You can do anything with emojis. Revisit your favorite TV shows or condense great works of literature. Like hashtags and GIFs, emoji is a language unto itself. But we’ve noticed this language is lacking some key phrases and ideas. The emoji library is vast, but it still has a way to go. There’s no emoji for hot dogs yet? Get on it! You know what? We’re tired of waiting. Mashable decided to create emojis to fill the gaps. After all, you’d be surprised how often we bring up robots in daily conversation. What new emojis would you want to see? Let us know in the comments. Mashable graphic. Design by Emil Lendof, Illustrations by Bob Al-Greene Homepage image courtesy of Flickr, bobaliciouslondon BONUS: 5 Emoji Meanings That Might Surprise You Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/06/26/missing-emojis/
Mobile Music Touch is a novel treatment for people who have lost sensation in their hands from a spinal cord injury. Not only does it have therapeutic benefits, but it also teaches people to play the piano in the process. Developed by Tanya Markow at Georgia Tech, the MMT is a device consisting of a glove, control box and five small vibrating motors. These have two functions. Firstly, it vibrates continuously and helps restore feeling and mobility to people suffering from spinal cord injuries. Previous studies have shown that vibrations can have a restorative effect, and a recent study with the MMT supports these results. Unlike other therapeutic devices, the MMT is small enough to be worn comfortably for extended periods of time. However, the MMT has a second trick — it teaches music. As music is played, a light-up keyboard indicates the correct key and the MMT vibrates the corresponding finger. A recent study, focused not on piano playing but on frequent wear of the MMT alone, had promising results. “Some people were able to pick up objects more easily,” Markow told Georgia Tech. “Another said he could immediately feel the heat from a cup of coffee, rather than after a delay.” The musical component of the MMT is important, though. For one thing, the researchers found that users who learned songs with the MMT learned them faster. It also gives users more of an incentive to use the device, and a goal to work towards. “Equipment used for hand rehabilitation may seem monotonous and boring to some, and doesn’t provide any feedback or incentive, […] Mobile Music Touch overcomes each of those challenges and provides surprising benefits for people with weakness and sensory loss due to SCI,” said Thad Starner, of Georgia Tech’s Contextual Computing Group. “It’s a great example of how wearable computing can change people’s lives.” While extremely promising, Markow and her colleagues are looking forward to further research using the MMT — expanding it to include MRI studies to observe the effects on patients more directly. “I am No Man” Doesn’t Cut It: The Story of Eowyn Why All Those Sexist Complaints About The New Ghostbusters Movie Are Garbage Study Says Binge-Watching Is For Lonely & Depressed People & Those Who Lack Self-Control The Pirate Bay Has Returned To the Land Of the Living After Two Months This article originally published at Geekosystem here Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/07/18/mobile-music-touch/
A new generation of Retina displays with high pixel densities is now on the market. Unfortunately, that means your website imagery could instantly become ugly and pixelated if you don’t take action. With the introduction of the iPhone 4 in 2010, Apple no longer measured its screens in pixels, but in points. The scaling factor of the screen changed, which determines how a point relates to a pixel. A Retina display now has a scale of two, so one point is equal to two pixels — if you draw a one-point line, it shows as two pixels wide. If you’re imagery isn’t optimized to account for this, your product won’t make a great first impression. Most standard desktop displays fall between 96 to 100DPI, with web-ready graphics normally at 72DPI. However, Retina displays have a much higher DPI (generally acknowledged at 200 pixels per inch, or greater), so the images will look blurry if you don’t make adjustments. It’s therefore essential to ensure your website images are optimized to scale up properly. We’ll cover four approaches to convert your site to Retina, while ensuring its imagery looks great on all devices. If you have found alternative solutions to serving Retina images, please share your recommendations with readers in the comments below. 1. CSS Sprites One method to serve responsive Retina images is to use CSS Sprites. To cater for high-resolution displays, you need two images: a normal resolution (@1x) and a high-resolution image (@2x); this means doubling the number of files, selectors and references in your CSS. However, if you use a CSS Sprite, “you only need to override the link to the @1x sprite file for all the selectors that include high-resolution assets,” says Maykel Loomans, user interface designer at Instagram. This technique reduces network requests and stylesheet file size, an efficient process for creating Retina assets. The CSS Sprite solution, though, is only for assets referenced in your CSS. For the images on your page, Imulus has developed Retina.js, a very useful plugin that checks your server to see if you have any image source with @2x at the end. For example, if you have an image on your page that looks like this: img src=”/images/my_image.png, the script will check your server to see if an alternative image exists at this path: /images/my_image@2x.png. It then automatically replaces images on your page with high-resolution variants. To use it, just place the Retina.js file on your server and include the script on your page at the bottom of your template, before the closing </body> tag. While it is often more time-consuming to produce multiple graphics, the end result produces an optimal file size and is a “future-friendly” approach to development. 2. Retina Images Retina Images is a server-side solution, which serves high-resolution images automatically without double loading resources. It relies on PHP, a modified .htaccess file, enabled cookies and JavaScript. Once set up on your website, all you have to do is create a high-res version of each image you […]
