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Girl on phone: Why? So you can go home and read Vonnegut and be depressed?
Girl on phone: (Long Pause from 9th floor to 4th floor)
Girl on phone: Oh. My. God. Martin you are not being artistic you are being antisocial and gloomy. LIKE ALWAYS.
Girl on phone: You stay home with Kilgore Trout. I'm going to a party. I'm eating ice cream. I'm going to join the human race. Goodbye Martin.
Filed under: overheard
Tags: elevators, Kurt Vonnegut, urban drama
While waiting in line tonight, I was totally thrilled to see the TypePad logo featured in the video playing on the giant iPhone. And now -- with my very first iPhone -- I finally get to use the application that our team worked so hard to bring to our users. Great work, guys and gals!
This is what happens when things get ugly in the sandbox:
In the last picture he looks like he is thinking, "But I defended myself, Mommy. You should see BOTH his eyes!"
DON'T mess with my son on the playground!
*grin*
What you are looking at is actually what happens to Jonah when he gets a bug bite. Each bite turns into a large hive (about two inches), and his pediatrician has instructed us to give him Zyrtec and Benadryl around the clock at the first sign of a hive until symptoms subside. We knew it was only a matter of time before he was bitten on his face. You can see the actual bite to the right of the swelling, and the swelling extends across the tissue plane under the eye.
I just finished reading the Jason Calacanis blogging resignation letter and can't help but be struck by the about face of one of the guys who-- love him or hate him-- did a lot to put professional blogging on the map. (I know, Paul Carr, don't hate me...) Jason always openly talked about how he loved that the Internet gave him such a big megaphone that he didn't have to play by anyone else's rules-- including reporters like me!
It hearkened back to this post I wrote a few weeks ago.
An excerpt in case you don't want to click:
"On the days I blog heavily, traffic goes way up. Especially if I weigh in on the Valley obsession of the day. It's seductive to just do that everyday. But is that really adding value and building something different? Maybe not. I recently read something from Michael Arrington addressing how TechCrunch's "community" had changed. (Sorry....can't find the link this second.) He essentially said as an audience grows it inevitably gets diluted and the trolls, spammers etc come in. I really love my blog audience. I get great comments from people I know and don't know. Occasional shocking comment from Fake Steve Jobs aside, my comments tend to be interesting, relevant conversations. I already write for two mass properties in BusinessWeek and TechTicker...suddenly I'm seeing the beauty in staying small. I'm not at a point where I'm trying to monetize this blog, but I wonder if a smaller community ever has an endemic value over sheer size of a mass community? I'm not talking about a niche-- because niches can still be mass when there are more than 1 billion people online."
I've been thinking about this a lot since with the confluence between my blog, my Yahoo show, and my book tour. My blog traffic was doubling month-over-month from a far higher base than I expected when I launched it earlier this year. But when life got complex and I started posting less for a while, it fell. If you're a goal oriented person, it's hard to be OK with that. Metrics equal validation to me more than money ever will. But I was Ok with it, for the same reason I wrote above and the same reason Jason says in his self-consciously melodramatic, but -- at its core-- heartfelt post.
There's obviously a role for mega blogs. But something about smaller blogs is better for me, at least now. It's a big way blogging is different from other media. I've worked and small and large print publications and there aren't truthfully a lot of benefits to small, aside from it being a better learning environment when you are first starting out.
But with blogs it's about interaction and conversation and somehow you lose the best of that when you get big. It's the same reason I prefer to have dinner with a source, rather than go to a party or conference. It's not efficient reporting, but it always yields better reporting. I know I make jokes about TechTicker commenters a lot. And I'm sorry to those of you who aren't part of the problem, but the spammer/troll/abusive hater that has become the stereotype of any Yahoo chat room just ruins it for me. As we've grown, I just don't spend as much time reading comments that I used to devour in the early Tech Ticker days.
This site, on the other hand, with its comparatively atom-sized audience is an unending source of fascinating conversation for me. I feel genuine affection for so many regular sarahlacy.com commenters who I have never met-- I know their user names and get excited when I see new comments from them. I know what resonates with some readers, and sometimes write posts because I can't wait to see how they respond. It's like having my own salon dinner efficiently via the web. (Although one where I'm doing too much of the talking, which is why I always welcome guest posts! hint, hint) I guess the point is I don't care if this blog never makes money. I don't want to lose that vibe.
When I think about the most personally fulfilling parts of my career now, it tends to go in reverse order from mass-to-small-- which is funny because I spent so much of my career wanting to get on bigger and bigger platforms. My favorite role is author. And let me tell you first hand: fewer people read books than any other medium, even best-selling books. My second most personally fulfilling role is writing on this blog. Part of that is a stage of life thing after more than a decade writing for other people. My third is probably BusinessWeek and fourth is probably Yahoo-- even though that show puts me in front of four times the audience of CNBC and is by far my biggest platform. Now, bear in mind, I LOVE my job on TechTicker -- particularly because it's so different than the rest of my career and I love my co-workers-- so this is all relative. But in many ways I am just more comfortable writing than being on camera. I was supposed to be on TV today talking about the iPhone, which was cool and good for the whole brand thing. But when they canceled I have to say part of me was relieved I could sit on the couch and blog in jeans, an old shirt my husband used to wear all the time when he was first courting me and a baseball cap. Most importantly: No makeup!
Anyway, as you can see my reasons are all very personal and that was why I was struck to see Jason point to many of the same things. (Well, not the make up and husband's old shirt part....that I know of...) It made me wonder if we're at some kind of greater cultural blogging crossroads. I remember when Six Apart launched Vox it talked about wanting to take the nastiness out of blogging, or being the place bloggers connect with a smaller group of peers-- like the hole-in-the-wall restaurant that chefs all go to after hours.
Will we see a return to small or the emergence of some newer digital medium to be what blogs once were? And is there any new concept of monetization that could reflect the value of small? In other words: Bloggers have proven they can build audiences just as huge as mainstream publications. Now can we prove we can build better ones and still be viable businesses?
UPDATE: publicist just called. TV back on. make-up here I come!! :)
As seen in The New York Times, Mike's photo of folks in line for their new iPhones. I had no idea that Buy n Large sold iPhones! Very cool.
Yesterday, Omar Minaya announced that Moises Alou could realistically miss the remainder of the season should he chose to have surgery on his torn hamstring.
Meanwhile, as I mentioned on SNY’s The Wheel House yesterday, which you can watch by clicking here, it would be wise for the Mets to approach this year’s Trade Deadline assuming Ryan Church will miss additional time this season, even if he returns healthy from his current stint on the disabled list.
And so, during his talk with reporters, Minaya said:
“Right now, we’re going to give the guys we have an opportunity. But, you have to continue to look at things and see if there’s somebody out there that we feel is an upgrade…Are we going to be in the marketplace looking for guys to improve? Yes, but it has to be the right guy.”
That said, in the New York Post, Joel Sherman recently wrote that names such as OF-1B Xavier Nady, OF Raul Ibanez, OF Randy Winn and OF Adam Dunn are will be most associated with the Mets.
Sherman also mentions that Minaya might be willing to take on a bloated contract, if it helped to reduce the value of the prospect needed to acquire a corner outfielder.
The sense I get from people in Seattle and San Francisco is that neither the Mariners nor Giants are eager to trade Winn or Ibanez, who are both relatively affordable, under contract and are both still useful and productive players.
The buzz from Cincinnati indicates that the market for Dunn is surprisingly quiet. Additionally, Dunn will likely be a Type-A Free Agent, and could net the Reds two draft picks, assuming he is not re-signed to an extension - in short, the two draft picks could end up being far more valuable than the type of prospect a team will trade for Dunn today. What’s more, the word around baseball paints Dunn as an apathetic strike-out machine, who, while he occasionally walks, is more or less useless in the field, and so he will bring more in name recognition than actual results.
As for Nady, who is the player I would like the Mets to
acquire, and the name that is mentioned most to me by other fans, at this point, from what I can gather, the Pirates are not feeling pressure to trade him.
In fact, the buzz from Atlanta suggests that the Pirates recently asked for at least one top position prospect, such as SS Brent Lillibridge. In terms of the Mets, I believe Nady would likely cost a package including Fernando Martinez, or Mike Carp, Jon Neise and probably another pitching prospect.
There is no indication that the Pirates will ever accept a package built around Aaron Heilman, as so many fans like suggest.
Regarding the free agent market, Omar Minaya essentially ruled out Barry Bonds while speaking to WFAN earlier this week. What’s more, according to a recent report by Ken Davidoff in Newsday, citing an e-mail from Minaya, the Mets are not interested in Kenny Lofton either.
Lastly, according to SI.com’s Jon Heyman,
speaking yesterday on SNY’s Pre-Game show, the Mets are most interested in 1B-OF Juan Rivera, who is hitting just .194 with three home runs in 34 games for the Angels.
In 2006, Rivera hit .310 with 24 HR and 85 RBI, but has struggled to return to that level of production ever since.
Rivera can be a free agent at the end of this season.
Obama reportedly raised $30 million in June.
Late Update: Not so fast, says the Obama camp, which initially refused to comment on the WSJ's $30 million report. Now it's saying the number is "way off the mark."
I found a moving interview with Hilla Becher, which, unfortunately, only appears to be available in German. I translated some of the passages that struck me below.
Q: You spent your life photographing industrial memorials: Hundreds of furnaces, hundreds of water towers, hundreds of coal bunkers. Is this about being complete?
A: At the end of his life, Bernd often said: Hilla, we haven't finished the job. And then we almost started fighting because I said: What do you think? We can't finish our job, since it's infinite.
Q: Was it difficult for him to accept this?
A: I think it was. He never managed to tell me what he meant by "finished". We knew we would not be able to photograph everything. In Russia, for example, it turned out to be too difficult, we did not manage to get permission to work there.
Q: Were there family photos at the Becher's house, for example at Christmas?
A: That didn't exist with Bernd, but I always had a small camera on me. It was important for me, to keep memories.
Q: Who did you take pictures of?
