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