Home » Archives for April 2010
Tyler Thompson has taken upon himself the mission, nay the Quest, to redesign the travesty of US boarding passes into something that not only is pretty to look at, but properly provides the information relevant to travelers: Flight Number, Gate Number, Seat Number. His own description of the current design of boarding passes is a hilarious start:
It was like someone put on a blindfold, drank a fifth of whiskey, spun around 100 times, got kicked in the face by a mule (the person who designed this definitely has a mule living with them inside their house) and then just started puking numbers and letters onto the boarding pass at random (yes, I realize that a human didn't lay this out, if a human had, judging by the train-wreck of design, they would have surely used papyrus). There was nothing given size or color importance over anything else, it was a mess.
His website shows some initial designs put forth by himself, then several more community iterations that leads to a truly beautiful and standardized design that I know I would prefer.
Given that I’m hopping on a plane this weekend, I’m sure to be reminded of just how hard current boarding passes are to decipher.
via Redesigning the Boarding Pass – Journal – Boarding Pass / Fail.
Graphics design, flights
A recent report states that 27 percent of Americans hve less than $1,000 in savings. 54 percent stated that they have less than $25,000 in savings, when not counting their home or pensions. BillShrink has posted an infographic taking a look at the looming retirement disaster in the United States.
Many Americans in real trouble when it is time to retire because they have insufficient savings to carry them through old age. Even those that have retirement accounts at work could be in for a rude awakening when they reach retirement age because billions of dollars in retirement funds that companies owe to workers has not been put aside for them. With the troubled state of the economy, this spells retirement disaster for millions of people.
via The Retirement Disaster in America.
Update 4/9/2010: Added a Full-Resolution graphic after the break.
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Graphics BillShrink, infographic
Financial visualizations are always interesting, due to the wealth of information they have at their disposal: Stock volumes, mins & maxes, prices, and more. The StockMapper website offers an interactive visualization of near-real-time changes in the Nasdaq and NYSE Euronext, allowing you to sort and filter by sector (Oil & Gas, Healthcare, Financial, etc) and more. The resulting visuals are fast & snappy, with a near overwhelming amount of data to comprehend.
While a bit overwhelming for ‘mere mortals’, financial analysts love this stuff.
StockMapper. via Infosthetics
Science financial, interactive, visualization, Website
It was only yesterday when we brought you news of MAXON and Alioscopy partnering up to provide pre-built autostereoscopic camera rigs for Cinema4D, and now Alioscopy is back with another great partnership: Turbosquid. In this partnership, you’ll be able to buy Alioscopy-ready 3D templates from TurboSquid, rapidly improving time to product.
“The Alioscopy 3D Marketplace on TurboSquid establishes the first destination to purchase and sell Alioscopy-ready 3D templates,” said Beau Perschall, Vice President of Business Development at TurboSquid. “We’re excited to be working together with Alioscopy as we offer this unique marketplace that services the needs of the Alioscopy community and 3D content producers,” added Perschall.
Great to see the autostereoscopic Alioscopy televisions moving beyond C/C++ based SDK’s and into more easily used templates & public applications. Hopefully their technology will eventually replace active-shutter and passive-polarization as the 3D technology of choice, and we won’t be force to wear those horrid glasses any more.
Full press release after the break.
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Graphics alioscopy, turbosquid
The Mozilla Foundation is trying to match FireFox against other browsers feature-for-feature and has announced some of what we’ll see in the next few versions. In addition to Chrome-style process-separation, they are working to add GPU acceleration:
GPU acceleration is another hot topic and here Mozilla hopes to offer Direct2D support in an update for Gecko 1.9.3, slated for October launch. Unfortunately this release doesn't include the Direct2D acceleration, but will be added later on, but hopefully not that much later.
Odd to see them choosing Direct2D, a uniquely Microsoft technology, over something like OpenGL. Hopefully they’ll offer similar GPU acceleration options for Linux & OSX.