A: Our son, my mother, just family. Doing group portraits was my favourite thing to do. But I did not just shoot left and right but arranged everybody: the first row sitting down, the second row standing, the third row [standing] on a table. Very conventional.
Q: Why was your husband not interested in such photos?
A: He rejected them because he was not interested in taking them. Actually, he was never interested in photography.
Q: That is an unusual statement about a man who spent his whole life on it.
A: Originally, Bernd did sketches. In the beginning, he sketched industrial landscapes. But he never managed to finish his work, because he was so precise. Often the object was demolished right in front of his eyes [...] The demolishing, the decay happened faster than he could sketch it.
Q: So then he took photos?
A: Right. He borrowed a 35mm camera and took photos, to use them for his sketches. That's how it started, photography as the means to an end.
[...]
Q: Did you sometimes go on vacation together?
A: A real vacation, two or three weeks, that we never had. Bernd was not interested in that at all. I am currently trying to make up for it. My son is helping me. Just a little while ago we went to Cuba together.
She said the city was spending $700,000 to create the string of blocklong plazas from 42nd to 35th Streets. That includes painting the bike lane green, buying the chairs, tables, benches, umbrellas and planters and applying a coat of small-grained gravel mixed with epoxy onto the pedestrian areas, which will set them off from both the street and the bicycle path.Looks like Bloomberg is going ahead with his battle against Manhattan car traffic without Albany's help. I can think of several more areas that could benefit from a full or partial closure...Bleecker St would make a great pedestrian mall, as would any number of streets in Chinatown. So would St. Mark's in the East Village. And while we're at it, close all the streets in Central Park to cars (except the transverses).
(link)
I've been wondering about this for weeks -- especially since the May fundraising totals came out, which showed McCain and Obama roughly even for that month. Just how much money has Barack Obama been raising since the end of the primaries? After all, if he's going to bring in these astronomical sums everyone's talking about there aren't that many months left. He's got to start putting up some big, big monthly totals.
This piece in tomorrow's Post suggests that the strain of raising money to retire Clinton's debt and some continuing resistance from Clinton's donors (to give to Obama's campaign) has put the Obama machine under some pressure.
We don't know Obama's totals. And obviously having difficulties, if that's what's happening, has to be understood in the context of the massive totals they're planning on bringing in.
But one thing that has occurred to me recently is the very different tempo of small donor fundraising, or at least the sense of it I get watching from my vantage point. There are established networks for big dollar giving. It has a bit more of a command and control quality. But small dollar giving seems highly dependent on the intensity of the moment and the spikes of the campaign cycle. During the heat of the Obama-Clinton battle, giving money was one of the most direct ways supporters around the country could participate in the fight -- except when the campaign trundled into their states. And that applies to both campaigns since, by any standard other than up against Obama, Clinton's 2008 monthly numbers were astounding too.
All time is precious in a general election cycle. But in relative terms we're in a bit of a downtime now, a lull. People may support Obama every bit as much as they did in February. But my feel of the situation is that people are taking a bit of a breather. And that may not change until the conventions, which are still almost two months off.
Perhaps too, when you hear that Obama's going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, that the sense of participation you get from sending in your $25 isn't quite as great.
I should make explicitly clear that I've made no real study of the small donor giving. These are more questions and impressions I have from my perch running TPM. But I wonder if this isn't a limitation of the small-donor model that has not been sufficiently appreciated.
Filed under: Blogging, iPhone, App Store
I've been blogging for way too long, and for a good chunk of that time my personal blog has been hosted on Six Apart's TypePad. I'm a big fan of the service (though some might recall it was a little flakey in the early days, I'm happy to report I can recall no major downtime in the last 2 years) and that's why I was very excited to see TypePad was coming out with an iPhone native blogging app.
Typepad Mobile, as it is called within the program itself, is available now on the App Store for the low, low price of free (of course, Typepad isn't a free service). It is a blogging client that lets you post directly to your TypePad blog from your iPhone as you might have guessed from the name. You can also snap a picture with your iPhone's camera and post that to your blog, or you can post a photo from your iPhone's photo roll in just a few clicks.
During the course of my testing this app was very zippy, and it did everything I would expect from a 1.0 release. I hope to see some more blog management features in future updates (being able to approve/delete comments would be very cool).
Check out this gallery for a a quick tour of this neat little app.
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"because you insisted, here's the unedited screaming version."
Filed under: iPhone
Back at the introduction of the iPhone (was it only just over a year ago? How the time flies) we all cast a jaundiced eye at Apple's "develop for the Web" philosophy for extending the platform, while simultaneously wondering if Apple might provide a true SDK for the device of the future; I seem to recall a conversation back on an early talkcast where a couple of people (yours truly included) stated for the record that a Apple SDK was an inevitability, with the only question being exactly when.
Now, on the cusp of the official App Store and 2.0 firmware launch and ensuing flood of iPhone/iPod touch native applications, we owe a moment of acknowledgment to the folks who refused to take "Safari" for an answer when it came to making iPhone applications: the jailbreakers and community toolchain developers.
Not to take anything away from the diligent work of the Mobile Safari application developers -- many of their results, including TUAW fave Hahlo, stand up well against desktop apps -- but it's hard not to feel some degree of astonishment when a few (sometimes fractious) loosely-affiliated bands of hackers, with some help from our friends, start from the barest hints of access to the iPhone's system and create castles floating on air.
Scores of applications (some great, some not-so) including music, games, dictionaries, utilities and not one but two complete or nearly-so ports of the BSD subsystem, complete with sophisticated software deployment capabilities, are currently available for jailbroken iPhones and iPod touch handhelds. This is a notable body of work, and what makes it more surprising is that it's been done over the course of one year, absent any support from the device manufacturer (to say nothing of active discouragement) and with no particular financial incentive to proceed. This is hacking in the original, non-pejorative sense: diving into the innards of the coolest gadget under the sun to figure out how it works and how far you can take it.
As exciting as the App Store is, there's a bit of wistfullness amidst the hype and enthusiasm; we are replacing the grimy, rough-edged and self-sustaining Times Square of iPhone application development with the sanitized, "Disney/Apple" reworking of the original. Knowing that a substantial fraction of the jailbreak app developers are under 18 and cannot legitimately join the authorized development program until they come of age, we can only hope that the energy and enthusiasm they brought to the iPhone will not be lost to another mobile platform.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Rick Linklater gives a nice list of things about Two-Lane Blacktop that he loves on the original Alamo blog:[...] Because unlike other films of the era with the designer alienation of the drug culture and the war protesters, this movie is about the alienation of everybody else, like Robert Frank's [The Americans] come alive [...]
Two-Lane Blacktop and The Shooting will both be playing at the alamo on the 23rd. Director Monte Hellman will be in attendence.
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Austin: In honor of Monte Hellman and TWO LANE BLACKTOP, an appreciation by Richard Linklater.
The newest issue of CoroCoro is out and fans have plastered scans all over the Internet of its article on Pokemon Platinum. What follows is a break down of the important nuggets of information contained therein.
- Pokémon Platinum is set for a September 13th 2008 release in Japan
- You have to face Team Galactic once more, but it seems their plans and HQ have been stepped up a fair bit
- The Battle Frontier returns and takes place in the Fight Area in Sinnoh. There are different areas in the Battle Frontier, their battle quirks are not yet known. However, it does still contain the Battle Tower
- The WiFi area has been enhanced with various areas which support up to 20 people at any one time
- The Poffin making has taken a step up and has a new feature that involves a Swalot machine. You essentially throw berries into its mouth. This can be done over WiFi in the new WiFi area
- The Battle Recorder, an item seen on the Shaymin pictures last week, allows you to record battles that you hold and share them with your friends. This is done at the new & improved GTS in Jubilife City, which has a bigger global terminal
- There is also confirmation of the Shaymin form changes and a note about the Giratina ones. It appears that like in the movie, Giratina’s Origin Forme can only be used in the Torn World, and its in its Another Forme elsewhere. It is unknown if there will be an item to use to keep it in its Origin Forme, but the main method will be revealed next month
- Shaymin Sky Forme’s ability is Serene Grace. It appears to be more focused in Speed and Special Attack and knows the move Air Slash.
- Giratina’s Origin Forme’s ability is Levitate.
- The pictures also indicate and confirm new sprites for each Pokémon including Bidoof, Giratina’s Another Forme & Shaymin’s Land Forme
- Confirmation of the new characters shown last month, one is a member of Team Galactic, and the other is part of an international police force and is hunting Team Galactic
With a September release date I expect an American release date around March 2009.
The inclusion of a Battle Park (as in Emerald) is going to be great! Couple that with Wi-Fi in the Underground and I expect Platinum to sell very well indeed.
As I get more information I will post it.
via [serebii]
You Know It, Baby
Photo by Donna Ruhlman
Summer is flying by too quickly and I've been buried in all the good things--work and family and friends and food. Ma was here and I showed her the Iron Chef show with Symon v. Bloomfield and she was so enamoured of Symon's idea of putting a yolk inside pasta, I made some for her (above, on a bed of sheep's milk ricotta I got from Paul Minnillo at Baricelli Inn, seasoned with citrus and espelette), served with a simple brown butter sauce. Sooo. Good . Yolk spills out into the butter. Then off to NYC to judge an Iron Chef competition, then back home on the 4th for Old Chicago's on the grill at my Dad's and fireworks viewed from the first fairway of a local course, then Pardus, my chef was here, for reasons I won't reveal now, but we cooked a meal that is worth a blog post on it's own. His visit of course required a two day restoration of the body and soul before work began again.
Yesterday I was with Symon as he was making some of his own egg-yolk-only pasta dough and he said something interesting that I'd never thought about. He made it very dry and scarcely kneaded it. I believe in kneading for at least ten minutes till it's satiny smooth, but Symon believes that the key to great texture is in not creating too much of a gluten network (which happens by kneading) so he treated it practically like a pie dough. It makes sense. I don't know if I'm willing to give up that satiny pasta dough, but it's an interesting idea, and his ravioli were very tender. Is this a common thing? Not kneading?
