Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 81

Visions of Undersea Cables

May not seem like much but this interactive map of trans-atlantic cables enabling the global Internet is pretty cool:

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

Now just use your imagination a little and think about the process to not only lay this cable but fix it. Puts our global Internet into a much different perspective. Almost like the blood vessels of our new, digital planet.

The March of Social Media

Vincenzo Cosenza, an Italian digital strategist,hasjust finished his latest research on Social Networks Adoption Lifecycle.Cosenza has appliedthe Innovation Adoption Model, a model that shows the stages in the adoption process for a new product by a consumer, to social networks diffusion to plottheir actual state and, hopefully, understand their future trajectories. He made a very cool infographic and gave us the first look. From Vincenzo:

In the innovators area you’ll Friendfeed, which unfort...

The Future of Data Interface

As data becomes more pervasive in the cloud, it also becomes easier to display and interact with. You no longer need a full-blown computer to interact with data. You simply need something with a light OS that can run a widget platform which can draw in data and display it (of course, it’s more complicated than that but you get the idea). CES 2012 really brought this to the forefront. In short, the way we interact with data and how it integrates into our lives is rapidly changing. From windows...

The Moon in Glorious 3D

Thanks to a new 3-D map of the moon, earthbound viewers can see its landscape with a clarity that only Apollo’s astronauts have previously enjoyed.

“NASA put out some amazing digital elevation data of the moon late last year, but nobody had released it in true 3-D. So I decided I would,” saidJeffrey Ambroziak, the map’s creator.

Ambroziak recently launched a Kickstarter project to fund the printing of a full-resolution, two-sided “National Geographic-style”3-D moon map. The image below is a sec...

Shake Your Biases Away? A Review of the iPad App POP IT.

In a recently published “story experience application” (this is not a traditional book as I have written about before) on the iPad, POP IT, young readers can shake away biases they have around homosexuality and parenting:

http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/pop-it-ipad/

The concept here is pretty simple: introduce young children to concepts of gender replacement and remove the fixation on gender. So what becomes important in a parenting relationship are the two parents (although I wonder why the aut...

Photo: The Grandiose of Minuscule

One of my core beliefs about photography is that it enables us to see the minuscule: atoms, bacteria, and cellular structure. Things we cannot see with the naked eye. The NewScientist has published a story with eight images of the minuscule, colored/modified to make them look like you might find them out your kitchen window.

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Can you guess what the above is? I can tell you that it’s not a picture of the Grand Canyon. Click below to discover what this picture is and see the rest of the series:

ht...

Benefiting from Information Overload

There has been a lot of talk about the impact of information creation on our ability to remember as well as the power of language. But one unacknowledged benefit of having everyone connected via a vast social network is our ability to raise awareness for issues and to seek out advice. In the article link below from Slate, a mother was able to diagnose her son’s condition by posting pictures to Facebook and interacting with both a primary and secondary network of friends:

http://www.slate.com/i...

Why Google + Motorola?

It has been announced, by none other than the Google CEO, that Google will acquire Motorola’s handset business for 12.5bn.

Now it’s not surprising that Motorola would want to exit the handset business. Ever since the Razr their handset market share has steadily progressed downhill. And although their embracing of Android has helped to lift them up a little, they face stiff competition from other handset manufacturers who also build on the popular open-source mobile platform.

From Google’s persp...

When a Book is Not a Book

An ex-pixar designer recently published a really cool app on the iPad: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664419/all-star-pixar-animator-creates-astounding-kids-book-on-ipad

Notice that I didn’t call this a book. That is because the application is actually an interactive representation of the award-winning short movie he created. It’s not a “book” per say. Of course it tells a story and it’s been formatted for the iPad but it is clearly not a book in...

We Can’t Ignore Our Role as Planetary Stewards

I never understand the argument against conservationism. Most of the time, the arguments are economical: “If we stop allowing people to hunt/fish/etc. here or regulate the volumes, we will cause the loss of jobs, money, etc.” That, unfortunately, is very shortsighted for two reasons. First, it ignores our position as planetary stewards. At the top of the food chain, we must regulate both ways. We must consume more when a species over populates an area and we must not consume as much when a sp...