It hasn’t been that long since YouTube rolled out livestreaming for those who want to broadcast directly from their phones. The caveat was that you had to have at least 10,000 subscribers to enable the feature. Today, however, the video service has m…
Tomorrow marks the first day of this year’s F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, and it promises to be a big one. After all, this is the 10th anniversary of F8, and you know that CEO Mark Zuckerberg will want to show off just how far Facebook…
The Official White House Snapchat Just Called Betsy DeVos Secretary of 'Educatuon'
Posted in: Today's ChiliOn Monday, while reading an Easter story to dozens of children she’s about to doom to a substandard education, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was featured on the official White House Snapchat under an interesting title: “Secretary of Educatuon.”
Coachella Bandit Nabbed by 'Find My Phone' Feature After Allegedly Stealing 100 Smartphones
Posted in: Today's ChiliCoachella is always full of surprises (like when Radiohead quit earlier this week after audio problems), but this year’s biggest surprise seems to have happened far away from the main stage. On Friday, a New York man was arrested after allegedly stealing more than 100 cell phones from concert attendees in one of the…
There’s big news coming out of Intel today, but it’s probably not news that most will want to hear: Intel has decided to quit hosting the Intel Developer Forum, otherwise known as IDF. The conference took place at multiple locations around the world each year and focused on Intel’s products. Intel’s announcement today unfortunately ends a 20 year run for … Continue reading
A Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus 2x camera prototype revealed in a recent leak has been tipped to release later this year. Instead of appearing as the Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, this device is said to be moving forward as the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given the relative size, shape, and features … Continue reading
For Architectural Digest, by Melissa Minton.
After becoming a media fixture in her own right at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011, the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister now has her own impending nuptials to look forward to. Pippa Middleton just announced that she will wed James Matthews on May 20, with her niece and nephew serving as a bridesmaid and page, respectively. The venue the couple chose might not surprise you; St. Mark’s Church in Englefield, Berkshire, is near the Middletons’ childhood home in Bucklebury. It also happens to be where Prince George and Princess Charlotte attended their first Christmas church service this past December and stole the spotlight while enjoying some candy canes.
The nave of the quaint stone church is its oldest section, built in 1190, according to the church’s website. It was extensively restored by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1857 and a tower was added in 1868. St. Mark’s is also located near the royal family’s Sandringham estate in southern England, where they typically celebrate Christmas. The Queen even sends Christmas trees from the country home to local schools and churches. With Pippa’s royal connections, we can think of no more fitting setting.
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Are Phone Booths Coming Back?
Posted in: Today's ChiliFor Architectural Digest, by Nick Mafi.
Anyone who has worked in an office can relate to the many distractions fellow colleagues can produce. From loud conversations to pungent wafts of lunch foods, coworkers are often real roadblocks to productivity (you might even be experiencing it at your desk right now). Indeed, a study from researchers at the University of Sydney found that office noise was cited as the most frustrating aspect of the work environment by about 50 percent of employees in open offices. What’s more, Oxford Economics — an independent global advisory firm — found that 53 percent of office employees complain that workplace noise reduces their satisfaction and productivity.
It’s these findings — and working in office environments themselves — that compelled the founders of technology start-up Framery to create a device that solves this age-old problem. And ironically, the Finnish firm looked back a few decades for its solution: phone booths.
Framery’s soundproof office booths allow staff members to easily step away from their noisy, nonproductive work environment and into a serene and sleekly designed mini workspace. The booths, which resemble traditional phone booths, come equipped with a table top, an adjustable stool, an electric socket, and LED lighting. An integrated air ventilation system ensures the user will remain at a comfortable temperature even when using the booth for long periods of time. They are also available in a variety of colors and sizes; there are single-person booths or larger options that house two people at the same time. And the idea is catching on: After selling 2,800 phone booths in 2016, Framery has set a lofty goal of selling 8,000 booths in 2017.
In fact, Microsoft recently installed Framery office phone booths throughout its headquarters in Seattle. “The feedback from users has been very positive. In fact, we plan to replace one-third of traditional phone rooms with Framery booths in three new buildings in our headquarter campus in Seattle,” said Riku Pentikäinen, Microsoft’s director of Global Workplace Strategies, in a statement.
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For Architectural Digest, by John Gendall.
As the world watches the Syrian Civil War drag on, a Syrian architect, Marwa al-Sabouni, has dealt with the ravages of conflict by thinking ahead to the postwar rebuilding process. From her home in Syria, she spoke with AD about her vision for the future.
