Alexx Henry has published a pair of videos on Vimeo that show prototypes of a ‘digital magazine’ for women’s magazine VIV, the likes of which you might find on the iPad or any number of upcoming tablets. It’s beautiful, combining text with motion video for a more ‘interactive’ experience.
Together with co-directors Cory Strassburger and Ming Hsiung, we produced a motion magazine cover and feature spread for Viv Mag – an all digital magazine, which would allow us to create content that will be able to live on the iPad and other tablet devices where digital magazines can live.
Look below for the two videos, one of a Feature Article Spread and another of a Motion Cover. The motion cover is impressive, and would definitely be eye-catching on a newstand. However, I don’t think you’ll be buying these at NewsStands anytime soon, so it seems a bit pointless since the first thing someone will do is ‘skip’.
The feature article, however, is just annoying to me. Interrupting the flow of reading with these annoying (albeit graphically stunning) video transitions would be maddening, and somewhat ruin the flow of the article.
Nonetheless, they are beautiful and eye-catching, combining some great graphical design with beautiful visual effects.
BillShrink has posted an infographic showing some of the highlights of the history of financial instruments. It is a bit wordy, so you will have to head on over to the site via the link below to actual read the infographic.
The problem with the graphic is that it assumes you know something about the events. I would hazzard a guess that most people do not know about the Dutch Tulip mania, or the South Sea Bubble.
As an interesting footnote in history, Sir Isaac Newton lost twenty thousand pounds by investing in the South Sea Bubble. About the Bubble, Sir Isaac Newton said, “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men”. As Paul Harvey would say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”
Throughout history, people have relied on various financial instruments to prosper. The concept of buying on credit goes back as far as 4000 BC and many fortunes have been made and lost through market speculation since the 17th century. From rice futures in the 17th century to Enron scam, we lay out the most monumental financial instruments in the history of time.
The House is still debating the new Health Care reform bill, and the Washington Post has created an interactive infographic showing how it’s going. They first show how the individual representatives voted in the earlier November 7th vote, and then show how they are standing for this week’s vote. They combine this with data about their campaign contributions from the healthcare industry and the amount of their constituency that is uninsured.
It’s a massive amount of information, but if you haven’t been following it closely then it’s a great way to see how your own representatives are standing.
PS: I know any post about healthcare is going to bring out spammers & protestors/supporters, so please keep it civil and focused on the Infographic, not necessarily the bill.
Guru3D has posted a news item today on the PowerColor HD5770 Eyefinity5 card. The card runs its GPU core at 850 MHz, while the 1GB of DDR5 memory runs at 1200 MHz. You can find out more information about the card in its press release.
This is a slower card than the HD5870 which supports Eyefinity6. I guess that is why it only has 5 mini-DisplayPorts and not 6 of them. Guru3D first posted information about the new card in its CeBIT report. But now the card has become official. No word on a release date or price. I suspect it will be released on March 29, which is when the other Eyefinity6 cards are slated to be released.
“As the first graphics solution supports up to 5 displays, the PowerColor HD5770 Eyefinity 5 delivers an immersive HD gaming performance with wider field of view and increases productivity at the same time,” says Ted Chen, CEO of TUL Corporation.
NPR’s Planet Money has bought a toxic asset, which is one of those creative financial products that helped to cause the Great Recession. They are tracking its value over time, and hope to make their money back. You can look at how the toxic asset has performed with a nice interactive infographic that they have on their website. I think that it is neat that they are doing something like this. From their article on the infographic:
Planet Money is committed to following the financial crisis to the bitter end. And what better way to do that than to own a piece of it. We bought one of those things that no one wanted, one of those things that almost brought down the global economy: our very own toxic asset. This one has more than 2,000 mortgages in it. We paid $1,000, with our own money, for our piece. It used to be worth more like $75,000. Click on the timeline and roll over the states to watch a disaster in progress.
Ronen Bekerman has just concluded his GH House Challenge and is showing the 23 amazing images in the final lot.
I’m very proud to present the images created by the 23 finalists of the first Architectural Visualization Challenge – The GH House. The public vote by the forums members is also open and you are all invited to take part in voting for your favorite! Don’t forget to submit your feedback if you participated in the challenge or even just visited the forums during this event.
