randomwalks/dj

Originally posted by moth23 from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 11:28 PM

OH yeah

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 11:28 PM

several graphic design studies that focus on the information dashboard of the coolest car of the 80's, & its talking voice: KITT. dozens upon dozens of freeze-frame images of “Knight Rider” episodes were used to meticulously document the positions, colors & labels of buttons, read-outs & displays on the KITT console.
[juhaterho.fi|via dashboardspy.wordpress.com]

Originally posted by infosthetics from information aesthetics, on March 30, 2006 09:11 PM

"A designer makes a dancing baby and is completely taken aback that it spreads everywhere. Or a silly video circulates all over the web. Much of that is completely unintentional. But now people are thinking, How do we do this intentionally? It's still more an art than a science."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 30, 2006 09:11 PM

In what ends up being a great post on self promotion, graphic designer Neil Tortorella tells us how to write a great proposal.

For a lot of folks, writing a proposal is often wrought with angst. Where to start? What to include? Don't sweat it. You've come to the right place. I'm going to walk you through the process so you'll be whipping out potent proposals that close the big deals.

The potent power of proposals [Inside the Marketing Mind]

 
Comment on this post

Originally from Lifehacker, on March 30, 2006 09:11 PM

So, what industry are we working in again?

We got a message from our supplier who said he'd send the stuff. He sent the stuff. But it was the wrong stuff, totally bogus, we couldn't sell it. So then he re-assured us, "no problem kids, that's fine, I'll send another batch and if it doesn't arrive in time I'll let you have some from my private stash."

Hopefully he'll bring the right, good stuff to our show tonight. Otherwise, we won't have anything for our clients.

Originally from massless, on March 30, 2006 09:10 PM

ass="caption"> This post is part of Part of the MacBook Pro Noise Series. Instead of linking directly to this post, consider linking to the series link, which includes a summary of all findings to date and direct links to the pertinent downloads that users may find useful. Thanks for reading!

In my last post on the subject of the MacBook Pro noise dilemma, I dismissed with borderline contempt the notion that “opening and closing Mirror.widget” was a reasonable workaround for the CPU whine problem. I felt pretty certain after my experiments with tweaking CPU usage that any workaround would necessarily equate to equivalent CPU usage or battery draw behind the scenes.

I may yet turn out to have been right, but I’m now using the “Mirror Widget Hack” (MWH) instead of my own QuietMBP. Why? I just got the feeling that my machine was running hotter, mooing more, and generally behaving less amicably when QuietMBP was used to alleviate the symptoms instead of the magical Mirror.widget. The damned computer feels like a wise investment when I use the MWH! I love it again (mostly). So, to all the readers who felt dismissed by my jarring rejection of MWH: mea culpa. I’m sorry.

I don’t like magic, though. At least not when I can’t understand it. I’m ready to admit that MWH does something that brings my computer into a state of calm, but if MWH can do it, surely some other piece of software, that is more convenient to run than a dashboard widget, can do the same thing. I decided to start looking carefully into what exactly happens to the computer when you apply this hack.

First of all, Mirror.widget contains no code. Well, that’s no fun! How the hell does it fix my system, then? The widget is largely implemented in the form of a special QuickTime movie “mirror2.mov” that is somehow configured to automatically reflect the incoming iSight image in real-time. Great, so I can get the same system-calming affects by opening the movie in QuickTime Player, right? Right. But as soon as I quit QuickTime Player, the noise comes back. When you close the widget, the noise stays away forever (actually until you use some app other than Dashboard that opens and then closes access to the iSight). I thought I’d try to open the widget in Safari. No dice. Even after editing the widget so it would attempt to operate despite not being in the Dashboard - it silences the noise while the movie is visible, but the noise comes back after closing the web page. Get this: even turning off the movie in Mirror Widget, by clicking the little “i” in the lower left corner causes the noise to come back. Something about the (perhaps clumsy, but beautifully, wondrously clumsy) way that Dashboard closes up shop for the widget while the movie is active causes the system to get “stuck in good mode.”

