Merry Christmas!

Santa Claus holding a coffee.A&P, Cof­fee, Santa Claus” by George East­man House

World’s Tallest Tower to be 5250 Feet High

Mile High Tower

It would cost 5 bil­lion dol­lars and stand twice as tall as its near­est rival.

Sure, the Burj Dubai tower looks amaz­ingly tall, but it’s final height— cur­rently pro­jected to be 2,300 feet— is less than half that of a new build­ing planned for Saudi Ara­bia. It’s going to be 5,250 feet high. Yup, that’s just 30 feet short of a mile tall: taller than any­thing under con­struc­tion any­where, and mak­ing it eas­ily the world’s tallest build­ing. Think they should stick a TV antenna on the top and go for that extra 30 feet? I sure do.

It’s going to be built in a new city near Jed­dah on the Red Sea and is funded by bil­lion­aire Prince al-Walid bin Talal. He bought London’s Savoy hotel for a cool $2.5 bil­lion in 2005. So you can sus­pect that there’ll be a hotel in the build­ing some­where. By my cal­cu­la­tions, the tower will have some­where between 320 and 350 floors, so per­haps that should be “sev­eral hotels”.

Not much is known about the details yet, other than the fact that it’ll have two sup­port­ing flying-buttress tow­ers to help keep it up (both more than 800 feet high). It will also have advanced damp­ing sys­tems to stop the sway­ing at high floors from mak­ing peo­ple sick, and it’s going to need amaz­ing engi­neer­ing to cope with freez­ing wind at the top and desert heat at the bottom.

It’s so tall that much of the fer­ry­ing of mate­r­ial and con­struc­tion work­ers will have to be by heli­copter. And that’s just cool.

Mile High: 5250-Foot Tower Will Make Burj Dubai Look Like Pencil

Color Photography in the Early 1900’s

Isfandiyar, Khan of the Russian

Melon vendor, Samarkand

Cotton textile mill interior with machines producing cotton thread, probably in Tashkent
Con­tinue read­ing ‘Color Pho­tog­ra­phy in the Early 1900’s’

Slow-mo Dread Flip

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Slow-mo Dread Flip’

Papercraft Self Portrait

Face and Bathrobe

Wearing the Face 4

Wearing the Face 5

Wearing the Face 6

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Paper­craft Self Portrait’

Pictures of the Year International 2009

Running from Gas

Thirst

Untouchables of Asia

Kenyan policemen open fire at demonstrators

Mongolian Horse Races

Lost

We Made a Promise - Never Again

See more at: Pic­tures of the Year Inter­na­tional 2009 Win­ners Gallery

via LOOK: Pic­tures of the Year | GOOD

Pool Table Sports Video Overlay

An inter­est­ing new pool table called the Obscura Cue­Light is mak­ing waves for its unique use of video tech­nol­ogy to enhance the player’s experience.

Cur­rently set up at the Esquire Ulti­mate Bach­e­lor pad, the Obscura Cue­Light is quite an amaz­ing demon­stra­tion of tech­nol­ogy. It uses sen­sors and motion detec­tors to manip­u­late images as you move the balls around the table. While the table is cur­rently set up to reveal a hid­den image, that’s just one poten­tial use of the tech­nol­ogy. It can also be con­fig­ured to trail flames behind the balls, or even project a pool of water on the table that rip­ples as the balls move over it.

The good news is that the sys­tem itself only costs $80,000. It just hap­pens to be mounted on a table that costs $125,000. So the ques­tion is, would it work on the $75 table you picked up at a garage sale?

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Pool Table Sports Video Overlay’

Infringing Youtube Video Helps Album Sales


Watch this video in HD (it’s far bet­ter that way).

It’s not uncom­mon for YouTube users to upload videos con­tain­ing copy­righted music. In fact, it hap­pens so fre­quently that Google has devel­oped sys­tems to find and disable/mute such infring­ing videos. Rather then see the poten­tial pro­mo­tional ben­e­fits of fan made videos, record labels have gen­er­ally claimed these uploads are hurt­ing their prof­its. Anti-piracy orga­ni­za­tions such as the RIAA, BPI and CRIA actively patrol web­sites like YouTube, search­ing for infring­ing con­tent and forc­ing it’s removal.

In one instance, song­writer Calvin Har­ris found that a video clip he uploaded him­self had been dis­abled for copy­right infringe­ment. The prob­lem con­tent: one of his own songs. As the record­ing indus­try seems to be doing sim­i­lar things all the time, it’s nice to hear of an instance where com­mon sense pre­vailed… although in this case it’s not the record labels who have seen the light.

Con­tinue read­ing ‘Infring­ing Youtube Video Helps Album Sales’

Kauai, Hawaii

"Maelstrom #3 - Kauai, Hawaii"  by PatrickSmithPhotographyMael­strom #3 –Kauai, Hawaii by Patrick­Smith­Pho­tog­ra­phy

Nice try.

Nice try...