Experience, design & technology.

Posts tagged “technology”

Touch me

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Posted on January 31st, 2012

I’ve noticed this strange quirk happening lately, most noticeably when I’m on my laptop at work. I’ll glance up at the laptop screen, spot a link in a web page (perhaps one I’ve launched using a keyboard shortcut), and reach up to touch it. Not reach for the mouse, not reach for the trackpad (which is already halfway between my hand and the screen), but reach up for the screen itself. My brain is telling me that the right thing to do is to touch it. I’d written off the concept of touch screens on laptops, after all, who wants to spend their time hovering an arm above a screen, won’t we all suffer from gorilla arm or stress injuries? Well perhaps not. I’d…

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Cameras on the verge

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Posted on January 6th, 2012

Anything you could ever want to know about the basics of camera use, over at the verge. Here’s a small snippet to give you a taste: SENSOR SIZE If there’s one rule to follow in photography, it’s that cameras with larger sensors take better photos. That’s a generalization, of course, but it’s based on a very basic empirical truth: the bigger the photosensitive surface area, the more light is taken in at a time. Practical evidence for this is abundant, from the Nikon 1 series that disappointed everyone with its undersized CX sensor, to the Nokia N8, which remains the smartphone camera champion today thanks to its class-leading 1/1.83-inch sensor. Full-frame cameras derive their name from the size of their sensors, which match the…

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One Trillion Frames

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Posted on December 13th, 2011

I’m not exactly sure how this works, but apparently researchers at MIT have developed a new camera technique to capture moving images at one trillion frames per second. This is a fairly experimental technique, used to observe the movement of light photons, no less. It’s pretty much constrained to the lab at this point, so don’t get your wallets out too soon.. Still, it’s pretty cool to see light photons beaming across things..

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The Gartner Hype Cycle

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Posted on December 7th, 2011

Posting here for posterity (and just in case you haven’t come across these elsewhere). The Gartner Hype Cycle is an annual analysis and visualisation of the current crop of technology and how they’re perceived in the market. The graph shows the technologies most hyped per year, the technologies we’re all disillusioned with, and the ones which are maturing into productivity. 2009 2010 2011

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The death of writing

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Posted on December 2nd, 2011

Most people who write for a living are thrilled by the sheer flexibility computers offer. In my case, I can rapidly bang thoughts into WriteRoom or Scrivener and then mould and shape them rather like a sculptor working on a piece of rock. When I used to write using only paper, the process was slower and I’d be frustrated by errors and editing. At school, this was even worse, since we were encouraged to submit final English essays with no errors at all, or we’d be marked down. This turned a creative pursuit into laborious drudge work, which the computer typically makes significantly less painful. Also, if we look at very young children, the simple act of holding a pencil and learning writing doesn’t…

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