randomwalks/dj

Originally from davidjacobs, on February 17, 2006 10:40 PM

The Responsive Eye catalog commemorates the show of the same name at the MoMA in 1965. A show several years in the making, it was the first to introduce the public to Optical (or "Op") art.

Artists featured in the show and catalog include the well-known Victor Vasarely and Josef Albers as well as the sensational and underappreciated Paul Feeley and collective work by Equipo 57, a group of Spanish artists, among others.

The 54 page catalog is full of inspiring and dizzying images in color and black and white, and highlights the work of these early Op artists and the methods and politics of the movement.

We scored a few of these catalogs and have some available for purchase. They are all used, in good to very good condition, and first (1965) or third (1967) editions. Prices range from $40 to $50 depending on edition and condition. If you're interested drop us a note here, and be sure to mention TRE.

Originally from Cool Hunting, on February 17, 2006 10:39 PM

biting the hand that feeds you; they should have paid for that kind of amazing promotion  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on February 17, 2006 10:38 PM

I should really buckle down and try writing a PHP app because, at the moment, I have an attitude problem. I know that IBM now officially loves it, and Tim O’Reilly’s been charting the upcurve in PHP book sales, and everyone’s saying that Oracle’s going to buy Zend. If you want your ears bent back, have a listen to Zend CEO Doron Gerstel; he’ll tell you that half the websites in the world are powered by PHP and that there are 2½ million developers and that the war is over and PHP won. So here’s my problem, based on my limited experience with PHP (deploying a couple of free apps to do this and that, and debugging a site for a non-technical friend here and there): all the PHP code I’ve seen in that experience has been messy, unmaintainable crap. Spaghetti SQL wrapped in spaghetti PHP wrapped in spaghetti HTML, replicated in slightly-varying form in dozens of places. Everyone agrees on PHP’s upsides: it’s written for the web, it’s easy to deploy and get running, and it’s pretty fast. Those are important advantages. And I’m sure that it’s possible to write clean, comprehensible, maintainable, PHP; only apparently it’s real easy not to. But PHP has competition, most obviously Rails; and don’t write the Java EE crowd off, they’re not stupid at all and they’re trying to learn the lessons that PHP is trying to teach. So PHP has earned everyone’s respect by getting where it is, and Sun should reach out to it more than we have. But in the big picture, it feels vulnerable to me.

Originally from ongoing, on February 17, 2006 10:38 PM

David Davis just wrote a splendid article about the history of the NBA's logo.

It outlines a long-simmering controvery. The thing is, the league has never officially acknowledged that the logo is patterned after former Laker star and current Memphis Grizzlies President Jerry West.

A high-ranking NBA official tells Davis it's "an urban myth" that the logo is based on West.

The guy who actually designed the logo disagrees.

"That's bull----," he said. "I guarantee you that it's Jerry West."

Later in the article, Davis interviews West, who is gracious and humble about the whole thing:

When I asked him if the NBA might have a financial motive for refusing to identify him — that he might be entitled to royalties for the use of his likeness — West chortled. "You publish this story and I'll call (my agent) and find out," he joked.

I have heard from multiple reliable sources through the years that Davis's theory here is the gospel truth: the NBA won't acknowledge that their logo is based on Jerry West, because they never got him to sign anything giving them his permission to use it. If they acknowledge it's him, he could ask for a lot of money.

Petty. The whole seem strikes me as petty. There are too many slimy little things like this around these days. I mean, if the guy who designed the logo is publicly on the record now, it's time for the NBA to 'fess up and make an honest man of that logo.

Originally from True Hoop, on February 17, 2006 10:37 PM

OMA New York is growing. To accommodate the wide range and diversity of our projects we are seeking passionate and dedicated individuals, with the relevant experience, to fill various positions... Full Details View hundreds of active job listings in our jobs section

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, on February 17, 2006 6:48 PM

or, public tracking of a group interest:

Originally from Dembot, on February 17, 2006 6:33 PM

"Guantanamo is a not-place. It's neither America nor Cuba. It is peopled by people without names who face no charges. Non-people facing non-trials to defend non-charges are not a story. They are a headache. No wonder the prisoners went on hunger strikes. Not-eating, ironically enough, is the only way they could try to become real to us."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 17, 2006 5:27 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

Kid is going to be a millionaire, for sure.

Originally from Sylloge, on February 17, 2006 5:25 PM

Holy.... During a commercial break in the counter-terrorism television thriller "24", viewers saw a commercial questioning the wisdom of "weakening" the Patriot Act. "The producers of this ad are playing off fictional fears to create pressure for their point of view on legislative reality. I think it's unique." Peter Hart, a Democratic-leaning pollster.

It's brilliant. It seems unethical. It certainly reduces an important and very complex problem to a simple marketing scheme. If I agreed with their position, I might be less troubled by this. And I'll bet it's the wave of the future.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on February 17, 2006 5:20 PM

I've generally stopped making new investments other than in particularly exceptional situations. However, last.fm is one of those exceptions and I wanted to let you know that I invested together with Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn and Stefan Glänzer, CEO of 20six Weblog Services AG in the UK in October. It is the first time I've invested in this trilateral formation, but with the company in the UK, a lot of potential partners in the US and a big market in Japan, this team seems to make sense. Apologies for the late announcement, but we've been working on some deals that made it difficult for me to talk about our investment publicly. I wrote about the first in 2004 and later in 2005 after they did the redesign. I'm really happy that after working with them for years now, our relationship is now more formal and aligned. Please see the links above or go to their site for more information about the service.

Comment - TrackBack

Originally from Joi Ito's Web, on February 17, 2006 5:20 PM

Chloé Poizat has a wonderful painted collage style to her illustrations. Her simple website doesn’t give much information about her, but it’s an impressive portfolio nonetheless.

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration Blog, on February 17, 2006 2:38 PM

Toppan, one of Japan's largest printing companies, has released a series of artist slide shows for viewing on iPods. The Artstar series consist of up to 175 images provided by the artists, which, when installed on your iPod, can be viewed while you listen to music.

No need of music for me as among the artists who have signed up are Yoshitomo Nara, Atsushi Fukui and Kenji Yanobe.

Via Off Center and eyeteeth.

Originally from we make money not art, on February 17, 2006 2:38 PM

a treemap visualization based on the huge flickr image collection. the application takes any form/length of text input & generates a collage with images that have related concepts & affect structure.
conceptually, flickr is considered as an enormous pool of memories of people. the system uses natural language processing, concept reasoning, & textual affect sensing techniques to collect all the related memories. see also flickrland collage & flickrland visualization. [mit.edu|thnkx James & Edward]

Originally posted by infosthetics from information aesthetics, on February 17, 2006 12:13 AM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 9:26 PM

In an agreement with the White House, lawmakers would be given more information on the spying operation run by the N.S.A.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on February 16, 2006 9:26 PM

I’ve uploaded updated renderings (pdf or png) of the document I use to keep track of the non-trivial, public DHTML toolkit efforts that have occurred over the years.

Interestingly, the difference between this version and previous ones is that many companies are starting to either release or talk about tools that they had quietly built in-house years ago. Also, Google and Yahoo have been on something of a hiring binge. Yahoo seems to be dedicating more (visible) resources to their responsive UI cause than Google. The secrecy difference between the two cultures might explain the delta, but I’m convinced that’s not the whole story.

Also interesting is that many of the commercial DHTML toolkit vendors have been able to effectively keep mum about who is working on their products. The TIBCO’s, Backbase’s, and Bindows of the world must be paying their people astoundingly well for them to keep out of eyesight of the increasingly frenzied recruiters who are banging down the doors of every competent JavaScript hacker I know.

I will admit to not having kept this document as up-to-date as it should be. The proliferation of toolkits over the last year has been pretty astounding, and investigating each one to find out if it’s just another crappy 10-line XMLHTTP wrapper hasn’t been on the top of my list of things to do. So in true open-source style, your help is requested! If you have corrections or new information, please either mail them to me or submit a patch to the graphviz source file. The format is straightforward and easy to figure out.

Originally posted by alex from Continuing Intermittent Incoherency, on February 16, 2006 8:20 PM

And of course, I would expect nothing less.

Thanks for the link, bro!

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on February 16, 2006 4:17 PM

Two weeks ago John Palfrey (Clinical Professor of Law, Berkman's Executive Director, and ONI principal) testified before the House and yesterday both he and Berkman Fellow Rebecca MacKinnon offered testimony to the Hill Hearing, "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?"   The hearing has been widely covered, including TimesOnline, VOA News, and USA Today.

From John Palfrey's written testimony:
There are a number of things that United States technology companies can do to make their actions more transparent to users, more protective of civil liberties, and more accountable to all of us.  Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, and Cisco each should be applauded for their respective, increasingly clear public statements about how they will operate moving forward when it comes to doing business in China.  These public statements, and action based upon these statements, are essential to moving forward toward a solution. 

Legislation and Other State Action --

Second, it may be the case that the Congress, or other branches of the United States government, must take new action to solve this problem.  That said, any outcome that bans United States technology companies from doing business in China, in the long-run, would not be in the best interests of democracy there or in states with similar Internet policies.  There are many other options beyond an outright ban that could help, if it is clear that the industry cannot solve its own problem.  To keep reading, click here.

Berkman Fellow Rebecca MacKinnon blogged the companies' testimonies and added her own commentary -- Google, Cisco, Microsoft, and Yahoo.  MacKinnon also blogged about the proposed Global Online Freedom Act of 2006.  MacKinnon blogs very frequently on this issue at Rconversations.

