I have time to browse around the web when I’m feeding Ripley and I come across some fantastic things. I figured I should share them. Here are some I came across June 2nd, ’10.

Flash Cards for Visually Impaired Kids
I love it when things are made with care and kindness. These cards help kids learn about their environment using these flashcards that have various tactile elements on them. Even though these are for visually impaired kids, I am tempted to get them for Ripley.
Haptic Flash Cards

Haptic Vest Lets You Feel Bullets and Knives In Video Games
“Saurabh Palan from the Haptics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania has developed the Tactile Gaming Vest (TGV) a device that lets you feel the impact of bullets, and the slashing sensation of knives as you play action packed video games.”

I’ve been interested in haptic technology ever since I read about teledildonics years ago. This isn’t quite that, but equally as cool.
Haptic Vest

Vocab
I was watching this video and related article that compares the 2010′s to “Turbulent Teens” – the dawning decade named for the incredible highs and terrible lows we’ll see in the coming years, as brands and businesses cope with huge economic, corporate, governmental, geopolitical, environmental, social, technological and civic upheavals – and some words popped up that I thought sounded kind of fun. I might have to try using them.

* Stuffocation – too much crap.

* Betapreneurs – a new try-it-and-see mindset that is daring, counterintuitive, risk-friendly, experimental and flexible

* Anarconomy – Anarchy + Economy. The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies wrote a report in the latter half of 2009 with that title. “The report claims to witness the current trends of free content distribution, mainly over the Internet: Wikipedia, open source software such as OpenOffice and Linux, books, music, films (and the content of this blog for instance) which the creators make freely available. To them this trend is going to get even stronger in the coming decades.”

How To Destroy Angels

This is Trent Reznor and his wife Mariqueen’s new band. I’ve been a huge, I mean HUGE NIN fan since I was in my teens and I also met Mariqueen when she was part of West Indian Girl, so this was a very interesting project to me. I just downloaded the free EP (using Topspin, the last company I worked for) and am on my second run-through listening to it. At first it sounds like a new NIN record with a female vocal. The two songs I like the most are “The Space In Between” and “A Drowning”. I have embedded the vid for your enjoyment.