Arduino The Documentary:

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).

More info : www.arduino.cc

Research Behind The #NewTwitter Design (Mark Trammell & Karina Van Schaardenburg)

Most everything built at Twitter is designed by watching how people use the service in new and interesting ways and incorporating those ideas. #NewTwitter, Twitter.com’s biggest change in its four-year history, called for iterative research that allowed designers and developers to quickly experiment with wide-ranging changes. Trammell & Karina will share how existing patterns affected the current design of Twitter, what worked (and what didn’t work) with #NewTwitter’s early research methodology, and what they’re doing to better understand how folks discover what’s happening.

Everybody Needs A Hobby of the Day: On last night’s Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions final round game, contestant Roger Craig — who is best known as the guy who bested the legendary Ken Jennings by setting a new single-day earnings record ($77,000) — made Jeopardy! history yet again when he went all-in on two back-to-back Daily Doubles.

Craig, a computer scientist from Delware, didn’t become the Jeopardy! superstar that he is today by shouting answers at the TV screen. He actually designed a special web tool to help him track and analyze his performance through thousands of practice questions.

Watch a demonstration of the software below:

[esquire / tnw.]

Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters Full Trailer

This is the official trailer for Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a feature length documentary capturing the greatest world record Tetris players as they prepare for the Classic Tetris World Championship. 

From the days of Thor Aackerlund and his historic victory at the 1990 Nintendo World Championships, right up to the present and Harry Hong’s perfect “Max-Out” score, this documentary expertly chronicles over two decades of Tetris Mastery. Visit ecstasyoforder.com for more information!

The power of gamification : MIT project tries to turn trash into a game

Here’s the problem with recycling: It’s boring.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be. A Boston company called Greenbean Recycleis trying to make the act of keeping bottles and cans out of the landfill into a fun, competitive and engaging game for students at MIT…

Want to know more? : http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/09/mit-project-tries-to-turn-trash-into-a-game/

The Sound of Football : As a first test, we arranged a football match between a team of visually impaired players and a team of former professional footballers. We wanted to see how they would perform under equal conditions – in a match where no one can see.

Wanna learn more about it? http://thesoundoffootball.com/

A Bite Of The Big Apple : “A year in New-York”

Andrew Clancy spent a year shooting random scenes around New York, the end result of which is this lovely five-minute compilation.