From Ars Technica:
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In a clever bit of technological legerdemain, Stanford University has combined historical research, mapping, and Web technology to bring ancient Roman Empire travel to the Internet. A cross-disciplinary team has created and launched ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World. With it, a user can determine how long it will take to travel from any point in the Roman Empire to any other, as well as calculate the cost of transporting goods and people.
This heretofore unnatural union of geographers, technologists, and historians of the ancient world is becoming more and more common under the descriptor of "digital humanities." ORBIS looks to be one of the most effective examples of its promise.
Built by historian and classicist Walter Scheidel and Stanford Libraries' digital humanities specialist Elijah Meeks, with the assistance of geographer and Web developer Karl Grossner and GIS analyst Noemi Alvarez, the interactive online atlas is based on a host of data. This includes historical tide information and weather; size, grade, and surface of roads; main cities and ports; land, sea, and river routes; vehicle speed (including ships, ox carts, horse, and walking); and the cost of transport.
The time period the system centers on is about 200 CE, when Roman power was at its highest and the empire's extent was greatest. The atlas is built from 751 sites, most of which are cities and towns, and covers about four million square miles. Two hundred sixty-eight of the sites are ports. The road network mapped on ORBIS includes 52,587 miles of road, including desert tracks and 17,567 miles of rivers and canals.
Ox cart and boat takes a lot longer than flying. ORBIS's cartogram... allows the user to select one main city — Rome, Constantinople, London, or Antioch — and a season, then choose either the fastest routes or the cheapest ones. The map changes dynamically according to those choices, and rearranges the spatial relationships to reflect them.
Suddenly London zooms away from Rome, actually moving off the map — it's nearly impossible to get there during the winter due to Atlantic storms. With another set of choices, Corinth meets Antioch in the center of the map — it's a cheap destination during the summer.
From the website:
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Have you ever used your phone as a pretend microphone while singing to your fave Justin Bieber song?
Well, now you can pop this speaker into your phone's headphone jack and it will amplify your tunes AND make you look more legit while singing into it.
Note: does not function as a microphone — only as a speaker.
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$28.
From Lauren Davis's May 26 io9 story:
"Ridley Scott's incredible attention to detail in 'Blade Runner' stretched all the way to the newsstands sitting in the background."
"He asked concept artist Tom Southwell to create these magazine covers for his dystopian Los Angeles."
"These covers actually appear in the film,
sitting on a newsstand during one of the movie's street scenes."
[via Science Fiction Tumblr, Super-Electric, Ruben Bolling, and Paul Biba]
From the website:
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Designed by Rina Ono and handcrafted from linden wood at the Takahashi Kougei wood workshop in Hokkaido.
The soft tone of wood adds warmth to your breakfast table.
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Apiece, $20.
From Adweek:
"Now, we have this Guinness QR code on a beer glass, dreamed up by BBDO New York. It's literally activated by the product — you pour a Guinness into the glass and the beer's black color fills out the code. Scan the code with your smartphone and it 'tweets about your pint, updates your Facebook status, checks you in via Foursquare, downloads coupons and promotions, invites your friends to join you, and even launches exclusive Guinness content.'"
[via LikeCool and @TheSmarmyBum]
Designed by Netherlands-based Marlene Jansen in an effort to solve the problem of "how to prevent people from walking away from the table whilst having dinner."
It was exhibited at last month's International Furniture Fair in Milan.
[via the New York Times]