Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 655

B-cycle

*Man. That's a very elegant piece of video propaganda. I'm way more impressed by the scripting there, than I am by yet another bike-sharing service.

http://shareable.net/blog/bikesharing-comes-to-denver-with-spimes

*"Formed at the behest of the Mayor of Denver"?! The thing is not even a company. It's a not-for-profit urban service!

http://www.denverbikesharing.org/faqs.php

*I got no real idea what gives over there, but y'know what? I bet the "Denver Bike Sharing" office would be an awesome s...

Rudy Rucker and Jaron Lanier

*Maybe it's just me, but I've got to like anything whatsoever that combines Rudy Rucker and Jaron Lanier.

http://www.rudyrucker.com/blog/2010/04/26/is-jaron-a-cephalopod/

Targeted Killing Lite: Inside the CIA's New Drone Arsenal

*Well worth a look for fans of tech evolution.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/in-drone-war-cia-opts-for-smaller-less-deadly-weapons/#more-23986

*A clear line of development here. Someday, these devices are gonna merge with model aircraft and flit around shooting .22 bullets at people. If they had evolved within today's paramilitary landscape, instead of being repurposed from giant lumbering Cold War gizmos, they would be there already.

*The better these sky-robots get, the more...

More city-as-software urban informatics

*"Not even impossible."

http://springwise.com/government/buitenbeter/

"Potholes, stray garbage, broken street lamps? Citizens of Eindhoven (((I might have guessed))) can now report local issues by iPhone, using the BuitenBeter app that was launched today.

"After spotting something that needs to be fixed, residents can use the app to take a picture, (((that's handy))) select an appropriate category (((make the hapless complainers do their own folksonomy work))) and send their complaint...

Showtime: Around the World in 80 Seconds

*Nice work, boys.

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/04/24/tour-the-world-in-80-stop-motion-seconds/

http://www.tourdumonde80.fr/#/making-of

*Looks like media hardware companies like Sony are establishing some viral special-relationship with YouTube. They offer travel budgets, real soundtracks, and everything.

Here comes the Knot, there goes the Knot

*I bet the world would look a lot different if we had about ten thousand rolling Favela Chic installations like this.

THE KNOT – linking the existing with the imaginary

Berlin/Warsaw/Bucharest

BERLIN 28 April – 30 May 2010 / Pre-Opening 28 April 2010, Opening 29 April 2010

WARSAW 16 June – 18 July 2010 / Opening 16 June 2010

BUCHAREST 8 – 31 October 2010 / Opening 8 October 2010

BERLIN
Kulturforum. 28 April – 01 May 2010
Pre-Opening. Wednesday, 28 April 2010, from 6:00 p.m.
Opening. Thursday, 29 A...

Dead Media Beat: floppy disks

*Read it and weep.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/04/the-once-ubiquitous-floppy-finally-being-axed-by-sony.ars

"The 3.5″ 1.44MB HD floppy may finally be going gentle into the good night. Sony, one of just a few companies that still produce the archaic computer storage media, has announced plans to end production of floppies in March 2011.

"The company sold about 12 million 3.5″ floppies in Japan last year, which represents 70 percent of that market (and incidentally, about 17TB of...

Augmented Reality: more goggle-based design-fiction

*This one's looking pretty good until the cornball Yahoo! flatscreen shows up. Yahoo! wouldn't put that on a mobile, so there's no reason they'd put it on your face.

http://thomaskcarpenter.com/2010/03/31/loading-screen-on-augmented-goggles/

Augmented Reality: Amsterdam flashmobbing

http://www.sndrv.nl/ARflashmob/

From: Sander Veenhof

"Hi Bruce (((Yo!))),

"Todays' ARflashmob event was a blast. It looked like I had pictured it would be like: a group of people standing around nothingness. Near to nothingness that is. I did put some big printed marker codes on the ground to have the flashmob get started quickly. Barcode-scanning the markers activated the augmented reality Layar instantly.

"I'm really glad that you posted a post about it on the Beyond the Beyond blog about two ...

Wal-Mart declined to comment

*You bought it: you live it.

http://www.impactlab.com/2010/04/24/imf-the-party-is-over-no-more-retiring-at-65/