EPUB Really IS a Container "It's OK for libraries to put things in their EPUB books." That's what Bill Kasdorf, a member of the EPUB Working Group, told me last week at the IDPF Digital Book 2011 Meeting. He checked with EPUB Revision Co-Editor Markus Gylling to make sure. I had been curious if libraries could put all their cataloging information inside an EPUB file instead of siloing it in their catalog system.
Future Spacecraft Will Be 3-D Printed Space exploration has always been restricted by the fact that all technology is to-go. Everything we put into the great beyond must first be fabricated on Earth and then packed into a rocket shroud and delivered--at great expense. The heavier the cargo, the larger and more costly the rocket, and thus, the launch. Explorable Explanations Bret Victor / March 10, 2011 What does it mean to be an active reader? An active reader asks questions, considers alternatives, questions assumptions, and even questions the trustworthiness of the author. An active reader tries to generalize specific examples, and devise specific examples for generalities. An active reader doesn't passively sponge up information, but uses the author's argument as a springboard for critical thought and deep understanding. Do our reading environments encourage active reading?
3D Printing of Preclinical X-ray Computed Tomographic Data Sets Using modern plastic extrusion and printing technologies, it is now possible to quickly and inexpensively produce physical models of X-ray CT data taken in a laboratory. The three -dimensional printing of tomographic data is a powerful visualization, research, and educational tool that may now be accessed by the preclinical imaging community. Date Published: 3/22/2013, Issue 73; doi: 10.3791/50250 How Online Education Is Changing the Way We Learn [INFOGRAPHIC] Over the past decade or so, the Internet has become a huge source of information and education, especially for those who might be short on time, money or other resources. And it's not just crowdsourced data collections like Wikipedia or single-topic blogs that encourage individual learning; huge corporations and nonprofits are making online education and virtual classrooms a very formal affair these days. From the first online classes (which were conducted by the University of Phoenix in 1989) to the present day, when online education is a $34 billion industry, more and more students are finding new life and career education opportunities online. Check out this infographic from OnlineEducation.net about how the world of online learning has changed and grown over the years. Click image to see larger version.
How 3-D Printing Might Revolutionize Amazon's Same-Day Delivery 3-D printing could someday help Amazon achieve same-day delivery without requiring that huge inventories sit in regional warehouses across the country. But plenty of experts say 3-D printers still have a long way to go before they can make a serious dent in the supply chain that connects businesses to demanding customers. The Washington Post has been thinking about how Jeff Bezos does business for reasons beyond Bezos' recent purchase of the venerable newspaper. Brian Fung, a technology reporter at the paper, recently speculated on how 3-D printing's ability to create objects on demand could affect the ongoing race between companies such as Amazon, eBay, and Wal-Mart to attract customers based on the ability to deliver purchases within the same day they're ordered.
How to Use Barcodes at Conferences (and Why You Might Want To) Audiences for oral presentations and poster sessions at academic conferences often want more information about a particular topic. One way to provide this, obviously, is to create printed flyers or brochures and hope that you’ve brought enough copies for everyone who’s interested. But what if your printed handout doesn’t make it all the way back on your audience member’s trip home? During the 2011 Digital Humanities conference at Stanford University (currently underway) some people are making use of QR codes, a specific kind of two-dimensional bar code (also known as a matrix code). For example, Peter Organisciak gave a talk entitled “When to Ask For Help: Evaluating Projects For Crowdsourcing,” and on one of his presentation slides–as you can see in the photo at the start of this post–he displayed this QR code:
How 3D Printing Will Impact the Web Is 3D printing really the next big thing? And will it impact you as a web designer? It might be too early to really know. But this new technology is pretty cool to look at. And who knows, the world of 3D printing could really start to explode soon. eText: Is It Ready? Are We Ready? eText | Viewpoint eText: Is It Ready? Are We Ready? After spending a significant portion of the past two years researching and "test driving" eText in the many formats and sources that currently exist, I have come to a number of initial conclusions about the nature and application of eText in higher education (the educational level to which I limited my studies and investigation). I've seen that most of the possible implementation strategies for eText seem quite logical and are based on existing technologies that have been available to the higher education community for some time. But there is still a problem holding us back--a problem that lies in the fact that defining, combining, and implementing eText components has as yet been accomplished only on a very limited basis and by only a few "technologically entrepreneurial" institutions.
3D animated and printable structures built from cellular automata #3DThursday #3DPrinting August 29, 2013 AT 4:00 am Here are some “4D animated” and 3D printable structures built from a range of cellular automata strategies including “Game of Life” from Wetware Ontologies: I have a soft spot for the immaterial & imperceptible rendered visible via rapid prototyping (see 3D printed molecular machines) and thanks to the ability of contemporary digital art suites and programming languages like Processing, Rhino, Python and Blenders ability to (for the most part) communicate with one another that reality is accessible to anybody with the time and inclination (and MakerBot lying around).When cellular automata (CA) are brought beyond 2D cells you don’t just get a 3D object but in effect a 4D visualisation – how a colony of cells moves in time as well as space…. Learn more about these artists and how they create their work here.
The Anatomy Of An Infographic: 5 Steps To Create A Powerful Visual Information is very powerful but for the most bit it is bland and unimaginative. Infographics channel information in a visually pleasing, instantly understandable manner, making it not only powerful, but extremely beautiful. Once used predominantly to make maps more approachable, scientific charts less daunting and as key learning tools for children, inforgraphics have now permeated all aspects of the modern world. I designed a couple of infographics back in college, the need arising especially around the time Soccer World Cup fever spiked.