The Original 1984 Macintosh Introduction: the magic moment, when Steve Jobs unveils the Macintosh and releases it from its bag.

“I must admit that I wake up extra early to read the chapters (blushing) I never use to go to the library but… i feel like i have a library on my phone and its great , YAY!” — Yoza reader

Designed to encourage reading, writing and responding, Yoza engages African youth with stories and social issues. The project, which was spearheaded by Steve Vosloo, a technology researcher in Cape Town, and financed by South Africa’s Shuttleworth Foundation, is dedicated to a participatory culture hungry for micro-doses of literature that are accessible as pixels not paper.

Officially launched last September, Yoza is based on Vosloo’s observations that African youth are book-poor yet mobile-rich. An estimated 90 percent of urban South African youth have access to cell phones, and 70 percent of those phones are web-enabled. In stark contrast, more than half of South African households own no leisure books and only 7 percent of public schools have functional libraries.

Yoza’s first story, Kontax, was released experimentally in 2009. Written by Sam Wilson, an author and scriptwriter, Kontax followed the adventures of a local graffiti crew around Cape Town. Its 20 pages were initially published over a month of daily dispatches via a mobisite and later on the popular MXit social network. Each episode, released in both English and isiXhosha, was around 400 words long. Prizes were offered for the best readers’ comments and sequel ideas.

Via Yoza, 17,000 users accessed the full premiere Kontax series — well eclipsing the South African “best-seller” standard of 5,000 book sales. Each chapter costs the reader around 1 US cent to download. Explains Vosloo, “Mobile data is cheap relative to voice and SMS — and of course, books. It’s also about access.” According to Vosloo, readership exploded when Yoza was made available to MXit’s 15 million local subscribers — a share currently far greater than Facebook’s.

The comments allow Vosloo to stay in touch with what readers want. “It’s become clear that youth are keen to be both educated and entertained,” he notes. “We get many requests for stories which are relevant to their lives. We’ve had requests for story lines which cover drugs and teen pregnancy, careers, money and more.” Feedback has helped to shape several narratives in the works, including Streetskillz, which is set during the South African–hosted World Cup soccer matches; Sisterz, which explores dark family secrets and teenage life; and Confessions of a Virgin Loser, which follows a boy steering his way through the complications of peer pressure, teenage sex and HIV/AIDS. Social issues provide a further avenue for interaction. A story that touched on domestic violence elicited a slew of comments in support of the affected character as well as personal accounts.

Alongside content derived from popular culture, Yoza has published versions of classics from Shakespeare to Wordsworth. Feedback from teachers in low-income schools tells of class assignments given in conjunction with Yoza content and applauds the access to literature the platform has provided. Comments across the site (often in text-speak) reveal an engaged audience ready to amend mistakes that have eluded Yoza’s editors.

Looking to the future, Vosloo has been speaking with potential sponsors; he approached one bank about a series that would weave financial literacy into its storyline. Sponsors are attracted to a medium that stimulates appetite by releasing stories in installments before making the entire series available on a website, where it continues to attract commentary. “It’s a bit like the transition from a box-office to DVD release,” Vosloo says. “There’s the initial rush to devour a fresh feature yet the legacy contributes to a growing library of accessible content.”

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear: they weave themselves into fabric of everyday life until are indistinguishable from it" / Mark Weiser

Technology is evolving in such a fast pace that what could just be a dream yesterday, is a reality tomorrow.  Back in 1988, Mark Weiser envisioned this future, and he was right.

Watch this video and get inspired by it.

For Australia's Tron: Legacy premiere, skaters slid around Eness' interactive ramp. The effects are controlled through iPod Touches loaded with custom apps that measured air time and provided their location.

Prepare for the most mind meltingly realistic CGI You've Ever Seen.

Alex Roman is some kind of wizard. I suspected it when I saw his jaw-dropping CGI mini-movie The Third & The Seventh, but after watching his new 100% computer generated commercial, there's simply no other explanation.

In the comments of the Vimeo video, Roman explains:

"Aswering your questions; yep, it's all CG -same process as T&S- I tried to put some live-footage shots but i run out of time so CGI did the trick :p. Whole production was 2 and a half months for the initial concept to the final editing; two people: Juan and me."

While Hollywood CGI is getting more and more impressive every day, you can almost always tell that it's not real. Some microscopically incorrect movement will betray the artifice of the image, or the light won't play off something in quite the right way. That is not the case here. There was nothing in this clip that raised in me even a hiccup of doubt that I wasn't looking at the world which I inhabit. The real world.

This sculpture—called Geometric Death Frequency-141'—shows a liquid splashing in a 5 x 15 meters invisible cube. Made entirely of small black spheres, it's so complex that is being completely manufactured by robots, who glued the balls one by one.

The scultpure plans were created in a 3D program by Federico Díaz for MASS MoCA 2010, once he got the frozen shape he wanted, he created a 3D manufacturing software, taking the spherical pixels into real 3D space. For that he also had to create his own custom "3D printing" rig, that uses robotic arms and dual glue dispensers.

More info and photos here.