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IKEA VR: Explore Interior Layouts in New Virtual Reality App

30 Apr

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

ikea virtual reality

A new virtual reality application from IKEA lets users try out various kitchen configurations in three dimensions. Using an HTC Vive headset, the app lets people see different setups but also change key details in each, such as the colors and materials of drawers and cabinets.

ikea interactive vr

Created in partnership with the French company Allegorithmic and employing the Unreal Engine 4 (from Epic Games), the app lets would-be buyers select from various furnishings and fixtures.

ikea options

“Virtual reality is developing quickly and in five to ten years it will be an integrated part of people’s lives,” says optimist and futurist Jesper Brodin, managing director of IKEA of Sweden. “We see that virtual reality will play a major role in the future of our customers. For instance, someday, it could be used to enable customers to try out a variety of home furnishing solutions before buying them.”

ikea meatspace digital fun

ikea home interior design

For now, the system is a test case, available to those with access to a virtual reality headset. Users are encouraged to try it out and let the company know what they think about the current setup and how it can be improved. The company hopes to enable participants not only to shop smarter but also to become a part of the creative process in developing new design ideas and interior options.

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Fixtures & Interiors. ]

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Instagram updates Explore page and search

25 Jun

Instagram has launched a major update to its mobile app that offers a redesigned Explore page and search function. The former will offer trending tags and places, the latter makes it easier to find people, places, and tags. Read more

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Set Sail on Rail: Quirky Vehicles Explore Abandoned Tracks

26 Oct

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

abandoned railroad vehicles 1

Before the abandoned railroad tracks of Paris officially disappear – which is bound to happen, as cities realize the potential for reclamation as High Line-style parks – some intrepid locals are taking the opportunity to explore. “Train Project” by French design studio HeHe is a series of fun, quirky handmade vehicles that traverse the city on a line that most local residents never get to experience firsthand.

abandoned railroad vehicles 3

The autonomous vehicles include ‘Metronome’ and ‘M-Blem,’ two transparent, cylindrical solar-powered electric vehicles, and the sailboat-inspired ‘Radeau de Sauvetage.’ HeHe also developed additional vehicles made for train tracks in other cities, like an individual transport system to transfer objects from one place to another in Slovakia, and a one-person platform making use of the urban tracks in Istanbul.

abandoned railroad vehicles 2

HeHe calls The Train Project “an ongoing body of speculative investigation into the language and aesthetics of transport culture,” proposing personal rail travel as “a temporary, imaginative solution to question our industrialized conscience in relation to locomotion.”

abandoned railroad vehicle 5

abandoned railroad vehicle 6

The collective invited members of the public to travel on the vehicles, “journeying through space and time to experience the past and future of local transportation networks.” The idea is to take a picturesque trip through areas of the city that can’t be seen from the roads, reclaiming spaces that have been left to deteriorate until they’re inevitably integrated back into the functional urban landscape.

Custom-Railroad-Exploration-Car-1-644x429

A similar project (above) explored sections of the 5,500-plus miles of abandoned railroad tracks in Mexico with the retro-futuristic SEFT-1, modeled after a midcentury vision of a spaceship.

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

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LEGO Architecture: 12 Sets Explore Buildings Brick by Brick

21 Aug

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

LEGO Architecture Main

Whether official or fan-created, LEGO architecture sets enable wannabe builders to understand just how some of the world’s most iconic structures come together in terms of architectural elements, form and lines. The brand has created an architecture series exploring “the fascinating worlds of architecture, engineering and construction,” and LEGO enthusiasts – including architects – have come up with a few of their own.

Monochromatic Architecture Studio Set

LEGO Architecture monochromatic 3

LEGO Architecture Monochromatic 2

Luring in architects with its monochromatic color scheme that enables the focus to be on form and shape, the LEGO Architecture Studio set is an all-white series containing over 1,200 pieces. An accompanying 268-page book includes the work of famous architecture firms like Sou Fujimoto, MAD Architects and Safdie Architects and covers principles like modules and repetition, creating surfaces, working in context and symmetry. Not only can it strengthen design skills in an average person, it can actually be used by working architects to create 3D models.

Limited Edition Marina Bay Sands Hotel

LEGO Architecture Marina Bay Sands

Rumored to be set for release only in Asia, the limited edition Marina Bay Sands Hotel set recreates Singapore’s striking cantilevered resort. It’s unclear exactly when this set, which was teased in the back of a LEGO instruction booklet, might be available to the public. Marina Bay Sands is the world’s most expensive building and contains a hotel, convention and exhibition facilities, theaters, restaurants and a 150-meter infinity pool on the roof (which is replicated with translucent blue bricks in this set.)

LEGO Towers by Bjarke Ingels Group

An architecture concept that was inspired by LEGOs is fittingly rendered in the little plastic bricks with this model from Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG.) The model uses conventional LEGO bricks to show off the design for LEGO Towers, a proposal for a residential, retail and hotel development in Copenhagen. It’s at 1:50 scale, uses 250,000 bricks and took five weeks to build.

