quaith writes "With the Space Shuttle Endeavour scheduled to launch at 4:39 AM EST on Sunday for a trip to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency has released a video that shows how the modules it's carrying — Node-3 ('Tranquility') and Cupola — are going to get attached. Node-3 is a connecting module. Cupola has six trapezoidal windows and circular roof designed to provide a unique vantage-point for observing Earth. The video animations show how the station's robotic arm will be used initially to put the modules in place as a single unit, and then to detach Cupola from the end of Node-3 and reattach it on the Earth-facing side. With this addition, the ISS will start to look like something that Jules Verne would have wanted to visit."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PVI chairman Scott Liu today told the press that his company will produce some of the earliest fully touchscreen and motion-capable e-paper displays this year. Current screens often need a separate touchscreen layer and are too slow to show video or other animations, but screens with either feature should be ready by the end of 2010. PVI's touchscreen technique would put the touch underneath the e-paper and eliminate the unintentional dimming of the display, a problem that has affected e-readers from Sony and others....

theodp writes "'You have a lot of missing images, in the TV, in the news reporting,' explains billionaire Jimmy Lai. It's a gap that Lai's Next Media intends to fill with its animated news service. Artists lift details from news photos while actors in motion sensor suits re-create action sequences of stories making headlines. Animators graft cartoon avatars to the live-motion action, and the stories hit the Web. When news agencies didn't have footage of scenes from the Tiger Woods car crash, Lai's team raced to put together animation dramatizing the incident that became a YouTube sensation. Thus far, Lai has been denied a television license, but with or without his own station, he thinks his animations are headed for televisions worldwide. His company is currently in talks with media organizations to churn out news animations on demand using Next Media's graphic artists and software tools."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Filed under: Software, Apple, Developer The new iPad has lots of space. The screen offers 1024x768 pixels. That's way more room to work with than the iPhone gave you. And because of that room, it's time to re-think the way you designed iPhone applications. Things that worked well with the iPhone's limited space -- things that were meant to expand the device's virtual world beyond the screen's tiny reality -- are the things that you need to readdress and confront. Why keep using visual tricks when you can expand into real pixel space? Take the traditional UINavigationController class for example. Its entire role on the iPhone is to provide the same kind of tree view used in Mac OS X's Finder windows (View > As Columns, Command-3). The animations as you select and push view controllers and the back button are both there because you can't reasonably see an entire tree structure at once, in columns, the way you do on a Mac. On an iPad, the rules change. You have enough space to reasonably present that kind of tree based view, whether you use two columns, or three columns, or more. An iPhone-style view controller begins to make less sense, unless it is embedded into a larger visual design where it needs to conserve space on that layout. Another iPhone space conservation approach is the tab bar. The UITabBarController class allows you to see up to five tabs at once, each tab hosting a separate view. Applications from YouTube to the iPod music player use this class (and its b

Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewCatan. If you've ever visited, there's a good chance you're passionate about it. First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it's a a damn good condensed version. First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn't condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple "vanilla Settlers," the basic game as presented in Exozet's iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that's great to have in your pocket. Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch). Gallery: Catan: The First Island The Game The Settlers of Catan is, at heart, a game of collecting resources and building a collection of settlements and cities on a modular board, with the goal of reaching a set point total (between 8 and 12, but defaulting to 10) before the other p

Beautiful new renderings of NASA data let you fly over Martian geology.