Automaker Renault unveiled a new electric car designed to counter perceptions that eco-friendly vehicles can’t be fun. The Twin’Z, which made its first appearance at the Salon Internazionale del Mobile, echoes naturally occurring forms in its design and can travel as fast as 50 mph. The compact Twin’Z is modeled after more conventional city cars. Image courtesy of Renault Design. Renault decked out the Twin’Z in LED lights that biomimic, or imitate forms and movements that one might see in nature. Image courtesy of Renault Design. Images courtesy of Renault Design This article originally published at NowThis News here Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/06/10/renault-led-electric-car/
Any high school-aged coders with a love for space and NASA out there? Read on. Zero Robotics, a robotics programming competition set up through MIT, is entering its fourth year — and there’s still a day left to register. Here’s how it works: Students can sign up in teams for free on the website. Over the course of the semester, they compete head-to-head with other teams in writing programs — sort of situational, scenario-based challenges. Gradually, the challenges get more difficult. Then, after several phases, finalists are selected to compete in running code for the International Space Station (ISS) — which is broadcast live by an astronaut on board the ISS. Since 2009, the competition has allowed participants to compete in a series of coding challenges through an online platform. “There’s a whole ranking system that tells them how well they’re doing as they’re going through it,” said Jake Katz, co-founder of the competition and research assistant in the Space Stations laboratory at MIT. “And throughout the course of the season, the game gets slightly more complex. They start out in two dimensions and then they will soon, around Oct. 5, be going into 3-D competition — then we add some additional challenges towards the end.” The original kick off for this year’s competition was on Sept. 8. But, Katz said, there’s still a day left to register. “There have been people participating so far, and are already off and running with it, but it’s still possible to join in and make a submission for the first phase,” he said. “We have 75 teams so far, and that’s just from the U.S.” There are an additional 43 teams from 19 other countries, he said. The competition is sponsored by NASA, DARPA, TopCoder, Aurora Flight Sciences, CASIS and MIT. TopCoder, a programming company, designed the platform the games are played on. “In 2009, when we started, we had just two teams competing against each other,” Katz said. “Just two years later, we had about 100 teams from all over sign up.” Check out the promotional video below: What kind of code would you write to run on board the ISS? Let us know in the comments. Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/09/26/zero-robotics-mit/
Disney Research in Zurich, Switzerland, has developed a new process called “Physical Face Cloning” that allows it to create realistic animatronic characters. The technology scans the head of a human before putting the coordinates and expressions into a 3D program. Measurements such as skin and thickness are then used to produce a 3D printed mold of the face before a silicon layer of syntheic skin is attached. The result is a realistic-looking robotic head with accurate expressions and features such as wrinkles. Disney will use the technology and process to produce life-like animatronic figures in its theme parks to add to the realism of the interactive characters. Watch the video below to see the entire process. Image courtesy of Flickr, Express Monorail This article originally published at PSFK here Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/08/17/disney-clones-faces/
In the latest video of our Ask a Dev series, Consulting Architect Conrad Stoll discusses the newest features of the latest iOS upgrade. Our developer experts are from Mutual Mobile, a leading development and design firm that builds mobile strategies for top companies such as Audi, Google and Citigroup. The team is eager to answer your questions about mobile, so ping us with your top queries on Twitter, using the hashtag #AskaDev. Don’t forget to check out our Ask a Dev YouTube channel and subscribe. Read more: http://mashable.com/2014/03/17/ios-7-1-ask-a-dev/