For those of you wanting to try an egg yolk ravioli, they're very easy. Marcella Hazan recommends a cup of flour and two eggs to make a pasta dough, mixed and kneaded till it's satiny, about ten minutes. While it's resting in plastic wrap in the fridge, mix into a cup of ricotta, citrus zest (any kind you like, lemon and orange are great, maybe a little juice), black pepper, espelette if you have it, some chives or minced shallot if you have it, kosher salt (and taste it for to make sure it's delicious). Make a pillow on the pasta for the yolk, put a little cheese on top to protect the yolk, and fold the pasta over it, using water or egg wash to seal the pasta. Boil gently for a few minutes and serve with a brown butter and some julienned parsley. The yellow ooze is worth the effort.
Posted by Robert Hamilton and David Singleton, Google Mobile Team
Our first downloadable iPhone application is here. It's free, and it makes searching faster and easier. It's never as easy to type on a mobile phone as on a full keyboard and the mobile network is rarely as fast as a desktop connection. So Google Mobile App starts working as soon as you type. Smart features mean you'll get what you're looking for in fewer key presses than before. For instance, we've added the power of suggest (type "lost in" and one touch completes "lost in translation") and My Location (type "coffee" and one touch shows cafes right where you are on a map) to help you search.
We've also brought Google search to your iPhone's address book to make it easy to contact the people you call or text most often. To learn more and see a video showing the App in action, check out this post on the Google Mobile Blog.
U.S. users can get Google Mobile App right now. Tap the App Store icon on your iPhone, or open iTunes, and search for 'Google Mobile App'. (You need to have the latest iPhone software update to see it.)
I've had one of the biggest traffic days in months, post the whole Playboy mention. Of course, anyone coming here looking for sexy photos was probably disappointed to read about nothing but my book tour!
I'm a little surprised people have balked so much at the Playboy thing. Clearly, I would never consider actually posing nude and assume most of the girls on the list wouldn't either. (No, TechCrunch commenters, not even for a lot of money. Seriously, what is wrong with men? Just because they'll get naked at the drop of a hat they think it's somehow irresistible?) But that's not all Playboy is about either. Loads of politicians, celebrities, business people have been interviewed and featured in Playboy before, even if no one really reads it for the articles.
And look at what Playboy actually said about me:
"Sarah cut her teeth as a Silicon Valley reporter for publications such as Business Week (where she continues to write their online tech column Valley Girl), as well as the new book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good (Gotham) that chronicles the rise of Web 2.0. But hiding behind all that smart writing is a curvy brunette that Silicon blog Valleywag.com declared "the hottest reporter in the tech world." Luckily, Sarah's new vlogging gig at Yahoo! Finance's Tech Ticker lets us enjoy her journalistic talents from a more visual perspective."
That is far less objectifying than what people write in the comments on my Yahoo show DAILY! Even some of the blogs that derisively wrote about Playboy's move were far more objectifying in their commentary. Maybe a few years ago I would have been scandalized, but I guess I've just been so desensitized by everything that's been written about me, the above mini-profile just sounds like a compliment. (Hello, Fake Steve Jobs, I'm talking to you!) Playboy doesn't insinuate any of us only have jobs for our looks and had a generally respectful tone in all of the pieces. Aren't we taking ourselves a little too seriously if we get upset about it? Also, it's Playboy! That's what they do! It's not like Newsweek wrote the piece.
I guess my main reaction was just laughter. It never ceases to amaze me that anyone could describe someone holding one of the least sexy jobs in the world-- a business reporter-- as somehow professionally sexy. And I guess others agree since my vote tally is so low! I'm guessing it's definitely a BusinessWeek first. I just hope they're not embarrassed, because I'm certainly not.
The Mets (48–44) defeated the Giants (39–53) by the score of 7 to 3 today, completing a three-game sweep.
The Mets have won six in a row, and eight of their last 11 games.
For a boxscore, recap, stats, etc., go to SNY.tv.
The Mets left men on first and second in the second inning. But, in the same situation one inning later, Carlos Beltran drove home Argenis Reyes, which was followed by a bases-clearing double from Fernando Tatis. The best part of the play was Beltran, totally blowing off a stop sign from third base coach Luis Aguayo.
- In the fifth, John Maine, who was wild all day, erased his previous 105 pitches by letting the game become tied at three. It’s a shame, because he was striking batters out left and right. However, he had no command, and continues to go full on every batter, then goes through a foul-ball parade, thus jacking up his pitch count to a point where, even if he’s doing well, he must leave the game after five innings. I’m a bit worried about Maine, because he just doesn’t look right, mechanically speaking. Hopefully getting a few days off during the break will help.
- Reyes, Argenis that is, nearly drove in a run with a hit in the gap during the sixth inning, but Randy Winn ran it down for an out. Nice catch.
- Speaking of nice catches, he made a nice pick up on a potential bunt, then flipped the ball with ease to Carlos Delgado for an out.
- Following a lead-off double by David Wright, Fernando Tatis tattooed a fastball in to the bleachers in left-center for a two-run home run. As my friend Johnny G said in a text message, ‘Tatis is partying like it’s 1999.’
- Thank you, Jose Castillo, for throwing away an inning-ending ground out beyond first base, allowing an insurance run to score. Reyes, Jose that is, then knocked home Brian Schneider to further expand the lead.
- Lastly, Carlos Muniz, Scott Schoeneweis, Duaner Sanchez and Billy Wagner each pitched an inning of scoreless relief. The bullpen did not allow a single run during the entire three-game series with the Giants.
The Mets start a three-game series with the Rockies tomorrow at Shea Stadium, starting at 7:10 pm, with Oliver Perez (6-5, 4.62 ERA) taking on Aaron Cook (11-6, 3.66 ERA).
Uh yeah, because Nader has always made addressing POC issues a priority..? There are numerous places where I wish Obama spoke louder (and leaned further left), but these communities Nader says Obama is neglecting are basically the same ones I've...Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com:, ReBlogged by Jamie Allen on Jul 10, 2008 at 03:23 PM
In the "bark is worse than its bite" category, the New York Times has an awesome web piece today on the apparent manipulation of yesterday's Iran missile shoot.
Of course the event got everybody up in a lather about Iran's capability and came darn close to a signing ceremony with SecState Rice and the Czech foreign minister on missile defense cooperation. But to me they sort of looked like '50s-era model rockets. Whoooo...scaaaaary....
[Photo from New York Times online.]
Anyway, sharp-eyed photogs have noticed that the smoke billowing from the launch can be attributed to three rockets, not four. And a photo later distributed by the AP shows three rockets with a fourth launcher that looks like it might have been a dud (or another Photoshopped image).
As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo appeared on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.
Agence France-Presse said that it obtained the image from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday. But there was no sign of it there later in the day. Today, The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile...
For its part, Agence France-Presse retracted its four-missile version this morning, saying that the image was “apparently digitally altered” by Iranian state media. The fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test,” the agency said.
So, looks as if the Iranians are trying to get a rise out of America and the Europeans with a little artistic license, I guess. And one has to wonder whether that country's threats are really credible.
-- Christian
Originally posted by lowe from Defense Tech, ReBlogged by Jamie Allen on Jul 10, 2008 at 03:21 PM
According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square is one of the Top 10 greatest public spaces in the U.S. & Canada. I couldn't agree more. Affectionately referred to as the city's "living room" the charming and versatile block was once slated to be a parking garage in the 1960s. Thankfully the residents didn't let that happen.
Recently while grabbing lunch in Portland, I wandered into the "Festival of Flowers" - a beautiful urban meadow installation that was so pleasant and comforting, I just had to shoot some video. Ethan Kent from PPS has often said to me that the key to the success of Pioneer Courthouse Square (and many public spaces) is its amazingly diverse programming. He's right, I've been to Portland a dozen times and there always seems to be something wonderful going on there.
Great tip from Gina Trapani:
With the iPhone 2.0 software installed, hold down the Home button and press the Lock button and your screen will flash — and an image of your phone’s screen gets saved to your Camera Roll’s images.
Awesome day! NetNewsWire 1.0 for iPhone is available via the App Store. (It’s featured, even.)
I’ve been checking out some other apps — so far I like Remote, Twitterrific, and Exposure. (There are plenty more apps to come, I’m sure. I know of some apps that aren’t listed yet that I’m eager to see.)
So much fun. Of course, I’ve already got 1.0.1 in the pipeline, and I’m working on 1.0.2. But for now I’m still checking out the App Store.
NYC cyclists rejoice—there now exists a web-based mapping system designed just for you...
city transit iPhone app
In his latest podcast, Bill Simmons apologizes (sort of) for his stupid article on why tennis is sucky and boring, calling it "maybe the dumbest column I've ever written". But then he goes on to say that what Wimbledon needs is a retractable roof on Centre Court and lights so that matches can proceed without fear of rain or night. Both of which are totally happening next year, unbeknowst to Simmons.
If you're a sports columnist, it helps if you're, you know, interested in sports. Many columnists are only interested in the big three sports -- football, basketball, baseball -- and treat other sports with a not-so-veiled disinterest or even distain. Competition, both against others and with the self, is at the base of all sports and if, as a so-called "sports fan", you can't find something of that to love about tennis or badminton or NASCAR, maybe you need to look elsewhere for work. Simmons needs to bring himself up to speed on tennis; he's missed a lot.
And if you're writing about a sport you don't know much about and argue that it needs to be changed in such a way that makes it more exciting for the short attention span generation, you should also be prepared to advocate for the 35-game NBA season, the 60-game MLB season, moving the pitcher's mound back to 65 feet, eliminating charging in the NBA, and 11-on-10 in NFL games.
If you'd like to follow kottke.org on Twitter, you may do so here. Tweets will consist of a post title and the permalink URL, updated every time I publish a new post (more or less). Thanks to arc90 for their PHP Twitter API library. Note: this is a separate Twitter account from my personal one. Never will kottke.org updates be pushed automatically to my personal Twitter account. I am not a dick, I would never do that to you.
Chronicle / SFGate TV critic Tim Goodman on the impact of Mad Men's $25 million advertising campaign in advance of Season 2:
Now, to the worry and the inherent challenge of growing the audience: If all the advertising pays off and new fans flock to Season 2 of "Mad Men," what are they going to think when they find a very intelligent, somewhat slow moving, exceptionally shaded character study? In other words, this isn't "The Sopranos." The brilliance of "Mad Men" is that the drama is mostly in the words. Actions are subtle. Many times the interior dialog of a character like Don Draper isn't explained.