Filed under: Other EventsThank you again everyone for stopping by and sharing this live event with TUAW. We really appreciated how many of you stuck around after our CoverItLive connection died. Thank you all! We really appreciate your support for TUAW. 11:37: And it looks like we're out of there. I think I'm going to have to soak my fingers in ice water. Yikes! 11:35: iPad is up on Apple, and video! 11:35 "Thank you so much for coming." 11:35 GIZ Jason Chen: And here's IPS: In Plane Switching. Click here if you want a better explanation of the technology. 11:34: "Go to the store. Get your hands on an iPad. Once you get your hands on an iPad you'll never go back." 11:33: "We fit the users. User don't have to come to the device. We come to the users." 11:33: "We always try to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. Be able to get the best of both. Extremely fast products." 11:33: Jason Chen: "We are ready for the iPad." 11:32: "Most advanced technology", "Magical and revolutionary device", "Unbelievable price". 11:31 Back to Steve. iTunes Store, App Store, iBook Store, all on the iPad. Over 125million accounts. One click shopping. (One tap, really) 12 Billion products. At scale, and ready for iPad. 11:30: (via Macworld) Monitoring The Twitter, I see a lot of people blown away by the price here, and also a bunch of people sold on the keyboard. Fraser Spiers, a Mac developer and a schoolteacher, says the 16GB wi-fi only model with keyboard extra makes

Like pretty visualizations? This new start-up pulls spending data into Flash animations so that you can see who's spending what where.

kkleiner writes "ARMAR, or Augmented Reality for Maintenance and Repair, is a head mounted display unit that provides graphic overlays to assist you in making repairs. An Android phone provides an interface to control the graphics you view during the process. Published in IEEE, and recently tested with the United States Marine Corps on an armored turret, ARMAR can cut maintenance times in half by guiding users to the damaged area and displaying 3D animations to demonstrate the appropriate tools and techniques."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael J. Ross writes "Of all Web technologies, JavaScript may have the most checkered past — first heralded as a powerful object-oriented language for jazzing up Web pages, but later condemned as a source of spammy pop-up windows and horrid animations polluting websites everywhere. Yet during the past several years, Web designers and developers are increasingly using JavaScript unobtrusively, for client-site interactivity — as a supplement to server-side functionality, not a replacement, and built upon standards-compliant (X)HTML and CSS. As a result, the once-derided language is now enjoying a true resurgence in interest and use. This has been bolstered by the proliferation of JavaScript libraries, of which jQuery is clearly the front runner. Web programmers seeking to get up to speed on this exciting resource can turn to Learning jQuery 1.3: Better Interaction Design and Web Development with Simple JavaScript Techniques." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

http://bit.ly/2oK8Mq Beautiful motion typography and kinetic type animations on Vimeo #type #tipografia [from http://twitter.com/PapaiFelps/statuses/5842160370]

Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, iPod classic If you happened to be wandering around a St. Louis, Missouri arcade in the early nineties, you'd probably find a young me, playing the Simpsons Arcade game (either that or the Avengers game, I loved that one too). It was great: beat-em-up action, The Simpsons, and impressive animations and graphics for the era. Now, EA Mobile wants you to try and revisit those days on your iPhone -- kind of. They've released something that they're calling The Simpsons Arcade [iTunes Link] on the App Store, and while it is a nice sort of tribute to the old game, it's not exactly a direct port. Trust me -- I played the old game, which had the family chasing after Maggie, and this game, which has Homer chasing after a doughnut, isn't the same thing. It's not a bad game -- it is a beat-em-up, with the standard movement stick, and an attack and jump button, which can be used in the ways you'd expect. And it does have real voices and sounds from the show, nice new, crisp graphics, and (c'mon, it's The Simpsons) guest stars aplenty. You can bring the family members in for special attacks later on in the game's 25 levels, and there are even some mini-games just like the old arcade version. But it's not the same, and for $4.99 in the App Store with no free trial currently available, it's slightly disingenuous to call this "The Simpsons Arcade" when you're not really getting to play the old game. If I bought this expecting a

... alkoholfreie und alkoholische Getränke von 10.00. bis 23.00 Uhr - Deutschsprachiges Animations- und Unterhaltungsprogramm Wellness/Sport (gegen Gebühr): Hoteleigenes Wellness- und Spa-Center mit Sauna, Dampfbad, Jacuzzi, Massagen, medizinischen Schlammbädern, ...