If you’re interested in the multi-process separation technology, a-la Google Chrome, check out ‘FireFox Lorentz‘, detailed over at Lifehacker today.
via Firefox to get separate processes, Direct2D acceleration.
Science firefox, gpu
AnandTech is reporting that some on-line retailers are already receiving GeForce GTX 480 and 470 graphics cards. Furthermore, they are selling them to users already and are shipping them out. Anandtech contacted Nvidia about the matter. Nvidia’s response was that the April 12 date was not a hard launch. Therefore if an on-line retailer receives the card early, they are free to sell it and ship it out. Wide availability should follow next week, just as planned. However, you should be aware that not all the cards are selling for MSRP. A quick check of NewEgg.com shows that no cards are available. From the article:
As for current availability and pricing, it’s highly variable. Some etailers are holding to MSRP and as such are quickly selling out, while other etailers are charging more than MSRP (e.g. $400 for a GTX 470) and still have cards in stock. The fact that anyone is charging MSRP right now is a good sign that pricing shouldn’t get too far out of hand, but we’ll have to see how things go next week. In the mean time if you’re dying to have a GTX 400 card, you should be able to get a GTX 470 right now but you’re going to be paying entirely too much for it.
via : NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 400 Series Shows Up Early
Hardware gtx480 gtx470, nvidia
MAXON closed out 2009 announcing a strategic partnership with Py4D, bringing the Python interface even closer into Cinema4D. Now, they’ve taken the partnership “all the way” and outright acquired Py4D.
Harald Schneider, CTO and co-founder of MAXON states: “With the Python connection for our products we want to offer an easy and flexible option of adding custom functionality for both users and developers alike. Python is the easiest and most flexible solution.”
Current Py4D developer Sebastian Rath will continue to manage the library, but until the integration is fully complete the most beta version and documentation will continue to be available free of charte at www.py4d.com .
via MAXON – The makers of CINEMA 4D and BodyPaint 3D.
Graphics cinema4d, maxon, python, sdk
Thus far I have not succumbed to buying an iPad, for the simple reason that I cannot see what I would use it for, other than reading books in a long, boring meeting. There have been reports of overheating on a typical spring day, and issues with its wireless capability. However, many of my friends, along with 450,000 other people, have bought one.
BillShrink takes a look at the competition to the iPad, and has created a nice infographic. They take a look at the Kindle, the Nook, the Fusion Garage Joojoo, and the WePad. Personally, I do not think of the Kindle and the Nook as competitors to the iPad.
If you’re considering the iPad along with other tablets and eReaders, we’ve whipped up an easy-to-digest comparison between the iPad and some if its “competitors.”
via iPad vs the Competition: Who Will Win The Tablet War?.
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Graphics BillShrink, infographic
Dr Dobb’s Journal brings us news of a live webcast tomorrow at 2pm Central where Jon Peddie will be talking about the dynamics of the GPU market. In the description, I found this paragraph particularly interesting:
GPU unit sales have long outstripped PC sales. The average PC has 1.4 GPUs, but that ratio will increase with heterogeneous compute, hybrid, and graphics scaling. The Integrated Processor+ Graphics-based processor will terminate the IGP market without doubt and impact midrange discrete GPU sales. But as good as they will be, they will always have limitations due to power, size, and price, while the need for more graphics, more displays, more compute, or hybrid operation will be satisfied by a discrete GPU.
A average of 1.4 GPU’s in the average PC? So for every computer running a single integrated graphics chip, there’s a matching computer running SLI? That doesn’t sound right to me, unless they’re counting ignored/forgotten GPU’s (desktops with a real NVidia card installed), or perhaps they are only considering PC’s in the last year?
via Dr Dobbs – Dynamics In the GPU Market.
Hardware conference, gpu, jpr
Here’s today’s links:
– $17.99
– $19.99
– $41.99
VizWorld.com 
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