So, this video by animator Renaud Hallée isn't quite a pure infographic--but as you'll see, it's pretty damn close. Titled Sonar, the short film basically visualizes the sound track. Now, we've previously covered such projects, but this one's interesting because of how much information about the song Hallée manages to squeeze into the image. It quickly gets crazy complicated:

The one element that's purely visual about it is the placement of the blips--they don't correspond with pitch or tone. If they did, you could imagine turning this sort of display into a straight-up touchscreen musical instrument--something like a next-gen version of the Kaossilator, a "cyberpunk lute of the future" that can be used--even by those with no musical training--to create astonishing electronica tracks in real-time (fast forward to 7:30 to see it in action):

[youtube aeQOuNBuJwg]

[Via Fubiz]

It hasn't officially been rebranded, of course; God is notoriously conservative about updating that Bible of His. But, as reported by the New York Times, Reboot, a nonprofit Jewish think tank, has come up with a new version of Shabbat that is not only restive but sort of cheekily appropriate. And if you notice a lack of Jews on the internet, starting about now, you'll know why.

Shabbat, observed sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, usually involves traditional Jewish meals (including bread, wine, and meat and/or fish), prayers, lighting candles, and spending relaxing time with family and friends, but it's the myriad restrictions that are best known (and loathed by every bored 13-year-old who just wants his Game Boy). It's prohibited to turn electronic devices on or off, as well as to travel in cars, trains, buses, and planes. There are workarounds for all of that stuff (like elevators that stop at every floor, or lights on an automatic timer) but many Jews have simply stopped bothering with the more intrusive aspects of Shabbat.

Reboot's "Sabbath Manifesto" takes a different approach. Instead of observing traditional modes of rest on Shabbat, it recommends we use that day to unplug ourselves from our connected lives. It's a fun twist on the traditional ban on electronics, and it's a good idea for anybody, anyway: taking one day to remember what life is like apart from Twitter, Facebook, email, and all the rest can only be good for our perspective and mental stability (let alone our social lives here in the real world).

Today (right now, actually: I've scheduled this article to publish at 7:07 PM EST, sundown in New York City), Reboot is hosting the first "National Day of Unplugging," which lasts the length of traditional Shabbat: sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. The group is hoping this big press push will encourage more obedience of their "Sabbath Manifesto," which is basically a weekly version of the National Day of Unplugging.

The Sabbath Manifesto, in full:

The philosophy goes beyond just a list of rules; Reboot is taking a more pro-active promotional path:

Reboot’s organizers are promoting the National Day of Unplugging via (what else?) Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. But the manifesto also emphasizes direct personal interaction. As such, Reboot has planned intimate gatherings this weekend in New York and Los Angeles, where members will dine and share their views on the manifesto. Cellphones must be checked at the door, where they’ll “sleep” in miniature sleeping bags.

Look at that! Miniature sleeping bags for cellphones! See, everyone? Shabbat can be adorable too! And that adorability is why you might see a distinct lack of Jews around on the internet tonight and tomorrow. Looking at my watch, it's just about time for me to head out as well: Shabbat Shalom, everyone.

You can make anything from 3-D printing, from impossibly complex lamps to chain-mail bags to entire buildings. So it's actually kind of surprising that 3-D printed shoes aren't more common. Maybe someday soon: For her master's thesis at ArtEZ in Arnhem, The Netherlands, Pauline Van Dongen created a line of high heels, dubbed Metamorphosis.

The pieces were exhibited recently in a show in Amsterdam called "The Future of Fashion," curated by Freedom of Creation, a Dutch outfit that specializes in 3-D printed design.

The shoes themselves are, like many 3-D printed objects, made of powdered nylon that has been slowly fused together, by a computer guided laser. As you can see on the heel and the forefoot, there's a little bit of a platform flange--to give a bit of cushion on what's normally a very stiff material.

It'll probably take a few more years though before you see 3-D printed shoes in your local mall: Even small objects like these can run thousands of dollars per copy, unless the designer happens to own her own machine. But these are dropping in price at a crazy rate: What used to be hundreds of thousands of dollars a few years ago can now be had by the at-home tinkerer for as little as $5,000.

Originally, the researchers were investigating "superchiral" particles, which focus light into even smaller wavelengths than usual. However, the scientists realized that rather than just altering the light, the light also began to organize the superchiral nanoparticles. After a day of light exposure, the particles had formed into ribbons, and after three days the ribbons had woven themselves into nano-rope.

