The Offline Report

A collection of Disney shorts played on Netflix last month, and before each was a DVD-like easter egg: interviews with the animators. This viewer was surprised to learn two-dimensional line drawings enhance the theme and texture of love story CG short "Paperman." Why would lines make this film ... more? We love the sound of this flat medium. It won Disney the 2012 Oscar for Best Animated Short. "Paperman"'s head of animation, Patrick Osborn, and producer Kristina Reed: PATRICK OSBORN:    "Paperman" looks a little bit different than most CG animation. John Kahrs, the director, was inspired by coming to Disney as the head of animation on "Tangled" and seeing all of the hand-drawn artwork around all the line work, all the design. And thinking, "could we get some of that into our CG animation somehow?" KRISTINA REED:    What's incredible to me how the experiments you and Jeff (Turley) were doing, and the line work th...

Progress! Humans rule. 1. The storytelling kindle - read it for a while, let it talk for a while. Best-selling authors Danielle Trussoni and Walter Kirn in their Writerly podcast describe the new digital book-audio book hybrid coming soon from Amazon. A human can read the book on kindle, then shift and allow the book's author to read aloud the next few pages. Kirn is recording one such book now for Amazon. Writerly podcast: " Your Work in Audio: Understanding the New World of Audiobooks " 2. Minecraft's "Litcraft" project to engage reluctant readers - classics such as Robert Luis Stephenson's "Treasure Island" are being implemented in video game form. Guardian article: " How Minecraft is helping kids fall in love with books " 3. Handwriting encouragement tech - typing too much begets humans who lose the ability and need to write. But studies show writing longhand helps us process and remember information. This new notebook allows...

Custom robotics manufacturer Anthony Nighswander is highlighted in this news story today: The problem is that Nighswander faces a hiring challenge in his own business, especially because, in this town of fewer than 4,000 people near the Indiana border, the pool of skilled workers is shallow. But rather than turn to robots himself, he has adopted a lower-tech solution: training. APT has begun offering apprenticeships, covering the cost of college for its workers, and three years ago it started teaching manufacturing skills to high school students. “I never thought that I would be training high school students in our facilities,” Nighswander said. “What I knew was that I was in survival mode. I knew the orders for robots and for automation were coming in faster than I could get the jobs out.” It's largely a story about the science of economics and productivity growth. Lay person's economic conventional wisdom, said economic downturns are the times companies innovate and beco...

Judgement, experience and evolving AI. LTE : The rush to driverless cars must pause and be reconsidered carefully. Yes, there are too many car-related deaths, but what we need are more mindful drivers, not mindless machines that cannot assess even busy parking lots, let alone children darting between cars. Courtesy, patience and full attention from human beings can never be replaced with machines. - Helen Sears, Mendocino