randomwalks/dj

As expected, a pick-up in high quality online content is being desired with the release of the Apple-TV.

It used to be that we got calls all the time about new distribution platforms for our files and now they have for the most part turned to HD calls. Aggregators serving HD content are popping up left and right. RB is currently distributed on at least four companies that I know of.

Our primary distribution point, Move Digital, has seen a 10-fold increase over the last couple of weeks. We were serving around 400-500 files per day there and its just jumped up to 3000-4000 per day.

Related: David Pogue lifts up TiVo in context of it's i-boxing.

What's next with all this new hardware? Why set-top box software apps, of course.

Originally posted by Drew from Dembot, on April 7, 2007 6:27 PM

It’s hard to resist just turning this blog into a place where I embed all the Next New Networks show episodes (hmm, maybe we should do that somewhere on a separate blog and feed, for the people who would want it).

That said, it’s really hard not to do it on Fridays, as each Thread Heads and Pulp Secret Report gets better and better, and both deserve a much wider audience. I’m buckling to the impulse today, and embedding them both here.

In Friday’s Thread Heads, we visit Etsy Labs and Bre from Make Magazine.

In Friday’s Pulp Secret Report, we have the usual comics insanity.

Hope you like ‘em. Anything you’d like to see, please email the shows or leave a comment on the site. We’ll be happy to listen.

Originally posted by tim from shey.net reboot, on April 7, 2007 1:05 PM

Promoting a civil public school environment is important, but we had no idea that the price you paid for writing on a desk could be so severe. A 13-year-old girl was handcuffed and arrested by the police for writing "okay" on a desk at her Dyker Heights school. WCBS 2 spoke to the Chelsea Fraser and her outraged mother Diana Silva, who said, "I'm appalled, because here we have rapists, murderers, and you're taking a 13-year-old kid? Wasting valuable manpower to arrest a child who wrote on a desk?" Yeah, what happened to detention? Fraser was charged with criminal mischief and the making of graffiti:

Fraser says the day she marked her desk, she was wrongly grouped together with troublemakers who had plastered stickers all over the classroom...She says she was made to empty her pockets and take off her belt. Then she was handcuffed and led out of the school in front of her classmates and placed in the back of a police car. "It was really embarrassing because some of the kids, they talk, and they're going to label me as a bad kid. But I'm really not," Fraser said. "I didn't know writing 'Okay' would get me arrested." "All the kids were ... watching these three boys and my daughter being marched out with four -- they had four police officers -- walking them out, handcuffed," Silva said. "She goes to me, 'Mommy, these hurt!'" The students were taken to the 68th Precinct station house where Silva says they were separated for three hours. "MY child is 13-years-old -- doesn't it stand that I'm supposed to be present for any questioning?" Silva said. "I'm watching my daughter, she's handcuffed to the pole. I ask the officer has she been there the entire time? She says, 'Yes.'"

Silva suggests that her daughter's punishment could have been cleaning the desk on a Saturday, in-house suspension, and a formal apology instead of going to the pokey. What do you think? And a 14-year-old and 15-year-old were arrested for graffiti incidents in Staten Island's North Shore; they've tagged a church, stores, mailboxes, telephone posts, and more.

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 7, 2007 1:43 AM

She is so weird and I heart her. Her performance piece at The Kitchen was amazing and I have no doubt that her book of short stories will be amazing as well. (Can you tell I'm a groupie?)

You must check out the website for the book. It is an interactive experience (or an exercise in patience). You decide.

I will buy the pink version of this book when it is available in May. The yellow one was the only one they had an image for. Just in case you were curious.

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on April 7, 2007 1:05 AM

“That’s terrible, that’s a racial … something?” Kumar said. “This is entirely wrong, but it’s not my fault. It’s my job to sell good product to people.”

When the new chocolate-coloured sofa set was delivered to her Brampton home, Doris Moore was stunned to see packing labels describing the shade as “Nigger-brown.”

Moore, 30, who describes herself as an African-American born and raised in New York, said it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out the label just after delivery men from the Mississauga furniture store left.

“She’s very curious and she started reading the labels,” Moore explained. “She said, `Mommy, what is nig … ger brown?’ I went over and just couldn’t believe my eyes.”

Moore said she called the furniture store the following day and three other times since, and feels discouraged that no one has returned her calls.

When interviewed yesterday by the Star, Romesh Kumar, Vanaik’s assistant manager, passed the buck to his supplier, Cosmos Furniture in Scarborough.

“Why should I take the blame?” he said. “I’m a trader, I don’t manufacture. I sell from 20 companies, maybe 50 companies. How can I take care of all of them?”

He said that he would check similar stock and make sure other labels were removed.
[ via ]

Originally posted by Administrator from Turbanhead.com, on April 6, 2007 11:38 PM

Rumor is that Sullivan Street Bakery's Jim Lahey, the dude behind the no-knead bread that swept the internets late last year, will be opening a pizzeria soon. Will be on 24th Street and Ninth Avenue.

Ed Levine has had prototypes of the pizza to be served there. He says it won't be just a mere rehash of the Sullivan Street pizzas but will be "real" pizza. Ed also assures me that it will be among the city's top 5 pizzas.

Myself, I'm reserving judgment until the place opens and I can try it.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Slice, on April 6, 2007 7:16 PM

Something about Google's My Maps thing that they don't mention in the user guide: the fact that these maps are available in KML means not only that they can be viewed in Google Earth, but also that they can also...

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on April 6, 2007 7:09 PM

April 6, 2007 - 3:05 p.m. - Venice, CA...

Originally posted by souris from hustler of culture, on April 6, 2007 6:05 PM

Examiner column for April 9.

    Teachers are ruled by the clock. When the bell rings we start; it rings again and we stop. Our day is over at precisely the same time every day, and at the end of the year our job is over. Then we go back to the beginning.

    Tick tock, it’s all about time. My column last week argued that teachers have the ability to revise what we do. But that is only partly true. I can teach “Hamlet” differently next year than I did this year, but I can’t teach it differently to the same set of students.

    When we return each year, we are in a new context. On any given day, we’ve been there before, but not exactly. The poems and plays may be the same, but the faces are different.

     Any scientist knows that if you change the conditions of an experiment, you change the outcome. Even if there are many constants---age, school, teaching material---the variables (new students) will affect the learning dynamic.

    Driven by the clock, teachers would like to be able to control the outcome of each year’s class. The formula might be: “If we read x and write y, that will equal z (a pass on the test.)”

    But students are delightfully unpredictable. Some students may love James Joyce and Kafka, while others loathe both. If the class is full of good spirits and fun, as opposed to resistance and contrariness, then there’s a better chance the formula for learning will work. But students don’t fit formulas.

    All year long I cajole them into reading difficult literature. “Can’t we just see the movie?” they whine. Or, “Don’t you realize this isn’t our only class?” Then they flee to Sparks Notes or, worse, get a verbal summary from someone who’s done the reading.

    Yet when given the chance to read a novel that has been made into a film, they usually read the book without the help of Sparks Notes. And when I ask, “Which did you like better, the book or the film?” they invariably answer “the book. It has so much more detail!” I bite my tongue to keep from saying, “I told you so.”

    The best and longest-lived lessons are the ones students learn for themselves. Those differ every year. As much as educators would like to control the learning environment, as much as we standardize curriculum, testing, and expectations, we can’t slot our human subjects into an experiment as though they will reliably react one way.

    It’s different every time we conduct the yearlong experiment we call school. Teachers may be slaves to the clock, but the beauty of teaching is that what’s really important can’t be taught.

    Students will learn, but they won’t always learn what’s taught. That knowledge keeps teachers humble, and keeps us devoted to our profession. We provide what we can, then stand back to watch students’ minds at work.

    Tick tock. Students may follow the clock, yet are not ruled by it. And good teachers learn to teach to the students’ clock and not the one on the wall. Which face would you rather teach to?

Originally posted by Erica Jacobs from TeacherTalk, on April 6, 2007 5:22 PM

A little while ago, my friend Michael Sippey, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing the other day, sent me a link to the new Google Voice Local Search.

Now, this new services seems like a good product, and I know I'm supposed to say "Wow, cool! Nice work, Google!" But because I work with Michael, we are often each other's toughest critics -- we want the stuff we do to not suck, and try to structure as much of our work as possible in a way that prevents the sucking. So my initial response wasn't positive. My gut feeling was "Why the hell aren't they charging for this? That sucks!"

Here's the thing -- I don't care about whether Google makes money on 411 services or not. They're going to do billions of dollars worth of AdWords sales regardless, and even if this new service becomes a huge hit, the revenues would just be a drop in the bucket. Certainly not enough to affect the overall direction of the company.

But having paying customers (or the equivalent -- something to indicate users were invested) would help focus the product team. This is Google, which means you've got enormous resources behind you if you're launching a product, both financially and intellectually. If your product "may not be available at all times and may not work for all users" (as it says on the product's homepage), then either fix it or get yelled at by angry users. Either one is a good option. Don't hide behind a "well, shucks, we said it was beta, and it's free..." excuse. Being accountable to your users makes your product better.

What's worse is the uncritical evaluations of new technologies. I don't care if an individual product or feature seems cool if it's just going to go away in a few months when the company folds. See The starting line is not the finish line:

I am, frankly, tired of reading reviews of new technology that omit the commitment of the team, that don't mention how the success of the product almost feels like life-or-death to the people making it, or ones that ignore the people who make the damn thing happen.

If we aspire to making meaningful technology (and if you don't, then please, just quit now), then it's irresponsible to let users become connected to, and perhaps even emotionally invested in, a tool that isn't going to be around for the long haul. If nothing else, it's a waste of someone's precious time to use a small company's tool that's evaporates because a big company found it trivial to clone, or because a big company decided it was too hard to charge what a product was worth. I don't believe AdWords will subsidize Voice Local Search indefinitely any more than I believed Windows 95 would subsidize MSN Sidewalk indefinitely, even though that was a fantastic online local guide product as well.

And connecting people via VOIP or sending them an SMS, two of the key features of the new service, cost money. At Google volumes, they cost a lot of money. I want to have a service I can rely on -- which again means I need to invest in it. I understand that the idea here is for this product team to use a beta test as a starting point to make the service more reliable, but the sad reality is that a line has been crossed where there's no sense of urgency or expectation that those actual launch days ever arrive.

Google's made the leap here before, by starting to charge for Google Apps. Even people who use the service for free were reassured by the fact there was a paid version. So there is still the opportunity to be brave enough again to assert that a product is worth paying for, even paying a premium for. Millions of iPod users are willing to listen to the argument.

This, I think, is the crux of the problem that David Galbraith highlighted on his site. David's is one of my few must-read blogs; I don't always share his tone of righteous indignation, but I love that a person who's often so reserved in person can be so passionate online. David mentions that new efforts by Google or Yahoo (see Google My Maps vs. Plazes, or Yahoo Alpha vs. Rollyo) can kneecap some Web 2.0 startups en passant, and posits that this is the death knell for Web 2.0. Leaving aside whether that's oversimplifying the efforts of those startups, it's an attractive argument just for the sheer audacity of his phrasing.

But that sort of reckoning is not the death of Web 2.0, that's it's promise. It's very possible to build a successful business and thrive while competing with Google and Yahoo, even in an established market. (Oh hey, that's my day job.) What's not possible is to make a business without adding significant value to the platforms provided by existing companies. This is, roughly, exactly what distinguishes current successful business models from Web 1.0.

