via mashabletech on twitter

How did the universe begin? The Big Bang is traditionally envisioned as the moment when an infinitely dense bundle of energy suddenly burst outward, expanding in three spatial directions and gradually cooling down as it did so.

Now, a team of physicists says the Big Bang should be modeled as a phase change: the moment when an amorphous, formless universe analogous to liquid water cooled and suddenly crystallized to form four-dimensional space-time, analogous to ice.

In the new study, lead author James Quach and colleagues at the University of Melbourne in Australia say the hypothesis can be tested by looking for defects that would have formed in the structure of space-time whenthe universe crystallized. The universe is currently about 13.7 billion years old.

“Think of the early universe as being like a liquid,” Quach said in a statement. “Then as the universe cools, it ‘crystallises’ into the three spatial and one time dimension that we see today. Theorized this way, as the universe cools, we would expect that cracks should form, similar to the way cracks are formed when water freezes into ice.”

If they exist, these cracks should be detectable, the researchers said, because light and other particles would bend or reflect off of them as they trek across the cosmos.

via mashable on twitter

Astronomers have discovered the universe’s most ancient spiral galaxy yet, a cosmic structure that dates back roughly 10.7 billion years, a new study reveals.

The galactic find, discovered by researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, comes as something of a surprise. Other galaxies from such early epochs are clumpy and irregular, not strikingly symmetrical like the newfound spiral, which broadly resembles our own Milky Way.

“The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding,” study lead author David Law, of the University of Toronto, said in a statement. “Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design’ spiral galaxies simply didn’t exist at such an early time in the history of the universe.”

via allthingsd on twitter

In NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters, workers were hustling Friday to transform the “Saturday Night Live” sound stage into a command center for coverage of the 2012 Olympics Games.

Much of this is familiar territory for America’s No. 3 network. NBC has broadcast nearly all the summer games to the U.S. audience since the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, making it one of the network’s crucial franchises.

Workers at NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ soundstage prepare for the broadcaster’s coming Olympics coverage.

But in many ways, this summer’s London Olympics will be a monumental experiment for network television in the digital age.

Executives of the network, which was taken over last year by Comcast Corp., have decided to do away with the old formula of keeping big events under wraps until its prime-time evening broadcast. Instead, every Olympic event will be available live online for cable and satellite subscribers, who will be able to select events from a menu at nbcolympics.com.

At stake is the billions of dollars NBC paid for U.S. broadcast rights and hundreds of millions in advertising revenues in an audacious bet that viewers will still come to the network at prime time.

NBC has called the Olympics its “billion-dollar lab,” a chance to figure out how to sate a modern audience with the right balance of online and broadcast TV. “There are traditionalists who say, ‘This will cannibalize us,’” said NBCUniversal chief executive Steve Burke in an interview. “But I think we’re in a world that is so fragmented, you want to do everything you can.”

The strategy is as risky as a relay handoff. By presenting every Olympic event live online during the day, the network is gambling they will still draw enough viewers to its taped replays of the day’s glories during evening prime-time broadcasts, when big advertisers have bought their commercial time.

Read full article… 

via engadget on twitter

We’ve seen research that suggests prolonged space travel could have some adverse effects on the human body, but it looks like there could be some real benefits as well. As BBC News reports, a new study conducted on Caenorhabditis elegans worms sent to the International Space Station has revealed evidence that the trip to space actually slowed their aging process. Specifically, researchers from the University of Nottingham and others institutions part of the ICE-First project found that the time in space reduced activity in a group of genes that have been shown to prolong the worms’ lifespan when suppressed on earth. Of course, these are worms we’re talking about, but this particular species is often used for such research due to its biological similarities to humans, so the discovery could well lead to more insight into how we age in space as well. Those curious can find the full paper linked below.

Thanks to Cole Abaius at Film School Rejects for posting Ted’s tweets:

  1. Set the agenda.
  2. Beware of their unexpressed agenda.
  3. Use passion to open doors.
  4. Find your community and activate.
  5. Create tools now for use later.
  6. Be honest in your communication.
  7. Walk on a tightrope with conviction.
  8. Be strategic.
  9. Don’t ask for permission.
  10. Embrace the fullest definition of cinema.
  11. Help people envision themselves as a force of change.
  12. Know the someone you make the movie for.
  13. Find a way or make one.
  14. Let the audience ripple wider.
  15. Create atmosphere of inevitability.
  16. Must have great intention.
  17. Be authentic to yourself.
  18. Be distinct in the marketplace.
  19. Make sure you have friends to support you emotionally.
  20. Look beyond the feature film form.
  21. Support each other.
  22. Do your research.
  23. Build a coalition.
  24. Establish your brand (what makes you unique).

Source: nofilmschool.com

There’s work and there’s your life’s work.


The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you’d never compromise on. That you’d sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don’t come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end.


They want their work to add up to something. Something big. Something that couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Welcome to Apple

(via thingsilikeon)

1st spotted via honor harger on twitter

This past week NYC hosted another string of art fairs: the first US installment of London’s Frieze, as well as several accompanying ancillary fairs, Pulse and NADA, which always seem to spring up around the behemoths, flocking like moths to the proverbial flame. It was barely two months ago that the city welcomed the annual Armory Show, which came with its own entourage of some half-dozen smaller fairs, and this, in a city that New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl calls “a permanent art fair, with hundreds of galleries conveniently clustered in a few neighborhoods.”

It’s no secret that recession or no recession, the art market is alive and well, thriving in fact, and bordering on bloated. Each week seems to bring yet another headline about a work of art going for record sums at the auction houses. And yet, despite the gluttonous feast, the digital arts remain almost uniformly absent from the dinner table. It seems no one even bothered to invite them to the party.

