Charcoal Design Weblog

RBGL Sprites v1.0 Released

2008-07-11T17:49:23Z

We've just released RBGL Sprites 1.0, a replacement for the now-deprecated REALbasic SpriteSurface control, used for making 2D games in REALbasic.

Chainsaw Maid

2008-07-08T16:25:10Z

Gruesome (but awesome) claymation remake of Night Of The Living Dead :

Chainsaw Maid

Algorithm Ink & ContextFree.js

2008-07-07T16:32:45Z

Context Free is a Logo-like drawing API implemented in JavaScript using the now-standard Canvas tag originally introduced by Apple in Safari.

You can read more about the language on Aza Raskin's blog .

It's a shame that Safari support is a bit sketchy, aledgedly due to missing features in Safari's Canvas implementation. It seems kind of odd that Apple's implementation of the standard is less complete than Firefox 3's, given that they invented it.

E.T.A.

2008-06-20T17:17:10Z

Brilliant animated spoof of the Alien(s) films: E.T.A.

Warning: The film is short, but the filesize is huge.

Spore Creature Creator

2008-06-17T16:36:14Z

In advance of the hotly anticipated release of Spore - the follow up game to The Sims , which will allow players to create a whole species and lead them through their entire evolution from the primordial soup into space - Maxis have released a standalone creature editor , designed to give users a taste of what Spore will be like.

Requires Windows XP or an Intel Mac.

Bug Fuel

2008-06-17T15:29:08Z

it sound almost too good to be true, but according to The Times , scientists have genetically engineered bacteria that eat waste and excrete crude oil .

Of course one might argue that the last thing we need right now is a way to extend the usage of fossil fuels. But running cars off bugshit has got to be better than buying it from the middle east (and directly funding terrorism in the process).

Sproutcore

2008-06-17T15:16:29Z

After we reported a few days ago that 280 North were using a Cocoa-inspired framework for their Keynote-like webapp 280 Slides , Appleinsider revealed that Apple has adopted a similar system called Sproutcore for their Mobile Me system (the replacement for .mac).

Sproutcore started life as an independent open source project, but like much of their technological foray into the Web (including WebKit itself), Apple has adopted it, hiring the lead programmer and taking development in-house.

RBGL v1.1 Released

2008-06-16T20:12:11Z

We've just released version 1.1 of RBGL, our open source graphics library for REALbasic that leverages the OpenGL library on Mac OS and Windows for hardware accelerated graphics.

Fabrication

2008-06-11T10:47:18Z

This is really cool – BMW have produced a concept car using flexible fabric instead of metal for the bodywork.

The car is called GINA, which presumably stands for something. I love her "eyelids".

Snow Leopard

2008-06-10T16:22:41Z

Few people were surprised by the new 3G iPhone announcements at the WWDC conferance yesterday. With many news outlets talking about the new iPhone as if it were an actual product (as opposed to just a rumour) for weeks beforehand, some people were more probably surprised to hear that it had not actually been announced until then.

More surprising and in some ways more interesting was the low-key announcement of Snow Leopard , Apple's next major operating system release.

Billed as a kind of maintenance release, Snow Leopard is going to focus on predominantly under-the-hood improvements to the OS, boosting performance and hardware utilisation by increasing the use of preemptive threading and GPU processing throughout the OS.

The Grand Central and OpenCS concepts in particular are intriguing. It seems that Apple has grown tired of waiting for developers to figure out how to utilise the multiple processors available in modern machines, and so has decided to do most of the work for us. Consequently Mac OS may become the first platform to truly utilise the power of modern computer hadrware.

Objective-J

2008-06-09T10:35:06Z

Interesting new JavaScript-based technology from an outfit calling themselves 280 North :

Objective-J is basically an implementation of Objective-C language constructs on top of the JavaScript language (Objective-C is the native language used by the Mac OS X application runtime – kind of like .NET for Mac OS).

On top of this language they have basically re-implemented the Cocoa GUI framework as a web-based technology (they call it Cappuccino – they're evidently not tea drinkers). Their flagship application using this system is a web-based slideshow authoring program called 280 slides, which has already been compared favourably to the Macintosh Keynote program (Apple's competitor to Powerpoint).

There's an interview with 280 North here

You can play with 280 Slides here

A child is born

2008-06-06T08:01:16Z

A few weeks ago we told you about the RepRap rapid prototyping machine.

Well, on 29 May 2008 the machine managed to print a replica of itself . One would assume that this just means it printed the parts which had to be assembled, but still, it's a significant step towards a general purpose, automated 3D replicator.

Eco Zoo

2008-06-05T14:20:51Z

A cute little 3D Flash website . If you ignore the ecotard message, the popup book idea is very cool, although it's a pity the popups haven't been done in a way that could actually be made with real paper.

The site is significant because Flash still can't actually do native 3D graphics . Unlike web plugins such as unity , Flash provides no 3D drawing commands, nor any way to leverage the built-in 3D graphics hardware in modern computers. The site was made possible by the Papervision3D , an Open Source 3D engine for Flash that implements 3D rendering and texture mapping from first principles.

Widgets 2.0

2008-06-04T15:46:22Z

Has anyone noticed now that the term "widget" has become a catch-all phrase for describing more or less any software component? I now hear the term used to describe any of

A user interface component or control
An application built using some nonstandard technology, e.g. JavaScript
A plugin for a web site
A panel or sidebar on another window
A web service for providing any or all of the above

As far as I can tell, "widget" basically means "something I haven't got a name for", like doohickey, or thingamajig, or whatchamacallit. So why is it that Yahoo can announce a "widgets API" and we are supposed to know what that means?

Coming soon: Google doohickeys and Microsoft thingamajigs, for all your unspecified software needs.

OpenLayers

2008-06-04T10:50:00Z

Interesting new Open source JavaScript mapping API aims to break the coupling between the implementation and the data provider.

