The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project — is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth, collecting critical data to improve our understanding of long-term climate change and short-term weather conditions. With NPP, NASA continues many key data records initiated by the agency’s Earth Observing System satellites, monitoring changes occurring in the atmosphere, oceans, vegetation, ice and solid Earth.

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/sets/72157627439487497/with/6760135001/

Noupe is a rad inspiration and tutorial website for all aspects of design and photography. I know we’ve seen quite a few of these, but I thought some of them were really smart!

Free on the Appsore, this app allows you to create interactive ebooks for the iPad!

Keynote interface with widgets to rate, build questions and play with content included.

Would be rad if we could pull off an ebook before the other preso companies

More details:

Now anyone can create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books, and more for iPad. All you need is an idea and a Mac. Start with one of the Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. Add your own text and images with drag-and-drop ease. Use Multi-Touch widgets to include interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote presentations, 3D objects, and more. Preview your book on your iPad at any time. Then submit your finished work to the iBookstore with a few simple steps. And before you know it, you’re a published author.

Apple-designed templates
• Give your book a great beginning with templates that include a choice of page designs with matching fonts, colors, and textures
• Easily customize your book with text and images, create new layouts, and even save a custom template
• Use the Book Navigator to organize your book and add a cover and table of contents

Beautiful text and layouts
• Use a variety of text styles in each template to give your book a rich yet consistent look
• Add text, shapes, charts, tables, and media anywhere on the page
• Import a chapter written in Pages or Microsoft Word and apply a great-looking layout from your current template
• Add any word to the glossary with a single click and easily include photos, images, charts, tables, and shapes next to any definition
• Automatically create a portrait view of your book, which allows readers to focus on the text

Multi-Touch widgets
• Choose from a variety of widgets that add Multi-Touch interactivity to your book
• Add a photo gallery, chapter review, movie, Keynote presentation, interactive image with callouts, 3D object, or custom HTML anywhere in your book
• Widgets include placeholders for titles and captions and are automatically numbered so you can reference them in your main text
• Add accessibility descriptions to any widget so that it can be used by sight-impaired readers easily with VoiceOver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LWu26ZtUeA&feature=share

#Rich The mechanic of this video is brilliant, it’s also well worth a watch for content alone: http://t.co/tjtAlF4j (via Greggles)

Sony has done a rad series of 3 web clips that demonstrate the power of projection mapping, effectively turning a plain white room into the “holo-deck” that Trekkie geeks have been waiting for!

Check them out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrgWH1KUDt4&feature=relmfu
here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_cKsOe7hLI&feature=relmfu
and here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ1KaYEBe5U&feature=relmfu

If this is real, the market for white paint is about to explode!

Put yourself into the habitat where you want to thrive

The guys at Brighttalk had this webinar a few weeks ago. It’s a little slow but if you have the free hour or so, it really is quite good. There are a lot of fundementals in the beginning that I think we sometimes ovelook and there’s some pretty cool tips and stuff towards the end. Grab the popcorn and enjoy!

Very well done content in relation to the topic – http://bootstrappingdesign.com/

The book is not out yet, but it aims to teach the basics of design using design.

Download the 5 point cheatsheet below:

design_critique_cheatsheet

Greg “Jos” Joswiak is part of the product marketing team who brought us the iPod, the iPhone and the iOS. Safe to say he knows about marketing. And he shared the following 4 things that made Apple successful:

Focus—”It means saying no, not saying yes. We do very few things at Apple. We are $100bn in revenue with very few products. There are only so many grade A players. If you spread yourself out over too many things, none of them will be great.”

Simplicity—”Make complex things simple. A lot of people think it means take something simple and leave it at its core essence. But it isn’t that. When you start to build something, it quickly becomes really complex. But that is when a lot of people stop. If you really know your product and the problems, then you can take something that is complex and then make it simple.”

Courage—”Courage drives a lot of decisions in business. Don’t hang on to ideas from the past even if they have been successful for you. You don’t build a product just because everyone else has one. ”

Best—”If you can’t enter the market and try and be the best in it, don’t enter it. You need that differentiation. At Apple if we can’t be the best then we are not interested in it.”

It is ok to make mistakes, but do not make daft ones – W

Thomas Suarez speaks at TEDxManhattanBeach

Thomas Suarez is a 6th grade student at a middle school in the South Bay of Los Angeles. When Apple released the Software Development Kit (SDK), he began to create and sell his own applications. “My parents, my friends and even the people at the Apple store all supported me,” he says, “and Steve Jobs inspired me”. Thomas points out that it’s hard to learn how to make an app. “For soccer you could go to a soccer team … but what if you want to make an app?” He’s started a club for fellow students at school, where he shares his knowledge of programming. Thomas articulates his vision that students are a valuable new technology resource to teachers, and should be empowered to offer assistance in developing the technology curriculum and also assist in delivering the lessons.

We need to work out how we can make these. As it stands now, it seems like you’d need the entire GE budget to create them, but for the right client…

The other thing I love about this video is the ‘unexpected moment’. Check out 1:10 and 4:45 to see what I mean. Even with the awesomeness of the technology, they put in little moments (that cost nothing extra) to add that ‘Holy shit!’ moment. We need to be doing that more often, too.

Watch the entire thing if you’re really into industrial engines.

GEnx Theatre – 3D Holographic Presentation from Musion Systems on Vimeo.

Awesome music video from an group of Asian dudes. Click here to check it or click the pic