Over the Transom

A collection of follow-ups and links to stories and developments that I found interesting or important in the past week, that I think you’ll find worth reading about too.

Open Source Museums Redux

In my post about Open Source Museums, I missed the opportunity to discuss the Open Exhibits project. I may have more to say about this one later, but for now, just wanted to point out that this initiative exists. Open Exhibits was developed by Ideum, a purveyor of commercial multitouch systems, with support from the National Science Foundation. They’ve concentrated on interactive technologies such as multitouch through the OpenWorks SDK and TUIO Kinect Complete, a hack of the Microsoft Kinect based on the OpenKinect project.
You can follow the Open Exhibits project on Twitter at @openexhibits

Magical Glow

This is a really clever idea – a light fixture that glows for hours after it has been switched off.

Each lamp is hand-blown using Murano glass that’s embedded with a layer of a photoluminescent pigment. Switch on the lightbulb, and the pigment gets excited, sucking up photons. Turn off the lightbulb, and the pigment radiates all those trapped photons as visible light. It’s the same effect you saw as a kid when you stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling.

Sure, you wouldn’t want this everywhere, but this simple concept has some really interesting applications, quite apart from the form of this particular luminaire. It sounds ideal for stairway lighting in buildings – automatic lighting in case of a power outage, or any other situation where safety dictates persistent lighting. It also sounds great for energy savings for outdoor lighting — at some point in the evening, the lighting can just slowly fade away. I’d also love to see this in place of the wasteful practice of fully lighting office buildings after business hours. A great concept — I hope the designers are thinking bigger.

Source: fastcodesign.com via: @radiuscreatives

Willful Ignorance

This disturbing little piece by from Good.com cites research indicating North Americans will actively avoid learning about important issues that they find difficult to deal with. Evidence of the truth of this is all around us, making it possible for politicians to adopt preposterous positions on important issues and present them as reasonable. I have little doubt that the research applies well beyond the the confines of North America. Worth a read.

Handmade V12

This video of the machining and assembly of a miniature V12 engine must be seen to be believed. 1220 painstaking hours of work condensed to 9 minutes and 25 seconds.