As a framework, OpenLayers is intended to separate map tools from map data so that all the tools can operate on all the data sources. This separation breaks the proprietary silos that earlier GIS revolutions have taught civilization to avoid. The mapping revolution on the public Web should benefit from the experience of history.

SquirrelFish

2008-06-03T10:49:27Z

Apparently not content with having the fastest JavaScript engine on the market, the Safari/Webkit developers have just announced Squirrelfish , the improbably-named new JS engine for Webkit that is more than half-again as fast as the version included in Safari 3.1.

This speed bump is signficant not just for Mac users and the ~3 users of Safari on Windows, but for mobile Internet users, where Webkit is rapidly becoming the dominant browser platform. On mobile devices, where processors are slow (Safari on the iPhone, one of the most powerful handheld Web-capable devices, was benchmarked as being 100x slower than its desktop cousin) this speed boost could mean that a whole generation of "Web 2.0" sites now become usable on today's hardware.

Apart from being great news for web developers and users, the article includes a facinating discussion of the engineering process for virtual machines and bytecode interpreters.

iPlayer Downloader

2008-06-03T10:43:30Z

Handy open source program for downloading DRM-free content from the BBC's iPlayer service (Mac OS X only):

iPlayer Downloader

Google adds common JS libraries to CDN

2008-05-28T11:49:04Z

Google has added a number of popular JavaScript libraries such as Mootools and jQuery to its CDN (Content Delivery Network).

These files can be loaded via the Google AJAX API , or directly by including the URL in a web page, e.g.

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/dojo/1.1.1/dojo/dojo.xd.js.uncompressed.js

The advantages of this over using a local copy for each site are obvious: Not only do you save bandwidth by not hosting the files yourself, but files on the Google CDN are edge cached , meaning site visitors will experience much quicker downloads. Also, if they visit multiple sites that use the same library then they will benefit from browser caching as the files will be shared.

Africa objects

2008-05-28T11:01:05Z

South Africa have launched an objection against the ratification of the OOXML standard .

We've written a number of times about the travesty that is OOXML, and whilst it comes from an unexpected quarter, South Africa's sudden outbreak of common sense is a welcome one.

DimP

2008-05-28T09:58:11Z

From the department of cool, but what's the point? comes DimP , a system that allows you to fast forward or rewind video by dragging any moving objects that appear in the frame.

3D Canvas

2008-05-27T10:46:04Z

More impressive technology from the guy who brought you JavaScript Mario Kart :

Javascript/Canvas Textured 3D Renderer

Hard to believe but all these amazing JavaScript graphics and game demos seem to be the work of just one person .

Mamma Mia!

2008-05-27T10:02:25Z

Continuing the recent trend of ridiculously awsome things done with JavaScript, check out JavaScript Super Mario Kart .

It joins the proud ranks of JavaScript Super Mario , DHTML Lemmings , JavaScript Wolfenstein 3D , JavaScript DOOM (more of a tech demo really) and the venerable Wolfenstein 5K .

PHP Sucks...

2008-05-22T12:31:46Z

...but it doesn't matter - at least according to Jeff Atwood .

It seems that a good proportion of all the most successful web apps are written in PHP (Facebook, Digg, Wikipedia, etc.). Not bad for a language whose primary fault is that it doesn't scale well to high-load applications.

The similarities drawn between PHP and Basic have nothing to do with language structure as far as I can see, and everything to do with bloated namespace. There are a lot of built-in PHP functions, most of which have silly names and use inconsistent naming and parameter conventions. This is curse because I find myself having to look up every function, but a blessing because nine times out of ten the function I want is in there somewhere.

For what it's worth, this site is written in PHP, and it it wasn't it would probably never have been written at all.

SmallWorlds

2008-05-22T11:45:43Z

An intriguing new online virtual world: SmallWorlds

Currently in closed beta, but due to be released to the public at large on Monday, SmallWorlds differs from other virtual environments such as Second Life by being based entirely within the web browser, and integrating with other social networking websites. In effect it is more like a 3D facebook than a traditional MMOG .

SmallWorlds is the first web-accessible, casual virtual world which is designed for mass market appeal ... for ages 13 to 103

One of the coolest parts about SmallWorlds is the close integration it has with other Web 2.0 services. You can buy picture frames that load up images from Flickr, radios that play stations from Last.fm, and billboards that let you post and view Twitter messages.

WiiWare Hits Europe

2008-05-20T15:26:46Z

Good news for indie game programmers and Wii owners alike, WiiWare is now available in europe.

the new WiiWare system enables videogame developers - no matter how big or small - to create exciting new downloadable games for the Nintendo Wii console.

Helicockter

2008-05-20T13:08:27Z

At a summit prtoesting the Putin administration, chess grandmaster and guest speaker Gary Kasparov was interupted by a flying penis .

It was noted that the incident, known in the VR world as griefing , was similar to an attack launched on a CNET interview hosted in Second Life in 2006.

This Will Make You Feel Better

2008-05-20T10:43:39Z

It turns out that celebrities have wrinkles too:

Room Post Production reel

Who knew?

Seriously though, it's quite eye opening. Everyone knows that celebrity photos are airbrushed (Photoshopped), but I'd always kind of assumed that it wasn't practical to do this for full-motion video. Seems I was wrong.

Hell of Sand

2008-05-19T16:03:43Z

Amusing particle physics game: Hell of Sand

There's no goal as such, just play around with different materials, then set them on fire.

Pity it's a Java applet though. I'd like to see a pure JavaScript implementation using the canvas tag or some such.

Cubescape

2008-05-16T20:39:15Z

Nice little Flash app for creating isometric pixel art-esque images: Cubescape

Except that it's not a Flash app at all - this is all done with JavaScript and CSS. Amazing!