Or, put more succinctly, I like paying for Flickr Pro. Like us at Six Apart, the Flickr team was lucky enough to start working on their company, and on Game Neverending, back before there really was AdSense to run on your site, and when virtually the only small startup charging money for a consumer web service was Oddpost. I'd argue those sorts of innovations are as important as all the Ajax work that either of those companies ever did, even though I admire and respect both teams tremendously.

This refrain never goes away, but it bears repeating. Those of us who love technology and believe in its potential owe it to our communities, our audiences, and our customers to make our efforts sustainable and accountable. I'm not an unabashed, uncritical capitalist, but I do recognize that one of the most positive effects that a classic charge-a-fair-market-value-for-your-goods business model offers is the opportunity to create an accountable and sustainable relationship with a customer.

I pay for a lot of products because it gives me the potential opportunity (though I almost never use it) to yell at someone when it breaks. I pay for a lot of other services because I want to make sure they don't go away, or they're not forced to make ugly choices about privacy or ethics in order to keep the lights on. And I am glad to use services or sites that are ad-supported when it's made explicit that the advertising is supporting a useful good or service.

If you believe in what you're doing, in technology or anything else in your life, make a commitment that it's here to stay. Do what it takes to prove it. Do what it takes to sustain it. And if it's the kind of service that you think is okay to just give up on, or that you don't want to bother to figure out a way to keep running, then why are you doing it in the first place?

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on April 6, 2007 5:03 PM

In a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene two-fer, the DOH announced that 5 million NYC Condoms were given given away between February 14 and March 14, while the Times reveals that the DOH is also working on a campaign to promote circumcision. The condoms, which the city handed out to the public on Valentine's Day and distributed to community organizations and stores, are a "sensation" according to Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden. Frieden said, "I commend them for doing their part to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies, and I urge anyone who wants an NYC Condom to visit www.nyccondom.org or call 311." Local businesses also say the condoms are great (being free and having a cute design work!). And after the World Health Organization's recommendation that "Male circumcision should be part of a comprehensive HIV prevention package," the DOH is working on its own policy. The Times says that the DOH is asking the Health and Hospital Corporation, "which runs city hospitals...to perform the procedure at no charge for men without health insurance," while asking community and gay rights groups to discuss circumcision. There's some question whether data from African populations that the WHO used for its recommendation can be used to make assumptions about NYC's population.

Peter Staley, a longtime AIDS activist and co-founder of ACT-UP New York, the Treatment Action Group and AIDSmeds.com, said he was “intrigued” by the idea of offering circumcisions but worried because those in the studies supporting it bore little relation to New York’s risk groups. “Should we proceed when we don’t have hard data yet on the population here?” he asked. “On the other hand, if we wait the three years it would take to answer that question, how many will be infected in the meantime?” Also, after reading many postings on gay Web sites about the Africa trials, he said he feared a backlash among black and Hispanic men to endorsements of circumcision from white public health officials or gay activists. “I’m white, Frieden’s white,” he said. “It’s going to sound like white guys telling black and Hispanic guys to do something that would affect their manhood.”

Frieden emphasized that NYC is the epicenter for the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. Here's the DOH's website on AIDS/HIV in NYC; the city has free and confidential STD clinics in all five boroughs. The graphic is from the Department of Health - really

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 6, 2007 4:41 PM

A few weeks ago, many of us on the Movable Type team got to meet with many of our most prominent members of the ProNet community, as well as a number of Movable Type users. The occasion was a two-day event, starting first with a Hackathon for MT plugin developers and geeks, followed by a more structured full-day Executive Summit, where the community discussed everything from best practices for a business blog to large-scale architecture issues to editorial concerns and even the future of the Movable Type platform.

For those of us at Six Apart, the events in New York City were exciting and energizing: Looking at some of the community writeups of the hackathon gives a great feel for the day; There were tons of plugins and little hacks created, but more importantly, there was the chance for many members of the community to meet each other face-to-face. (For some of us, we were putting faces to names we’d seen online for six or seven years!)

Plus, Dan brought cookies!

The Executive Summit the next day featured a full day’s worth of presentations, starting with Jay Allen outlining “how to build a plugin” first thing in the morning and lasting until Michael Sippey’s look at the enormous amount of energy and effort being put into the next major update to the Movable Type platform. In between, we heard lessons from experts like Adam Tinworth of RBI, David Jacobs of Apperceptive, and Matt Jaeger of Advance Internet. Though the videos are a bit rough, Maarten Schenk on our team, whom you might also know from Blogologie, has posted some low-res recordings of many of the day’s presentations.

We’re extremely grateful to all of you who took the time to travel to the events, from all around the country and even from around the world. There’s simply nothing as inspiring as seeing what amazing and unexpected things our community can create with the tools that we help build, and it’s a great motivator for the significant milestones we’re achieving with Movable Type in the next few weeks and months.

(Thanks to Elise Bauer and Dan Wolfgang for the photos.)

Originally posted by Anil Dash from ProNet, on April 6, 2007 2:25 PM

If there’s one thing all baseball fans associate with the Boston Red Sox, it’s fine wine. And regardless of whether or not the previous statement is remotely true, next month will see the release of three unique wines that reflect the personalities of Red Sox stars. As a result, bourgeois yahoos from Great Barrington to the Vineyard will spend this summer guzzling Manny Being Merlot, Schilling Schardonnay and Tim Wakefield’s CaberKnuckle, desperately attempting to work up the courage to come out to their wives.

Being the investigative epicures we are, we had to ask: What further vintning had the Red Sox undertaken? Hayden Bronzino, the team’s Managing Oenologist, let us know what we can look for coming down the pike this summer:

Big Papinot Noir – This warm and full-bodied vintage all but embraces your entire mouth as it makes its inevitable circuit around your palate.

Two-Buck ‘Tek: A simple wine that traps flavor like Jason traps pitches in the dirt. Crude yet effective in certain situations.

Youkilisyrah – No one has ever properly pronounced the name of this deceptively complex red. Look for the strong finish, with hints of pear blossom and roasted lamb.

Dustin Madeira – A sweet young dessert wine, with a richness that belies its inexperience. Undertones of roasted cherry and molasses make this an ideal after-dinner wine to enjoy with an aged roquefort, or else a refreshing breakfast wine when poured over pancakes or Belgian waffles.

Mike Lowell’s Hard Cuban Lemonade – Frightening. Seriously, do not drink this. Trust us.

Matsusake – This imported rice wine has barely been sampled in the United States, but if the hefty price tag is any indication, it is mind-blowingly awesome.

Chenin PapelBlanc – Young white grapes are relentlessly pulverized to create this forceful varietal, featuring undertones of banana and a distinct aura of dread.

Wily Moët Pena – A non-vintage sparkling wine, this brutal Brut may not offer the most balanced combination of flavors, but its extra-large bottle makes it a spectacular choice for christening yachts and other sea-going vessels.

Cabernet Josh – Unpretentiously crafted by righthander Josh Beckett, this workmanlike vintage tastes of grapes, with subtle hints of a different kind of grapes.

Coco Cristal – A smoothed-out chilly blend of only the speediest varietals, carbonated VERY naturally so as not to injure the grapes. Louis Roederer developed this reluctantly, due to the center fielder’s rap career, but is reportedly very pleased with the results. Unlike “the Triangle,” no funny stuff here!

Tito’s Celebration Sparkle – Not champagne but darn close, the grapes for this bubbling treat come from the skipper’s organic farm outside his ancestral home near Pittsburgh. Don’t let it stain your jersey, Terry!

Backup Backstop Bordeaux – Doug Mirabelli’s classic Malbec, with all of the earthy cedar and tobacco undertones the discerning connoisseur would expect of a seasoned veteran who’s spent eleven years squatting in the dirt.

Pinot Piniero – Made with delicate Pinot grapes grown exclusively in the Red Sox bullpen, this fruity, sometimes erratic white makes for a strong accompaniment to most seafood, save for fish, shrimp, scallops, lobster, crab, clams, mussels, oysters, eels, shark, sea urchin, sea horse, sea cucumber, sea anenome, starfish, sponges and krill. If anything, it’s best suited to skates and rays. Okay, honestly? Just skates.

Julian Tava-Red: Blood-red grapes and an earthy tone set this shiraz apart from other vintages. There is a hint of violence in the nose.

Theo Epstein’s Rockin’ Manischevitz – Party like it’s 5764! L’chaim!

Cask of Amontillugo – Dry and tangy with a hint of sweetness, this well-seasoned sherry provides an ideal balance of flavors to stabilize a dessert course, a crowded middle infield, or a tortured psyche, slowly driven mad from entombment in the catacombs.

The Mint Drewlep – Peppermint schnapps, Southern Comfort, and as much ice as you can fit in your glass. Because J. D. “don’t go in for that pansy-ass wine shit.”

Originally posted by BoonDock Ellis from Yard Work, on April 6, 2007 1:36 PM

The Wolverine (Gulo gulo) is the largest land-dwelling species of the Mustelidae or weasel family (the Giant Otter is largest overall), and is the only species currently classified in the genus Gulo (meaning "glutton"). The Wolverine is a stocky and muscular animal, considered carnivorous but known on occasion to eat plant material. The wolverine is still trapped for its fur in some parts of its range. Since 2003 Canada has classified its eastern population of Wolverines as "endangered.

We caught Wolverines Revealed last night and it was incredible - supposedly the closest documentarians have ever gotten to wolverines. The part where the runt bear cub gets stuck up in a tree while his mother and siblings are run off by another bear family (while wolverines lurked) was excrutiating.

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on April 6, 2007 1:10 PM

Artist Xia Xiaowan uses layers of glass to make 3-D paintings. A picture's worth a thousand words of explanation in this case:

Xia Xiaowan surpasses the boundaries of painting and establishes a new way of "looking" at paintings. He draws his inspiration and method from X-ray photographs, giving two-dimensional painting a three-dimensional effect. He combines material, technology and painting, thus maintaining the hand-made qualities of painting while adding elements of installation and sculptural art and displaying the cold, absurd and strange qualities of realism.

More work by Xia Xiaowan here.

Update: Marilène Oliver does similar work. (thx, emmett)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on April 6, 2007 12:58 PM

• Malaysian bloggers may have to reveal identities
  The battle to control cyberspace in Malaysia intensified Thursday as a minister said bloggers may be forced to register their names to avoid unjust claims being posted on the Internet.
  (tags: malaysia Blog blogger identity)
• Online newspaper rocks South Korean media trend
  Oh Yeon-Ho firmly believes in the slogan that hangs over the door of his office: "Every citizen is a reporter."
  (tags: south korea ohmynews citizen reporter)
• On Choosing Your China Expert
  this is a great post to read - tricia "I do not think there is such a thing as a China expert and I would not recommend anyone who claims to being such a thing...." Dan Harris
  (tags: danharris China expert)
• Japanese biggest posters in exploding weblog universe: study
  Online weblogs mushroomed to more than 72 million this year, with Japanese now the most prolific posters to the popular online personal journal web pages, an Internet research company said on Thursday.
  (tags: japanese blogger Blog popular posts internet)
• Mobio, Times Internet bring mobile mash-up to Indian operators
  Mobio has developed new applications designed for India's mobile population that include 2007 Cricket World Cup-themed services such as Indiatimes Cricket Station for live scores and Howzzat!!!
  (tags: mobio indiA application cell mobile culture cricket)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from YouMeiTI 有媒体, on April 6, 2007 12:26 PM

There are a lot of angry people in the world. These people typically have a number of gripes, and sometimes one of them stands above everything else. Those who have web savvy might even take it to the rest of the world through a passionate blog or unifying community website. I was interested in what Google thought the most hated things were, and this is the list:

1. Cilantro
2. Brooklyn
3. Starbucks
4. Divorce
5. Emo kids
6. Clowns
7. Cubicles
8. SBC Yahoo
9. Haggling
10. Macs

From this logic, I present a highly unsuccessful personals ad:

Part-time clown seeks cilantro-loving emo kid. My house in Brooklyn , my cubicle in Manhattan (selling SBC Yahoo), but my heart is with Austen (die hagglers!). Let’s grab a Starbucks or just chat on our powerbooks!

