Web Wonders

I was listening to Greg James on BBC Radio 1 earlier and heard a brilliant electronica track called “The Quantum World” by Symphony of Science. While looking for this video I also found another educational and quite funny video explaining Quantum Mechanics and the history of the science.

The Quantum World by Symphony of Science (Melody Sheep)

This video features clips from many leading figures in physics, seen on TV and in the media, inc. Stephen Hawking, Prof. Brian Cox speaking at TED, Doc. Michio Kaku, actor Morgan Freeman presenting Discovery Channel’s Through The Worm Hole, and other auto tuned clips from science programmes seen on BBC4 and Discovery Science.

This song by Melody Sheep may not blaze up the music charts, but its definitely a unique, clever, stylish and educational video & (I think) a well produced track. Its good to hear and see something like this in music, especially when heard on national radio!

Does this make watching BBC4 and Discovery all the time a tiny bit cooler?

Ode to Quantum Mechanics by Casual Entropy

This just made me laugh, its a rapid journey through the history and some of the stranger observations made within the field of Quantum Theory.

Richard Dawkins first introduced these Biomorphs in his book The Blind Watchmaker as a way to show how evolution has resulted in the existence of complex organisms. The software applet that shows this can be found here and allows the user to choose the steps of the evolving Biomorph from a selection of options, the chosen Biomorph then becomes the parent of further options for the next generation of offspring.

Evolve Your Own Organisms

Most of these offspring options offer only a tiny change from the parent organism, while a few offer greater alternative forms.

These options mimic the slight variations of living things, allowing us to see how natural selection can result in amazing changes in the evolution of creatures over a number of generations. Big changes can often be seen to occur through just 10-12 generations / clicks of the mouse.

What is a Meme?

Richard Dawkins is also known for coining the term “Meme”. The term is loosely based on the word Gene and first mentioned in another of his books, The Selfish Gene. A Meme is an idea, a fad or an interest that seems to spread through popular culture and communication networks in much the same way as genes pass on information through generations.

The word “meme” is more commonly used now than it was in the early years following the original publishing of Dawkins’ book in 1976. Now that the internet, the web and social networks allow the transmission and spread of ideas & thoughts more rapidly, there have been a number of internet memes that have caught on quickly. Creating a meme, or a mass public interest (buzz) around something can be very profitable for a brand or product manufacturer.. or even a film studio or a musician… or a damn Crazy Frog!

The science of genes, evolution and the spread of information, both on the web and in the world, can be seen as similar systems. Understanding the natural world can even lead to better marketing ideas… I’m sure it already has and we’ve probably often helped the subjects of those ideas to spread… ever heard of something “going viral”?

Biomorphs Video

Shows the steps this particular Biomorph takes in its evolution.
(this video often seems to take a moment to begin)

Biomorphs Interative Applet – Richard Dawkins
Another Biomorph program

I believe there are some other similar programs around.. maybe if you know of any, please post a comment and I’ll add a link here.

I stumbled across this guide from Google, it explains a lot about browsers and the web. It clearly addresses all sorts of things from basics like “what is the internet?” to “the difference between old and modern browsers” and also some of the new programming technologies and features in HTML 5 and CSS.

So if anything about your online experience baffles you, or if you just want to know a bit more, like where the web page you are looking at comes from.. check out this guide, have a read or bookmark it for later reference.

Find it here.. 20 Things I Learned .com

Information Architects agency in Tokyo (and also Zurich) are experts of interface design and also make apps including a much liked iPad app for writing, iA Writer.

They are also the creators of the award winning Web Trend Maps. The latest is map number 5 and they always release them as posters to buy through their online store.

Each map shows how the web (or specific area of it) is developing, growing and how the contributors are comparing and connecting to each other. They include beautiful graphics that show the information clearly and simply, which is probably why they are often bought by some of the worlds leading web agencies & companies inc. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and even CERN.. home of The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, considered the birth place of the Web after it was conceived by Tim Burners-Lee.

→ Continue reading Web Trend Maps

Google’s Plus One button is the new service from Google as a step into the social network sharing arena with Facebook’s “like” button and Twitter’s “tweet” buttons.

There are many other networking and bookmarking services offering sharing buttons, such as Linked In and Stumble Upon to name a couple. Along with Facebook and Twitter, these established services have the systems and social infrastructure to allow their members to share links with their friends and contacts.

Google Going Social

Although Google doesnt have a successful social network (any attempts in the past have pretty much failed), they are definitely planning something bigger and better & they already offer a new dimension to the search results with their Social Search.

Update 2 July 2011:
Google+, their new social network, has had a soft launch to invited people only.. it’s looking very popular after only a couple of days!

