7 Image Search Tools That Will Change Your Life by Maria Popova What martinis have to do with reverse art lookup and obscure German calendars from the 1990’s. Although Google has been playing with some fun image search toys in its lab and the official Google Image Search has recently significantly upped its game, some of its most hyped features — color search, instant scrolling, hover preview — are but mere shadows of sleeker, better versions that geekier, more sophisticated image search tools offer. Here are seven of our favorites. oSkope is a visual search assistant that lets you browse images and products from popular sites like Amazon, eBay, YouTube and Flickr in a highly intuitive way. You can skim thumbnails related to your search keywords and save search results from different services to a visual bookmark bar at the bottom of your browser screen. Thanks, Amrit! CompFight is a Flickr search tool tremendously useful for all your comp stock image needs but also doubling as a visual inspiration ignition engine. Share on Tumblr
Life Path - Sarah Berchild 2 Flares Twitter 2 Facebook 0 Google+ 0 Pin It Share 0 1 2 Flares × Life Path – Sarah Berchild Fifty things I've learned about the literary life | Books | The Observer From time to time, this column is asked for advice, sometimes obsessively, about decoding the many mysteries of "the world of books". There's a widespread view, held by those looking from the outside, that there must be a philosopher's stone for success in literature, a magic formula that will turn everything to gold. The truth is much closer to Thomas Edison's definition of creativity: "1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." So this is not an advice column. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. Finally: anything goes. Happy Christmas!
‘App gap’ emerges highlighting savvy mobile children You’ve heard of the digital divide, but how about the app gap? That’s the new term coined by Common Sense Media, which conducted a study looking at the amount of time children under the age of 8 are spending in front of screens. The study found that there is a growing rift between children from wealthier families who spend more time involved in mobile apps and lower-income children who are more involved in traditional TV watching. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco, surveyed almost 1,400 parents and found that 47 percent of families with incomes more than $75,000 had downloaded apps for their children, while only 14 percent of families earning less than $30,000 had done so. The study also found the following: TV is still the most popular choice for occupying the time of children. The app gap would seem to be extension of the digital divide as lower-income families take longer to embrace certain technologies because of cost considerations.
Frontiers of Innovation Launched in May 2011, Frontiers of Innovation (FOI) focuses on the work of a community of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, philanthropists, and experts in systems change from across North America. The goal of FOI is to bring about substantially improved outcomes for vulnerable young children whose needs (or whose caregivers' needs) are not being fully met by existing policies and programs. To do that, FOI seeks to spur change in the field by forging cross-sector collaborations that prompt creativity, support experimentation, and foster learning from experience. FOI’s work draws on science, including advances in the biological, behavioral, and social sciences, to: identify reasons why children’s development stays on track or goes off course;devise theories of change about how to produce better outcomes; anddesign and test new intervention approaches and measure their effectiveness in reducing barriers to learning and strengthening lifelong physical and mental health.
Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Tips on How to Write a Great Story By Maria Popova The year of reading more and writing better is well underway with writing advice the likes of David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and various invaluable insight from other great writers. Now comes Kurt Vonnegut (November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007) — anarchist, Second Life dweller, imaginary interviewer of the dead, sad soul — with eight tips on how to write a good short story, narrated by the author himself. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.Start as close to the end as possible.Be a Sadist.
Say Hello to Learning Interface Design "So what do you do?" asks the aging hipster in the faux retro tee. "Oh, me? From university webinars and "Mathletics" in schools, to corporate eLearning, to spelling apps, learning has gone very digital. In order to go from user interface design to learning interface design, we need digital designers who have a sophisticated grasp of educational theory and educational psychology insofar as these can be applied to the design of interface and media elements. Designers all over the world have been engaging in learning interface design (without calling it that) for projects such as employee training or educational technology, relying on tried-and-true design principles, instinct, experience, and the shared knowledge of interdisciplinary teams. We haven't yet put a name on this speciality and it’s not just a style issue. So why the fuss? It goes beyond usability. That's where a new sub-discipline needs to zip in to save the day with a new wave of specialist designers.