I decided to whip out Shark, Apple’s profiling tool from the CHUD toolset. I figured there must be something different about “my computer doing nothing” before and after the magic MWH. To get a fairly straightforward sample, I quiet all visible applications except Shark and the Finder. Then, with the noise blaring, I took a 2 second timed sample of “Everything.” This means all processes on the system that are using any CPU time at all for anything. Then I silenced the MBP with the MWH, and grabbed an identical 2 second sample. I did this a few times to make sure there were no statistical anomalies coloring my view of what’s going on. The difference between the two samples? Almost absofrickinlutely nothing. In fact, nothing of interest I can pinpoint after multiple sessions of sampling at different rates, over different durations, and using different sampling configuration.

The Mirror Widget is magic. I use it and love it. Be warned that as soon as you use your iSight again in another app, and then quit, the noise will come back. But other than that, I now switch my allegiance to Mirror Widget. I just wish I knew why it does what it does. Maybe somebody with more Shark skills than I can get to the bottom of this.

Update: Supporting evidence that the silence is a side-effect of a poor “cleanup” from Dashboard: opening mirror2.mov in QuickTime Player and then force-quitting QuickTime player produces the same “permanent” fix to the system. Also, opening Photo Booth (or I presume any other iSight-using app) and force-quitting it while the silence is golden will achieve the same result. Getting closer to an answer!

More: Apple’s “WhackedTV” developer sample also eliminates the noise if you add a video track in the app (defaults to iSight) and then quit. Apparently however it cleans up or doesn’t clean up upon quit is also well-suited to leaving the Mac in quiet mode.

Update 2: I decided to hack the WhackedTV example to produce the simplest possible app that can shut the MBP up and immediately quit. This would make a suitable login item, and can be manually relaunched any time the noise comes back (e.g. after using the iSight for something real). Download MagicNoiseKiller (Intel only) today!

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on March 30, 2006 09:10 PM

Dan Brown on managing incoming information (a design pattern).

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on March 30, 2006 09:09 PM

---

Paddy Johnson interviews Cory Arcangel:

FANZINE: In fact it was a friend, Yael Kanarek, that organized your first talk in 2001 at Eyebeam. I remember this talk because you said some rather nasty things about Flash––the crux of your argument being that you should understand how a program is built if you are going to use it, and that Flash makes everything look the same. I saw your lecture at Columbia University in 2004 online, where you appear to have changed your opinion a little. Though you don't speak specifically about Flash, you do mention that you now believe that as long as you understand software imposes an aesthetic then it is fine to work with it. What was it that made you change your mind?

CORY ARCANGEL: Well in 2001, I was still a punk basically, and just thought it was my way or the highway. This was inherited from the BEIGE days, where we kinda rolled as a computer gang, and pretty much hated anything that wasn't exactly like what we were doing. But I guess as we grew older we started seeing all this work that we loved that wasn't necessarily 100% craft aware. In fact it was the opposite. I mean look at the Internet? How many amazing crappy Flash animations are there? And those are amazing!! Also, I began to see bad Photoshop art where the artist knew it was bad and was therefore OK. So I needed to find a way to accommodate this perspective.....otherwise I would be ruling out a lot of great self aware media art that is made these days. I had to have a way to deal with that in my own set of rules...

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on March 30, 2006 09:09 PM

Eery caricature of Harry Caray on top of his restaraunt in Chicago. Also in Google Earth news this week, an iPod-like pattern is allegedly the result of a poker bet gone horribly wrong. --dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 30, 2006 05:33 PM

zHAUS photography has one of the best slideshow interfaces I've ever seen. Flash, no permalinks, but still beautiful and intuitive. --dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 30, 2006 05:33 PM

A caricature of Harry Caray, the legendary announcer for the Chicago Cubs, looks up at us from the roof of his Chicago restaurant.

Caray was famous for his frequent use of “Holy Cow!” and for leading the crowd in singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”. There is a good biography on Wikipedia and you can read more about the restaurant building, and its secret chambers on the Harry Caray’s Homepage.

Thanks: C. A. Daw

Originally posted by James from Google Sightseeing, on March 30, 2006 04:55 PM

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, an influential new wave composition by Brian Eno and David Byrne, is being released under a Creative Commons license. A social network for trading derivative works is also launching soon. --dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 30, 2006 04:54 PM

Have a weekend to kill and a burning desire to become an expert in Godzilla, Italian horror or screwball comedies? GreenCine movie genre primers. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 30, 2006 04:54 PM

From Peterme’s closing plenary at the IASummit:

“…I think that web 2.0 puts the “architecture” in information architecture. Think of an architect. They design the space. People flow through it, meet in it, contribute to it.! With that model, the bulk of information architecture currently on the web isn’t really architecture — it’s some form of hyperdimensional document organizing. We’re not creating a space that people move through, and engage with. We’re classifying material to be retrieved. But with web 2.0, we are providing an architecture — a space, a platform through which and upon which people move, contribute, and change…

…If information is a substrate running through an increasing amount of our “real-world” lives, and we believe that these web 2.0 principles are important for the future of information architecture, how do we merge the two?”

