Demian's Blog

Interactive Art & Computational Design / Spring 2011 » Chong Han Chua | App Store Visualization | 31 January 2011

Some interesting work done by Chong Han Chua where he used a node.js script to scrape the entire appstore, saved the results in an sqlite db and wrote a Java visualisation program that groups the average colours of icons into an interactive spectrum display.  Includes full source and a video of the visualisation running.

App Store Visuaization from johncch on Vimeo.

Dr. Rosalind Picard demonstrates two technologies for measuring emotional response that were invented at the MIT Media Lab and are being developed into products at Affectiva.

Recommended reading

• TechCrunch Review: The Name’s iPhone. Verizon iPhone. – Very interesting overview of the differences between using your iPhone on at&t versus verizon. Also it seems Apple did a sleuth fix of the attenna problem with the latest verizon phone release.
• Red Sweater Blog – The Mac App Store Debug Menu –

Interesting article here.

It’s been a good day for pathetic emails:

Skype 5 looks like it has some UI improvements, although many seem to disagree, but it’s almost three times as memory hungry as the previous version.  I need that like I need a hole in my head, as my granny used to say.

• Skype 5.0: 178 MB memory usage
• Skype 2.8: 67 MB memory usage

And as usual, it’s nigh impossible to find any useful information on the Skype website.  If you want to downgrade:

1. Delete the Skype.app from the Applications folder
2. Download the old Skype version here

“Over the next couple of years, the volume of data generated by digital sensors will surpass the flow of e-mails and social-network entries combined, predicts Stephen Brobst, chief technical officer at data analytics firm Teradata. ‘Sensors will touch nearly every aspect of our lives,’ he says.”

(Via http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-01-26-digitalsensors26_CV_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip)