HAPPY FRIDAY: These T-shirt designs are awesome

Enough said.

Awesome T-shirt Designs

Anyone know where we can order any of these awesome t-shirt designs from? I want the sans sheriff one!

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TED TALK: Richard Seymour on product beauty

“BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder”, they say. To someone more cynical about love: beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. To the advertiser and product designer, beauty is in the limbic system of the beholder.

Beauty is intrinsically tied in with advertising and new technology. I was intrigued to recently discover that the marketing of motor vehicles is not so much about shapes but reflective surfaces. The recent motor show illustrated this well, with each car shimmering more than the next in the strategically placed lighting. This has the effect of making stationary objects come to life.

Consider Steve Jobs’ claim to fame. The flood of articles that have emerged since his death remind us that Jobs was not the genius behind Apple software but rather the chief designer and marketer. His work revolved around beauty and involved appealing to the emotional beings that we are.

Designers and advertisers are responsible for shaping our ever-evolving ideas of beauty year after year. This year some of the criteria that signify beauty in technology are flat, touchable surfaces, thin and light-weight with rounded corners. The beautiful colours are black, white and silver – much like the colour scheme of what we might imagine a modern-looking kitchen to embody.

A lot of funding for the marketing of new technologies goes towards understanding how people’s brains respond to images. Debates have revolved around whether we “think beauty” or “feel beauty”. What we do know is that it takes a good few seconds for stimuli to enter into the cognitive portion of the brain, where we get a chance to really think about what we have just seen or felt.

Television adverts take this fast-paced form of advertising to the extreme – quickly throwing imagery at our eyes coupled with strange statistics and tidbits of information. They attempt to embed these into our subconscious and supply us with answers before we get a change to think about what just happened. When we happen upon the product later on we suddenly feel a strange sense of familiarity with it.

Then there is the other extreme. There is roughly a six second period whereby stimuli and information reach the cognitive part of our brains – six seconds which is crucial to advertisers and product designers. The lights dimming before a movie starts in the cinema, for example, takes roughly six seconds. The intended effect is to create feelings of anticipation and excitement. BMW copied this technique with their slow dimming lights.

Richard Seymour: How beauty feels

Richard Seymour is a product designer who revealed some of these secrets during a recent TED talk. In his talk, Seymour explores our response to beauty and illustrates the surprising power that objects which exhibit beauty can have over us. Seymour explains that the goal of advertisers and designers is to form emotional bonds between us and products. What we see, he argues, “is an electro-chemical party trick that happens before we even get a chance to think about it.”

“We are slaves to the first flash”, says Seymour, and “we see and understand things not as they are, but as we are”, to quote the philosopher Anais Nin.

Seymour also shed light on how the beauty and our perception of something can change according to the information we are provided either before or afterwards. Consider ballet, for example. One who doesn’t understand the pain and discipline that ballet dancers endure would find it far less beautiful than someone who truly understood and appreciated the art.

It makes one wonder if the small and curvy Blackberry is suddenly less beautiful now than it was before.

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FUTURE HOMES: When applying tech intelligently, options are endless

WHEN people consider their future dream home many may think of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, double-story house with a great view — somewhere in the mountains. I think of a house under the sea — one that has a huge window­ looking out into the ocean and one that is fully connected to the outside world … and which cleans itself.

The home of the future is likely to be far more than just a residence, but an element of lifestyle that will encourage and facilitate learning, inspiration and communication. Furthermore, the surrounding environment would be conducive to creativity and innovation. These are some of the ideas of social and industrial engineer Jacque Fresco.

Future Smart Homes: Architecture

According to William Gazecki - director and narrator of the film Future by Design, "the architecture of future homes will evolve on an entirely different basis from today’s houses. The structural elements­ would be flexible and coherently­ arranged to best serve individual preferences."

According to the Venus Project website: “These prefabricated, modular homes, embodying a high degree of flexibility inconceivable in times past, could be built any place one might imagine­, amid forests, atop mountains, or on remote islands.”

Gazecki and Fresco propose that houses be prefabricated using a new type of pre-stressed, reinforced concrete with a flexible ceramic external coating. Such material would result in homes that are relatively maintenance free, fireproof, and impervious to bad weather. The construction of future houses' thin shells could also be mass-produced in a matter of hours. Furthermore, with this type of construction, there would be minimal damage to homes from natural disasters.