And

“as digital networked media pervades more and more of our lives, the idea of a discreet region called “cyberspace” starts to feel like an anachronism. Who here has a mobile phone on them? One that can send photos by email, for example? Well, you’re all carrying “cyberspace” in your pocket. And once that happens, distinguishing that from the “real world” becomes impossible.”

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on March 30, 2006 04:54 PM

R. Lindley DeVecchio, who turned himself in Wednesday evening, faces a sentence of 25 years to life.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on March 30, 2006 03:33 PM

Originally posted by moyrad from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 03:25 PM

Heathcote's Uploader Almanac

Originally posted by blackbeltjones from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 03:25 PM

Finally, all those elitists who kept saying you had to be comfortable with PHP to develop a theme are telling the truth:

This document assumes basic PHP editing skills, though you probably won’t have to write and code of your own.

You probably won’t? Ah well, at least now the coders can claim they were right all along; that templates are software and shouldn’t be touched unless random question marks and semicolons hold no fear for you.

Oh, I have basic PHP editing skills, don’t worry about that, so the instructions are borderline comprehensible. I’m just sick of the goalposts getting moved all the time. For 1.2, it was all about total control through CSS and don’t touch the default template. For 1.5, designers suddenly had to deal with a dozen files rather than just one. (There was a lot of other stuff in 1.5 too, such as plugin hooks and internationalisation, but most people ignored that.) Now, for 2.0.3367whatever/2.5, we’re getting pressured into re-doing the work we did for 1.5 to incorporate their trendy AJAX crap.

If you are hosting Wordpress on a paid server and suddenly decide that you would rather have your archives displayed above your categories and recent comments at the top, you do not need widgets to accomplish this. You just need to master cut and paste. And given the huge number of themes out there and the tiny percentage which are adopted for wordpress.com, I kind of think it’s up to the admins to widgetize them rather than expecting hundreds of designers to tweak them on the off-chance that they’ll make the Chosen Few.

I mean, yeah, I have some sympathy for the view that there are too many themes out there and we don’t need any more, but for pity’s sake just say that 1.5 themes will not be fully compatible with 2.5. Not that they are ‘broken’ and ‘need to be fixed’. Theme developers are unpaid volunteers. Some of them may even have lives. They are under no obligation whatsoever to mess with a theme that worked fine a couple of months ago just to serve your addiction to trendy AJAX crap.

So let’s be honest for once about the backwards-compatibility thing: say we’re junking 1.5 and we need shiny new themes by PHP mavens. Or maybe just admit that actually you don’t need anything from people who are not Michael Heilemann, then the rest of us can stop wasting our time and switch to developing for Textpattern.

(Oh, and don’t even get me started on the bizarreness of marking up section headers as <h2> and claiming this to be the ‘most semantically correct’ way of doing things. Sidebar labels are more important than post titles? Only if you believe people’s sidebars are more important than their content. I don’t, but evidently I am alone in this.)

Originally posted by wank from wordpress wank, on March 30, 2006 03:25 PM

President Jacques Chirac is expected to make the law effective by signing it as early as Friday and will address the nation.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on March 30, 2006 03:25 PM

The combo rollie/backpack laptop case I bought two years back is starting to wear out, and I’ve decided that the rollie feature is not cost-effective; there are lots of times I can’t use it, and the mechanism adds weight and bulk while robbing me of space. So I’ve been poking around looking for good laptop packs (has to be a pack so I can put a change of clothes in for my frequent overnighters). David Weinberger told me that Crumpler was a hot name, and in looking at them I ran across some other interesting candidates via reviews that said “and the competition is...” The candidates are the Crumpler King Single (that website is totally trying too hard), the Tom Bihn Brain Bag, and the RoadWired Digital Daypack. Anyone out there got one of these, or want to weigh on on the subject of the ideal laptop pack? [Update: GAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I’m buried, even more people care about laptop bags than about carbonara sauce, even. I must must MUST do that comments system.] [Dear Tom Bihn: you owe the LazyWeb a couple hundred bucks worth of thanks. I just ordered a Brain Bag with all the fixings. Dear Crumpler: please fix that egregious website. What part of “don’t offend every computer professional on the planet” don’t you understand? Dear world: please stop sending me laptop-bag email.]...

