Khoi Vinh's Blog, page 111

iBeacon Is the New Frontier

A very smart post about how Apple’s indoor positioning system represents a huge advance in how “smart” our smartphones really are — and, consequently, how iBeacon represents a huge opportunity for new innovations and businesses. So iBeacon really is the digital equivalent of something we all take for granted: analog human sight. Because up until this…

Reappraising “House of Cards”

Respected television critic Alan Sepinwall summarizes his thoughts on Netflix’s popular flagship program: I began the series being impressed by its pedigree and visual style, but finished its first season finding it to be good but not great. Then I saw the first four episodes of the new season, and by then had downgraded the…

Daft Punk Merch

I really am a sucker for convincingly rendered simulations of yesteryear — especially if it’s from the days of my youth. Earlier in the year I wrote about Future City Records and their uncannily 1980s-style album covers. I spent a lot of time poring over them and marveling at how accurately they had recreated the…

Rice Cooker Technology

This is the rice cooker that my parents bought for me when I went to college in the fall of 1989. It’s been with me ever since, through many roommates, girlfriends, and lonely spells as an eligible bachelor. And it’s been a reliable workhorse for my young family too, regularly serving up fresh, hot, perfectly…

Videos of People Making Luxury Goods

Digital media engenders all kinds of ironies. For instance, as the things we interact with on a daily basis get less and less tangible, we turn to digital media itself to fetishize the things that digital media can’t reproduce. I see this in videos documenting the intensity of manually assembling high-precision luxury objects from real…

Pearl Paint, R.I.P.

The Wildcard offices are only a few short blocks from the legendary Pearl Paint art store on Canal Street, but somehow I didn’t hear until after the fact that the longstanding New York art world institution shut down a little more than a week ago. I shot this picture of its signage this morning on…

Pearl Paint, R.I.P.

The Wildcard offices are only a few short blocks from the legendary Pearl Paint art store on Canal Street, but somehow I didn’t hear until after the fact that the longstanding New York art world institution shut down a little more than a week ago. I shot this picture of its signage this morning on…

Harvard Law Review

Is a law journal supposed to look this good? This redesign was launched about four weeks ago by Upstatement. I like the home page much, much more than the secondary pages, but overall it’s impressive work. Via Typewolf. +

Takeshi

These collage-based works from New York-based illustrator Emeric Trahand, who goes by the name Takeshi, are beautiful. I’m entranced by their symmetry, and their balance of geometric forms and random images. More at Takeshi’s site. +

Marvel Comics Developer API

Yes, that’s what I said: a developer API for seventy years’ worth of Marvel Comics content. You can now write your own application and make use of Marvel’s countless characters, creators, series, even story arcs. What a remarkable gift this is to kids (of all ages) with plenty of time on their hands and the…