The Berkman Center - its faculty, fellows, and affiliates - have researched issues like Internet censorship and regulation for a long time.  If you are interested in reading more about this issue, please click here.  If you are a member of the press and would like to be notified of research on this issue, please email amichel AT cyber.law.harvard.edu.

Originally from Berkman News, on February 16, 2006 4:17 PM

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 4:16 PM

Last year one of our TED Prize winners Ed Burtynsky made a powerful wish at TED. He wanted to find a way of using his photography to make people think harder about our planet's future.

Well, this is one way to do just that. (Go to the page, take a deep breath, and run the video).

Ed asked a really smart question when he was preparing his wish. How do you turn the emotional impact of his pictures into action? His solution has been to nudge his viewers toward the fastest growing home on the web where people discover how we might create a sustainable future.... a site that, with financial help from TED and from Ed, is becoming an exhilarating force for good.  That site is worldchanging.com whose co-founder Jamais Cascio is speaking at TED this year.

If you want to support Ed's wish, please link to this as widely as possible and then email me (chris@ted.com) to say what you've done. We want to publicly acknowledge the best efforts at TED next week.

By the way, the gorgeous musical soundtrack on the video is by TEDster Michael Montes and the ingenious captions are courtesy of Bob Isherwood and Saatchi & Saatchi.

Originally posted by Chris Anderson from TED Blog, on February 16, 2006 4:16 PM

jmcada writes "This week, Perlcast is featuring another podcast interview with brian d foy. In this interview we talk about the newly renamed book, Intermediate Perl. We also discuss a new project that brian is working on, Mastering Perl. Listen to find out how you can help be a part of this developing book.:

Originally posted by brian_d_foy from use Perl, on February 16, 2006 2:36 PM

Ask Yahoo: Which city has the cleanest drinking water? "Here are the cities that scored a perfect 50 points for water quality: Portland, San Jose, Buffalo, Columbus, San Francisco, Denver, San Diego, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Riverside (CA)." (thanks, Jeremiah!)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on February 16, 2006 2:33 PM

The Death of Handwriting. No kidding. I was thinking that all this typing has made my handwriting as atrocious as it is, but I just came upon the business card on which I wrote my phone number when I first met Jesse — and it's a good thing he had my email address. (via dm)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on February 16, 2006 2:33 PM

Difficult decisions are best left to your unconscious mind, a new study reveals, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes

Originally from New Scientist - Latest Headlines, on February 16, 2006 2:32 PM

Runs Mesh-Key records. Brought Yura Yura Teikoku to the US. Japanese-English translator. Guitarist.

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 12:46 PM

I saw them in NYC in October. It's crazy: so much heartache attached to listening to them but in listening I forget everything.

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 12:45 PM

Japan's obsession with camera-equipped mobile phones has taken a bizarre twist, with mourners at funerals now using the devices to capture a final picture of the deceased. Reuters reports.

"I get the sense that people no longer respect the dead. It's disturbing," a funeral director told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

al people gathered round the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse as preparations were made to begin a cremation , she was quoted as saying.

"I'm sure the deceased would never want their faces photographed," she said. But others called it a form of a memento in the modern age.

"Some can't grasp 'reality' unless they take a photo and share it with others ... It comes from a desire to keep a strong bond with the deceased," social commentator Toru Takeda told the paper.

Originally posted by Emily from Smart Mobs, on February 16, 2006 12:45 PM

"Just as Marx seduced a generation of European idealists with his fantasy of self-realization in a communist utopia, so the Web 2.0 cult of creative self-realization has seduced everyone in Silicon Valley. The movement bridges counter-cultural radicals of the '60s such as Steve Jobs with the contemporary geek culture of Google's Larry Page ... radical communitarians like Craig Newmark (of Craigslist.com), intellectual property communists such as Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig, economic cornucopians like Wired magazine editor Chris "Long Tail" Anderson, and new media moguls Tim O'Reilly and John Batelle."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 16, 2006 12:45 PM

Apologies for missed appointments, unresponded-to mails and such; we were sidelined in Palm Beach for a few days, without access, as a result of the big storm. (Our flight out on Sunday night was, understandably, cancelled - and the next one jetBlue could get us on was last night. So it goes. I only hope that Marc and Young-hae, leaving from JFK the same night, got out OK.) It's nice to know that something as trivial as Nature still has the power to disrupt so decisively the wee little plans we make.

Originally from v-2 Organisation | Adam Greenfield, on February 16, 2006 12:45 PM

Slashdot references to research showing Dec 16th, 2005 was the oil production peak

Originally posted by william.hertling from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 12:22 PM

Originally posted by djacobs from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 12:22 PM

This is the world famous Lombard Street in San Francisco. Known as “the crookedest (most winding) street in the United States”, Lombard street was re-created in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as “Windy Windy Windy Windy Street”.

Its ridiculous switchback design was instituted 1922 in order to reduce the hill’s natural 27° slope, which was too steep for most vehicles.

There’s some good ground-level shots at Wikipedia.

Thanks to James Boorman-Padgett and Nathaniel Hansen.

Originally posted by Alex from Google Sightseeing, on February 16, 2006 12:22 PM

The Flatiron Building (actually the Fuller Building) is one of New York’s most distinctive sights, and when they finished constructing it in 1902, it was one of the city’s tallest buildings (although 87 metres seems pretty tiny these days).

At its rounded tip the tower is only 2 metres wide, and the shape apparently creates a wind-tunnel effect - much to the enjoyment of the local men, who originally took great pleasure in hanging around and watching ladies skirts get blown up…

The Flatiron has been in all sorts of movies including Armageddon, Hitch, Shark Tale and both Spider-Man movies (as the Daily Bugle offices!).

Thanks to Frank Castle.

Originally posted by Alex from Google Sightseeing, on February 16, 2006 12:22 PM

As Spirit continues to explore a strikingly layered new outcrop, mission planners are working out how the robotic explorer will survive the winter

Originally from New Scientist - Latest Headlines, on February 16, 2006 12:21 PM

story links: google map clouds (thanks, everyone!), averaging the gradius video game, 1921 annimation, tokyo live (via tokyo calling, planet of the apes except all parts where charlton heston isn't speaking, nasa's first trip to moon, jumping fish, first bbs day, kent bye with interviews on open source intelligence

Originally from Rocketboom, on February 16, 2006 12:21 PM

Now that the weekend is nigh, it might be worth checking out this new Website, called Podbop. You type in the name of a city, and it provides you with podcasts of all the bands playing in in the city at upcoming events. Click on the event, and you get the details. This is an example of a cool and simple site that is very useful. Here's what is going down in SF this week. Thanks to Noah for tip....

I love this meta-app! It use's the Upcoming & Eventful APIs, an mp3 search API, and my friend John's map. --dj

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on February 16, 2006 12:21 PM

LinusChix Africa involves women in the tech aspects of computing, with work rooted in open source. An overview of the program at World Changing begins:

LinuxChix Africa manages to shatter two stereotypes at the same time: the idea that women aren't interested in free/open source software development; and the idea that women in Africa are bound to traditional cultural roles. Founded in late 2004 by Anna Badimo, a computer science graduate student in South Africa, and Dorcas Muthoni of the Kenya Education Network, LinuxChix Africa seeks to build Linux skills among African women, as well as to support more generally the use of free/open source applications and systems across Africa. Like most Linux and F/OSS communities, much of their work entails professional software development and public advocacy of open source, but LinuxChix Africa adds a unique twist: they focus their outreach on encouraging young women to pursue careers in computing.

key participant in the recent Africa Source II conference, which (as we noted at the time) included a particular emphasis on getting more women involved in the use of open computing technologies for economic development. LinuxChix Africa participants place a high value on mentoring and visibility as role models; as they put it, "If they [African women] can see their future, they can realize their future."

Originally posted by Judy Breck from Smart Mobs, on February 16, 2006 12:20 PM

At 3GSM, according to Telecoms Korea, Motorola was omnipresent. Even in the men's room.

Really, really creepy. --dj

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on February 16, 2006 12:20 PM

Of course, you already know that the Detroit Pistons have given up on the science experiment known as Darko Milicic, shipping him off to Orlando with Carlos Arroyo for Kelvin Cato and a pretty cherry first-round pick, that is protected only if it's in the top five.

A friend just called to ask if this means that the Pistons had really just done a terrible job of assessing Darko from the very beginning.

I don't think so.

Rather, I think it's the reality that you have to get your top players young these days, and when you draft 18-year-olds, you end up looking for elements of successful players: things like size, athleticism, and skills. But when it comes to the winning in the big game, you need things that are very tough to assess in an 18-year-old: grit, an ability to learn, a willingness to improve, comfort with the speed of the NBA game, and an ability to adjust to all the crazy hoopla of the NBA.

It is a gamble.

Milicic is still incredibly young. He probably shouldn't even be in this league yet. But I can tell you that whenever I have seen him play, it has been clear to me that he has not done a whole hell of a lot of improving yet. His NBA learning curve has not been steep. In his third season, he is still someone you can only love based on those "potential" categories: size, skills, and athleticism.

Those things don't earn playing time on good teams.

Playing time is the sunlight and water of player development. If Milicic is now planted in good soil (gardening analogies!) now is his chance to grow and blossom.

If he can contribute, he could have a pretty fun time playing alongside Dwight Howard for many years to come.

And Detroit gets another big body to patrol the lane in Cato, as well as a top draft pick to build with. It could be a great trade for both teams.

The craziest part of all of this? I wouldn't be surprised if we all look back at this in a few years and say that Carlos Arroyo was the most important player to change hands yesterday. He has moments when he looks really good, and others when he rushes shots, presses, and looks like he's trying to make himself look good in short playing time. Maybe he'll get some regular burn and start winning, too.