As soon as the researchers overcame their disbelief, they began exploring the applications of their discovery. One scientist is working on getting the nanoribbons to spin in the presence of light, essentially creating an artificial flagellum that could drive a nanosub. Another speculated that the light-warping effects of superchiral particles to create a cloaking device. And yet another wants to use the ribbons self-assembling power as a way to make microchips and other nanomachines.

[Science Daily]

We're guessing we don't need to do much to get you hyped for the NCAA tournament. But here's a little data throw out in obsessive sports talk. Because, while the NFL playoffs, culminating with the Super Bowl, are overall the biggest moneymakers on the American sporting scene, the hoops tourney is a none-too-distant second. And unlike the Super Bowl, which creates a windfall for a single city and a handful of prominent players, the college games spread the wealth all over the country. To wit: this fast-breaking graphic displaying how everyone from media behemoths like CBS to a little pub in Buffalo, NY, to you and me are making the most of the madness. Talk about passing the bucks!

Infographic: Rob Vargas

Ninteno's guru Shigeru Miyamoto has just revealed that Nintendo might be aiming at a surprising new market for its games consoles: Schools. With all the controversy about distractions and violence, is this sensible?

Miyamoto's words came during an interview with the AP. While dodging questions about the future of the Wii, and how he thinks about competitor consoles (particularly relevant now Sony's PlayStation Move is on the way) he noted that getting Nintendo products in use in an educational environment may be the area in which he's most expending his efforts. The DS console, in its various variants, is already in use in Japanese museums and other publicly-visited venues, and that a roll out in "junior high and elementary schools in Japan" will start in the new school year later in 2010.

What exactly would kids use the devices for though? The aim really has to be for interactive educational purposes--very probably with dedicated software that, perhaps, a whole class works through at once, under a teacher's supervision. The right kind of app could also work well as interactive homework, even including a pop-quiz, with results that the school collects up electronically the next day.

Nintendo will have to adjust the hardware carefully though, so its incompatible with the plethora of games available for the DS. I don't know how disciplined the average Japanese school kid is...but my peers at these sort of school ages would have found the potential gaming options a huge distraction, and the electronic homework would come last in the priority list. And I'm sure Mario would've made an appearance in class too, if they thought they could get away with it. There're also a few privacy issues to ponder on--let's not forget the apparently illegal and desperately big-brother behavior of that Pennsylvania school recently, when it turned on Webcams on school laptops to monitor kids activities at home. And there's even a technology addiction angle to think on--our society is so bedazzled with tech, that integrating it so firmly into school kids lives may not be all that much of a good thing.

[School image via Flickr user anijdam]

To keep up with news on matters like this, follow me, Kit Eaton on Twitter.

A pair of senators, one red, one blue, have today proposed a biometric ID system to "mend" immigration. It's part of a bipartisan immigration bill backed by President Obama, and proposes to replace everyone's social security cards with one that stores biometric information about the individual. But just how practical is the proposal? Perhaps it's worth casting a look at similar proposals in Britain.

This is how the ID card proposals have evolved in the U.K. Governing party outlines its proposals, which the opposition quickly makes a stand against. Violation of civil liberties, Big Brother state, blah blah. Party in office forges ahead, giving the project an innocuous name, ie Entitlement Cards. Creates database known as National Identity Register. Announces timeline which computer experts say is "highly ambitious." Makes a muck of it. Costs go up. Movement against gathers steam.

Party in office has partial climb-down, saying that cards will be voluntary, then comes up with cunning wheeze: Make anyone who applies for a passport to go on the National Identity Register. Cost to citizen: $45. Cost to make card: $90. Current spend on card: $300 million. Sign contracts worth $1.5 billion. Recession hits. Realization that rethink is in order. Thinks of ways of marketing the scheme. I know, teenagers can use it as official ID to prove their age! It's really, really cool, aspazzarently, lets you buy a beer in a pub if you're over 18. Then they get the oldies on board, suggesting that it should be a replacement to their free bus passes. Estimated cost: $7.6 billion. Looming election--and probable change of Government means that plan will be shelved just as soon as the removal vans have left 10 Downing Street.

Let's return to the U.S. Both parties admit that there is an immigration problem in the country, with around 11 million people residing in the States illegally. The two senators, Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), will need the scheme to be rolled out universally for this to work. The concept of extracting biometric information from the entire population seems a long shot.

