Posts tagged huffington post

Fashion Designers Experiment With 3D Printing

Fashion designers are using 3D printing to create garments, shoes, and accessories for their clothing lines. 

3D printers follow instructions of computer generated blueprints to create one layer of material at a time until a piece of clothing is fully formed. According to Weburbanist, soles and fasteners aren’t necessary in 3D printed garments because of the architectural specificity of the blue prints; the apparel is designed to fit an individual’s exact measurements.

The materials for 3D printed clothing and accessories are lightweight, flexible, and easy to produce, and Continnuum Fashion, a fashion start-up company, has already recognized the benefits of 3D printing their garments. Continnuum offers customers the option to design their own clothes to be printed in-house. The clothes are printed when the order is placed, so time and materials aren’t wasted.

Via Huffington Post:

In the past, when designers go to the trouble of manufacturing a dress, they have to be confident of selling hundreds to make the cost of production worthwhile.

But 3-D printing flips that idea on its head. The technology cuts a designer’s manufacturing costs to zero until a customer has ordered a garment. As a result, designers can now afford to experiment in small batches and sell apparel in limited editions.

FJP: Careful hand-stitching can now be replaced by code. And with Staples now offering mini-3D printers for your own home, does this mean that we’ll be ordering and printing clothes right in our offices? Ehhh. Probably not for awhile. 

Via Readwrite:

$1,300 for a hobbyist’s toy isn’t cheap. And that’s not counting the $50 per plastic cartridge holding 320 grams of material (0.7 pounds). Printing is expensive, whether it’s 2D or 3D.

Also, it can take HOURS to print a garment. And according to Mashable,  the larger 3D printers necessary to print a full size pair of pants can cost upwards of $14,000. (And I thought ink cartridges for 2D printers were overpriced.) — Krissy

Image: Weburbanist

Do Social Media Sites Like Tumblr Need Their Own News Publications?

We learned last week that Tumblr is shutting down Storyboard — the news blog responsible for reporting on creative and noteworthy posts by Tumblr users. Tumblr’s cofounder, David Karp, posted his explanation for Storyboard’s closing on the site’s staff blog, saying: “What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now, and our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on.”

Karp mentions that Storyboard partnered with the likes of WNYC, Mashable, Time, etc. and was even nominated for a James Beard Award (to name a few accomplishments). So, why is it best to “move on” when the project has been so successful? 

The consensus (here, here, and here) seems to be that Tumblr needs to downsize to turn a profit this year. However, in an interview with The New York Times, Charlie Warzel, deputy technology editor at Buzzfeed, suggested Storyboard is closing because there’s no point in writing about what you can just go and see for yourself. He said:

It is always peculiar when a social network branches out into publishing, it just seems odd to bring on even excellent editorial talent to cover what is already going on organically.

And he’s not the only one who shares the sentiment. 

The New York Times calls attention to Dan Fletcher (a journalism school graduate) who quit his “amorphous” job as managing editor of Facebook in 2012. His position required him to write about FaceBook trends. He said that reporters aren’t needed on FaceBook and that articles detract from user activity that is “inherently more interesting” than the articles themselves.

FJP:  Why is it “peculiar” that an excellent editorial staff would be reporting on the “organic” events of social media communities? Isn’t that what journalists do? Just because social media communities exist in the cyber-verse doesn’t make them less newsworthy.

Admittedly, Storyboard and other social media news blogs (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) aren’t exactly watchdog reporters (they want to talk about the posts that make themselves look good, after all), and that should make us question whether these publications can really be “journalistic.” But social media news is in its larval stage. Maybe, in the future, social communities will be publishing articles about juveniles who break copyright laws, and sites will be locking people’s profiles in cyber-jail-blocks for weeks due to hazing. Surely, social sites are gonna need some objective, guardian watchdogs for that, right? Eh? — Krissy

Image: Screenshot from Storyboard.