Bat Hat

2008-05-16T12:30:49Z

Dr. Kevin Warwick from Reading University has developed an echo location hat for blind people. Using the same principles as a bat, it allows them to navigate via utrasonic sonar.

For those not familiar with his work, Warwick is the guy who's famous for using himself as a human guinea pig for microchips implanted into the nervous system:

Kevin has carried out a series of pioneering experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer in order to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled

Games With a Purpose

2008-05-16T12:17:08Z

Interesting new site: gwap.com , purports to solve difficult pattern recognition problems by repackaging them as a game and getting humans to do the work.

This is similar to something Google did with their image search service: Google Image Labeler

It's also similar in concept to Amazon's Mechanical Turk , which makes micropayments to users in return for solving simple processing tasks.

This all seems like a brilliant idea - I really love the concept of seemless web services where you can't tell if a problem is being solved by a computer or a person. It's similar to a concept in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age , where a girl's story book automatically outsources voiceover work to an actor via the Internet.

Flat Mac

2008-05-15T18:02:55Z

This is a pretty nice idea - a tablet conversion for the MacBook.

It's been under development for a while, but they seem to have refined the design a bit since it's inception.

People have been clamouring for Apple to make a decent tablet Mac since around the time that Jobs canned the Newton. The fact that Axiotron actually went as far as to build one suggests that the market for such a thing is a reality, not just a lot of hot air.

The only thing that puts me off getting one is the sneaking suspicion that if it's really any good, Apple will be releasing an official model any minute now, and if they don't, it's because it isn't.

How to Buy a Mac

2008-05-14T23:11:15Z

Advice on which Mac to buy from Macworld.

Aimed at old-gen Mac users looking to upgrade, but probably applicable for Windows users looking to make the switch.

The important thing to remember when buying a new Mac is that even the cheapest consumer models are now pretty powerful machines - the Macs are expensive myth seems to have sprung up because PC users are used to buying over-specced machines to compensate for all the malware, anti-malware and other crap using up processor cycles.

If you want to, you can easily blow 10 grand on a Mac, but you'll be buying a server or a supercomputer, not a home PC. The only upgrades worth buying for your machine are a bigger hard disk and more RAM, and if you're smart you'll buy the latter from Crucial , not Apple.

Follow that principle and most machines will leave you change from £1000 (~$2000).

VBA's Back, Baby

2008-05-14T18:12:25Z

The Mac Business Unit (Microsoft's internal Macintosh development team) announced today that VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) scripting would be making a return in the next revision of Office for the Mac.

This is great news. I'm not a huge fan of Office, but like Photoshop it's the dominant application in its field right now, and until something better comes along, I'd like the Mac version to continue to be the best it can be.

Animated Graffiti

2008-05-14T10:00:57Z

MUTO: a wall-painted animation by BLU

This is an incredible example of stop-motion animation done on a grandiose scale. I particularly like how the creature interacts with its environment, kicking over objects and eating papers on the wall.

The artist seems to have taken his influence from John Carpenter's The Thing , as well as the "biomechanoid" works of H.R. Giger.

A shorter version was released under the title Fantoche a few months ago.

Pair Programming

2008-05-10T01:12:40Z

Those who've delved into the depths of this site will have noticed that my programming language/development environment of choice over the years has been REALbasic .

REALbasic is by no means a perfect language. A crude description would be Visual Basic, only cross-platform and with more bugs - hardly a glowing review.

But the reason I use RB, apart from the ridiculous ease of creating a program and compiling it for Mac, Windows and Linux, is that it keeps extending the language with fascinating new features, borrowing not only from Java and C++, but occasionally coming up with obscure but ingenious things found only in more esoteric languages such as Ruby or Python.

The latest addition is a new feature called pairs , sometimes referred to in other languages as a tuple , but essentially a form of isolated hashkey/value pair.

I think any hardcore software engineers out their would be well served by taking a look at RB. For all its faults (and there are many), it is much more than just a buggy VB clone, and how many other languages offer the raw low-level structs and pointers of C, the classes, interfaces, introspection and automatic memory management of Java, the simple and accessible API of Visual Basic, and offer single-click cross-platform compilation from a common code base all in the same package?

One for Pixel Art Fans...

2008-05-06T14:19:53Z

An entire city created using pixel art (drawn by hand on a computer with a limited colour pallete and without antialiasing. Similar in the style to videogames from the 80s and 90s).

Broken Robot

2008-05-02T16:01:09Z

A modular robot that re-assembles itself when broken apart:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIn-sMq8-Ls&eurl

Not the most impressive demo I've ever seen; It seems to take a really long time, even with the speeded up video, and it's particularly amusing at the end when it stands up and then immediately falls over and breaks into bits again.

Still, it's one step closer to grey goo , and that's both scary and cool in equal measure.

Quit IT

2008-04-30T20:57:30Z

An excellent article about quitting your job:

Up or Out: Solving the IT Turnover Crisis

I think it rather nicely puts paid to the job-for-life, career-minded attitude of a lot of companies, and suggests that constant movement is a good thing in technical organisations because it avoids stagnation and encourages knowledge sharing.

Euphoria

2008-04-29T17:51:24Z

Incredible new animation system that combines artificial intelligence with physics simulation to create lifelike character movement without the need for motion capture.

This is really impressive. The characters dodge projectiles and grab ledges to save themselves from falling. Check out some of the videos of Euphoria in action in LucasArts' upcoming games.

99 Monkeys on 99 Typewriters...

2008-04-29T10:51:51Z

The evolution of the stackoverflow.com site is an interesting example of "branding 2.0" .

After selecting a name for the site by polling the developer community , they have now enlisted the help of 99designs to come up with a logo (my money's on #141).

Normally I'm not a fan of the community design paradigm - it's too similar to design-by-comittee, and we all know that never works. But the 99designs approach avoids this issue because whilst the designs are submitted by the public, the voting is entirely controlled by the person or persons who intitiated the competition.

