This image is of a jacket created by Ames laboratory research on metamaterials. It alters the path of light so it appears that you are seeing right through the jacket.

Ha! How about BETTER SERVICE and ON-TIME FLIGHTS and NOT OVERBOOKING TICKETS?

If you like sodoku and Rubik's then you should get this toy. The object of this game is to get 1 through 9 on each side of the cube.

Of old Police cars including the original BatMobile.

I keep seeing people take photos, fans posing like they're fighting Miguel Cotto. Lots of ambient buzz around this venue. Ever since I watched Ron Howard's Cinderella Man, I was alway interested in a boxing match at Madison Square Garden (historical). Anyway, as CNN reports "Miguel Cotto retained his WBA welterweight championship with an 11th-round stoppage of Zab Judah." What does welterweight mean?

So on 49th St. station going downtownI saw this ad for a rap CD (Ludacris, Jay-Z, et. al.) and there is a headphone jack where you can plug in to listen. It's strategically placed on the photo of the CD player. I didn't plug in yet.

There was a steam pipe explosion.

Only in New York will sell every seat to the movie Helvetica. There was an ITP "designers" reunion at 8:20 pm last night. The movie was great in exhibiting pro-Helvetica and anti-Helvetica sentiments. Liked how the movie presented the historical and cultural contexts of helvetica and graphic design in general. Super designers from the older and current generations gave their two cents. In the end, the director, Gary Hustwit and type designer Tobias Frere-Jones made a special appearance. The director was down-to-earth and honest. He admitted that he was approached to direct a movie on the font Times New Roman. I really liked the movie, and would probably watch it again to see David Carson, who will make a special appearance today. I was a big fan of his work in Ray Gun magazine.

If you go, do pick up an "I hate Helvetica" or "I love Helvetica" pin.

Gary Hustwit and type designer Tobias Frere-Jones
Photo Credit: Lia Bulaong

Jane and Tim in this photo, among other ITPers that went, Pollie, Dmitri, Dan, Ahn (Mang), and Lia. It was really great to see them.

Well, it's about time. I was looking for the 2 train at the 14th street station and came across these signs via the L. A copy of D.C.'s wonderful subway system, these signs tell you when the train will arrive and in what direction. This is really useful because when you're standing around waiting for a device, be it an elevator or train, 3 seconds can sometimes feel like 3 minutes. I really hate elevators that don't indicate what floor they're on, which is useful information of whether I should stand and wait or just use the stairs. I remember Tom's first pComp assignment (2005), and our group (Matthew Burton and Cory Forsyth, both very cerebral) proposed to improve the subway system. Ahhh, brings back memories of passing surveys around to subway riders at the Union Square station.

Only saw these on the "L" train.

The Municipal Art Soviet of New York
457 Madison Avenue at 51st Street
September 25, 2007 - January 5, 2008

Digitally mastered and playing at the theater. This movie was one of my favorite science fiction films. This theater is super cool. Each stall of the bathroom has it's own sink (Ladies' room). I am tempted to see "Enchanted," the 3D and live action version of Snow White. Okay, maybe not, I just watched the previews.

Theater is packed, if you like complete silence, watch it on a weekday. Pretty awesome in the theater. They probably had to fix this movie to renew their copyright.

Thought these were interesting about the Palm Pre in an article that sums it up again iPhone and G1 on [a href="http://i.gizmodo.com/5126870/in-a-nutshell-palm-pre-vs-iphone-vs-g1?skyline=true&s=x" target="_blank">Gizmodo [Read full article here].

These will be interesting to follow...

Development platform: The Pre's "Web OS" sure sounds nice—all developers need to know is JavaScript, HTML and CSS? Sounds good in theory, but building a mobile app will never be as easy as cranking out a new theme for your Tumblr. Palm's stressing ease of development, though, so it will be interesting to see how it stacks up against Apple's solid, familiar-to-devs OS X-based SDK and Android's fully open source approach. Advantage: Pre? If it's straight-up JavaScript, that's a lot of programmers ready to go. Note: we had iPhone here before, but we've switched with a qualification. Developer community still goes to iPhone for volume.

and

Multitasking: One of the beefiest of our beefs with the iPhone SDK is its insistence on Apps running one at a time. The G1's notifications drawer was definitely a step in the right direction, but the Pre's interface is the first smartphone OS that was built with multitasking as a core design element. Resembling the Xbox's old Blades, or a less-jarring OS X Expose even, the Pre's "Cards" interface always places you in the context of every app running for fast switching, and notifications from other apps don't pull you away completely from the task at hand. Multitasking is hugely important on a phone, and it's a good sign that Palm recognizes. Advantage: Pre

Wondering if Palm Pre will make a comeback. Overall, Gizmodo really liked the interface and gave it an honest review. But how does Palm's relationship with Sprint work out? I know a lot of people who are on the Sprint network, who are moving to AT&T because they needed a smart phone ages ago. Most of these people are moving because one of their immediate family members transferred to AT&T awhile back, and now their move to AT&T will save them money (because mobile-to-mobile is included on AT&T). This will be an interesting battle for Palm.