Why False Rumors Spread on Twitter During Times of Crisis

Yasuaki Sakamoto, assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, conducted an experiment in behavioral psychology to test rumor-spreading on Twitter during times of crisis. The original hypothesis was that if a person read a rumor-tweet and then read a rebuttal tweet that criticized the rumor immediately afterward, the rumor-tweet would then have lower perceived importance, anxiety, and overall accuracy — meaning a person would be less likely to continue spreading the rumor-tweet.

To test this, 87 Japanese undergraduate and graduate students were exposed to 20 rumor-tweets and then 10 rebuttal-tweets about the 2011 Japan Earthquake.

The researchers discovered that when someone’s tweet is met with a criticism, it gives the tweet less credibility — making a person less inclined to spread the tweet associated with a criticism. The amount of people who stopped rumor-tweets actually increased 150% when people were exposed to rebuttal-tweets. 

So, basically  the original hypothesis was right. When people hear opposing views, they will be less inclined to spread rumors during a crisis. Spectacular. Funny thing, though…

via iRevolution:

“Whether a receiver is exposed to rumor or criticism first makes a difference in her decision to spread the rumor. Another interpretation of the result is that, even if a receiver is exposed to a number of criticisms, she will benefit less from this exposure when she sees rumors first than when she sees criticisms before rumors.”

So, even when someone is exposed to another point of view after she’s exposed to a rumor, the perceived importance, anxiety, and accuracy of the rumor will still be higher than that of the new opposing point of view. She’ll STILL be instinctually inclined to spread the rumor-tweet just because she heard it first.

With that in mind, one can assume that in times of crisis (when people’s perceptions are most likely influenced by belief or emotions), these people will be inclined to believe the first thing they read regardless of its validity. 

FJP: So, how do we attempt to solve this issue? 

Verily is a platform (currently in development) that will directly connect rebuttal-tweets to rumor-tweets with the intent of decreasing the spread of rumors during disasters. 

Verily’s plan to connect contradicting tweets is a step in the right direction, but even if a rebuttal-tweet is a criticism, it doesn’t mean it’s a valid criticism. Is it any better if people believe the second tweet they read, if it’s just as incorrect as the first one?

How do we make sure that these tweeters can think critically and/or draw their own conclusions about a rumor-tweet without the helpful contradiction of rebuttal-tweets?  

Michael Shammas of The Huffington Post thinks integrating philosophy into American education is the answer:

While some philosophies obviously conduce toward peace more than others, while some philosophers (Marcus Aurelius) seem kinder than others (Nietzsche), the open-minded study of different philosophies at least opens one up to the possibility that one is wrong. One realizes, like Socrates did, that knowledge is anything but certain, that true wisdom lies in realizing how much one does not know, in understanding that our knowledge of the universe (and therefore of earthly things like politics) is utterly inadequate, perhaps comparable to the area of a pin’s tip against a table. This realization makes one less angry when confronted with opposing views, replacing counterproductive anger with productive curiosity.

Is it better to combat ignorance and gullibility in the schools, or in the cyber-streets? Both? Both. — Krissy

Image: iRevolution

Respect

Doonesbury spends the week on the evolving journalism career of one of its characters. First strip in the series is here.

Select image to embiggen.

Huffington Post: 104,000 Sideboob Posts and Counting

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the boob, side, top, front or whatever, but this seems a little bit… obsessive.

Of course, in June, Arianna Huffington wrote to inquiring minds at the Guardian that the fetish is kind of an in joke that eventually resulted in a dedicated sideboob news page:

This was put together by our comedy team in response to a segment on Jon Stewart. Sorry if the context wasn’t clear.

Huffington’s note was then followed up by a member of the communications team:

Our editors created this page as a little bit of a joke on ourselves and the phenomenon. It’s a silly take on the silly side of celebrity culture and our coverage of it, which we believe our women readers get and appreciate. I hope this helps put it in the right context.

104,000 boobs and counting.

Image: Google search results for “Sideboob” on the Huffington Post.

‘Huffington Post’ Employee Sucked Into Aggregation Turbine

Horrified Workers Watch As Colleague Torn Apart By Powerful Content-Gathering Engine.

Via The Onion.