Surprisingly, I find myself being quite a big fan of most of them. Maybe people just hate the things I like, but probably these things get more attention because they are highly divided topics.

Originally posted by cameron from overstated, on April 6, 2007 12:21 PM

Wild parrots, normally native to South America, can also be found living all over Brooklyn, with large enclaves around Brooklyn College (where a group of the birds' fans is hosting a "wild parrot safari" tomorrow at noon). The Associated Press got wind of the event and seemed concerned that the parrots' presence was a "harbinger of massive climate change," but it turns out the brightly-colored birds have been roosting in Brooklyn for decades. They most likely set up shop after escaping from shipments in the late '60s (or after being released by owners who were unable to care for them). Any hot parrot-sighting spots in your neighborhood?
Wild Parrots in Brooklyn [AP]
Photo by Steve Baldwin of brooklynparrots.com.

Originally posted by Brooklyn Record from Brooklyn Record, on April 6, 2007 12:04 PM

Use the TinyURL service to easily shrink URLs in any application on the Mac without having to hit a bookmarklet.

Read More...

Originally posted by justin.berka@gmail.com (Justin Berka) from Infinite Loop, on April 6, 2007 9:34 AM

I’ve been a regular visitor to the Kinetica Museum in London since it’s opening. One of the things I always really liked were the automata donation boxes. For this reason I attended the Cabaret Mechnical Theatre workshop that gave an insight into the processes using cardboard prototyping (some photos).

Last night was the opening of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre’s first-ever major retrospective show, which includes over 80 automata and a number of previously unseen works from CMT’s illustrious The Ride of Life. Here are my photos. Open until 5th May.

I can safely say that this one of the most beautiful, playful and magical exhibitions I’ve been to for a long time. My photos don’t do it justice, you need to go and see them moving in real life. It has a real feeling of British crazy backyard inventor to it, mixed with detailed tiny models to large scale automata. It was surprised by many of the works, narratives that formed over time rather than simply looping playback. I can’t recommend this exhibition enough.

Artists include Ron Fuller, Arthur Ganson, Tim Hunkin, Will Jackson, Pierre Mayer, Keith Newstead, Paul Spooner and Carlos Zapata. Read about CMT and the history of how it was started.

From the site:
The Ride of Life, developed as a satire of British culture, was a large-scale project commissioned in the late 1980’s by the Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield. Designed and created by the top British automatists of the time, it was to become a huge automated theme park and ride covering a colossal 25,000 sq ft area of the shopping centre and was set to become a landmark in the history of automata. However what started as a wonderful dream in the booming 80’s had a very rude awakening with the recession of the 90’s and after 3 years of work, the project was suddenly axed. Stored in sheds and warehouses for the past twenty years, many of the sets were tragically destroyed through vandalism and theft. CMT have initiated the restoration of the surviving scenes with some of the artists originally involved, enabling segments of The Ride of Life and the only complete surviving scene to be shown publicly for the first time.

If you are interested in automata, why not attend a workshop, attend artist talks, buy instruction books or kits. I’d love to see a lot more of this kind of work coming back.

More from Kinetica Museum.
Photos of this exhibition.

Originally posted by Chris OShea from Pixelsumo - Chris OShea, on April 6, 2007 9:32 AM

Chumley's, the famous former speakeasy in Greenwich Village, is in danger of collapsing. One of the building's walls at 86 Bedford Street became unstable and the FDNY was dispatched to the scene. The wall was considered to be "compromised" and apparently people were evacuated from surrounding buildings. In Curbed's breaking coverage, tipster suspects the building may be torn down completely. There was also this comment:

I was at the CB 2 meeting about a month ago where architects representing the owners of 86 Bedford basically begged the the board to let them replace the facade immediately, claiming it was in danger of imminent collapse. The owner of Chumley's and a rent-controlled residential tenant voiced protests, claiming it was all a ruse to kick them out of their sweet leases. Looks like they were wrong.

The Department of Buildings and Con Ed are on the scene. Update: Someone from the scene sends us the above photo and tells us, "Chumleys has begun to fall down again. The are going to tear the building down now." Photograph of 86 Bedford Street by wallyg on Flickr

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 6, 2007 8:48 AM

More on the project here and here.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on April 6, 2007 8:12 AM

I thought I'd take this Hills entry off of Suzy's hands.

Let's celebrate Lauren lovers -- The Hills has been renewed for a third season!

I'm so happy -- especially with all the gossip that has been swirling about the cast. Hopefully we'll be able to see Heidi's new boobs, get a glimpse at Whitney's hidden boyfriend, and please, oh please, hear some more about the "is there or isn't there" Jason/L.C. sex tape!

If you've fallen behind on this past season, catch my recaps at TV Cocktail. I'll meet you at the premiere!

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on April 6, 2007 7:58 AM

In Edible City - Part 1, my report on an exhibition about the urban environment and its food systems, i was talking to Debra Solomon, curator of the show and author of Culiblog, about utopian projects. This second part will focus more on some recent or ongoing proposals and strategies to produce food in or near the city. Debra listed all the projects on her blog but here's a quick selection:

Infra-ecology by Jago van Bergen, Duzan Doepel and Willemijn Lofvers, explores new ways to turn motorways into places for offices and noise pollution into birdsong. Spa-Spar, for example, envisions a motel chain on the crossing of a water- and a highway. Motel rooms with adjacent spa pools would be located above highway and waterway crossings. The system would use the water purification effect of ozone. Ozone is created during the reaction of nitrogen oxide from car exhausts with the fresh smell of pine trees.

Edible Estates invites American families to trade the "carpet of conformity" that is the lawn against food-producing vegetable gardens right in their front yards. Started in 2005 Los Angeles, the concept is spreading to other cities like London and New York. As Fritz Haeg, the organizer of the project, writes the food will connect us to the seasons, the organic cycles of the earth and our neighbors. I used to live in the countryside and enjoying the passing of the seasons is something i'm missing. Seasons to me now are no more than a fashion issue.

Fallen Fruit asks citizens to map all the "public fruit" planted on private property that overhangs public space. If a fruit tree grows on or over public property, the fruit is legally no longer the sole property of the owner. The fruit maps, photos and essays aim to build up an online global public fruit resource. Besides, Fallen Fruit encourages people to grow fruit on the perimeter of their property and let others harvest it and to petition the cities to plant fruit-bearing trees in public parks. Freegans have adopted an extreme version of the idea: their objective is to remove themselves from participation in the capitalist economy altogether as workers and consumers. Some of them get thus free food by pulling it out of the garbage of restaurants, grocery stores, and other food-related industries.

The Kitchen of Terrestrial Mechanics uses natural phenomena such as gravity, evaporation, plant growth, static electricity, decomposition and digestion as mechanical elements for kitchen design. There are of course worms that turn the garbage into composted material but John Arndt also came up with some unexpected ideas such as: water dripping off cleaned dishes falls onto the herbs growing below the dish rack or onto unglazed ceramic food containers to make them cooler.

For the kitchen to work for you, you must use it. It depends upon you to feed it, water it, let it grow, harvest it, eat it, etc.

Then the exhibition also highlighted some of Debra Solomon's own projects:

How did people enjoy the experience of eating in a Sproutstaurant?

The Sproutrestaurant was first enjoyed at the Mediamatic exhibition Night Garden for two months starting in November 2006. Guests enjoyed a tasting menu of 31 different sorts of micro greens, sprouts and cresses with three different sorts of potato mash, ginger crackling and onion marmalade. For the meat eaters there were also some pork or lamb additions (all locally produced and organically grown).

More images at culiblog

The layout of the plate suggested that you could try to taste every single sprout with every sort of mash. That would be upwards of 93 variations for those folks that are really anal I mean disciplined, a completely unrealistic desire, in any case. People constantly told me how exciting they found it to eat such a non-homogenous dish, each bite different from the last one and they were amazed to find out that they were capable of growing all of the sprouts at home. I gave a lecture explaining how to sprout and posted this on my blog in the hope that it would be an inspiration. People still write me exclaiming the wonders of the coreander sprout or the sublime perfume of the fennel sprouts.

At the Edible City exhibition, the Grow Yer Own Dang Food Sproutrestaurant will be open during the symposia. In the mean time, the sprouts that we grow in the exhibition will be used as a material by one of the designers to press into wastewear 'ceramic' bowls for the special micro-green cuisine that we plan on serving there later in the exhibition.

Can you give me more details about that project you're working on together with David Barrie and Nina Belk? Has the balcony farming of DOTT07 started already? How is the growing process going on? Which feedback have you received so far from people involved in Tees Valley?

The DOTT07 Urban Farming project will begin cultivation of small, medium and large mobile planters at the start of April. Right now we are in full-on preparation mode working with the local organisations and institutions to make the growing and cooking phases happen. I'll have to get back to you to tell you how this goes, but I suspect that it will go brilliantly because already we have received more pledges than we can honour for the planters. The city of Middlesbrough has also already decided to keep the planters for the following year, so it is easy to interpret this as a high level of enthousiasm and support for this project. The kitchen playgrounds are the next part of this project that we are addressing - because our team believes that it isn't enough to just get your hands dirty in the garden, you have to also get your hands dirty in the kitchen. Food sovereignty means ownership of the entire multi-context process of getting food on the table.

Climate Machine - Ton Matton

Are you optimistic about the future of urban environment and its urban food system?

If I look at architectural and urban regeneration projects in Northern Europe that incorporate a food growing element, I am extremely optimistic. Increasingly designers, architects and urban planners are using food growing elements in urban projects because of food's life enhancing properties, but also because food growing as part of an overall plan for the built environment can increase land value in cities the long term. Aside from the placemaking effects of food producing landscapes in urban areas, food growing spaces are treated with greater care than places in which the landscape architecture is simply decorative. Growing food in the city can transform derelict spaces into places which inhabitants deeply care about. Municipalities are starting to latch onto this idea because they know that its simply good business.

How about the design of the exhibition itself? What guided the way you show the works? Which "trick" did you use to make the whole experience of visiting Edible City more engaging?

The curatorial team (Hans Ibelings, Anneke Moors and I) knew that due to the subject matter, the majority of the projects would only be visible in 2D documentation. We thought it might be fun to express how lush the built environment could become through the addition of food production by doing just that in the exhibition itself. For the exhibition design we worked with the Dutch group Event Architecture who in turn brought in the growing expertise of de Groene Stap (the Green Step) to produce a lush and edible experience in the exhibition space itself. We also intend to keep the exhibition engaging by planning some symposia during the harvest period of this season's vegetables and soft fruit in June. I'll certainly keep you posted when we nail down the dates for these events.

Thanks Debra!

Edible City is running at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Maastricht (NL) until June 22.

Originally posted by Regine from we make money not art, on April 6, 2007 3:52 AM

Josh Wolf, the blogger whose record 7 1/2 months in federal prison stirred debate about who qualifies as a journalist and what legal protections journalists should receive, was freed Tuesday after releasing video footage sought by prosecutors about an anarchist protest.

