10 Membranes

08/02/2010

» Google's Babel Fish

When I first saw augmented reality apps the first thought was: phwoar! That looks like the future! Cool. No longer are we going to be saddo, 20th century loser n00bs. We’ve got the awesome stuff, like a real live episode of Star Trek, only with better graphics and less space. This is in that category - a service that does in-conversation translation, like Douglas Adam’s immortal Babel Fish that sits in the ear and automatically translates. By marrying Google Voice to their existing and in-development translation software Google executives say a live version could be ready in just a few years. Please, please do this and vindicate all my shameful laziness in not learning other languages. Please.

Link posted at 17:25

Via the Londonist.

Via the Londonist.

Photo posted at 14:48

05/02/2010

» Posterous

What a terrible irony - a link to Posterous, a micro-blogging service that may kill Tumblr. Posterous’ great boast is that to upload content to your page all you need to do is email your account. Sometimes we (you know, us) probably underestimate the barriers to entry even running a tumblelog represent to the techphobic earthlings. Posterous smacks it.

Link posted at 12:08

04/02/2010

Above is a screenshot from the Paul Verhoeven film Total Recall. Featured extensively in the film are none other than full body scanners - the kind that we now see at Heathrow airport. In the world of Total Recall they are ubiquitous, found at the entrance to underground stations and airports alike. Surely this is where we heading now, the logic of infinite terror and infinite security meeting at the gaze of the full body scanner in all public places. Strangely I find the idea less intrusive than the camera overload we presently have: scanners actually do something, and if you didn’t want to be scanned, you could take private transport and so on. That’s not to say scanners are good.

Above is a screenshot from the Paul Verhoeven film Total Recall. Featured extensively in the film are none other than full body scanners - the kind that we now see at Heathrow airport. In the world of Total Recall they are ubiquitous, found at the entrance to underground stations and airports alike. Surely this is where we heading now, the logic of infinite terror and infinite security meeting at the gaze of the full body scanner in all public places. Strangely I find the idea less intrusive than the camera overload we presently have: scanners actually do something, and if you didn’t want to be scanned, you could take private transport and so on. That’s not to say scanners are good.

Photo posted at 13:43

27/01/2010

Anish Kapoor looks likely to win the competition to design an enormous statue for the Olympics, trumping amongst others Anthony Gormley. I am pro-statue and pro-Kapoor so goody. However the news is always accompanied by the claim that the Mittal funded east London piece will trump a Peter the Great statue in Moscow as the tallest in Europe. See above. When I stayed in Moscow in 2008 the statue was opposite my hotel room; at the time I thought it was the most awful and ghastly piece of tat I had ever seen. Looking at again I still think. It’s completely bonkers. It’s tacky, kitsch and colossal. It’s out of place, ugly, a confused mesh of engineering and bad art built to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Russian navy. And thats why one can’t help but quite admire it as well. It’s so big and so bad that it’s good. As long as you don’t have to look at it everyday.

Anish Kapoor looks likely to win the competition to design an enormous statue for the Olympics, trumping amongst others Anthony Gormley. I am pro-statue and pro-Kapoor so goody. However the news is always accompanied by the claim that the Mittal funded east London piece will trump a Peter the Great statue in Moscow as the tallest in Europe. See above. When I stayed in Moscow in 2008 the statue was opposite my hotel room; at the time I thought it was the most awful and ghastly piece of tat I had ever seen. Looking at again I still think. It’s completely bonkers. It’s tacky, kitsch and colossal. It’s out of place, ugly, a confused mesh of engineering and bad art built to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Russian navy. And thats why one can’t help but quite admire it as well. It’s so big and so bad that it’s good. As long as you don’t have to look at it everyday.

Photo posted at 12:09

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