We begin today with two educational pieces: the 10-minute guide to the U.S. Constitution, from Mindflash, and Mint‘s cracking the Credit Card code. After that, Zendesk analyzes the impact of Outsourced Call Centers on Customer Satisfaction, Techie WWW brings all about the World’s Biggest scam in India, valued to $40 Billion, and we close with a great interactive chart from The Guardian, showing us which countries are faced with a critical health worker shortage.
Next time you need a map for your project, check out the d-maps.com website. With over 95,000 maps available, you can choose from thousands of unique locations and then download it in WMF, SVG, PDF, or other formats for your use. Completely free of charge, they’re even available for commercial use (provided you give them a link, it’s all in their T&C’s).
I went down to an individual US state and found over 40 different maps to choose from, each one available in 5 or 6 different formats. Including ocean and land, countries and states, historical and current, and even different map projections, it’s a pretty amazing collection.
If you go visit the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, you’ll see a large display of 9 LCD televisions showing various little blocks in the shape of the Yahoo Logo. What you might not expect is that as soon as you walk past this display it automatically begins to follow and interact with you, despite your attempts to avoid it. The project is a joint effort between Yahoo and Tronic.
The sequence opens with an attract mode – the “Yahoo! logo composed of stacked tiles. As you walk by the display begins to interact with you, the tiles slowly following to catch your attention. At this point most people stop and look. Then, even a simple movement, like shifting your shoulders or raising your arms, will cause the tiles to mimic your movements.
Yahoo!’s agency Goodby Silverstein Partners commissioned Tronic, telling them is was important that there be no instructions whatsoever. Rather, people should discover the display’s almost lifelike quality on their own, play with it, and become familiar with its response patterns. “You actually build a sort of relationship with the display,” said Tronic co-founder Vivian Rosenthal. “People told us repeatedly that it was great not to have instructions because it enabled them to explore the interface and discover its characteristics on their own terms.”
Using just natural gestures you can move the blocks around, even sweeping them off the screen into oblivion. It’s fun to watch, and I’m sure it’s entertaining to play with while you wait for that nerve-racking job interview.
Check out the demo video below, and read the full release after the break.
Meant to be Seen (MTBS3D) has a tutorial posted in its forums on how to create a parallax barrier for your LCD screen. This way you can play 3-D games without the need of glasses, as long as you do not move your head. I am skeptical of how well this will work in real life, but they have posted a video on YouTube showing it.
Convert your standard LCD monitor into a glasses-free 3D display for only $5. This mod uses parallax barriers, which is the same technique as the Nintendo 3DS. With this mod you will be able to play over a hundred popular PC games in full stereo 3D without the use of any 3D glasses.
We begin today with two educational pieces: the 10-minute guide to the U.S. Constitution, from Mindflash, and Mint‘s cracking the Credit Card code. After that, Zendesk analyzes the impact of Outsourced Call Centers on Customer Satisfaction, Techie WWW brings all about the World’s Biggest scam in India, valued to $40 Billion, and we close with a great interactive chart from The Guardian, showing us which countries are faced with a critical health worker shortage.
Next time you need a map for your project, check out the d-maps.com website. With over 95,000 maps available, you can choose from thousands of unique locations and then download it in WMF, SVG, PDF, or other formats for your use. Completely free of charge, they’re even available for commercial use (provided you give them a link, it’s all in 
If you go visit the Yahoo Headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, you’ll see a large display of 9 LCD televisions showing various little blocks in the shape of the Yahoo Logo. What you might not expect is that as soon as you walk past this display it automatically begins to follow and interact with you, despite your attempts to avoid it. The project is a joint effort between Yahoo and Tronic.
VizWorld.com 
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