5th dimension: a Kickstarter project and a visual book about a “50s Sci-Fi alien” plot

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Stefano

I found this amazing (already funded) project on Kickstarter: 5th dimension.

A retro-futuristic art narrative centered around a 1950’s Chicago and the arrival of space aliens.

5th dimension

Author Justin Benzel has been working hard on building this around some 1950’s alternate past/future.

5th dimension

I love this kind of stuff: a mashup of several elements from 50s B-Movies, Sci-Fi, B/W photos, hi/low tech and a lot of creativity.

Images are amazing, check out for yourself on both his website and his 5th dimension Flickr page.

5th dimension

5th dimension

5th dimension

More info at: Kickstarter page, Justin Benzel web site, 5th dimension Flickr page.

Posted in Book, Kickstarter, Sci-Fi | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ikea Catalogue becomes bookbook: a great Apple-spoofing video (and a great marketing tool too!)

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Stefano

Once again we’re getting the 2015 Ikea Catalogue filled with (nice) pictures, products and suggestions.

Ikea Catalogue is not just the Ikea’s best selling item (even though it’s free) beyond meatballs and Billys shelves, it’s a dramatically powerful marketing tool.
According to Ikea:

Last year 198 million copies of the catalogue were printed in 56 editions and 27 languages.

Ikea has just released a video that’s going to be a smash hit: the introduction to the bookbook in an obvious Apple-spoofing style.

Still waiting for the next iPad? 😉

Posted in Case Study, Digital media, Ikea, Marketing, Mobile advertisement, Mobile marketing, Video, Web Marketing, Youtube | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Venus: Steve Jobs’ sleek super-yacht spotted in Venice

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Stefano

Venice is a such a nice place to reach with your own boat or yacht – provided you have one.
Last week I spotted this gorgeous 260ft-long super yacht in Venice, Riva degli Schiavoni (the place where private luxury boat are allowed to dock): Steve Jobs’ latest design obsession and legacy.

Jobs’ family is reportedly on vacation in Italy and Venice is just one of the several cities they’ll going to stay.

Venus, the name of this super yacht, has been designed by Philippe Starck, is strikingly different from most other yachts, has very sharp edges, especially its blade-shaped prow and front windows do not exactly comply with aerodynamics since they’re flat-facing forward.

All in all you can see this yacht has little in common with other peers: there’s some Jobs-touch in it, even though he was never able to see it cruisin’ (Jobs died in October 2011, Venus was unveiled a year later) and was described in Isaacson Steve Jobs biography.

As reported from several online resources, the vessel sports teak decks, the sleek design Jobs has been looking for his whole life and seven 27-inch iMacs taking care of almost everything on board, track, heating, engines and so on.

Enjoy!

Posted in Apple, Design, Venice | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Vermeer’s legacy? Tim Jenison investigates paintings, photography, art and computer graphics

Posted on July 26, 2014 by Stefano

Vermeer Music LessonTexas-based CGI specialist Tim Jenison is someone that has crossed my life a long time ago with his mind-blowing products.

In 1986, when I bought my Amiga 1000, Tim Jenison was the founder of NewTek, which was so famous, back then, because of their video products such as DigiView, an analog-video digitizer for the Amiga (true-low-cost, true-great-success).

Tim, today, released the result of a five-year project that almost obsessed him (and his life).
He’s been studying, examining and recreating The Music Lesson – in the real world, a painting from dutch master painter Jan Vermeer (17th century).

He aimed to proof the fact that Vermeer has been using some sort of optical device to achieve such photographic quality in details, proportions, scale, lighting and perspective.

Below is the trailer of the documentary Tim’s Vermeer in which Jenison fully explains his journey into 17th century painting using today tool, his own computer graphics skills, photography tools and then some.

Tim’s Vermeer has been around since January but is now available as a Blu-ray combo pack and as digital download just recently.

More info at Boing Boing and ThisIsColossal.

Posted in Art, Commodore Amiga, Computer graphics, Digital life, Digital media, Digital photography, History, Movie, Movies, Painting, Photography, Technology, Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What do “The edge of tomorrow” and Wargames movies have in common?

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Stefano

The edge of tomorrow is a pretty cool movie: the plot and the script shows some really nice ideas about time warping, looping and so on.
As a movie fan, though, I spotted something very funny.
In the opening scene, Tom Cruise-Cage addresses TV and media with a crowded war-room in the background.

edge of tomorrow 2014

This room and its screens, immediately reminded me of one my all-time favorite movies: John Badham’s Wargames (1983).
It looks like the famed Norad (showing some pretty green-phosphor CRT monitors from the 80s) has been used in a 2014 blockbuster!
Is it a retake of WarGames or an image of the real Norad?