The Plus One service will allow anyone with a Google Profile to “plus 1″ a page and add it to their profile page’s +1′s tab. The search results already let you know if your contacts from other services, like Twitter, have shared a link. With the arrival of the new social services from Google, they will soon also tell you who has +1′d a result in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

→ Continue reading Google Enters Social Sharing with the Plus One Button

You may have seen lots of them already, but did you realise the new idents for Channel 4 are created by visitors to their website?

Anyone can visit the Twist Our Words site and create their own sentences, submit them and with a bit of luck they’ll be shown on TV. If you’ve ever played with those little word fridge magnets to make rude sentences, you’ll get the idea of how the site works. The videos you make are all saved so you can also share them with friends on Twitter or Facebook etc. or embed them in your site.

I think Channel 4 have attempted (and succeeded) in connecting TV, their website and it’s audience together with something quite clever. With many advertisers committing more budget to online ads, Ch4 encouraging it’s viewers to interact with their site and create their own content can only make them look like a good marketing choice.

This is a brilliant and fun way of engaging viewers on the web and on television, it’s also kind of addictive to see what new and unusual phrases you can string together..

Like this..

Video link
Twist Our Words site

Your friends might not be so private.. they're watching you & anything could end up online.

Its all going off at the moment.. Super-injunctions, celebs secrets coming out on Twitter, Facebook still not happy with Google.. the battles are raging.

All this could be relevant to everyone who uses social networks and the internet.
You can control what you put online, but you have no control over what others say or the photos they post?

Last week it was reported that Facebook had been purposely creating negative stories in the press regarding Google’s Social Search. Some suggested that the service was risking the privacy of Facebook users and their info. Google returned a statement that any data kept private on Facebook remained private and only became public if the original Facebook content is public.

While this might sound ok.. what if an unfavourable photo of you is posted on your friends public profile? It might even end up in Google image search someday!

Facebook encourages web developers to use it’s API to enhance their sites, which often results in further reach and brand awareness for the developers and Facebook themselves. However, it would seem that they are not so happy about major competitors Google allowing their users to access the data to expand their search results. Facebook has a lot of data about it’s users.. info that is very valuable to them, especially when they feel their dominance of the social web could become diluted.

Super Injunctions & Twitter Tweets

Last week also saw the concern over super-injunctions being broken on Twitter. Courts can ban the press from reporting stories throughout the UK, but when the publishing website is based in America (outside the jurisdiction of British courts) and the person who tweets the banned information is unknown.. who is to blame for the breaking of the injuction?

Anyone can say anything on an anonymous profile.. and Twitter says it doesn’t take responsibility for its users content.
It’s usually impossible to catch original whistle-blowers as they can easily use internet cafes and public wi-fi to avoid IP address tracing. Apparently re-tweeting and sharing a story protected by a super-injunction can also be an offence, but if over 200,000 people are sharing a tweet, it’s impractical to try to enforce the ruling.

This has now resulted in courts admitting that super-injunctions are basically useless and that the laws on media privacy need a fresh approach to address the new technology and rapid reach of information.

This whole confusion over privacy doesn’t just apply to rich celebrities either. It’s a clear message that, whoever you are, even when going to great lengths to keep something hidden, perhaps you should be prepared for the day it eventually ends up on the web…

It could be anyone.. don’t be so afraid of the cctv and the state watching you all the time, it might be your friend with a camera phone that gets you into trouble with the boss, your wife or everyone you know!

Want a quick insight into how the world is doing?
Take a look at the info graphics websites Today the World Is & We Feel Fine.

Today The World Is

Tommy Palmer developed Today the World Is as a university project to show simple statistics collected from the worlds news streams.

Analysing the words mentioned in RSS feed headlines, he has created dynamic info graphics that update to show the positive and negative story ratio. The site also features additional figures for specifics like “how many times war is mentioned”.

This concept is a brilliant use of data collection, filtering and beautiful visual display.

Visit site >

We Feel Fine

I first heard of the We Feel Fine site when mentioned on Hans Rosling’s BBC program The Joy of Stats.

The designers have developed a colourful interactive display of how the world is feeling right now, on a very personal level. They have brought in data from Twitter tweets and blog posts that include the word “feel” or any variant.

Using the posts, the site creates a dynamic, ever-changing statistical display of how people are feeling.. click on a dot and see a posted comment from anyone in the world, click a square and see an image with a comment.

They also have a very nice book filled with feelings and photos collected through the site.

Visit site >

Both of these sites show the amazing possibilities of using freely available information in a simple and effective way.