If you get the feeling it won’t be long until everyone in the world has a smartphone, you’re not alone. The allure of an all-in-one device that makes calls, takes photos, accesses the web, plays music, and does pretty much anything else you can imagine is pretty hard to resist. And with the unveiling of the new HTC Radar™ 4G phone, our friends over at HTC are making it even harder. Featuring a sleek, polished-metal design and 4G speed, it uses the Windows Phone platform to offer innovative functions like Live Tiles for your updates, People Hub for your contacts, and Threads for your conversations. But that’s not all it offers: With the Windows Phone Marketplace at its disposal, it gives you access to thousands of awesome apps. While some of them — Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds — you don’t need us to tell you about, we’ve rounded up ten of our favorites that may not already be top of mind, so you can put them at the top of your list.
Though the trend of new gadgets pretending to be vintage has been going on for a while now (some have called it “nostalgia tech”), thanks in great part to Urban Outfitters, the style seems to be shifting a little. Now, in addition to creating new gadgets styled after vintage versions of themselves, companies are coming up with various ways to dress up or augment new technologies to make them look old, using skins, apps, and add-ons to create trompe l’oeils that aren’t even supposed to be that convincing, just ironic. It’s as if the current generation is embarrassed of their new toys and feels the need to hide them behind faux-book covers and pictures of Game Boys some of them have probably never even played with. Click through to see our roundup of new technology masquerading as vintage, and let us know if you want a Stereolizer.
Welcome to Conversation Pieces, where Flavorpill curates five articles from the past week that you should read. Some are long, others are short. Some are from major publications, others aren’t. The only thing all these articles have in common is that they’re interesting. This week we examine cures for writer’s block, what being a Luddite originally meant, robots that think they’re human, the virtues of solitude, and more. After the jump, find something exciting to discuss this weekend in the home, at the bar, or on the street.
MRQE, the biggest, most comprehensive movie database you’ve never heard of (which has actually been around since the beginnings of the web when the only browser was called Mosaic), just launched a new service called Flicktweets, which lets you bypass all the reviews and trailers and get right to the on-the-ground, real-time film buzz via Twitter. Tapping into the massive ongoing chatter of a bazillion daily tweets, they’ve figured out how to make sense out of it all, matching and grouping posts around specific film titles. They’ve also just released it as an iPhone app, which is where it excels. For when there’s no time for reading complete sentences and you just want the instant, visceral reaction… great, sucks, or meh. Let’s try it with a few titles listed on Flavorpill, for which we’ve labored over that old art form of grammatically correct reviews.
In one of the stranger op-eds we’ve read of late, art critic Martin Gayford writes for Bloomberg News about British painter David Hockney and his huge crush on Apple’s iPad. We hope the piece isn’t an insidious new marketing plan targeting art consumers with spending capital and is instead just an attempt by The Olds to show their adaptability. After all, if David Hockney can find a way to transport the “tricky” device with an awkward shape (he “has always had his suits made with a large internal jacket pocket for carrying sketch books”), so can you, you spry young thing. Wonder if Hockney’s trying to reinvent the swimming pool?
We’d like offer a proverbial standing ovation to the fine folks at Gizmodo, who posted this morning a convincing visual and functional explication of the top-secret, yet-to-be-launched 2o1o iPhone. In a stupendously thoughtless misstep, someone left the prototype in a bar in Redwood City, California, and Gizmodo editors examined the phone from front to back, inside and out. We’re left wondering whether it’s all an elaborate red herring and if not, what happened to the unlucky Apple employee who lost the device. Unemployment? Most likely. Death? Quite possible. Peep the specs after the jump.
We’ve covered cut-out paper art and textile art and everything in between, but stumbling uponShannon Rankin‘s map art makes us glad there’s still a use for quickly outdated old-school road maps. (Quick jaunt down Memory Lane: remember fighting over The Map on family car trips? Trying to figure out the difference between I-95, 895, 495, and 195? Trying to fold it back up after seven hours of strife and a losing battle with McDonald’s ketchup packets?)
Now that pesky but beautiful paper maps are being put to more creative use, high-tech navigation options proliferate. We’ve got two new apps to try after the jump, plus more map porn from Shannon Rankin.
Artlog is a savvy and streamlined way to connect art-world news and events with social-media users.
Artlog relaunches today at the advent of the 8th annual Art Basel Miami Beach extravaganza, allowing fairgoers to connect in real time on its mobile application. Simplifying the week-long affair that’s as known for its party atmosphere as its market-driving capabilities, Artlog makes it easy to discover, search, and contribute to art happenings.
Our science-inclined pals at Wired have collected a set of images depicted the world’s islands as seen from satellites in space. Unsurprisingly, many of them resemble amoeba and other organisms on the cellular level. (Put it all in perspective with the Scales of the Universe display at the American Museum of Natural History.) The abstract yet oh-so-concrete images also capture volcanoes, coral reefs, and mighty storms all from their perches in the heavens. Click through for two more shots.
Above: Atafu Atoll, Pacific Ocean, is the smallest of three atolls (pop: 500) in the Tokelau Islands near New Zealand.