Originally posted by naughtYmike from David Jacobs' Huffs, on April 6, 2007 3:28 AM

A month ago, I was really in the market for a stand-alone cooling tray to enable faster cooling out of the Sivetz. 

When I asked around for prices on new bean coolers, the prices took my breath away and made me yearn for something a bit more...depreciated. 

Trolling in the used marketplace I discovered a beautiful cooler conjoined in transactional solidarity with a drum roaster which had been damaged in transport from Europe some time ago. 

The price (even if we were getting just the cooling tray) was too good to pass up.  I decided it would be best to take custody and bring it in for some TLC.

We take delivery next Tuesday.

Originally posted by Kevin from gimme! coffee, on April 6, 2007 12:16 AM

The new Google Desktop for Mac could become a good utility, but it's currently big on bloat and small on features.

Read More...

Originally posted by justin.berka@gmail.com (Justin Berka) from Infinite Loop, on April 5, 2007 10:17 PM

VMware will release Beta 3 of VMware Fusion on Friday morning. Beta 3 brings a whole of improvements and bug fixes, including the ability to boot off of a Boot Camp partition.

Read More...

Originally posted by eric@arstechnica.com (Eric Bangeman) from Infinite Loop, on April 5, 2007 8:56 PM

Thank you, Adam, for the note,. In the meantime, Google Reader has become the theoretical "all open tabs," and it does a pretty good job! Along with a bunch of other reBlog improvements (releasing soon), dj.riceweevil is back, archives too (and they're here to stay.) The Brooklyn Botanical Garden has a live cherry blossom map. Via Andrea. Candidates for Miss Landmine. Via Tricia, via Dav ("An odd way to bring about awareness of post-war landmine casualties."), via me, somehow. Second Avenue Subway wishlist. ADM comments: "that sliding door idea is really funny. just one more surface to get tagged, nutra-lifed, acid-etched, and phlegmy." Residents of Roosevelt Island want an escape... staircase. We'll see how that works in a crisis. Via Gothamist. Bid on Senator Kerry's almost-was iPod to raise awareness for Creative Commons. Google launchs MyMaps.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on April 5, 2007 8:07 PM

Thank you, Adam, for the note,. In the meantime, Google Reader has become the theoretical "all open tabs," and it does a pretty good job! Along with a bunch of other reBlog improvements (releasing soon), dj.riceweevil is back, archives too (and they're here to stay.)

The Brooklyn Botanical Garden has a live cherry blossom map. Via Andrea.

Candidates for Miss Landmine. Via Tricia, via Dav ("An odd way to bring about awareness of post-war landmine casualties."), via me, somehow.

Second Avenue Subway wishlist. ADM comments: "that sliding door idea is really funny. just one more surface to get tagged, nutra-lifed, acid-etched, and phlegmy."

Residents of Roosevelt Island want an escape... staircase. We'll see how that works in a crisis. Via Gothamist.

Bid on Senator Kerry's almost-was iPod to raise awareness for Creative Commons.

Google launchs MyMaps.

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on April 5, 2007 8:07 PM

From Danwei: Postal modernism in the cinema:: Siqin Gaowa, Chow Yun-fat, and Vicki Zhao in The Postmodern Life of My Aunt.

Ann Hui's new movie The Postmodern Life of My Aunt tells a story of love, games, and opera. But what makes it postmodern? Nothing, according to Hu Xudong, a noted columnist, poet, and Peking University professor. In a column for The Beijing News last week, Hu mused on how the term "postmodern" is misunderstood in contemporary society.

Note: those ads for "Postmodern Town" that Hu mentions were captured on Danwei in 2003 and 2004.

The Modern Life of My Step-Aunt
by Hu Xudong
Since it entered China, the word "postmodern" seemed predestined to attract a cloak of vulgar sketches. I remember more than a decade ago when the intellectual world had just begun to import "postmodern" concepts into the country that among the scads of translated theory that Chongqing Publishing House put out, someone actually translated "postmodernism" (?????) into "postal modernism" (??????). Before its underlying reasons could be worked out in the minds of intellectuals and literati, the hapless "postmodern" was casually tossed out to the public by advertising and the media. In Beijing a few years back, through successive assaults by real estate advertisements, the public gained a dramatic understanding of the "intellectual geography" of the term "postmodern": what's behind the modern is the postmodern. For at the time, there was a hot-selling development called "Postmodern Town" [aka American Rock] whose spatial situation was right behind a development called "____ Modern Town" [aka SOHO New Town].

More than a decade has passed, and although in the wishful thinking of many intellectuals, "postmodern" is a concept that like Tiger Balm can be applied anywhere, that like China Unicom covers everything, in the plain vocabularies of many common people, the term "postmodern" is an unreadable string of random letters. One of the most striking examples is The Postmodern Life of My Aunt by elder sister Ann Hui On-Wah, who tied her boat to Hong Kong cinema back in the day. I have always kept a respectful distance from such spooky names, but in the great spirit of "no taboos when supporting domestic products," I dialed the information number of a theater in Zhongguancun to pick a suitable showtime.

When the call connected, a lovely voice said, "Showtime information. For Babel, press one, for The Host, press two..." but then something wasn't right. "For The Post [one second pause] Modern Life of My Aunt, press five..." After pressing five, again there was "The Post [one second pause] Modern Life of My Aunt is showing..."

At first, I excitedly went around telling all my friends this story of "The Post, Modern Life of My Aunt," but then I suddenly realized that in China, "postmodern" appeared onstage as a joke clad in the clownish outfit of "postal modernism"; if intellectuals have not fully cleared away the vestigial influences of "postal modernism," then how can we demand that a common cinema employee waste time and effort to polish the delivery of the term "postmodern"? Whether it is read as "the postmodern life of my aunt" or "the post, modern life of my aunt", it will not in any way lessen the confusion of the aunt doing about whether life in Beijing is modern or postmodern. This feeling is even stronger after watching the film. The life of Siqin Gaowa's Aunt, in both narrow-minded Shanghai and the desolate, bitter northeast, never connects to the word "postmodern." If Ms. Hui wanted to show the touching fate of a woman, then why did she choose to link this bitter fate with "postmodern," a term doomed to be a joke?

Like the Zhongguancun cinema hotline, a friend of mine has a hard time saying the awkward title The Postmodern Life of My Aunt, but her mistake is fairly special: she has unconsciously remembered it as "The Modern Life of My Step-Aunt" (????????). I personally feel that she has stumbled upon the central problem of the movie: on the mainland, amid complicated psychological journeys and the changes of modern life, even the intrepid Ms. Hui is but a "step-aunt" who's barged in mid-process. The narrative she provides of the life of a mainland woman in changing times is actually just a view through the eyes of a "step-aunt" of a life that can barely be called modern. If this is not the case, then how is it that as she narrates Auntie's bitter life in the northeast, she does not forget to turn a curious camera to something commonplace for mainlanders and greedily snatches shots of ads for counterfeit documents?

Links and Sources
Hu Xudong's blog (Chinese): The modern life of my step-aunt
Shanghai Daily via CD: Postmodern Life of My Aunt

Technorati Tags: china, china, film , hu xudong, postal modernism, ann hui

Originally posted by (author unknown) from YouMeiTI 有媒体, on April 5, 2007 7:04 PM

Does the world really need a formalist-structuralist whodunit, and is one actually possible?  Absolutely. Depending on the kind of movie you like, Caché will be a merciless portrayal of the middle classes or a merciless assault on tolerance of the viewing public. For me, both of these things are good.

If you're a film nerd with any patience you’ll enjoy the tension of the slow pacing, the unravelling of the narrative, and swoon at the unsettling video playback shots. If you’re more a Tom Hanks movie kind of person you’ll probably be asleep or very angry after the first 20 minutes. But lucky you - Ron Howard is coming to the rescue with his remake. He'll probably toss in some dinosaurs.

Regardless of your approach to film, you’ll probably miss what happens in the films closing shot. But don’t worry too much, it might not matter.

Originally posted by Josie from A Girl & A Gun, on April 5, 2007 6:12 PM

David Remnick may be the current editor of the New Yorker, but it's much-maligned former editor Tina Brown's team that's running the place. Love the comments at the end...the Gawker audience is almost shocked at something that's actually researched, longer than three sentences, and doesn't contain any overt drug references. Choire, you keep this up, I might have to start reading the site again. (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on April 5, 2007 5:28 PM

NYU's Bobst library offers IM reference, though MSN messenger, yahoo, AOL (and maybe some others). Lots of academic libraries do this, and we're considering offering IM reference where I work. I've used chat support for our cable modem at home, and I've used my public library's chat (Question Point).

Yesterday, however, was the first time I've ever used IM chat as a patron (as an NYU student). I love it. So much so, I'm really tempted to turn into "one of those patrons" who other librarians blog about after the reference interaction.

I was looking for two articles that we didn't have in any databases where I work, and I couldn't find them in NYU databases either (turns out one of them I should have figured out on my own, and the other I'd need to inter-library loan). But, besides the answer to my question, I got a lot out of the experience.

1) I now have NYUBobst on my buddy list. Not only do I not need to visit the library in person, I don't even need to go to the website to ask a library question. I love this.
2) They're my friend. They log in, they log out. The librarian is like a real person, and they're my buddy. Even when I'm not doing library work, I see their status and know NYU's Bobst library is there to help me. This is where the "bad" library patron comes in bc I just want to chat with them sometimes... even when I don't really have a question, just bc they're online (maybe I shouldn't admit this online-- how many of you now think I really need to get a life?)
3) I can ask them questions from my phone with IM. If I have a really pressing reference question, as long as I have my phone around, I have a reference librarian! I guess that's true with telephone reference also, but for whatever reason, IM reference seems easier.

And finally... for whatever reason, I really value this service. I mean, I am a reference librarian. I'm constantly surrounded by librarians. It's not like reference service is a scarcity in my life. Yet somehow, just by virtue of it offered through IM, it's a huge extra value.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from iPalimpsest, on April 5, 2007 3:39 PM

Yeowza! Check out America Ferrera's cover shot for the May issue of W magazine -- we should all be such Ugly Bettys.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on April 5, 2007 3:35 PM

I love YouTube. This is a video clip of a chef pulling noodle dough, doubling it over 12 times until the noodles are unbelievably fine. The clip is from a 1987 PBS science show that I watched once when I was 14[1] and I've remembered it ever since as one of the simplest, coolest, and most concrete illustrations of mathematics I've ever seen. (via seriouseats)
[1] Ooh, watching science shows on PBS at 14....how popular was I in school? (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on April 5, 2007 2:23 PM

First they launch the most annoying commercials ever made, featuring Claire “Anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better” Danes, then they rename their “Hipster" skinny-fit jeans “Williamsburg.” What is the Gap braintrust thinking? After a few unsuccessful attempts to get hold of a PR person (who I hoped could explain why it was a good idea to name a clothing line after a place that most of the country thinks is a colonial settlement town in Virginia), I headed to the Gap store on Fifth Avenue in lower Manhattan to get some answers for myself. Having convinced the nice saleslady I really did want to try on the men’s jeans (my secret mission being to take pictures of them), I determined that only an elderly person would deem these things “skinny fit” and left to troll the streets of Williamsburg looking for hipsters to speak their minds.

