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"byCycle.org's mission is to promote alternative forms of transportation by building software tools that help users plan safe trips and making those tools freely available to the public. Our main project at this time is an online bicycle trip planner. We plan to add features that will make it easier to plan mixed mode trips using public transportation as well."
"Ratatouille is a nearly flawless piece of popular art," writes A. O. Scott of the New York Times, in a review accompanied by this picture:
Stephanie Zacharek in Salon calls it "one of the most beautiful animated pictures I've ever seen," in a review accompanied by this picture:
Any student or critic of art, popular or unpopular, knows why these statements are wrong and what's missing from these images and these movies (also Shrek, the Incredibles, Toy Story, and the rest): line. For reasons mostly of budget and a kind of unthinking rush to modernize, filmmakers have thrown out possibly the central tool in the history of visual expression, and replaced it with tricks of sfumato and chiaroscuro that give objects a rounded, "realistic" look but make everything in the frame bulbous and doughy. It would be like making music with no "attack transients" (sharp sounds at the beginning of notes that give them their texture and bite)--all music would become billowy and ersatz, like New Age music. Years after photography mooted realistic painting in the world of portraits and "scenes," these Tinseltown hacks persist in imitating photographic depth, using computer short cuts, and the results are often simply grotesque (see above--eyes without lashes that are merely encircled by reptilian lids).
It's not a fluke that Toy Story "pioneer" Jon Lasseter worships Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and has given his films a boost in the US. It's guilt from a fast food franchise owner at all the excellent cuisine he's displaced. Miyazaki is a poet of line.
So expressive! Whereas Pixar and its offspring have the smooth, slightly frozen look of '70s album cover illustration done with an airbrush:
A topic for another day: the Pixar movies are also the embodiment of Disney Values. The plucky little guy triumphs over adversity and learns a valuable lesson. Whereas in real life plucky little guys have boots in their faces all over town, while the big entities (such as entertainment conglomerates) grow more and more dominant.
"Encoded polylines store two types of encoded information for any given set of points: the latitude and longitudes of those points, and the maximum zoom levels to display these points. Levels are encoded using unsigned values, while point coordinates need to use signed values, so the encoding process is slightly different for each case."
hey, medical industry! counter the bad press with some Google ads!
A couple of weeks ago I said I wasn’t going to get a first-gen model, but seriously, did you really think I could stop myself? Really? While I’ve written extensively about the iPhone’s shortcomings (see here, and more recently here), we all know that whatever don’t-buy-anything willpower I may possess (OK, so I don’t have any of that) dissolves in the face of mobile gadgets, especially those from One Infinite Loop.
As hokey as it may sound, I just kind of felt like I was supposed to have one (and if you know me at all you saw that coming from a mile away). As one friend put it, “How else am I going to know if I should get one if I don’t have you to tell me?” I’m just playing my part. :)
Immediate impressions (likely colored by my “nerd high”)
- This first one is a biggie: I actually don’t have too much to complain about with regard to the keyboard. Can you believe that? I don’t know if it’s because of my SureType experience or what, but, well, it’s totally usable.
- There’s no denying that it’s absolutely gorgeous in every way — the screen, the design, the build quality — all wonderful.
- The UI is very responsive — it feels fast.
- Activation/setup through iTunes could not have gone faster/smoother.
- The “visual” voicemail feature is nice.
- It’s neat that text messages pop-up as you’re doing other things.
- The translucency used by some parts of the UI has to be seen in person to be fully appreciated.
- Everyone who doesn’t have one is going to want one (even if they don’t know it yet).
- I love having OS X in my pocket. ;)
- Safari is incredible.
- Google Reader finally has a decent mobile implementation and it has nothing to do with Google Reader. :P
- It’s got a phone!
Oh, and one last piece of advice for Motorola, Nokia, and Samsung: bow out gracefully.
Niggling complaints to follow.
But for one night they were two guys with a lot in common -- first in line to get an iPhone and wearing the same outfit."
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by stamen to iphone stevewozniak tenderloin apple - more about this bookmark...