Never afraid to explore the power of web technologies, Grammy-winning rock band Arcade Fire unleashed an interactive music video for “Reflektor.” The video is an open-source Google Chrome experiment that lets viewers use a computer mouse, phone or tablet to toy with the video’s graphics or incorporate their faces into it. People can play with the flashy video effects in the Chrome experiment or on this explanatory website. Director Vincent Morisset filmed the footage in Haiti. The video follows “a young woman who travels between her world and our own.” Two of Arcade Fire’s previous videos used code, as well: 2010’s “We Used to Wait” took your childhood home address, and personalized the experience with Google Maps, while 2011’s “Sprawl II” again tasked viewers to direct by using a webcam or mouse. Here are some details about the web tech used for “Reflektor”: Arcade Fire also released this entirely different, non-interactive version of “Reflektor”: Image: JustaReflektor Read more: http://mashable.com/2013/09/09/arcade-fire-reflektor-video/
History of Windows Startup Sounds 1. Microsoft Windows 3.1 Startup Sound Back in 1992, 3.1’s startup sound was jarring and unpopular. This prompted Microsoft to create a more aurally pleasing version for its next operating system. 2. Microsoft Windows 95 Startup Sound In 1994 Microsoft asked Brian Eno to create a piece of music that was (in his words) “inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental [and] emotional.” The resulting seven seconds — about twice as long as Microsoft’s initial brief requested — has made tech history as a recognizable “sonic logo.” 3. Microsoft Windows NT Startup Sound In 1996, Windows NT 4.0 revealed a fresh, futuristic sound. Legend has it that the shutdown sound played the startup sound backwards. 4. Microsoft Windows 98 Startup Sound Microsoft audio producer Ken Kato is credited with the creation of the Windows 98 sound. 5. Microsoft Windows 2000 Startup Sound Microsoft tinkled the ivories with its professional “2000” operating system. 6. Microsoft Windows ME Startup Sound The consumer-aimed “Millennium Edition” shared the same audio. 7. Microsoft Windows XP Startup Sound The startup chime (and other system sounds within XP) are based on live orchestral recordings. Composer Bill Brown worked with Emmy-award winning sound designer Tom Ozanich to create the audio. 8. Microsoft Windows Vista Startup Sound The Vista startup sound was a collaboration among progressive rock guitarist Robert Fripp, record producer, musician and composer Tucker Martine and Microsoft’s own engineer (and musician) Steve Ball. In a blog post, Microsoft described the tune as having “two parallel melodies played in an intentional ‘Win-dows Vis-ta’ rhythm,” with four chords — one for each color in the Windows flag. 9. Microsoft Windows 7 Startup Sound Finally, Windows 7’s default startup audio is the same as Vista’s. Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/10/24/windows-startup-sounds/
MakerBot CEO Jenny LawtonJenny Lawton took a somewhat circuitous route to the helm of 3D printing leader MakerBot. Before joining the company as “Head of People” in 2011, Lawton spent ten years in retail, running her own bookstore in Greenwich, Connecticut. And though physical book selling might appear the polar opposite of 3D printing, which takes digital ideas and makes them physical, Lawton told me she learned a lot in the “down and dirty” retail business. “Retail is tough, tough work,” said Lawton and her bookstore taught her valuable lessons about small business, inventory management and the critical nature of customer relations. Lawton was able to layer that knowledge on top of a rather rich and impressive background in startups and technology. The 51 year old Quantico, Virginia, native studied applied math at Union College before going to work at the MIT in the late 1980s. In 1991, Lawton (along with Christopher Caldwell) launched the Web consulting firm Net Daemon Associates and rode the Internet wave (they created Monster.com) and subsequent bubble right up to the 1999 burst when Lawton sold the company to Interliant. After that, Lawton spent a couple of years in venture capital. Then 9/11 happened. It was, for Lawton, a pivotal experience. She been living what she called a “a go-go” lifestyle. After the terrorists attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, Lawton took stock and thought, “Hey, there’s a different way to do this.” Her love of reading led her to buy the bookstore and build it into a community based service. “I can’t tell you how cool it is to turn a kid onto reading.” A different passion Now, however, Lawton is turned on by the sound of 3D printers and whenever she gets to bring kids into her home to show them any of her five 3D printers in action. She’s also excited about the future of MakerBot, even if the short term does not include new 3D printing hardware. “I am happy to say that we’re not going to be launching new hardware products at CES,” said Lawton sounding gleeful. She told me that MakerBot introduced five new products at CES 2014, including a giant $7,000 3D printer capable of printing 10 objects at once. All that hardware leaves MakerBot with lots of work to do on many fronts, including solidifying the ecosystem and polishing the projects that are still just rolling out to customers (the mini started shipping in May.) “We really feel like they need time in the market. Next year is not the year of hardware: Focus on ecosystem and material space,” said Lawton. In other words, MakerBot’s new smart extruder will likely take the company well beyond printing with tradition 3D printing materials like the biodegradable PLC. Growing up A little more than a year ago, MakerBot was acquired by another 3D printing company, Stratasys. Little has changed since then, with the notable exception of the company leadership. Over the summer, MakerBot Co-Founder and CEO Bre Pettis […]
