This time last year I was finding my feet during my first week living in Beijing. I can hardly believe it’s been a year since that fateful adventure and at the same time I’m pining to get back out there. There is something very alluring about the adventure of living somewhere which is so foreign (for want of a better word) and developing at such a fast rate.
That said, I don’t particular envy my friends in China right now suffering severe snow blizzards and ice storms. What makes it all the more worse is that the bad weather has come just as the time people are heading off for the annual spring festival. For many migrant workers this the only time of year that they have the chance to head home and see their families which for some is now an impossibility. Many have been stuck at rail stations for days.
If you are unlucky enough to have got caught up in the chaos you may want to check out this innovative mashup map service Google has created to show the current weather and transport across the country. [via]
If anyone is looking for a highly-motivated English-speaking business analyst/technologist/project manager in China please get in touch!
If you follow the various social news networks (Digg, Reddit etc.) then you will probably have read about the “war” being waged online against a certain creepy cult (evangelised by an equally creepy actor) by a loosely organised group called Anonymous. What really stood out for me is their rather effective “press releases” on YouTube. Complete with monotone computerized voice, ominous rolling clouds and militaristic soundtrack these guys certainly know how to set the tone:
Awesome. Part 2 here. Good luck with exposing the cult for what it is.
Edward Tufte, undisputed master of information visualisation (described by The New York Times as “the Leonardo da Vinci of Data”) and PowerPoint hater extraordinaire, has posted a very interesting article and video about the interface design of the iPhone [via]:
“The iPhone platform elegantly solves the design problem of small screens by greatly intensifying the information resolution of each displayed page. Small screens, as on traditional cell phones, show very little information per screen, which in turn leads to deep hierarchies of stacked-up thin information–too often leaving users with “Where am I?” puzzles. Better to have users looking over material adjacent in space rather than stacked in time.”
He makes some interesting observations about the user interface and offers some advice for areas which could possibly be improved. The main point which resonates for me is that Apple have, arguably for the first time, solved the problem of displaying information on a small screen in a way which is intuitively useful to the user. By removing “computer administrative debris” (e.g. scroll bars) and introducing interaction by touch, pixel-wastage is reduce - “content is the user interface; the information is the interface”.
The fact that mobile internet has been a failure up till now can be directly attributed to poor interface design (and to a lesser extent bandwidth). It looks like that’s all about to change.
Key takeaway: “To clarify add detail; clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design“.
There can never be any substitute for going somewhere “in the flesh” but there are times, for obvious reasons, when you can’t go there in person or you want a taste of where you’re going before you depart. With fast connections becoming ubiquitous, richer and more immersive online maps are growing in popularity and diversity. Most people are familiar with the big players in the west (Google, Yahoo, Live etc.) here are a few you may not have heard of but provide a unique virtual experience:
Captures some amazing 3D walkthroughs in North America and Asia using 2D photos stitched together combined with GPS data which you can wander through as your own pace or be “driven” through on autopilot. Transitions between different areas in one location is especially impressive with the environment rushing past you (ala Hyperspace). I particularly liked the Forbidden City and Great Wall captures in China which is all the more surprising considering how tight the Chinese authorities usually are in allowing the capture and use of geodata within its borders. A friend of mine who worked at a large online mapping company in Beijing told me that, whilst they had all the satellite images to be able to provide a service like Google Maps, they were not allowed to use them for reasons of “national security”…
Take a virtual tour of Shanghai (and 21 other cities in China) rendered Sim City style - seriously cool! A part of me can’t help feeling sorry for the people at Edushi (short for E-City in Chinese) who must have had to painstakingly draw this but the result is surprisingly compelling. The maps appear to be ad supported and rather depressingly even have dedicated buttons to show your nearest MacDonalds/KFC - don’t you just love globalisation? Even if you can’t read Chinese the maps are well worth a look, even if it’s just to check out the shear audaciousness of it all!
More virtual panoramas from China allowing you to step through some high-res 360 degree imagery from a plethora of locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Jinan and Wenzhou. Similar to Google Maps Street View you can navigate within the environment in some areas allowing you to take virtual walks, just try to avoid being run down by the crazy drivers! I like the way it presents a traditional map next to the image also highlighting your angle of vision.
Also worth checking out are Panoramas.dk for some amazing Quicktime VR and the Google Sightseeing blog which highlights some of the more quirky discoveries on Google Earth. Do you know of any others worthy of a mention?
Eurostar, the high speed train which runs under the English Channel (through the Channel Tunnel) between London and Paris, has recently relocated to St. Pancras International station in London (from Waterloo). It’s grand new home, celebrated for its Victorian architecture and often termed the ‘cathedral of the railways’, features heavily in a recent TV advert for the service which clearly draws heavy inspiration from another classic (in style, if not in substance at least):
The Eurostar AD (2007):
Koyaanisqatsi (1982):
For an iconic film which so few people know of, but had such a deep impact on the way we viewed the world, it’s nice to see this little homage (complete with Philip Glass soundtrack). Even though purists may see this as denigrating the originals’ artistic integrity isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
From a purely marketing perspective it definitely gets the right message across.
More video segments from Koyaanisqatsi after the break…
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