft­ware (writ­ten in C) that cap­tures the kinet­ic activ­i­ty around the bridge and then uses the data to sequence the lights, cre­at­ing pat­terns that nev­er occur twice. You can vis­it the instal­la­tion through 2015. Learn more here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pi in the Sky: The World’s Largest Ephemer­al Art Instal­la­tion over Beau­ti­ful San Fran­cis­co

Cap­ti­vat­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Cre­ate Gold­en Sculp­tures

MIT LED Heli­copters: The Ear­ly Smart Pix­els

Build­ing the Gold­en Gate Bridge: A Retro Film Fea­tur­ing Orig­i­nal Archival Footage

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Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Computer Science Course And Other Free Tech Classes

in Harvard, MOOCs, Online Courses, Technology | February 26th, 2013

I’ll con­fess, when it comes to com­put­ers, I’m pret­ty much strict­ly a user. And these days, with the poten­tial free­dom and cre­ative­ly afford­ed by open access soft­ware, the end­less hacks for vir­tu­al­ly every­thing, and the avail­abil­i­ty of free online com­put­er class­es, that seems like kind of a lame admis­sion. So I’m tempt­ed to rec­ti­fy my pro­gram­ming igno­rance by push­ing through what promis­es to be a rig­or­ous intro to com­put­er sci­ence, CS50, Harvard’s intro­duc­to­ry course for both majors and non-majors alike. The course offers a broad knowl­edge base to build on, as you can see from the descrip­tion below:

Top­ics include abstrac­tion, algo­rithms, encap­su­la­tion, data struc­tures, data­bas­es, mem­o­ry man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, soft­ware devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­iza­tion, and web­sites. Lan­guages include C, PHP, and JavaScript plus SQL, CSS, and HTML. Prob­lem sets inspired by real-world domains of biol­o­gy, cryp­tog­ra­phy, finance, foren­sics, and gam­ing. Designed for con­cen­tra­tors and non-con­cen­tra­tors alike, with or with­out pri­or pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence.

Har­vard has made this course avail­able free to anyone—via YouTube, iTunes, and the course page—with a series of lec­tures filmed dur­ing the Fall 2011 semes­ter. The class is led by David J. Malan, an enthu­si­as­tic young pro­fes­sor and Senior Lec­tur­er on Com­put­er Sci­ence at Har­vard, and him­self a prod­uct of Harvard’s Com­put­er Sci­ence pro­gram. Pro­fes­sor Malan has also offered Harvard’s CS50 as a MOOC through edX. In the intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture to CS50 (above), Malan promis­es that “this is one of those rare cours­es that actu­al­ly squeezes your brain so much and your sched­ule so much that by the end of the semes­ter you actu­al­ly feel smarter.”

Pro­fes­sor Malan has become some­thing of a hot shot at Har­vard. His mission—to make com­put­er sci­ence more acces­si­ble and far less daunt­ing. He’s done this in part by gen­er­ous­ly mak­ing sev­er­al of his cours­es avail­able free online to non-Har­vard stu­dents. In addi­tion to CS50, Malan offers the fol­low­ing cours­es for those who want to pur­sue pro­gram­ming or web design fur­ther:

And if you still need some sell­ing on the val­ues and virtues of com­put­er sci­ence, watch Malan below deliv­er an inspir­ing talk called “And the Geek Shall Inher­it the Earth” at Har­vard Thinks Big 2010 (Harvard’s ver­sion of TED Talks).

We’ve added Har­vard’s CS50 to the Com­put­er Sci­ence sec­tion of our list of 750 Free Online Cours­es and our list of 150 Free Busi­ness Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Cours­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps with Stanford’s Free Course, Cod­ing Togeth­er

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Start Your Startup with Free Stanford Courses and Lectures

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | February 18th, 2013

Last spring, Ken Aulet­ta wrote a pro­file of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in the pages of The New York­er, which start­ed with the ques­tion: “There are no walls between Stan­ford and Sil­i­con Val­ley. Should there be?” It’s per­haps an unavoid­able ques­tion when you con­sid­er a star­tling fact cit­ed by the arti­cle. Accord­ing the uni­ver­si­ty itself, five thou­sand com­pa­nies “trace their ori­gins to Stan­ford ideas or to Stan­ford fac­ul­ty and stu­dents.” The list includes tech giants like Google, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Cis­co Sys­tems, Sun Microsys­tems, eBay, Net­flix, Elec­tron­ic Arts, Intu­it, Sil­i­con Graph­ics, LinkedIn, and E*Trade. And stay tuned, there’s more to come.

Stan­ford is one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing incu­ba­tors, and the rear­ing of young entre­pre­neurs does­n’t take place by mere osmo­sis. No, Stan­ford stu­dents can take cours­es focused on entre­pre­neur­ship, which give them access to sea­soned entre­pre­neurs and financiers. If you head over to eCorner, short for Entre­pre­neur­ship Cor­ner (Web — iTunes — YouTube), you can watch “2000 free videos and pod­casts fea­tur­ing entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion thought lead­ers” who have paid vis­its to Stan­ford. Per­haps you’ll rec­og­nize a few of the names: Mark Zucker­berg? Lar­ry Page? Maris­sa May­er? Reid Hoff­man (above)?

Or, if you go to YouTube and iTunes, you’ll gain access to entire cours­es ded­i­cat­ed to teach­ing stu­dents the mod­ern art of start­ing star­tups. Two cours­es (both housed in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es and our col­lec­tion of 150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es) war­rant your atten­tion. First, Chuck Eesley’s course, Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship (YouTube — iTunes Video) intro­duces stu­dents to “the process used by tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neurs to start com­pa­nies. It involves tak­ing a tech­nol­o­gy idea and find­ing a high-poten­tial com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty, gath­er­ing resources such as tal­ent and cap­i­tal, fig­ur­ing out how to sell and mar­ket the idea, and man­ag­ing rapid growth.” The course fea­tures 28 video lec­tures in total.

Once you have a broad overview, you can dial into an impor­tant part of get­ting a new ven­ture going — rais­ing cap­i­tal. Hence the course Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal (iTunes Video — YouTube), a course cur­rent­ly tak­ing place at Stan­ford that “explores how suc­cess­ful star­tups nav­i­gate fund­ing, man­ag­ing, and scal­ing their new enter­prise.” It fea­tures guest speak­ers from the VC world that fuels Sil­i­con Val­ley.

It goes with­out say­ing that Stan­ford offers many world-class cours­es across oth­er dis­ci­plines, from phi­los­o­phy and physics to his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. You can find 68 cours­es from Stan­ford in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ford Launch­es iPhone/iPad App Course on iTune­sU

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

The Stan­ford Mini Med School: A Free Course Now Online

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

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