Originally from True Hoop, on February 16, 2006 12:20 PM

Originally from Tuberaider Video, on February 16, 2006 12:20 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

- Taken at 11:23 PM on February 15, 2006; cameraphone upload by ShoZu

Originally from Sylloge, on February 16, 2006 10:14 AM

podcasting MP3s from bands on tour using the Eventful API; very clever mashup [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on February 16, 2006 10:12 AM

Spacelike tetrahedral tessellations - William R. Olson If by chance you’re on the look out for complex crystalline tetrahedral structures send a exploratory probe over to pimeson.com where you’ll find a fantastic array of exotic tetrahedrons - all existing as 3 dimensional models as well interactive applets. Those of inquisitive nature will be happy to read [...]

Originally posted by paul from dataisnature.com, on February 16, 2006 10:12 AM

From Numskull comes word that Australia has banned Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure video game from being sold, demonstrated, hired or imported into Australia.

Here's the full article:

Australia bans graffiti game

By Stephen Hutcheon, Louisa Hearn and David Braithwaite
February 16, 2006 - 1:20PM

Multimillionaire US fashion designer Marc Ecko has slammed the Federal Government's decision to ban his new video game.

The Classification Review Board yesterday refused to classify the game, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure, meaning it cannot be sold, demonstrated, hired or imported.

snip --dj

Originally from Wooster Collective, on February 16, 2006 10:11 AM

This came as a complete surprise to us, but apparently some widget-developers called Colorworks have built Google Sightseeing its very own widget! If you’re running Tiger on your Mac then give it a whirl - it can display either the 20 latest posts or comments (although you could of course have one widget for each if you like).

Loads of thanks to the guys at Colorworks - we love it!

Originally posted by Alex from Google Sightseeing, on February 16, 2006 10:10 AM

A collection of "stupid nude calendars". I confess that I found this while looking for photos from the racy curling calendar...but I came away empty-handed. (Only slightly NSFW.)

I was also looking for the racy curling calendar this morning! --dj

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 16, 2006 10:10 AM

(Assuming you read at threshold 4, obviously)

Originally posted by seldo from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 16, 2006 10:09 AM

"you have your life, and i have this ham"

in therapy with children, identifying feelings is a major deal. there is a truly barfalicious poster in the offices of many child therapists, The Feelings Poster.

visuals aid so some homespun version gestates in the psychic project incubator. maybe it will grow fuzz and a beak on the airplane ride to milwaukee.

plus generating a list of sixty feelings (open invitation)

**happy birthday to colorado performance artist matthew weedman, aka, "this pipe cost fifteen dollars." here's to fifteen years of magical friendship**

Originally from serenalarogers, on February 16, 2006 10:09 AM

Avian FluKleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's best known venture capital firms (backer of Google, Sun, Netscape...), has raised the nation's first fund dedicated to bio-defense and preventing pandemics. It is significant because no other venture capital firm has raised such a focused fund. We'll update tomorrow morning with a link to our full Mercury News story on this. With Bill Joy as a partner (or just go directly to this Wired article), you'd expect Kleiner to be the first mover in this realm. And Kleiner's leading light, John Doerr, has also been vocal on the threat of avian flu recently. The $200 million pandemic fund, formally called the "KPCB Pandemic and Bio Defense Fund," comes at a time of heightened public awareness about the risks of a breakout of avian flu and other diseases The news is joined by an announcement by Kleiner that it has also finished raising its twelfth fund, at $600 million. For the tealeaf readers, check out Kleiner's new home page. They've spiffed it up, relying on a search box at the top right-hand corner -- a sort of Googlesque simplicity. And a new logo. And even a new saying: "Relationship and Venture Capital." (Here's a cache of old site.) See the press releases in extended entry....

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on February 16, 2006 12:57 AM

aperture is a facade installation with interactive and narrative displaying modes. Consisting of an iris diaphragm matrix, the facade's surface with its apertures' variable opening diameters is enriched by a dynamic translucency, that creates new imagery.

Originally from unmediated, on February 16, 2006 12:09 AM

Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure follows a graffiti artist, while the game Chibi-Robo is about a robot that cleans.

Originally from NYT > Technology, on February 15, 2006 9:47 PM

Erdös’s co-authors have Erdös number 1. People other than Erdös who have written a joint paper with someone with Erdös number 1 but not with Erdös have Erdös number 2, and so on...

Originally posted by stamen from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 15, 2006 9:29 PM

June 8, 1968 The controversy over the cartoons critical of Islam printed in European newspapers has seized the world’s attention. To some, it must seem that the Muslim prohibition against depicting the Prophet could not possibly be enough to fuel such a violent response. And, in truth, it probably is a combination of that prohibition and the nature of the content depicted in the cartoons. (That three far more offensive cartoons were mysteriously distributed within the Middle East didn’t help matters any.)

But the importance of Muhammad in the Muslim world, in and of itself, cannot be underestimated. Consider Ved Mehta’s 1968 article about the massive turmoil sparked by the theft of a single strand of the Prophet’s hair, an event that occurred in December 1963 in the contentious region of Kashmir. There, too, other factors played a role: the intractable politics of Kashmir, the larger context of India-Pakistan relations. Mehta relies a little too much on lengthy excerpts for my taste, but it is still a valuable piece of background to the current cartoon furor.

Note: The article is Part IV of a long series covering Mehta’s travels in India. The New Yorker got a little sloppy about numbering the parts of this series. I think the series ended up having eight parts, the last of which appeared in the April 11, 1970 issue. Still, wow. An eight-part series. It’s hard to imagine any editor anywhere, other than Shawn, who would have approved an eight-part series of this sort.

Originally posted by Martin from Between the Squibs, on February 15, 2006 8:08 PM

I think we can safely say that it was a good day when I heard that the New Yorker was going to release all of its issues in DVD format. In the autumn of 2005, I bought the Complete New Yorker (CNY) set, and I’ve been enjoying it with gusto ever since.

Most of the reviewers who praised the CNY made reference to the futility of actually trying to read all of it. The number of issues (4,109) was often mentioned. It is certainly a daunting number. If you spend every single evening reading one issue, you will be nearing the end in the year 2016. (Once you finished that, you’d still have to continue the exercise for another year and a half to catch up with the issues released since autumn 2005.)

As I eagerly consumed my fill of the excellent articles, I often wished for some sort of online directory, blog, wiki, or catalog containing the favorite finds of some industrious person. Of course, this worked in two directions: after reading a particularly satisfying article in the CNY, I also wished that there were an obvious place where I could post the find.

Strangely enough, I never found any such directory, and Amazon’s comments page for the product wasn’t exactly doing it for me. So I’m starting my own.

This blog is herewith dedicated to the collection of discerning recommendations of treasures to be found in the CNY. Articles, Talk of the Town pieces, Cartoons, Advertisements, Squibs, you name it. If you stumbled on it in the CNY, and you think people should know about it, drop me a line. I promise to do my share of the recommending.

This will also be a place where people can discuss and debate the DVD collection itself. I am aware that there has already been considerable annoyance expressed in some quarters about various technical quirks and legal ambiguities concerning the collection, and — provided that the tone remains civil — I would like consumers of the DVD to consider this blog a potential resource for such topics. Having said that, I should state that I am relatively not very bothered by such matters, and I will not allow this blog to become a place for wholesale trashing of the project.

Eventually I would like to see this blog (should it find palpable response) turn into a collective enterprise, but for the time being I will be in charge of it.

So onward! I have plenty of articles I want to pass on, and I sincerely hope you do as well. This blog will never work if it remains a one-way street. Welcome!

Originally posted by Martin from Between the Squibs, on February 15, 2006 8:08 PM

Today Theo Watson in the Eyebeam Production Studio released the Maya to Google Earth plugin.

Maya2GoogleEarth is an open-source, cross-platform tool developed at Eyebeam for exporting 3D models from Maya into Google Earth. Once installed, it allows you to export 3D models from within your scene as a single Google Earth Placemark (KML) file.

The project was inspired by the Open GL extraction utility OGLE which can extract 3D data from openGL programs like Google Earth. We thought that it would be fun to be able to take the extracted 3D data, remix and add to it and then load it back into Google Earth.

Here are a couple examples, and there are more (as well as the KML files for download) on the Maya2GEarth page:

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs, on February 15, 2006 8:03 PM

I’m sorry that we missed this post yesterday, but for all you day-late romantics out there here’s a (slightly patchy) large heart-shaped forest near Kansas City airport. Aww.

We’ve also previously posted various other heart shaped things.

Thanks: Glenn

Originally posted by James from Google Sightseeing, on February 15, 2006 8:02 PM

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on February 15, 2006 8:02 PM

"interesting concept"

Originally posted by anselm from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 15, 2006 8:01 PM

I have listened to this song about twenty times today.

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 15, 2006 8:01 PM

Between the Squibs is a blog highlighting articles from the Complete New Yorker DVD set.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 15, 2006 8:01 PM

Earlier today I posted a link to Frank Bruni's new food blog over at the NY Times. At the same time, I added a comment to this post about how restaurant reservations work here in NYC. I went back to see if there was any further conversation and my comment had been deleted (or had otherwise disappeared). Not such a good start. I've resubmitted the comment...we'll see how long it lasts.

