LuminAID is solar-rechargeable, inflatable light that packs flat and inflates to create a lightweight, waterproof lantern. It’s portable and can be used anywhere in the world in areas such as disaster zones that has no working or available electricity. It’s about the size of and weight of an iPhone and it’s inexpensive solution to a big problem in areas that need light.
OpenBrand is an online platform that helps companies and designers gather, organize and maintain everything they need to unite a brand. A fully fleshed out brand needs to track everything from hexadecimal color codes to print and web typography, and OpenBrand helps make this task much easier. OpenBrand also encourages new companies to develop a complete brand by serving as a checklist. (via OpenBrand Makes It Easy To Manage Your Brand)
Digital imaging is allowing scientists to listen to test recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta Laboratory for the first time since the 1880s. After Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, Bell was one of the competitors in the race to make the technology commercially viable, and sent several boxes of recordings to the Smithsonian Institute to guard against patent challenges (yes, even back then). Without an accompanying playback device, they’d since lain dormant. | The Verge
Why should we have to spend so much time dealing with our computer’s interface? Jef Raskin, the man behind the original Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface often wondered the same thing, and his desire for a forgiving, document-based UI led Canon to create its Cat “work processor,” a re-imagining of what office computing should be like. | The Verge
Future Fossils
by Bughouse
Enders Analysis analyst Benedict Evans writes that the figure is correct as of 27 December, with iOS and Android applications accounting for more than two-thirds of mobile app use on the social network. (via 300m Users Access Facebook Via a Mobile App)
Language Map of Europe for Twitter users…According to this map, it looks as the users of Twitter tend to be located around major transportation infrastructures.
The colors represent languages: gray for English, purple for French, red for German…
“I really liked these maps both for their cartography but also for their demonstration that linguistic and national borders can be seen online as well. There has also been a tendency for fine scale mapping of Twitter data so it is nice to get a global perspective.”
The World Trade Center is being rebuilt, and as it is, it’s progress is being tracked. Some new pictures from the new World Trade Center were posted to the WTC official Twitter account which show just an amazing view of New York City, 71 floors up. The new World Trade Center will be in total 1,776 feet tall, which will be the tallest skyscraper in New York.
