The world is full of interesting things

Google has this pretty awesome slide-show of interesting things on the internet. While the slideshow does plug a lot of Google stuff like Chrome Ads and a stylesheet for Google Reader; and a lot of content is sourced from off youtube, everything on the whole probably does merit its place.

I’ve collected a few here from the slide-show which I thought were absolutely amazing:

1. The Wilderness Downtown: A chrome-optimized, CPU-intensive HTML5 video. (or videos. It opens many many windows. Don’t panic). Just sit back, don’t touch anything, wait, keep waiting, and then watch the video. Quite an interesting visual experience. The load time is mighty annoying (and ironic considering the soundtrack).

2. Singing Fingers:

3. You’ve probably heard of this – the Youtube Symphony Orchestra

4.Pixels – the movie. Very hilarious:

5. Remember those spheres from a couple of years ago showing the shrink in net worth of the largest banks? This is better.

6. Whoa.

7. Guess what this is. Brilliant. (This is cool too)

8. Mildly hypnotic. Very very cool:

9. WHOA.

Notable mention to the epic-in-scope life-in-a-day.

 

Windows Live Writer–Test Drive

Windows 7 is a wonder. I had, long ago, panned Windows 7 for not being being more, simply put, EPIC. But after the torment in Tartarus that was Windoze Vista, Win7 has been really really nice.

As a treat to Microsoft, I’m actually giving their suite of Live Tools a try, including Life Writer. It seems to have done a suitable job of downloading my theme and giving me a ‘edit my blog’ sort of feel. It obviously does not have the capabilities of my Zemanta-enhanced WordPress editor, but does seem a handy way of firing out quick, non-media-heavy posts. It sensibly includes a quick buttons to open the actual WordPress dashboard, to manage comments and a button to my blog itself. I will look into the plugins as well to see if I can make this a little more effective.

PS: Browsed through the ‘plugins’. Some look useful, none look authentic or safe. Giving them a wide-berth for now. Also inserting URLs and images is just not as easy / smooth as on the WordPress editor.

Better use for your cellphone camera: Lilliput-scale animated films

Righ' Ho Luv! Just a wee bit o' milk, nae sugah with me 'ot wa'er..

Remember these guys? Before Futurama, before Southpark, almost before even the Simpsons (a matter of eight days), there was Wallace. and Gromit. The ever-lovable ‘propah’ British chap and his ever-lovable mutt.

Anyway, I’m digressing. The makers of Wallace and Gromit – Award Winning UK Animation House Aardman Animations, have taken;

a) 1 regulation Nokia N8 mobile phone with standard Nokia completely-useless 12MP camera

b) 1 never-regulation, super-cool Cellscope microsopic lens

and crafted the world’s smallest-scale stop-motion animated film:

The girl, called ‘Dot’, is 9 millimeters high.

Watch the ‘making of’ video, which is actually more interesting than the film itself:

This is the second amazing video I’ve come across made from basic consumer electronics. Toshiba’s timesculpture was the other, and still one of the most amazing videos I’ve seen.

While the video is obviously a good plug for the N8, it is even more so an attention-grabber for the Cellscope Lens. Designed at Berkeley, the lens is intended to be mated with a cellphone and used for medical analysis out in the field, far away from laboratory facilities.

More here:

Via betanews and techradar .