Couple of things: Smooth Criminal is a timeless classic. Rasputina watch out.

“The “Meal Planning Solution,” part of Intel’s “Connected Store,” is a sort of kiosk you might find in an upscale suburban market, catering to families desperate to find something the kids will eat. [...] So, when he or she passes by the kiosk, the digital signage, equipped with a freaky sort of Anonymous Video Analytics technology, zooms in on his or her face and instantly determines gender and age group to guess what products might exert some allure.”

Sadly the video demos everything but the face recognition. Lame, Fast Company.

The Art of Hermann Zapf from Johnny Dib on Vimeo.

“A film on the purpose and techniques of calligraphy. Presented and produced by Hallmark. Filmed at Hallmark cards during a visit by Mr. Zapf. Production manager Noel Gordon. Script outline Peter Seymour. Script editor Richard Rhodes. Camera Direction Frank Robinson. Associate cameraman Heinz Burger. Idea and direction Harald Peter.”

The painfully short description for this video is: “teams of quadrotors autonomously build tower-like cubic structures from modular parts.” Autonomous, in this case, could maybe possibly (anyway to make this even more passive and wishy-washy?) be considered AI for today’s revised definition. The video and the following Wired article are unrelated but I think there’s some interesting connections.

“By using probability-based algorithms to derive meaning from huge amounts of data, researchers discovered that they didn’t need to teach a computer how to accomplish a task; they could just show it what people did and let the machine figure out how to emulate that behavior under similar circumstances.” Read the whole article, The AI Revolution Is On, to see some other definitions.

And here’s a fun little video from last summer demonstrating the Kiva robots mentioned in that Wired article too.

If you’re at all interested in the history of programming languages, give this video a watch. You’ve got the father of APL, Ken Iverson himself, being interviewed along with a panel of experts.

If APL isn’t your cup of tea, then you can also watch for the crazy 70s flute music, the hardware, the fashion, the crazy hair & beards and the set design. This video is such a wonderful collection of stuff.

There’s more backstory at Catherine’s Myspace page. (And so you know, she’s working on a whole documentary on the history of APL and array programming.)

Design story: The Decanter from Landor Associates on Vimeo.

“The Decanter,” a promotional film produced by Walter Landor and Associates in the 1960s, shows the start-to-finish process of several of Landor’s designs for Old Fitzgerald whiskey. Narrated by Walter himself, the film depicts creative teams illustrating and critiquing designs, industrial designers fabricating models, and research teams conducting focus groups and testing in Landor’s supermarket laboratory. All takes place on the famed Klamath ferryboat docked at San Francisco’s Pier 5, which housed Landor’s offices for some 20 years.

Thanks to Core77 for discovering this gem.

I See Steaks In My Sleep from Department of the 4th Dimension on Vimeo.

Keep an eye on the knife. Envious of his facility with that thing.

From the description:

“This commercial for online storage site driveway.com came out in 2000, and featured a parody of a supervillain, Lord Insidious, which I created. This spot was even featured at Cannes that year. Now Dreamworks is coming out with their movie, Megamind, about a giant brained supervillain in a black outfit with a high collar and cape. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. Let my lesson be one to you all: don’t wait a decade before working on the film treatment for your own good idea.”

For you film buffs, this spot was shot by Bennett Miller, who a few years later got some love from the Academy when he directed Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote.”

A little blast from my past. Thank you Bonapa!

Enjoyed this video from the Singularity Hub article “What’s The Secret Behind Diapers.com Success? A Kiva Robot Warehouse“.

Did you know most online retailers use 5-6 different box sizes? Diapers.com uses 20. Plus they have some fancy computer science going on with their box packing software. Interesting stuff.

The Nature of Things / Martin Gardner from Wagner Brenner on Vimeo.

Watched this last night. Like many, I first discovered Martin Gardner while attempting to read Scientific American as a kid. This video reminds me why he was so interesting: math, juggling, puzzles, magic tricks and even computers. Check out the segments with John Conway (Mr. Life) or Bill Gosper (Mr. Lisp) or the “Dean of American Magicians” Jay Marshall. Martin Gardner was such a fascinating guy.