Google maps meets SIMcity

http://gizmodo.com/5313575/honey-someone-shrunk-hong-kong

This over bearing resemblance to SIMcity graphics offers perhaps a taster of the area GoogleMaps could advance to.

Obviously street map offers the possibility for actual images of houses, buildings, roads etc, so perhaps the cartoony style sampled in the article could be swapped for realistic images but still, it adds another dimension to maps.

It actually makes me want to look at the city in detail, it brings life. This in the least would be great for tourism.

And on reading the new .net, it appears somebody has started doing close ups of cities: New York Aerial Virtual Tour and Syndey. Superb, hi def shots. It feels as if we're being spoilt after becoming used to the slightly weaker satellite images from Google maps.

It's like interactive Planet Earth.

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Image compression tool - smush.it

Although broadband speeds are increasing and the Government proposes 2MBPS for everyone, it doesn't do any harm to compact the files that you want people to see online.

A great tool available for image compression is smush.it. You install it, direct it to your site's images either by uploading or providing URLS and it outputs your smaller images in a zip telling you how much data has been saved.

In fact, a great article in .net issue 192 offers advice and incite into the whole topic of web compression and features smush.it.

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To the moon

We Choose the Moon seems to be an official launch site to celebrate 40 years ago since man landed on the moon.

What I like about the site is that it adds in modern technologies - you can add a widget in Facebook or your desktop which acts as a countdown for when the rocket will launch.

You then also have a twitter update indicating the status of the mission, i.e. what the astronauts are doing.

Lastly, it is all in real time, so you will be able to see how far away from the earth it is, at what speed it is flying, at a particular time. This takes away some of the simulation feeling that technology tends to over subscribe us with nowadays, where we now expect to fast forward and rewind at our discretion. Instead it is "real time" + 40 years, giving it a realistic feeling and providing more impact.

Again, this is an example of technology on the screen replicating real life stuff. It makes history alive and exciting... (for some).

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Students marketing HP

HP - invent from Tom and Matt on Vimeo.

I can't decide whether it's real printing in a stop motion kind of way or post production effects but still, it's got a catchy music track and appears eye catching with the motion of the lines/shapes and colours. And what's more, it came from students.

It kind of reminds me of the sauce advert which reuses bits of clip with a set sound to build an ensemble tune.

I think it's the rhythm of the sounds that draw us in as humans.

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