WarGames Norad War Room

Am I right? 🙂

Posted in Cinema, Media, Movie, Movies, Vintage computer | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pure genius: The Simpsons rendered using *only* CSS!

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Stefano

This is really awesome!
Do you know CSS?
Do you think you can master CSS enough to build whatever web-page layout you want or any special effect?

simpsons in css

Before answering, consider taking a look at Chris Pattle‘s Simpsons in CSS.

Full characters made just of CSS code, best viewed in Chrome (Firefox seems to work fine, though) and full source code, thanks to GitHub.

Awesome: great job Chris!

Posted in Ajax, html, Web design, web programming | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Blast from the Windows-past: how to delete file & folders from NTFS drive with wrong names & nested folders

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Stefano

windows file deletingYou never learn enough… (about Windows, I mean).

Problem.
During a routine backup operation, I found a Windows NTFS drive contained several files and folders which could not be deleted due to wrong naming.

Yes, it’s 2014 and we’re still having this kind of problems…

Weird character (the drive was shared with Mac users) and italian accents were quite common in the file structure.
I found myself stuck as I tried to delete them from either Windows Explorer and the old, venerable, DOS prompt.
No DEL, RMDIR, COPY or REN worked.

Solution.
A Microsoft KB Note came in handy.“God is in details”.
Provided you need to delete a file and/or a folder from the command prompt like this:

DEL filename

or

RMDIR foldername (with optional parameter /S for subfolders)

Path names is a key issue and you should use the TAB key as a help to compose correct path just like this:

DEL “f:\some path with spaces\some other path\some wèéird nàme.txt”

The ultimate touch from the MS KB brings some more magic:

DEL “\\?\f:\some path with spaces\some other path\some wèéird nàme.txt”

The \\?\ character sequence before the complete path forces any DOS command, be if DEL, RMDIR o REN, and allows us to get rid of the dreaded files&folders.

Hope this is useful to you as it’s been to me 😉

Posted in Digital life, Microsoft, Operating system, Software, Windows, Windows 8 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How the future of electronic communications looked like in 1982: Compuserve’s “Welcome to someday”

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Stefano

compuserve welcome someday 1982

$5 per hour: that’s how much it cost in 1982 to get on the ‘Net.
Well, actually, not Internet: just Compuserve, with its e-mail services.

As Wikipedia reports:

The original CompuServe Information Service, later rebranded as CompuServe Classic, was shut down July 1, 2009. The newer version of the service, CompuServe 2000, continues to operate.

Nice to see what the future looked like in 1982: a ‘total black’ environment where some sort of wireless keyboard was connected to a desktop computer, much like an Apple Lisa with a color display showing the ubiquitous graph chart.

“Someday, in the comfort of your home, you’ll be able to shop and bank electronically, read instantly updated newswires, analyze the performance of a stock that interests you, send electronic mail across the country, then play Bridge with three strangers in LA, Chicago and Dallas.”

Oddly enough, these are the key points of this vision:
– e-mail is country-wise, not world-,
– you can read newswires, not write them… or watch some sort of video,
– shop and bank is seen as a whole…

Last but not least, it all happens in the comfort of your home.
How funny: mobile users surpassed, somewhere in mid-2013, desktop Internet users, [according to Morgan Stanley]

Posted in Advertising, Compuserve, Digital life, Internet | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zooming into a microchip: that’s where the (computer) magic happens!

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Stefano

This reminds me some Tron Movie sequence.

Take a look at this nice video, you’ll zoom in into a common chip, thanks to a scanning electron microscope, and peek into the micron scale to see what’s really like to be a bit inside your computer.
Hint: things happen at a lower electronic level 😉

[Source: Sploid]

Posted in Computer, Electronics, Energy, Science, Scientific Video, Tech industry, Technology, Video, Youtube | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

European Election 2014: results provided in real-time thanks to open-data #EP2014

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Stefano

May 25th marks not only European Paliament Election day but a ‘first time‘ for open data.

The European Parliament is making a range of tools available to make it easier for the media to cover the European elections on 25 May. The results and other relevant information will be available in open data format, enabling the media, bloggers and interested users to automatically retrieve the raw data and publish it directly on their online platforms within seconds.

This announcement means that journalists and bloggers (like me) will be able to automatically retrieve raw data and publish it directly on their online platforms within seconds – helping to transform the ways that the media can report on the elections, through the use of innovative visualations, graphs and illustrations.

Below is the real-time-updated Widget with Results from 2014 European Elections.

Posted in 2014 European elections, Big data, Elections, Europe, Media, News, Open data, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment