The Red Ferret Journal

The Meaning of Color is an absolutely brilliant post (the first of three) from Smashing Magazine which looks at the meaning of color in terms of design. It comes with some great practical examples of the use of color in web design. If you’re involved in design or even just interested, then you really need to bookmark this and keep it for permanent reference.

 Outside the western world, red has different associations. For example, in China, red is the color of prosperity and happiness. It can also be used to attract good luck. In other eastern cultures, red is worn by brides on their wedding days. In South Africa, however, red is the color of mourning. Red is also associated with communism. Red has become the color associated with AIDS awareness in Africa due to the popularity of the [RED] campaign.

Delete Your Account. Awesome site gives detailed info (and direct links) on how to delete your account from the major online services like Facebook, MySpace, The Pirate Bay, Flickr, Amazon etc. Still a work in progress, but a must-have bookmark nonetheless. Hot on the heels of the most excellent Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, hmm…is there a trend here?

 Information on how to delete your account from all of the major social networking, blogging, shopping, etc. sites and services across the web…Feeling a little regret? We can show you how to get it back, too! (If possible)

The Third & Seventh is an astonishing example of how far CGI (computer graphics) has come. The whole film is CGI. Yes all of it! Grab a cuppa and enjoy. [Via]

 A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.

Radio Tuna is a real time search for online internet radio stations. You can enter a song, artist or genre and it will give you a list of radio stations that are currently playing whatever it is you’re searching for. The interface is very intuitive and once you’ve found something you like, you can listen to it via the Radio Tuna webpage, complete with cover art and information about the station’s playing habits.

It’s completely free, but you’ll need to register if you want to bookmark your stations using Radio Tuna or to suggest new online radio stations. Neat, simple and nifty. [Photo from Golden Coast]

RadioTuna is the first real-time search engine for online radio, giving up-to-the-minute results relating to the music being played across the globe right now. If you search for an artist that happens to be playing right now, we’ll tell you and you can connect straight to that station. If your choice isn’t playing right now, we’ll tell you which stations are most likely to play them next.

Tags: radio+tuna, internet+radio+search+engine, internet+radio+station

The name may not be a household word yet, but it may soon become one. Piezoelectric Rubber is a new technology for embedding piezoelectric tech onto rubberized material which could soon be used to power mobile phones and pacemakers.

These stretchable rubber sheets embedded with ceramic nano ribbons could be used to make shoes which would generate electricity while we walk or jog, and so charge our cell phones or pedometers. Or by placing this material on our chests we could use the vibration from our breathing to power a pacemaker.

The material has been developed by Princeton University and could provide cable-free energy devices with an ever widening variety of practical uses. Move over wind and solar! There’s a new guy in town.

The development of a method for integrating highly efficient energy conversion materials onto stretchable, biocompatible rubbers could yield breakthroughs in implantable or wearable energy harvesting systems. Being electromechanically coupled, piezoelectric crystals represent a particularly interesting subset of smart materials that function as sensors/actuators, bioMEMS devices, and energy converters.

Tags: gadget, eco+gadget, piezoelectricity, pzt+ribbons

Google Map Buddy is an excellent free program which you can use to grab any part of a Google map you may need. It’s much cooler than simply doing a rough screen capture, because you can select exactly what you need, roads, satellite or hybrid maps even, select the zoom level, and generally customise the results to your total requirements. Lovely stuff!

This BBC report on scientists communicating with brain damaged patients directly via the brain is absolutely astonishing. Apparently the boffins can now recognise patterns of thoughts and treat them as answers to questions using an MRI brain scanner. Stick a patient who is apparently in a vegetative state (i.e. completely non responsive) into a scanner, and you can ask them questions and receive answers based on what they’re thinking about.

Watch the video, it’s mind-blowing. It reminds me of that amazing film where those patients who were severely non-communicative were given some concoction and started to come alive again. Freaky stuff. More here from New Scientist.

 Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world. Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.