Future Smart Homes: Lighting and heat

Gazecki and Fresco describe the interior of future smart homes as having no source of light in the form of lamps and hanging fixtures. Instead, all the walls would evenly illuminate — either­ the entire inner surface or particular areas. One would also be able to specify the colour and intensity of the illumination.

"Thermopanes would be used to tint out bright sunlight by variable patterns of shading. All these features could be selected by the occupants to supply more than enough of the energy required to operate the entire household," says Fresco.

"The buildings would be designed as self-contained residences with their own thermal generators and heat concentrators. Photovoltaic arrays would be built into the skin of the building and into the windows themselves," says Gazecki.

Future Smart Homes: Bathrooms and water

Fresco argues that a considerable amount of water can be saved by designing bathroom installations into one system. A shower, sink and toilet moulded into a single system, for example, would be the simplest type of bathroom that would only use one sixtieth the amount of the water used in today’s more common bathrooms. Waste water from the shower and sink would automatically fill the toilet; so instead of telling people to save water, there would be a system built in.

Future Smart Homes

"Cleanliness and hygiene will become major features of future homes, says Fresco. By building in several sensory devices, homes would be able to detect fire, toxic materials — anything that may threaten the life of a human being." With these nervous systems built in, future homes would be smart homes.

"When you leave the building the entire building is clean. With a slight increase in air pressure in the building, no dust would be able to come in from outside. If there are any contaminants in the air it would increase the electrostatic charge, which removes contaminants," Fresco continues.

Future Smart Homes: Self-erecting Structures

"For apartment buildings and other large structures, Fresco has devised a cybernated construction system, says Gazecki. The idea is that computer-controlled robots would handle 90% of the movement and placement of prefabricated components. Special advanced materials are to be developed, eliminating waste and minimising the need for manual labour. Guided by satellite, and using a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence, the buildings will actually construct themselves — a technique Fresco has named “self-erecting structures”.

Evolving homes of the future

Fresco believes that one of the most interesting aspects of tomorrow’s civilisation is that people’s homes will change as the people living within them change. As people’s needs and dimensions of knowledge grow, so will the environment in which they live.

“There’s no such thing as a fixed home that a person lives in all their lives … they will choose to live in whatever architectural shape would meet their needs,” says Fresco.

So think again when you consider your dream home and the type of environment you would like to live in. When such ideas finally take off the options could be endless.

• Smart Homes is the fifth part of a series of articles related to The Venus Project, Jacque Fresco and the film Future by Design. The previous four parts are available under Quite Interesting -> Resource Based Economy.

*** Watch Future by Design online now! ***

1. Part 1: The power of the planet
2. Part 2: A world without money
3. Part 3: Incentive to work in a moneyless society
4. Part 4: Future by Design
5. Part 6: Automated governance?

FUTURE DESIGN: Applying technology intelligently for a better future

IMAGINE living in a house that is permanently dust free, driving a car that automatically repairs itself, traveling at two thousand miles an hour in absolute comfort, and having the chances of getting ill significantly reduced by living in a city that self regulates it’s air and water by design. These idealistic-sounding goals are more possible than you might imagine.

Future by Design is quite honestly the most inspiring documentary I have ever seen that illustrates just how possible and practical such things are. There is, however, a bittersweet quality to the film: on the one hand it shows how technologically advanced and capable we are – illustrating how the world could be today rather than tomorrow or in the future. On the other hand, it describes how behind we are politically and how future progress is painfully halted due to certain systems set in place.

Thomas Edison had to actually make an electric light bulb before anyone took him seriously and backed him up. The same scenario can be said of Jacque Fresco – the man behind Future by Design. Fresco has been a social and industrial engineer and inventor all his life. Now in his 90s, he still invents and implements his ideas for a new, re-designed society – focusing his attention on The Venus Project - a small 25 acre ‘futuristic’ society located in Venus, Central Florida.

Developed since the late 1970s, The Venus Project is a living model of how hi-tech and nature can co-exist. The small society consists of a scattering of dome shaped homes co-existing in a lush, natural environment. You cannot see one house when you’re in another and the entire project represents how sustainable communities could be created worldwide.

“The Venus Project has a vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know to achieve a sustainable world civilization, says Fresco. It calls for a scientific redesign of our culture in which war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed as not only avoidable, but unacceptable. Anything less will result in a disastrous continuation of the problems inherent in today's world."