Goodman's characterization of the show is right on (see the last bit in my last post), esp. if newcomers don't initially understand the backstory of Draper. (After all, it took most of the first season to explain it.) But is Goodman underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public?
(Or should we be more worried that AMC's spending the $25mm because they've dulled the sharp edges and know season two can attract -- and retain -- a mass audience? And since when does Goodman use The Sopranos as a comparison like that? He's already deserted Tony and the guy's not even in the ground a year?)
Quick Post
Finally catching up with my New Yorkers (I'm in June now!) and I loved this article about Avery. He antagonizes the other team in an effort to distract them. Lots of purists were upset, but I saw all's fair in love and sports. To top it all off he lurves fashion and is now an intern at Men's Vogue. This guy rules.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/04/28/080428ta_talk_paumgarten
Cardboard Mania has a poll up right now asking what is the best card set of 2008 now that we're at the midpoint of the season. As I looked over the list I realized something: I AM COMPLETELY BORED WITH THIS YEAR'S PRODUCTS RIGHT NOW. A third of the products are out of my price range, a third are flat out ugly and the last third I've been focused on for about 6 months now. I mean, Upper Deck is a great looking set, and so is Heritage, and even Topps is a decent set despite the flaws, but come on already, I'm really starting to get sick of them. It doesn't help that the dollar brand products are almost exact duplicates of base UD and Topps. Oh what I'd give for a Bazooka or a Topps Total or a UD Victory right now. Or, hello? Lets get some Donruss back up in here! I guess Goudey and Allen & Ginter are approaching fast, but right this second I'm wracked with ennui. There is of course a surefire cure for the base set blues and that's ODDBALL CARDS.Here's a couple of great oddballs to help pass the time. These are cards that were inserted into packages of Ziploc bags. The copyright date says 1992 but the design screams 80's. The three sizes too big corporate logo, the primary colors, the generic font, the three stars for no readily apparent reason... that's a quintessential '80s design there. It's definitely from 1992 though, I remember seeing the packages advertising them in the stores back then. Too bad a broke college student with a dining hall pass had no use for Ziploc bags and no money with which to pay for them at any rate. No worries. I got these two for a buck, which is less than a pack of bags cost anyway.
If I could chose any battery throughout history to start a team with, it would be these two. The Greatest lefty and the greatest catcher of all time. This is where Joe jumps in screaming Johnny Bench. Johnny bench is a great, great, wonderful catcher, but he is not a Zen Master and Spiritual Leader for our times. Yogi called a better game too, he coaxed a perfect game out of Don Larson fer crying out loud. Besides, I'll take this single Geico commercial over all of the Baseball Bunch.
The backs are pretty sweet too, lots of text to read and best year and career stat lines in elegant two color print. Ahhh, so refreshing... Oddball cards, thank you for taking me away from all the new product drudgery!
I am sitting in the airport in Pittsburgh after a workshop with RUST - the Radical Urban Silkscreen Team. RUST is a rad goup of teens making prints in Pittsburgh and they were a blast to work with.
My plane is delayed and I have a few minutes to sort through some photos of the completed Justseeds exhibition at Space 1026 in Philadelphia. Here they are.
Filed under: Internet, .Mac, Apple History, MobileMe
Tonight, we will all say "goodbye" to .Mac, a service that has been a small part of Apple for almost 8 years. iTools, .Mac's predecessor, was launched on January 5, 2000 at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco and was a free service that included a HomePage, iCards and the much coveted @mac.com e-mail address that is commonplace today (as well as the forgotten 'KidSafe,' which was a database of kid friendly websites Apple compiled so you could make sure your children weren't up to no good on your Mac). As more users came to the service and the cost of bandwidth went up, Apple began charging for the service and called it .Mac.
The name ".Mac" was born at the Macworld Expo in New York on July 17, 2002 and provided several new services including: a beefed up iDisk (with a dizzying 100 megs of space), Backup, and a free copy of Virex. On September 17, 2002, Apple announced that it would discontinue the free iTools service in favor for .Mac.
That brings us to, well, tonight. Apple is scheduled to take down .Mac and replace it with a newer, rebranded service named "MobileMe." While some scoff at the name, TUAW can't help but see the other side of the picture: look how far iTools has evolved over the past 8 years. So, join us in saying, "So long old friend, we hardly knew ye."
Do you have a favorite story to tell about iTools or .Mac? Be sure to mention it in the comments below! Apple is scheduled to take down the .Mac service between 6 p.m. and 12 a.m. pacific time.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
I love this clever New York magazine cover design from 1969...a photo of a too tall mayoral candidate is cropped just below the chin.
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I can see unicorns at play in easter-basket-grass fields surrounded by lollipop trees and marshmallow stones. (I’ll explain later.)
Something about Darren Elliott's photo of a bowl of tonkotsu Taiwan ramen is making me unable to think of much else besides scarfing down a huge bowl of noodles. I only just looked up what tonkotsu ramen was after looking at this photo, which Wikipedia explains uses a "thick broth made by boiling pork bones, fat, and collagen over high heat for hours on end, suffusing the broth with a hearty pork flavor and a creamy consistency that rivals milk or melted butter or gravy." Melted butter. I'd drink it.
Related
Takashi Murakami-Inspired Instant Ramen Noodle Packaging
Photo of the Day: Ice Cream Ramen
The Best Bowl of Noodles in the World
Some of the best onion rings around.
On Tuesday, Leonard Lopate of WNYC interviewed Worldchanging Executive Editor Alex Steffen about the "stickiness" of environmental trends. Leonard wanted to know why environmental trends -- like bringing your own canvas bag to the store -- catch on in some places, and not in others. Laura Haight, senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Research Group in Albany, New York, also joined in on the conversation.
So, how do environmental trends spread? How can we improve their chances of sticking? And where does individual responsibility end and government responsibility begin? Listen to find out.
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!
(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Team at 1:22 PM)
Fresh from the airwaves, we hit the video vault to find out just why John McCain believes Social Security is an "absolute disgrace" (including special new debamboozling video to help you not be spun by the McCain camp's damage control ...)
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
I was searching for a French cultural something-or-other, got this rather fabulous "404 ERROR Page Not Found" screen -- then became completely distracted from my original search. Click on the link to see the totally frivolous Flash movement of the color bars.
via http://www.culture.gouv.fr/First_T2.html:
Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry has an fantastic children's science center called Kids In Charge. Jonah loves the Kids In Charge area, and we love to watch his imagination run wild as he learns about science through play.
One of the things I miss the most about Washington, D.C. is the plentiful museums that the city offers, and the free admission to them! I am fortunate to have experienced and enjoyed the cultured atmosphere of D.C., and I hope to pass on to Jonah an appreciation for the arts. We bought an annual family pass to MOSI so we can go often, and the museum changes the Kids In Charge area from time to time, so Jonah never tires of it.
Tio Kevin will be proud to know that Jonah spent a lot of time at the music stations (the picture of him playing the drums is for you, little bro!). He also enjoyed the butterfly garden adjacent to the museum and had a hard time leaving it (the last picture shows him waving goodbye to a turtle--he is such a sweet boy).
Digital Spy: Lost Jimi Hendrix Album Discovered.
"The record, which Stills forgot about soon after recording it 30 years ago, is being prepared for release by his bandmate Graham Nash."
As the Guitar Blog mentions- how the hell do you forget about recording an album with Jimi Hendrix?
The whole things sounds fishy… especially this quote: "In the '70s, he was a recording fool. He just found a bloody album he made with [Jimi] Hendrix". Jimi died in 1970. I'd wager this is nothing more than a small cache of demo tapes, Jimi and Stephen jamming together a bit. Still, I'd love to take a listen.
In what was probably the weirdest soccer match finish ever, Barbados tied their match against Grenada with an own goal to send the match into overtime where they won by the 2 goals needed to qualify for the finals in the 1994 Shell Caribbean Cup.
Needing to beat Grenada by two clear goals to qualify for the finals in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados had established a 2-0 lead midway through the second half and were seemingly well in control of the game. However, an own goal by a Bajan defender made the score 2-1 and brought a new ruling into play, which led to farce. Under the new rule, devised by the competition committee to ensure a result, a match decided by sudden death in extra time was deemed to be the equivalent of a 2-0 victory. With three minutes remaining, the score still 2-1 and Grenada about to qualify for the finals, Barbados realised that their only chance lay in taking the match to sudden death. They stopped attacking their opponents' goal and turned on their own. In the 87th minute, two Barbadian defenders, Sealy and Stoute, exchanged passes before Sealy hammered the ball past his own goalkeeper for the equaliser.
The Grenada players, momentarily stunned by the goal, realised too late what was happening and immediately started to attack their own goal as well to stop sudden death. Sealy, though, had anticipated the response and stood beside the Grenada goalkeeper as the Bajans defended their opponents' goal. Grenada were unable to score at either end, the match ended 2-2 after 90 minutes and, after four minutes of extra time, Thorne scored the winner for Barbados amid scenes of celebration and laughter in the National Stadium in Bridgetown.
Here's a video with highlights of the end of the game. (via gulfstream)
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FLUSHING— While we've all known for awhile that Danny Meyer had a deal cooking with the new Mets stadium, Citi Field, the Union Square Hospitality Group just released the most detailed line up of the offerings to date. In addition to the rumored Shake Shack and Blue Smoke the new stadium will also have a yet-to-be-named taqueria featuring "authentic" tacos and Pop Fries, USHG's new fry stand concept (think the East Village's Pomme Frites). The powers that be are also announcing the dining options in the "Sterling Club" (a wine bar, a dining room, a casual cafe) but they sound far less exciting than the Danny Meyer concourse fare. The question now is, which Shake Shack, the Citi Field or the Madison Sq. Park original will have longer lines? The full press release ahead:
FLUSHING, N.Y., July 9, 2008 – The New York Mets and ARAMARK – a world-class leader in professional services and the Mets’ food and beverage provider – today announced an unprecedented partnership with Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) to transport its culinary talent and expertise to Citi Field, the new Mets home opening in 2009. Through this collaboration with one of the world’s most renowned restaurant groups, Citi Field will set a new industry standard for the guest dining experience in sports and entertainment venues.Among the dining choices USHG will offer at Citi Field are the enormously popular Blue Smoke and Shake Shack, as well as two new food concepts – a taquería and a Belgian frites stand. In addition, USHG will provide all food and beverage services at Citi Field's Sterling Club, the premium seating area for 1,600 guests on the Field Level directly behind home plate. Through this collection of innovative dining options, USHG will showcase its award-winning cuisine with unparalleled hospitality at Mets games, non-game day events, and other functions throughout the year at Citi Field.
