There’s a splendid new section on Pixar’s website about how they shaded the food in Ratatouille:

The challenge of shading food for Ratatouille was to work with a stylized look that fits into our world, yet is still readable and recognizable as something appealing to eat. We, as humans, have a built-in sensory system to know what looks edible to our eyes and stomach. Finding that acceptable (and tasty) appearence was the main focus.
— Ratatouille: Shading Food, pixar.com

My favorite bit: to make the baguettes look believable, they took the trouble “to compress air bubbles which were closer to the crust, then give a slight twist to the pattern of air bubbles, as often seen in real bread.”

Update: Turns out this is an excerpt from the 58-page Anyone Can Cook – Inside Ratatouille’s Kitchen. Read more…

Microsoft has announced that they will be opening retail stores this Fall. In the user comments on a leaked document posted by Gizmodo detailing the store design, one comment stood out:

The important thing to note (when comparing Apple retail stores to future Microsoft retail stores), is that Apple sells BOTH their own software AND hardware. Apple has a variety of products to sell, from the Leopard OS, to iPods, to AppleTVs, and then to Macintosh computers.

Microsoft has Zunes, Windows 7, and the XBOX 360. It’s no secret that MS doesn’t manufacture computers.

So, when someone comes in looking to buy a PC, what do the copy-cat-renditions-of-Apple-Specialists… do? When someone books an appointment at the ‘Answers Bar’ because their computer is acting up, what happens when the issue is discovered to be a hardware problem? How will Microsoft tell a customer that their issue can’t be taken care of in-store because the company only sells the software on the broken laptop, not the laptop itself?

I’m less concerned with the store design and recurring motif of Microsoft borrowing inspiration from Apple. I’m simply curious how the company plans on getting around the major issues I mentioned above.

— Leslie Capobianco (user comment), gizmodo.com, July 25, 2009

Good question.

Observing how well Microsoft executes on the details in their retail stores should be fun. One curious choice: the document as posted devotes considerable attention to Surface, an expensive product few retail customers are likely to buy.

I didn’t know these four-fingered trackpad tips:

• Swipe four fingers up to reveal your desktop, and down to hide it again.
• Swipe four fingers left or right to display the application switcher, just like Command-Tab.

The training video is nicely done, too.

A great read in The Atlantic about how we’re already augmenting our intelligence with what one biologist calls “exocortical technology” to manage an increasingly complex world:

In any case, there’s no going back. The information sea isn’t going to dry up, and relying on cognitive habits evolved and perfected in an era of limited information flow—and limited information access—is futile. Strengthening our fluid intelligence is the only viable approach to navigating the age of constant connectivity. — Get Smarter, theatlantic.com, July/August 2009

The iPhone replaces yet another device.

In addition to serving as map, compass, camera, and dictation device, iPhone is now also being used to report police speed traps and traffic cameras. Trapster, available for iPhone in addition to other popular mobile platforms, uses your geolocation to monitor whether you’re approaching a speed trap and alerts you with iPhone 3.0′s new notifications.

You can report your own points, too:

Trapster is a clever reconceptualization of speed trap detection that lets drivers pool knowledge. It’s interesting to see another dedicated hardware device, the traditional and often illegal radar detector, replaced by the combination of networked software and GPS.

Interesting too that, though it has limitations when compared to the radar detector, the app offers compelling features that the radar detector cannot. And unlike the radar detector, the app can be trivially updated with additional features.

Refreshing Mobile Mail often confuses me.

When you tap the little refresh button in the bottom-left corner on Mobile Mail’s Accounts page—in version 3.0—the little spinning network access indicator appears in the Info bar at the top of the screen—presumably, Mobile Mail checking for new mail in all of your accounts. After a while, the network access stops, and you think, there, all of my accounts are now refreshed.

But when you then descend into a single account’s Inbox, nothing appears to have changed: no new mail, and the timestamp displayed at the bottom of the page is clearly old. Almost immediately afterwards, at the bottom of the screen appears the spinning progress indicator and “Checking for Mail…”. And new mail starts pouring in.

If Mobile Mail has to refresh within individual accounts, what’s it doing on the Account pages when you refresh?