Today is Election Day in the U.S. and we are once again reminded that voting is a right. (It is not a privilege as our highest elected official stated just this morning.) Over the last week or so we’ve come across some interesting sites worth sharing. First, if you need to know where to vote go to Vote411.org. For an interesting experience in viewing the results, there is an election mashup that combines Google Earth and Google Maps (CNET has the story). It…
Flash is a great technology for presenting information to the user in an interesting, fun, functional and predictable way. It’s installed on nearly every internet-capable machine on the planet, and it’s perfect for deploying a rich media-driven experience. Despite its advantages the system has several noticeable drawbacks. Current cross platform support is uneven (although Flash 9 promises support for Linux, Mac, and Windows), textual content is displayed using a flash-specific renderer (native OS/WM text support is more functional, IMHO), and…
The video interviews we conducted at the Future of Science Conference in Venice, Italy are now available on the Tech Museum’s Understanding Genetics site and on iTunes as a video podcast. We discussed issues surrounding human evolution and genetics with Peter Atkins, Daniel Dennett, Marc Hauser, and Ian Tattersall. Along with traveling to Venice, one the great pleasures of this project was preparing for the interviews. All four of these scientists are accomplished authors and I can enthusiastically…
The Association of Science-Technology Center’s (ASTC) annual conference starts this weekend, hosted by the Louisville Science Center (pictured right). This year I’m co-presenting, The Next Wave: Emerging Internet Technologies at Museums with Bryan Kennedy, and Kevin von Appen.
Shelfari (Beta, of course) is “a virtual shelf to show your books” and “connect with your friends.” It’s an interesting concept and parts of it are well done, although some the limitations in organizing your shelf became apparent soon after I began to add books. It would be great to be able to reorder, or otherwise create categories (in ways other than using opinions or star ratings), but perhaps this is in the works as this site only launched this month. Our shelf…
As the Web has evolved, so has our portfolio. I’ve always believed that a strong portfolio site not only demonstrates our capabilities, but also reflects our approach towards design and technology. This is our fifth portfolio site in less than seven years and while it is never easy to find the time to redesign, we’ve always managed to squeeze it in between projects. There were several motivating factors at play here for this redesign. First, as screen size has grown over the last few years…
This Sunday the third Mayan World Alive! event will be held, this time in San Rafael, California at the Pickleweed Community Center. The event is free. (The previous two openings were held at the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco and the Governor’s palace in Merida, Mexico). This cultural event and exhibit will feature activities, music, dancing and a photographic exhibit showing some of the photographs we took for the Traditions of the Sun project last year. NASA’s website has more on the traveling…
Yesterday we interviewed Daniel Dennett and Ian Tattersall, here at the Future of Science Conference. Both interviews, I’m happy to say went extremely well and as I mentioned in a post yesterday, they will be available on the Tech Museum’s Understanding Genetics website and through iTunes as a video podcast. Yesterday, I attended a press lunch in which many of the speakers answered questions. Interestingly, there was an extended discussion on intelligent design and some debate about how…
We’re scheduled to interview Ian Tattersall and Daniel Dennett later this afternoon! (All of these interviews will be available in coming weeks on The Tech Museum of Innovation’s Understanding Genetics website.) As I mentioned in my last post, Ian Tattersall is the curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He’s also the author of several books. I’ve been reading Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness, which is fascinating. Some of the subjects covered in the book…