Citi Field's outfield concourse, accessible to all ticket holders, will feature:
* Blue Smoke: the pioneer of urban ’cue, Blue Smoke will offer mouthwatering real pit barbecue (Highlights: Pulled Pork Sandwich and Kansas City Ribs)
* Shake Shack: the enormously popular hamburger and hot dog stand that made a splash with its original location in Madison Square Park will griddle up game day favorites (Highlights: ShackBurger and Shack-Cago Dog)
* Taquería (name TBD): this new concept will feature authentic tacos
* Pop Fries: another new concept for USHG, this frites stand will serve freshly-cut, Belgian-style fries with a variety of dipping sauces
The Sterling Club will feature several different dining options, including:
*Sterling Market: this casual cafe will serve classic, artisanal comfort foods
* Sterling Beer & Wine Bar: located inside Sterling Market, this venue will offer specialty brews and an extensive selection of wines from around the world, available by the glass or bottle
*Sterling Dining Room: reservations required, with limited seating for walk-in guests, will present a small-plates menu ideally suited to game day dining
*Sterling Bar & Lounge: offering guests a view of the large outdoor patio and ball field, the bar and lounge will serve specialty cocktails and small bites
* Sterling In-Seat Service: waiter service will feature “Best of Ballpark” food from the outfield concourse
“One of our major goals in the development of Citi Field was to create a destination attraction for our fans and our city. Our partnership with Danny and ARAMARK sets out to do that and redefine the paradigm of dining at any sports or entertainment venue in the country,” said Jeff Wilpon, COO, New York Mets. “Danny is a rock star restaurateur and Union Square’s restaurants are uniquely New York and globally renowned. We now have a culinary All-Star at Citi Field as a major pillar of the total entertainment experience throughout our new home.”
“As lifetime baseball fans and longtime Mets season ticket holders, we are incredibly excited to partner with the Mets and ARAMARK at the new Citi Field, and to have the opportunity to offer fans a fresh array of winning food options,” said Danny Meyer, CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group. “What you eat and drink – and how it’s all served – has become a major part of the ballpark experience, and we are eager to contribute as much as we can to why people will love going to Citi Field.”
“Working closely with the Mets, we have created a unique and extraordinary dining experience that will satisfy fans throughout every level of Citi Field,” said Liza Cartmell, Group President, ARAMARK Sports and Entertainment. “By partnering with Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, Citi Field will showcase the very best of New York’s culinary offerings and provide fans with a wide variety of delicious menu choices and dining formats. We take pride in working with our partners to develop innovative food and beverage solutions and are thrilled to help the Mets make this revolutionary concept a reality.”
· Meyers Makes a Move on Citi Field [Cutlets]
—photo: HOK Sport
Carlos Beltran is batting .269, and is on pace to hit roughly 25 HR with 115 RBI and 25 or so stolen bases, while playing a Gold Glove-caliber defense.
He hit .276 with 33 HR and 112 RBI last season, and .275 with 41 HR and 116 RBI in 2006 when he finished fourth in the National League MVP voting.
Beltran hit just .200 in April this season, while averaging one home run every 40 at bats. Since, he’s batting .290 while averaging one home run every 22 at bats.
He is hitting .286 with runners in scoring position, however just .158 with men on base and two outs.
For more statistical information on Beltran, click here.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Drip by drip, Starbucks lost what made it shine:(via azspot)
I’m amused that this mainly criticizes Starbucks for:
- The expensive food.
- The staff’s recent high turnover and low quality.
- The quality of some new tables and chairs.
What about, oh, I don’t know, the stale and burnt coffee?
“The chickens in the attached picture untied one of my shoes when I tried to enter their pen and replenish their water on a farm in Vermont last week.”
(via the robman)
As a cyclist and triathlete, I've been a fan of products like Chamois Butt'R for years, but it was only last year I stumbled across BodyGlide in a giant bin in the Triathlon section of SportsBasement. In a matter of weeks, I went from interested to addicted. It's simple stuff you just apply anywhere you have rubbing issues: your netherbits, nipples, wrists, ankles, cankles, armpits or pretty much any other body part prone to chaffing, scraping, or friction. For triathletes, it's great to put on the neck and shoulders to keep your wetsuit from chafing. I also smear it on my wrists and ankles to help me get out of my suit faster in that first transition. I even put it on the outside of my wetsuit at the ankles to make it nice and slippery. Cyclists can use it like chamois butter (although I'm not sure it's good for your chamois like a traditional creme) and for runners it's great for the inner thigh (or if you're prone to bloody nipples. Naturally, it's great for hiking and backpacking as well. There are even versions with sunscreen and analgesics to cover multiple bases. Just don't share it, okay? That's totally grody.
-- Mathew Honan
Body Glide
$15
Available from AmazonManufactured by W Sternoff LLC
Related items previously reviewed on Cool Tools:
Garmin Forerunner 305 & MotionBased Training
Orlando Hernandez is scheduled to make his second minor-league rehab start in St. Lucie this weekend.
Jerry Manuel, speaking to reporters prior to yesterday’s game, regarding Hernandez’s role once healthy, said:
“I have thought about that, but if it were to happen now, it would be difficult to take any one out of the rotation…If he does, it would have to be a bullpen situation…That’s going to be a tough thing to deal with.”
…manuel is right…i just don’t see how el duque fits in the rotation unless a trade is made, involving a member of the current rotation, to improve the team or an injury occurs…i would assume once healthy, el duque would take Tony Armas‘ spot in the bullpen, but that is purely speculation on my part…
Google has open sourced Google Browser Sync.
Awesome! This is potentially great news, especially in light of the semi-disappointment that is Weave v0.2.
The Mets (46–44) defeated the Giants (39–51) by the score of 7 to 0 in Shea Stadium tonight.
For a recap, boxscore, stats, etc., go to SNY.tv.
Mike Pelfrey escaped a bases-loaded jam in the first inning, striking out John Bowker to end the inning.
- After that, it was smooth sailing for Pelfrey, who continues to look relaxed and confident. He has been text-book perfect, mixing up his pitches, getting first-pitch strikes, using his fastball and throwing inside. Tonight, he pitched seven scoreless innings, while letting up just three hits and striking out five.
- Tim, who? Lincecum, what?
- Carlos Beltran put the Mets up early with a three-run home run in the first.
- In the seventh, Beltran knocked in another run with a two-out RBI single that scored Argenis Reyes from second, which was followed by a two-out RBI single by Damion Easley, who scored Jose Reyes from second.
- Easley has a 10–game hitting streak.
- Carlos Delgado and Fernando Tatis each hit a home run.
- Jerry Manuel met with his players on the field prior to batting practice today to discuss fundamentals.
- The Phillies lost tonight, meaning the Mets are now one loss back of the Phillies for first place in the NL East.
The Mets look confident and comfortable, just like Pelfrey. Also, this makes two nights in a row during which they tacked on runs and collected back-to-back two-out hits, which is always huge.
In short, they’re playing good, clean baseball. It’s that simple.
The Mets continue their series with the Giants tomorrow night in Shea Stadium, starting at 7:10 pm, with Johan Santana (7-7, 2.96 ERA) taking on Jonathan Sanchez (8-4, 3.87 ERA).
Submissions from Married with Dinner and Ezra Pound Cake.
In the short time that Photograzing has been up, we've gotten hundreds of submissions and have published—or are about to publish—more than 200 absolutely hunger-inducing photos that serious eaters have submitted. We launched our food-photo-sharing site last week, just before the Fourth, so if you missed it in the rush up to the long weekend, head on over and take a peek. Just don't go on an empty stomach.
And if you're interested in submitting photos, note that if you already have a Serious Eats account, you're all set to begin uploading to Photograzing. If you don't have an account, it's free and easy to grab one.
Ok, y’all. The votes are in, cities decided and dates somewhat settled upon. The User Generated Book Tour is so far eclipsing my wildest dreams with most cities hosting several events. Most of the plan is still pretty fluid so there’s time to let me know what kind of event you think would be best if your city has been selected.
Again: There is absolutely no demographic study or statistical research that went into deciding the cities. It was purely based on enthusiasm. Think of it like a school assembly "applause meter" where the principal holds his hands above people's heads and you clap and then he decides who got the most applause. This is the qualitative—not quantitative-- book tour. And together we’ll see how it goes! Again, props to my publishers at Gotham for funding a haphazard and unconventional tour despite a general industry disdain for tours of all kinds.
The schedule on the jump!
- Pre-tour: Los Angeles TONIGHT.
- Washington DC- July 16-17 (Details in the next post)
- Pre-tour Part II: Menlo Park- July 25- TechCrunch Part @ August Capital
- Des Moines- Aug 2
- Omaha- just before or after Des Moines
- Boulder- Aug 6-9ish
- Seattle- August 21-22
- Portland- just before or after Seattle
- Boston- Sept 16-ish
- Memphis- Sept 18
- Austin and Toronto TBDI am making T-shirts, ala concert tour T-shirts, to give out on the road for anyone who helps organize local events or anyone who just asks a really good question! And, um, maybe if you buy multiple copies? I'm sort of making up the rules as I go along. All of the events will have books for sale but none will be a traditional reading.
Questions:
-Boston folks: I’d like to do some sort of college event for would-be entrepreneurs or maybe even-- gasp!-- business school peeps. Anyone got any contacts or ideas?
