Just Curious

Damien Lopez has created an infographic on the evolution of game controllers. I’ve used all but two of these, second ColecoVision and Sega CD. I’d feel a little more nostalgic if I wasn’t a game player today.

Damien’s graphic depicts incremental improvements and from what I can see,
two innovations; the NES controller which switched from a stick to a directional pad and the Wii Mote which moved the controller from your fingers to your arms. Sony’s PS2 controller was a vast improvement which game users even more control in a game, but it was still an improvement from the original NES controller.

Found on Cool Infographics

The New York Times has been putting a great emphasis on public consumption of data, from understanding data to access to data. They initially started with information graphics that visualized complex data sets into something easy to digest. The nytimes.com versions were also interactive, engaging the reader to understand the data in more depth. A few weeks back, APIs were released to allow developers access to the same data that NY Times has.

Now they are taking it a step further partnering with IBM’s Many Eyes team to combine NY Times’ data with the Many Eyes visualization application. Users are now enabled to render data against multiple types of visualizing techniques.

Great effort by NY Times to put data and tools in the hands of their readers.

Amazon has released Windowshop. Essentially a pseudo 3D wall you can move across and zoom in on a product. When you zoom in you’re presented with video or audio material about the product. Looks like the products presented are recent releases in categories such as Movies, Books, and Music.

Seems like an interesting idea and a way to navigate through products. My first impression was that it was interesting, but not something that help my buy a product. After using it a few times, I realized that the accessibility value here is great. Slide from one product to another and I can almost instantaneously play information about it. Maybe it’s a 30 second preview of a book or album or a full trailer of a movie, all reachable with a few arrows on my keyboard versus the multiple clicks and searching for links on a typical page.

I lost my cool this morning at work, frustrated at coworkers who were not being proactive. Not wanting to lash out, as that is never the right thing to do, I took an early lunch break to a local deli. Sitting outside eating my turkey sandwich, sipping on a SanPelegrino Lemonade seemed to turn my mood. Ok, ok, it’s likely because I stepped away and got some fresh air, but I’d like to thank the little red start for the delicious lemonade.

The great folks at XPLANE have put together a infographic video explaining how we got into this Subprime debacle.

You can have so much fun with Wordle. This example is based off of taking a few minutes worth of Twitter tweets about Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin. Ironically, Wordle made them look like bullets pointing at each other.

(2) MODIFICATIONS.—In the case of a residen-tial mortgage loan, modifications made under para-graph (1) may include—-
(A) reduction in interest rates;
(B) reduction of loan principal; and
(C) other similar modifications.

In the Bailout Draft, as expected, modifications regarding residential mortgage loan is included. I am completely for people keeping their homes, but from a home owner fairness perspective, I would hope Option C would be used, whereby home owners are expected to pay a lower monthly mortgage over a longer period of time. The net is the same amount of money pushed through the economy.

A PDF of the Bailout Draft Text can be found on CNN.

My LG phone is slowly falling part. Its served me well these past three years, rudimentary browser, battery lasted days, and rarely experienced dropped calls.

So today, I decided it might be the right time to make the jump, to an iPhone 3G. Taking a peek at AT&T’s 3G coverage (3G in blue) makes me wonder why the iPhone is even called iPhone 3G, it should be more like iPhone 3G 10% of the time.

Comparing AT&T’s network to Verizon’s VCAST & Broadband coverage, in purple. Now its not to straight forward to compare Verizon’s EVDO to AT&T’s 3G network, but if your going to tout such great speeds, make sure people can have access to it.

Most of my reading happen on a train, airplane, vacation, or weekend mornings with a cup of coffee. Usually armed with a non-fiction book and a few magazines. I’ve always found it difficult to pick one magazine to subscribe to, which meant I was always picking a few by mood at newsstands costing more than if I had signed up for a year subscription.

Maghound was recently released as a la carte solution for magazines, similar to NetFlix. You can chose your magazines for the month, pay a flat fee regardless of the magazine, and tweak your selection as you go.

Video of people unsuspectingly, I assume, getting punched in the face recorded at 1000 frame per second. This video proves that reality is like cartoons, when you get pummeled, your body accelerates at different speeds.

Found on kottke.org