When text is rendered by a computer, sometimes characters are displayed as “tofu”. They are little boxes to indicate your device doesn’t have a font to display the text.
Google has been developing a font family called Noto, which aims to support all languages with a harmonious look and feel. Noto is Google’s answer to tofu. The name noto is to convey the idea that Google’s goal is to see “no more tofu”. Noto has multiple styles and weights, and is freely available to all. The comprehensive set of fonts and tools used in our development is available in our GitHub repositories.
All Noto fonts are now licensed under OFL.
by Justine Alford
photo credit: Yvonne Felix, screenshot from YouTube
There’s no shortage of heartwarming videos on YouTube, and this is no exception. In the short clip, you get to see the moment when a legally blind woman sees her newborn baby boy for the first time, thanks to a pair of innovative electronic specs.
The woman in the video, Kathy Bleitz, has been legally blind since the age of 11. She suffers from a condition called Stargardt disease, which is an inherited degenerative disease that causes a significant reduction in central vision, but peripheral vision is usually retained…
You can’t expect negotiations with French to be like negotiations with Americans, and the same holds true for cultures around the world.
(complete images at the end of the article)
British linguist Richard D. Lewis charted communication patterns as well as leadership styles and cultural identities in his book, “When Cultures Collide,” now in a 2005 third edition. His organisation offers classes in cross-cultural communication for big clients ranging from Unilever to BMW.
In support of cultural studies, he writes: “By focusing on the cultural roots of national behaviour, both in society and business, we can foresee and calculate with a surprising degree of accuracy how others will react to our plans for them, and we can make certain assumptions as to…
The first factor that needs to be considered in the design of a space suit is “what will the suit be used for?”
There is no universal suit. The suits are designed for particular mission needs. For example, technically the Russian Sokol suit is a space suit, but it is not designed for use outside. Its mission is to protect the cosmonauts from the vacuum should their Soyuz capsule depressurize. The Sokol’s mission requires it to be small and flexible so that it can be worn inside the cramped Soyuz and within the seat of the Soyuz. …
January 29, 2015 | by Kathryn Lagrue
photo credit: Immune responses. Faces by Shutterstock
The extent to which our personalities determine aspects of our lives and health has increasingly been the subject of research over the last few years.
There was the suggestion, for example, that being a morning person or a night owl might reveal a lot about our personality. But scientifically speaking, what do we actually mean by our “personality”?
When you break it down, personality can be defined as a collection of distinct psychological traits which remain fairly constant over time and therefore shape the way we react to the world around us. These…
Getty Images
The landscape of interaction design is a mess. But messes have a way of also bringing about opportunities, don’t they?
Examples abound of inappropriate and unnecessary technology masquerading as innovation. Look at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show from last month; it featured a bewildering array of innovation box-checking, ranging from touchscreen fridges to dashboards that take your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road. But any modern innovation manager can slap a touchscreen on a product and tell you what it adds over its analog counterpart. …
photo credit: TeaDranks / Reddit
Where in the world did Australia go?! A new cartogram by Redditer TeaDranks rescales the world’s countries according to population size instead of geographic area.
Reconstructing maps based on different variables can be a powerful tool for understanding the world we live in. In this case, certain regions almost disappear from the map while others expand considerably; Canada transforms into a thin, jagged line while India now takes up a massive amount of space.
Other interesting tidbits: North Korea has a larger population than Australia, with 25.1 million people compared to 23.7 million, respectively. Denmark…
by Timon Singh, 11/13/14
If you live in Germany, a new company can now offer you free heating and water if you get one of their data centers installed in your office. It’s so simple, it’s genius. The company, Cloud&Heat, places servers in premises such as your office, where they process cloud data for internet users. Meanwhile, the heat generated by the servers is used to heat your building and water.
See how they add unique personality to these stunning spaces from our archives. Curated by Architectural Digest
CONTEMPORARY LIVING ROOM BY DANIEL ROMUALDEZ
In a Los Angeles den, the table and daybed are both by Jacques Adnet; the painting is by McDermott & McGough, the throw pillows are made of a David Hicks fabric, and the rug is by Rosemary Hallgarten.
