Symbol
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Land art reminds you to maybe go offline sometimes
Leon Keer, a Dutch pop-surrealist and land artist, has created a simple but monumental piece with a very clear message. Conceived for the Vision Art Festival in the Swiss alps of Crans-Montana, 'offline' anamorphic land art, will make visitors do a double take when they see a WiFi symbol seemingly floating in mid-air at the pristine resort.
Elder Scrolls Online offers new guild heraldry
If you're excited for August's Elder Scrolls Online upcoming update, then today's ZeniMax devblog will be a welcome one... though not one that promises sweeping changes for the game. Specifically, the new post previews some of the new symbols that guilds can adopt as their official crests. "You'll probably recognize some of them, like the symbols for the Divines and the Daedric Princes," write the developers. "Combine these with even more crests, a huge color palette, and different tabard shapes, and your guild will have its own memorable look." We've included the images below. See one you like?
Breakfast Topic: What's your favorite WoW symbol?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. I play Alliance now, but I started out as a Horde player. I have pride for both factions, but I think I will always have a preference for the Horde. They're very diverse to me. The Alliance seems so humanoid-centric: You have humans, you have dwarves (who are squat humans), you have gnomes (who are even smaller humans), and you have worgen (who are shape-changing humans). It could just be cynical me. I think my most favorite thing about the Horde is their symbol; it's unique, it's bold, and no one outside the game will know what it is if they don't play. It's a great emblem for a shirt, jewelry, or body art. I just can't get as excited about the Alliance symbol. I love cats large and small, don't get me wrong. But it just looks like it belongs to a family crest or on a shield. I wouldn't sport it on my clothing or pay for the body art. That symbol just doesn't evoke the same pride as the Horde symbol. To be honest, I like the Argent Crusade or Silver Covenant symbols more than the Alliance lion crest. Granted, the Alliance get the lion mount, which is awesome ... but that's going on a tangent. Do you take pride in sporting your faction symbols? If not, what changes would you propose to make them better? What are your favorite faction symbols in WoW?
The Noun Project: public domain pictograms for designers, the illiterate
OK, this might not be much to look at -- a page full of Dingbats, essentially -- but the premise behind the Noun Project is sound and, in this increasingly complex world, important: by creating a visual collection of downloadable public domain symbols representing things like escalators, fast food, and customs checkpoints, the website hopes to promote a visual language "that can be understood by all cultures and people." And since we're sticklers for good, clean design, projects like this are especially dear to us. Hit up the source link to see for yourself.
Gilneas flag revealed
Every faction and major city has its own flag and crest, and of course we figured that goblins and worgen would be no exception to this rule come Cataclysm. We haven't seen the goblin one yet, but it looks like Blizzard may have just revealed the worgen flag in promotional materials for their fifth anniversary celebration! As seen in the photo above, featured in Kotaku's 5 Years of WoW article, the flag looks ... a lot like the Quake III logo, upside down. But, of course, it also looks a lot like a clawed hand, which makes sense. And it's also a red and yellow circle on a black background, which is the classic worgen eye color scheme. It's worth noting that this isn't the same design as the Warcraft II Gilneas flag, but that makes sense given how much change the kingdom has experienced. Looks pretty neat. Hopefully we get a full crest like every other faction gets, too. The blood elf and draenei crests were so cool that it'd be a shame if these new races didn't get one. We're counting on you, Samwise. And while we're on the subject, it's just about time for you to update the official Cataclysm site, isn't it, Blizzard? World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Alliance insignia inexplicably on a t-shirt
Reader Vid is from Croatia ("the homeland of Niko Bellic from GTA IV," he says), and he sent us this t-shirt he found in his closet. He's had it for a few years, but just recently noticed the emblem sitting on the chest pocket -- if it makes you want to grab your sword and fight the Horde, you're right. It's a slimmed down version of the Human Kingdom of Lordaeron symbol (although most of Lordaeron is now held by the Forsaken, but no mind -- the blue and gold are a widespread symbol of the Alliance).Of course, how that symbol ended up on a cruise t-shirt, Fordragon knows. If the Lordaeron insignia is a reference to any real symbol in real life, we couldn't find it. Vid says the patch wasn't added by him, and it's been on the shirt since he owned it. Interesting -- either someone at S&A is a Warcraft fan, or there's a real-world link here we're missing. That's a nice t-shirt you got there, cousin!
Latest Motorola MC70 blessed with GPS
It's been a tick since Motorola / Symbol's MC70 saw a notable refresh, but today Moto is announcing that the newest version of its rugged Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA) will boast GPS capability. The firm claims that this addition will allow organizations with field-based employees to "track and manage dynamic, real-time tasking, as well as verify specific locations of activities and provide mobile workers with pinpoint navigation support to improve location-based productivity." Additionally, the device will still include barcode data and signature capture, WWAN, 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth, and should be available for sale worldwide in Q1 of 2008.
