Tag: Global warming »

It was Earth Day this past Sunday, so what better time to check out the second in the Painting with Time app series: Climate Change. The app has 17 pre-set images of geographical regions that have been severely impacted by global warming. If one has any reservations about the veracity of Earth’s rising temperatures going in, toying with this app should lay them to rest.

Each image first appears as a tracing. Users then pick one of eight brushes or pre-cut segments, but instead of painting with tubes of color, we brush on the effects of time. The consequences are jaw dropping. The app uses high quality photographs of each locale from two time periods. Some are decades apart, others like the Mississippi River only a year. Users can uncover the overlapping views one at a time by filling in the canvas quickly with broad strokes to compare, or get creative and paint or break up the image artfully. Each photo comes with information on the region and the impact climate change is having there. There is even a multi-media presentation on the issue in general.

For those who don’t want to be lectured, and prefer to see evidence with their own eyes, Painting with Time: Climate Change  is perfect. For believers and even activists, it provides a useful teaching and display tool.

The Our Choice app is Al Gore’s book on global warming converted to an interactive app. The book examines causes of global warming and solutions in the works to stop it. Gore touches on subjects like solar power, nuclear power, wind power, biomass energy, deforestation, and more. The physical book itself is #1 in books on climatology on Amazon.com and #10 in public policy.

The app is packed with features. Al Gore’s commentary, read by Gore himself, is available throughout the app. Pictures and videos pop out and are occasionally accompanied by commentary. Info-graphics are sprinkled throughout the app with various data about global warming and related topics. The app also includes over an hour of documentary footage.

Basically anything in the app can be “picked up” and uses multi-touch in some way: pictures can flip over or fold out, one can zoom out to the visual table of contents, finding the location of a picture can be done by tapping a globe, etc. Push Pop Press, the developers of the app, call it “the next generation of digital books.”

On the Push Pop Press website, names, information, and pictures of each chapter are available. Take a quick scan through what the app consists of before taking the plunge to buy it. The app is selling for $4.99 and is available for both the iPhone and iPad. With the paperback on sale for about $15, it seems a steal to get the book plus all of these extra features for only $5. Al Gore describes the app in the video below.