Sometimes I run into real gems while browsing Github repositories. Have a look at impress.js, a presentation framework using CSS3 transforms and transitions. It’s inspired by Prezi. Demo here.
One Last Linkdump in 2011
Waterunderground
Waterunderground is an interactive visualization of global ground-water fluctuations on a monthly basis from 2002 to present.
It was built with the infamous Three.js.
Navigation is located in the footer.
The data used is from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), freely available here and courtesy of the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling.
Flood Map 3D Simulation
A web-based flood simulation is developed for navigating over the flood inundation map of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. More here.
Flood Game
A flood game in HTML5 (Youtube)
More videos from Ibrahim Demir of the Iowa Flood Center
OpenScalesGL
OpenScalesGL is the HTML5/WebGL version of the ActionScript-based “rich mapping” framework. The video below is a preview of what’s coming in summer 2012.
Another video, Desktop Firefox (Youtube).
ReadyMap Web SDK
ReadyMap is a free Javascript library for 3D/2D web mapping. It works with TMS/WMS and WebGL. (Github repo).
If your video card and webbrowser are recent enough, check out the demos. Especially this one which renders layers from an ESRI ArcGIS Server.
Nokia Maps 3D WebGL Beta
100% 3D maps, 0% plug-in, currently in beta.
Tip: Try zooming in a bit to Cape Town or New York and click on the label. It beautifully zooms in and goes into more detail. Very nice.
USGS Texture Blending demo
A visualization of the USGS elevation data using Three.js/WebGL. Technical background information here. More WebGL from Chandler Prall.
WebGL Nature Scene
A WebGL nature scene based upon NVIDIA’s Nature demo project.
This is an effort to integrate some interesting shader based rendering techniques to present realistic-looking nature scene on web using Javascript and WebGL (SpiderGL to be precise). The techniques applied in this demo include:
- Multi-layered Terrain
- Waving Grass with Countless Blades
- Realistic Water Simulation with Reflection and Refraction
- Dynamic Cloudy Sky Dome
- Flying Birds with Flocking Behaviour
Earthquake Visualization
Nine Point Five is a WebGL visualization exploring earthquakes over the past 30 years. (More information) Built by Dean McNamee who also seems to do nice physical world experiments.
World Flights
World Flights is a WebGL visualization of major airline flights, built using Sencha’s PhiloGL Framework by Nicolas Garcia Belmonte.
Miscellaneous Links
OpenWebGlobe beta from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.
SceneJS, a JSON-based scene graph API on WebGL. 2.0 release
Top iOS Apps for 2011
Tabata Pro
Tabata Pro is a timer application for use with the Tabata training protocol also known as High Intensity Interval Training. I’ve only used it for a training or ten, but I can say it works perfectly. It’s definitely as good as the famous Gym Boss timers.
Wild Chords
Wild Chords is a free guitar learning app. I actually can’t believe it’s free, because it’s brilliant. In a playful way, it takes beginning guitar players through various levels where you’re challenged to play chords in order to entice all kinds of animals that’ve fled the zoo and lead them back. Also, its built-in tuner is truly genius. Highly recommended for beginning guitar players like myself. If you’re not convinced, have a look at Ovelin’s pitch for the game at Slush2011.
Aelios
Aelios is a polished weather app. It has quite a unique user interface which isn’t always the easiest, but it’s pretty and it works. It gets updated now and then, and useful new features like bookmarking locations were just added.
Prompt
Prompt is a Terminal client which can connect via SSH and supports color and fancy key combinations. Can be very handy for remote work, especially if you attach a bluetooth keyboard.
Penultimate
Penultimate is a drawing/note-taking app. It was the first app I bought. I’ve used it in the beginning, and found it to be ideal for quick sketches, not so much for text.
Air Video
Air Video can stream video from your Mac to iOS devices. It needs a ‘server’ package on the Mac side, which is a free download. It can transcode streams on-the-fly from pretty much every format you can find. One thing it cannot do (yet) is streaming of (physical) DVD’s.
GarageBand
GarageBand. What else do I need to say? I wasn’t convinced when I read about it, you just have to experience it. Excellent value for money if you’re at least a bit interested in music production.
iMockups
iMockups is a tool for quick user interface sketching using pre-fab elements like input fields and windows. It’s quite limited and I prefer doing mockups in straight HTML and CSS these days. Still, it’s a useful app that I would recommend especially to non-technical people who want to communicate their idea of an interface.
SketchBook
SketchBook Pro is a full featured drawing app. Gallery here. It has layers and loads of brushes, color management et cetera. Recommended even if you’re only drawing snow men while riding the train.
Pages
Pages is the only of the three iWork for iOS apps (Keynote and Numbers) I’ve bought, and it doesn’t disappoint. It does everything I expect of a wordprocessor. Since iCloud support was added, even the syncing problems have disappeared.
iMAME
iMAME is an Arcade emulator (MAME) formerly available only on jailbroken devices. More here
Snapseed
Snapseed is a Photo retouching app from Nik Software. They build expensive Photoshop plugins too, and this shows in the quality of Snapseeds filters and effects. The touch interface is a pleasure to use, especially on the iPad. Next level interaction design in my opinion.