-Austin and Toronto: When should I come? Are there times in the next few months that make particular sense?I have groaned a lot about being sick of traveling, but the idea and planning of this tour has completely re-energized me. I can’t even pretend to be weary.
If this tour is an insane, insane resounding success, I’m open to phase two, so don't be sad if your city wasn't picked!
Our friend Marc Moscato sent along this link to an interesting story/conversation unfolding around a attempt to combat perceived racism through street art in Portland, OR. The story centers around a street art action where artists/activists temporarily replaced images of Confederate flags on a mattress store with images of Martin Luther King, Jr. The action was blogged about on the Portland Mercury website, and although the art is interesting, the responses to it are whats really worth checking out. A fascinating, rambling road through varying opinions on street art, vandalism, gentrification, class, yuppies, and property values.
no parking on fire island
FistFam's grill gets the job done.
"I wish I could grill these hot dogs, but I only have $10 in my 'Buy a Grill' fund! Can I fulfill my grilling dreams on such a pittance?"
Indeed, you can—let FistFam show you the way with their instructions for how to build a grill for under $10. But don't expect one of those fancy schmancy grills with, like, knobs, or a built-in cover, or something. $10 will get you some concrete bricks and a medium-sized flowerpot. Add your flammable material of choice, cooling racks, tongs, and meat, and you'll be on your way to budget-friendly grilling bliss. Just don't handle the flaming pot of briquettes with paper bags like FistFam did—paper can catch fire. And so can human skin. [via Grocery Eats]
How big is England? Mapmakers can't seem to agree.
So for the last two years I've been taking pictures of Britain on world maps. Not accurate maps, but drawings or illustrations of maps. The differences are amazing. You might assume that all maps were accurate, or at least accurate-ish. But no, designers play fast and loose with the truth making the host country bigger, more important or more central. Look at Britain in these photos. Look at the size of it compared to Europe. It's the same, but different.
I love the averaged England near the bottom of the post. (via migurski)
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I love a good bug-slaying yarn [via]
The AP pulls out all the stops to bring you the substantive political reporting you can't get anywhere else.
Here at TPM we've been chronicling some of the more ridiculous reporting on the presidential election that's been produced by the Associated Press.
But now we think we've found the most Pulitzer-worthy AP effort yet. Gaze upon this headline and subhed -- the AP actually did a poll of pet owners and found that people with animals prefer McCain!
In poll of pet owners, McCain tops ObamaPet owners find McCain with his house full of animals more appealing than the petless Obama
Yes, this is a real AP article. Now check this out from the body of the story...
From George Washington's foxhounds Drunkard and Tipsy to George W. Bush's terriers Barney and Miss Beazley, pets are a longtime presidential tradition for which the presumed Republican nominee seems well prepared, with more than a dozen.Democratic candidate Barack Obama, on the other hand, doesn't have a pet, though he has promised his daughters a dog after the election, win or lose.
"From an image standpoint, nothing humanizes a candidate more than seeing him lovingly dote on his pet or toss a ball around on the White House lawn," says American Kennel Club spokeswoman Lisa Peterson.
An AP-Yahoo News poll found that pet owners favor McCain over Obama 42 percent to 37 percent, with dog owners particularly in McCain's corner.
"I think a person who owns a pet is a more compassionate person -- caring, giving, trustworthy. I like pet owners," said Janet Taylor of Plymouth, Mass.
We're not sure what our favorite thing is here. Is it that last quote? Is it the fact that the subhed called the Illinois Senator "petless Obama"? Is it the fact that the AP, which presumably knew at the outset that Obama was "petless" and was thus likely to score lower than McCain, conducted this poll at all?
Writing advice from Zadie Smith: write it then put it in a drawer.
When you finish your novel, if money is not a desperate priority, if you do not need to sell it at once or be published that very second -- put it in a drawer. For as long as you can manage. A year of more is ideal -- but even three months will do. Step away from the vehicle. The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. I can't tell you how many times I've sat backstage with a line of novelists at some festival, all of us with red pens in hand, frantically editing our published novels into fit form so that we might go on stage and read from them. It's an unfortunate thing, but it turns out that the perfect state of mind to edit your novel is two years after it's published, ten minutes before you go on stage at a literary festival. At that moment every redundant phrase, each show-off, pointless metaphor, all of the pieces of dead wood, stupidity, vanity, and tedium are distressingly obvious to you.
Top notch advice. I'm currently working on a (mostly visual) redesign for kottke.org. I pretty much finished the Photoshop part of it two months ago and haven't looked at it since, hoping that the distance will give me some much needed perspective on whether the new design is any good or not. I've used this technique on the past couple of designs as well...if you have the luxury of the extra time, I'd highly recommend it.
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Prior to last night’s game, Omar Minaya was asked if the team is looking for an outfielder in the trade market, given the health of Ryan Church and Moises Alou.
Minaya told reporters that he doesn’t anticipate being in the market for a starting corner outfielder, because he is confident that Church and Alou will soon return.
That said, if Church and Alou do not return, Minaya said he would obviously reconsider his position, adding, “but I feel pretty good that these guys will be back.”
Earlier in the day, reporters talked to Jerry Manuel about Barry Bonds, who is a free agent.
Later, when asked to address Bonds, Minaya said, “I’m going to focus on our guys and our guys hopefully will be OK…I heard somebody mentioned his name. Right now, we’re going to continue with the guys we have.”
Of course, this prompted the New York Post and Bart Hubbuch to write, “Omar Won’t Say No to Bonds,” all while Photoshopping a Mets batting helmet on to a picture of the player.
…of course, they also could have written, “Omar Won’t Say Yes to Bonds,” but they didn’t…
At the same time, in Newsday, which runs the headline, “Mets have No Interest in Bonds,” David Lennon writes:
“No, Minaya hasn’t called Jeff Borris, the slugger’s rep at the Beverly Hills Sports Council, and currently has no plans to do so. When contacted yesterday, Borris sent word through a spokesman flatly stating, ‘The Mets have no interest in Barry Bonds.’”
…folks, omar doesn’t say, ‘No,’ to any player in public…why would he…in fact, he has repeatedly told reporters that it is not wise to make such definitive statements in public, because it can impact his position in the market place…
…i bet if you asked him if he’s interested in Donald Duck as an outfielder, he would abstain from taking a position…actually, not taking a definitive position is his position…
…at any rate, i believe Barry Bonds would be the worst possible solution for the Mets…i pray the team truly has no interest in this guy, for obvious reasons…
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Oobject is on a roll lately. In particular, check out the railroad snowplows, worst General Lee, medical manikins, pocket sundials, and food rations.
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I am so completely obsessed with Veronica Mars
. I'll admit that when I started watching the show, which I did simply because I love and have to watch all PI/sleuth/detective related shows, I wasn't immediately captured by it. It was easy to mock the oh-so-clever writing and the silly setting but last night I had a major realization: Veronica Mars is the coolest girl on earth. The character really is an impressive blend of precocious, sarcastic, funny, sweet, not syrupy sweet and delightfully devious. If reincarnation is true, please please please let me be her (or Jerri Blank of course)! Thank god I have a job because otherwise I would have spent today stalking my postman for the season three dvds I ordered last night.
Inbox Victory: take a photo of yourself and your mail program when you get your inbox down to zero items.
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The moral equivalent of clearing the browser tabs, here are some recently starred items. (And yes, I realize that along the way I could have Shift-S shared these items with you, since most of you are reading this in Reader, or FriendFeed, or some other type of super fabulous lifestreaming and attention parsing aggregator that reduces the elapsed time from content consumption to content production to mere milliseconds, but I digress.)
Protocol Buffers, or "a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for serializing structured data – think XML, but smaller, faster, and simpler." Even if you never use Protocol Buffers (the product marketer in me winces at the name) the overview is worth reading, if only for the speed difference v. parsing XML (that's measured in nanoseconds, mind you).
Also from Google's earth (we just live in it) comes Joe Greggorio's draft spec (tracked at the IETF) for adding multipart support to AtomPub. "The primary objective of multipart/related POSTs is to reduce round-trips for creating Media Resources." Who wouldn't like reducing round trips?
Wil Shipley's post on fixing The Greatest Bug of All is worth the entire read. Don't get discouraged when two-thirds of the way through he starts wandering off through the land of file system memory mapping and the ins and outs of NSData; push on through and stay for the payoff.
Software is written by humans. Humans get tired. Humans become discouraged. They aren't perfect beings. As developers, we want to pretend this isn't so, that our software springs from our head whole and immaculate like the goddess Athena. Customers don't want to hear us admit that we fail.
Via Kottke, Michael Beirut's appreciation of Mad Men. I feel for Jason, who hasn't even seen the show, since when he read through Beirut's wholesale quotation of scenes he didn't have the memory of watching Jonathan Hamm deliver these lines...
This device isn't a spaceship. It's a time machine. It goes backwards. Forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called The Wheel. It's called The Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels, around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.
OK, that's enough for a Monday. The elapsed time between star and share has already grown too long, and I fear this post may already be fish wrap.
We finally got an interview with someone from BMW Direct, the GOP direct mail firm whose business model includes fleecing GOP donors on behalf of obscure, often minority, candidates and then skimming off most of the contributions for itself and its affiliates. Good work if you can get it.
Our calls to the firm last week went unreturned, but we got lucky when we called again late today and Jordan Gehrke, BMW Direct's director of development, answered the phone. We called to ask specifically about complaints we'd received from another BMW client whose campaign had seen precious little of the contributions it was paying BMW to solicit.
Over the weekend, TPMmuckraker's Andrew Tilghman interviewed Ada Fisher, who's running for Congress in North Carolina. She used BMW Direct during her unsuccessful 2006 congressional run, but after that experience decided she'd be better off without them this time. "They sort of -- what shall I say? -- screwed me," Fisher told us.
By our count, BMW raised $400,000 for Fisher during the last election cycle, but only about $30,000 actually wound up being available for her campaign to use. The rest was plowed back into paying BMW and its affiliates for raising the money in the first place. "They make it seem like each of these people is a private entity. But as you listen more and more and you get smarter, you realize they all work together," Fisher said in the interview with us.