Originally from kottke.org, on February 15, 2006 7:59 PM

The very insighitful Stowe Boyd gives a follow up to Robert Scoble’s advice about how to raise more attention (and consequently send more important ’snowball’ as in Stowe’s terminology). I.E. it’s w how to for improving one’s blog and one’s sphere of influence. Some excerpts:

1. True Voice — authentic and empassioned writing, clearly expressing a consistent and value-based perspective
2. Throw Yourself Into Dialog — Most great posts are a response to the writing of others.
3. Draw The Line, Over And Over Again — At any given time, successful, engaged bloggers are pursuing a set of themes or topics. (…) State your position and defend it.
4. The Big Idea — Every once in a while, work on one of those big posts, that outlines an idea that may have big implications.
5. Sharpen Your Pencil, And Then Write. (…) You should write — at a minimum — every day.
6. Courage — (…) Accept the occasional (or even consistent) vitriol from detractors and nay-sayers. If you stand up and say something is great, or pointless, or the most likely trend for the future, you can be sure that there are others that will disagree, and they will be happy to say so. Fine. But you can’t hedge, and middle-of-the-road platitudes or cautious optimism
7. Technology — (…) Learn how search engines work, and do the obvious things. Expressive titles, especially with people’s and products’ names help greatly. Tagging with detailed terms helps search engines and people alike. By all means, make your blog visually pleasing, accessible, and easy to read. Use graphics when appropriate, such as screen shots or diagrams. Link to all the people and stories you reference, and include people discussed as tags. [My favorite but hard to follow on a regular basis -nicolas]
8. Timing Matters — I am not suggesting blowing hot and cold on themes, but rather try to build on stories when they are still new and in people’s thoughts.
9. Human Sized Pieces — People are busy, and so your posts should generally not be 20 page dissertations.
10. Respond to comments — (…) Engage them when they come. But never feed the trolls.

uote>

Why do I blog this? actually I don’t aim at following all of these, especially my blog is first a repository for what I keep track of (yes that’s why it’s a HUGE MESS here) but I found some ideas interesting. I like what Stowe Boyd writes, relevant insights about to improve new media communication.

At the same time, News Scientist has a paper about the opposite: How to keep your site anonymous!

Originally posted by Nicolas from pasta and vinegar, on February 15, 2006 7:59 PM

gives you cancer

-- miami ink

ill-advised portion of odb quilt, sketch:

the odb thing ("rip") comes from brooklyn group home days... reportedly (from Trinidadian house-mother) he'd drive around the girls' home "riding in fancy cars, drinking liquor" picking up vulnerable or straight up soul-starving girls. he got real into one, gave her expensive shit, and called the house for her a lot. the house-mother intervened, told him to mess with women his own age. and odb said, "don't you know who i am?" and she said, "yeah, i'm from staten island -- you're a drug dealer."

a quilt that screams and cusses and is kind of hot and sad, like sexed-up adolescents... catholic symbolism (it was a catholic foster care agency) will aid, plus whatever else jumps in. fabulous dress and martini (fleeting, lost in the mix) may represent me.

odb's music maintains a prime zone in my emotional history btw. if effective this piece is about tension, not demonizing.

Originally from serenalarogers, on February 15, 2006 11:23 AM

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on February 15, 2006 11:22 AM

sledgehammer-operated keyboard, 2005
silicone, wood, computer, projector

It actually looks more like a rubber-mallet operated keyboard, but why split hairs?

It also reminds me of Perry Hoberman’s Cathartic User Interface which was fun, fun, fun!

Originally posted by T.Whid from MTAA Reference Resource, on February 15, 2006 11:22 AM

Starting next month Andy Baio’s Waxy.org becomes the fifth plank in The Deck ad network we’re building. Andy’s influential links list pretty much sets the daily surfing agenda for the web dev and design communities. It also brings millions of new page views to any buy on the network. Not only does Andy seems to have a perfect sense of pitch when it comes to selecting the topics we’re most interested in, he also seems to be hardwired in a way that results in lots of exclusive finds too.

If you’ve got a product or service that could benefit by being in front of tons of web design and design prefessionals, there’s a slot or two in The Deck open in March and April and we’ll be making May through July available for reservations soon.

Originally from Signal vs. Noise, on February 15, 2006 11:22 AM

Things about my job at The New York Times that I can talk about: I’m working slightly fewer hours than I did at Behavior but each hour is more jam-packed with work than ever before. I’m walking to work most every day; it’s more than two and a half miles each way, but I’ve never liked commuting to work on the subway, it probably doesn’t take that much more time by foot anyway, and it’s great exercise. I’m taking lots and lots of notes, and getting in the habit of writing everything down — or recording them in the impressive, Omni Outliner Pro-powered Kinkless Getting Things Done system — as quickly as I possibly can, before I forget the dozens and dozens of details that get thrown at me every day.

Perhaps most importantly for those reading this weblog, I’m also hiring several full-time positions for the design group that I lead, and I’m looking to do this pretty soon. So maybe you’re an awesome visual designer, information architect, or design technologist and you want to come work with me?

Apply Within

You can follow the link to the Times job board to get the full descriptions for each job that I’m looking to fill, but I thought it would make sense to provide brief, human-readable summaries of what each position entails right here.

Warning: Please do not email me directly with your responses and résumés; to apply you must actually hit the “Apply” button in the upper right-hand corner on each job description’s page, linked to below. I won’t be replying to anything sent to the Subtraction.com domain if it has anything to do with these job positions. Seriously.

Wanted: Information Architect

This person will help plan new areas of NYTimes.com by translating business and technical goals into wireframes, user flows and site maps. He/she will also be an in-house authority on information architecture, helping improve information architecture practices across NYTimes.com.

Please read the full job description and use the “Apply” link on that page.

Wanted: Web Site Developer

This person will help design user interfaces for new areas of NYTimes.com, from brainstorming ideas to completing finished designs for hand-off to HTML coders. He/she will also help make modifications to the existing Web site, providing design help where necessary to improve the overall user experience.

Please read the full job description and use the “Apply” link on that page.

Wanted: User Interface Specialist

This person will help develop new areas of NYTimes.com with a special focus on producing customized weblogs. He/she will also be providing design and coding help as necessary for prototypes and to improve the NYTimes.com user experience. A thorough knowledge of weblog publishing software, especially WordPress, is required.

Please read the full job description and use the “Apply” link on that page.

Wanted: Web Developer/HTML Coder

This person will help develop new areas of NYTimes.com with a full skill-set of client-side technologies including XHTML, CSS, Macromedia Flash and ActionScript. He/she will also provide help with other technologies in both client and server environments relating to the user experience, and will be continually expanding his/her technical knowledge.

Please read the full job description and use the “Apply” link on that page.

Originally from Subtraction, on February 15, 2006 11:21 AM

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on February 15, 2006 11:21 AM

Originally from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, on February 15, 2006 11:21 AM

Originally from Tuberaider Video, on February 15, 2006 9:09 AM

Jason Levine's mom and her friends were using Flickr to share their drawings between one another and get each other's feedback.

For a while, a lot of the members were using Flickr to upload their drawings, but when the folks behind Flickr began enforcing a photos-only policy, people found themselves without a home for their artwork.

Here's some of the artwork that was so threatening to the Flickr Community Guidelines.

Originally from Off the Hoof, on February 15, 2006 9:09 AM

These are hyperlinks to internet websites you should read.

• Rhino is doing a Prince retrospective. Though there's certainly more than enough retrospectives out there already (a box set with b-sides, a crappy single-disk colection, and the soundtrack to Spike Lee's Girl 6) it looks like this is one of the easiest ways to get a lot of the extended versions of the old Prince stuff on CD. In the olden days, we had to track down European import CD singles, and it was uphill both ways! In the really olden days, we found vinyl 12" singles at flea markets while knee-deep in the snow. I hope Rhino cleans up the audio, too, as these tracks approach 20 or 25 years old, they need remastering.

• Now don't get me wrong, I love Prince. I'm just glad I'm not this guy.

• Who dares to link???!1 I dare to link! In related BLTN news, that's a mighty purty logo.

• A few years ago, Andre and I got obsessed with instant messenger bots, and he built some pretty cool little apps. Of course, these all get killed off after a while because AOL hasn't had the sense to do open licensing on their APIs. But now Microsoft has, which would be cool if anybody I know used MSN Messenger.

• Two years ago was a very naive time.

• If shareholders start to think that investments like Amazon's (excellent) web services platform aren't delivering enough short-term value, how is this going to impact the trend of big publicly-traded companies being more open with their technology? The combination of cool but expensive technology investments and unexpected underperformance is could make it harder to do Good Things.

• The SEO community just loves drama, it seems. Especially as reported in this Wall Street Journal story. I'd be mad if the person I was paying to improve my site was busy wasting time with a pointless online pissing match. And I say that as someone who's participated in one.

• In found Shaun Inman's discussion of Mint piracy interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I've faced the opposite problem for a while, in that we have a totally free version of our application that we make available which people are allowed to customize and extend and hack the code of, but some people don't know it's there. So seeing the contrast is educational. And second, with the purchase of MeasureMap (congrats, kids!) Mint is theoretically more valuable now -- how does that complicate the requests that some people made that Shaun simply encourage free distribution and then charge for support? The honor system and the gift economy are tricky things to navigate.

• And finally, stop sending me the link: I've Seen It.

Originally from Anil Dash, on February 15, 2006 9:06 AM

We saw the photo above on a new website called Stencil International, a new site that reminds us a bit of Stencil Revolution (which seems to be down for quite some time)

http://stencilinternational.com

Originally from Wooster Collective, on February 15, 2006 9:05 AM

Today Theo Watson in the Eyebeam Production Studio released the Maya to Google Earth plugin.

Maya2GoogleEarth is an open-source, cross-platform tool developed at Eyebeam for exporting 3D models from Maya into Google Earth. Once installed, it allows you to export 3D models from within your scene as a single Google Earth Placemark (KML) file.

The project was inspired by the Open GL extraction utility OGLE which can extract 3D data from openGL programs like Google Earth. We thought that it would be fun to be able to take the extracted 3D data, remix and add to it and then load it back into Google Earth.

