Category Archives: Designer

Application Transferance

Facebook is killing it this week.

App Links are Facebook’s new tools, attempting to make it easier for developers to link other applications from their own apps. For instance, if someone tapped on a post from Tumblr in their Facebook feed, they would be taken directly to the Tumblr app rather than a mobile browsing window. This kind of programming exists, and has been called mobile deep linking, but it’s not easy to use since many apps interact in different ways on different platforms in relation to each other.

Using the open-sourced App Links, developers can code the links directly into the guts of their web page, taking a user directly from one app to another without having to login to the other app or getting booted to a mobile page. It’s all about streamlining the process, and helping mobile applications interact seamlessly with each other.

What Sparks Our Fire: Solving a major problem and open-sourcing the solution.

What apps would you like to see linked to each other in this way?

Old Masters, New Tricks

3_Andy_Warhol_Venus_1985_AWF

The lost work of Andy Warhol has come back to light. Created only with mouse and screen and never set to paper, creations by the infamous artist have once again seen the light of day, thanks to reverse-engineered software and some custom hardware.

4_Commodore_Amiga_computer_equipment_used_by_Andy_Warhol_1985-86

These Warhol originals were crafted on a Commodore Amiga 1000 computer in 1985, and demonstrate the earliest attempts at creating art on computers. Never before had such a feat been attempted, much less by an artist who had spend years refining a brush and canvas approach. “Warhol saw no limits to his art practice,” said Eric Shiner, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum. “These computer-generated images underscore his spirit of experimentation and his willingness to embrace new media — qualities which, in many ways, defined his practice from the early 1960s onwards.”

2_Andy_Warhol_Campbells_1985_AWF

These works were found on Amiga floppy disks, added to the Andy Warhol collection in 1994, but its only recently that curators realized the disks may hold more than just dusty old Gallaga games.

We’ve also found a digital database, Artsy.net, that provides easy access to a variety of Warhol’s work, exhibitions, and exclusive articles.

What Sparks Our Fire: Finding forgotten works by talented artists on old computers may be the way generations of the future discover great works of art left untouched for years.

What do you think of these newfound works?

Power Play

I have an iPhone 4S with a battery that barely lasts five hours. Because of that, I need to carry an extra rechargeable battery with me at all times. It’s bulky and I hate it, on top of which it takes forever to charge, somewhere between 20 minutes to a half-hour, and only to about 50% capacity.

Israeli startup StoreDot plans to use nanotech to solve the charge speed problem. A video released by the company shows a phone going from next to no charge to full charge in slightly less than 30 seconds. It works via nanodots, which are minuscule bio-organic conductive crystals that basically allow a greater amount of charge to pass through them faster than was possible with conventional tech.

The charger is still in prototype, but The Wall Street Journal has reported production is planned for the latter part of 2016. They hope to refine the device, which looks sort of like a laptop charger, for an industry that “is not ready for it,” CEO Dr. Doron Myersdorf said. “We are talking about a new type of materials that can be introduced into different types of devices.”

What Sparks Our Fire: Fast and comprehensive charging technology, helping us to waste less time.

Do you think this will solve the battery issues facing most smartphones today.

Creative Dissipation

Have you ever needed to hide your body heat from others in order to avoid detection?

infrared-vision

If you answered yes, you’re either in a Predator movie or you’re an elite soldier. If it’s the first, we hear mud works. For the rest of you, the Army has got something for you that isn’t a convenient plot device.

In a world where the enemy can be looking for you with everything from binoculars to infrared night vision predator drones, it pays to be hard to see.  A revolutionary suit developed by Raven Aerostar breaks up the heat waves emanating from a body, effectively rendering it invisible to infrared detection devices.

Gobble-suit-2

The body heat of soldiers did not become a giveaway until very recently. In general, most insurgents couldn’t afford the kind of tech that lets you see in the dark the way the US Army does. However, with recent advances there’s now an app for that, and any guy with a cheap thermal sensor can pick out the enemy from thousands of yards away. This suit, called the Nemesis turkey suit, negates that advantage, keeping soldiers hidden and saving lives. The suits are available through Raven Aerostar or the U.S. General Services Administration, and are currently being tested for military service.

What Sparks Our Fire: Something that actually hides heat signatures that isn’t made up for a movie.

Do you think this is a relevant line of research and development?

Heart Healthy

A heart beating outside of a body in a vat of mystery liquid seems like an old pulp horror story. But not today! Today it’s life-saving science!

617279868812423086

 

Or at least it will be in 10 to 15 years. That’s a rabbit heart, kept beating with a revolutionary electronic membrane that was custom-fitted to it via 3-D computer imaging topography taken of the heart while it was still within the rabbit.

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis created this flexible and stretchy circuit-lined membrane, which in the future may be used as a minimalist, bespoke internal defibrillator for people with heart conditions.

Additionally, the device functions as an artificial pericardium, which is the natural membrane which covers the heart. According to materials researcher John Rorgers, “But this artificial pericardium is instrumented with high quality, man-made devices that can sense and interact with the heart in different ways that are relevant to clinical cardiology.”

It’s alive! IT’S ALIIIIIIIIVE!!

What Sparks Our Fire: Live-saving heart healthy technology.

Do you think this is a good improvement to existing internal defibrillation products?