Looking at the quality of the submissions, I think this has got to be the future of branding. A company could easily pay $500,000 to an agency and get a worse design than some of the ones here. Jeff and Joel are stumping up a mere $512 for the winner, and get hundreds of choices.

Nikko R2D2

2008-04-28T14:32:05Z

Nerdy, but awesome: R2D2 Projector & Webcam

This are really nice piece of kit, it looks like they have pretty much every imaginable feature. In fact if they didn't look like R2D2 they might well be the best Projector and Webcam respectively on the market.

Realistically though, I suspect the Star Wars theme will put a lot of potential consumers off. Shame.

It's Hip to be Square

2008-04-25T14:46:48Z

Not new, apparently, but I hadn't come across these before:

Square watermelons (no, really!)

Apparently the idea is to make more efficient use of fridge space, as well as avoiding damage due to unfortunate rolling-off-table incidents.

I think it's brilliant - I wonder what other things we could make into cuboids for efficiency (or amusement). Square cows perhaps?

Eastern Europe

2008-04-25T14:05:48Z

I love this: Visualisation of Eastern Europe

From Dresden Codak 's, LiveJournal page .

Chip Shop

2008-04-23T10:10:28Z

In a surprise move, Apple has just purchased P.A. Semi, a microprocessor design company.

It's unclear how Intel are going to take this news - after cozying up to Intel for the past year or so, Apple's sudden decision to see other people is unlikely to go down well.

Grand Theft Google

2008-04-23T10:05:51Z

Nice little flash game where you drive around a Google map: googleDrive .

Reminiscent of the the old top-down GTA games (minus the cop-killing and exploding cars).

Microsoft Drops Support for MSN Music

2008-04-23T01:01:53Z

Microsoft once again demonstrates its commitment to its valued media customers by ditching support for the MSN Music DRM service . This basically means that anyone who bought tracks on MSN will not be able to play them on any future PCs they purchase.

The message here in case anyone missed it is do not buy media protected by DRM unless you have a clear path for removing it, or you don't mind losing the ability to play it at some unspecified time in the future.

If that's too complex, don't buy any media from Microsoft is probably a good rule of thumb.

Airstrike

2008-04-22T15:06:13Z

LM3Labs has created Airstrike , a gesture-driven hologram system.

I'm not quite sure what the point of it is, but it's all very Star Wars .

I Want One

2008-04-22T10:10:56Z

Some whimsical cuteness from XKCD .

Every nerd secretly wants a pet with a serial port (and that doesn't shit, shed, or chew on the network cables).

Hooray for Bureaucracy

2008-04-21T13:18:08Z

Just over a year ago we wrote about Microsoft's OOXML format, a dreadful specification that they were trying to get ratified as an ISO standard.

Anyone who has been following this sorry and sordid story will know that after initially rejecting the spec on technical grounds, almost every party eventually gave in and voted yes to the standard, despite the fact that none of their concerns had been addressed.

Now at least part of the mystery of how this happened has been revealed . It turns out that (in Norway at least) an 80% majority of experts is overruled by one bureaucrat.

REALunit

2008-04-20T16:20:46Z

We've added REALunit, a new open source unit testing framework for REALbasic to our open source software page.

Paypal

2008-04-19T19:08:47Z

Paypal is apparently planning to ban web browsers which don't provide anti-phishing features.

Since phishing typically takes the form of a site pretending to be Paypal to get user's details, wouldn't they somehow need to persuade the phishing sites to block these browsers?

Otherwise they'll end up with the ridiculous situation that the only Paypal branded sites that some users can visit on their browser will be phishing sites.

The Videogame at the End of the Universe

2008-04-19T08:45:03Z

A fascinating account of the aborted development of Milliways , the sequel to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy adventure game. The best bits are the design documents, written by game designers who were evidently geniuses, but quite possibly insane:

On Magrathea is a crater left by the impact of the whale. (You don't remember the whale? Then you'll be even more confused by the petunias...)

Even more incredible is the tale of how the author came by this information - he's somehow gotten a hold of a complete backup of Infocom's company network drive circa 1989, including all the company emails, financial documents and source code for all their games.

Your Session Has Timed Out

2008-04-18T16:39:49Z

Jeff Atwood hits the nail on the head with respect to session timeouts.

This is a typical example of technology driving a usability consideration. Session timeouts are not good enough as a solution to this problem. We need something better.

Programmers doing the same stupid thing over and over again just because it's what everyone else does is exactly what's wrong with software interface design as it stands today.

Now Requires Flash

2008-04-18T14:30:54Z

Dilbert has gone all "Web 2.0".

The prominent Beta at the top of the page hardly excuses turning a simple, fast-loading site into a processor-hungry JavaScript behemoth that requires Flash to be enabled before you can view the cartoon.

But that's just my opinion.

Dreamworks Acquires Ghost in the Shell

2008-04-17T14:32:02Z

http://www.variety.com/VR1117984029.html

If you can get past the toe-curling insistence of the characters to wax philosophical for minutes on end about the nature of humanity, the original Ghost in the Shell anime is one of the finest examples of the genre, and a gripping high-tech thriller in its own right.

By removing all the Japanese cultural elements that don't translate well to a Western audience, and converting to a live action format (which the intended "adult" viewer will relate to better than a cartoon), Spielberg could have real winner on his hands here.

Should be interesting to see how they screw it up.

stackoverflow.com

2008-04-17T11:53:06Z

Intriguing new site from Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood: stackoverflow.com

Not much to see yet, but on his blog , Joel describes the site as...

a programming Q&A site that's free. Free to ask questions, free to answer questions, free to read, free to index, built with plain old HTML, no fake rot13 text on the home page, no scammy google-cloaking tactics, no salespeople, no JavaScript windows dropping down in front of the answer asking for $12.95 to go away"

Sounds pretty good to me.