Can’t get your TPS report written because stupid Fred in the cubicle next door keeps yammering on about his third in-grown toenail? Well fight back with Rainy Mood, a 15 minute rain and thunder sound effects loop that plays through your browser. Headphones on and chill out, now get back to work.

Add gentle rain to your environment. Enhance your music. Sleep better. Relax.

Tags: rainymood, rainy+mood, rain+sound+effects

There’s a lot of excited talk about EcoShield™ Deck Tiles. Made of over 90% recycled materials – including polyethylene plastics recycled from food packaging and used milk jugs, recycled wood fibers from scrap pallets and other waste wood and construction debris – these innovative tiles were just introduced at the 2010 International Builders Show.

Created by Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies, Inc. (AERT), a leading plastic recycler and manufacturer of green building products, these interlocking floor tiles are part of the new LifeCycle® line. Their superior strength and durability make them perfect for patios, verandas, rooftops, walkways, and virtually all level surfaces. And they don’t take any special tools to install and require no staining, painting, or sealing.

These handsome deck tiles come in 12”x12” and 2’x2’ configurations with a number of color combinations, and have an impressive 20-year warranty. Available throughout the US and Canada, these cool deck tiles will definitely create a special look for a lifetime of enjoyment.

EcoShield Deck Tiles are an innovative product that leverages A.E.R.T.’s unique processing technologies, encapsulating recycled wood fibers in recycled polyethylene plastic. EcoShield Deck Tiles create beautiful exteriors and provide the following benefits: Available in both 12”x12” and 2’x2’ configurations (which can be used for commercial applications and larger areas) / Comes with a grid pattern for easy layout and versatility / Snap together for simple and secure installation.

Tags: recycled+flooring, ecoshield, ecoshield+deck+tiles

Lots of talk currently doing the rounds about a mythical ‘Nirvana Phone’, which is basically the marriage of a mobile phone with thin client and wireless technology . The idea is you do away with laptops, and replace the whole computing thing with a phone hooked up to a Bluetooth keyboard and large screen.

Make no mistake, this IS the future of computing. Now that we’re starting to see cell phones with the processing power needed for the task, it’s inevitable that this idea will take off massively once the economics can be worked out. By that I mean, it all needs to fit together in an affordable package which offers the same kind of utility as a laptop does today. We’re not far off.

When you think about it most people already use their smartphone for the major part of their work needs – email, voice communication and a bit of search browsing. Once the online web app market matures a little (i.e. works reliably) and 3G wireless delivers the soon to launch 40 Mbps everywhere type speeds we’ll start to see new phone computers everywhere. Will they be Citrix/PC thin client type devices? I doubt it. More likely Google will take the lead since it understands the Web-machine interface better than most companies on the planet. And with Android it is learning fast about the needs of the new generation computing platform.

Watch this stuff, it’s going to explode over the next few years.

How to Report the News is simply hilarious. And absolutely totally completely spot on! Warning – some adult language.

You’ve got Windows Vista and you’re totally fed up with having to click Continue each time you want to start up a program which Vista feels is ‘dangerous’. Time after time. After time.

Behold, Norton UAC. This free utility sits on top of the Windows security stuff and lets you build up a whitelist of programs you want to start up automatically without the quiz and darkened screen. Tick the ‘Don’t Ask Me Again’ box and it won’t. Ever. It’s brilliant.

And before you start saying ‘oh, but you’ll make your computer so much more insecure’, as far as I can see mindlessly clicking OK for regularly used programs is not secure. After a while you do it without even thinking, where’s the security in that? And this seems to be a more secure option than simply switching off UAC completely as some people suggest.

One caveat for the paranoid. You will be sending anonymous meta data to Symantec for them to optimise their whitelists for ‘the next version’ of the utility. Just saying.

 The Norton User Account Control tool will replace parts of the Windows Vista UAC system. It will utilize the UAC security feature from the Windows Vista architecture, while simultaneously improving user-friendliness significantly. The tool prompts recommendations based on an assessment on the user-action i.e. the signature information of the executable. The tool also has a “remember me” feature that allows users to suppress future prompts from the same action.