BMW's Gehrke acknowledged that Fisher's was a unique case. She came to BMW Direct late in the cycle, with less than a year left before the election. That's usually not enough time for the sort of direct-mail campaign BMW runs to yield results, Gehrke said, but they thought Fisher was a strong enough candidate to make up for the lost time. Alas, things didn't work out. As Gehrke explained: "[W]e think we would have been very successful if we had had another six months. For all kinds of reasons, fortune had its say, and things did not work out as we hoped."
Seems not. The donors who gave the $400,000 to Fisher's campaign saw less than 10 cents of every dollar actually go to the campaign they were aiming to help. Fisher herself complained that what little money BMW Direct did raise was so unpredictable and arrived so late in the campaign that it didn't really help. The only party to this arrangement who came out ahead was BMW Direct.
According to Gehrke, we're not taking into account certain intangibles, like building name recognition and improving the GOP brand:
"Is it worth it? Yes. If she doesn't win this year, maybe she ends up turning it into a state senate seat a few years later and then runs for Congress again. Going into a district where Republicans have not traditionally competed and having a black doctor on the ballot is a way of saying this is not your father's Republican Party. This is what building a party is about. This is what expanding your coalition is about. The point is, it has value."That may be one way of explaining why it's good for the GOP, which is already struggling to raise money and hold on to House seats this year, to lose millions of its donors' dollars to the churn of direct mail costs. It doesn't explain why donors and candidates alike are being played for dupes.
Maybe we just don't understand.
Some right-wing blogs have taken up a concerted defense of BMW Direct in the past few days, claiming that the BMW Direct business model makes perfect sense, unless you're ignorant of the way direct mail works.
Mark Hemingway at NRO's The Corner, proclaims that "whether the candidate gets 5 percent or 75 percent -- it's basically free money to them." The reason for the scrutiny, according to Hemingway, is that the left is trying to undermine the GOP's advantage in direct mail by painting direct mail firms as "the used car salesmen of politics."
Michael Krempasky at RedState (husband of former DOJ darling Monica Goodling) gives a nod to left-wing conspiracy theories, but ultimately dismisses us as oblivious:
"Every year, we see it again: shrieking, hand-wringing, gloating (?) lefties pointing fingers at Republican direct mail fundraisers. Trouble is, they don't seem to have much idea what they're talking about."We're not alone apparently. It took Ada Fisher an entire campaign to figure out how the game is played.
The Movable Type blogging engine is easy to set up and customize. This Webmonkey tutorial covers the basics of templates, plug-ins and everything you'll need to inject some personality into a vanilla MT installation.
washingtonpost.com:Gmail's Mysterious Grey Box Michael Arrington TechCrunch.com Sunday, July 6, 2008; 11:46 AM There's a small grey box rendered in an iFrame in the top left hand corner of Gmail, and TechCrunchIT is trying to figure out what it is. The icon is a ten by ten pixel graphic with a diagonal line across it, with one half in black and the other in gray. It isn?t an inline image, as you can not highlite it or select it in your browser, nor right-click on it. There is also no reference to the image within the style sheet for Gmail. So what is it? Since it's being rendered in an iFrame it's difficult to say. We've been emailing back and forth with Google since Wednesday but so far they haven't said what it is. What's your best conspiracy theory? The most elaborate/entertaining or most accurate comment (on TechCrunchIT) gets a free TechCrunch Tshirt.
An appreciation of Mad Men by designer Michael Bierut.
Jesus God in heaven! Not until I know I'm not wasting my time! From the minute Don launched his this-meeting-is-over bluff, I was on the edge of my seat, and my lovely wife Dorothy will tell you that I literally clapped my hands at that line. For me, this sequence is as close to pornography as I ever get to see on basic cable.Alright, uncle, I give, I give. I will try and find some time in my schedule to watch this show.
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Today's date (7/7) reminded me to look up the cocktail of the same name that John Travolta's character drinks in Saturday Night Fever [1]. I'm certainly no mixologist so I hadn't a clue what could possibly be in that drink. It turns out that a Seven Seven is made with Seagram's 7 whiskey and 7-up.
[1] Incidentally, I watched Saturday Night Fever for the very first time only a couple weeks ago. It was on television and I had time to kill before heading out to Baby Loves Disco (completely unrelated to the viewing). The movie, unfortunately, only led me to be disappointed by the lack of both desire and dance skills of the babies in attendance.
Woah -- we think we're not alone in saying we didn't see this one coming.
Jim Webb -- the perfect on-paper Vice President for Obama and a target of much Veep-oriented speculation -- just put out a statement removing himself as a candidate entirely. From Webb...
"Last week I communicated to Senator Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for Vice President."We're not sure what the back-story is here, but we're def going to try to find out. Webb's full statement after the jump.
"Last week I communicated to Senator Obama and his presidential campaign my firm intention to remain in the United States Senate, where I believe I am best equipped to serve the people of Virginia and this country. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for Vice President."A year and a half ago, the people of Virginia honored me with election to the U.S. Senate. I entered elective politics because of my commitment to strengthen America's national security posture, to promote economic fairness, and to increase government accountability. I have worked hard to deliver upon that commitment, and I am convinced that my efforts and talents toward those ends are best served in the Senate.
"In this regard, the bipartisan legislative template we were able to put into effect through 18 months of work in order to enact the new, landmark GI Bill will serve as a prototype for my future endeavors in government. This process, wherein we brought 58 Senators from both parties to the table as co-sponsors, along with more than 300 members of the House, gives me renewed confidence that the Congress can indeed work effectively across party lines and address the concerns of our citizens.
"At this time I am also renewing my commitment to work hard to make sure that Senator Obama wins both Virginia and the presidency this November. He is a man who speaks eloquently about our national goals and calls for the practical solutions that must be put into place to obtain them. I will proudly campaign for him."
"I'm not here to make friends" is a montage of a common phrase found in reality TV shows. found on jonson's weblog
In our new house we are finally using the HD Tivo with Comcast and getting back into television. We're currently hooked on The Deadliest Catch. I think my wife has a crush on Edgar…I think I have a crush on Edgar.
In case you’re doing a double-take, too: meet Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Les’ “Delight Everyone” post is latest greatest addition to the 17th letter of the alphabet for savior conversation.
And believe me I’m a huge fan, and am busy carving out a night sometime this week to play with the RabbitMQ/XMPP bridge (/waves hi Alexis).
But …. there are a couple of caveats:
1) Some writes need to be real time.
Les notes this as well, but I just wanted to emphasize because really, they do.
If you can’t see your changes take effect in a system your understanding of cause and effect breaks down. It doesn’t matter that your understanding is wrong, you still need one to function. Ideally a physical analogy too. There are no real world effects that get queued for later application. Violate the principle of (falsely) seeming to respect real world cause and effect and your users will remain forever confused.
del.icio.us showing you the wrong state when you use the inline editing tool, and Flickr taking a handful of seconds to index a newly tagged photo are both good examples of subtly broken interfaces that can really throw people.
My data, now real time. Everyone else can wait (how long depends on how social your users are).
2) You’ve got to process that queue eventually.
Ideally you can add processing boxes in parallel forever but if your dequeuing rate falls below your queuing rate you are, in technical terms, screwed.
Think about it, if you’re falling behind 1 event per second, processing 1,000,000 events a second, but adding 1,000,001 for example, at the end of the day your 86,400 events in debt and counting. It’s likes losing money on individual sales, but trying to make it up in volume.
Good news: Traffic is spiky and most sites see daily cycles with quiet times.
Bad news: Many highly tuned systems exhibit slow down properties as their backlogs increase. Like a credit card, processing debt can get exponentially unmanageable.
In practice this means that most of the time your queue consumers should be sitting around bored. (see Allspaw’s Capacity Planning slides for more on that theme.)
If you can’t guarantee those real time writes for thems that cares, and mostly bored queue consumers the rest of the time then your queues might not delight you after all.
1. The Federer/Nadal final at Wimbledon was epic. I was tense for the entire duration of the final three sets, which lasted about 2.5 to 3 hours. After years of sportswriters declaring that Roger Federer is the best player of all time, we might be faced with the possibility that he's not even the best player of his generation. Two data points: 1) Nadal has shown that he can win on any surface, including Federer's specialty, and 2) Nadal's head-to-head record against Federer is 10-5 (although many of those wins came on clay). The match also clearly reveals the idiocy of this lame Bill Simmons article about how tennis needs to change.
2. Joey Chestnut successfully defended his title this weekend at the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, eating 59 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes. He needed a 5-dog overtime to hold off long-time champ Takeru Kobayashi, who has lost to Chestnut the last two years. Chestnut weighs 230 pounds while Kobayashi is only 160 pounds.
3. The US Olympic swimming trials are over and Michael Phelps qualified in 5 individual events and will likely participate in three relays as well, giving him a chance to break Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals won in a single Olympics. Overshadowing Phelps' achievements was "41-year-old mom" (that's how they kept describing her on TV) Dara Torres, who qualified in both the 100-meter freestyle and the 50-meter freestyle.
In the history of modern baseball there have only been two teams that have been able to win more games than they lost while only scoring 1 run. These 2 teams, the ‘06 Cubs (1906 that is) and the ‘69 Mets (also 1969) need no introduction as they are familiar to anyone who has spent 2 minutes watching baseball. Two other teams with less impressive resumes (The 1910 Reds and the 1960 Braves) have finished the season at .500 in such games. This season, the Angels can join this illustrious group. The Angels have scored 1 run in a game 5 times this season and are 3-2 in those games.
It is interesting to note that the other LA team, the one which is famous for winning 1-0 this season, has only done it that one time and in fact, leads the majors with 18 losses when scoring 1 run.
Tim Lincecum is a 5' 10" 172-pound Major League pitcher with a 98-mph fastball. Such velocity out of such a small frame is attributed to his unique (but mechanically sound) pitching technique.
One key to Lincecum's delivery is to keep his left side, especially his left shoulder, aimed toward his target for as long as possible. "Don't open up too soon because then you lose leverage," Tim says. "If you twist a rubber band against itself, the recoil is bigger. The more torque I can come up with, the better."
