Monday, January 25, 2010

Prezi Improves Freestyle Presentations with Simpler Editing, YouTube Integration [Webapps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/C0ZPqK__O3w/prezi-improves-freestyle-presentations-with-simpler-editing-youtube-integration

Prezi, the previously featured online editing tool that lets you make zooming, free-flowing presentations, has simplified its editing tool, improved its presentation controls, and made YouTube embedding much more simple in its latest release.

Prezi is the antithesis of the slide-to-slide PowerPoint style. Your presentations are mocked up on a large canvas, with bits of text, images, charts, and now videos embedded where you want them, and connected where it makes sense. You can set up a "path" to run through when giving a presentation, creating a kind of Disney-like rail ride through your points, but the real value comes when your audience has a question—zooming back to a point and expanding on it is easy and intuitive, and connecting two points doesn't require a slide hunt.

You can check out a demonstration Prezi below, embedded from the webapp's site:

As when it launched, Prezi's basic online editor and offline presentations (on Windows and Mac systems) are free, but removing the Prezi watermark, keeping your Prezi presentations private, and upgrading your storage require a paid plan. If you've used Prezi for a presentation, or like a similar non-linear tool, tell us about it in the comments—and feel free to show off your work by linking it.




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Radio Tuna Combines Music Discovery and Internet Radio [Radio]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/VuyJLB2Z27I/radio-tuna-combines-music-discovery-and-internet-radio

If you're looking for new music you won't find a shortage of music discovery services online. Almost all of them search their own music catalogs and not the vast assortment of online radio. RadioTuna brings music discovery to online radio.

Click on the image above for a closer look.

When you visit RadioTuna you can dive right in by searching by genre, artist, and song to begin listening. Radio stations suggested by RadioTuna are given rankings to show you how much of a certain type of music they play. You can bookmark radio stations you find and then review your listening history, see the play charts from your saved stations, and share the stations you listen to with friends through social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

RadioTuna provides a more in-depth method for discovering music online than simply searching a directory of radio stations and hoping to find one that plays songs you'd like. You can check out RadioTuna without signing up but saving stations and your search history requires a free login. If you have a music discovery service you can't live without, let's hear about it in the comments.




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Visual Sound Is A Phone Concept For The Deaf With Transparent Touchscreen [Concepts]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/O6cZXtObRh0/visual-sound-is-a-phone-concept-for-the-deaf-with-transparent-touchscreen

We don't give much thought to deaf users of phones, but Pratt Institute student Suhyun Kim has worked hard on this stunning Visual Sound concept, which converts voice to text and vice versa.

The scroll-like device has a touchscreen for text to be typed in, which then gets converted to voice for the other person on the line, whose audio then turns into text for the deaf user of the phone to read. If the Visual Sound concept ever got put into production, I'll be one of the first to snag one—not only does it look great, but it might help when phoning from noisy locations, as I'm prone to do. [Yanko Design via Recombu]



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Tablet Sutra: How Are We Supposed to Hold This Thing? [Apple Tablet]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/9r4lm4dFhvQ/tablet-sutra-how-are-we-supposed-to-hold-this-thing

Speculation and guesswork aside, if Apple's got a tablet, we need to know how to handle it, physically. So, with two pieces of cardboard, scotch tape and Photoshop, we crudely mocked one up. It was... unusual.

Tablet PCs have been around for years, but they've got keyboard, ball-jointed necks and all manner of extraneous fixture and features. Smartphones are sort of like this new slate-like variety of tablet, only they're too tiny. Buttonless, slick, slab-like tablets do currently exist, but they're rare, and no one has found the right software pairing to make them particularly versatile. A 10-to-11-inch tablet wouldn't be totally new, but since none of us are really clear on how you're supposed to handle it in real-world situations, we built our own.

Here now, in the darkest, dingiest corner of the tech world's favorite rabbit hole, we've performed a hands-on with our cardboard version of Steve Jobs' mythical product. So, before it exists anywhere outside of our collective imagination, step into Tablet Sutra, the at-times-awkward position-by-position walkthrough of tablet handling:

The hurdles for a tablet like this aren't just technological. This is a device that's going to have to convert its usership to a whole new kind of physical experience. We're used to laptops and smartphones, and we take the things they're good and bad at for granted. The tablet's software may be a wonderful mystery box with massive potential, but the tablet form factor, like any other, won't be for everyone.

If you think we left out any key tablet positions, mention it in comments—feel free to upload photos—or send a note to our tips line with "Tablet Sutra" in the subject line. We'll be on the lookout.



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South Korea Plans Giant Eco Dome [Architecture]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/GIheUN_04AM/south-korea-plans-giant-eco-dome

The Ecorium Project, South Korea's planned nature reserve, is a stunner. The 33,000 sq. meter park includes a wetland reserve, a wild plant area, and maybe—just maybe—two dudes and their hilarious hijinks.

The structure will comprise a series of connected domes, each of which contains its own greenhouse.

Sponsored by the National Ecological Institute of South Korea and designed by Samoo, the Ecorium Project is going to be as much an educational center as it is a preserve. It'll also be energy-efficient itself, with each greenhouse being capable of detecting external climate conditions and making the appropriate adjustments inside. The exterior will be made of metal panels, low-iron and low-e double glazing, wood and plexiglass.

While there's no word on when it will be completed—or started, for that matter—it's great to see a project like this moving past the concept phase and into development. [World Architecture News via Inhabitat]



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