Jason Kottke on Facebook.
Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore.
I just loved this film. Parker Posey is crazy, crazy, crazy in this film and I related to her a lot! I related so much it sort of scared me.
I don't want to tell you all to run out and see this movie because I know that what made me love it was how much I related to it. I know there are things wrong with it but I just decided that I did not care about those things. Once I made that decision, I just gave in to the film and adored it. Oh and I adored Parker Posey's clothes as well!
Oh, and not to objectify him but the French guy in this film is really hot! I wonder if French guys feel like they are stereotyped in US films. I am sure they do not mind.
Hello, iPhone.
Today we release our first application significant more so as a sign of whats to come from within our group:
If you have an iPhone, just navigate to this link:
http://rocketboom.com/iphone/Here is a demo of what it should look like(video flip not in demo):
http://rocketboom.com/iphone/demoConsidering we have never even tested it on an iPhone, we still have some work to do this weekend Im sure just to get v0.1 up to par.
This application is outstanding for us not because it's designed as yet another standalone Rocketboom player, but due to our primary intent to make it available as a player that anyone can easily customize for their own show.
There have been lots of things I've built for Rocketboom over the years, but Ive never had the resources to do anything with them or take them to the next level. I always wanted to for even more ideas come up than I could ever take action on.
Enter our superstar programmer Jamie Wilkinson who has been a saving grace the last few months. When we decided to take on this particular project about 3 days ago, Jamie put it together almost overnight. This weekend we'll test and spiffy up the player (still dedicated for Rocketboom) and next week, once we have a grip on the iphone standards, we hope to release the custom functionality so anyone can use it for their own show, or their own favorite shows.
I've always been really transparent about everything because I still dont believe in competition for the show, Rocketboom, but this is for a new business (along with RB and other shows in development) so the plan is to keep our other ideas under wraps until they are up. Nevertheless, we plan to work mostly within a GPL when spinning things off.
GNU General Public License Version 3. It occurs to me that book publishers stand to make good money from this; when does Totally Unauthorized GPLv3 Unleashed -- For Dummies! come out?
Check out Ars Technica's first unboxing photos of the iPhone as the review begins its writing process.
It's the day for the Apple iPhone to be released to the public, and the public is doing its job to feed into the media frenzy. If you're not on line waiting for the iPhone, you've either seen people waiting on line or mocked people waiting on line (while secretly coveting one, of course). WCBS has some photographs of people on line this morning - someone even brought his dog, which is named Beta! David Clayman, second in line, has been blogging about his waiting at iPhone Adventure. And earlier this week, on the luck of seven interviewed the person at the head of the line, Greg Packer, and Clayman - here's the video.
We'll be updating this post with updates, so let us know what you're seeing and hearing. So far, we hear that the line is only 10 deep at AT&T stores. Which makes sense, because who wants to be the dope waiting outside the AT&T store? And we'll be at the release tonight, possibly wearing body armor. Update: This comes in from Fox News. They were doing a live report with a Newsweek columnist Steven Levy, and someone just walked up during the interview and tried to grab his iPhone, but gets the mic instead. Looks like our prediction is very real. Gizmodo is using Justin.TV technology to live video broadcast from the SF line. Interesting if you want to experience the line, but from the comfort of your own home. CollegeHumor comes at us with their first in a series of iPhone spoofs, just in time for launch. This one is focused on the visual voice mail feature. WCBS 880 got some video of people at the head of the line at Fifth Avenue (video below). Apparently the people have been sponsored by companies to take advantage of the media attention - the people are either paid or wearing free-t-shirts. If a personal hygiene product isn't offering deodorants, we think a great opportunity is lost. Top photographs of people outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store by Matthew Stanton/CBS; lower photograph of the Soho Apple Store by your pal Matt on Flickr
Another Mac geotagging application to add to an already surprisingly large pile: Magrathea. Free (donationware), integrates with iLife and Flickr. Via Geotagging Flickr. Previously: More Mac Geotagging Utilities; Geophoto: Mac Geotagging Software; GPS, Geotagging Automator Actions for the Mac;...