Motorola's Symbol MC35 coming to AT&T
Motorola and Symbol bring us a new device that fits solidly in the would-have-been-way-cooler-last-year segment. While this device packs a huge array of features into a fairly compact 185 gram device, the feature set is lacking any 3G connectivity, ROM capacity is 128MB rather than 256MB, and it comes flavored with Windows Mobile 5, not 6. Featuring a 416MHz CPU, touchscreen, quad band GSM plus EDGE, WiFi, USB 1.1, Bluetooth 1.2, 2 megapixel cam, and integrated GPS, the handset does pack the goodies -- but with a couple tweaks it could have become a showpiece for AT&T. We do, however, love the fairly big 2.8 inch display and that sweet-looking QWERTY keypad, but it just isn't enough to make our hearts sing. This handset is aimed solidly at the business set, but with other kicking Windows Mobile devices in the stable, is it a case of too little, too late? There is no word on pricing, but we can expect this handset to appear sometime in April.[Via MobileTechReview]
The MC35: a Symbol for the masses?
Symbol's handsets, while plenty rugged and capable for everyday use, don't exactly meet the... uh, aesthetic requirements demanded by average folks carrying smartphones around as part of their daily routine. Enter the MC35, a rumored Windows Mobile Pocket PC coming down the pike for a possible January launch. If the blurry picture we have here resembles the final product, it looks like Symbol is taking a sharp turn in the direction of form over function -- but no worries, corporate users and Symbol fanboys -- it should pack pretty much all the typical goodness you'd expect from a Symbol. The company is apparently billing it as a "durable, lightweight... all-in-one enterprise communication device" with integrated GPS, VoIP, and push-to-talk. Foreign-language and WiFi versions will be following shortly after the plain vanilla variant launches.
Symbol and Palm OS part ways
Where has the love gone? Symbol Technologies, a company that once enjoyed a very tight relationship with Palm and its platform, has officially announced that it will be dropping Palm OS from its lineup in January. For the record, there's no evidence to suggest Symbol's acquisition by Motorola played a role in the decision; rather, it was apparently based on shortages of required components, Windows Mobile's (arguably) superior feature set for the target demographic, and Symbol's understanding of Access' roadmap for the platform. The last two Palm-based products to roll off Symbol's assembly line will be the (Palm III-based!) SPT1550 and SPT1800 -- both of which have seen their heydays come and go. Get 'em while you can, folks.[Via The Inquirer]
Publicly useful information to be beamed in Seoul via RFID
South Korea is bringing the heat yet again, and this time we're seeing the "first ever 900MHz RFID" services that can provide product, traffic, and other pertinent information directly to your RFID-equipped cellphone while out and about. If you're not totally freaked out about Big Brother being able to tell precisely what you're looking for on your mobile at all times, Alien Technology and U-IT have developed a mobile RFID pilot aimed squarely at business-to-consumer (B2C) scenarios. The team plans to implant the voyeuristic chips into "products from Symbol Technology" next year, and initial information is being offered about movies, wine, bus routes, and other publicly useful tidbits. The idea is to install RFID chips in all 70,000 taxis cruising around Seoul in order to give customers convenient access to the data they crave, and if all goes well, additional intelligence will be added concerning "medicines, food, and social relationships," while "travel and tourist related info" should be live in July 2007. [Via CNET]
Symbol's invincible MC70 Pocket PC phone
She may not be pretty or pocketable (and "invincible" might be going a bit far), but unlike your typical consumer-grade Windows Mobile device, Symbol's beefy MC70 is probably going to handle the occasional drop, dunk, toss, or burn. The quad-band GSM / EDGE handheld comes equipped with your choice of Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Premium or Phone Edition, 802.11a / b / g plus "comprehensive VoIP support," Class II Bluetooth 1.2, and -- being that this is a Symbol device and all -- the obligatory barcode scanner, all sitting atop a crazy fast 624MHz PXA270. Of course, we're suspecting everything-proof smartphoning doesn't come cheap, but for the accident prone among us, it does have a certain strange appeal.[Thanks, Cristian P.]
Graffletopia
OmniGraffle is fantastic. Its useful, shiny, and it allows me to show people what my thoughts look like visually, even if it scares them a bit. Perhaps one of the most useful applications of OmniGraffle is for plotting out infrastructure of some kind; network maps; flow charts; company hierarchies. The only issue with OmniGraffle out of the box is that it comes with a fairly paltry selection of symbols and shapes to use when creating your masterpiece. Is that purple square the Executive VP of Finance, or is it the refrigerator in the break room? Lucky for those of us too lazy to go looking for images on our own, Patrick Crowley of iCalShare has setup Graffletopia, as site dedicated to OmniGraffle stencils. (A stencil is a collection of reusable images or symbols.) Some of the stencils available are amazingly well done, and include such specific categories as Cisco network switches and Sun server hardware. All stencils are provided free of charge, and users are encouraged to submit their own.
Mini OEM laser projection display
Symbol has been pushing their mini laser projection displays since 2002, but while those earlier models could only pump out 16 shades of gray at VGA resolution, Symbol says their new model can display full color XGA resolution images and HD-quality video (although if it's XGA, it ain't exactly 1080p). Not suprisingly, the technology's creators see virtually limitless applications for the technology, from handheld micro projectors to laptops to cellphones and PDAs to automotive dashboards -- it'll also do your laundry, make your coffee, and wash the dishes when you're done. Symbol hasn't said exactly how much these will cost (not that you can buy them anyway), but they do say that'll be competitive with comparable LCD displays when purchased at high volume.[Thanks, Steve]
