1. Microsoft crash while imitating Jobs
Microsoft have been powerless to Apple's rise in being the coolest kid in the digital playground as the iPod, iPhone, iPads and Macs have become the devices to own. Now Microsoft want to get back in the game, this time competing in the tablet market with their rather fancy Surface.
At least that's how they want you to see it. Unfortunately for Microsoft, not only do they appear to be over-using buzzwords implemented by Steve Jobs years before, but President of the Windows Live Division at Microsoft, Steven Sinofsky, can't even surf the web with ithout it crashing. At least there wasn't a blue screen of death.
2. Oxford gets stitchbombed
Please re-read that title before you start tweeting to your friends about how UXB broke tragic world news. Oxford got stitchbombed.
The event was put together by Oxford based shop Darn It & Stitch to celebrate two years of being a unique haberdashery shop and saw the team go around putting colourful and creative crocheted seat covers on random bicycles, as well as this bulls nether-regions.
A terrible shame we are based in London as the UXB team would have loved to have seen one keeping their bike seat warm for them after work.
3. Toughest interview ever?
Jobs can be hard to get. Even a phone call after handing in a CV can feel like a small victory. However, to the people who created YouTube, Bebo, Skype and the world wide web you'd think applying to help kids how to code would be a sure thing. That is until you find out your interviewers are the children themselves who care more about Bieber than your success.
Code Club UK is the brain child of Clare Sutcliffe and Linda Sandvik and aims to introduce coding into the school system. A genius idea that could inspire children into the technical side of digital.
4. Gamma-ray burst orchestra
In september 2008 one of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts in recent history occurred. Labeled GRB 080916C, the huge energetic release of the event was measured into a graph which, to a regular blog reader, seems quite colourful and meaningless.
However, members of the team that work with the Fermi Large Area Telescope used to graph to create a song. This is the NASA blog's explanation:
"In translating the gamma-ray measurements into musical notes we assigned the photons to be "played" by different instruments (harp, cello, or piano) based on the probabilities that they came from the burst,... By converting gamma rays into musical notes, we have a new way of representing the data and listening to the universe."
The result? A creepy and dark orchestral piece that wouldn't seem out of place in a modern sci-fi film.
5. Instagram specs
A few weeks ago we featured the concept design for the world's first Instagram polaroid camera. Now the internetz is up in arms over an Instagram glasses design by Markus Gerke.
[Image from Technabob]
The idea is that on the left eye lens you will see the real life image and on the right lens you will see the world as instagram sees it. With an aviator look, the instagram glasses are as vintage as the photos they take. Unfortunately, the Berlin based designer has no plans to take the concept further as "it's fictional only".