Originally from ongoing, on March 30, 2006 03:25 PM

Kate turns 30 today, March 30th. Send her your best wishes!!!

Originally from iPalimpsest, on March 30, 2006 01:00 PM

For over half a decade, the front page of Jamie Zawinski's site has been hexidecimal gibberish, with the source-code comment: "mail me if you find the secret. no, you can't have a hint." I spent some time trying a few years ago, but only discovered that the contents of the page change on a regular basis, each version has 404 lines and the only consistent characters are the anchors for the links and an asterisk in the seventh position on line 330. Anybody crack it? -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on March 30, 2006 01:00 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

Originally from Sylloge, on March 30, 2006 01:00 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

Originally from Sylloge, on March 30, 2006 01:00 PM

Stewart posted a photo:

Originally from Sylloge, on March 30, 2006 01:00 PM

The only thing *almost* as cute as real live puppies are cartoons about them. Check out Modern Pooch now!

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on March 30, 2006 11:58 AM

• 30 daytags
• 30 boxes
• 37 signals
• 43 folders
• 43 things
• 83 degrees

Update, March 30th 2006:

• 45 Fix
• 9 Cays ("cays"?)

What did I miss?

• 23 hq (thanks Andrew)
• 31 three (thanks Tomas)

Honorable Mention

• 9 Rules
• 6 Apart (thanks Adam)

Originally from tecznotes , on March 30, 2006 11:58 AM

RDB, or rhythm dohl bass, are one of the most successful asian bands in the uk, selling over 100,000 albums and touring extensively worldwide. yet, mainstream western media (or even alternative indie media) still can’t find a place for bhangra or desi, despite its obvious appeal. kuly, manj and surj singh - brothers from bradford - released their first self-titled album in 2001, and instantly aligned themselves to a generation of artists fusing bhangra with a love of american hip-hop and r’n’b. thus, a new younger fan base for traditional asian music was born, albeit in a tasty new guise.

The obvious crossover between contemporary asian and ‘urban’ music was fleshed out last year on an excellent compilation entitled ‘bhood’. described with tongue firmly in cheek by ‘the fader’ as “dirty south asia”, the album paired american, caribbean and asian artists in a series of collaborations - and whilst the project seemed like an obvious marriage, there was still room for plenty of surprises. rdb’s collab with elephant man, ‘ishq naag (love bites)’ is one of the highlights - taking cues simultaneously from both bhangra and dancehall.

[ via ]

mp3: RDB feat ELEPHANT MAN ishq naag (love bites)
mp3: RDB feat ELEPHANT MAN ishq naag (love bites) (reggaeton remix)
mp3: 4-IZE & RDB under attack
mp3: RDB & DEEMI deemi!

Originally from turbanhead, on March 30, 2006 11:58 AM

A new study suggests that South Korea has been toppled by Japan as the world's most connected country.

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on March 30, 2006 11:28 AM

I just watched the BBC demo from mix06. Stunning. But while watching it, it occurred to me that the BBC’s unique position of being publicly funded is a huge advantage for adopting new media technology, and that advertising-funded media in the States seems to be battling against these same advancements.

Since UK citizens fund the BBC (at least, that’s my simplified interpretation), it is in the BBC’s interest to make their content easily available to all (paying) citizens. In other words, DVR’s, IPTV, and video iPod’s can be embraced rather then feared. Additionally, since their funding is somewhat fixed and consistent (ie., no spiky ad revenue), it is also in the BBC’s interest to reduce content distribution costs where possible to free up money for new content creation (ie., P2P file sharing amongst their customers is a good thing since it cuts the BBC’s direct bandwidth costs.)

Where it gets particularly interesting though, is that the BBC should be in no way threatened by the idea that their viewers will be copying, re-mixing, fast-forwarding, place-shifting, and sharing the content. With no need to track ad impressions, there’s no dreaded “30-second-skip” attacking legacy business models. Surly they still need to track customer interest to know which shows to fund, but that seems a lot easier then developing content based on how lucrative a viewing audience is for advertisers.