Rockin' Our Sales

2008-04-17T11:29:40Z

There's something very wrong with Microsoft.

Here is a recent internal promotional video for Vista.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great when a company can poke fun at itself. But to paraphrase Krusty the Klown , "it's only funny if the sap's got dignity" !

Update: In case you were thinking that this depravity was some kind of recent phenomenon at Microsoft, think again .

V for Vendetta

2008-04-16T10:11:05Z

Virgin Media has stepped over a line, and Charlie Stross and pals aren't happy about it.

Amid allegations of sniffing for router hardware and intentionally providing an inferior service to anyone using one, the CEO of Virgin Media has come right out and said that he's in favour of throttling the bandwidth of sites that don't pay a premium for data delivery.

And all this after the previous fiasco whereby Virgin somehow managed to fall out with Sky , resulting in Virgin's customers permanently losing access to Sky One, and with it shows like Lost , 24 and Battlestar Galactica .

Samorost

2008-04-15T10:06:34Z

Cool, quirky Flash puzzle/adventure game: Samorost

Reminds me a little of Cosmic Osmo and the other early Hypercard games for the Macintosh.

Google TV Ads

2008-04-15T09:57:31Z

Google have just announced that they will be selling TV slots for their Internet advertising service.

Now anyone with a Google ads account (and a big budget) will be able to advertise their service on TV without any additional infrastructure.

It's a great idea, but it only serves to make me more certain that this arbitrary distinction between Internet and TV is destined to be very short lived .

Five Minutes to Kill Yourself

2008-04-14T17:58:39Z

Original (if somewhat morbid) Flash game:

http://www.adultswim.com/games/game/index.html?game=fiveMinutes .

Open Source Self-Replicating Printer

2008-04-12T00:20:38Z

A few months ago we wrote an article predicting the impending rise of bespoke manufacturing technologies, specifically the 3D printer.

It's happening . An open source group split across the US, UK and New Zealand has just announced the RepRap , a 3D rapid prototyping system capable of printing its own components. It's a long way from a general-purpose home manufacturing system, but it's definitely an important step closer.

Google App Engine

2008-04-08T09:26::4Z

http://code.google.com/appengine

Google App Engine enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications.

Looks pretty sweet. Based on Python/Django, it provides all the back end services for building your web app + they'll host it for free (until it gets popular).

Starcraft 2 "fansite kit"

2008-04-07T15:11:10Z

Blizzard are offering a downloadable "kit" of resources so that Starcraft fans can build their own fan sites:

http://eu.starcraft2.com/downloads.xml

This is a breath of fresh air compared to the heavy handed tactics of other companies/individuals over the unauthorised use of their copyright material by fans ( Apple , Prince ).

Between the accessible and innovative use of technology on the Starcraft 2 web site (unobtrusive JavaScript and Flash, client side XSL), the innovative approach to product development and quality control and the friendly and encouraging attitude to fans, I’m absolutely blown away by Blizzard. I think a lot of companies could learn a thing or two from them.

11 Innovation Lessons

2008-04-07T14:10:22Z

Innovation lessons from Blizzard (makers of World of Warcraft):

"9. DEMAND EXCELLENCE OR YOU'LL GET MEDIOCRITY"

They don’t say what to do when you demand excellence but still get mediocrity – still, seems like some good thinking here.

Calligraphy

2008-04-07T13:45:32Z

Smashing Magazine mourns the death of hand-penned calligraphy .

If only there was some way to simulate beautiful calligraphy on a computer...

Oh well.

Beautiful New Coinage from the Royal Mint...

2008-04-03T10:20:44Z

… and a new five dollar bill in the States that looks like a kindergarten finger painting experiment:

http://www.typography.com/ask/showBlog.php?blogID=93

Outside

2008-04-02T16:02:49Z

A candid review of the popular game Outside :

The physics system is note-perfect (often at the expense of playability)... The real fundamental problem with the game is that there is nothing to do .

Brilliant!

Oh... Bollocks

2008-04-02T13:36:13Z

Well that’s all we needed: ISO approves OOXML

If only Microsoft had spent half as much money on actually fixing the giant, man-eating holes in their specification as they have on bribing state officials into ratifying it...

Who Ate All the Pies?

2008-04-02T12:12:39Z

Today is officially the fattest day of the year .

Funny, I don't feel any heavier...

Quantum Sleeper

2008-03-28T17:02:14Z

Rest Well in the Face of Terrorism

I loved this, from the comments below the article:

In a really bad disaster we remain both superpositionally alive and dead inside the Quantum Sleeper until someone opens it up. Especially if you take your cat inside.

Genius!

BigDog: Amazingly Lifelike Robot Dog

2008-03-20T11:47:37Z

The motion of this thing is incredible

It does look ever-so-slightly like two blokes in a suit though.

Update: Seems I wasn't the only one who noticed

The Big Word Project

2008-02-28T09:17:06Z

A kind of viral marketing dictionary... or something...

Pay $1 per letter for the ad word of your choice:

http://www.thebigwordproject.com

Stake your claims now, it may be the next million dollar homepage .

Lego Universe

2008-02-26T09:06:13Z

Best idea for an MMO ever:

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/lego-universe-l.html

The best part is that you can take any model you build virtually in the game and Lego will send you the parts and instructions to build it.

Is it possible that Lego has finally found a way to make itself relevant in the digital age? I hope so.

Castle in Colour: Optical Illusion

2008-02-25T09:05:28Z

This is a nice trick:

http://www.johnsadowski.com/big_spanish_castle.php

Source Fource

2008-02-22T15:44:46Z

Ill-conceived marketing concept from Microsoft:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/hero/sfbio

Is it me, or do they look like Lego people? Only... you know... shit.

Update: It seems they've improved them a bit. You can see the woeful originals here .

Slow News Day?