Here’s what a few folks on Grand Street had to say:

"Honestly, I am not surprised that Williamsburg has recently become so marketable, a term earmarked to describe the hip and cool, but I question whether or not the suburban GAP shopper will even understand the reference.... What's up with not making a girl version either?" —Rita Naman, video editor/actress

After the jump: Why one guy thinks Williamsburg toilet paper is next

Originally posted by Lisa from Brooklyn Record, on April 5, 2007 2:03 PM

Living on Roosevelt Island may afford you gorgeous views and short commute to Manhattan, but residents really would like more ways out. The Sun reports residents want to build a staircase and elevator to the Queensboro Bridge in case of an emergency. An emergency like evil, goopy water? The president of the Roosevelt Island Residents Association Matthew Katz says, "You can't get off Roosevelt Island fast enough right now. We need to find alternative ways to get people on and off the island." The current options are not ideal: The F is crowded, the lift bridge "often gets stuck," the bus is slow, and the tram...well, we know about the tram. While City Coucilwoman Jessica Lappin thinks it's a good idea ("seems like a reasonable, low-cost way to provide that access"), the Department of Transportation rejected it because putting in an elevator would require giving up a lane on the bridge. And without an elevator, a stairway would be inaccessible to the disabled. Still, the Community Board is going to talk about it. What do you think would be good ways for Roosevelt Island residents to get off the island? How about a fleet of sturdy rafts... though there may not be enough for the population increase (the RIRA expects the population to increase from 12,000 to 20,000 in the next couple years.) Photograph by wallyg on Flickr

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 5, 2007 2:02 PM

Iconfactory: “Twitterrific is a fun little application that lets you both read and publish posts or ‘tweets’ to the Twitter community website. The application’s user interface is clean, concise and designed to take up a minimum of real estate on your Mac’s desktop.”

This new version displays tweets inline, which is cool. (I’d bet that it was the most commonly requested feature.) We here in the lab use Twitter because of Twitterrific.

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on April 5, 2007 1:25 PM

Now that the MTA is really, truly going to build the 2nd Avenue subway extension, planners are starting to put together a list of totally realistic design elements, including:

• roomy, brightly lit stations
• wide platforms
• air-conditioned stations in the summer
• sliding mechanical doors at the edge of platforms that open up with the train's doors, like on the AirTrain at JFK
• computerized train operation so that these doors will all line up
• and, hey, while we're at it, how about free snowcones and pony rides, too

Sounds pretty nice! But how likely is it that any of these features will be included in the 2nd Avenue line that not everyone truly believes, deep down, is ever going to happen at all? The current subway system of course doesn't use computerized operation, so the whole system would in theory have to be overhauled. The Times says that the MTA has been thinking about developing a computerized system for the entire subway, but that it's "still a long-term goal."

Lawrence G. Reuter, president of NYC Transit until he resigned in February, also had his doubts about the mechanical doors/air-conditioned platforms/on-board Wii gaming stations, too. "It’s only going to apply in a few stations. What good is it going to do if you can’t adapt it to the rest of the system? I didn’t see any benefit, plus it’s going to cost extra money to maintain them."

written by Amy

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Amy's Robot, on April 5, 2007 12:36 PM

far more than simple annotations  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 5, 2007 11:27 AM

It seems to me Serious Eats has to do with being serious about food and the enjoyment of the experience of food. I love the fact that sometimes this site talks about gadgets, sometimes about gourmet restaurants, and sometimes about peanut butter, how you like your brownies, what goes in your ice cream, what are you cooking this weekend and things that people who seriously love food LOVE to talk about. It's nice to see that different people who love food, or otherwise would not post on this site, actually respond to these questions, with enthusiasm I may add, whereas others would think of them as ridiculous. So Serious Eats, keep being the way you are. I am sure that's why people keep coming back.

Originally posted by cristi from Serious Eats - Comment Responses, on April 5, 2007 11:19 AM

His big eyes darted around nervously, scoping out his fellow trees, scrutinizing the temperature, feeling the vibe...making sure his timing wasn't egregiously off. He reminded himself that others before him had done it and survived...some were even lauded for their perfect timing! And...he...bloomed...just a little shy bloom at first...but then he couldn't stop blooming and he knew then, that for the first time in his young life, he was a leader.

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on April 5, 2007 11:02 AM

story links: million dollar documentary (thanks, scott!), youtube can youtube hear me?, david lynch on product placement, david lynch weather report, homeless signs for toronto (thanks, wareinga!), death-star attack conspiracy theory, new laptop for driving. rudy rucker on mathematics and physics (thanks, david!), surfing waves made by dynamite, its jerry time, nikola tesla documentary, link to your favorite entry for videoblogging2007 week in the comments and vote for tomorrows episode

joanne

Originally posted by Drew from Rocketboom, on April 5, 2007 10:25 AM

Yesterday afternoon, as I was perusing mega-media site LA Observed, I noticed this at the bottom of a post about...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on April 5, 2007 9:50 AM

David Lynch on Product Placement:

(thanks, Drew)

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on April 5, 2007 9:49 AM

David Lynch on Product Placement:

(thanks, Drew)

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on April 5, 2007 9:49 AM

John Kerry has rejected his iPod gift from the Information Policy Action Committee, so they're auctioning it off in hopes of using the funds for future information policy campaigns.

Read More...

Originally posted by jacqui@arstechnica.com (Jacqui Cheng) from Infinite Loop, on April 5, 2007 9:35 AM

Clearly I go to bed too early. Late last night, Google Maps added a new feature called "My Maps," which seems to be Google's response to the collections feature in Microsoft's Virtual Earth/Windows Live Local/Live Maps. In a nutshell, it's...

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on April 5, 2007 9:23 AM

Sergeant Marcia Ramode, serving us proud!

Originally posted by mejusthavin from Most Huffed News, on April 5, 2007 9:00 AM

A couple months ago, we commissioned filmmaker George Motz to go filmmakin' for us. Today, he sends us this piece, which details a trip to the butcher to get some freshly ground beef for—what else?—hamburgers. (He is George "Hamburger America" Motz, after all.)

The Takeaway

• The best hamburgers come from fresh meat.
• A good hamburger needs a little bit of fat. You need at least 10 or 15 percent of fat.
• It's important to grind at least twice—to mix the fat and meat evenly.
• The difference between going to a good butcher and the supermarket is that you get fresh beef—not the boxed prebutchered meat.

United Meat
Address: 219 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn NY 11215 [map]
Phone: 718-768-7227

About the filmmaker: George Motz is the burger-mad genius behind our favorite burger movie, Hamburger America. For more from George, visit his website, HamburgerAmerica.com

Originally posted by The Serious Eats Team from Serious Eats: Video and Features, on April 5, 2007 8:15 AM

The latest issue of Brownstone, NYU's magazine devoted to minority issues, is out and it's all Asians, all the time. You can learn if how Stern classes has more Asians, it's harder. Or how editors canceled a photo shoot that would have involved Asian stereotypes (the nerd, the girl who only dates white guys, and the FOB). Also the spread of yellow fever is examined (though there's no mention of The World of Suzie Wong). Bonus: NYU College Republicans President Sarah Chambers ("awfully pretty") is profiled - you may remember Chambers from such stunts as the "Illegal Immigrant Hunt." Here are the April 2006 issue and the October 2006 issue of Brownstone. And can any any NYU students or graduates reading tell us how popular Brownstone is?

Originally posted by jen from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 5, 2007 7:00 AM

Nokia and EMI Music, have announced a marketing and content agreement in which EMI artists, beginning Lily Allen and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. The artists will be featured in Nokia's Flagship Store locations worldwide, as well as Nokia's Experience Centers, theater locations and certain Nokia music-related websites across North America. [Press release via The Cell Freak]

EMI will be the exclusive major label provider of music content for the retail program, and new content from its artists will be added and featured every 60 days.

For instance, if you want to see how video looks on a Nokia N95, the sales person might show you Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’ “Face Down” music video. Or to lure you into buying more Nokia products, they might offer a free Lily Allen ringtone.

Previously: - Join the Lily Allen mobile club

Originally posted by emily from ringtonia.com, on April 5, 2007 4:56 AM

Wow, I love all the comments...now this is getting edgy! Mr. Levine, I pretty much understand your position and I can't fault it.

The "cackling housewives" comment ellicited exactly what I was hoping for. So let's talk, let's chat... pretty soon I'll be baking cookies with Hillary. But really, you all must get my point. (Yes, I mixed it with a few jabs.) I like the serious stuff, the hints, kitchen gadgets, great recipes et al. I love to cook! But "PBJ" isn't on the menu. Sorry.

I suppose if I had signed my rant "by Anthony Bourdain," more of you would have understood, and maybe laughed.

Originally posted by Big___Al from Serious Eats - Comment Responses, on April 5, 2007 1:22 AM

While the title of this “book” suggests it is only for animators, the lessons within are valuable to anyone itching to be better at drawing expressive people. Walt Stanchfield was Disney animator who taught drawing at the studio. His handouts have been passed around and circulated for years, and Leo Brodie has organized them (based on the 60 handouts shared on animationmeat.com) into a book that Stanchfield might have written: Gesture Drawing for Animation.

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on April 4, 2007 11:42 PM

But Anil and I had fun doing the "ten years of blogging" interview thing over on the Six Apart News blog.  (He's doing a series of these posts -- check out the ones already up on Dave Winer and Leslie Harpold. I'm in good company.)

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on April 4, 2007 8:13 PM

"He seems very happy. [Kate] is a very nice girl."
-- Luke Wilson on his brother Owen's not-so-secret romance with Kate Hudson

Originally posted by sbyrne from Daily Blabber, on April 4, 2007 6:24 PM

Call for Papers

Future Histories of the Moving Image: An international conference to be held at University of Sunderland :: 16-18 November 2007 :: Keynote Speaker: Professor Patricia Zimmermann (Ithaca College, New York), with other keynotes to be confirmed.

As is now widely acknowledged, with the advent of digital technology the nature of moving image production, distribution and exhibition has changed dramatically. In particular, a rapidly increasing number of people are now accessing an increasing volume and range of moving image material online. This technology is also changing the way in which we analyse and document current and historical moving image practices, as there has been a recent proliferation of digital archive and database projects relating to film, video and television practices. It is timely therefore to examine the changing ways in which we are circulating and interrogating moving image culture.

We would particularly welcome papers that address the following areas:

– What impact does the increasing reliance on database resources have on the nature of the histories we produce and write?
– History as database vs history as narrative.
– Implications of the proliferation of online critical writing (from refereed academic journals through to personal blogs) and its dissemination, with the blurring of the traditional distinction between professional and amateur writer.
– The role and implication of immediate online distribution/exhibition of works
– What impact is digital distribution having on theatrical exhibition?
– Issues arising from the perceived need on the part of major producers/broadcasters to develop content for multiple platforms.
– The implications of multiple producers being able to disseminate a wide range of material to multiple niche audiences (giving the idea of ‘narrowcasting’ a new meaning).
– Revival/development of found footage production practices with the availability of digital archives such as Library of Congress Internet Archive (including the Prelinger Archive) and BBC Open Archive initiative.
– Questions relating to the increasing accessibility online of moving image material in relation to intellectual property and the development of the Creative Commons copyright licence.
– The creative influence of database logic on film structure.

The conference will also host an open workshop – with participation by the Arts Council England, the Tate and the British Film Institute – which will address the issues of securing the sustainability and maximising the use/visibility of the growing number of film and video database/online research resources. The workshop is funded by the AHRC Networks and Workshops Scheme.

Please send proposals of 200-300 words for papers of approx. 20 minutes, together with a brief biographical note by 30 May 2007 to the conference organisers (Steven Ball, Julia Knight and Stephen Partridge) at futurehistories[at]sunderland.ac.uk

Future Histories of the Moving Image is a joint conference organised by the Univeresity of Sunderland, the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection (University of the Arts, London) and the Visual Research Centre REWIND project DJCAD at the University of Dundee, in collaboration with Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. All papers delivered at the conference will be considered for publication in the journal.

