something in the way

The new online shop called Modista [modista.com] collects inventories across multiple retailers, and organizes items according to their visual similarity using digital image processing and machine learning algorithms. The horizontal axis orders products by shape, while the vertical axes ranks them by color.

Currently the inventory is limited to shoes, watches, handbags and eyewear, although it seems the shopping experience is slowly but surely becoming more similar to its traditional physical counterpart.

See also:
. Amazon Windowshop
. Zoomii Visual Amazon Store
. Amazon Book Map
. Map Amazon
. AmazNode
. Oskope Amazon Information Graphs
. Viewzi Book View
. Vizzl shopping engine
. Browse Goods
. like.com visual search engine
. BlackDogAir
. Music Plasma

Animal Collective, My Girls. Official music video for one of the songs on repeat in my itunes.

Posted by Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Mayor Bloomberg join us here. – Ed.]

This is New York City: the ultimate destination and home to world-class hotels, dining, shopping, arts, entertainment and more.

In partnership with Google, we are launching a new website and Information Center to help make it easier for both visitors and residents to explore all the energy, excitement and diversity of New York City’s five boroughs. nycgo.com is the official resource on the web for all there is to see, do and experience in the City. This dynamic site uses Google Maps to help you plan your New York experience and find hotels, restaurants and entertainment, in addition to exclusive citywide savings and promotions. With nycgo.com you can use Google Maps to get directions to attractions throughout the City, and even send the info to your phone with Google Maps for mobile.

While you’re in New York, stop by the brand new Official New York City Information Center at 810 Seventh Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets. The Information Center features interactive map tables, powered by the Google Maps API for Flash, that let you navigate venues and attractions as well as create personalized itineraries, which can be printed, emailed or sent to mobile devices. Additionally, there’s a gigantic video wall that utilizes Google Earth to display a 3D model of New York City on which you can map out personalized itineraries.

So whether you are a visitor or a resident, we invite you to explore New York City from your home computer, your mobile phone—and of course, in person.

Get started by taking a look at this video:

Adobe will essentially open up the RTMP protocol officially. RTMP has been used in other tools such as Red5 and haXe video for some time now.  But officially having it open will make it possible for more products built on it.  I am sure that most of this is to combat silverlight and to gain more video users that can play flash formats. RTMP spec will be posted here when ready.

RTMP provides an enhanced and efficient way to deliver rich content. Developers and companies will have free and open access to the documented RTMP specification to help enable unparalleled delivery of video, audio and data in the open AMF, SWF, FLV and F4V formats compatible with Adobe Flash Player.

Adobe has also been working on more real-time protocol tools based on UDP instead of TCP (which RTMP is based) that fall under RTMFP using ordered UDP that will be interesting to watch evolve.  Stratus is so far a sample of what is to come there.The UDP based real-time tools will be able to beat the capabilities of TCP based real-time  tools when using authoratative servers.

But with the RTMP announcement, multiuser and video applications should thrive even more with an open RTMP spec.

Simon Høgsberg spent last 17 months on creating this impressive 100 meters long photography project – We’re All Gonna Die – 100 meters of existence

This is the fifth rule of Jim Jarmusch, an independent film director, his golden rules:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.”

found at swissmiss

Fractal4D is a really interesting AIR application that is different to the usual run of the mill AIR apps that we see.

This AIR app enables you to draw really cool detailed fractal swirls that can then be exported as a vector for use in Adobe Illustrator or as a plain PNG. There are a whole load of options that allow you to tweak the colours, blending, easing and blurring.

Built by developer Matt Kenefick it’s currently in beta release and he is encouraging active feedback as he develops the apps feature set.

The resulting import into Illustrator makes this app a valuable asset for any graphic developers toolbox. How many times have you wanted a few background swirls in a graphic or montage?

There are a few usability issues especially with the options menu system but those refinements will hopefully come with time. Export to Illustrator can be a little clunky but follow the steps in the video and over at Matt’s blog and you should have a result.

I have done a brief video review and Matt has a few videos that show more specifics:

“Video Review”

Fractal4D Adobe AIR application from RefreshingApps on Vimeo.

A few videos from the developer Matt:

F4D: Record to Illustrator from mattkenefick on Vimeo.

F4D: General Options from mattkenefick on Vimeo.

Color Shifting F4D from mattkenefick on Vimeo.

Design eye

Clean design but with a complicated menu and options panel. The results are superb both inside Illustrator and as a PNG.

A file save dialogue box would be nice instead of defaulting to saving directly to your desktop.

Technical eye

It is built using Adobe Flash with ActionScript 3“.

In Summary

A good addition to a designers array of Adobe AIR applications, something a little different. Some clunky usability quirks and the documentation / instructions could do with being expanded. Matt has a huge amount of features he wants to include in future versions of Fractal4D. Always remember to feedback to the developer about any bugs you find or feature requests.

So download it today and I guarantee you will be hooked on creating swirls!

Tagged with: designer, fun

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Random Attractors – Found using Lyapunov Exponents

[Reposted from bashford]