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Visualized: KIRFer's paradise
LA lovers of things that Keep it Real Fake, finding your next knockoff might be a little harder than anticipated. The Los Angeles police just busted a warehouse full of knock-offs, things like GiPhones, iPhoncs, PNPs, and Poops. Among all this junk, some $10 million worth, two dudes were found and arrested -- two dudes who had records showing more than $7 million in profits. It seems KIRFing does pay, for a little while at least.
Visualized: Nokia R&D spending, almost 3 times its peers
Our initial reaction to the Bernstein Research chart above is to wonder what value Nokia's massive R&D spending has achieved. Sadly, that's our second and third reaction, too, having spent some time with the company's Symbian OS. Let's just hope all that money was poured into MeeGo or some other megaprofitable ecosystem that it will "build or join" in 2011. Update: Added a snapshot of Nokia's R&D spending from 2007 and 2008 (when the company topped the EU with US$7.24 billion spent on R&D) after the break.
New York subway schedule turned into a beautiful, musical visualization (video)
HTML5, JavaScript and a tiny pinch of Flash. Those are your ingredients for building one of the neatest, simplest websites we've come across in a long time. Conductor, as its maker Alexander Chen dubs it, is a visualization built on New York's publicly available subway schedule API. It shows the progress of the Big Apple's underground carriers throughout the day and garnishes the experience with a delightful musical trick every time two lines cross. You can see it on video after the break or just hit the source link and experience it for yourself.
Visualized: Google's periodic table of APIs
The world of Google APIs and developer tools can be a confusing one, but the company has now at least brought a bit of order to the chaos with its own take on the periodic table of the elements. As you can see above, Android occupies the top spot normally reserved for hydrogen in the actual periodic table, and the remaining APIs and developer products are all grouped into their appropriate categories -- and, of course, linked to their respective websites. Hit up the link below to check out the table in its interactive form.
Visualized: the last glass eye maker in Britain
We'll be the first to admit that there's not a lot of tech in use here -- this is the story of a man using techniques that are hundreds of years old. Still, it's a mesmerizing glimpse into the creation of art with a hugely useful purpose: glass eyes. The video below is a study of Jost Haas, a Londoner who shapes each orb by hand, said to be the last man in Britain who still manufactures them this way. It's a 16mm film shot by Ben Todd and, if you like, you can consider this your five minutes and three seconds of zen for the day. Update: Loudmouthman was kind enough to share this link that contains another video of Mr. Haas in action plus some further information from one of the recipients of his work.
Visualized: the HP Slate's new job
Wondering where your HP Slate has been all these weeks since you ordered it? Well, at least one of those precious Windows 7 tablets has taken a little detour from its supposedly enterprise-centric destiny to make a cameo appearance... as a dashboard infotainment system. HP, in its inimitable wisdom, has decided to grace the opening of its Vancouver store last month with a customized GMC Yukon Denali truck, which is where we find the company's Slate casually showing off its Acrobat Reader and other big boy OS advantages. We wouldn't really say embedding the Slate into your dash is the worst idea in the world, though the rest of the characterful customizations to this Denali just might be. [Thanks, lmwong]
Visualized: the Power Mac G4 clock (update)
What do you do with that once state of the art Power Mac? Well, you could always empty the case and add a "cheap clock mechanism," in the words of our friend Justin -- who emailed us some pictures of his latest creation this morning. But don't forget the Mighty Mouse pendulum: that's what really won us over. Hit the source link for more glamor shots. Update: We just received an email from Justin, who inexplicably left out one crucial detail: this thing plays the Mac startup tone on the hour. Super geeky, or super annoying? We'll let you decide for yourself (although we suspect it's a combination of the two).
Visualized: the state of the smartphone wars
As AT&T's iPhone exclusivity reluctantly teeters on the brink of oblivion, it seems a good time to take one last look at the smartphone playground, the way it is before V-Day. The New York Times has handily done that job for us with the above chart, which simultaneously gives us a sense of scale when comparing US carriers and lays out the concentration of Android devices across those networks. It also shows a big fat bump of iOS on AT&T, making it the biggest carrier in terms of combined iPhone and Android users -- nothing shocking there, but the real fun will be in taking a look at this same data a few months from now. Will the iPhone fragment itself all over the four major networks? Will AT&T's Android stable ever be respectable? Tune in to your next installment of "fun, but mostly irrelevant statistics" to find out.
Visualized: the fate of the most ambitious Soviet-era space exploration project
Project Buran was the USSR's answer to NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia. Unlike its highly decorated American counterpart, however, this child of the 1970s produced only one unmanned space flight during its operation and was ignominiously shut down by Russian authorities in 1993. The remains of this most ambitious (and expensive) effort are still around, however, and have now taken on a layer of rust, weeds and general decay that would make any post-apocalyptic set designer swoon with admiration. It's as beautiful as it is sad, this gallery of failed human endeavor, and you can see it in full at the link below.
Visualized: the glamorous lifestyles of WP7 jailbreakers (update: Geohot crashes the party)
To be a jailbreaker means different things depending on the device that you're busy hacking preinstalled walls from. If you're fiddling with consoles, a legal team would come highly recommended, but if you're tweaking mobile code, at least Windows Phone mobile code, you're in for a much sweeter ride. The ChevronWP7 guys that brought us the first jailbreak of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 are currently in Redmond having a sitdown and a frank exchange of views with WP7 dev experience director Brandon Watson, and the amicable nature of their discourse has been evidenced by the image above. Microsoft is clearly taking a light-hearted and community-friendly approach to handling the (now inevitable) efforts at disabling limitations to its software and we can only congratulate its mobile team for doing so. [Thanks, Tasos] Update: Looks like Microsoft's softie approach really is working. Shortly after the jolly news, notorious hacker Geohot announced on his website that he's going to treat himself to a WP7 device; but before long, Redmond's already reached out to offer him a free handset. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Visualized: when backpacks attack!
