🎄 Smaragdine Sunday Deals
The other Black Friday.
Happy December, friend. Did you catch all the Black Friday deals this year? If not, there's always today: Smaragdine Sunday. I just made it up, but I’m pretty sure you can still find something on sale, somewhere.
Lots of random stuff this month. Read on for some hot links.
NO CROW
#pigeon_stories
If you haven’t watched pigeon stories on Instagram, stop what you’re doing right now and go watch them. Best use of caption tracking I’ve seen yet!
• Space Robot (Instagram, #pigeon_stories)
• Bee (Instagram, #pigeon_stories)
• Bread (Instagram, #pigeon_stories)
• #pigeon_stories (Instagram)
BYE, HEADPHONE JACK
AirPods are totally worth it
I’ve been using AirPods for a few months now and I would recommend them to anyone considering wireless buds (pods?). They pair faster than any bluetooth devices I’ve used in the past, and the charging case gives you hours and hours of play time.
If you’re worried about them falling out of your ears (what most people usually ask), just try on a normal pair of wired Apple headphones. If those don’t fall out easily, neither will the AirPods.
The price is steep, so I’d say look out for online deals around the holidays to avoid paying full sticker price.
• AirPods (Apple)
SIMCITY LIGHT
Infinitown
The browser is the new frontier for creative and complex programming applications. Pretty soon most of our beloved desktop apps will be replaced by web apps.
This infinite town experiment is pretty cool—it really shows the potential for 3D animated animation within the browser.
Note: This may run slowly (or not at all) on older computers.
• Infinitown
NOT QUITE STAR WARS
Capture your family in holographic VR & AR
You can already see how this would be amazing for parents to capture their kids at various stages of their life, and I’m sure we’ll see more applications of this tech going forward. Worth a watch.
• Capturing holographic memories for AR and VR (YouTube, 08:23 watch)
DOWNLOAD OF THE MONTH
I ditched Headspace for this app
Oak, a new meditation app, just launched on the App Store. I've been using it for a little while now (from when it was in beta), and it's become my go-to for meditation. It's a more focused alternative to popular apps like Headspace. It’s also free, so there’s that, too.
Beyond the basic guided and unguided meditations—with optional background sounds, by the way; a huge win over other apps—it also offers breathing exercises and audio and video content related to meditation principles.
Give it a try if you’ve been on the fence about meditation.
• Oak Meditation
THEY DIDN'T PLAN FOR THAT
When a weather live stream backfires
The Weather Channel was live streaming a building demolition when it didn’t quite go as planned… watch the video (with audio on) for the hilarious result.
• Georgia Dome Implosion (Twitter, 00:42 watch)
NEXT THEY MAKE YOU TOAST
Robots can do backflips now
Boston Dynamics has done it again. Their latest bot, Atlas, can now do backflips. Amazing? Terrifying? Both? Cool.
• Boston Dynamics' Atlas Robot Does Backflips Now and It's Full-Tilt Insane (WIRED, 02:00 read + 00:55 watch)
WHY ISN’T THIS IN NORTH AMERICA
The best show you’ve never seen
I could watch Slippery Stairs for hours.
• Slippery Stairs (Twitter, 02:20 watch)