Favorite Apps

I thought this was a really neat idea!
http://www.mysuitestuff.com/shop.html

The Müller Formula (or: Predictable Color Preferences)

More than half a century ago, Aemelius Müller, professor at the academy of Winterthur, Switzerland, came up with a formula that could predict the appreciation of a color-combination. In other words: Müller was able to predict which combination of colors most people would probably like.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2007/09/02/the-muller-formula-or-predictable-color-preferences/

Smiley, Sad & Wink faces: Shouldn’t they be stylized and available on all fonts?

Maybe it’s time to step back and look at how we use text, especially in social networking. An entire vocabulary of abbreviations have evolved including smiley, sad and wink symbols. The beautiful thing about these symbols is that, unlike all the other characters in the alphabet, only smiley faces can actuallyexpress emotion. I realize that what I am about to propose may sound a little cheezy in the light of the stereotype smiley faces we’re all used to seeing. And that is precisely the point: The existing smiley faces don’t look great because they haven’t been specifically designed to match each font style. Look at the image showing  Arial, Franklin Gothic and Garamond all sharing the very same smiley face…

I propose that we start integrating properly styled Smiley, Sad and Wink symbols into every font – this may just be the beginning of a whole new movement that will expand our ability to communicate more effectively and, most importantly, in STYLE.  Afterall, we call them typeFACEs, so why not live up it??

Memorable business cards

Okay I know we’ve all seen some weird business cards. I finally decided to post some business cards that are unusual for a variety of reasons. One of my favorites is the self amplified card. You fold up the arm and place the needle attached to the folded arm onto the record and then evenly spin the record. Sound picked up by the needle is amplified by the paper “horn”. Simple and effective!

The Lüscher Color Test

We were talking about personality tests and I suddenly remembered the Lüscher color test.
I Googled it and sure enough, found an online version for the test. Nine of us did the test and I have to say it was uncannily accurate.
The test is free and it really reveals much, maybe too much:)!
When you have completed taking the test, make sure you continue clicking for further results and at the end,  you are able to email the results to yourself and others.

Here is the online test http://colorquiz.com but it is not approved as the official Lüscher test.
The official website for the Luscher test is http://www.luscher-color.com/

The ColorQuiz test is based on the work of Dr. Max Luscher and is used worldwide, most notably in Europe, by psychologists, doctors, government agencies, and universities to screen their candidates. Since the 1950’s the test has been given to hundreds of thousands of people.

There is even an iphone app that claims to do the Luscher test and is simply called “Color Test” for 99c. One funny line in their description under “more info” : “All-thaw the results are very accurate, they shouldn’t be used as an medical diagnosis” Warning: You may find some strange words and descriptions here:)

The Offical Lüscher Color test:
“The Lüscher-Color-Diagnostic® measures a person’s psychophysical state, his or her ability to withstand stress, to perform, and to communicate. It uncovers the cause of psychological stress, which can lead to physical symptoms. Using 5015 precise definitions, the selections from among these pre-determined test colors measure the state of 23 personality traits, some of which lie outside the realm of the conscious.

Because the color selections are guided in an unconscious manner, they reveal the person as he or she really is, and not as he or she perceives him- or herself, or as he or she would like to be perceived, which occurs when questions are asked directly or by questionnaires. The results of the Lüscher-Color-Diagnostic® (ca 5 pages) contains indications pertaining to personal assessment and special, professional recommendations as to how psychological stress and the resulting physical symptoms can be avoided. It also offers additional information for verbal and homeopathic therapy. Prof. Dr. Max Lüscher is the Head of the Institute of Psycho-medical Diagnostics in Lucerne (Switzerland). He studied clinical psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology in Basel. He has held a professorship in Amsterdam, teaching positions at the Universities of Paris and Rom, at Yale University in the USA, in South America, at universities in Western and Eastern Europe, and in Australia. The Lüscher Color Diagnostic has been in clinical use since 1947, and has been translated into 27 languages. His chief work is : “The Law of Harmony within Us” (ECON pocket book, 6th edition).”

A gazillion straws light

I cannot imagine trying to construct this, but the ultimate effect is pretty cool.

http://mocoloco.com/archives/011615.php

Can we make the case for a phonetic alphabet today?

The English language is complicated to grasp since the spoken language is quite different from written language. Instead of one symbol per sound, English has an average of over 14 different ways to[two] write[right] a single sound.

This makes the English writing system ambiguous and difficult to master.

A dictionary key is over ten times less complex and can probably be learned ten times as quick. It has been claimed that instead of 3 years to achieve literacy, highly phonemic notations may take only 3 months to master!

The concept of a phonetic alphabet has been around for a while now – more than likely even before Benjamin Franklin made his contribution even though he lost interest in it after a while.