Originally posted by jo from networked_performance, ReBlogged by exiledsurfer on Apr 4, 2007 at 04:07 PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on April 4, 2007 5:45 PM

Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, Bill Clinton says he's trying to build a better world to hand to his daughter. Unequal, unstable and unsustainable, our world must correct its course, and private citizens ("like me") can be powerful forces for change. His Clinton Foundation, fresh from its success negotiating down pharmaceutical prices in the developing world, is now running a pilot health care system in Rwanda, based on the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti. In 18 months, it has shown potential as a model for the entire developing world. Clinton's TED wish: Help him build this system in Rwanda, to bring world-class health care to a people who have overcome deadly hatred to rebuild their nation. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 25:52)

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Originally posted by June Cohen from TED Blog, on April 4, 2007 5:22 PM

Without much fanfare last July, Alex Stupak replaced Sam Mason as pastry chef at Wylie Dufresne's Clinton Street avant-garde institution WD~50. Prior to arriving in New York, Stupak, who will turn 27 later this month, had already accrued a blockbuster resume- most notably he was the pastry chef at Alinea in Chicago, named the #1 restaurant in the United States by Gourmet magazine in 2006. Last week, Stupak talked with Gothamist while plating one his desserts at WD~50. How often does the menu at WD~50 change? It changes based on ideas and concepts. Obviously when seasons change, ingredients change, but we actually consider a new dish new when we’ve created a new technique, or new method. Some dishes have been on since the restaurant opened, and other ones last for just a month. What have you been developing, concept-wise, with your desserts? Technically speaking, the frozen capsules and pliable ganache that we’re putting forward- I’m really proud of those techniques. And there’s some new stuff that we’re working on. It’s 2-3 months away, but all really exciting. What’s your take on the recent New York Times review of the restaurant Varietal, given your friendship with [Varietal’s ex-pastry chef] Jordan Kahn? I was anticipating that review. I was pretty sure it was going to come out the way it did, and I think Jordan was, too. There’s a disconnect there: You had someone cooking very rustic, borderline bistro style food, and then you had someone creating extremely esoteric, highly conceptual desserts; some with 15 or 20 components. They both can be great, but trying to combine them in one restaurant creates a kind of disconnect.

Originally posted by goth_hugh from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 4, 2007 5:22 PM

As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we're still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; and yet we're steadily, methodically, vigorously destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:21) NEW: Watch this talk in High Resolution (480P)

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Originally posted by June Cohen from TED Blog, on April 4, 2007 5:21 PM

Accepting his 2007 TED Prize, James Nachtwey talks about his decades as a photojournalist. A slideshow of his photos, beginning in 1981 in Northern Ireland, reveals two parallel themes in his work. First, as he says: "The frontlines of contemporary wars are right where people live." Street violence, famine, disease: he has photographed all these modern WMDs. Second, when a photo catches the world's attention, it can truly drive action and change. In his TED wish, he asks for help gaining access to a story that needs to be told, and developing a new, digital way to show these photos to the world. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 23:41)

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Originally posted by June Cohen from TED Blog, on April 4, 2007 5:19 PM

Tina Munim, Jackie Shroff and Anil Kapoor in a clip from Yudh where they rip off Yaz’s Move Out, Twin Peaks’ Little Man From Another Place and the Human League’s makeup. This is better than Sanjaya.

Originally posted by Administrator from Turbanhead.com, on April 4, 2007 4:41 PM

Guy Dammann: Don't feel bad about abandoned books. His 3-step process for deciding on whether or not to read a book is similar to the "inspectional reading" outlined in the classic How to Read a Book.

From the reader comments, here is one of my favorites:

Squatting on my top shelf, 3 paperback volumes of the unabridged 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire', about 1500 pages each, the first volume creased on its spine about a fifth of the way in, the rest of volume and the other two spines immaculate. A message screamed out to the perceptive observer, 'Here is a man who likes to be seen buying impressive books but whose pygmy intellect cannot cope with any book that hasn't had a murder and a rooftop chase by page 100'.

I've been making an effort in the last few years to read more of the "murder and a rooftop chase" type of book. For a while I got mired in a swamp of non-fiction, much of which only held my interest for the first few chapters. I finished all of those books, but it sure would take a long time. Initially, I thought it was because my interest in the subject was actually at the "long-article" level, but now I've developed a new theory.

Much of the highly-touted non-fiction of the last few years simply starts stronger than it finishes. Writers submit a book proposal and then just don't have enough ideas to fill their word count with interesting and relevant material. They end up padding. These books (sometimes based on a wildly-popular magazine article) become less and less substantial as they progress. The author has enough interesting material for a much shorter book, or a series of long articles, but not enough for the amount of material he has been paid to produce.

It's not that I don't like non-fiction. You can look at my book lists from the last few years and find non-fiction that I rave about. These are books that delivered from start to finish. Anything that has a notation to the effect that "there are some good ideas here" or "a little thin" probably suffers from the padding problem.

It dawned on me one day that reading had become drudgery—but in my childhood, I was an incredibly voracious reader. Was the problem me, or the books?

I decided it was time to apply a different filter to at least half of the books I read. Not, "Does this sound like an interesting and/or important topic?" but "Does this sound fun to read?" Using the library has helped me in this, allowing me to explore without spending money, and (theoretically) making it easier to just chuck a book if it's not living up to the "fun" standard (though I still have trouble putting down a book without finishing it).

In that spirit, here are two of my favorite reading links: The Reader's Bill of Rights and Marylaine's Books Too Good to Put Down. (via wl)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 4, 2007 2:46 PM

"The message of the film is a challenge to this sort of self-righteousness which has often been mythologized in the superficial and Manichean genre western. It is a deliberate challenge to the Little Bills among us, especially those who use the tropes of popular culture to propagate and validate these sorts of lies. It is a message that is extremely apposite to a critique of the current political leadership of the US. The US military machine is analogous to William Munny and the Administration analogous to Little Bill."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 4, 2007 2:26 PM

A few weeks ago i made an interview of Alejandro Tamayo, a Bogota-based artist-engineer and a teacher working in the intersections of design, art and new technologies. I had to be a bit insistent to get him to answer my questions (not the sort of thing i'd usually do.) Convincing him to write for the blog has been somewhat easier. Now, look! His first post is above!

The image is taken from his flickr set. That's a picture of the sort of things that happen in his bathroom.

Originally posted by Regine from we make money not art, on April 4, 2007 2:15 PM

Continuing this morning's post: Another LA dealer has told me that KCRW art critic Edward Goldman tried to leverage an...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on April 4, 2007 1:52 PM

Daring Fireball: A Quick, Possibly Incomplete Guide to What Gets Installed by the Google Desktop Installer: “Google Desktop is delivered using another new Google app, called Google Updater. This app is a meta installer for various Google Mac apps, including, as of today, Google Desktop, Earth, Notifier, and Picasa Uploader.”

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on April 4, 2007 1:39 PM

Short profile of Atul Gawande, surgeon and writer, one of the few New Yorker contributers I make a point of reading every single time I see his byline. "I now feel like writing is the most important thing I do. In some ways, it's harder than surgery. But I do think I've found a theme in trying to understand failure and what it means in the world we live in, and how we can improve at what we do." (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on April 4, 2007 12:23 PM

Full Belly, Happy Heart
Originally uploaded by kathryn.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from A Full Belly, on April 4, 2007 11:46 AM

In the wake of last week's NYT story on KCRW art critic Edward Goldman (and my post about that story)...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on April 4, 2007 11:42 AM

CNET interviews Hamaro Cantu [photo gallery]. Best known for his edible menu printed with a Canon inkjet, he's executive chef at Chicago's Moto and chairman of Cantu Designs where he's developing products that include multi-functional kitchen utensils and edible ads. Yes, edible ads.

You open up a magazine, there's a small plastic thing in there, and you rip it open. It looks like a cheeseburger, tastes like a cheeseburger, it's made from all organic ingredients. In some cases it doesn't contain the ingredients that we would associate with that picture. But the key thing you've got to remember with edible ads is it's got to be an allergen-free substrate. If it's not, then you go do a peanut ad, and there's real peanuts in there, then somebody's going to die.

Edible ads will fund the nutraceutical applications, which is where we take actual nutritional value, caloric value, amino acids and vitamins and all that good stuff. You put it on and now you have a piece of paper that has some sort of text on it...and you can eat it and digest it much quicker than sending someone a peanut butter bar in a starving country where people don't know what peanut butter bars are. They may not eat it or it may upset their digestive tract.

Novel and intriguing, but what about mouth feel and what about my still empty and growling stomach? I think it's going to take a lot more science before a piece of paper will make me feel as happy as an order of hot soup dumplings.

Originally posted by Alaina Browne from Serious Eats: Posts and Comments by Alaina Browne, on April 4, 2007 9:46 AM

Check out the new issue of OUT magazine. They've just released their first Gay Power list. Great, right? Sure, for openly gay stars like Ellen and Rosie, or mega music producer David Geffen, who tops the list, but maybe not so much for Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster who are gracing the mag's cover.

Sliver-haired fox Anderson and Oscar winner Jodie have never publicy admitted to being homosexual, though they've never denied it either.

"It's a bit of chutzpah on our part," acknowledges Out editor in chief Aaron Hicklin. But he says it wasn't just an attempt to stir up controversy. "The A-list and even B-list gays are mostly in the closet still, and those are the kinds of people we need to have on our cover. This is a way of addressing that."

It's a risky move on the part of the magazine. I'm excited to see what kind of response they get.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on April 4, 2007 9:31 AM

Brooklyn Drug Dealer Charged With Online Sex Assault [MyFox NY]
Brooklyn Food Group: They Eat Babies, Don't They? [Gawker]
Elderly Woman Killed In Brooklyn Hit and Run [NY Sun]
Bon Jovi Puts Up The House In Brooklyn [WCBS]
Phony veterinarian pleads insanity [NY Post]
Cobble Hill CSA Kicked to the Curb [Village Voice]
DiFara's reopens
Photo of DiFara's by aser

Originally posted by Brooklyn Record from Brooklyn Record, on April 4, 2007 9:29 AM

Didn't Cynthia Nixon get the memo that she'll be getting paid for the Sex and the City movie?

Cindy was caught with her hand in the trash last week when she picked a used plastic bag out of a Riverside Park garbage can!

"A woman got up off the bench and fished through the garbage to get my Ziploc," an eye-witness told The Daily News. "I was standing there in utter shock that Cynthia Nixon picked my trash out of the garbage. She then turns to me and asks, 'Is it okay to take this?' She then took her son's half-eaten snack and placed it in my used baggie."

Eww! Cynthia! You don't know where that woman's been. Even if I knew the person, something about a used baggie is gross. Toss the snack and get your kid something else -- the movie check is in the mail.

Originally posted by Tracy Pepey from Daily Blabber, on April 4, 2007 7:27 AM

Sonic and Mario in the same game? Is nothing sacred?

