Lovely not-warning signs

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Love these encouragement signs that create delight by subverting expectations.

They work in two simultaneous and complimentary ways:

1. Our expectation that at National Trust properties lots of things are probably restricted and that we should conduct ourselves in a reserved English manner.
2. Clever visual design that makes them seem like they're about to prohibit something expected (photography, playing, use of mobile phones) where in fact on second look, they're encouraging it. 
   

The full set can be seen in situ here, and presented by the agency that created them here: The Click Design Consultants (warning, contains horizontal scrolling).

Fabergé Fractals

Tom Beddard makes incredible 3D fractals with software he designed and built.

Here's a couple from a collection called Fabergé Fractals: 

The software will be available at fractal.io when it's ready. You can see it in action here on YouTube.

Here's an awesome one from another collection: 

You can find tons of other incredible generative art he's made on his Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/subblue/

A punctuation mark slash word

Love this piece on new uses of the word slash.

Finally, a student asked, “Why are you so interested in this?” I answered, “Slang creates a lot of new nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. It isn’t that often that slang creates a new conjunction.”

[...]

The emergence of a new conjunction/conjunctive adverb (let alone one stemming from a punctuation mark) is like a rare-bird sighting in the world of linguistics: an innovation in the slang of young people embedding itself as a function word in the language.

The interesting thing is that the word isn't just used to offer up alternatives -- i.e. serving a similar function to its namesake punctuation -- but also to connote ​'following up', e.g.

Really love that hot dog place on Liberty Street. Slash can we go there tomorrow?

The whole thing is well worth a read if any of this seems interesting...

Slash: Not Just a Punctuation Mark Anymore

The curious case of the Xbox One

I am both a lapsed core gamer, always willing to be drawn back to the fold for the right new release, and a modern consumer of video on demand with a fully fledged media PC (alongside the Xbox 360) under their 50" plasma. 

In other words: I am even more the target market for the Xbox One than most hardcore gamers whose palpable outrage I've been reading since the press conference yesterday.

And yet, even assessed on charitable terms, the focus on broadcast TV seems anachronistic to the point of absurdity.

As Rob Fahey puts it:

a business strategy which in five years time will probably look about as wise as launching a game console that plays VHS tapes

In fact, Rob sums up my thoughts perfectly in that piece over at Gamesindustry.biz:
After an awful start, Xbox One must redeem itself at E3

Long, but well worth reading.

Nothing the Xbox One proposes to do is new either. On the integrating-cable-TV front, Google TV has tried and failed at this before already. And when it comes to controlling your TV through voice and gesture, who hasn't had a go?

Rob Crossley at C&VG:​

It's as though Microsoft has wilfully ignored that Siri and other voice command gimmicks, and QR codes and other camera-based technologies, have flat-lined despite their comprehensive promotion.

Including Microsoft themselves of course, with the Kinect. Control systems need to be responsive and accurate above all else - until voice/gestures are accurate and appropriately ignore false inputs >99.99% of the time, they won't catch on. Maybe the Xbox One has solved the problem, but I'm sceptical.

If you didn't see the conference, here's a brilliantly edited summary that sadly really does sum up, in the correct proportions, the key elements of the presentation:

​Bring on E3.

Holland vs. Sweden - tourism videos

Going by these two recent attempts, I'd say Holland is winning the propaganda war... although Sweden's is considerably crazier.

​These are both pretty good / bad, but if you only have time for one, the Swedish one is the one to watch.​

Holland. The Original Cool.​

Swedish Smörgåsbord​ - the propaganda song that hosts of the Eurovision song contest are allowed to use to sell their nation.