2008-02-18T12:39:28Z

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/45792

Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness

That's Not a Warning Message...

2008-02-07T11:09:17Z

This is a warning message!

It's Fast, and it's Free

2008-01-29T09:49:07Z

Brent Simmons describes the creative process behind the UI for NetNewsWire's syncing interface:

http://inessential.com/?comments=1&postid=3468

Interesting reading for UI junkies.

NASA MMO

2008-01-28T10:20:03Z

NASA is making an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online videogame)

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/nasa-seeks-inpu.html

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/would-you-play.html

First thoughts: Cool and... er... why?

The 2007 Darwin Awards

2008-01-14T14:39:24Z

http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2007.html

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

Story of the iPhone

2008-01-11T11:42:03Z

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/16-02/ff_iphone

Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep.

A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.

Three Columns of Idiocy

2007-12-17T09:22:32Z

This is going to be unpopular, but the man has a point...

http://www.andyrutledge.com/bad-layout-conventions.php

Defending the Indefensible

2007-12-15T20:07:22Z

Many users and developers alike would like to see Microsoft improve its browser, or replace it with something better, but should this really be a legal matter? Is it right to force them to do this in a court of law?

Infestation

2007-12-14T16:52:29Z

Eww...

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/12/14/wii_attracts_cockroaches

Who'd have imagined that leaving wii on your carpet would be a health hazard?

Fun with Windows

2007-12-14T16:48:42Z

Here's some fun things that you can (or rather can't) do in Windows:

Try creating a folder called "con". Try it, anywhere on your desktop or inside any folder. You can't. Same goes for any of the following:

prn, aux, nul, com1, com2, com3, ... com9, lpt1

You can't make a folder with any of these names. Think that's strange? Try this:

Create a new text file and type "this app can break" in it without the quotes or any leading/trailing space.

Now open the file in Notepad (if you created it in Notepad, close it then open it again).

Weird huh?

Corporate Blogging

2007-12-10T09:24:10Z

Airbag Industries discusses the new corporate blogging thinktank The Blog Council :

http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/airbag/fail.php

That's perfect! As long as you keep doing that, you'll always need your stupid councils to discuss why the cool kids think you're an idiot. Well played, asshats.

Ouch.

Jumpchart - Interactive wireframing tool

2007-12-10T09:15:35Z

This seems pretty cool: http://www.jumpchart.com

An online tool for designing the structure and content of a web site without any messing around in Visio.

Once you're done, it exports a clean XHTML/CSS framework from which to begin building the site itself.

Google Optimised for iPhone

2007-12-07T11:59:26Z

A look at Google's new iPhone portal

Looks pretty sweet, but doesn't appear to work on the iPod Touch yet.

Update: I stand corrected. In the UK you just have to go to http://www.google.com/m , otherwise it redirects you to google.co.uk, which doesn’t have the new interface (yet).

An Analogue Lock

2007-12-06T20:16:11Z

A nice slideshow illustrating both the illogicality of software licence agreements, and the terrifying implications of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act when applied to the real world.

Flickrshop

2007-12-05T13:43:48Z

Flickr adds photo editing tools:

http://blog.flickr.com/2007/12/05/edit-your-photos-on-flickr

Nice.

Not Invented Here

2007-12-05T12:11:29Z

Perl on Rails - why the BBC fails at the Internet

If the last 60-odd years of software engineering science have taught us anything, it's that software problems are hard enough to solve already without needing make extra work for yourself.

If a tool already exists that will solve your problem, use it. I'm sure Perl is great, but if you want to use Ruby on Rails then use it, don't rewrite it.

Cheeky Mac Banner Ad

2007-11-21T11:09:41Z

Captured on YouTube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAUlK8_2VE

Note that I say this as a long-term Mac user:

It is a very bad idea to advertise yourself by saying how bad your competitor's product is. People don't buy something just because an unrelated product is shit.
It is especially pointless since the Mac platform doesn't directly compete with Vista - they even advertise the fact that you can run Vista on a Mac as a selling point.
Leopard could have been a lot better - they really dropped the ball on that one, promising a lot and delivering very little.
The ad was still funny.

Software Thievery

2007-11-15T09:12:09Z

'Virtual theft' leads to arrest

A Dutch teenager has been arrested for allegedly stealing virtual furniture from 'rooms' in Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website.

It's not that strange if you think about it, "stealing" virtual property is no different from "stealing" an mp3 file or a copy of Photoshop, and there are people serving jail terms for doing the latter.

In fact one might reasonably argue that the term "theft" is more accurately applied in the former case, since the rules of the game world make it impossible to copy someone’s sword without depriving them of it, whereas in the real world one can duplicate digital goods without depriving their original owner of their use.

Human Pong, Tetris

2007-11-14T11:31:54Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QNI3W8UB-s

(Headphones or speakers needed for full effect)

Facebook Ad Profiles

2007-11-14T09:32:50Z

Coca-Cola, Dove and The New York Times are among a cluster of brands who have signed up to a new ad system on Facebook which enables advertisers to have their own profile page.

Apparently, the future of advertising is being repeatedly "poked" by a company until you agree to buy their product.

The March of the Avatars

2007-11-08T16:10:30Z

http://www.collings.co.za/2007/11/the-march-of-th.html

Gives some credibility to the prediction by Gartner Consulting that by 2011, 80% of active Internet users will have an avatar.

Okay, try to set aside the idea of Gartner having credibility for a moment. If 80% of people will have an avatar, does that extend to brands as well?

I have a sudden mental image of a virtual Ronald McDonald getting cornered in a dark alley in Second life and having the shit kicked out of him by the Burger King mascot.

Domino village

2007-11-08T13:29:45Z

New Guinness advert - Domino village

I thought it was a bit disappointing to be honest. I much preferred the Honda ad , which was filmed as a single shot.