Google Maps Is Changing the Way We See the World, from Wired's July issue, is a far-reaching state-of-the-topic article that looks at Google's mapmaking ventures and the tremendous amount of amateur mapmaking it's stimulated. Covers all the bases. Noteworthy: "Today,...
As much as we like to blame the RIAA for all the evils of the recording industry, leave it to my boy Prince to bring out the best in the execs over in the U.K. And mind you, these are music retailers, not even the people who, despite their extortionate ways, might actually have once helped an artist with production or distribution.
The Entertainment Retailers Association’s co-chairman Paul Quirk couldn’t help himself at an industry conference:
“It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday.”So, what’s the transgression that made this guy lash out at Prince, and threaten “artists who may be tempted to dally”? Prince is giving away free CDs with the Mail on Sunday newspaper. Oh, the humanity! And he’s done this before, of course; His 2004 CD Musicology was given away for free at all of his concerts that year, though U.S. retailers were a lot more quiet with their grumblings. I do like that the tension between the death of the record industry and the decline in circulation of print has pitted these two behemoths against each other, however.
Keep in mind — this isn’t some low-level spokesperson for this industry group, this was the co-chairman of the organization, one of the guys in charge. Thus, when I read this story, I realized the only one who could possibly be cackling more loudly than me was Prince himself. Aside from performing, I think his greatest joy in life is to make stodgy old guys so mad they get flustered and start sputtering.
Oh, and the new album Planet Earth features the return of Wendy & Lisa and will probably actually have some good songs, too. I am tempted to dally with it.
via migurski, via pownce - very matta-clark ish
Jerry Baker has been riding in the Northwest since the roads were dirt, back when shorts were wool, chamois were leather, and you switched gears by removing the wheel and flipping it around. Here’s Jerry with a new Davidson
Save Me :: Lauryn does Nina Simone
The saddest thing we've ever known? Nah, it's probably the drugs. Lee Hildebrand breaks down the fan revolt at Lauryn Hill's Oakland concert:Her hair in an unkempt rust-colored Afro, Hill wore a green-and-yellow plaid jacket that appeared to be made of wool and an ankle-length black skirt, looking not unlike a bag lady one might encounter at a taco truck on International Boulevard. She held a microphone in her right hand and a black handkerchief in her left, frequently wiping sweat from her face as she paced the stage.
At one point during the show, the singer tripped and fell, landing flat on her backside. "That's what I get for wearing high heels," she said as she rose to her feet.
...
Some concertgoers who had paid as much as $89.50 for tickets were requesting refunds even before Hill hit the stage -- two hours and 15 minutes after the concert's scheduled 7:30 start and 80 minutes after the opening act, Jupiter Rising, had finished its set...Other patrons started their exits during her first song, and the trickle turned to a flow after a speech late in the show during which the vocalist attempted to explain her new musical direction.
"When you're young, gifted and black -- and female -- you have to have a lot of endurance," she said, borrowing from the title of a song made famous by Nina Simone, a singer who'd had a somewhat similar meltdown more than three decades earlier.
"I can't fit into a stereotype that makes me comfortable for you," she added. "If that makes me feel uncomfortable to you, I need to find some new company."
In response to this previous post, Matthew Foster sends this great link to a series of publications dissecting the 2007 Farm Bill. Check the right hand column of the page under “Understanding the Farm Bill.” Matthew is a graphic designer at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and has done a fantastic job. The bold WPA-inspired graphics and typography make me want to pick up these reports — and evoke an nostalgic image of the American farmer back before it was big Agribusiness. The reports provide overviews of the Farm Bill and its implications as well as IATP’s policy recommendations to make the Farm Bill fairer for the U.S. and the world. A beautiful and compelling way to spread the word on an often overlooked and vitally central policy matter.
Update: Yeah, OK, so my current blog design uses WPA imagery, too. I like it.
The world of serious sandwiches suffered a terrible loss this week with the death of Al Langer at the ripe (or should I say cured) old age of 94. I got the news in an e-mail from David Sax, a Canadian food writer who is on a mission to save Jewish deli food.
