http://blog.wolfram.com News, views, & ideas from the front lines at Wolfram Research Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:51:54 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As the project coordinator for The Wolfram Demonstrations Project, I've seen a lot of new exciting features we've been working on come to fruition recently and I want to tell you about them. I hear from a lot of our users, and want to let you know that we are ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/07/08/a-demonstrations-project-update/ I am lucky enough to find time to blog again about the NKS Summer School. Every year is different (see last year's post), but some things remain the same. Everyone is very active: students doing homework and developing their projects, the instructors helping them and giving lectures, and Stephen Wolfram ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/07/03/return-of-the-nks-summer-school/ (Two posts from me in short succession. Forgive me. I promise that I won't frequent this forum more than is bearable---hopefully. But I've been asked to do a post about the Mathematica scrapbook that we've just made public, so here I am again.) As I said in my last post, June ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/06/24/launching-the-mathematica-scrapbook/ Today is an important anniversary for me and our company. Twenty years ago today---at noon (Pacific Time) on Thursday, June 23, 1988---Mathematica 1.0 was officially launched. Much has changed in the world since then, particularly when it comes to computer technology. But I'm happy to be able to say that Mathematica still seems ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/06/23/mathematica-turns-20-today/ June is a special time around Wolfram Research. Every year we have a big company picnic to celebrate the anniversary of the release of Mathematica, which occurred June 23, 1988. That's right, Mathematica turns 20 years old this month. When you think about it, having a 20th birthday is pretty remarkable ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/06/17/the-mathematica-memory-museum/ On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress resolved that the flag of the United States would have 13 alternating red and white stripes, with the states represented as white stars on a blue field. The CountryData data paclet has information about this and many other flags, as can be seen ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/06/14/flag-day/ As an astronomy enthusiast, I try to keep up on all the various goings-on in astronomy news. Astronomy, being a primarily visual science, often lends itself quite well to computer visualization. Recently, NASA landed on Mars again, this time near one of the Martian poles in an attempt to study ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/06/11/interacting-with-nasa-landers-from-your-own-pc/ Recent Demonstrations: Visual Encryption When I was a kid, dinosaurs and secret codes were topics of surefire interest, since one was useful for eating your little sister and the other one for denying her the password to the clubhouse. I haven't noticed any Demonstrations about dinosaurs yet (I continue to keep ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/06/04/secret-codes-in-the-wolfram-demonstrations-project-but-no-dinosaurs/ I'm looking forward to attending the upcoming International Mathematica Symposium (IMS) in Maastricht, the Netherlands, June 20-24. IMS is an interdisciplinary conference run by Mathematica users, and it covers the wide range of applications of Mathematica. Held every two years (sometimes every year) since 1995, this one is the ninth. ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/05/28/international-mathematica-symposium/ There are a lot of interesting features hidden "under the hood" of the Wolfram Demonstrations authoring notebook, and most of them are new to Mathematica 6. The authoring notebook acts as a stand-alone form, and not only represents a simple new way to standardize information for systematic deployment, but also ... http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/05/22/the-form-of-a-form/