Based in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, al-Sabouni has lived the experience of a civil war. “We basically don’t have a cityscape anymore,” she says, pointing to the fact that over 60 percent of Homs has been completely razed as a result of the conflict. There are pockets of livable neighborhoods, but these are remnants, each disconnected from the other by large, impassable swaths of rubbled areas. “Each neighborhood is surrounded by piles of collapsed buildings,” she reports. In 2012, al-Sabouni’s architecture studio, which once overlooked the main square in the central neighborhood of Old Homs, became one of those flattened buildings.
For the last two years, Homs has been mostly spared from major conflict, except for an occasional car bomb or mortar. But normalcy is a long way off. Not only was the April 7 airstrike by the United States a mere 20 miles southeast of the city, but there are daily struggles: Electricity is rationed for a few hours, which means that even the most basic tasks — laundry or charging a phone, for example — take advance planning. There are generators, but the fuel to power them can be scarce. As al-Sabouni characterizes it, “It’s a phase between war and peace.”
As with any tangled geopolitical condition, reasons abound for how the Syrian Civil War came to be. To this list, al-Sabouni would add architecture itself, charging that the built environment created some of the conditions that led to armed conflict — an argument she makes in her acclaimed book, The Battle for Home (Thames & Hudson, 2016). Whereas there had once been an urban fabric that had emerged over time, embedded in culture and place, 20th-century colonialism imposed construction systems and town planning that effectively suffocated the original city, replacing courtyard houses with concrete towers and cutting off neighborhoods into demographic ghettos.
Her concern is that a similar approach will be used once the work of rebuilding begins. “Under the name of reconstruction, there is a temptation to allow investors to build mega-projects and buildings that could erase much of what is important for people here,” she says. “I am trying to help people communicate what kind of city they want to have — to have a connection to memory, a connection to history.”
“I am not in favor of building exactly what we had before, but we should be able to assess what worked and what did not work,” al-Sabouni urges. “We should have a moment of contemplation before we start throwing up high-rise towers and concrete blocks.” One of her ideas is to reconsider building materials. As she explains, Homs is situated in a plane of rich volcanic soil, and over the centuries, its builders found in this landscape what would become one of the city’s principal building materials: black basalt. Despite its natural properties — “it’s very durable, very beautiful, and sustainable,” al-Sabouni says — it has become consigned to history, replaced by the concrete blocks that have come to define, blandly so, the landscape of Homs.
She also looks to the long-standing local tradition of architectural pattern making. To walk through Old Homs is to be amidst a context of richly ornamented surfaces, all derived from craftspeople working in a local idiom. Not only as a matter of aesthetics, but also as an economic principle (support for local artisans), al-Sabouni sees an opportunity to restore some of this tradition in the rebuilding process. She is quick to clarify that she is not advocating a kind of historical pastiche, but instead an incorporation of local materials and an interpretation of traditional patterns in modern ways.
As a kind of testament to Syria’s geopolitical complexity, one of the other characteristics of the architecture in Homs is its layering of history. These layers reference its many phases, from pre-Hellenism through the Ottoman Empire, with each leaving its distinct mark on the landscape. As al-Sabouni remarks, “It is not uncommon to have 2,000-year-old columns standing in a building with 200-year-old walls.”
Al-Sabouni sees this war, as tragic and challenging as it has been, as one more layer of Syria’s history. Once it is confined to the past tense, her hope is that her country will build better, more livable cities. She seems to view her personal experience in similar terms: “I am doing what I can in the moment that I’m in.”
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When it comes to “Guardians of the Galaxy,” expect a lot Ga-more-a.
OK, admittedly, that’s not the greatest pun, but we’ll have plenty of time to work on them, since James Gunn just announced he will return for a third “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie.
That means, barring something catastrophic happening in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” Zoe Saldana’s Gamora, Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord, Vin Diesel’s Groot, and the rest of the crew are likely coming back!
Gunn made the announcement on Facebook Monday, saying he wanted to share the news with the fans, aka the “most important people in the Guardiansverse.”
“Yes, I’m returning to write and direct ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,’” he wrote.
Gunn credits his relationships with Marvel and Disney as big factors in his decision to return, saying, “I can’t fricking wait to get started.”
Even though “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” isn’t out until May 5, Gunn teased the newly announced movie, revealing that the third “Guardians” would come after “Avengers: Infinity War” and “conclude the story of this iteration of the Guardians of the Galaxy,” helping to “catapult both old and new Marvel characters into the next ten years and beyond.”
See Gunn’s full post below. It appears the galaxy will be in good hands for many years to come.
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