I have a hunch we may just be able to apply some of the learning from the phonetic movement…

……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Here’s a sample of Ben Franklin’s text:

http://www.historycarper.com/resources/twobf3/phonetic.htm
http://www.childrenofthecode.org/code-history/franklin.htm

There is an International Phonetic Association that has lessons and even its own fonts
http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/index.html

IPA fonts
http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/encore-ipa.html
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/fonts.htm
http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts/phonetic.html

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Chart Unicode “Keyboard”
http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/keyboard/

An example of Unicode writing:

And here is an extract from a story:

IPA charts in Unicode
http://www.ipa.webstuff.org

Online phonetics and phonology lessons
http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184.html
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/course.htm
http://www.uiowa.edu/ acadtech/phonetics/

UCLA Phonetics Lab Data
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu

Interactive IPA charts (include recordings of each phoneme)
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html
http://www.shef.ac.uk/ipa/symbols.php

IPA trainer
http://www.ipatrainer.com

Representation of IPA with ASCII
http://www.blahedo.org/ascii-ipa.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA

Color Semiotics

There are several fonts that convert text into blocks of color, but the one that intriques me most is from Christian Faur: “Colors and how they can express coded information is an area often focused on in field of design, art, physiology and philosophy.  Easily identified iconography in conjunction with color can quickly inform us about potential dangers (warning=yellow, danger=red), it can guide us on what social expectations are, and easily identify product branding (Mc Donald’s, Coke, etc…).”
The most common colors have a standard social precept in which specific colors might stand for a general mood or idea.  These meaning do not often transcend the boundary of the society that has constructed the meaning.  An example is the color black, which often stands for death in western society while it’s opposite, white, is used to symbolize death in the eastern cultures.
 
Their have been systems put in place in the past that use colors to signify abstract meaning.  These systems range from those used in coat of arms, flags, and military uniforms to the color and patterned Setts of Skottish kilts used to identify clans or groups. 
 
The Inca’s are believed to have used a system of colored strings and knots as a system of writing and recording data which was probably one of the first uses of mapping color directly to language. (http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/inca-khipu.html). 
 
In modern times, electronic engineers are using color mapping system developed for identifying the resistance of resistors (10 colors that represent the individual numbers from 0-9) as well as color coding for wires (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code).

Article/website here: http://www.christianfaur.com/color/Site/Color%20Semiotics.html

Just how dimensional are our senses?

I am sure you must have considered that perhaps we don’t all sense things the same way – for instance, does PMS 185 red actually seem the same to you as I perceive it? I was especially intrigued by an article I read about Letter-Color Synaesthesia in which the author explains this “condition” : ” For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this implicit sense of a relationship between letters and colors. To me, every letter seems to have a color of its own. When I think of a word, I am aware of its color and the color of its component letters. The phenomenon is consistent enough that I can rely on it to help me remember things like phone numbers and proper names. I call it my letter-color synaesthesia.

Webster’s Dictionary defines synaesthesia as “the production of a mental sense-impression relating to one sense by the stimulation of another sense.” In my case, the sense-impression (color) comes from a purely mental event (thinking of a word), not from any external sensory stimulation.

The effect is completely involuntary. It’s a bit like what happens when you think of a word like “banana”: maybe you see the spelling in front of your mind’s eye, or maybe you hear the way it sounds in your mind’s ear. But it’s pretty likely that you are also at least faintly aware of the color yellow. That’s pretty much what it’s like: a faint awareness that can be brought to my full attention under certain circumstances.”

Here is another resource done by MIT regarding synaesthesia:
http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html

Also very intriguing is that some people can TASTE letters HEAR colors and FEEL time:
http://www.kval.com/news/health/45459612.html?video=pop&t=a

How the brain can SEE sounds
http://shamslab.psych.ucla.edu/lay-articles/telegraph.html

People may be able to TASTE words
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8070210.stm

I think I suffer from a really weird sense and that is that I see numbers in three dimensional positions relative to each other. Some are stacked one above the other but they are mostly arranged diagonally higher or lower relative to each other.
Here’s what I mean:

I’d love to know if anyone else has unusual ways of visualizing letters…

What does a Trillion look like?

So what does a trillion look like?
How about this: A million seconds equals 11.5 days and a billion seconds is 32 years, while a trillion is 32,000 YEARS. Now here’s a really thought provoking illustration: If you spent $25,000 a DAY it will take 109,000 YEARS to spend a Trillion Dollars.

While you will never see a trillion dollars in person (nature’s way of protecting your sanity amidst the bailout), computers can do the job without breaking a sweat—or worrying about retirement. This particular rendering was made through Google SketchUp, Google’s 3D modeling software. Measurements were taken of a $10,000 stack of $100 bills (just half an inch thick!) and pretty much multiplied from there using simple geometry. In that trillion dollar shot, each pallet holds $100 million…and the pallets are double stacked. As for that red blob on the left? It’s a human.

Now imagine if you stacked up $1 bills rather than $100 bills…