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App ReviewWhen Apple launched the App Store, there were no in-app purchases, but it quickly became apparent that some mechanism for buying stuff within an app itself would be needed. I remember thinking a store of virtual gifts seemed like a no-brainer, but the in-app purchase block was a show-stopper. Kisky Netmedia isn't the first company to enable in-app purchases, of course, but Little World Gifts [iTunes Link] is precisely what you'd expect to evolve on the iPhone: a little store of 3D trinkets which you can purchase and share with friends. Little World Gifts (which we covered a few weeks ago) would be relegated to a "gee whiz" factor were it not for the Facebook component. My purchases appear in the Facebook LWG app (as seen in the gallery below) and from there I can share with my friends who also enable the Facebook app. No iPhone required. Uh oh. The implementation is simple: you see a series of little shelves with little 3D items, and you can buy them. Some are simply 3D objects you can rotate and zoom in a little staging area, while some have associated animations (none that I tested had sound). You will need a network connection to browse this store, as new items may appear periodically. I found the store pretty easy to use, as most in-app purchases tend to be low friction. Viewing an item is a little tricky sometimes, and you have to intuit to double-tap to bring up a "close this view" button, but the models are quite wonderful

... 10.00 bis 24.00 Uhr Bei Ankunft Auffüllung der Minibar mit einer großen Flasche Wasser Fitnessraum, 2 Tennisplätze (Flutlicht gegen Gebühr), Beach-Volleyball, Aerobic, Fußball, Tischtennis Tagsüber reichhaltiges internationales Animations-Programm Abends ...

E-on has announced several new software options in the Vue 8 family of 3D rendering and animation tools. The Vue 8 Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is essentially a fully functional version of the company's xStream/Infinite utilities. Users can create and complete projects, save the work, and render stills or animations without any size or length limits....

True to a late leak, five major American publishers today cemented plans for a joint venture to promote a universal standard for digital magazines and similar content. Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp and Time expect the unnamed company to develop digital magazines that will be readable on many platforms, including different operating systems and screen sizes, such as computers, smartphones and tablets. The technology will also be designed such that it should scale up to color reading devices with mixed media like animations and video....

An anonymous reader writes with a New York Times piece about the tumultuous transition to electronic devices, instead of printed materials, for text. "Newspapers and novels are moving briskly from paper to pixels, but textbooks have yet to find the perfect electronic home. They are readable on laptops and smartphones, but the displays can be eye-taxing. Even dedicated e-readers with their crisp printlike displays can’t handle textbook staples like color illustrations or the videos and Web-linked supplements publishers increasingly supply. Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jumsoft has launched a new version of its Keynote bundle, Keynote Quartet FX '10. The package includes the latest versions of Keynote Themes FX, Keynote Backgrounds FX, Keynote Objects FX and Keynote Animations FX. It also includes a bonus package, consisting of themes and images for iWork. The base part of the package includes 150 objects, 100 animations, 35 motion backgrounds and 15 motion themes. The bonus package adds 400 more images and themes....

Created by lill Using Memoov online animation studio. Go to http://memoov.com to create Your own Animations. Author: MemoovSite Keywords: memoov animation m_id:375_1259417476476 u_id:375 c_id:0 Added: November 28, 2009

iPresentee has launched an update to its Keynote Animations package for Apple's Keynote presentations software. Version 3.0 provides a total of 115 animations, including 35 new animations and 85 carry-overs from the last release. The animations support customization of size, rotation or opacity, while allowing users to add multiple layers. Each animation's background is transparent for use on any colored Keynote background....

A lot of work was put into this thesis presentation. It lasts for a whopping 6 minutes and 47 seconds consisting of numerous animations along with unique stills. Some parts appear to be done in a power point type presentation where the director calls out several facts about his creation. This feature was put together with such care, I absolutely enjoy the way it starts off with site analysis, then structure stats, then structure features, then spaces..... and then finally several seamless shots, and approaches of the whole building, showing off the design to the viewers. Great job to Michael Ka'ainoni, the person responsible for this thesis project.