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs, on February 14, 2006 11:11 PM

Interview with David Remnick about the revitalization of the New Yorker and what exactly it is that makes that magazine unique. "My principle in the magazine - and I am not being arrogant - is that I don't lose sleep trying to figure what the reader wants. I don't do surveys. I don't check the mood of the consumers. I do what I want, what interests me and a small group of editors that influences the way of the magazine." (thx, george)

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 14, 2006 11:10 PM

Shuna's write-up of the Common Wealth Club's Food Blogger panel (and the event itself) triggers quite an interesting reaction in the comments. Recipe for a food blogger flame war: 3 cups drama, 0 parts actual discussion of food, a pinch...

Originally from A Full Belly, on February 14, 2006 11:10 PM

The story so far: Danish paper publishes cartoons that mock Muslims. An Iranian paper responds with a Holocaust cartoons contest. Now, a group of Israelis announce their own anti-Semitic cartoons contest. Amitai Sandy, the publisher of Tel-Aviv, Israel-based Dimona Comix, and founder of the contest jokes, “We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published! No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

This is a refreshing response to all the cartoon-fueled anger in the news lately — fighting fire with humour.

(via MetaFilter)

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration Blog, on February 14, 2006 11:10 PM

urban_data posted a photo:

Originally from eyebeam - Everyone's Tagged Photos, on February 14, 2006 11:10 PM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 11:09 PM

please help: non-profit bookmobile project trailer & van is MISSING!

Originally posted by anemone from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 11:09 PM

Marc Andreessen is annoyed by his customers coming to visit the office (the nerve!) so a few of his customers are using his software to organize and pay him a visit tomorrow. My long-held opinion: Marc Andreessen = putz.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 14, 2006 11:08 PM

Apple's latest operating system update addresses several issues.

Originally from Macworld, on February 14, 2006 11:08 PM

ccMixter tracks in-community mixversations. We've now released a very simple beta API that allows tracking remix relationships across sites. The API is implemented in ccHost, the GPL software that runs ccMixter, and you can implement it for your site. For details see ccMixter developer Victor Stone's blog entry and the beta documentation. Feedback to the cc-devel list.

In other ccHost development news, the excellent Open Clip Art Library is in the process of migrating to ccHost and doing some work along the way to make it easy for others who want to use ccHost for non-music remix communities to do so.

Originally posted by Mike Linksvayer from Creative Commons Blog, on February 14, 2006 11:08 PM

read: finding religion

Originally from lifeblog, on February 14, 2006 11:07 PM

MeasureMap just got bought out by Google. I believe that's the first Ruby on Rails application to be picked up in a Web 2.0'ish buyout. And it didn't even have to launch, take that Yahoo! Speaking of, I'm now having a sale of futures in ideas for apps that I haven't even thought of. Who's bidding?

No seriously, congratulations to the MeasureMap team, which includes Rails core member Nicholas Seckar and always interesting Jeffrey Veen. I've been in on the beta for a while and there's definitely some interesting ideas and thoughts going on there. Statistics that goes beyond the numbers^TM. Mighty nice.

Now let's see some Getting Real and a launch!

Originally from Loud Thinking, on February 14, 2006 11:07 PM

MeasureMap, a blogstats application built by our good friend Greg Veen (with help from his brother) was sold to Google today.

As much as we will miss Jeff at the bar after work, it is good to know that MeasureMap will now not work with Chinese blogs either.

Originally from Off the Hoof, on February 14, 2006 11:07 PM

HAPPY V. DAY

 

The art blogosphere is up-in-arms over Artnet Magazine writer Charlie Finch's supposed sexism. That news is so old and tired  the only way it could be the least bit interesting is if it was old Charlie himself posing as Anonymous Female Artist (A.K.A. Militant Art Bitch). More interesting to me is why this particular kind of old school feminist discourse is being promoted so heavily at this particular moment. Oh, right, it gives Roberta and Jerry a platform to preach to the flock (and rake in the thithes).

 

For those in New York City who would like to put in their two bits on the topic the LMCC gallery on the second floor on Maiden Lane is giving you an opportunity: 

Speed Limit
Redhead Project Space, 125 Maiden Lane, Second Floor
New York, NY
February 24-May 26
Public Event: April 4
Closing Reception: May 26

Redhead Project Space invites you to participate in an experiment: A History of Women’s Art. What constitutes a history of women’s art?  Who can write that history? Speed Limit is an experiment attempting to arrive at an open, participatory, physical history of women’s art. On February 24, the gallery will be open and empty and ready for your contributions.  What can you contribute?  Works of art, artifacts, texts, etc. that you believe could contribute to a history of women’s art.    The more difficult question of what could constitute a history of women’s art is up to you. Everyone is welcome to contribute. For Rules and Regulation and a more complete description of Speed Limit, visit http://www.redheadprojects.com.

Originally from post.thing.net - A lean, mean, media machine., on February 14, 2006 11:07 PM

Originally from Perl.com, on February 14, 2006 11:07 PM

The scrappy, unwavering spirit of the Camino team pays off in a big way today with the version 1.0 release of that Web browser. In the wish list of browser features I wrote last December, I had unfairly disregarded Camino, even though I had it installed on my own system at the time. This is probably owing to past experiences with earlier versions that were a bit bumpy, but this latest release is smooth, polished and very solid. It’s a true Macintosh product, having painstakingly brought the Mozilla group’s refined Gecko rendering engine into Apple’s Cocoa framework.

The result is a browser that’s rivaled perhaps only by Safari in how native it feels to the Mac OS X computing experience. I’ve been using it for several days, and it feels fast and reliable — but what I like most of all is its integration with Mac OS X’s Keychain password utility, which is invaluable for convenience and peace of mind. Unfortunately, Camino is missing a few features that I’m becoming increasingly used to having at my disposal: session saving and the ability to force all new windows into tabs.

That doesn’t stop it from being an amazing piece of work though. It may be true that Camino’s open source cousin, Firefox is a wonder of coordinated, selfless efforts joining together to produce a surprisingly usable and elegant end product. But Camino is an example of similarly dedicated and truly passionate engineers and designers putting that same brand of selflessness to work creating something truly beautiful. It’s the closest an open source project has come to producing art that I’ve seen yet.

Originally from Subtraction, on February 14, 2006 11:06 PM

Here's one from the archives for you. Make sure your kids don't grow up without seeing this. By the way, that guy he dunked over? The Knicks picked him ahead of Ron Artest, Jeff Foster, Andrei Kirilenko, and Manu Ginobili (who, by the way, was so unknown on draft day in 1999 that CNN/SI listed him as a power forward).

Originally from True Hoop, on February 14, 2006 11:06 PM

If you want to play with space and time and people, if you like crossing barriers and probing around in extreme situations, if you fiddle around with the idea the space can be programmed, if you eat social patterns for your breakfast, if you are not scared by a drunk young audience, if you keep telling your friends that environments are not passive wrappings but active processes, if your perceptions keep shifting, if your projects are about interplay, exploration and humor, if tinkering with technology is your obsession...
...then... this call for works is your unique chance to experiment with interaction design within the context of an electronic music festival. Nightlife, extreme characters, clubbing freaks, a young, unrespectful and challenging audience. You know what we are talking about, don’t you?

YEAH!

Originally from USC IMD: , on February 14, 2006 11:06 PM

I've been getting lots of squid t-shirts orders as of late, but recently I recieved quite a few orders for our NARM! shirt. Mike and Erika noted that one of the orders was from Matt Shakman, a television director for Six Feet Under. Turns out he directed "Singing for Our Lives" the episode that introduced NARM! into the public discourse.

I contacted him, and he said that although there were many NARM! shirts floating around on the InterWeb, "none compare" to Mule's. Matt is a charmer, but he's also an enabler, because he promised to give one of the shirts he ordered to Scott Buck, the writer of "Singing for Our Lives" and the "true father" of Narm!

This news has made all us Mules giddy, as we are big Six Feet Under fans. Thanks, Matt!

Originally from Off the Hoof, on February 14, 2006 11:04 PM

A video of The Fall performing Smile on the Tube in 1983 with guest presenter John Peel. I used to know a guy in college who only listened to the Fall and Pere Ubu, I can see a logic to that.

Posted to music

Originally from Stunned, on February 14, 2006 11:04 PM

Google buys Measure Map, Jeff Veen leaves Adaptive Path to work at Google.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 14, 2006 11:04 PM

But I thought it would be Yahoo. Google grabs web analytics UI wizards Measure Map.

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on February 14, 2006 11:03 PM

Python for S60 is making the news again!

• Guido van Rossum now has a Nokia phone to run PyS60 on: “Too Much Fun with Python on Nokia Phone“
• Steve Litchfield, of All About Symbian, has posted a review: “Nokia Python’s Flying Circus” that discusses the pro’s and con’s of using Python compared to other mobile development options, and shares his first PyS60 application, “created in around ten man hours from ‘never having seen a line of Python before’ to ‘finished and ready for download by the world’”!

Originally posted by erik from [eriksmartt.com/blog], on February 14, 2006 3:18 PM

Former US ski team member, and gold medalist, Picabo Street has a blog! You may remember her from the 1998 games in Nagano. She won the gold in the Super G. She's in Torino now as a special correspondent for NBC. While there, she's keeping a blog on the Torino experience, especially now that she's getting to enjoy the Games as a spectator rather than a competitor. Neat.