Langer and his wife Jean founded Los Angeles' only great Jewish deli in 1947. His pastrami, made to his specifications, was a peppery, smokey ode to Jewish soul food. When I wrote favorably about Langer's pastrami in the New York Times, I was practically stoned by New York deli afficionados the next time I walked into Katz's. They might as well have put a "fatwa" on me.
Read more to discover what Nora Ephron, our poet laureate, said about Langer's. And find out how to get Langer's Pastrami shipped to your house so that you can have a Langer's pastrami party in Art's honor.
Placed on still-warm rye bread, Langer's pastrami made more than a "nice" sandwich. It was, as Nora Ephron, our pastrami poet laureate, wrote in the New Yorker, a "work of art." Here are a couple of choice Ephron Langer's pastrami bites:
"The rye bread, faintly sour, perfumed with caraway seeds, lightly dusted with cornmeal, is as good as any rye bread on the planet, and Langer's puts about seven ounces of pastrami on it, the proper proportion of meat to bread."
"The resulting sandwich, slathered with Gulden's mustard, is an exquisite combination of textures and tastes. It's soft but crispy, tender but chewy, peppery but sour, smoky but tangy. It's a symphony orchestra, different instruments brought together to play one perfect chord."
Ephron goes on to say that if Langer's was in New York, "it would be a shrine."
There are three great pastrami sandwiches to be had in this country:
Langer's, 704 S. Alvarado St., Los Angeles, CA, 213-483-8050
Katz's, 205 E. Houston Street (corner of Ludlow St.), New York, NY 212-254-2246
Ben's Best, 96-40 Queens Boulevard, Rego Park, Queens, New York, 718-897-1700
Rounding out my top six are: Carnegie Deli, Artie's, and Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Amazingly, you can get all three of my favorite pastramis by mail. But if you get it, try to buy a whole, uncut piece and then steam it slowly to approximate the real deli experience.
With great delis seemingly in peril all over North America it's heartening to know that Norm Langer, Art's son, will continue to run the business adhering to his father's high standards. Wherever you are this weekend, serious eaters, have a pastrami sandwich and a Dr. Brown's soda, and before you take your first bite, toast Art Langer, a true Serious Eater. And remember, if Art Langer lived to 94, maybe someday researchers will discover that pastrami has the same health benefits as red wine. Eat pastrami, live longer.
[pastrami photo taken by Ben Brown]
“Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. The New York Times weighs in with its review. The movie opens today and I can't wait to go back and see it again!
comments are open
Fresh from the Glastonbury festival, Lily Allen was formally arrested yesterday after turning herself into police. The singer had her photo taken and gave a DNA sample in the West End of London. Police said, "She was arrested in connection with an allegation of assault and bailed to return in July."The singer had previously been questioned by authorities about an incident where she allegedly karate kicked a paparazzi photographer outside a nightclub in March. The celebrity snapper complained to police that Lily "went berserk."
I would have loved to see Lily doing some Judo moves! Now why didn't someone get a picture of that?
Making Public Space. When it opened its doors to the community, Public School 503/506 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn became the largest public open space within more than 10 blocks. What started in 1999 as an afterschool program for youth has subsequently become a vibrant “Neighborhood Center,” engaging the local community and expanding far beyond the original vision.
Picking up on this success, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed opening 290 city schoolyards to the public during non-school hours as part of his PlaNYC 2030. But “simply unlocking the gates,” could spell disaster without learning from Sunset Park. The Center for New York City Affairs tells a brief history of the program and makes its own recommendations.
Earlier in the week, I made a comment in passing in a post about Vimeo:
you do know that Facebook is AOL 2.0, right?
A few people picked up on it and speculated what I might have meant by it. In reading those posts and poking around a bit, I found a post that Scott Heiferman made just after Facebook Platform launched in May:
While at Sony in 1994, I was sent to Virginia to learn how to build a Sony "app" on AOL (the #3 online service, behind Compuserve & Prodigy at the time) using AOL's proprietary "rainman" platform.