Fallingwater

Perhaps the most well-known private residence in America created by an iconic architect, Fallingwater seems like it was made to be recreated in LEGOs, with its blocky stacked silhouette. Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous design was completed in 1937 and is considered a feat of engineering, its cantilevered floors jutting out over a waterfall.

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Lego Architecture 12 Sets Explore Buildings Brick By Brick

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Explore Everything: Epic Book Shows How to Hack Cities

22 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Global & Urbex & Parkour. ]

urban exploration guide book

Combining harrowing first-hand experiences, vivid images and historical context, urban explorer and photographer Bradly L. Garrett takes his readers on a stunning in-depth tour through the hidden world of urban exploration and building infiltration. This trip passes through the sewers and subway tunnels of London, over bridges and skyscrapers of New York, and slip you in between derelict buildings and abandoned places around the world.

urban crane tower climb

Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City (from Verso Books) is more accessible than a manifesto yet more revealing than a manual. In highly readable and engaging prose, it manages to combine personal storytelling and thoughtful reflection with factual urban histories and practical tips for exploring secret spaces.

urban tunnel vertical view

If you are looking for a coffee-table book of eye candy to flip through, this is not the one for you, but there are plenty of those already. Instead, this is a rarer sort of volume that goes far deeper, drawing on meticulous notes, handmade maps, diligent research and many years of direct experience.

urban paris rooftop

urban deserted building structure

urban derelict building decay

urban tunnel graffiti art

urban subway tunnel

Like something from a China Miéville or Neil Gaiman novel, this author reveals that there truly is a layer of fantastic mystery behind, between or below the surfaces of any city. With stories of personal adventures, from climbing skyscrapers under construction to descending into derelict subway tunnels, Garrett conveys the hot sweat and cold fear experienced in his travels. At the same time, he manages to provide commentary that goes beyond the level of an explorer and into the realm of researcher and philosopher. His combination of first-hand and historical knowledge make this a book worth reading.

urban abandoned interior

urban detroit interior volume

The heavy volume may have travel anecdotes and photographs, but it is also not lacking in powerful insights and revealing opinions. Discussing Detroit, Garrett reveals the complexities of a city that is known for its abandonments but is simultaneously in many ways and places a “light, bright, vibrant, beautiful place” that is “full of life, events, politically active citizens, great places to go out” as well as “a plethora of sites ripe for infiltration.” He notes that “as images of decay had become culturally ubiqituitous in this city” many photographers have focused too hard on “sharp, vibrant, long-exposure photography” that produces stylized and idealized imagery that “look uncomfortably similar to traditional photos of colonial explorers, evoking images of white men sticking flags in the soil.” Detroiters sick of their city being seen as a one-sided wasteland will appreciate the author’s even-handed and open-minded approach to and appreciation of their home – and this is just one of many such examples.

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Explore Everything Epic Book Shows How To Hack Cities

[ By WebUrbanist in Global & Urbex & Parkour. ]

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Explore the Funnier Side of Mobile Photography with these Photo Apps for iPhone

11 Jul

The huge strength of the Apple iTunes store is that it features a vast array of apps in virtually any category. Photography is one of the most popular iTunes categories, and with good reason. We’ve already done a very comprehensive post about some of the hottest photography apps on iTunes, but they were all mostly of a serious nature. That Continue Reading

The post Explore the Funnier Side of Mobile Photography with these Photo Apps for iPhone appeared first on Photodoto.

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Hacking Flickr: How to Build Your Own Personal Version of Flickr’s Explore Using Advanced Search

16 Oct

One of the things that I dislike about Flickr’s Explore algorithm is that it shows me so many photos that I’m not interested in. It seems like every time I go there I end up with a hodgepodge of photos that I dislike — overwatermarked, overcooked, etc. I’ve always been interested in is a version of Explore that would filter out everyone on Flickr except for my contacts. Over the years I’ve managed both my contacts and friends/family list to my own personal taste as a consumer of photography.

The most popular way to view your contacts’ photos of course is on the “Photos From Your Contacts” page. This page shows you the last 1 or 5 (you choose) photos by your contacts or friends/family (again you choose). So you basically have four different ways to view your contacts’ photos, but all four are by recency only.

Sometimes you might want to look at photos by your contacts in ways other than recency. Over the years I’ve added a ton of people as contacts — so many in fact that there is just no way that I can keep up with every single photo every single contact posts every single day. So instead of the recency view I’ve been looking for other ways that I can look at my contacts’ photos.

After playing around with Flickr’s advanced search page this weekend, I figured out how I can view my contacts’ photos by interestingness instead of only recency. This is helpful if you want to see what are the best (most popular) photos by your contacts over past period of times. Flickr’s interestingness algorithm gives every photo on flickr a hidden internal score. This score is based on lots of factors including how many favorites a photo gets, how many comments a photo gets, tags, where it’s posted on the web outside of Flickr, etc. The basic premise though is that the more activity a photo receives the more interesting a photo might be.

Advanced search on Flickr lets you customize your search criteria and seems to even work with empty search queries (which seem to return all photos). You can customize the search page to only search using your contacts photos and you can customize it by past time periods. So if you want to run through all of your contacts’ photos by the last day, week, month, etc. and have them ranked by the most popular photos to see if you’ve missed any great photos you can do that using this page.

