M.I.T. Computer Program Reveals Invisible Motion in Video
A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a computer program that reveals colors and motions in video that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
Mapping Mapping the Globe: Initial Research into Regional Media Attention in Massachusetts Submitted
Last fall the Center for Civic Media launched a new partnership with the Boston Globe, the preeminent newspaper in the Boston and New England region. Part of this partnership means that we get access to the last year or so of their archives via their alpha API. And one of the first things we noticed about the API data is that Boston Globe reporters have to enter a location for their news story.
MIT’s (T)ether melds virtual and real space, shows the future of collaboration
Every few months a new innovation in physical interaction with virtual objects comes along and the Minority Report comparisons begin. But (T)ether, a new project by a group of students at the MIT Media lab, is one of the first that actually made me believe it.
ZeroN slips surly bonds, re-runs your 3D gestures in mid-air
Playback of 3D motion capture with a computer is nothing new, but how about with a solid levitating object? MIT’s Media Lab has developed ZeroN, a large magnet and 3D actuator, which can fly an “interaction element” (aka ball bearing) and control its position in space. You can also bump it to and fro yourself, with everything scanned and recorded, and then have real-life, gravity-defying playback showing planetary motion or virtual cameras, for example.
Visualizing Light with a Trillion FPS Camera
A fruit and a roll of tape illuminated by a femtosecond laser pulse and effectively captured at a trillion frames per second. Light moves less than 1 mm per frame.
Easter spending patterns in Spain, animated
The MIT SENSEable City Lab, in partnership with BBVA, visualizes spending in Spain during Easter of 2011. The animation shows the activity of 1.4 million people and 374,220 businesses, over 4 million transactions.
Redefining NBA Basketball Positions
For the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference a few weeks ago, Stanford biomechanical engineering student Muthu Alagappan presented his work on redefining basketball positions.
The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Visualizing Global Economic Growth
Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID) and the MIT Media Lab have joined forces to create The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity. Next to a +85MB PDF file chockfull of brightly colored but insightful data visualizations, the project includes a website that holds a small collection of interactive visualizations. As a side note: the colors actually serve a purpose, each representing a product group (e.g. electronics, petrochemicals, fruit, oil, etc.).
MIT Researchers Create New Urban Network Analysis Toolbox
MIT researchers have created a new Urban Network Analysis (UNA) toolbox that enables urban designers and planners to describe the spatial patterns of cities using mathematical network analysis methods. Such tools can support better informed and more resilient urban design and planning in a context of rapid urbanization. “Network centrality measures are useful predictors for a number of interesting urban phenomena,” explains Andres Sevtsuk, the principal investigator of the City Form Research Group at MIT that produced the toolbox.
MIT’s Free Urban Planning Software Will Help Build The Cities Of The Future
If we are to improve the quality of life in our cities—27 of which are expected to have more than 10 million people by 2020—we will have to find a better way to build them. MIT’s new software will help.
GE’s newest public health-related visualization has been designed by MIT Senseable Lab, as yet another proof how the multinational, conglomerate corporation is partnering with some of the most respected visualization designers (e.g. David McCandless, Lisa Strausfield I and II and Ben Fry I, II and III).
MIT’s Backtalk project / art exhibit traces the unseen life of discarded gadgets
Sooner or later, the device you’re reading this on will either be sold, donated, recycled or otherwise disposed of; and unless you’re particularly nostalgic about old gadgets like us, you likely won’t ever give it much more thought. But no matter how you get rid of it, that device doesn’t just vanish off the face the Earth. It’s that extra life that got the folks from MIT’s SENSEable City Lab thinking, and the Backtalk project is what they’ve come up with.
![The Real-Time Data City is now Real (in Singapore)
Next to their established offices in Boston and Milan, MIT Senseable Lab is now also active in Singapore, where they just launched an impressive exhibition [senseable.mit.edu] with five different graphical perspectives into Singapore’s social, economic and mobility patterns. The five visualizations are all based on real-time data recorded and captured by a vast system of communication devices, microcontrollers and sensors.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lji9gg9QxS1qhn3smo1_1280.jpg)
The Real-Time Data City is now Real (in Singapore)
Next to their established offices in Boston and Milan, MIT Senseable Lab is now also active in Singapore, where they just launched an impressive exhibition [senseable.mit.edu] with five different graphical perspectives into Singapore’s social, economic and mobility patterns. The five visualizations are all based on real-time data recorded and captured by a vast system of communication devices, microcontrollers and sensors.