Originally from megnut, on February 14, 2006 3:18 PM

Ten successes that shaped the 20th Century American city.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 14, 2006 3:16 PM

Through an improbable series of clerical errors, I am scheduled to participate in a "keynote conversation" about professional blogging with Heather Armstrong at SXSW in Austin, Texas next month. Armstrong, so the story goes, got fired for blogging at work and was rewarded with a loving husband, cutie-pie daughter, photogenic dog, several television appearances, hundreds of media mentions, and a new job -- talking about poop all day -- that supports her entire family. And so but by the way, she's also headlining the entire SXSW Festival along with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Neil Young. Which makes me approximately chopped liver. When I told Meg about the headlining thing, she said, "boy, that conversation had better be good". Pressure's on, Heather.

To sum up, a piece of chopped liver will be having a chat with a nice lady from Utah next month about blogging for groceries. Should be fun.

Originally from kottke.org, on February 14, 2006 3:16 PM

Adobe released a new Lightroom beta, its first Intel-ready application.

Originally from Macworld, on February 14, 2006 3:16 PM

MacMinute: “The Camino Project today announced the Camino 1.0 browser, a free Web browser for Mac OS X, built on the open source Mozilla Gecko rendering engine.”

Sweet!

Originally from ranchero.com, on February 14, 2006 3:16 PM

Today the Eyebeam Production Studio releases its Maya to Google Earth plugin.

Maya2GoogleEarth is an open-source, cross-platform tool developed at Eyebeam for exporting 3D models from Maya into Google Earth. Once installed, it allows you to export 3D models from within your scene as a single Google Earth Placemark (KML) file.

The project was inspired by the Open GL extraction utility OGLE which can extract 3D data from openGL programs like Google Earth. We thought that it would be fun to be able to take the extracted 3D data, remix and add to it and then load it back into Google Earth.

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs, on February 14, 2006 3:15 PM

They are serious. BioWillie! [boingboing]

Originally posted by pmcaleer from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 3:15 PM

Worldchanging ally Ze Frank, one of the funniest men on his block in midtown Manhattan, explores global warming, quarter-mile-long cars, and the plight of joke-writers in this new informative video:

"I started PSBI as a non-profit because I wanted to start an organization where no one profited."

(Posted by Alex Steffen in QuickChanges at 11:02 AM)

Originally posted by Alex Steffen from WorldChanging: Another World Is Here, on February 14, 2006 3:14 PM

Originally from the real janelle, on February 14, 2006 11:48 AM

The Whitney Museum's Artport and the Tate Online have teamed up to commission three web projects. Launching today, Valentine's Day, The Dumpster by Golan Levin with Kamal Nigam and Jonathan Feinberg is an online visualization that depicts a slice through the romantic lives of American teenagers. Using postings extracted from millions of blogs, visitors can surf through tens of thousands of romantic relationships in which one person has "dumped" another.

The Battle of Algiers (launches Wed 3.1), by Marc Lafia and Fang-Yu Lin, is a continual re-composition of scenes from the seminal 1965 film re-enactment of Gillo Pontecorvo's movie.

By entering Screening Circle (launches Wed 3.22), by Andy Deck, visitors can compose loops of graphics and affect and edit each other's screens. The pieces, or segments, can be made by one person or by several people and the arrangement of the segments can be haphazard or precise.

Via Flavorpill.

Originally from we make money not art, on February 14, 2006 11:46 AM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 8:33 AM

Barcelonan hotel wrapped in "individual nodes that will read the daylight sun amplitude and then at night each node will give off color according to how much sunlight that node collected." (via WMMNA)

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 8:32 AM

James Clar, an interactive lighting designer, is currently working on scaled-down version of an L.E.D mesh structure that will eventually appear around the Habitat Hotel, near Barcelona. Working for experimental company Cloud9, Clar is using his expertise to build a working prototype for a model of the hotel, to be shown in New York. As he puts it on his site:

It is a hotel with a light mesh that wraps the whole building. The light mesh has sensors that will read the daylight sun amplitude and then at night each node will give off color according to how much that node collected sun. Therefore, the mesh reflects the energy levels of each day, it will change over seasons and due to weather. It’s very nice since the mesh itself is raised off the building and forms its own see-through structure. Also, each node is self-contained with it’s own sensor and LEDs, there is no central computer controlling the whole structure.

The model, along with many other works, will be on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) NYC from Feb 12th for the New Spanish Architects show.

[UPDATE] James has now posted some photos and a great project PDF.

Originally from Pixelsumo, on February 14, 2006 8:32 AM

Rocking it comprehensive-school computer class style on your phone...

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 8:31 AM

Upload from your gps to make tracks on google maps/earth

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 14, 2006 8:31 AM

an aesthetic portrait of romantic breakups from a group of 20,000 blog posts describing breakups in 2005. this 'social data browser' visualises inferred reasons for the break-up, who was involved, age & gender of the author, & emotional state, with similar breakups showing up with similar colours. launched today, Valentine's Day. [tate.org.uk & tate.org.uk]

Originally posted by fofoda from information aesthetics, on February 14, 2006 8:30 AM

elastico has a nice post (in spanish but most of the links lead to websites in english) about the New Architecture in Spain exhibition at the MOMA, New York, February 12–May 1, 2006. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have picture galleries.

My favourite projects are the Metropol Parasol to be built in Sevilla by J. Mayer H. and
Habitat Hotel by architect Enric Ruiz-Geli of Cloud 9 Architecture.

The hotel will be wrapped in an "energy mesh." The light mesh, developed by James Clar, has individual nodes that will read the daylight sun amplitude and then at night each node will give off color according to how much sunlight that node collected. The mesh reflects the energy levels of each day and will change according to seasons and weather.

The model's mesh consists of 500 tri-color LEDs controlled by a PIC microprocessor. Also imbedded in the model's mesh are photosensors which determine the brightness on them and give off a color according to the energy color scheme.

The building should be completed in 2008 and will be located in L'Hospitalet, Barcelona.

Just like Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, big names have been invited to contribute to its general design. Vito Acconci (see also his Island in the Mur) is working on a garden which will start in the main hall of the ground floor and will continue outside to create a confusion between public and private space. Evru (previously called Zush) has designed a small meditation room shaped like a bubble. And Dutch designers Droog Design will mark every step of the main stair with the number of calories burnt to climb them. On the top floor, Brazilian architect Ruy Othake plans to grow a kind of Amazonian jungle.

Via noticias arquitectura. More information in El Pais.

Originally from we make money not art, on February 14, 2006 8:30 AM

Another Spanish project (which isn't part of the New York show) that intrigued me: the city of Basauri (Basque Country) is studying the possibility to build a new type of dwelling for young people. 35 wooden box-houses would be built in the Basozelai area, in a natural surrounding.

The 42 sqm (+ 20 sqm for the terrasse) will be available as a temporary house for young people at a relatively cheap price, around 200 euros. What's interesting is that half of it will be kept in a bank account. Dwellers will get that money back at the end of their stay in the house (max. 5 years.)

The project has been designed by urban activist, artist and architect Santiago Cirugeda who was inspired by the urban ideas he saw in Northern Europe.

Cirugeda is famous for his activist projects. He seeks out unrecognized leftover spaces between the lines of building laws and gives them (il-)legal asylum. He works with the same survival strategies as migrants, who have conquered niches and found a place of their own when society refused to grant it to them.

Some of his Strategies for Urban Occupation i like: house enlarging with scaffoldings, insect house (first set of images, on the right), empty lots occupation, the dumpster-playground (images above.)

Also by the architect: Casa Pollo and don't miss Geoff's post in BLDG blog.

Via Edgar Gonzales < El correo digital. Image.

="http://feeds.we-make-money-not-art.com/~a/wmmna?a=Jm8ICp">

Originally from we make money not art, on February 14, 2006 8:30 AM

motorcyclist records video of Honda Civic losing control and hitting her, posts video online  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on February 14, 2006 1:55 AM

Originally from yann@typepad, on February 14, 2006 1:55 AM

Notes on a very practical Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us presentation, apparently taken my a group via subethaedit.

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 14, 2006 12:51 AM

"Blogging and wikis are reflective of a culture that views the Internet as a stream of information, rather than a collection of places."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 14, 2006 12:51 AM

The Yahoo! User Interface Library’s got a bunch of open source Ajaxy UI components, including a Calendar control, Drag and Drop, a Slider and Tree View. Neat.

Yahoo! UI Library

Originally posted by Gina Trapani from Spun, on February 14, 2006 12:51 AM

an interactive facade installation consisting of a matrix of iris diaphragms (like those found in cameras) which open & close according to the external light. this reveals and obscures the inside of the building from the outside, and reflects the duration which people stand in front of the facade. [fredericeyl.de|via we-make-money-not-art.com]

Originally posted by fofoda from information aesthetics, on February 14, 2006 12:50 AM

Takafumi Horie was charged with violating securities law by spreading false information to inflate a subsidiary's stock price.

Originally from NYT > Technology, on February 14, 2006 12:49 AM

Best Practices News: The new Google Talk Privacy Policy includes a link to the older version, marked up to show what has changed. Quite honestly, the very best practice would be one that allowed you to opt-out of a service — meaning that they would erase your personal data — if you didn't like the changes that had been made. (via sew)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on February 13, 2006 8:19 PM

Researchers did MRIs of 5 subjects watching Superbowl ads and found that the best ones stimulate the brain’s empathy and reward centers. (via c'ist)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on February 13, 2006 8:19 PM

Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative. "As Christians, our faith in Jesus Christ compels us to love our neighbors and to be stewards of God's creation. The good news is that with God's help, we can stop global warming, for our kids, our world and for the Lord." The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a megachurch in Longwood, Fla., in a television spot that links images of drought, starvation and Hurricane Katrina to global warming. (via jc)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on February 13, 2006 8:18 PM

Last night’s Grammy gift baskets were reportedly worth $65,000 and, naturally, bestowed upon only the most deserving, bedraggled souls (Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, etc). The funny thing is, we don’t actually know what the swag entailed: We were just given a list of 53 brands (flacks don’t have time for details when there’s so much, uh, flacking to be done!) that were somehow in the basket, including such crucial names as Nasal Comfort, Valhalla Shooting Club, and K-Y... (GAWKER)

Originally from Agenda Inc. Live Feed, on February 13, 2006 7:50 PM

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 13, 2006 7:49 PM

side B detail 2



3rd person i met in beacon: you heard about the bodies they found in the creek?

me: the creek behind my apartment?