The way Flickr returns photos in search is a little clunky and is not as elegant as the justified view for photos on your contacts most recent photo page, but I bet search results on Flickr end up with a justified view at some point in the future as well. A photo wall that you can favorite from is a much superior/engaging layout after all.

Anyways, these links below should work for you as well and allow you to see the most popular photos by your contacts and friends/family over previous time periods. If you command/click (Mac) on a thumbnail it will open it in another window and then you can just tab through these windows to fave/comment/view larger any of the photos you have an interest in.

Most Interesting Photos by Your Contacts September 2012
Most Interesting Photos by Your Friends/Family September 2012
Most Interesting Photos by Your Contacts August 2012
Most Interesting Photos by Your Friends/Family August 2012
Most Interesting Photos by Your Contacts July 2012
Most Interesting Photos by Your Friends/Family July 2012

Most Interesting Photos by Your Friends/Family YTD
Most Interesting Photos by Your Contacts YTD

For some reason, some searches using empty queries on flickr for earlier time spans (like all of 2011) produced no photos for me, so something must have changed with how Flickr handles empty queries after 2011.

I’m not sure how long you’ve been able to search empty queries from the advanced search page. I tried to go use the wayback machine at the Internet archive to see what this page looked like in the past but apparently Flickr is blocking the internet archive from indexing this page (and other pages as well, including one specific group, which seemed odd).

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

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Flickr Close to Releasing a Redesign of Global Navigation, Explore and Groups

16 Oct

Yesterday I was contacted by a Flickr member asking me if I knew about the redesign that was being done on Flickr. Although I’d assumed that more redesigning was coming to Flickr after earlier releases this year, I wasn’t aware of what specific changes were being implemented or considered. I’ve seen screenshots of some of the new redesign but haven’t had a chance to seriously examine it yet.

Apparently a beta group is currently testing changes to Flickr’s Global Navigation, Explore section and most significantly Groups. Rollouts of the new design have begun and some users are now seeing a different layout on Flickr.

I’ve long believed that Groups represents Flickr/Yahoo’s most significant chance for winning at social. Although it doesn’t sounds like the new Groups layout is set in stone yet, some of the comments made by beta testers would seem to suggest that more emphasis is being placed on Group photos and less emphasis on Group threads. Here are some of the comments in the thread

“That would be a complete disaster and kill off what remains of the active discussion groups on Flickr. Good luck getting new members to ever click over to the threads.

The Groups List page redesign is also, quite frankly, atrocious. Much harder to find groups, not to mention the graphics are messed up.

I will personally lead the revolt if the new group page design sticks. It will KILL any attempts to integrate new users into group discussions.”

AND

“Oh lordy, that’s terrible. The group rules page and intro is completely hidden and while the emphasis on photos is kind of nice, it completely destroys any importance of the description and the discussion.

Not liking that at all. It makes groups look about as social as a set is now. Completely wrong direction and neuters the group other than a photo collection.”

AND

“Let me rephrase that. If you go ahead, and make the groups look like what I just saw, I will mothball every group I have, log out and never log back in. This is not out of some idea that I’d be contributing to an effort to twist Flickr’s arm into doing anything, but because navigation will have broken down so badly, that the site will no longer be worth my time.”

These initial comments regarding Groups are disappointing. It sounds like Groups may be headed in the wrong direction. I’ve long been critical of Yahoo executives who can’t/won’t join Flickr publicly including current Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (Mayer posts her photos on competitor Instagram instead of on her own company’s photo sharing site Flickr). Previous CEOs Scott Thompson and Carol Bartz likewise did not have public Flickr accounts.

Part of my criticism of Yahoo execs not using Flickr is that without dogfooding it, without really digging into it, I don’t believe that they can begin to understand the promise that Groups represent for social on Yahoo. Based on early comments on the Group redesign page I’m also beginning to worry that even Flickr staffers don’t truly understand the power of social that Groups represent.

Whether or not this new Group redesign will be rolled out to other users or not remains to be seen. I’m concerned though that time/engineering/design talent wasted making Groups *less* social might just be another blunder after a long line of previous blunders made by Flickr in terms of the guesswork on what users may or may not want.

Last year Flickr rolled out a wonky photo/chat feature, for example, that was quickly killed earlier this year. Time wasted going in the wrong direction hurts Flickr and hurts their chance at social.

Photo sharing is a super competitive space and becoming more and more important. Great care should be taken to make photo sharing as social as it can possibly be. Every single step towards redesign should be asking the question, will this make Flickr more social or less social?

Although I’m not part of this beta or test group, I’m usually not one to keep my opinions to myself, so I’ve also written a companion post to this one entitled “Ways to Redesign Flickr Groups to Make Them More Social, Addictive and Powerful.”

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

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360Photography

Posts Tagged ‘Explore’

IKEA VR: Explore Interior Layouts in New Virtual Reality App

Instagram updates Explore page and search

Set Sail on Rail: Quirky Vehicles Explore Abandoned Tracks