Jacque Fresco

And it isn’t necessary for one to have studied science or design in order to understand Fresco and his working concepts. I found my jaw on the floor as he presented designs (in all fields) that simply made so much practical sense.

Even more appealing was the social philosophy behind each idea – that being to improve the standard of living for all people while simultaneously saving the planet. As an engineer, Fresco’s ideas are not part of his own view of how the world should be, but rather how the world could be today and what it takes to start progressing towards it.

Some Future by Design concepts:

• A dome-shaped home requires the least amount of material to build and offers the maximum protection against the elements due to its shape.
• By increasing the air pressure slightly inside the home, dust will not be able to enter it. Cleanliness will be a major factor in the future home environment.
• There is a type of memory alloy that reshapes itself when heated. Cars made from this material will straighten out any dents when heated (assuming that accidents will even happen in the future).
• Sensors installed in the front of vehicles can detect how far away other objects are and keep a constant distance between them.
• Travelling underwater is likely to become the future of sea travel as it is far more economical than travelling on the surface of the ocean where one is confronted by wind and waves.
• A long, thin boat that breaks the surface tension of the water by rapidly releasing air bubbles at the front while simultaneously drawing water towards the rear (propelling it forward) will be able to travel very economically at remarkable speeds.
• Having computers and machines continuously regulate the air and water supplies of cities and eliminating contaminants will significantly reduce viruses and disease.

The real appeal of Future by Design is the idea of creating harmony between people and nature. The Earth is far more abundant that what we are made to believe and there are even ways of making the planet more abundant by improving nature and applying design technology intelligently.

It is a sad reality that we live in an age where more time and technology is devoted to destroying humanity rather than advancing it; where global equality is greater than it has ever been; where more resources are invested in making a bigger, better bomb rather than providing clean drinking water where it’s needed.

"Social designs must be based on the carrying capacity of the Earth's resources, and not on the philosophy, desires, aesthetics, or advantages of particular people" - Jacque Fresco

The standard of living proposed by Fresco and films such as Future by Design is by no means perfect; it is just significantly better. After all, the blunt truth is that no one knows what the future might bring, only that we can do a lot better with regards to the intelligent management of the Earth’s resources for the benefit of all the world’s people and protection of the environment.

What can be accurately predicted is that the future of communication lies in 3D imaging, and I would therefore urge everyone to give Future by Design a watch. It should appeal to anyone who has an interest in technology, ecology, people, design and society, and the possible future of our civilization.

Related Articles: A Resource-Based Economy

1. Part 1: The power of the planet
2. Part 2: A world without money
3. Part 3: Incentive to work in a moneyless society
4. Part 5: Smart Homes
5. Part 6: Automated governance?

For more info check out the following:

• Q+A with Jacque Fresco - Meta Magazine
• Alternative view - The Venus Project hoax
• Overview - The Venus Project and The Zeitgeist Movement

WEBSITE BUILDING: Free website design tools and resources

MANY people maintain the belief that nothing is free in today’s world. While this may be true in the physical world, there is plenty of free stuff on the web (if you know where to look). This is particularly true with regard to creating and developing your very own website.

Several web developers simply coin it by creating sites for individuals who don’t know any better. Granted there are several brilliant website designers who deserve to be paid well for their expertise. However, there are others who will charge a hand and a foot to create something that you could quite easily create yourself for free.

Blogging is the most free form of beginning a journey in website design and development. One is able to choose a ready-made design from a large library of templates, publish posts to your heart’s content and make use of a variety of free-to-use tools. Taking things to the next level, however, is a different story and often involves having to spend something.

There are several website builders that label themselves as “free” yet there is always a catch. Basically the beginning stages are free, but the hidden agenda becomes apparent once you become excited about website building and want to take things a little further.

Nevertheless, I have come across two website-building sites that I would like to share with anyone interested in self-taught web design. After all, teaching oneself a new skill, whatever that may be, should always result in the warm and fuzzy feelings of self-satisfaction.

Doodlekit - free, online website builder

DOODLEKIT
Doodlekit is a fully hosted free website builder and content management system that claims to be the quickest and most advanced website tool available. That is a mighty claim which is surely shared with several other website builders.