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Gamesblog, on April 4, 2007 4:41 AM

New York-based artist Ricardo Miranda Zuniga has been marking the new media art scene with his provocative body of work. His activist, socially-engaged practice reflects his own history: having been born of Nicaraguan immigrant parents, he experienced the discrimination that this group often suffers in the US, especially in a period defined by conservative values. His relation to Nicaragua was the starting point of Fallout (2005), a repository of personal perspectives concerning the Nicaraguan national identity. Also among his most well-known projects is Dentimundo (2005), consisting of an online resource documenting the landscape of Mexican border dentistry. The piece casts a powerful metaphor about labor forces in a global economy. Although many of his projects have a web dimension, he has expanded his practice beyond the internet and, over the last few years, has been combining computer-generated images with sculptures involving technology in large-scale installations. For example, Fallout: What's Left, is a development of the initial online presence of this work and was presented at Brooklyn's Momenta Art in late 2005. Here, the text submissions that were at the core of Fallout informed the propaganda-style posters featured at that artist-run space, and the work established a new trajectory to the ebb and flow of Latin American Marxist revolutions. His last public intervention was last summer at Berlin's Schlossplatz, a traditionally politicized site. There he co-organized a live event of experimental music that took over that famous plaza. Those that did not see it or have not yet connected with his ideas and process will have a chance to know him soon, as he will be part of the upcoming show, 'What War?,' that will open in the Fall at New York's White Box gallery. Until then, his website is a great way of discovering this fascinating artist. - Miguel Amado

http://www.ambriente.com/

Originally from Rhizome News, on April 4, 2007 3:00 AM

Gimme! Coffee hosted the North East Regional Barista Competition last week.  The overall barista skill level was quite impressive, especially given the fact that this was the first year the event has ever been held.

The event was a smashing success due in large part to the efforts of Erin McCarthy, our Lead Trainer, who handled all the logistics and rounded up a dozen or so volunteers to help.  (Let's have a round of applause for the volunteers!...)  MAD PROPS to Colleen Carey and Phoebe Aceto for their solid performances representing Gimme. 

Congratulations to Chris Deferio of the Carriage House Cafe for his first place finish.  "Campfire" was his signature drink and it included a hickory-smoked vanilla bean and shots of Leftist, among other things. 

This was my first time judging and it was rigorous.  Fortunately I was a sensory judge, so my job was simply to evaluate beverages.  Technical judging and performing in the capacity of Head Judge is a different ball of wax.

Best of luck to all who will be competing in Long Beach.  See y'all next year!

Originally posted by Kevin Cuddeback from gimme! coffee, on April 4, 2007 12:09 AM

"Helvetica sits, / watching you try the new fonts. / It knows you'll be back."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 3, 2007 7:02 PM

Walters Art Museum director Gary Vikan is blogging on his museum's website; Marc Spiegler, Andras Szanto, and Ian Charles...

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Modern Art Notes, on April 3, 2007 4:25 PM

Kudos to Paul Ford for the absolutely astounding revamp of Harpers.org.

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on April 3, 2007 3:50 PM

from the readme: "HACK TIL IT WORKS"  

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Waxy.org Links, on April 3, 2007 2:27 PM

Example of grays and blacks showing up as
purple/magenta under infrared-strong lighting.

I just started the Leica M8 Magenta Madness Flickr group.

About Leica M8 Magenta Madness

The Leica M8 has a sensor that is overly sensitive to infrared. This problem causes a magenta hue on certain blacks, particularly fabrics. The color is also visible directly in lights and on anything that is lit by strong infrared light.

There is a promised firmware update and IR/UV filters are just now shipping to early M8 customers with more to follow for the rest of us real soon now.

Until we get our filters, why don't we call this a "feature" and share our Leica M8 Magenta love with each other?

Comment - TrackBack

Originally posted by jito@kula.jp (Joi) from Joi Ito's Web, on April 3, 2007 2:08 PM

The Wall Street Journal has some really good blogs that link all over the Net, creating an interesting compilation on specific issues, including legal affairs or the energy industry. Recently i have been reading their Energy Roundup blog a lot.

But the irony is that great and helpful effort they put into networking out is to other blogs and articles just shows how closed their own site is. Because often when they link to their own articles, you are confronted with a log in request, because ah yes, only people who subscribe to the WSJ online or the paper can get most of their articles online.

That's their choice, but within the context of their blogs it seems to not be so smart. Maybe they should always include a disclaimer (subscription required) so you know what to expect. Knowing what to expect always seems to me to be one of the best ways to keep folks happy.

Originally posted by heather_green from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on April 3, 2007 11:31 AM

from the NY Times:

Uncle Ben, Board Chairman

 

By STUART ELLIOTT   

A racially charged advertising character, who for decades has been relegated to a minor role in the marketing of the products that still carry his name, is taking center stage in a campaign that gives him a makeover — Madison Avenue style — by promoting him to chairman of the company.

The character is Uncle Ben, the symbol for more than 60 years of the Uncle Ben’s line of rices and side dishes now sold by the food giant Mars. The challenges confronting Mars in reviving a character as racially fraught as Uncle Ben were evidenced in the reactions of experts to a redesigned Web site (unclebens.com), which went live this week.

“This is an interesting idea, but for me it still has a very high cringe factor,” said Luke Visconti, partner at Diversity Inc. Media in Newark, which publishes a magazine and Web site devoted to diversity in the workplace.

“There’s a lot of baggage associated with the image,” Mr. Visconti said, which the makeover “is glossing over.”

Uncle Ben, who first appeared in ads in 1946, is being reborn as Ben, an accomplished businessman with an opulent office, a busy schedule, an extensive travel itinerary and a penchant for sharing what the company calls his “grains of wisdom” about rice and life. A crucial aspect of his biography remains the same, though: He has no last name.

Vincent Howell, president for the food division of the Masterfoods USA unit of Mars, said that because consumers described Uncle Ben as having “a timeless element to him, we didn’t want to significantly change him.”

“What’s powerful to me is to show an African-American icon in a position of prominence and authority,” Mr. Howell said. “As an African-American, he makes me feel so proud.”

The previous reluctance to feature Uncle Ben prominently in ads stood in stark contrast to the way other human characters like Orville Redenbacher and Colonel Sanders personify their products. That reticence can be traced to the contentious history of Uncle Ben as the black face of a white company, wearing a bow tie evocative of servants and Pullman porters and bearing a title reflecting how white Southerners once used “uncle” and “aunt” as honorifics for older blacks because they refused to say “Mr.” and “Mrs.”

Before the civil rights movement took hold, marketers of food and household products often used racial and ethnic stereotypes in creating brand characters and mascots.

In addition to Uncle Ben, there was Aunt Jemima, who sold pancake mix in ads that sometimes had her exclaiming, “Tempt yo’ appetite;” a grinning black chef named Rastus, who represented Cream of Wheat hot cereal; the Gold Dust Twins, a pair of black urchins who peddled a soap powder for Lever Brothers; the Frito Bandito, who spoke in an exaggerated Mexican accent; and characters selling powdered drink mixes for Pillsbury under names like Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry — the latter baring buck teeth.

“The only time blacks were put into ads was when they were athletic, subservient or entertainers,” said Marilyn Kern Foxworth, the author of “Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”

After the start of the civil rights movement, such characters became “lightning rods” in a period when consumers started to want “images our children could look up to and emulate,” Ms. Kern Foxworth said.

As a result, most of those polarizing ad characters were banished when marketers — becoming more sensitive to the changing attitudes of consumers — realized they were no longer appropriate. A handful like Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima and the Cream of Wheat chef were redesigned and kept on, but in the unusual status of silent spokescharacters, removed from ads and reduced to staring mutely from packages.

Times, however, change, as evidenced by real-life figures as disparate as Wally Amos, the founder of Famous Amos cookies; Oprah Winfrey; and Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is running for president. In advertising, there are now black authority figures serving as spokesmen in multimillion-dollar campaigns, like Dennis Haysbert, for Allstate, and James Earl Jones, for Verizon.

That helped executives at Masterfoods and its advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, consider the risky step of reviving the character.

“There’s no doubt we realized we had a very powerful asset we were not using strongly enough,” Mr. Howell said.

So about 18 months ago, the company and agency decided “to reach out to our consumers” and gauge attitudes toward Uncle Ben, Mr. Howell said. There were no negative responses or references to the stereotyped aspects of the character, he said. Rather, the consumers “focused on positive images, quality, warmth, timelessness,” he added, and “the legend of Uncle Ben.”

That encouraged the idea that “we could bring him to life,” Mr. Howell said, sensitive to “the sorts of concerns that are important to me as an African-American.”

Joe Shands, a creative director at the Playa del Rey, Calif., office of TBWA/Chiat/Day, said the freedom to use the character to sell the Uncle Ben’s brand was a welcome change from the years when “all we’ve had to work with is a portrait.” “We wanted to know if there was something there we could utilize to talk about new products, existing products, the values of the company,” Mr. Shands said, adding that both black and white consumers described the character as someone “they know and love.”

“Through the magic of marketing, we’ve made him the chairman,” Mr. Shands said. Uncle Ben’s office, he said, is “reflective of a man with great wisdom who has done great things.”

Magazine ads in the campaign, which carries the theme “Ben knows best,” present a painting of the character in a gold frame with the chairman’s title affixed on a plaque.

The painting is also on display on the home page of the redesigned Web site, which offers a virtual tour of Ben’s office. Visitors can browse through his e-mail messages, examine his datebook and read his executive memorandums.

“It’s important consumers begin to hear from Uncle Ben,” said Mr. Howell of Masterfoods, who is based in Los Angeles.

Despite the character’s impressive new credentials, some advertising executives expressed skepticism that the campaign could avoid negative overtones.

The ads are “asking us to make the leap from Uncle Ben being someone who looks like a butler to overnight being a chairman of the board,” Ms. Kern Foxworth said. “It does not work for me.”

“I applaud them for the effort and trying to move forward,” she added, but the decision to keep the same portrait of Uncle Ben, bow tie and all, also dismayed her because “they’re trying so hard to hold onto something I’m trying so hard to get rid of.”

Howard Buford, chief executive at Prime Access in New York, an agency specializing in multicultural campaigns, said he gave the campaign’s creators some credit. “It’s potentially a very creative way to handle the baggage of old racial stereotypes as advertising icons,” he said, but “it’s going to take a lot of work to get it right and make it ring true.”

For instance, Mr. Buford said, noting all the “Ben” references in the ads, “Rarely do you have someone of that stature addressed by his first name” — and minus any signs of a surname.

Mr. Buford, who is a real-life black leader of a company, likened the promotion of Uncle Ben to the abrupt plot twists on TV series like “Benson” and “Designing Women,” when black characters in subservient roles one season became professionals the next.

“It’s nice that now, for the 21st century, they’re saying this icon can ‘own’ a company,” Mr. Buford said, “but they’re going to have to make him a whole person.”

Mr. Visconti of Diversity Inc. Media struck a similar chord. He said he would have turned Ben’s office into “a learning experience,” furnishing it with, for example, books by Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I’ve never been in the office of African-Americans of this era who didn’t have something in their office showing what it took to get them there,” Mr. Visconti said.

The actual biography of Uncle Ben is at variance with his fanciful new identity. According to Ms. Kern Foxworth’s book and other reference materials, there was a Ben — no surname survives — who was a Houston rice farmer renowned for the quality of his crops. During World War II, Gordon L. Harwell, a Texas food broker, supplied to the armed forces a special kind of white rice, cooked to preserve the nutrients, under the brand name Converted Rice.

In 1946, Mr. Harwell had dinner with a friend (or business partner) in Chicago (or Houston) and decided that a portrait of the maitre d’hotel of the restaurant, Frank Brown, could represent the brand, which was renamed Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice as it was being introduced to the consumer market.

