GrabCAD Now In 3D, Sets Sights On Being The GitHub For Mechanical Engineers | TechCrunch

Whatever you think of Hollywood’s current preoccupation with all things three dimensional, in the world of mechanical engineering, 3D is definitely the way to go. But sharing those CAD-generated renders with clients is more often done Old Skool using print screens, drawings or the dreaded powerpoint presentation. That’s a pretty static way of doing things since those renders can’t be interacted with and the only way to level-up is a full physical model or 3D print out, adding unnecessary expense and friction at various stages of the design process.

Therefore, it seems rather remiss that mechanical engineering community GrabCAD doesn’t support a 3D view.

Until now, that is.

GrabCAD’s new-fangled 3D functionality, which is currently only supported in Firefox and Chrome and is in Beta (like, seriously – see example), brings the startup closer to realising its vision of making it easier for mechanical engineers to collaborate, both amongst themselves by sharing models in an ‘open source’ way and thus reducing duplication, but also with clients by making it infinitely quicker to get feedback.

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Data Scientists: Illuminate Your Patterns with Pictures

James Kobielus
Senior Program Director, Product Marketing, Big Data Analytics

Scientific inquiry is all about finding non-obvious patterns in observational data. It’s no surprise that that is also the core of data science.

Patterns may be obvious to any sentient creature, or they may be deeply invisible - until we invent the conceptual or technological tools to bring them to the surface. The conceptual tools may be groundbreaking paradigm shifts, such the “thought experiment” that shaped Einstein’s insight into special relativity, or powerful new frameworks of visual notation, such as Feynman’s diagrams of subatomic particle interactions.

Patterns feel ghostly and unreal until we can actually see them, on some level, with our eyes. The chief technological tools are whatever scientists and engineers can use to bring these ghosts to light. In the realm of the subatomic, the magical inventions have been visualization technologies such as the cloud chamber and the scanning tunneling microscope (the latter was invented by IBM, by the way). 

Most real-world data science serves commercial interests, rather than pure science. But the restless search for deep patterns is no less critical in the business wars than among geniuses vying for Nobel Prizes. Today’s data scientists have two broad sets of pattern-sensing tools: advanced visualizations and statistical algorithms. No advanced analytic toolkit is complete without a best-of-breed library of them, with visualizations serving as the core interface at the heart of every step in the development, maintenance, and governance processes. You will find these complementary technologies - visualizations and algorithms - supported within IBM SPSS Modeler and in the complementary Big Data platforms, such as IBM Netezza Analytics, IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, and IBM InfoSphere Streams, where data is stored and resource-hungry computations are performed.

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How Will Kinect Change Filmmaking?

Jonathan Minard and James George from RGB D are using the Kinect and a DSLR to reimagine filmmaking. They have created a technique that lets you map video from the camera onto 3D data from the gaming console device, generate a CGI and video hybrid. This could make it easier and cheaper to create 3D films using commercially available hardware and open source software.

via singularitarian:

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A Visualization of March’s Record-Breaking Heat: 15,000 Records in the U.S.

March 2012 goes down as the warmest on record. NOAA data showed 7,755 daytime and 7,517 nighttime temperature records in the month of March. This visualization shows them in sequence.

(via The Atlantic)

via jtotheizzoe:

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That map you see above isn’t a picture of the earth, seen from space. Rather, it’s a map of the locations attached to every tweet and Flickr photo. What results is a remarkable picture of how each service has spread across the globe.  Infographic Of The Day: Using Twitter And Flickr Geotags To Map The World | Co.Design

That map you see above isn’t a picture of the earth, seen from space. Rather, it’s a map of the locations attached to every tweet and Flickr photo. What results is a remarkable picture of how each service has spread across the globe. 

Infographic Of The Day: Using Twitter And Flickr Geotags To Map The World | Co.Design

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Plenty More Fish In The Sea? | Information is Beautiful A visualization of the state of Atlantic fish stocks. Commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts as part of European Fish Week Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, brill, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot, whiting.

Plenty More Fish In The Sea? | Information is Beautiful

A visualization of the state of Atlantic fish stocks.

Commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts as part of European Fish Week

Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, brill, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot, whiting.

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7 Billion: How Did We Get So Big So Fast? (by npr)

It was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion — in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population, especially in the West.

As higher standards of living and better health care are reaching more parts of the world, the rates of fertility — and population growth — have started to slow down, though the population will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

U.N. forecasts suggest the world population could hit a peak of 10.1 billion by 2100 before beginning to decline. But exact numbers are hard to come by — just small variations in fertility rates could mean a population of 15 billion by the end of the century.

Produced by Adam Cole
Cinematography by Maggie Starbard

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BMW 3 Series gets ‘full-color’ heads-up display — Engadget If you’ve been hankering for some HUD action in your next auto, you’ll have one more choice come next spring: the all-new 2012 BMW 3 Series. The launch will mark the first time a heads-up display has made it into Bavaria’s volume seller, after debuting as an optional extra eons ago on its 5 Series. Since then, HUDs of limited hues have permeated München’s high-end, splaying speed and navigation directions in the line of sight of road-going elites everywhere. However, this iteration is “full-color,” which besides pleasing ROY G. BIV fans, makes it “more intuitive,” as the company reasons it’ll aid drivers in recognizing crucial alerts faster. That, or we’re really just a generation away from über cool AR wizardry and movies on our windscreens. Of course, no word on when the 3’s brethren will get the technicolor treatment, but we’re betting it won’t be long, given that’s the dash of a 6 Series you see above.

BMW 3 Series gets ‘full-color’ heads-up display — Engadget

If you’ve been hankering for some HUD action in your next auto, you’ll have one more choice come next spring: the all-new 2012 BMW 3 Series. The launch will mark the first time a heads-up display has made it into Bavaria’s volume seller, after debuting as an optional extra eons ago on its 5 Series. Since then, HUDs of limited hues have permeated München’s high-end, splaying speed and navigation directions in the line of sight of road-going elites everywhere. However, this iteration is “full-color,” which besides pleasing ROY G. BIV fans, makes it “more intuitive,” as the company reasons it’ll aid drivers in recognizing crucial alerts faster. That, or we’re really just a generation away from über cool AR wizardry and movies on our windscreens. Of course, no word on when the 3’s brethren will get the technicolor treatment, but we’re betting it won’t be long, given that’s the dash of a 6 Series you see above.

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3-D Japan Quake Animations May Help Visualize Temblors | VizWorld.com Combing through the massive amounts of data regarding this year’s massive 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan, researchers have found mountains of useful information.  Visualizing it all usefully has proven tricky, but some new techniques coming out of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks show promise.

3-D Japan Quake Animations May Help Visualize Temblors | VizWorld.com

Combing through the massive amounts of data regarding this year’s massive 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan, researchers have found mountains of useful information.  Visualizing it all usefully has proven tricky, but some new techniques coming out of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks show promise.

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