3rd person i met in beacon: and this weekend they robbed the gas station.

me: whaaat?

3rd person i met in beacon: you need to read the newspaper.

don't know whether it's obvious, but the broderie perse on the purple side (A) below is stuffed (the polyester flowers)

Originally from serenalarogers, on February 13, 2006 7:43 PM

The MacBook Pro ships sometime this month. And with its release comes the usual spate of “But Dell laptops are cheaper” arguments. Dan Frakes compares comparably-equipped laptops and finds those arguments don’t hold much water.

Originally from Macworld, on February 13, 2006 7:41 PM

Harrison Ford just hacked your bank account with an iPod; the trailer [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on February 13, 2006 7:41 PM

"A goldfish gets its bowl drained of its water, then the water gets replaced by Mountain Dew and the goldfish dies. The Mountain Dew is then drained and replaced with water. The goldfish is still dead, but is ressurected with a 9 volt battery." Wha?

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 13, 2006 4:01 PM

I did some skiing last week up in Vermont and took some videos with my phone on the slopes. The quality isn't great, but hopefully you'll get the gist.

A short clip of me skiing through the trees:

Riding the chair lift:

And one of me skiing behind Meg:

The motion in the last one reminds me of Quake...like I'm chasing after her with a railgun or something.

Originally from kottke.org, on February 13, 2006 4:01 PM

Check it out folks, someone posted this anonymously to the SourceForge forums -- a re-render of Google Earth building data, but with texture maps!

(click for full-size image)

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs, on February 13, 2006 1:42 PM

Making custom photoshop brushes has become habit forming....

Originally posted by pa from invisibleman, on February 13, 2006 1:05 PM

Living in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, one of the biggest issues hanging over our community is the specter of Bruce Ratner's planned "Atlantic Yards" development. By dangling the prospect of a glitzy new Frank Gehry-designed stadium (to...

Originally posted by keegan from invisibleman, on February 13, 2006 1:05 PM

A Hong Kong media researcher and blogger has criticized Western media coverage of Yahoo's role in the Li Zhi case.

Originally from Macworld, on February 13, 2006 10:59 AM

(via), Julie Mehretu - Psychogeographic paintings:

The twelve paintings in Julie Mehretu: Drawing into Painting, curated by Douglas Fogle and originated at the Walker Art Center in 2003, are densely layered works that describe a futuristic environment capturing the sense of our time in history.
(…)
Mehretu’s works draw from those traditions yet her image of the urban environment depicts a post modern city. Her paintings are built from the juxtaposition of different styles of marking, each with their own character, identity and history. These dense compilations of marks create overlaps and transparencies. The resulting layered compositions exude an energy that is consistent with contemporary society. She depicts a world that is in constant motion, a world that draws from the past as it looks toward the future.

Check this one: Julie Mehretu, “Excerpt (Suprematist Evasion),” 2003, ink and acrylic on canvas, 32 x 54”.

Why do I blog this? I like these representation of (data? artifacts? vehicles? city?) flows. Wouldn’t it be a nice metaphor for a physical representation of what we used to call cyberspace, a la hertzian tales? I like this concept of “invisible topographies” (see here or here).

Originally posted by Nicolas from pasta and vinegar, on February 13, 2006 10:59 AM

Reading about urban development reminded me of this:

"You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs but the violent jolt of the Capital. That is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. I wish, for your sake, Leonard, I could be happy in this quietness. But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death."

- Said by the character of Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Who was not, as the song goes, a little bit country.

Originally from massless, on February 13, 2006 9:31 AM

Looky here! Half-Life is going to become a 'series':

Valve Software has revealed to GameSpot that Aftermath, the upcoming expansion pack to the award-winning 2004 shooter Half-Life 2, has been renamed "Half-Life 2: Episode One." When asked whether the name change is indicative of a change in direction for the Half-Life 2 franchise, Valve marketing director Doug Lombardi replied, "episodic." When asked the follow-up question of whether the new name meant that beginning of a regular flow of content, Lombardi replied, "yes."

(Verbose, isn't he?)

So - games as a regular flow of content. We can see where this is going, can't we? Wahay!

Originally posted by Alice from Wonderland, on February 13, 2006 9:30 AM

Watched Sebastian Telfair's movie "Through the Fire" twice last weekend, and strongly suggest any Blazers fan to watch it when...

Originally from Behind the Blazers Beat, on February 13, 2006 9:29 AM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos, on February 13, 2006 9:29 AM

news on the Much robbery

Originally posted by kick_out_the_internet_jams from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 13, 2006 9:28 AM

---

I like the gallery Foxy Production but it bugs me that they're giving the members of the collective Paper Rad solo shows. It's like saying "Collectives are cool! OK, now let's get back to the valorization of individual geniuses which is what we know and can sell."

The Paper Rad installation at Pace was amazing. They really rose to the occasion. It's better and stronger than anything we've seen from them individually. Their triangular box installation was minimal but the exterior "painted mural" image with Bart Simpson, and the wall-to-wall video projected on the inside of the box were maximal--it was a perfect balance, very thought out.

Jacob Ciocci's recent solo was good, but on the whole I'm more interested in his (and Paper Rad's) video than the physical work. The video *is* radical, but the objects strike me as standard outsider moves (dolls, thrift store items, accumulations of more detail than the eye can take in...)

Which is not to say I didn't find a lot of compelling things to look at in Ciocci's show. I guess the problem is you want so-called cutting edge work to show you things you haven't seen. The "boy's bedroom" with chock-a-block tchotchkes on the walls we've seen. It's a more psychedelic version of a piece like Ed Kienholz's The Beanery--a claustrophobic enclosed room full of "stuff." The video in Ciocci's bedroom was great; I wanted to move all the stuff out of the way so I could see it.

The video murals in the Pace show were something new. Imagine a giant Rauschenberg or Polke painting with all the layered elements *moving*, each independently of the other. The subject isn't some rarified art substance but the worst and silliest pop culture trash--cheesy animated GIFs downloaded off the internet merging and morphing with abstract Flash patterns and found photographs in a constantly changing allover field: dozens of moving and overlapping Hannah Hoch style collages bubbling in and outside your field of vision. Similar things are going on in Ciocci's physical work, but there's something about forcing it onto a rectangular, pixeled 2-D field that tightens it up, makes the familiar strategies seem unfamiliar. With the objects you are weighted down with all the history of those objects.

Also, it's possible that this collective actually works better...as a collective.

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on February 13, 2006 9:22 AM

"Fulltext Indexing is a method by which MySQL quantifies the relevance of textual entries to an input query. ... A MySQL database must index data as it is entered, whereas Google can simply update their index periodically, after a crawl takes place. As such, the MySQL indexer needs to be computationally fast, ideally, while not sacrificing result quality."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 13, 2006 9:21 AM

A nice summary of weird but normal activities of the brain, in A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster. I haven't read Blink, but I'll bet a lot of it is based on these three assumptions:

1. The brain is good at cutting out the irrelevant, by which we mean, if you tell someone to count how many jugglers appear in a movie, they will almost surely miss the enormous purple gorilla in the background.
2. The brain notices more than we think it does. When people are under hypnosis, or in some special circumstance they can remember and describe more about something that they can't under normal conditions. Although this odd fact has been much abused, as in Repressed Memory Therapy.
3. The brain is actively hiding the real world from us. Raph gives the example of people drawing the simplest, most iconic or habitual symbol of something rather than the thing itself. Books like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, show you how to overcome this substitution (really good book! can teach anyone to draw well.)

Originally from Caterina.net, on February 13, 2006 9:20 AM

Originally from Lifeblog, on February 13, 2006 9:18 AM

A Professor of Interactive Media at UC Santa Barbara, George Legrady blurs the boundary between academic and studio practice by fusing technology with visual art. His Algorithmic Visualizations exhibit, at LA's Telic Arts Exchange through February 16, is a selection of three recent works that involve digital images generated using mathematical formulae. Legrady's virtuosity shines strongest in his site-specific activity. 'Making Visible the Invisible' was commissioned for the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Central Library. The work translates Dewey decimal-based circulation stats on the non-fiction book collection into plasma screen displays of patterned color. That impulse to reflect the architecture's modular characteristics (the entire collection forms a continuous spiral) also emerges in 'Kinetic Flow,' a work designed 'to engage the kinetic experience of the downward movement on both escalator and staircase, one smooth, the other sequential,' in the Vermont/Santa Monica MetroRail Station. Smart, engaging and visually compelling, this one's not to be missed. - Peggy MacKinnon

http://www.telic.info

Originally from Rhizome.org Net Art News, on February 13, 2006 9:18 AM

kid51 writes "Perl Seminar NY's February monthly meeting features Lincoln Stein talking on 'Genome Databases and Visualization in Perl'. For this month only, we have a special location:"

Originally posted by brian_d_foy from use Perl, on February 13, 2006 9:17 AM

Originally from Tuberaider Video, on February 13, 2006 9:06 AM

Originally from Tuberaider Video, on February 13, 2006 9:06 AM

One-page full schedule for the NBC coverage of the Winter Olympics.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on February 13, 2006 9:05 AM

Aibo Memories is a 3D Playable Sony Aibo for Mobile Phones . The direction stick on the mobile phone can be used to make Aibo stand, sit, lie down and jump up. Sony sadly decided to end its line of robot dogs in January 2006. Aibo Memories was created in memory of Aibo (1999-2006), by Tea Vui Huang.