The Guinness one just seems to be a collection of loosely related sequences - it doesn't even appear as if there is any attempt at continuity.

It also completely spoils the message - "Good things come to those who wait... but we couldn't be bothered to wait so we'll just cut to the final scene".

Stick Shift

2007-11-07T13:04:50Z

A driving instructor had a 12-inch carrot in his trousers when he gave a woman a lesson, a court was told yesterday .

The woman, who accused him of groping her breasts on three occasions between August 2005 and February last year...

He must have been a fantastic instructor if she got in a car with him again after he'd groped her on two previous occasions.

Three Legged Legs animation

2007-11-06T14:31:08Z

It's not exactly An Inconvenient Truth , but it's very nicely produced:

http://www.threeleggedlegs.com/repertoire/humans

"...we hate the human species. Really we do." - you gotta love militant environmentalists!

3D TV becomes reality

2007-11-05T15:31:54Z

3D television without glasses or headsets

It’s annoying that there’re no pictures to go with the article.

I mean, I understand if Orange didn’t let them take photos, but they could have at least put in some pictures of an ordinary TV as an illustration – it’s not like we’d know the difference…

Rimvertising

2007-11-02T13:15:20Z

Let no empty space go unadvertised:

http://ledwheels.com

...and a similar idea for bike spokes:

http://www.ladyada.net/make/spokepov

Sci-fi Wi-fi

2007-11-01T13:38:00Z

You can now buy a 2GB SD memory card with built-in wi-fi to upload/download your images:

Eye-Fi Card, Wireless 2 GB SD Memory Card

Did I miss a couple of generations of technology or something? I mean, seriously, how is that possible?

New Zunes

2007-10-31T17:01:01Z

Microsoft raises the bar in incomprehensible tag lines:

"You make it you"

…I make what me?

Ear, What're You Lookin' At?

2007-10-11T17:04:29Z

What is it with artists and ears? First Van Gogh, and now this...

Performer gets third ear for art

Cyprus-born Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, says his extra ear, made of human cartilage, is an augmentation of the body's form.

Human LCD

2007-10-11T11:14:02Z

Korea unveils its new widescreen display technology:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=453_1191345802&p=1

Zero Punctuation

2007-10-10T10:27:24Z

Without doubt, the best review you will see of Halo 3:

Zero Punctuation: Halo 3

How did THAT get in there...

2007-10-05T09:54:11Z

Schoolchildren in the US state of Ohio were left bemused after images of nude women were shown in a politician's lecture on the legislative process.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7028389.stm

His eyes... my God, look at his eyes...

Ballmer Sells Windows

2007-10-04T09:01:16Z

Would you buy a used operating system from this man?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk

reCAPTCHA

2007-10-02T13:39:01Z

Nice idea - using spam CAPTCHAs to aid in the process of digitising old documents:

http://recaptcha.net

Technology of the Future

2007-09-11T11:31:01Z

...from the point of view of the past:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=479667476202599810

MagiCal v1.1 Released

2007-08-15T02:21:14Z

We've just released a major update to our popular MagiCal menu bar clock and calendar. Almost every feature has been enhanced and polished - even the icon!

The Backlight is On, But Nobody's Home

2007-07-29T20:07:22Z

Environmentalism is turning the world mad. Obvious nonsense suddenly becomes gospel truth if it is uttered in the course of "saving the world". Apparently even Google is not safe from the ravages of the environmentalist movement. So where will it all end?

Parsing and Tokenizing Libraries

2007-07-29T19:26:13Z

We've added new open source libraries to our REALbasic source page, including classes for tokenizing and parsing complex formatted strings such as programming languages and structured data.

An Unachievable Goal?

2007-07-23T20:07:22Z

According to Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple), "we never will see a robot that makes a cup of coffee". Could he be right? Is it possible that AI is an unachievable dream? That we will never see robots that can even perform basic household chores, let alone outsmart us?

The Forecast for Broadcasts

2007-07-20T19:21:56Z

Just as video killed the radio star, the Internet is set to kill radio, TV, and telephone, or at least change them beyond recognition. It's just a matter of time. This article details why scheduled broadcasting is about to fall hard, and what we can expect to replace it.

Where are the Widgets?

2007-07-19T21:12:31Z

When Steve Jobs announced that Apple had provided a 3rd party development environment for the iPhone, he was met with rapturous applause. This soon turned to scorn when he revealed that the "development environment" was really just a web browser. But was this scorn justified, or are web apps the future for the iPhone?

The Drive of Progress

2007-05-17T13:11:23Z

Acclaimed science fiction author Charles Stross has published his predictions for how our future will be shaped by technology. In his books he describes a fabulous utopian future, but his vision of how imminent technologies will change our lives demands a sacrifice of personal freedoms that I find difficult to stomach...

It's a Mini Adventure

2007-05-11T01:20:57Z

When Apple released the new line of Intel Minis a year ago I decided to take the plunge and buy one for use as a media centre or living room PC . In some ways it has surpassed my expectations, and in others I've been bitterly disappointed. Here is the good, bad and ugly of the Media Centre Mini ...

How the Mighty Have Fallen

2007-04-11T19:55:01Z

According to Paul Graham, Microsoft is dead. So if he's right, what killed them? And what conclusions can we draw from this? Was Microsoft just too slow to keep up with the advances around them, or was their vision of the future fundamentally flawed from the start?

New Bug Tracking System

2007-03-23T01:30:07Z

We've overhauled our bug reporting and feature request systems with a brand new interactive bug tracking database.

Spacial Awareness

2007-03-20T18:13:02Z

Mozilla has been used as the basis of a revolutionary web browser and email client. Now it seems set to take on the operating system too. But is the Mozilla brand of innovation really what is needed to inject new life into desktop operating systems, or do we need to look backwards, not forwards to make progress...?