Gallery · mbostock/d3 Wiki Wiki ▸ Gallery Welcome to the D3 gallery! More examples are available for forking on Observable; see D3’s profile and the visualization collection. Please share your work on Observable, or tweet us a link! Visual Index Basic Charts Techniques, Interaction & Animation Maps Statistics Examples Collections The New York Times visualizations Jerome Cukier Jason Davies Jim Vallandingham Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Peter Cook Charts and Chart Components Bar Chart Histogram Pareto Chart Line and Area Chart Pie Chart Scatterplot and Bubble chart Parallel Coordinates, Parallel sets and Sankey Sunburst and Partition layout Force Layout Tree Misc Trees and Graphs Chord Layout (Circular Network) Maps Misc Charts Miscellaneous visualizations Charts using the reusable API Useful snippets Tools Interoperability Online Editors Products Store Apps
MetaMaus: Inside the Making of the Comic that Made History by Maria Popova Why comics? Why mice? Why the Holocaust? Twenty-five years ago, beloved comic artist and editor Art Spiegelman published Maus: A Survivor’s Tale — his cult-classic comic book about the Holocaust based on the biography of Spiegelman’s father, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 and paved the way for comics as a medium for nonfiction. Today, Spiegelman releases the highly anticipated MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus — a fascinating look at the thinking, tinkering, and creative process behind the making of the iconic comic. The book seems to loom over me like my father once did, and journalists and students still want answers to the same few questions: Why comics? The book comes with a digitized reference copy of The Complete Maus in the form of a bonus DVD, linked to a deep archive of audio interviews with his survivor father, historical documents, and a wealth of Spiegelman’s private notebooks and sketches. Share on Tumblr
Interface Design Guidelines Marshall G. JonesNorthern Illinois University Email: mgjones@niu.edu James R. Research in the area of user interface design for computer-based learning environments (Jones, 1993) found that screen and interface design should be considered at the same time during the design and development process. Names for some of the concepts were taken from an analysis of the literature in computer-based instruction (CBI), computer-based learning environments, and human computer interaction (HCI). Further research is being conducted to determine how designers and developers can implement these guidelines. Concepts Of User Interface Design Browsing (Jones, 1989; Laurel, Oren, & Don, 1992). Browsing allows for the flexible exploration of the content of the program through a variety of controls. Changes in State (Nicol, 1990). Animation, movement or other visual effects used to provide users with a visual cue that a particular action is taking place is known as the concept changes in state. Control Types
Curriculum Vitae -PDF- by ~dizzia on deviantART Inside the Creative Process of Cut-Paper Storyteller Béatrice Coron by Maria Popova Slicing the different layers we’re made of, or what an 18th-century French statesman has to do with the MTA. Béatrice Coron has been a shepherdess, a truck driver, a factory worker, a cleaning lady, and a tour guide. But today, Coron is one of the world’s most remarkable cut-paper artists. I first encountered her astounding artwork on New York’s F train last year and was thrilled to see her take the TED stage this past spring. In life, and in paper-cutting, everything is connected — one story leads to another.” ~ Béatrice Coron My inspirations are very eclectic. The stories, they have a lot of possibilities, they have a lot of scenarios. Charming, thoughtful, and relentlessly inventive, Coron, with her blend of indiscriminate curiosity and focused creative voice, is a true inspiration. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. Share on Tumblr
How Online Innovators Are Disrupting Education - Jason Orgill and Douglas Hervey by Jason Orgill and Douglas Hervey | 8:26 AM November 4, 2011 Four years ago Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen predicted that online education would take off slowly and then hit everyone by surprise: the S-curve effect. And indeed, while it initially grew slowly, online education has exploded over the past several years. According to the 2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, approximately 5.6 million students took at least one web-based class during the fall 2009 semester, which marked a 21% growth from the previous year. Consider a recent Economist article featuring Bill Gates’s educational poster child: Khan Academy, founded by Salman Khan in 2006. But Khan goes beyond the computer and customized feedback. Of course not everyone has warmly embraced the online education movement, namely teachers’ unions. Other concerns relate to education quality. A greater selection in course offerings will also motivate students and improve their educational experience.
- The Institute For Figuring -