New High-Resolution Satellite Image of Earth

Source: Flickr

This new high-resolution photo of earth was taken by NASA’s new satellite: Suomi NPP.

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012. The NPP satellite was renamed ‘Suomi NPP’ on January 24, 2012 to honor the late Verner E. Suomi of the University of Wisconsin.

Just take a moment an pan across the high-res image and see the exquisite detail the image renders.

LG Introduces CES To The Home Of The Future

Domestic needs are going to be greeted with higher tech in the near future, if the announcements at CES are any indication. The main culprit of using technology to change the home has been LG. The electronics company unveiled many advancements in appliances and other tech to make tasks in the home easier and/or faster.

The company announced at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show an array of new products to its Smart ThinQ appliance line. At the forefront of its new line is its refrigerator, which just got a lot smarter with a health manager feature that allows you to maintain your diet, send recipes to your smart oven and even keeps you posted when you run out of certain groceries.

Source

The company also introduced a vacuum cleaner operated by your smart phone and an upgrade to their washing machine. The home of the future seems to be right around the corner.

What To Do With Your Instagram Photos

As instagram rises in popularity there have been many 3rd party entrepreneurs taking advantage of it’s popularity offering print services to the users of the photo app. There are apps for your phone that allow you to order prints without even sitting at a computer, like PostalPix. PostalPix lets you choose any of the Instagram photos saved on your phone for square prints (4 in x 4in OR 5 in x 5in) or print any other size of other pictures on your phone. All from your iPhone.

If you’d like a more comprehensive printing of your photos, as opposed to the printing of select images, you could order a photo book through Blurb with either a hard or soft cover. You could also order a mosaic photo poster from Prinstagram displaying dozens of your Instagram pictures on one glossy wall-hanging. You could also use Prinstagram if you’re into stickers, ordering sheets of over 200 mini-stickers from your images. Or you can even order larger vinyl stickers from ArtFlakes.

The possibilities seem endless, but my favorite instagram product of all, is the iPhone case from Casetagram. You can build a photo mosaic out of your istagram photos that will be turned into an iPhone case. I think this could be the most interesting use of the social photo service. Some users stick to a theme or a color/effect creating a more artistic or professional cover; while others just use it as an opportunity to showcase their favorite photos.

Will This Be Flickr’s Most Viewed Photo?

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President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. Seated, from left, are: Brigadier General Marshall B. “Brad” Webb, Assistant Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command; Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Standing, from left, are: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Tony Binken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; Audrey Tomason Director for Counterterrorism; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

3 days after this photo was taken and it has already been view HALF the amount of times as flickr’s most popular photo: Nohalikai Falls. That photo has been viewed over 3 million times and even the photographer is confused by it’s popularity. Either way…what took that photo 5 years to accomplish, could take the situation room mere weeks if the trend continues.

I Really Want This To Be A True Story

One of the most bizarre, and also hysterical, customer service stories I’ve heard in a long time: Antique Dresser Mistaken For Laptop Gets Destroyed By HP Customer Service. The short version: Roommate #1 has to package up a laptop to be picked up and delivered to HP for repair. Roommate #2 received antique dressed from parents. FedEx picked up the package with the dresser instead of the laptop. After much stress with HP customer service, package with dresser finally located and sent back. DESTROYED. There’s some added bits that make the story even more entertaining regarding things Roommate #2′s parents put in with the dresser for him. The story is bizarre and funny and I really hope it’s true just because it’s so ludicrous it deserves to be retold 100 times.

How To Create Art Out Of A Painfully Long Winter

Image Credit: Roger Hanson

Roger Hanson is making the most of a bad situation. He lives in Minnesota where the winters are notoriously brutal. Yet, he has found a way to use it to express his creativity. Or at least the creativity of mother nature when combined with some strategic engineering. Hanson is a software engineer that has spent the last several winters using the water from his geothermal heating system to build ice sculptures. This year he has done this with the help of some structural components and has created a work of art 85 feet wide and 64 feet tall.

Full article here.

Techno-Art: Microchip Paintings

Image Credit: Yuri Zupancic

Artist Yuri Zupancic has found a medium for his paintings that combines technology with art in a visually stunning manner. I have no artistic skill whatsoever. I’ve always been drawn to museums and galleries as it allows me to walk along works of art and admire their beauty and also be amazed by the skill. I’ve always had a hard time wrapping my head around an artist’s ability to create beauty in the medium they choose. Now I find myself amazed by the paintings, but even more so by the skill require to paint on such a small scale.

Since the paintings are done on a surface that is sometimes less than an inch wide, the paint is applied with a small brush and the works of art are showed with magnifying glasses on hand.

My paintings on microchips are an attempt to broaden our perspective of modern electronics and acknowledge their position as extensions of the mind and its sentimental qualities.

via Boing Boing

Wall Art For The Typography Nut

I have a new favorite website. It’s Typography Deconstructed and it breaks down the minutia of typography with such precision and detail that I would like to memorize the entire catalog of content. The anatomy of type page does everything from define the various “lines” used to measure or describe letter height, to define words like “aperture” in the font context, as opposed to the photography one. But to me, the best part about the site, is the Letterpress Poster they offer for sale. It combines my geeky love of typography with my tactile love of paper. I would only love it better if I could be there as it was cranked out for my purchase.

If you’re a typography nut, enjoy my new discovery!