Instructable user Steve Mosely built this amazing kinetic marble track around the top of his youngest son’s bedroom. Check it out:
If you’re interested in building one for your kids (or for yourself!), Steve gives all the instructions you need right here.
News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s international media giant, is reportedly working on an iPad-only newspaper that won’t exist in printed form.
Murdoch’s main involvement in online technology to date has been putting some of his leading titles behind a subscription-only “paywall”, making the newspapers available to paying users only. So far that project has attracted customers but, even with the increased attractiveness of a focused audience for advertisers, it doesn’t appear the subscription fees have made up for the loss in ad revenue of shutting out the vast majority of site visitors.
The precise details of the new project vary depending on the source. (If you think journalists are gossipmongers, you should see the way they talk about their own industry.) The most consistently reported points are that it will be known as The Daily, be produced from the company’s Manhattan office, and debut in December or January.
The newspaper — if you can call an electronic-only product a newspaper — is said to have a staff of 100 and a start-up budget of $30 million. It will syndicate some content from other News Corporation titles, but most of the material will be original. Reportedly readers will have to pay either 99c a week or $50 a year, though the latter figure makes little sense as a subscription discount.
Apple’s involvement in the product, if any, appears to have been talked up through the rumor mill. One British newspaper referred to reports that Steve Jobs was a “major fan” of Rupert Murdoch, which sounds unlikely from a purely political perspective. That somehow became enhanced in other reports until it was being rumored that Apple engineers were helping out on the project to ensure not only compatibility, but that the newspaper made full use of the technology.
There are also conflicting reports about whether the publication will be available on other tablet devices. Even if that does happen, I’d expect it to come after the launch, simply because of the need to produce separate applications.
As fascinating as it will be from a technology and journalism perspective to see a title designed specifically for the iPad rather than adapted from print, for me the numbers simply don’t add up. The $30 million budget is the equivalent of 600,000 annual $50 subscriptions. Depending on how the budget accounts for running costs, that could of course be, for example, met with 200,000 customers over three years.
But even that would be 2.6% of the entire iPad audience worldwide. Take into account that 21st century newspapers traditionally aim a specific audience, either geographical or political, and it’s hard to see how — even with whatever advertising the project can raise — such a project can turn a profit any time soon. Then again, when your company has assets of more than $50 billion, such matters aren’t always a major concern.
For those living in the San Francisco area, this awesome laser cat mural is located at the old Harding Theater on Divisadero street. It looks like it recently went up because it wasn’t there when the Google Street View car last passed by this area.
[Via Laughing Squid]
[Via 9gag]
If you’re unfamiliar with the trend of “multi-track” a capella, allow me to explain. A number of YouTubers have been uploading videos of themselves singing all four parts of a barbershop quartet, recording one part, then recording a second part and so on, mixing them all together in on video.
This can get downright ridiculous, for example, François Macré created sixty four tracks to cover Michael Jackson’s Thriller in a capella.
There’s a very talented multi-track artist by the name of Julien Neel, also known as Trudbol on YouTube and Reddit. A number of his videos have been featured on Reddit’s front page recently, and between his renditions of “Everybody wants to be a cat” and “Let me call you sweetheart,” I was very impressed.
One song which has been covered by many a capella groups – as well as Julien Neel – is the song from the Simpsons, “Baby on Board”
Not only was this covered by Julien Neel, but also by another multi-track artist on YouTube, a woman whose online handle is “gwenatav.”
After hearing the two versions of the song, I thought to myself: Certainly if they can synchronize themselves, I could synchronize them to each other!
As it turned out, it wasn’t quite so easy. There were slight differences in timing and tempo which meant I had to alter Gwenatav’s part slightly, cutting out moments of silence so the two would sync up. Since choppy video would be unacceptable, I had to do my best to match up what I could – compounded by the fact that Gwen’s video was recorded in 25fps and Julien’s at 30fps. That said, I’m happy with the results, which you can play here:
You can also view Julien’s original video here and Gwenatav’s here.
Geeks are Sexy reader Peter wrote in today to let us know about one of his friends’ home made Doctor Who-inspired gift wrap rolls. At $22 for 6 feet, they’re a bit on the expensive side, but don’t forget folks, these are hand made products… plus, what geek wouldn’t love to receive his gifts wrapped in paper like this?
Tired of always going back to the desktop or the start menu to open your system’s Windows system properties window? Here’s a quick way to do it: Hold the Windows key of your keyboard down, and then press the pause / break key. Voilà!
We’ve already featured Debbie Goard’s amazing cakes on [GaS] in the past, and since we did last time, she released A LOT of awesome new ones on her flickr account. So for today, we’ll just post up this absolutely awesome Lord Vader cake and let you check the rest over at her flickr photostream.
“Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidence, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.”