However, I would agree that Doodlekit is at least easy to use. First-timers may not be able to design a website “within minutes” yet can at least doodle with designing for as long as they please without any charge.

What’s also great is that the site doesn’t require the installation of any software – all aspects of it are done online via the Doodlekit website.

There are some great-looking examples of what some users have created using Doodlekit, such as www.ama-dojo.com

350 pages - the quick & easy website builder

350 PAGES
350 pages markets itself as the "quick and easy website builder" that is “fun and flexible”. They’re also convinced that us 'ordinary' folk can produce a professional-looking website in minutes, if not "seconds!".

The site does have some great features though, despite being a little over-appealing (a typical tactic used to rope one in). It is a bit more professional than Doodlekit in the sense that it allows one to fully customise each heading, button bar, logo, divider, image and photo gallery, and even goes as far as allowing the customisation of fonts, styles and colours. Such stylistic changes are often deep in the realm of professional web design.

"If you want to build a web page, but are perhaps clueless when it comes to web design, you might benefit from paying a visit to 350 pages" – 350 pages user

What’s also great about both these design tools/websites above is they don’t require you to do any coding whatsoever. Specifically with 350 pages, layout is as simple as dragging and dropping content using your mouse.

It may be a sad reality for web developers who slogged away for years learning HTML, but a warm welcome to those who don’t know an “<a href>” from an “<align-left>” code.

A particularly pleasant feature of 350 pages is that it offers a library of video tutorials to get you started. The only catch (as the title suggests) is that you can only design up to 350 pages for free before having to pay anything.

Yet this isn’t really a catch, because if you get as far as 350 pages you should have built up enough confidence and web design skills to take things into your own hands. I wish you many hours of happy doodling.

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GOOGLE: Top Google logos and best designs for 2009

IT must be good to be Google. Bringing joy and information to millions around the world every day, while earning billions in the process must feel really fulfilling. Getting the opportunity to work for Google is the dream job of many Internet junkies.

I’ve always imagined that the job of creating customised designs of the Google logo is one of the most coveted in the company. Imagine being asked what you do for a living and being able to respond with, "oh I’m just doing a little graphic design work at the moment creating logos. Have you ever heard of Google?" You’d have Internet geeks polishing your shoes and bringing you freshly-squeezed orange juice.

However, it seems that this is not the case. There is no single Google King-God who is the master behind every customised logo. That is why it is usually just the standard blue, red, yellow and green logo.

But, every little now and then we are pleasantly greeted by a customised logo — creatively crafted to commemorate a significant event in history or to celebrate an important person’s birthday. I’ve been excited to see these designs appearing more often than usual, which is largely due to a new annual Doodle 4 Google competition, and 2009 has seen some of the best designs yet.

If Google is not currently set as your homepage, do that now. Open up your web-browser (e.g. Internet Explorer) and click on "tools" then "Internet options" (on the top-right of the screen). Type in the following in the white home page box: http://www.google.co.za/ and click "apply." I’ll wait ...

It’s really worth doing the above for you may be missing out on these visually-pleasing bits of knowledge. When a customised logo appears hover your mouse over it to get a description of what it’s all about. If intrigued enough, click on the logo to be presented with a wealth of information on the event.

So, without any further ado I present you with some of the top logos and best designs for 2009.

LONGEST SOLAR ECLIPSE IN INDIA & CHINA

Google displayed this logo on July 22, 2009 on Google China and Google India homepages to commemorate the longest solar eclipse in both countries for at least a century. The solar eclipse lasted as long as six minutes and 39 seconds in some places. This eclipse is also considered as one of the most watched eclipses of all time because of the path it takes, it is clearly visible from some of the most densely populated places on earth.

400TH ANNIVERSARY OF GALILEO’S TELESCOPE

400 years ago (on August 25, 1609), the Italian astronomer and philosopher Galileo Galilei showed Venetian merchants his new creation — the telescope. The instrument was to bring him both scientific immortality and, more immediately, a whole lot of trouble. Galileo’s discoveries were, perhaps predictably, not best welcomed by the Catholic Church, and he spent the final decade of his life under house arrest.

40TH ANNIVERSARY OF COMIC-CON

Google pays tribute to comics by displaying this logo (on July 23, 2009) with the launch of a new super Google logo by DC artists Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair. The logo marked the start of Comic-Con festivities.

