Surrey is a developing city with a huge potential.
Surrey should develop an awesome masterplan to guide it in its development throughout the coming years, decades, and centuries.
Some great examples of masterplans that I have looked over in the past year include Curitiba, Brazil; Greensburg, Kansas; and various cities around the world. Check out the innovative approaches that Curitiba and Greensburg have taken/are taking!

UPDATE
I've realized that I didn't clarify that a Masterplan is a comprehensive outline for the urban planning of a city.

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Pretty sweet technology allowing 360 degree, navigable, video. Similar to Quicktime3D, but with video. I'm interested to see what the possibilities will be. Live 360 degree streaming web broadcasts? It would be like you were right there at the show~



www.yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com

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For those of you unfamiliar with Prism, I will keep it short and let you read the rest on their website. Mozilla Prism is a piece of software (based off Firefox and which is also available as an Addon to Firefox) that allows you to create a desktop web-application of your favorite web service.

This is a great way to isolate a service, such as Gmail, to be its own application and running separately from all your other Firefox windows, with its own process. I especially like it this way because Gmail will tend to bog down my browser and take up a lot of memory. Now I can just restart the Gmail webapp instead of restarting all of my browser windows.

But back to Prism. Yeah, its great. It produces a lightweight version of Firefox to client the web service. It also supports the ability to have Addon Extensions. They generally work exactly the same as Firefox extensions but with a few differences here and there. By default Firefox extensions wont work for Prism, they need to be altered.


One of my favorite Firefox addons is Greasemonkey. It allows you to have your own custom js scripts to modify webpages to the way you want to view them. I wanted Greasemonkey to be a part of my Gmail webapp, because I have a script that modifies the layout to make room for the Tasks pane. Unfortunately you can't just simply install the default Greasemonkey addon to Prism.

So with the help of this article on Prism extensions and how they differ from Firfox's, I was able to modify the current version of Greasemonkey to make it installable into Prism.


However, after some more searching online, I found teramako's version of Greasemonkey for Prism. This version is much better tweaked for Prism than mine. It has a new method for adding scripts better suited to Prism and got the Greasemonkey status icon working. The only drawback about teramako's version is that it hasn't been packaged in an xpi for install, so its rather un-userfriendly. So for the convenience of others, here is a packaged xpi of teramako's Greasemonkey for Prism:

teramako's Greasemonkey for Prism
My crappy version Greasemonkey for Prism

[UPDATE]:
Here is an updated xpi of teramako's addon. Version 0.8.20090811.2.
For future reference, if you guys want the latest version, you can easily create your own xpi of the addon. Just download all the files from the latest build on teramako's site and use your favorite zip program and add the files to a zip file, then rename the .zip extension to .xpi


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Bill Verplank's definition of Interaction Design


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After seeing some examples of Augmented Reality Applications, most using the new iPhone 3GS, it has gotten me excited.
Here is an example of a shooter game and a real-world subway navigation system:


These are amazing! I would really love the chance for me to be able to create an Augmented Reality Project.

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HOME is an amazing film of our home, Earth, with absolutely beautiful panoramas and cinematography! ... its amazingly beautiful, and with a message too~
The full HD video is used to be availble on youtube, but not anymore. Please check out the trailer - in HD!


For more, check out: http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject

UPDATE: The full 720p HD Home documentary is back up here

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The Node is a pretty cool power bar / power outlet design.
Node Power Outlet Makes Power Strips Almost Useless
Node—a power outlet that can accept several cables safely—may be the power outlet of tomorrow


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Heres a blog post all about dealing with feedback as designers.
http://sixrevisions.com/project-managem ... ty-killer/


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In New York, a former elevated railway gets turned into a park! : High Line Park!

An awesome example of urban re-purposing of derelict or unused space. Turning an overpass or existing structure into something new can be amazing feats of urban design.



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Cool Tools: Ikea Nail-Driving Utensil
A review of Ikea Nail-Driving Utensil (Brilliant free knickknack), a Cool Tool


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Harvesting the Wind
Three young French designers hatch an ingenious plan to use existing infrastructure to create clean energy

A great design concept of modifying existing towers that hold up high voltage power lines to make clean, sustainable, wind electricity!

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This is for everyone who has a laptop.
If your not interested in details, scroll to the bottom for the simple guides for prolonging your battery.
I would kinda ignore the recalibrating one (esp with Asus). But I'd add this one: Don't discharge the battery past 30% (at most 20%).
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

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Here are some answers - Some peeves that I must point out, things I must clarify to you, or answers to questions that are often discussed around me. I will periodically add and update to this list over time.

+ The word you should be using is Contemporary, not Modern. 'Modern' design, is something else - its a cultural movement.
+ Interdisciplinary, is a discipline that exists in between that of other disciplines, crossing traditional boundaries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdisciplinary

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Huzzah.
I posted earlier, a few months ago, some slides from presentations at the Interaction'09 conference put on by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). They have recently uploaded their videos of the talks from the conference online. Check them out at http://library.ixda.org/ or on their Vimeo profile. Great videos - very enlightening!


Although, I was watching their discussion panel on hiring the next gen of Interaction Designers, and was deeply surprised that they didnt mention SIAT in their discussions. They talk about needing more (10,000) Interaction Designers, how current programs are small and can only output 15 students a year in small two year programs; they talk about Bachelors and Masters in this field; they talk about how they need people who have the ability to work with people from different fields and can do design thinking. SIAT, who by the way HOSTED the conference, has almost 800 students at present with graduates since 2003, offers full Bachelors, Masters, and PhDs, and produces amazing students who work hard and are great designers, and amazingly talented. Everything they were talking about was right in front of them.

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Today I watched a screening of Gary Hustwit's film Objectified about industrial design and the design of everyday objects.

First thing I learned:


Japanese toothpicks are an amazing piece of etiquette design!
In the movie, Andrew Blauvelt revels that the ends of these toothpicks can be broken off. Why? Well first to simply indicate that they toothpick has been used. But also it can be used as a rest to keep the tip of your toothpick hygienically off the surface of the table. Awesome.

IDEO was working on a toothbrush design to make toothbrushes less disposable and more sustainable. Something that 'gets better with time' and is infinitely reusable. That one wooden handle looked nice, I wouldn't mind trying that out.

They talked kinda briefly about Interaction Design, with Bill Mogridge. But only briefly skimmed it and not explaining it to anyone. Afterwards during the Q&A with the director, Gary was hinting that he is thinking about a third design documentary (first was Helvetica, second is this one, Objectified). I hope his next film will delve into Interaction Design.

My favorite quote from the film:
[As a child,] All of my dreams were about the future.

I don't remember who it was by, perhaps Karim Rashid (but I generally find him too elitist).



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