The digital arts (AKA New Media Art, tech art, net art, interactive art, or whatever other moniker you want to use—we’re talking about artistic works that are using digital technology as an essential part of the creative process) have long been the red-headed stepchild of the art world. Though the first computer art exhibitions were staged back in 1965, some 55 years later, the digital arts remain as much an outsider in the contemporary art world as ever, forever denied access to the secret clubhouse.

In part, it may be their own fault. Rooted in hacker culture and borne out of the conceptually-minded 60s, the digital arts carry the anti-Establishment gene, reveling in opposing and working outside the system. They shunned the galleries and championed art for all, making the internet their gallery. They snubbed the conservative traditional art fairs and created dozens of media art fairs that, to this day, seem to take place every other weekend across Europe. The work, being largely founded in code, is immaterial and difficult to sell and conserve, stumping art dealers and collectors. Since many of the pieces rely on computers and projectors, they’re often difficult to exhibit as well, especially for curators and exhibition designers who may not be used to working with so much tech. And since the technology they use is often experimental, or utilized in an experimental way, the pieces themselves can often be finicky, crashing and stalling, needing constant attention lest they overheat or freeze up.

The problems with digital art are many, and yet its outsider brethren—performance art, video art and street art—have somehow managed to transcend similar limitations. Performance art, in particular, is experiencing something of a heyday at the moment, even though it’s arguably even more immaterial and conceptual than digital art. New Yorkmagazine art critic Jerry Saltz speculated in his recent cover story on the new rules governing the art world that this is reflective of a fundamental shift—it’s now “in” to be “out.” In the current moment, it’s cool for your work to reject the market and be difficult to collect, and nobody wants to admit to being the Establishment anymore.

If that’s the case, then the digital arts should be the new “IT” trend. And yet, they remain on the shady outskirts, relegated to niche DIY spaces and relying on the generosity of fellow artists and friends, brands and (in Europe, at least) government-funded grants and commissions.

What will it take for a sustainable digital arts market to form? Is that even a possibility? Can the digital arts make money? And will they ever be incorporated into the contemporary arts dialogue at large? These are the questions we’ll be exploring this week with a series of guest articles, interviews, profiles, and essays that will examine the current status of the digital arts market and speculate on what needs to change for it to evolve.

Forget Instagram’s billion-dollar payday. Forget IPOs, past and future, from Facebook, Groupon, LinkedIn and the like. And ignore, please, the online ramblings of attention-hungry venture capitalists and narcissistic Silicon Valley journalists with the off-putting habit of making their inside-baseball sound like the World Series. Their stories, to paraphrase Shakespeare, are tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, but signifying very little about the impact of technology on most of our lives.

- Paul Smalera, via soupsoup, reply via rickwebb

While this is probably directed to my ilk, I take no offense. Most people, including myself, don’t particularly know what they’re talking about with this deal. And we’re all guessing on the future impact of technology.

But do feel compelled to point out to you that the Facebook-Instagram deal is significantly bigger than the World Series by every conceivable measure: economic, number of people effected, societal, cultural. The most profitable world series ever raked in about $50 million in ad revenue and attendance revenue: 1/20th the economics of this single deal. The largest viewership ever totalled 25 million: 1/40th the number of people involved this deal. Americans spend about 12 times more time per year on Facebook than they do watching even a 7 game series. Even in terms of games, Zynga makes forty times more money per year than the World Series does. Most of that is on Facebook. Though sadly they do not have a baseball game yet.   

With all due respect, the World Series is child’s play compared to this deal. A poor metaphor.

(via rickwebb)

Source: soupsoup

@mikeambs took a Vicodin then proceeded to tell me a rambling story of how he may or may not be related to Colonel Sanders.

- via @funshine on twitter

Ha ha, okay, yes, this does sound a little strange - but it’s not completely a drug-induced fantasy :P It is true, I am in no way related to the actual Colonel Sanders, still, I am related to man who was paid by KFC for many years to come to restaurant-openings dressed to the T as Mr Sanders. I have pretty vivid memories from when I was young of going to Florida and playing in the front yard of his home, which was more a plantation-styled mansion than a home. Even when he wasn’t doing openings he was dressed as the Colonel. He also owned a chain of Dairy Queens I guess; and was a Green Baret in his younger years. Interesting man. 

via DigitalTrends on twitter

Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive — the man behind the iMac, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad (to name just a few) — has given a rare interview to the London Evening Standard. And while Ive doesn’t offer any trade secrets, or reveal what Apple has in its pipeline, the design virtuoso does provide some unique insight into the world’s most profitable electronics company.

“[M]ost of our competitors are interesting [sic] in doing something different, or want to appear new — I think those are completely the wrong goals,” says Ive. “A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us — a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. Committees just don’t work, and it’s not about price, schedule or a bizarre marketing goal to appear different — they are corporate goals with scant regard for people who use the product.”

In other words, if a consumer electronics company wants to achieve Apple-level greatness, it must stop reacting to its competitors by releasing “just another” tablet, or smartphone, or laptop, simply because others are doing the same. Creating a better product is the reason Apple owns the tablets space: Because nobody else has made a better iPad. Sure, there are devices with tighter specs, or more attractive price tags (though even that is up for debate, now). But no other company has released a tablet that gives the majority of users a better experience than the iPad. And doing so is the only way to break Apple’s stranglehold on tablet market — something that’s obviously far easier said than done.

In addition to this daunting insight, Ive also explains why, unlike so many other companies out there, Apple doesn’t use focus groups to fine-tune their products.

“We don’t do focus groups – that is the job of the designer,” says Ive. “It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.”

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