Subscriber v1.1 Released

2007-03-19T00:11:01Z

Subscriber 1.1 is now out of beta, and comes loaded with a few new goodies including full support for Intel macintoshes, and a shiny new icon!

PicTiles on MacZot

2007-03-16T18:25:39Z

Our Popular puzzle game PicTiles will be appearing on macZOT this weekend, at the special discount price of $9.99!

Patently Ridiculous

2007-03-07T20:07:19Z

For 500 years the patents system has protected innovation by allowing inventors to capitalise on their ideas. But with the changing pace of technology, and the rise of patents for software concepts and algorithms, are cracks appearing in this venerable institution...?

The Next Big Thing

2007-03-05T20:07:19Z

In the last 25 years we have seen a number of key technologies emerge that have revolutionised how we work, play and interact with each other. Could these innovations be part of a grander design? And if so, what's the next piece in the puzzle...?

Review on Apple Matters

2007-02-28T21:55:39Z

Apple Matters has posted a review of our freeware utilities MagiCal and Shades, along with a mini-bio of Charcoal Design's founder and chief software engineer Nick Lockwood.

PicTiles v1.1 Released

2007-02-02T00:35:31Z

We've just released a major update to our popular PicTiles puzzle game, which includes Intel processor support, as well as many other enhancements.

Standard Bearers

2007-01-29T21:48:11Z

For most of its history, Microsoft has relied on a mix of secrecy and litigation to protect the workings of its software and file formats. In light of mandates prohibiting the use of proprietary formats for government documents, Microsoft has pledged to change its ways... but has it?

Viva Amiga

2007-01-23T10:46:21Z

The Amiga, a cherished computing platform from the 80s - 90s era, which was finally killed off by the dominance of the PC market, may be about to undergo a revival with the release of Amiga OS 4. But is a new OS release really the best way to continue the Amiga legacy?

MagiCal v1.0 Released

2007-01-06T18:31:14Z

We've just released MagiCal, a FREE menu-based clock and calendar program for Mac OS X. MagiCal provides a range of time and date display options, and can operate in conjunction with, or as a replacement for, the system menu clock.

Of Historical Interest?

2007-01-05T10:11:21Z

Since his execution, Saddam Hussein is more popular than ever, with apologists just about falling over themselves to say how dignified he was in death, and how much worse the allies are than he ever was. Surprisingly however, Richard Dawkins has actually managed to say something original on the subject...

Shades v1.1 Released

2006-12-18T01:29:47Z

We've just released a major update to our popular Shades application, which includes many new features requested by our users.

Beyond Belief

2006-11-24T18:14:46Z

What is belief? Is absence of proof the same as proof of absence, or is it just as misguided to disbelieve something without evidence as it is to believe in it? This article explores the touchy subject of dogmatic belief, and explains why atheism is not just "religion for the nonbelievers" .

Shades v1.0 Released

2006-11-24T06:45:47Z

We've released a new software product called Shades. Shades is a FREE utility for adjusting monitor brightness on your Macintosh. It can be used as a compliment to the built-in brightness controls of many Macintosh machines, offering a greater dynamic range and finer control.

Open Source

2006-11-22T18:15:29Z

We've added a new open source page to the software section of our site. We believe that open source software is a great way to encourage innovation and progress within the developer community, and for this reason we have decided to provide the source code for our in-house tools and experiments...

Just Say No!

2006-11-09T21:14:08Z

When Microsoft announced that they were finally updating the aged Internet Explorer with a new version, many were initially skeptical. Could this be a glorious turn in the road for the world's worst (and most popular) browser, or would this be just another rushed-out bodge job like IE6 before it...?

Six Word Limit? That's Easy, I'll...

2006-10-26T06:13:37Z

Wired recently ran an article in which they challenged some contemporary sci-fi and fantasy authors to produce interesting literary works in a maximum of six words, with some amusing results. I thought it might be fun to join in, so here are my efforts...

A Hard(ware) Act to Follow

2006-10-23T21:48:13Z

Gartner, a prominent industry analyst believes that Apple would be better off if it abandoned the hardware business and concentrated on selling OS X to the established PC user base. Is this really the way forward for Apple? And if not, why do people keep thinking they know how to run Apple better than Apple does...?

The Phantom Menace

2006-10-18T17:20:27Z

Some would have us believe that software piracy is a terrible threat to the industry, to the consumer and to the whole of civilisation. I cannot help but wonder if software piracy is not simply the predictable symptom of the need for the industry to adapt to meet the changing face of information technology. Yarrrr...

Pink for October

2006-10-13T12:11:06Z

Pinkforoctober.org has been set up in order to bring attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, get people talking about breast cancer, and raise money for research. Like many others, Charcoal Design will be adopting a pink hue for the duration of the month of October...

Web Site Relaunched

2006-10-13T02:22:21Z

We hope you all like the new-look site. After languishing in development hell for several years, and after several redesigns which never saw the light of day, Charcoal Design is now officially open for business. The new site features a number of enhancements, which we will be adding to over the next few weeks...

Pipette v1.0 Released

2006-10-07T22:00:11Z

We're proud to announce the release of a new product called Pipette. Pipette is a FREE utility for web developers and digitial artists that allows you to take colour readings from anywhere on the screen, and return the colour value in the right format for pasting into Photoshop or any web page. Download it now...

Read it and Weep

2006-09-27T19:02:01Z

Sony recently unveiled its new e-book reader, imaginatively entitled the Sony Reader . I have to admit that when I saw it my first thought was that this was the coolest thing I'd seen. Sadly, a closer examination reveals a lack of design forethought - a shame because it is clear that the technology has real potential...

So Wwwhat's the Point?

2006-09-14T21:32:49Z

No-www.org have taken a stand against the largely redundant requirement of many websites that you prefix their domain with www. While I applaud their efforts to save us all several characters worth of typing every day, I believe that they have missed out on some more subtle benefits of the www prefix...