SparkBlog by The Hartman Group

The Future Is Now

This week we've been hypnotized by food-sorting robots.

Salami snacks have never been more organized. The choreographed dance of the robot arms is mesmerizing!

These pancake robots stack up to 400 flapjacks per minute. Although we don't have video evidence, we hear they are also quite good with croissants and muffins. 

All of this sausage sorting and pancake flipping reminds us of a simpler time, when Sesame Street journeyed to the Crayola factory and introduced us to the nice men and women who roll our crayons.

Robots: we've come a long way since people poured hot pools of wax nearly unassisted by modern technology.

For more food handling fun, check out robots sorting meatballs here.

(via Kottke)

The iPad, can it blend?

For those of you who can't quite justify the purchase of the iPad just yet. Here's the true test:

(So painful to watch!)

At the intersection of food and technology: cool websites described as food

Found on

[via Kottke]

Weekly Six: Bar codes, color wheels and punch art

In Japan, Even the Barcodes Are Well Designed
D-barcode specializes in turning barcodes into something fun and memorable.

iPhone App for the Environment
GoodGuide iPhone app scans bar codes for environmental and heath ratings

Graph Media Activities With a Wheel Chart
Hand-drawn "media wheel" shows what media people consume when and where

The Worst Cities for Walking
Transportation for America released a new study on which U.S. cities are most dangerous for pedestrians.

Hole Punch Art
A self-portrait created with holes of 10 different sizes.

And for the "wow" factor: Video Remix
[via Kottke]

We do not live in public

Currently the socialmediasphere is abuzz about Tumblr’s decision to reconfigure its entire site (or “Dashboard”) to accommodate Justin Johnson’s video-crafted marriage proposal to Marissa Nystrom. And, of course, she said yes.

Marissa, will you marry me? from justin on Vimeo.

Now, no doubt, an infestation of lifestyle journalist hacks will descend upon the “story” to document our life in these most curious of social media times. But Ondi Timoner’s pleadings aside, we’d like to interject a healthy dose of reality with the following proclamations:

1. We don't live like this: The last time I checked, many—though not all—of us live in houses or apartments, that’s how and where we distinguish our private space from public. True, we have cell phones and now waste the time that used to get wasted on comic books and sitcoms with things like Facebook, but we still live in private. Hey Ondi, I saw your film, but the more interesting thing is that when you and Josh were living in that giant tunnel pretending to be artists, nobody even cared…because they didn’t know! They were in their homes! Get it?
2. Nobody I know ever lives like Justin and Marissa: As others wiser than we have pointed out, the marriage proposal looks much more like life in a Zach Braff film (i.e., Garden State) than the everyday reality of mere mortals such as ourselves. Our friends have real life problems like broken cars, diabetes and divorce and tend to focus on much more important things than spending 6 years documenting their relationship with a $2000 video camera and a suite of editing tools.
3. It is a sad world when the notion of love becomes a commercial to lure the clueless marketing types further into the imagined world of social media.

Remember, social media is like advertising, if you would just quit looking and listening, maybe—just maybe—they’d go away.
 
Bottom line? Like wow man...

For once, truly game changing innovation: Sixth sense technology coming soon

Some have been blabbing on about the much-touted “sixth sense” technology for some time now. Well, the startling news is that it’s finally here, and it was announced last week that it is going to be open source.

Keep in mind that the technology right now seems primitive and not fully scoped out, but given two years of open source development this could prove mind blowing. As shown in the embedded video, need to know the time? Well, imagine simply using your finger to draw a circle on your wrist and an image of a clock appears. So very cool.

The world of social networks...literally

A map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data (June 2009). (Good luck deciphering the subtleties of the colors!)

Amazon.com—if nothing else, always a good read

Further evidence that nobody really understands the internet the way they think they do…

Two different legitimate sellers on Amazon.com are offering to sell a gallon of private label milk for $2500. In response, over 1000 consumers have penned quite detailed, imagined product reviews about the product—many over 250 words!. To give you some idea for comparison Dyson’s best selling upright vacuum cleaner has only generated 115 legitimate user reviews.

In fact, a recent communications study found that the upper 50% of products in terms of overall volume of user reviews on Amazon.com were instances in which users began spontaneously reviewing the product for the sake of play, sarcasm, art, etc. rather than taking seriously the task of reviewing the product. Put another way, the majority of user reviews on Amazon.com have little to do with product opinions or experiences and much more to do with creating witty, sarcastic or mocking stories about the products and brands.

And here’s an example—Bic Pens—in which every single review is a sarcastic comedy piece rather than a serious review. In the end Bic ends up looking like a comedians tool rather than a preferred brand:

And, of course, nobody could resist letting Gillette off the hook when they had the unfortunate audacity to release a “limited edition gamer” version of their Power Fusion razor:

My favorite review:

I tried to buy the Gillette Razor Power, Fusion Gamer(tm) from Best Circuit Shack, but one of the beflippered gnomes who toil there refused to sell it to me.

When I approached the counter to purchase this clearly superior shaving wand, "Doug" began to hammer me with questions. "What's your favorite game? What are the other names of Jenova? How many alts do you have in WoW? Have you ever run a CS server?" Flustered, I could only stammer out thin excuses. "Doug" grew suspicious and hustled me into the back. There he strapped me down to an Ultimate Game Chair(tm) and poured Mountain Dew Game Fuel(tm) into my ears until I confessed I only owned a second-hand Dreamcast.

They kicked me out, taunting me as I left defeated. However, once in the car, I managed to drive at twice the speed of Twitter and bought a Gillette Razor Power, Fusion Gamer(tm) from Target, cleverly bookending it with a bag of Cheetos(tm) and a copy of "Puru Puru Ne Sho Ma Machinehead Samurai Kitty". The unsophisticated checkout girl never thought to ask, and she practically smiled at me.

I went home and shaved. My chin is now hairless.

In summary, the Gillette Razor Power, Fusion Gamer(tm) is a good razor, but it is prejudiced against non-power gamers. 3 stars.

 

Spectrum on online friendship

You've got Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, LinkedIn. And you've got friends, followers, colleagues, connections, networks and more. But who's your BFF online.

image: Mike Arauz, http://www.mikearauz.com

Single Serving Sites

In the past we've shared a few of our favorite single-focus sites, ranging from charting the progress of our new president to simply informing us if we need an umbrella today.

Today we stumbled upon another single serving site as visually compelling as it is informative. Created by Justin Ouelette (the creator of Muxtape), All The Curry does what it promises, offering a simple solution to a single common problem.

Justin says:

Brendan and I decided to order Thai food last night and faced an all-too familiar problem: remembering which curry is which. With colorful names that may or may not reflect their actual appearance and similar ingredients that aren’t usually listed, selecting a curry can be a harrowing decent into the darkest depths of indecision.

It was time to settle the issue once and for all. We ordered all five standard Thai curries so they could be examined and sampled as a complete set, and challenged ourselves to build a web site with our notes in exactly one hour (cementing the memory and providing future reference should that memory fade).

Certainly more compelling than The Price of a Stamp.

Anyone want to chip in for an order of panang?