Holographic technology at its finest

For those of you who just started replacing your DVD collection with high definition Blu-Ray discs having not all that long ago finished the transfer from VHS, you might want to consider banging your head against a nearby wall about now. A clever chap at the University of California has just ironed out the last few problems with HVD (Holographic Versatile Disc) technology which can store 20 times the ammount of data. Personally I’m hanging on to my vast cinefilm collection for another six months at which point it’s more than likely I’ll be able to have the films transfered directly to a microchip in my brain using nanomachines.

Sarah Jessica Parker in the Blu Ray version of Sex & the City

The Museo del Prado in Madrid, home to Hieronymous Bosch’s opaque masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights among other things has produced super high resolution scans of some of their major artworks and made them available to us all using the google maps API.

Meanwhile, the cracks are starting to show in less desirable places with the onset of Blu Ray technology and high definition televisions. Not only can we now see the celluloid grain on our favourite films, we can also see the blemishes and make-up lines
of our favourite actors and actresses. As we speak, HD ready make-up is being created and marketed to a horrified Hollywood. For example, Airbase are suggesting that you airbrush your face before stepping in front of those unforgiving HD cameras.

Hoefler & Frere Jones always have something interesting to say. Their recent article On the Death and 441-Year Life of the Pixel waves goodbye to the pixel as monitors using utterly unpronounceable acronyms for their technologies achieve higher and higher resolutions. One of the obvious benefits is we should expect to see a vast improvement in on-screen typography as we’re no longer having to hint at the subtleties of type as if seen through the compound eyes of an insect. We can also look forward to laughing at outdated websites designed for 640×480 monitors sitting in the corner of our screens like letters to Lilliput. The downside is of course no longer being able to take a preview image from ghetty, crop off the watermark and still have a sizable hero image for the homepage, ahem.
In general design is always about overcoming challenges and in web design the challenge has always been how to convey all the information you’d find in a magazine, brochure or catalogue but on something the size of a postage stamp or business card at best. Soon that problem will go away for good and web designers will be faced with the rather more frightening challenge of learning how properly to use all that extra space. Web designers now have a lot to learn from print designers.
I do wish H&FJ had wheeled out those old embroidery patterns a bit sooner.

We still have many clients who refuse flash, and the most compelling reason was the lack of search visibility. The boffins at google have fixed that with some form a SWF decoder. Worth a read for developers and a reassessment of the reasons not to have flash…

 Q: Which Flash files can Google better index now?
We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.

One key limitation is that the robot does not execute javascript,  so you might have to carefully select what flavour of flash detection you use to ensure the flash files are visible.

Link to the Google webmaster post

Google favicon revamp

Originally uploaded by hobart65

If you are of the typographic nature, you might have noticed the google favicon went lower case sometime in June. Here’s the backstory from the Google blog about the revamp . Google badly need some form of graphic device or framework to unite its ballooning set of services. Interesting that they start with the favicon, something most branding companies would do last.

” You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, the small icon you see in your browser next to the URL or in your bookmarks list. Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon — after all, we hadn’t in 8.5 years(!)”

Link: one-fish-two-fish-red-fish-blue-fish

Shameless-plug-of-my-own-stuff alert.

I wrote another article (last one here) for mad.co.uk and it’s gone live. Titled Why is integrating digital into the agency so awkward? it discusses some of the problems that agencies face when trying to ‘go digital’ and how they might be solved or avoided.

Worth a look for the awful photo if nothing else. Enjoy.

[youtube EoZmBjaFWto]

Another piece of visual evidence to support that truism – everything just looks more cool in slowmo. The digirati in the studio have had this one on their desktopa for weeks, but it occurred to me how amazing that camera / phone manufactures haven’t latched onto this. How many hi-end phones / camera / camcorders can capture stuff at ridiculous frame rates? Answers please, as i’d like to buy one so I can make my own series of ephemera screen savers.

Similar to other media players but an AIR application. It’s pretty quick to pull in the data and the interface seems okay at first glance. Can the market place support another player or is this just another ‘AIR is super’ demo (albeit a pretty meaty one)?

Download and install if you fancy a play.