Fast forward to Facebook 2007 and see similarities: If you want access to their big base of users, develop something in their proprietary language for their people who live in their walled garden.
Scott pretty much nails it here. I've no doubt that Facebook is excited about their new platform (their userbase is big enough that companies feel like they have to develop for it) and it's a savvy move on their part, but I'm not so sure everyone else should be happy about it. What happens when Flickr and LinkedIn and Google and Microsoft and MySpace and YouTube and MetaFilter and Vimeo and Last.fm launch their platforms that you need to develop apps for in some proprietary language that's different for each platform? That gets expensive, time-consuming, and irritating. It's difficult enough to develop for OS X, Windows, and Linux simultaneously...imagine if you had 30 different platforms to develop for.
As it happens, we already have a platform on which anyone can communicate and collaborate with anyone else, individuals and companies can develop applications which can interoperate with one another through open and freely available tools, protocols, and interfaces. It's called the internet and it's more compelling than AOL was in 1994 and Facebook in 2007. Eventually, someone will come along and turn Facebook inside-out, so that instead of custom applications running on a platform in a walled garden, applications run on the internet, out in the open, and people can tie their social network into it if they want, with privacy controls, access levels, and alter-egos galore.
Right, so I feel totally swamped right now, mostly by e-mails and a general feeling of not enough time in the day.
Two big interesting things have happened in the past week: Tom and I went to O'Reilly's FOO Camp in Sebastopol, an invitation-only hootenany attended by a variety of nerds. Among other talks and sessions, Kevin Slavin gave an understated, epic rundown of Area/code's relationship to that one meme about how kids don't roam nearly as far from home as they used. Kevin neatly tied up a bunch of threads about location, technology, television, and media, and my life is the richer for it.
The other thing is that Pownce launched. Our own Shawn Allen built the Adobe AIR desktop client for this messaging application, and large chunks of the project were conceived and perfected in our office. I've been close to the work and participated in a number of API design discussions. There's a bunch of noise about how it's like-Twitter-this, and isn't-it-just-email-that, but it's a stake in the ground, fun to use, and has a bright future.
Die Hard 4 might be the perfect summer entertainment. I couldn't believe how much fun this movie was...we wanted to go again as soon as we got out.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
This instructional website at Nippon Ham teaches you how to turn a boring tube of meat into something that kind of resembles a bunny. Or a duck. Or a hippo. Or a sheep. Now you can fulfill that lifelong dream of creating a menagerie of flesh colored animals with just the power of a knife and a pack of ham-based weiners!
TED speaker and NYTimes tech columnist David Pogue (TED06 speech) has been testing the Apple iPhone, which will hit stores tomorrow Friday in the US, and he shows it all on video, feature by feature, dressed with classic Pogue fun. Or you can read his article. Summary: "much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed ... it does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."
Legendary New York eatery Shopsin's reopened last week, in its latest incarnation at the Essex Street Market. A few years back, after inhabiting the same cramped space in Greenwich Village for decades, Shopsin's moved a few blocks to a bigger space. When that outpost closed late last year, some observers feared it was the end of the road for Kenny, the beloved and eccentric restaurateur. If you want to know meet the man, you've got a couple of options: 1. Find no more than three of your closest friends and visit the new space, where you can sample any of Kenny's hundreds of menu choices, or 2. Visit Netflix and cue up Matt Mahurin's 2004 documentary, I Like Killing Flies, which depicts the final months of the original location and documents Kenny's unique approach to food, life, and hospitality. It's a fascinating portrait of a profound, profane iconoclast. It's safe to say that Kenny's one of the most amazing characters in the restaurant business. The DVD also goes on sale in late September at Amazon
and your finer video retailers.