IGOR STRAVINSKY BIRTHDAY

On May 17, 2009, Google celebrated the birth anniversary of Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky by displaying this logo on all its homepages. Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (June 17, 1882 to April 6, 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor, who was considered by many to be one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and conductor<!--, often at the premieres of his works.

KIDS DOODLE 4 GOOGLE: "What I wish for the World"

EVERY once in a while, Google passes the creative baton into the hands of interested Internet users to design the next Google logo. Creative minds are given the chance to have their logo displayed to millions on Google’s home-pages for a day, as part of a competition appropriately called “Doodle 4 Google.”

The 2009 Doodle 4 Google competition saw school kids from all over U.S. submitting designs for the Google logo based on the theme “What I Wish For The World”. Twenty-eight thousand designs were received this year. Here are the top four logos with a little snippet from each of the young designers:

"What I wish for the world is that people would slow down to see all the beauties of life of the Earth around us. So many people rush on with their lives never stopping to say hello to a lady bug who’s watching the world spin by.” - Blakely Linz (aged 13)

"My doodle, A New Beginning, expresses my wish that in the current crisis, discoveries will be made. That in these discoveries solutions will be found to help the Earth prosper once more. That those solutions will help the world get back on its feet and create a better place for everyone.” - Christin Engelberth (13)

"The world will be reborn in peace, harmony and prosperity. Pheonix is reborn from ashes; blossoms and lotus symbolise peace. Earth is a prosperous like an apple. Kois symbolise harmony. Wheat is a prosperous crop. The clock represents time for the world to change. The butterfly carries it on its journey.” - Emerald Lu (13)

“My wish for the world is that everyone would get along and treat one another in a nice and loving way. We could all be friends!” - Miriam Elizabeth Lowery (5)

NIKOLA TESLA’S BIRTH ANNIVERSARY

On July 10, 2009 the Google logo was transformed into a Tesla Coil to celebrate the birthday of Nikola Tesla. Tesla (July 10 1856 to January 7, 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Tesla is often described as an important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a man who “shed light over the face of Earth”. He is best known for many revolutionary contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

APOLLO 11 – LUNAR LANDING ANNIVERSARY

Google celebrates the anniversary of first manned spacecraft (The Eagle – Apollo 11), which landed on the moon on July 20 in 1969.

MARY CASSATT’S BIRTHDAY

Google celebrates the birth anniversary of Mary Cassatt (May 22, 1844 to June 14, 1926). Mary Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

PERSEID METEOR SHOWER

The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle. Meteor showers occur when the Earth moves through a meteor stream. The stream in this case is called the “Perseid cloud” and it stretches along the orbit of the Comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it passes by the Sun. Most of the dust in the cloud today is approximately 1 000 years old. The shower is visible from mid-July each year with the greatest activity between August 8 and 14, peaking on August 12. During the peak, the rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour. They can be seen all across the sky, but because of the path of Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, Perseids are primarily visible in the northern hemisphere.

Images: www.google-logos.com

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AOL: Homepage refashioned as a one-stop portal

AOL.com (the web portal of America Online), was a powerful player in the early days of the Internet, but has lost ground since then due to stiff competition. However, it is currently refashioning its homepage as a popular one-stop portal.

The web portal rolled out a redesigned homepage yesterday which it hopes will become a central station of sorts for Internet travelers by letting people coordinate social networks, email accounts and more without switching from site to site.

The move comes a month after AOL.com, the number four gateway to the web after Google, MSN and Yahoo, revamped its homepage to allow users to preview outside email accounts without having to navigate away from the homepage.

With "My Networks" users can now log onto their Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, AIM or Twitter accounts directly from the homepage and send a status update to all of them simultaneously. Bill Wilson, executive vice president of AOL Programming, said in a statement:

"AOL.com is the first traditional big portal to offer access to popular social networking sites all in one place. Now consumers can connect with their numerous networks and information sources all from AOL.com"

The new RSS feed browser allows users to receive news from other websites and display it in scrollable window at the bottom of the page. Entering the name of a US city or zip code provides a feed of local news and weather.

Another feature labeled "Themes" gives users the possibility of personalizing the homepage by choosing a color or backdrop of their own design. The functionality of the new site is allowing users to create their own personalized one-stop portals.

Look out Google!

PS: How do AOL users feel about their new portal?

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