What’s great about this situation is how well it demonstrates the connection between business models and the ability to embrace change and adopt to consumer needs. In the States, we are at risk of legislation making it illegal to watch movies on one’s computer and even more illegal to share a video with a friend. In the UK, IPTV and P2P networks might just save the country money.

Originally posted by erik from [eriksmartt.com/blog], on March 30, 2006 11:28 AM

I was so happy to finally enjoy a Spike Lee joint again.

Inside Man was very good.

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek says, "This is a mainstream entertainment designed for that forgotten movie audience, grown-ups who have brains."

I appreciated the New York he captured, the terrific actors and tight screenplay, and the directing style of Spike Lee applied to a suspenseful heist movie.

The only disturbing part of yesterday evening's movie going experience was seeing a preview for a movie about 9/11 and Flight 93. It felt so wrong to make us New Yorkers relive it. I'm not sure when we will be ready but it seems a long ways off.

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on March 30, 2006 11:28 AM

Six Apart, the startup behind the Movable Type and TypePad blog blogging software and service, is dishing up widgets. It's pulled together a directory of 33 free widgets, already ready to go from companies including music service Pandora and Weatherbug. And it's making public the APIs that it developed over the pas six weeks so that anyone can build a widget for TypePad blogs.

It make a ton of sense for Six Apart to do this. Widgets help bloggers liven up their blogs. And they help companies creating the widgets market themselves and reach broader audiences through a type of syndication.

These widgets are exactly like the ones that Apple pionnered--little bits of interactive code that can be easily dropped into any blog and can offer features like job searching or games.

With the Pandora widget, for instance, you can share use the widge to share the Pandora stations you're listening to or your favorite songs.

Originally from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on March 30, 2006 11:27 AM

''FedEx T-shirt makes you look like you are carrying a package: My friend Christian forwarded this to me as a Fashion Titicaca, but I would like to classify this as a Fashion Titillation - not b.c it's Fed Ex, but in that the designer thought about an innovative way to transform reality, portability and design. It's also a commentary on the ubiquity of the FedEx brand. "Buy the shirt, then go

Originally from Hi Tricia!, on March 30, 2006 11:27 AM

I'm off on my honeymoon for a couple weeks, so posting will be limited to a small number of items I've scheduled in advance. Nothing major, though honestly this site hasn't seen major amounts of posting in some time! Hopefully that will change after the honeymoon. In the meantime, enjoy yourselves and I'll see in a few with some travel tales and pictures. Hopefully.

Originally from megnut, on March 30, 2006 11:27 AM

Healthy bacon, anyone? Highly theoretical yet promising cloned pigs that make their own omega-3 fatty acids....

Originally from A Full Belly, on March 30, 2006 09:06 AM

interesting news buried in 10th paragraph; anyone have more info?  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on March 30, 2006 08:45 AM

badly needs an API, but brilliantly lo-fi  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on March 30, 2006 08:45 AM

me in the MSM

Originally posted by lauren_cornell from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 08:44 AM

pancakos!

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 08:44 AM

Tonight we launched TypePad Widgets, or as they are known on the street, TypePad Bling. From the very early days of TypePad, we imagined this sort of widget functionality -- the roots are evident in the way modules are handled in TypePad's design managment -- built into the service. It's exciting to see that the integration is finally here and that we've already got over thirty partners providing and enabling their unique services to our users. There's a lot more to come and we want to hear from others with widgets to integrate. (See the FAQ if you're interested in creating a TypePad Widget.)

As much as the term Web 2.0 is loosely thrown around, I believe strongly that the most significant characteristic of this era of development is the openess that is enabled by APIs. It's about sharing information and data and having services work well together.

Thanks go out to the TypePad team for making this happen as well as all our partners who made their widgets available for release. Our thanks, as always, to our customers for their continued suggestions and inspiration.

Originally from Mena’s Corner, on March 30, 2006 08:44 AM

Widgets aren't just for the big guys. San Francisco blogging company Six Apart announces tomorrow that its TypePad hosted blogging plaform will let users add a wide array of widgets to their blogs. The company is starting with 33 widgets, which do everything from add polls, custom search boxes and FatLens event info to their blogs. Developers can also build their own widgets. We're not sure yet what the development platform is....

