Apparently, someone else has been playing around in Adobe apps… Almost every major news source had run an image of an Iranian missile test that has since been called “apparently digitally altered.” New York Times has the scoop.

(A rare political post on Perpenduum, via Telstar Logistics)

Drivers will be alerted to empty parking places either by displays on street signs, or by looking at maps on screens of their smartphones. They may even be able to pay for parking by cellphone, and add to the parking meter from their phones without returning to the car.

…and data from New York City traffic studies:

Not that New Yorkers need any reminders of their traffic problems, but a study released in June by Transportation Alternatives, a public transit advocacy group, reported that 28 percent to 45 percent of traffic on some streets in New York City is generated by people circling the blocks. The study also said that drivers searching for metered parking in just a 15-block area of Columbus Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side drove 366,000 miles a year.

The Nonist has a small collection of these Victorian-era sliders, which are incredibly beautiful even without a microscope. (via Monoscope)

At first, it looks like a Sol LeWitt conceptual art piece. Then, you realize that some of the lines are turning to form the word of the hour. You can see the words forming and going back into chaos, which I guess tells you how far along you are in the hour. This part reminds me of the Mondaine “Don’t Rush” wristwatch. Let’s see this Christiaan Postma piece as a wristwatch! (…or an iPhone app.)

(clock found via Pan-Dan)

I also like his calendar (concept?), which uses the controlled spread of an ink blot to depict the date. In the project statement, he describes how this calendar does not “signal” the passing of time, but gives a true sense of elapsed time by taking advantage of a slow physical process.

Here’s a YouTube demonstration of the technology and here’s the Dasher website, which offers a test drive of the program. (via GUUUI)

I recently watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It’s a film based on the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was the editor-in-chief of Elle. He had suffered a massive stroke in 1995 that left his mind in tact, but his body was completely paralyzed except for one eye and eyelid. Needless to say, he could not speak. Speech therapists devised a method of cycling through the alphabet, whose order was based on frequency of use and he would blink at the letter he wanted to use.

Dasher paired with eye tracking systems is a beautiful way for disabled people to communicate.

Careful! Google’s usage policy states that you shouldn’t query over 50,000 charts per day!

Paul Rand is also known for writing the children’s book “Little 1” with Ann Rand, which you can preview and buy at Amazon.

Using this tool, you can can convert any image with a web address to ASCII Art. Just pick the level of detail you want the ASCII characters to capture and how large you want the resulting image to be.

Don’t forget the Dog Name Generator.

HP has an “On-Line Color Thesaurus” which isn’t much to look at, but offers decent results. (via Core77)

Adobe offers a more comprehensive Flash tool called Kuler (pronounced… “color”) that finds complementary and contrasting colors. This is something of a social network as well, because you can formulate a swatch and make it available to other Kuler users. It’s a really fun tool to play around with… kinda like NameVoyager, which is an amazing tool that determines the popularity of baby names with respect to time. Go ahead and search “Paris” to see how many people want to name their kid after Ms. Hilton.

Created by Xelor and commissioned by TAX-videoclipfonds. From Xelor’s site:

The important criteria were that the audience at the opening would be able to witness the whole shoot, and that the videoclip would be added to the exhibition immediately after the shoot. This meant we had no option to reshoot or edit if something went wrong. This made the whole crew so focussed that we performed even better than any of us could have imagined.

View it on YouTube or download the higher quality mp4 (100 mb).

(Via Information Aesthetic)