Some great pictures, and an overwhelming amount of 3dsMax and Vray, much to my surprise. Only 2 Cinema4D entries, only 2 Blender entries, and only a single Maya entry.
Yesterday we told you about how Internet Explorer 9 is becoming GPU aware, and using it to offload some of the rendering work. Today, AnandTech has posted a review on the Internet Explorer 9 Preview. Not everything is perfect, nor would I expect it to be, since it is a preview. However, just because it turns in the highest performance in one test where its image quality is inferior, tells me that the test is not a valid indicator of real world performance, yet. Given some time, Internet Explorer 9 may be very good. Until then, I will stick to Firefox.
Finally, IE 9 Platform Preview gives the highest performance yet, at around 58-60 FPS. At the same time however, image quality sits somewhere between Firefox 3.6 and Safari/Chrome/IE 8. It’s obvious that there’s some downsampling here that isn’t 100% quality-friendly, however, there’s significantly less blocking. Detail is still a bit strange inside the black Safari logo.
No doubt that March Madness has gripped the US, as I constantly hear people talking about their brackets and predictions for the Final Four. Bodog, popular online betting & sports site, has released a fun new infographic that compiles some of the numbers behind the games. Some tidbits:
Odds of a Perfect Bracket: 9 Quintillion to 1.
UNLV holds the honor of being the only team to score over 100 points an an NCAA title game in the 90′s
In 2009, American Businesses lost $1.2Billion in worker productivity during the NCAA Tournament
There is a correlation between the distance traveled for a game and the outcome (but that doesn’t imply causation!)
Planck is a space telescope that is mapping the entire sky, and is particularly looking at the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Currently, more than 98 percent of the sky had been observed, with 100% expected to be achieved by May 2010. You can see an animation video of Planck scanning the sky on YouTube. Planck is run by the European Space Agency, with some support from NASA. Obviously it is named in honor of the German scientist Max Planck, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918.
While Planck is looking at the CMB, it also looking into star formation and galactic structure. Today, the Planck team has release an image showing cold dust structures in our Milky Way Galaxy. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image, or click through the link below for more images from Planck.
This image covers a portion of the sky about 50 degrees in total extent. It is a three-color combination constructed from Planck’s two highest frequency channels (557 and 857 Gigahertz, corresponding to wavelengths of 540 and 350 micrometers) and an image obtained at 100 micrometers with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). This combination effectively traces the dust: reddish tones correspond to temperatures as cold as 12 degrees above absolute zero, and whitish tones to significantly warmer ones (on order a few tens of degrees) in regions where massive stars are currently forming. Overall, the image shows local dust structures within 500 light-years of the sun.
SIGGRAPH 2010, to be in Los Angeles between July 25-29th, has just opened online registration on their website. If you register between now and June 4th, (the end of “Early” registration), you can get the full pass for $895, and full single-day passes for $325. (an extra $50 if you are not an ACM member) Student discounts are also available, as well as heavily discounted “Basic Conference” passes for $95.
Alexx Henry has published a pair of videos on Vimeo that show prototypes of a ‘digital magazine’ for women’s magazine VIV, the likes of which you might find on the iPad or any number of upcoming tablets. It’s beautiful, combining text with motion video for a more ‘interactive’ experience.
The House is still debating the new Health Care reform bill, and the Washington Post has created an interactive infographic showing how it’s going. They first show how the individual representatives voted in the earlier November 7th vote, and then show how they are standing for this week’s vote. They combine this with data about their campaign contributions from the healthcare industry and the amount of their constituency that is uninsured.
Ronen Bekerman has just concluded his GH House Challenge and is showing the 23 amazing images in the final lot.
No doubt that March Madness has gripped the US, as I constantly hear people talking about their brackets and predictions for the Final Four. 
SIGGRAPH 2010, to be in Los Angeles between July 25-29th, has just opened online registration on their website. If you register between now and June 4th, (the end of “Early” registration), you can get the full pass for $895, and full single-day passes for $325. (an extra $50 if you are not an ACM member) Student discounts are also available, as well as heavily discounted “Basic Conference” passes for $95.
VizWorld.com 
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