Previously on Serious Eats: Last Brunch at Shopsin's
A report from Citizen Action of New York suggests that Manhattan juries have "strong racial and ethnic disparities in the people who show up to serve." While whites are just more than half of Manhattan's population, about three-quarters of juries are made up of whites. The group had some suggestions on how to change that:
The report recommends that these steps be taken by court officials on the state and local levels Manhattan County Clerk administers court selection in the borough): - broadening the state juror source list -- the list from which county court officials draw summoned for jury service -- to reflect the real racial and ethnic population of Manhattan, such means as adding names from city directories, and community organizations; - sending a higher proportion of qualifications questionnaires and summonses to communities a higher proportion of people of color and Hispanics, to compensate for their lower response rates; - updating juror source list addresses more frequently, from annually to semi-annually, compensate for the higher mobility of people of color and Hispanics; and - increasing state regulation of county use of juror source lists to ensure that the pool of prospective jurors available for a particular trial is racially and ethically balanced.The NY Times spoke to the County Clerk, Norman Goodman, who said "personal injury lawyers had complained to him about the high proportion of white professionals serving on juries" because working-class juries tend "to be more generous in granting financial damages to plaintiffs." Goodman also said sending more notices to certain neighborhoods might be unconstitutional. Have you noticed if juries you've served on are particularly white? Gothamist had jury duty last year, and the waiting room seemed very diverse, as did the pool that was called in.
I thought about trying to coordinate another NYC visit with the Boredoms 77 Boa Drum Show, but it won’t work out. You east coasters should go since it’s free.
Legendary Japanese iconcolasts BOREDOMS, a visionary band who has spent over twenty years pushing itself toward new frontiers, will stage the most extraordinary concert of their career on July 7, 2007. A once-in-a-lifetime performance featuring 77 drummers, and meant to be performed just once (on 7/7/07), BOREDOMS will create 77BOADRUM as a free show in the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park section of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Located directly on the East River and majestically framed by the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park section of Brooklyn Bridge Park provides an arresting stage for this audacious performance.
A Comicbook Orange is really hitting its stride now, so I’m embedding it again. I honestly don’t know what more comic book fans would need. Girl in Wonder Woman costume? Check. The same girl talking straight in the next segment about why a new comic sucks? Check check. Go, Casey! Everyone else, spread the word. If you’re trying to make your limited comic-buying funds stretch and only get the good stuff, if you want to find out why people like comics, or if you just want to be entertained for a few minutes — you should be watching this show.
Apple announced this morning that customers at its stores will be able to get twice as many iPhones as those at AT&T stores. Well okay, maybe that's just two per person. But still.
As a sure sign that cognitive improvement games have gone mainstream, Nicole Kidman has been announced as the new face of Nintendo's latest 'brain training' title.
The idea that mental training will actually help boost your mental skills is relatively new.
It was traditionally thought that the mind and brain just start losing their edge after young adulthood and your best hope was to learn to use your remaining resources more effectively as you age.
However, studies started to appear in the late 1990s suggesting that practicing certain tasks could act as a sort of 'mental workout', actually improving mental abilities directly in people with disorders like Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.
Most people weren't fully convinced of the benefits in healthy older people until a key study was published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association that showed modest but reliable improvements, even after five years.
The effects were typically small (often too small to be picked up without standard tests), but interestingly, the training also had a knock-on effect on the participants' ability to look after themselves effectively on a day-to-day basis.
It seems that cognitive training may have a stronger effect in people with mental impairments. A recent review of 17 studies found a positive effect on mental abilities, everyday activities and mood in people with Alzheimer's.
However, as far as I know, no controlled trials have ever been published on any off-the-shelf 'brain training' game, including Nintendo's. You'd guess from the medical literature that they might have a similar effect, but it's yet to be shown for sure.
Link to BBC News article 'Kidman to be new face of Nintendo'.
Link to JAMA article 'Long-term Effects of Cognitive Training...'
MacRumors has confirmed that the forthcoming version of iTunes Music Store.
Users will be able to right-click on purchased songs and select "Make into Ringtone," which will give them a small audio workspace to select the 30 seconds they want to use as a new ringtone.
According to MacRumors, the use of this feature will cost $.99 per track--a fee which goes toward licensing the music for your mobile phone. That means the total fee for a ringtone is $1.98.
[via Crave]