We spotted this giant backpack from Everki here at CES and couldn't help but put it to the intern test. Sadly, Sam Sheffer decided to open the backpack and was never heard from again. %Gallery-113447%
Visualized: here's looking at you, fanboy!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to mock the above self-portrait without resorting to obvious jokes about the iPhone needing a bumper, the iPad lacking a camera of its own, or prefixing insults with the letter i. Come on, it's Christmas, let's be a little more like San Diego and keep it classy. For his part, David Polette, the author of this piece, admits to no Photoshop trickery whatsoever, having relied simply on his camera, Apple gadgets, and no small amount of patience to line things up just right. Android users, care to play along as well? [Thanks, David] Update: Ask, and ye shall receive! Tipster Antonio did up his own version of this with a Galaxy Tab and a G2. Check it out below!
Visualized: world's largest neutrino observatory rivals Guatemala sinkhole
Without question, one of the images from 2010 will be the insane, almost incomprehensible sinkhole that emerged in Guatemala earlier this year, but this particular shot from the South Pole does an outstanding job of vying for equal attention. Coming directly from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this is a look into the planet's largest neutrino observatory, which was just completed after half a decade of work with $279 million. The goal? To detect "subatomic particles traveling near the speed of light," and when you have an ice-bound telescope that encompasses a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, well... you've high hopes for success. Will this pipe into the underworld finally lead us to understanding Dark Matter? Will century-old mysteries of the universe finally have answers? Even if not, we're envisioning a heck of an entry fee when it's converted into the world's longest firehouse pole and marketed to affluent tourists who make the trip down.
Visualized: Leica's first digital camera
In 1996, Deep Blue defeated chess grand-master Garry Kasparov for the first time, Dolly the cloned sheep was born, and digital cameras were still out of the reach of most consumers. This was also the year that Leica released its first digital scanning back, the S1. This bad boy was designed for the company's 35mm R-series lenses (with lens mounts for a number of other manufacturer's optics) and captured 1.4-inch square images. And what did you get for your $21,500? A camera that operated at ISO 50 and produced 48-bit (151Mb) image files with "little if any of the artifacting, blooming, and fringing that continue to plague us to this very day," according to B&H. And as one would expect from Leica, it has a design that inspires significant gadget lust. Hit the source link for plenty more photos.
Visualized: Facebook's global reach
If you've ever wondered what a map drawn entirely of Facebook relationships would look like, wonder no more. A Facebook intern by the name of Paul Butler has put together the above image by feeding in location data for pairs of friends, with the white lights representing cities, towns, and hamlets, and the blue streaks between them identifying relationships linking them. It's fun to see large swathes of Australia and South America devoid of Facebook activity, but check out the bit on the map where Russia and China are supposed to be -- is Facebook the most capitalist social network ever or what? Hit the source link for the full-scale image, it gets prettier the closer you get to it. [Thanks, Ian]
Visualized: the real Android fragmentation
It's been staring you in the face all this time. The Android fragmentation that not only threatens, but dooms Google's mobile OS: the buttons are always in different places. How will we ever cope? [Thanks, Drummertist]
Visualized: Tron Armchair redefines furniture art
If you haven't noticed already, Disney (and the rest of the world, seemingly) is going all-out for this year's rendition of Tron. What's potentially better than a cinematical remake? You're looking at it. The Tron Armchair was dreamed up and designed by New York's own Dror Benshetrit, with the seating apparatus officially debuting this week at Design Miami / Art Basel. There's a whole slew of motifs to peek down there in the source link, all of which make "impregnated fiberglass and polyester resin" look about as good as they can. It's a crying shame that no price tag accompanies them, but hopefully that'll change soon. Really soon.
Visualized: a treasure trove of modern design in one amazing Flickr photo stream
Looking for a crash course in modern industrial design? Then you could do a lot worse than the Flickr account of one known only as "afghtiga," who has compiled an amazing photo stream (and seemingly an amazing collection) of some key design touchstones of the past fifty years or so. As you might be able to discern from some of the curves and colors in the image above, there's a particular emphasis on products from the 1960s and 70s, but he does also include a few more recent gadgets, and we won't even begin to mention the number of watches on display. Head on past the break for another taste of what's in store, and hit up the source link below to dive in.
Visualized: iOS has more games than four generations of consoles
This one's strictly in the "just for fun" category of stat comparisons, but the guys over at TUAW decided to do a little headcount of the sheer number of games Apple's App Store has available for consumption. Then, just for fun, they decided to compare that to some publicly available stats on how many games the last 25 years of consoles, both the sort that plug into your teevee and the handheld type, have churned out. Of course, the caveats are plentiful, as there are a lot of duplicates and Lite versions floating about in the App Store (as well as multi-platform games among the consoles), but the general point that iOS has a lot of games on its books is made pretty clearly. Now if anyone wants to document how many Flash games there are for browser-based consumption, we look forward to reading your results in 2013.
Visualized: Sprint's Wisconsin outage prompts primitive warning system
Spotted at a Sprint kiosk in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin's Mayfair Mall -- because, really, what other way can they tell the customer base? Verizon? No thanks. (Also, in case you were wondering, there's apparently a statewide outage.) [Thanks, Kyle K]
