http://alignedleft.com/blog Exploring digital culture and dynamic media Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:15:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A new game called [Rolando](http://rolandogame.com/) has been announced for iPhone. I don't totally understand what's going on in the video above, but it looks a lot like the [Phun](http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki), the ingenious-yet-silly physics experimentation app that Jason and Elaine have mentioned. Maybe this developer took the Phun engine and ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/07/a-phun-like-game-on-iphone/ I recently got my invitation to join the beta test of Fire Eagle, a new location-tracking service from Yahoo. Now, technically, it doesn't "track" where you are, but rather, when you *tell* it where you are, it listens, and then shares that information with other online applications that you ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/07/yahoo-always-knows-where-i-am/ Although Comic Sans is typically misused when trying to make signage and flyers appear friendlier, I actually love it here in this ATM interface. The user experience of most ATMs is so poorly designed that the fact that this ATM's creator gave at least an ounce of thought to ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/comic-sans-atm/ Since posting on [the origin of the Apple key](http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/the-origin-of-the-apple-key/), I dined at an establishment that found a completely new use for that command propeller symbol: http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/command-propeller-separator/ I was about to run out to the store for some tomatoes, hoping to make my first batch of summer gazpacho, when I remembered the salmonella outbreak. I checked [the FDA's website](http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html) for the status, and encountered these photos: The first thing that I noticed is that these look like ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/criminal-tomatoes/ I'm sure everyone and their mothers have already blogged this, but here are the lingering questions I have following today's WWDC keynote: - A new remote "erase" feature was alluded to during the enterprise portion of the presentation. How will this work, and who controls it? If I'm late ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/iphone-3g-unanswered-questions/ My last project of the semester was a response to the concept of *gesture*. This is my second-ever installation-ish piece, and it was well-received. When someone moves in front of the camera, the motion is detected and represented on-screen as the spinning of hundreds of tiny discs. ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/gesture-project/ *Image source:* [Jason Michael](http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonmichael/1973910/), [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/) Most keys on a keyboard make intuitive sense, even to a novice computer user, since nearly all of them are labeled with either familiar symbols (such as letters or numbers) or with recognizable words (enter, delete, escape). The Apple key, ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/the-origin-of-the-apple-key/ I finally made it out to Mass MoCA, and I have to say, my favorite piece, far and away, was, of course, text-based. Jenny Holzer's "[Projections](http://massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=339)" features two *enormous* projectors set at either end of a blacked-out warehouse space, pointed at each other, and throwing text across every surface ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/text-is-the-best-at-mass-moca/ Now that I'm looking for innovative uses of SMS, I see them everywhere -- even on yogurt containers. This recent Stonyfield Farm lid suggested I send a text message to get climate-related information on a company, so I did: > **SENT TO 30644:** cc stonyfield farm > **RECEIVED REPLY:** Climate Counts ... http://alignedleft.com/blog/2008/06/company-climate-change-info-via-sms/