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on February 13, 2006 9:05 AM

Originally posted by vgoutsiders from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on February 13, 2006 9:05 AM

Originally from TeacherTalk, on February 12, 2006 3:01 PM

david posted a photo:

One bench down! One bench down!

Originally from david's Photos, on February 12, 2006 3:00 PM

(Via Joi Ito's Web)

Reporters Sans Frontieres claims that more dissidents may have been jailed in China, following disclosure of their identities by Yahoo in response to PRC requests. I echo Thomas Crampton's call for transparency: If it is the contention of US companies that they must comply with the laws of the nations where they do business, then the US ought to require that they disclose any activities that compromise the rights of citizens. Such transparency would enable market forces to pressure these companies. Without such disclosure, how would customers or stockholders know which companies to frequent, which to avoid?

Reporters Without Borders called on Yahoo ! to supply a list of all cyberdissidents it has provided data on, beginning with 81 people in China whose release the worldwide press freedom organization is currently campaigning for.

It said it had discovered that Yahoo ! customer and cyberdissident Li Zhi had been given his eight-year prison sentence in December 2003 based on electronic records provided by Yahoo. “How many more cases are we going to find ?” it asked.

“We were sure the case of Shi Tao, who was jailed for 10 years last April on the basis of Yahoo-supplied data, was not the only one. Now we know Yahoo works regularly and efficiently with the Chinese police.

“The firm says it simply responds to requests from the authorities for data without ever knowing what it will be used for. But this argument no longer holds water. Yahoo certainly knew it was helping to arrest political dissidents and journalists, not just ordinary criminals. The company must answer for what it is doing at the US congressional hearing set for February 15.”

Originally posted by Howard from Smart Mobs, on February 12, 2006 2:59 PM

Boats on ground

The same but silver

Moblogger descending staircase

People love those Campbell's Soup cans

Originally from hello, typepad, on February 12, 2006 1:31 PM

A friend just sent me a link to Teemu’s Blog to check out his two recent posts:

• Coding for Nokia 770 using Python - Part 1
• Coding for Nokia 770 using Python - Part 2

The examples cover Python for Maemo on the Nokia 770, and make it look extremely easy!

Teemu’s Blog also has some good information on other applications that have been ported to the 770, like TuxPaint, a VNC Viewer, Rhythmbox, Asterisk, and, of course, Monkey Island!

For more Nokia 770 apps, check out the ApplicationCatalog on the Maemo wiki.

Originally posted by erik from [eriksmartt.com/blog], on February 12, 2006 12:15 PM

Aaron's got a great post that's kind of about teaching yourself new programming tricks and identifying old ones. His example is about callbacks (a programming pattern) which he's being more careful about using these days. We're using them often over in our corner. (This corner in question holds Mihai and myself for sure.)

In regards to making asynch requests for information I still find the following pretty elegant:

Obj.prototype.Foo = function() {
// get necessary stuff ...
if (iDontHaveTheStuff) {
  var self = this;
  getStuff(function() {self.Foo();});
  return;
}


// do something with the stuff...
}

But I like Aaron's point about the tradeoff of spread-of-logic for cleaner and easier to understand interfaces. The kid is teh smart and I'm gonna think harder about how these patterns can be improved.

Speaking of teh smart ... if you're a Javascript junkie and you're not reading Continuing Intermittent Incoherency (by Alex Russell of Dojo fame), well, why not start? I think you really should - it's great. I highly recommend it for the fun times and debauchery.

Debauchery's relative. You know, term-wise.

Originally from massless, on February 12, 2006 12:11 PM

I love Flickr to the point of unhealthy obsession. In addition to being a fixture of my life, it is one of the .02% of "Web 2.0" stuff that is genuinely innovative.

Caterina and Stewart and Heather et al are all bright and lovely people. I recognize that working to maintain and grow the community under the aegis of Yahoo! is a challenge. I have a heard a bit from Heather firsthand about what she faces (most of which seems to be snapshots of people's ...ahem personal lives I have no wish to witness).

I've done a lot of work developing content strategy and community standards. The more broad your community, the more necessary the latter become. No pool of users could be more broad than Yahoo!'s. So, developing Yahoo-friendly guidelines for a site that began in the wild wooly fringes of the Web (Canada) is, yeah, hard.

When I clicked on the "hey, new link in the footer" message, I winced. The new Community Guidelines, while totally sensible in substance, are an exercise in tone gone wrong.

Tone and voice development are an aspect of Content Strategy. Getting the voice right makes your audience feel like they are interacting with people they can trust and want to continue interacting with.

Flickr is legendary for perhaps the most playful and friendly voice on the InterWeb, and it totally works for them. (We all forgave the site its many massages in days past.)

However, a key part of voice is knowing where to bump it up and when to tone it down. Typically, even on the most lighthearted website, TOS and related guidelines are the place to take the friendly down a notch.

When you have to bring the hammer, you can't be the friend. That's the time to be level and straightforward. It's disingenuous and a little insulting to do otherwise. (Think of a cop cheerfully saying "I'm going to have to jot out a little ticky-wicky for your speeding back there.")

Flickr is, in the truest sense, a community-driven site. It isn't something else with some community tacked on. The participation of very enthusiastic people is integral to Flickr's enormous success.

Some of that activity is, shall we say, more suited to the back pages of an alt-weekly, than the front page of a family newspaper. But it is only polite to recognize that a wide range of contributions —from kitten photo to raunchy escort ad to kitten photo photoshopped into raunchy feline escort ad— made Flickr what it is today.

So, I would prefer that they were at least a little apologetic about the necessity of making those at the fringes clean up their act and sit a bit straighter at the table. (In addition to the jerks who need to be straight up booted, a lot of creativity happens at the margins of communities.)

I would have prefered they were not so:

Plainly speaking, if you don't want to abide by our TOS and these Guidelines, don't let the door hit you on your way out!

but a little more:

We recognize that making our community more pleasant for all will make it less fun for some. We hope you understand that we have to do this and you will continue to hang out and join in.

..

Don't be creepy. Don't be that guy. You know the guy.

That, however, is spot on.

Originally from Off the Hoof, on February 12, 2006 12:08 PM

reBlogged from The Wit of the Staircase:

The Love Letter Always Reaches Its Destination: Jacques Derrida's Valentine

'The Postcard is a "collection" of various love-letters, supposedly burned in a fire, which has left pieces of text missing. Derrida has also included a few essays which he believes continue the analysis begun in the loveletters [envois]. The content of the loveletters covers a broad range of philosophical and personal questions - from philosophy of language - to the relation b/w Socrates and Plato - to personal encounters in (I suppose) Derrida's life as a philosopher.

But the overall effect of this - this "re-contextualization" or in other words, this casting of philosophical questions in a format not usually considered "serious" -> love letters... the profundity, the importance, the dissemination of the questions take on a wholly different feel and effect. The feel and effect, of course, is hard to describe, but it is a way of playing with "philosophical sensibilities" -- what is "real" philosophy? What is "serious" philosophy? And what is the meaning of such questions in the most private of all communications - love letters between two intimate lovers.

I know, this is merely one small aspect of Derrida's enterprise. But it is, I believe, the main purpose of The Postcard: to see how the meaning of philosophical questions regarding language, history, and the sequence of events, take on new meanings in the context of lost love letters-- the same way a Postcard which never reaches its destination takes on new meanings for the unintended third reader.'

--Jon Penney

Link: Amazon.com: The Post Card : From Socrates to Freud and Beyond.

The Olivetti "Valentine" typewriter, above, one of several vintage typewriters in The Wit Of The Staircase office. It's a bright red pop art riot that inspires me to write even though I always use an iBook.

Friday, February 10, 2006 in Philosophy | Permalink

Originally posted by joy garnett from NEWSgrist - where spin is art, on February 12, 2006 12:01 PM

Originally from the real janelle, on February 12, 2006 12:01 PM

ESPN.com | Cyclist Hamilton's two-year doping ban upheld

It's pretty anticlimactic, but Tyler Hamilton received word today that his 2-year suspension from racing has been upheld. Hamilton was the first rider implicated by a new blood-doping test, and he has fought the suspension and the test since his blood test results turned up positive in September 2004.

His original suspension date was in April 2005, but the CAS ruled that Hamilton voluntarily accepted a suspension when he withdrew from the Vuelta upon being notified of the positive blood test, so he can return to racing in late September of this year.

Still on the table is an appeal by the Russian cycling federation, which wants to see Hamilton stripped of his 2004 Olympic gold, and Viatcheslav Ekimov, currently the silver medalist, elevated to gold.

Some sources:
• The CAS summary
• The full CAS report (pdf)
• Tyler Hamilton's response
• Summary of the case by Hamilton's camp (Word file)
• Assael: Latest ruling shifts momentum for athletes: a good commentary by an ESPN writer
• VeloNews.com | CAS rejects Hamilton appeal

Originally from Tour de France 2006, on February 12, 2006 12:00 PM

Chris Palmieri on local context and direction map design: "The Tokyo street system is a tangle of unnamed capillaries branching off a handful of well-known avenues. In places, even these avenues are difficult to identify due to lack of signage. Directional maps must therefore make greater use of landmarks."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on February 12, 2006 11:58 AM