Many people will not be happy with the concept of the state holding an individual's data. The proposal states that medical records, private information and tracking devices would not be on the cards may, for those people with a bunker at the bottom of their gardens, make them think of one word: Yet.

Biometric data is not a failsafe way of protecting an individual's data--as last month's assassination of the Hamas leader in Dubai, when the identities of several British citizens were used when their biometric passports were cloned, shows. Although it is very hard to fake iris scans, fingerprints are a lot easier than you think.

[youtube LA4Xx5Noxyo]

The issue here, however, is not about faking someone's identity. A week after the British Home Secretary unveiled the Government's latest ID card policy, it was shown up to be eminently hackable, using just a mobile phone and a computer--in less than 15 minutes. Instead of becoming another person, what you do is make your card look like someone else's. And that is where the whole idea falls down. The concept of ID cards is that they use failsafe technology, that they are unfalsifiable and that the information on it is true--even when it isn't.

[Via Washington Post and CNET , Image Via Flickr]

Good news for anyone who has old records but no record player: you can make your own record player pretty easily--just add cardboard. Griffiths, Gibson and Ramsay Productions (GGRP), a Vancouver-based sound design studio, exploited the idea in a direct mail marketing piece.

The company created a record player from a corrugated cardboard envelope that can hold a 45 rpm record in place. Just spin it with a pencil, and voila, vibrations pass through the needle to generate a recording of a children's story called "A town that found its sound." It's a brilliant marketing idea--and a great reason to upcycle old pieces of cardboard.

[Via Core77]

A week after the FCC debuted a beta tool for consumers to measure their broadband speeds, we've got the first set of stats. 150,000 people decided to avail themselves of the widget, available on Android, iPhone and Web platforms, giving the commission a more realistic idea of the state of the U.S.'s Internet connections than the figures bandied about by the ISPs. The FCC also announced that it would be conducting a hardware-based scientific study of broadband connections on tens of thousands of U.S. homes.

Most of the tests were performed on home Internet connections and, while average downloads (top image) look higher than expected, the median is somewhat lower, due to the fact that most people have DSL connections instead of the higher-performing FiOS and cable connections. Uploads, however, were much lower (see above:) Average was around the 2.3Mbps, while the median came in at 1Mbps.

Unsurprisingly, Californian residents were the busiest with the speed checker, which is why the Golden State scored so highly in the data. Two things ye must remember about the speed test, however. One, it's still in beta. And two, no random sampling and two separate platforms mean the results are not scientific. However, it will give the FCC something to work on, such as how to improve the Internet dead zones throughout the country--and get the ISPs to pull their socks up a bit.

[Broadband.gov blog Via ArsTechnica]

In the future DARPA's ISIS blimp may be hovering above the horizon near to conflict zones, feeding real time radar data to troops and smart weapons from on high. True to its name, it's also a little more magical than the Goodyear blimp as it's almost totally automated.

In fact, the Integrated Sensor Is the Structure has almost nothing in common with the Goodyear aircraft apart from its shape and helium-filling. It's designed to take off from a permanent ground base in the U.S. and fly automatically to any point on Earth within 10 days, where it'll hover in the stratosphere (over six miles up.) At this height it's safe from most ground-based missile attacks and even pretty safe if an enemy aircraft tries to take it out with an air-to-air missile. It can beetle about at 60 knots to be repositioned for better surveillance opportunities, and even sprint away at 100 knots if a threat is imminent.

But what's it actually for? Inside its core will be a huge phased array radar system, capable of tracking airborne and ground-based moving targets, and even producing Synthetic Aperture Radar images in great detail of whole battlefield scenes at high resolution (these images have the advantage over optical imagery in that you can take them at night and without needing to fly over the scene in question.) According to DARPA's blurb on the beast it'll provide "unsurpassed situational awareness with a surveillance range of 187 miles for individuals on the ground and 373 miles for advanced cruise missiles."

If that doesn't impress you, then this might: ISIS is designed to be pretty much automatic and self-sustaining. When its orbiting in the operational zone it harnesses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, which it then recombines in a fuel cell at night to generate electrical energy. Its rigid, light structure is even designed to absorb sunlight to help keep it aloft--all reducing fuel needs, and extending the usefulness of the thing. From a military point of view, it also means that all the local air base facilities, replacement aircraft, servicing, fuel and ground crews that go with current radar surveillance aircraft like AWACS won't be needed. It'll be in flight, as a demonstration prototype, sometime around 2014. Terminator-style, Skynet-driven apocalypse to follow...

[MITRE]