Design posts

Coming down the pipe from XKCD is this utterly brilliant map of the state of social networking today. Click the link for the giant one. “Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community’s current size and health,” explains the map. A talking map. “This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community – that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there.” Honestly, there’s nothing to say that the map can’t say for itself. “[the map] involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random…

Good afternoon. Have you got boobs? If you’ve answered ‘yes’, you might be a woman, and if you’re reading Techi, you might be a woman interested in technology. There’s every chance I’m wrong on both counts, but for the purposes of this article I’m writing, we’ll assume I’m not. So, being female, ‘The Man’ is not going to stand for the flippant display of your assets (though a man might). You’ve got to hide your nipples somewhere, lest you incur the wrath of your local Indecent Exposure law. But bras suck, right? Yeah, I hear that (said the large, scruffy man with the beard)….

What’s your kid wearing for Halloween? He’s not going as Batman, is he? I see, like, a trillion child Batmans running around every Halloween, all wearing that foam (plastic?) muscle bib chestplate deal, with snowpants so they don’t catch a cold. Parents, your child isn’t going to catch a cold. He’s the goddamned Batman. Anyway, the point is, your kid’s Halloween costume is stupid – muscle bib or no. If you really wanna have a pissing contest with the other parents on the block, you’ll consider the Kid’s Walker from Sakakibara Kikai. Obviously from Japan, the Kid’s Walker is a robot that… well,…

Turns out Big Steve isn’t the ninja we all thought he was. After being pulled aside and searched at Kansai International Airport in Japan, throwing stars were allegedly found in his luggage, and were promptly confiscated by security. Enraged, Jobs reportedly stated he’d never visit Japan again. But he wasn’t pissed for any old reason. Security had just unwittingly blown the lid off Steve’s latest revolutionary game-changing device: The iPod ninja. “iPod ninja fits into that sweet spot between the iPod touch and a small handgun,” Apple spokesperson Ted Wetmore tells Scoopertino. “It…

Tell you what: I’m just gonna leave this here, and you can totally just talk amongst yourselves. Or buy it. I just know there’s a joke that could be made about, like, pizza, and the Delta Quadrant, or something, but I can’t find it. Do me a solid and throw out some Star Trek/pizza puns, will ya?…

It’s always cool when a totally big-ass milestone is hit on something, sort of like Twitter’s 20 billionth tweet, which… well, I… posted about it awhile ago, but for the life of me, can’t find. Whatever. It was a boring tweet anyway. It’s just cool to nose in on the big milestones, whatever they may be. And that’s exactly what this is: Flickr’s 5 billionth photo, uploaded by user Aaron Yeo – a view of the Woodward’s building in Vancouver, Canada. According to Media Culpa, a blog that has enough time on its hands to track these stats, Flickr adds about a billion photos per year. So, with that in mind,…

Craft time! Got a spare $100 bill lying around? Of course you do, you’re made of money. Look at you, in your freshly-pressed leisure suit and Italian shoes. Well, don’t dawdle, go get your bill, and play along as designer Enrique Pardo guides you through the how-to of creating your very own origami iPhone stand. You can’t more disregard currency without burning it! Or, like, eating it, I guess. You could do this with a $1 bill, but who would care? Certainly not me, you cheapo….

Despite Soviet heritage, I don’t pretend to know more Russian than I learned watching James Bond movies through my childhood. Basically, I know ‘yes’, ‘no’, and a host of Russian swear words slipped slyly past the ratings board. That being said, as you can probably guess, I don’t have much information on the video you’re watching, there, beyond the fact that it’s Russian President Dmitry Medvedev handling a 4G prototype phone with a display on either side. This would, of course, come off as entirely ridiculous, but if I’m not mistaken, that back screen appears to be e-ink. Totally rocking if you…

I repeatedly harp on the iPad for its lack of ability for truly professional content creation. Well, I take it all back. This is one of the most ingenious things I’ve seen in days. Combining long-exposure photography and stop-motion animation, I can guarantee you that this will be one of the most creatively-produced animated shorts you’ve ever seen, iPad or not….

3D is absolutely bloody everywhere now. Everywhere you turn, stuff’s popping out of every surface at you – most of it in an attempt to get you to buy a television. Well, guess what, Every Surface: I already own a 27-inch CRT television from 1995, and I am pleased as down-forward-punch by its traditional bi-dimensional performance. Can’t a more useful message be sent with 3D? Apparently, it can. Canadian safety awareness group Preventable have taken a page from that guy what does them neato chalk drawings, and come up with a campaign that explores the third dimension in an ingeniously low-tech way….