Originally posted by Michael Bazeley from SiliconBeat, on March 30, 2006 08:43 AM

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on March 30, 2006 08:41 AM

Sex in the Syllabus. Academia's new "porn curriculum" casts a critical eye on the aesthetic, societal and philosophical properties of smut — and makes some students squirm in their chairs.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on March 30, 2006 08:40 AM

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on March 30, 2006 08:39 AM

This book paid for itself on the fourth page:

Bill points out that people like simple explanations, and love simple explanations that are partially true.

Originally from Off the Hoof, on March 30, 2006 01:16 AM

movie matrix stuff

The Movie Toolbox makes extensive use of transformation matrices to define graphical operations that are performed on movies when they are displayed. A transformation matrix defines how to map points from one coordinate space into another coordinate space. By modifying the contents of a transformation matrix, you can perform several standard graphical display operations, including translation, rotation, and scaling. The Movie Toolbox provides a set of functions that make it easy for you to manipulate translation matrices. Those functions are discussed in QuickTime Movie Internals Guide. The remainder of this section provides an introduction to matrix operations in a graphical environment.

Originally from unmediated, on March 30, 2006 01:15 AM

Ruby library for parsing all sorts of syndication feeds, with preference given to ActiveRecord for caching

Originally from unmediated, on March 30, 2006 01:15 AM

Why is the BBC getting involved in blogging? It's a question that was raised in a session I was running the other day. Followed by the comment: 'Blogging is for amateurs, and provides an easy way for them to put their opinions, however flaky, online.'

It's interesting that the comment came on the day that the Baghdad Burning blog was nominated for an award a measure of how some blogs can be credible and offer a new perspective, not often portrayed by 'big media'.
But it's not just individuals getting into blogging. Big business is there too ­ with GM, IBM, Microsoft etc. using the Internet to connect with consumers. Connecting in a way that allows consumers to enter into a dialogue.

The BBC too has just started to expand it's blogging operations. The first was political editor Nick Robinson, Paul Mason of Newsnight and the World Have Your Say programme from the World Service have recently joined him.

When the BBC already operates chat forums, message boards and community sites, and lets people add comments to some news stories ­ - so what's the point of adding blogs to the mix?

It's early days and hard to tell how blogs at the beeb may develop, but some of the ideas delegates suggested were inspiring. Blogs needn't be just personality based, but could also be built around events, or the genre of programme. They'd be more interactive ordinary web pages, provide more insight to the production process and journalistic process and more depth to programming.

It's similar to the way that big business is using blogs to get closer to consumers, big media can use blogs to engage with the audience in a more one-to-one way.

Matt

Originally from unmediated, on March 30, 2006 01:15 AM

I've gotten some feedback on my content objects post, and I'm realizing that I should expand and clarify a bunch of things.

In a world of content objects, there are no copies. There are no mp3 downloads. Special Edition DVDs are obsolete. We think we want to own this content because we've only known audio and video content in a world of masters and dupes.

The content sits online in one place and one place only. There are no intermediaries. You interface with that content by calling it up from the source server which transcodes a stream best suited for your access device.

In the master+dupe world, there are 1 million instances (read:paper copies) of The New York Times in circulation each day. In the content object world (read:online), there is only one NYTimes.com that gets 22 million unique visitors to one instance. Just think of what the world would be like if we could only view web pages through downloading pdfs. Now ask yourself why is it okay that we do this with our music?

The difference between video captured to media during the production process and your final content object is the meaning conveyed through the final edit. A content object is curated. A content object can also be inserted as a whole or in part into a playlist, making it part of a greater content object.

Content objects are neither blogjects nor spimes though they share many of their underlying ideas of and rely on a confluence of emerging network and processor technologies in order to work. Content objects are probably the close cousin of blogjects and Project Xanadu. But I need a little more time to figure out the lineage.

I used to complain that our content shouldn't be married to our objects. Now I realize that our content shouldn't be bound to their particular instances.

(Original post here. -kc.)

Originally from unmediated, on March 30, 2006 01:15 AM

kid grew up to be a game developer.  Or maybe a marketer.  Industry friends have been sending this video around all day because we've all been there (or close).  When you're my age, things might not be expressed with so much enthusiasm but the passion is definitely still there. 

Originally posted by souris from hello, nintendo, on March 30, 2006 12:32 AM

In a set from Rogério Mariano.. (Lots more eclipse photos here)

Originally from FlickrBlog, on March 30, 2006 12:28 AM