Computers that create musical compositions which pass the Turing test with flying colors. Dynamically created 3D renderings of live events with multi-angle camera interpolation. A prosthetic foot that efficiently reduces the amount of energy needed to walk. A satellite view of the world's largest plane graveyard. A high-level walkthrough of Google's search algorithm. Enjoy!

Matt Taibbi's article on the Wall Street bailout and what led to it has been getting a lot of press.

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

Courtesy of Faisal.

I just love this first chord voicing of Nouvelle Vague's cover "Wishing" originally by Flock of Seagulls. Its an inverted G5 strummed into an inverted Am, like this:

x x 0 0 1 3

to:

x x 2 2 1 0

You can mute the bottom two strings using your thumb. The chorus is D (2nd position) and Em (1st or 7th position). But it's the first G5 that sounds so great, especially on a good acoustic guitar.

The song is a bonus track from Nouvelle Vague's eponymous first album. Sadly, the track is not available on iTunes and is only available on the French version of their CD. You can catch 30 seconds of the song at BeeMP3 or find the song online. You shouldn't have to go to France just to hear this excellent track.

I was thinking about the area of fractals, and my favorite is the Koch Snowflake. It turns out the area of the snowflake as a ratio of the original equal-angle triangle is 8/5, or 60% larger than the single triangle. I find it very cool that the fractal produces a rational result. Thanks to Dr. Kahle for the link.

'Nuff said!

First off, the tragedy in Chile has got me thinking about earthquakes more than I usually do. As far as I can tell the scientific authorities say that we are not seeing an uptick in activity, but rather an unfortunate run of bad luck in terms of proximity to seismic events. A quick look into history shows that the western coast of Chile has extremely high levels of tectonic activity and was the location of the largest recorded earthquake in 1960 at 9.5 on the There's anecdotal evidence emerging that smartphones themselves (and the design of their radios) are the root cause in the degrading quality of service on major networks like AT&T. If this turns out to be true it's a great example of how use cases and product engineering are so tightly coupled. On the bright side, maybe lots of dropped packets is a good thing because being on the network has allowed social scientist to prove that we are predictable creatures of habit like ants in a big, messy anthill.

But mobile networks aren't the only ones watching. Paranoid about Google? Here's how to unplug and purge your relationship with the G-Spot.

Me, I'm more worried about the media's ability to manipulate us by understanding how we work on a biological level. As it turns out, the movie industry has evolved their formula until it perfectly matches our natural processing rhythms to maximize our ability to sit down and stare at the screen. I find this fascinating, if not downright creepy. There was a Harlan Ellison short story where a country developed a neurological weapon that killed people with a brief TV broadcast. The fact that we are reverse engineering our own processing system for the purpose of product marketing has some pretty major implications.

That said, I'm off to watch the Olympic Hockey finals on NBC Viacom sponsored by Nike, McDonalds, and Visa! Their products are doubleplusgood!

A friend of mine from my days at IDEO has died in a plane crash along with two of his colleagues. The details are not clear; although the plane did crash on takeoff during poor weather there are some indications that mechanical failure may have played a role in this tragic accident. What I do know is that Doug was a great guy and probably the most responsible and careful private pilot I've met. Regardless of the cause, it's a very sad situation. Our thoughts go to the families and friends of those who lost their lives today.

Well, first off you should probably prepare for alien invasion based on the latest images from Hubble. For more on this, we go to our anchor Ken Brockman!

Silicon Valley was news-y this week. Turns out Apple make more on iPhones than any other product. Which explains why they have nearly twice as much cash as Google in the bank. Should make the next few years fun, especially as they start to squeeze their partners in favor of their own strategic goals.

Faisal let us know about a custom-molded earpiece that works with Jawbone headsets. Nice.

YouTube darlings OK Go did a remarkable job threading the needle as they explained why their latest videos won't be on YouTube. It's nice to see bands that feel like they can actually talk to their fans like humans instead of communicating through their lawyers and RIAA. Music artists need to understand that the system has changed, and they need to evolve.

Points to Matt Taibbi for a David Brooks smackdown that shouldn't be missed.

Finally, it's good to know that the formula for perfect parallel parking has been found. This is clearly what Kasparov has in mind. Chess, parking....what's next?

I'd love to get a cover letter that describes how the applicant can build weapons of war.

Here's an interactive application that allows you to move continuously through the objects in our universe from the largest to the smallest. I find it intriguing that there are such huge gaps in the small scales, but none in the larger ones. What an interesting place.

Here's a wonderful infographic that shows the artificial satellite content of Earth's orbit organized by country. There's a lot of garbage up there...

J.D. Salinger, perhaps my favorite modern author, died yesterday at the age of 91.

I encourage anyone who is unfamiliar with his work to read Nine Stories as a powerful and sometimes overwhelming introduction to his unique writing style. It will change you.

I often use the Apple methodology to explain why end-to-end development is such an important thing when it comes to certain types of products, notably consumer electronics. This generally irks the open source crowd who think that everything can be made better by standard-based interfaces and publishing your code. But that's not universally true. Stehpen Fry (an admitted Apple fanboi) does a great job of explaining why:

It is made by Apple. I’m not being cute here. If it was made by Hewlett Packard, they wouldn’t have global control over the OS or the online retail outlets. If it was made by Google, they would have tendered out the hardware manufacture to HTC. Apple — and it is one of the reasons some people distrust or dislike them — control it all. They’ve designed the silicon, the A4 chip that runs it all, they’ve designed the batteries, they’ve overseen every detail of the commercial, technological, design and software elements. No other company on earth does that. And being Apple it hasn’t been released without (you can be sure) Steve Jobs being wholly convinced that it was ready. “Not good enough, start again. Not good enough. Not good enough. Not good enough.” How many other CEOs say until their employees want to murder them? That’s the difference.

Apple repeatedly shows that when the efficiency, elegance, and utility of the user experience is your number one goal, there is no substitute for designing the whole system yourself. And it doesn't hurt to have a rabidly focused CEO that not only understands product design, but religiously pursues its perfection.