In coming months, visitors to the Uncle Ben’s Web site will be able to discover new elements of the character, Mr. Howell said, like full-body digital versions of Uncle Ben and voice mail messages. The Web site was designed by an agency, Tequila, that is a sibling of TBWA/Chiat/Day, and the budget for the campaign, print and online, is estimated at $20 million. TBWA/Chiat/Day is part of the TBWA Worldwide unit of the Omnicom Group.

If the makeover for Uncle Ben is deemed successful, could there be similar changes in store for other racially charged characters?

Last month, the Cream of Wheat chef got a new owner when B&G Foods completed a $200 million deal to buy his brand, and its companion, Cream of Rice, from Kraft Foods.

“We’re doing consumer focus work right now to understand how important the character is,” said David L. Wenner, chief executive at B&G in Parsippany, N.J.

If any changes were to be made, “you would need to be very careful,” he added, “and you would want to do it with dignity.”

Originally posted by Jesus Park from lifeblog, on April 3, 2007 11:00 AM

david posted a photo:

Originally posted by david from david's Photos, on April 3, 2007 9:05 AM

"The write/here project offers a critical exploration of public and personal relationships with Hobart, installed across twenty-seven advertising billboards during Ten Days on the Island, 23 March until 01 April 2007.

"The write/here project is part community event, part temporary public art project and part media intervention.

The artists have been motivated to transform 27 city billboard spaces from common advertising messages into a vast urban narrative which reveals the intimate personal stories and marginalised micro-histories of people who call this city home.

Each billboard hosts a single narrative text, a personal response to life in Hobart. These texts were selected from responses recorded from different community groups; recent arrivals to Tasmania from the Middle East and West Africa, prison inmates, clients at nursing homes, college students, members of the Aboriginal community; and anonymous submissions from the general public."

Click here to view the project.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Wooster Collective, on April 3, 2007 8:43 AM

Seen in Barcelona two days ago:

Originally posted by Nicolas from pasta and vinegar, on April 3, 2007 6:05 AM

Correction to an earlier post, which read:

Should galleries not post documentation so people will get off their lazy butts and come to see actual work? Cory Arcangel also addresses this matter in a transcription of a recent talk he gave, but from the reverse vantage point--he describes work he's seen on the Internet to people sitting in "real space" without a computer as an audiovisual aid.

A friend noted that I am *completely* wrong about this--Arcangel's text reads like a transcription but is actually anecdotal, semi-stream of consciousness writing about the internet, to be read on the internet, but where links are perversely not used. My friend found this annoyingly unhelpful but I defended it, as someone who has spent six years worrying about whether hyperlinks were broken and/or up to date--after a while you just want to say, "ah--google it yourself." It's possible I may still not be getting this text so any theories are welcome.

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on April 3, 2007 5:19 AM

The secret ingredient in Jamba Juice's "non-dairy blend"? Milk! (via bb) (link)

Originally posted by (author unknown) from kottke.org, on April 3, 2007 12:37 AM

Williamsburg may be at the forefront of the energy independence movement. There appears to be 'a-bubblin' crude' leaking out of the ground at a construction site at Roebling and North 11th St. According to The New York Times, Brooklyn locals and bloggers have taken to referring to the site as the "Roebling Oil Field."

At the McCarren site, some obvious questions emerged: What is the black stuff, where did it come from, and is there more of it around the area, which is largely a former industrial zone? Chris Almskog, a geologist working for an environmental consultant hired by the developer, McCarren Park Mews L.L.C., said there are two culprits. First, workers on the site unearthed an empty heating oil tank with some contaminated soil around it. Second, he said, what appears to be “some kind of petroleum product†was leaking into the site from the north or northeast.

Curbed noted the oozing back in February with some scary pictures indicating it's more than just a little oil. Lots of pictures of the Roebling Oil Field here.

Originally posted by nyc_daveh from Gothamist Weekly Favorites, on April 2, 2007 10:53 PM

Congrats to Dave Winer on ten long years of blogging. I've long given him credit for inspiring me to start writing CamWorld way back in the heady days of 1997. Sometimes I wish we could go back 10 years and...

Originally posted by Cameron Barrett from CamWorld, on April 2, 2007 8:46 PM

a new data visualization method for representing document content by a radial space filling layout technique. "docuburst" aims to provide a more intuitive abstraction than those developed through statistical techniques.

the root node is shown as a circle. all other nodes are assigned to a sector of an annulus with angular width which is part of the parent node’s width, depending on the amount of word occurrences. highly coloured nodes have many occurrences, while almost transparent nodes have few occurrences.

see also: document icons & affective color bar & graphical text similarity.

[link: toronto.edu (PDF) & utoronto.ca (PDF)]

Originally posted by (author unknown) from information aesthetics, on April 2, 2007 8:11 PM

Word came down today that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration in the landmark global warming case of Massachusetts v. EPA. The ruling was 5-4, with conservatives dissenting and the crucial vote of Anthony Kennedy going with the ... non-conservatives.

Originally posted by Snow Wolf from Most Huffed News, on April 2, 2007 7:10 PM

We all knew/hoped that this was happening, right? Harmonix, MTV, and EA announce the project Harmonix has been working on since Guitar Hero II, and it's Rock Band.

Read the Gamasutra story, the 1up.com story, the Gamespot story, and the USA Today story.

This is fantastic; and I can see the possibilities of next-generation music games already on the horizon. Pretty soon I won't even need to go to the studio to practice, my bandmates and I will just pick up our remote instruments and get online.

By the way, I'm disappointed that none of these stories mention how dreamy Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos is. I expected more out of you, Gamespot.

Originally posted by jane from game girl advance, on April 2, 2007 6:37 PM

Mark your calendar: April 16-17 at Google. Everybody is invited, provided they bring along an APP implementation, client or server. This was just announced a couple of days ago, and as I write this there are already six nine client and seven nine server implementations signed up to be there and try to fill in the grid. Let’s drop some names, in alphabetical order: AOL, Flock, Google, IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, Oracle, O’Reilly, Six Apart, Sun. Um, have I mentioned that the APP is going to be huge?

Originally posted by (author unknown) from ongoing, on April 2, 2007 4:00 PM

It's National Peanut Butter & Jelly day, which means we're celebrating over at Serious Eats. I wrote an article, J: Jams, Jellies (and Preserves and Conserves), all about the difference between the many type of "jams" and how they're made.

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from Megnut, on April 2, 2007 2:18 PM

Sasha Frere-Jones bears witness to Prince's ageless funk in this week's New Yorker. As much as I admire Prince's gifts, it's Sasha's job I want.

Originally posted by Anil from Anil Dash, on April 2, 2007 2:02 PM

In the spirit of March Madness, The Washington Post decided to hold its own beer-tasting tournament. Our fair borough's own Brooklyn Lager dispatched 31 other competitors in the bracket, including heavyweight microbrews like Anchor Steam, Dogfish Head, and Saranac Pale Ale. While the study wasn't all that scientific (there were just five panelists, with varying degrees of expertise), it's still nice to see a Brooklyn brew make headlines.
Beer Madness [Washington Post]
Photo by Orimo via Flickr

Originally posted by Brooklyn Record from Brooklyn Record, on April 2, 2007 12:25 PM

I just like the idea of the The Modified Toy Orchestra.

Originally posted by (author unknown) from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 2, 2007 10:51 AM

(via) French company JazzMutant, released a multitouch controller for live performance named “Lemur“:

“The Lemur’s pioneering concept relies on JazzMutant’s unique patented multitouch technology. While conventional mice, touchscreens and tablets are limited to single contact points, the Lemur’s multi-touch capacity makes it possible to use all of your ten fingertips to accurately control multiple user-interface objects at once. The Lemur appeals to you straight away by its amazing responsiveness.

The continiously growing palette of configurable graphic objects enables you to design made-to-measure interfaces by using the free available JazzEditor.“

Some videos here.

Why do I blog this? an interesting example of a concrete project with a well-targeted audience.

Originally posted by Nicolas from pasta and vinegar, on April 1, 2007 1:54 PM

Cool little movie about printing with a letterpress - via Kottke.

And Web Typography Sucks (podcast - mp3) - a panel discussion on the state of online typography from SXSW Interactive.

It’s a good listen. Check out all the SXSW podcast discussions here in the archive. (I recommend especially the People Media discussion with John Batelle. It’s not illustration, but it’s good).

Related stuff:

Drawn wins Best Canadian Weblog at SXSW

Originally posted by Matt from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on April 1, 2007 11:59 AM

Goodling is far from just a mid-level aid who played a peripheral role in the purge. On the contrary, she's very well-connected and apparently one of the main drivers behind the process of selecting U.S. attorneys. Just look at how Legal Times describes Goodling's role in the interviews to select U.S.A. replacements: Interviews for U.S. Attorney replacements took place with only a handful of people: David Margolis, the department's top-ranking career official and a 40-plus year veteran; a member of the White House Counsel's Office; the head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys; and Goodling. Charles Miller, whom Gonzales appointed as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, interviewed with the panel in the fall of 2005. "They asked me what I'd done to support the president," Miller says. It wasn't a question Miller expected. He told them he'd voted for Bush. But a former prosecutor who did not get a U.S. Attorney post was left with a sour feeling after his interview in 2006. "Monica was in charge, in essence, of the interview," recalls the former supervisory assistant U.S. Attorney. "I walked out of that room and thought, 'Wow, I've just run into a buzz saw.'" It can't be surprising, then, that Goodling got her start in national politics in 1999 by working in the Republican National Committee's war room for political opposition research. There, she was working directly underneath Tim Griffin, then the deputy research director of the RNC who bragged that his shop made the bullets in the war against Democrats -- and later the administration's pick to be the U.S. attorney for eastern Arkansas. Goodling, of course, played a key role in helping install her old boss in the spot last year. But Goodling worked alongside a number of others who went on to hold prominent positions in the Justice Department:

Originally posted by mrJJ from Most Huffed News, on April 1, 2007 8:54 AM

Goodling is far from just a mid-level aid who played a peripheral role in the purge. On the contrary, she's very well-connected and apparently one of the main drivers behind the process of selecting U.S. attorneys. Just look at how Legal Times describes Goodling's role in the interviews to select U.S.A. replacements: Interviews for U.S. Attorney replacements took place with only a handful of people: David Margolis, the department's top-ranking career official and a 40-plus year veteran; a member of the White House Counsel's Office; the head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys; and Goodling. Charles Miller, whom Gonzales appointed as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, interviewed with the panel in the fall of 2005. "They asked me what I'd done to support the president," Miller says. It wasn't a question Miller expected. He told them he'd voted for Bush. But a former prosecutor who did not get a U.S. Attorney post was left with a sour feeling after his interview in 2006. "Monica was in charge, in essence, of the interview," recalls the former supervisory assistant U.S. Attorney. "I walked out of that room and thought, 'Wow, I've just run into a buzz saw.'" It can't be surprising, then, that Goodling got her start in national politics in 1999 by working in the Republican National Committee's war room for political opposition research. There, she was working directly underneath Tim Griffin, then the deputy research director of the RNC who bragged that his shop made the bullets in the war against Democrats -- and later the administration's pick to be the U.S. attorney for eastern Arkansas. Goodling, of course, played a key role in helping install her old boss in the spot last year. But Goodling worked alongside a number of others who went on to hold prominent positions in the Justice Department:

Originally posted by mrJJ from David Jacobs' Huffs, on April 1, 2007 8:54 AM

"In the past few months, I've come across a variety of work dealing, in one way or another, with compression of time as a method for visualization. Despite the wide range in intent, there are certain generalizable attributes in the work..."

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 1, 2007 3:51 AM