Just got the SlingBox for Christmas, and we're pretty excited about it since we researched a whole year between Apple TV, SlingBox, and one that the NY Times wrote about, but I can't find that article now. They're all about $250-$350, but the biggest factor for us was the HD aspect. Streaming has been pretty good on Slingbox (we tested when Nick visited Jerseyville and Singapore). Also access to our recorded shows on TiVo is pretty sweet. They even have a Dashboard widget (the screenshot above). We heard that they were going to come out with an iPhone app before we bought it, so now we know for sure because they just announced it at MacWorld Expo 2009 on TÚAW.

Just in time because lately, since the national analog to digital conversion for TV, my stairmaster no longer plays TV. This poses a timing problem and a programming problem. I'm not sure if it's because our super is lazy (which I highly doubt), but I think some of the treadmills are obsolete. I've been listening to Stitcher on my iPhone, an app mimicking radio news, but it's not enough. Especially because my Sunday routines is to do 45 minutes while watching Frontline and Meet The Press. My friends suggest This American Life and various podcasts and RSS, but I need something more visual when I work out. And I would be able to watch any show anytime, uninterrupted (fast forward through ads). The Slingbox App is very much anticipated.

A slide from Adam Greenfield's Presentation

Adam Greenfield, who taught at ITP, and wrote the book titled Everyware also spoke at Dot Dot Dot, and now head of design direction at Nokia. He researches many ubiquitous computing systems. I can't cover everything he spoke about, but if you want to see some of his presentation slides, visit my Flickr set. Here are some of the highlights that you can look up or read about in his new book The City Is Here For You To Use:

UNStudio with Arup Engineering: Galleria West, Apgujeongdong in S. Korea

u-Cheonggyecheong: Instead of cleaning the stream, they wrapped it in media.

Tom Armitage, Making Bridges Talk: What if the London Bridge could Twitter?

u-City New Songdo: totally networked, and can track everything down to tagging soda bottles with RFID tags that can automatically credit your account even if you throw it in trash. Every action is recorded and mediated. This project is still a work-in-progress.

Massive simultaneity: The 1K Project

MITsenseable city lab/New York Talk Exchange (NYTE)

Mosaic of Singapore mall: A photo that shows a lady moving through a mall physically, but this mosaic also shows a layer of secondary information--who is on the other end of her mobile phone. We should think about cyberspace (Being on phone is like being in cyberspace) when we think about designing the physical space.

Stamen Design: Oakland Crimespotting
Think about constraints in analysis (e.g. Taxonomy of police department is already a constraint (e.g. categorizing rape).

iPhone/Flickr: Geotagging/Search urbanism, browse urbanism, make urban API. If we check the weather before we go out, we are conditioned to that networked information, hence Adam calls this a "network overlay." Contemplate how this "overlay" reflects every decision we make (i.e. real-time info).

I've also added Adam Greenfield's blog to my RSS Feeds and Google Reader.

Even though I use CS4 with my clients, I still have CS3 on my own laptop because Adobe took away my favorite feature from Photoshop, and put it in Bridge, which makes my computer run very, very slow.

Yesterday, I had the most frustrating experience with Flash, and then I found this link:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

In a nutshell, Eric Socolofsky summarizes what is supported and not supported (found on ITP list)

Supported:

MultiTouch
Screen Orientation
Saving images to Photo Library
Accelerometer
Geo-location
Cut / Copy / Paste

Not Supported:
Embedded HTML content (via webkit in Adobe AIR).
RTMPE
Dynamically loading SWFs that contain ActionScript
PixelBender Filters
Microphone Access
Video Camera Access

Found this app via the Daily Intel's blogpost about Gossip Girl last week. In a nutshell, this app is like a karaoke machine and recording studio. Inspired after seeing a tiny, blond girl perform a Snoop Dog track at a karaoke bar, I decided to buy/try this app.

Also, the buying and downloading experience is cohesive (meaning, I'm not ported to another site to buy a track, and it's downloaded into my iTunes account). This app is self-contained, which allows a more engaging experience. Love that you have options for real time auto-tune, and it truly works better with the mic. After trying this app, I could really see its viral potential.

Last, bought the "I'm on a Boat Track" and it seems like the instrumental is louder where the profanities are. If you are a fan of SNL, Smule is hosting a contest:
http://iamtpain.smule.com/contest

After seeing my friend and colleague Matt Chmiel at the ITP 30th Anniversary, I couldn't get this song out of my head. Then I found the lyrics on this site Lyrics on Demand. Who knows? I might just by the ringtone there ;)

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Sclemeel (Chmiel), schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated. We're gonna do it!

Give us any chance, we'll take it.
Give us any rule, we'll break it.
We're gonna make our dreams come true.
Doin' it our way.

Nothin's gonna turn us back now,
Straight ahead and on the track now.
We're gonna make our dreams come true,
Doin' it our way.

There is nothing we won't try,
Never heard the word impossible.
This time there's no stopping us.
We're gonna do it.

On your mark, get set, and go now,
Got a dream and we just know now,
We're gonna make our dream come true.
And we'll do it our way, yes our way.
Make all our dreams come true,
And do it our way, yes our way,
Make all our dreams come true
For me and you.

It's called Monocle. It's a work-in-progress, but pretty cool.

Can't wait to see what "big" games people create with this feature.