Where Lincecum truly separates himself from most pitchers is the length of his stride. It is ridiculously long as it relates to his height. And just as his left foot, the landing foot, appears to be nearing the ground at the end of his stride, he lifts it as if stepping over a banana peel -- extending his stride even more. The normal stride length for a pitcher is 77% to 87% of his height. Lincecum's stride is 129%, or roughly 7 1/2 feet.As a casual fan, it's difficult to see what's so different and violent about Lincecum's pitching technique.
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At New York Magazine, contributing writer Will Leitch, formerly of Deadspin, explains why Jerry Manuel with his charismatic style fits in with the legacy of Mets managers from the past more than former manager Willie Randolph ever did.
Leitch writes:
“Jerry Manuel might only be the Mets manager for the next few months, but already he has proved himself a rightful heir to Shea’s legacy in a way that Willie Randolph never was…Whereas Randolph had that Yankees’ corporate, We’re All Professionals Here attitude they prefer in the Bronx.”
…i’ll admit, i was very skeptical once manuel was named the interim manager…i thought nothing would change, as i heard manuel had very much the same demanor and style that randolph had…
…surprising, manuel is much different…setting defined roles in the bullpen, not being aprehensive with the media and making bold in-game moves…it’s quite refreshing…
Yet another basis for comparing Obama with John F. Kennedy?
This morning it was announced that Obama would be moving his convention acceptance to Invesco Field, a football stadium that holds 76,000 people. The last person to do this was -- you guessed it -- the nation's 35th president, who delivered his 1960 acceptance speech as the Dem nominee at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum:
At about one minute and twenty seconds in, the camera pulls out to a wide shot that gives you a sense of just how grandiose the setting for JFK's speech was -- and how grandiose Obama's chosen venue may prove, too.
YouTube - Ira Glass on Storytelling #3
Video featuring terrific advice from This American Life’s Ira Glass on having the tenacity to get better at the creative work you’re passionate about — even through the times when you know what you’re making isn’t as good as you’d like.
I admire Ira’s courageousness in using himself as an example of how to do it wrong.
(Also, now that I’m aware of that tic where radio people punch every third word, I’m hearing it all the time.)
[via Big Contrarian]
Last month, DOT striped buffered bike lanes on Vernon Boulevard (right), part of a package of safety improvements for the north-south corridor that parallels the western Queens waterfront [PDF]. Bike facilities are scarce in this part of the city, and the addition of the new lanes, which eliminated a lane of parking along parts of the route, has not come without opposition from the local community boards, CB1 and CB2. But as Transportation Alternatives' Queens Committee Chair Mike Heffron reports, residents also organized to voice support for the project.
When Streetsblog last checked in, CB2 had tabled discussion of the plan following the land use committee's unanimous vote in favor of it. Long before the proposal came to CB2 -- in early 2007 -- the T.A. Queens Committee wrote up a letter to DOT supporting the bike lanes. Thirteen local groups signed on, including residents of Queensbridge Houses, who live next to the route, as well as several park organizations. In May of this year, a letter backing DOT's final project proposal came from City Council Member Peter Vallone, Jr. DOT took members of CB1 and CB2 on tours of the route and distributed brochures explaining the project to local businesses.
Ultimately, the community boards were not swayed. CB2 never took up discussion of the project at a general meeting, says Heffron, and neither did CB1. Instead, CB1 let its position be known by sending DOT and local elected officials a letter opposing the Vernon Boulevard bike lanes.
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Talk of the Nation, June 30, 2008 · When a video clip on the Internet gains widespread popularity through e-mail and other venues of Internet sharing, it becomes what's known as a "viral video." The often highly pixelated and wobbly images have such an air of authenticity about them that it's hard to watch without thinking, "Maybe I can make a video that goes viral!" The truth is, it's not only harder than it looks; people are paid a great deal of money to make things go viral.Internet entrepreneur Jonah Peretti, hula-hooping viral video star Lauren Bernat and TV Week contributing writer Daisy Whitney talk about the highly controlled world of "viral video" and what's real, what's fake and how video became a big gun in the online marketing arsenal.
testtesttesttesttest
Herewith some evidence, for the general tech public, that Atompub is a big deal, and for the Atomistas, some interesting developments.
It’s an Atompub Future
Let’s see; Microsoft is using Atompub for... well, everything, pretty much. Google has been for a while, and that’s now leveraging Salesforce.com. Oh, and the Kool Erlang Kids are getting into the act: Atom-PubSub module for ejabberd (Hmm, I dislike “Atom PubSub” and all its orthographic variations). And then there are things like AtomServer.
The Right Amount of Cloud Lock-In
But here’s the real reason. We seem to have consensus that the future is cloudy. My #1 gripe with the cloud-computing infrastructure I’ve seen out there is that it all seems to come with some degree of lock-in.
The only appropriate amount of lock-in, to build a cloud-centric future, is zero.
It seems to me that Steve O’Grady really hit the nail on the head with Question for Cloud Campers: The Cloud and Standards. Now it’s quite possible that my obvious bias as one of Atom’s fond parents is showing here, but it seems to me that the Atom format provides a nice clean zero-lock-in way of getting information out of the cloud, and Atompub an equivalently safe way in.
Now let’s move on to some Atom-technology news stories.
Atom-Multipart
To post an image (or any other bit-blog) with Atompub, you HTTP-POST it; the server stores it and creates a synthetic Atom entry for metadata about it. Then if you want to update the metadata, you have to PUT that. So Joe Gregorio, based on his work at Google, is proposing “atom-multipart”; the idea is use pack up your bit-blob and an Atom entry full of metadata, and push ’em at the server in a MIME multipart package.
Everyone seems to like the idea, the Atom-protocol mailing list is chewing it over, the IETF seems to think it’s appropriate for the standards track, and I’ve volunteered to be the consensus referee (which is probably poetic justice since I’m obviously going to have to implement the sucker in mod_atom).
Meta-CRUD
Just to review: an Atompub implementation lets you create, retrieve, update, and delete (CRUD) Web Resources. So, suppose you think of publications as Web Resources, wouldn’t Atompub be a candidate for the CRUD job? Now, this is all getting more than a little bit meta, but the idea is so obvious that everybody is doing it. In fact, I’m doing it myself in mod_atom, since my original idea (to create a new publication, edit the Apache config file) is, well, really lousy.
I thought “If everyone’s doing this, maybe we should standardize it, and then authors of Atompub test suites (like me) could build portable tests”. So I raised the issue on the mailing list and well, it’s complicated.
Just by way of reminder: Atompub starts with a Service Document, which contains one or more named Workspaces, which contain Collections, which are what you actually POST to in order to start up the CRUD process.
So the meta-idea is simple; have a collection that when you POST to it, creates a new publication. What could be simpler? Well, it turns out that there are three obvious choices you could take as to what happens when you POST to one of these meta-collections:
Create a new Service Doc, with Workspaces and collections.
Create a new Workspace in the current Service Doc.
Create a new collection in the current Workspace.
There are implementors out there doing all three of these things; mod_atom does #1. We just don’t have enough experience yet to decide which (if any) of ’em deserve standardization. Oh well.
I believe we're at one of those moments when it is a help to step back from the rhetorical flurry and see where each side stands -- call it clearing away the Fog of Spin.
The Iraq War is very unpopular. The majority of the country believes it was a mistake to have invaded in the first place. And the great majority want to get all of our troops out of Iraq in the near future. These are facts amply supported by what is now years of public opinion data. While it is true that the reduction in violence over the last 8-9 months has led to some shift in how people think 'things are going' in Iraq, it has had no measurable effect on the key questions: should we be there in the first place (no) and should we leave now (yes.)
This is the only backdrop against which to understand the current jousting over the semantics of the Iraq debate.
We have two candidates with starkly different positions. Barack Obama is for an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces in Iraq, a process he says he will begin immediately upon taking office. John McCain supports a permanent garrisoning of US troops on military bases in Iraq -- a long-term 'presence' which he hopes will require a constantly-diminishing amount of actual combat and thus an ever-diminishing toll in American lives.
This is, I believe, a fair and even generous description of each candidate's essential position. And the recital makes the key point clear: McCain's position is squarely on the wrong side of public opinion -- in fact, to an overwhelming degree.
This is why the McCain campaign spends what seems almost literally to be all its time (with tractable reporters in tow) scrutinizing the rhetorical entrails of Obama's every statement trying to find some movement or contradiction or frankly anything that can be talked about to keep everybody's attention (press, commentators, citizens, precocious teenagers) off the fact that McCain's position on Iraq is wildly unpopular and even more what McCain's position actually is.
Because of this, on Iraq, McCain's entire campaign is based on a strategy of constant obfuscation -- a strategy that has become much more aggressive in the wake of what the McCain campaign is calling last week's "relaunch" with a new staff based around Rove proteges from President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
Now, before concluding, let me say a few words more about the nature of this dodge. As noted yesterday, despite the AP's sloppy reporting, Obama has been quite consistent on proposing a 16 month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. But let's back up and come at the question another way. If 16 months is no good, is there anyone out there ideologically committed to 12 or 20 months. Or for that matter, since few of us in the general population have a good understanding of the operational details of how you withdraw well over 100,000 military personnel from a country like Iraq, why is it not enough for a presidential candidate simply to say, I'll change the policy on the day I get into office. And that means I'm going to begin an orderly and considered withdrawal of our troops and have it done as soon as possible.
Now, I can already hear a lot of people rising to the bait and saying, 'No, we need specifics, a timetable, a date certain, because we've been hearing this for years -- that we'll be out as soon as we can, as soon as this that or the other happens.'
And I'd agree.
But this makes the point. Most people who are so keyed into specifics and hard deadlines are that way because we've had five years of a policy of deliberate deception in which vague promises of bringing the troops home in the pretty near future are hung out in front of the public's collective nose as a means of obscuring the real policy of keeping American troops in Iraq permanently as a way of securing oil reserves and projecting US power and in the region.
And that brings us squarely to our other point. What McCain's offering is exactly the same thing -- vague suggestions about troops coming home to toss dust in people's eyes about his real policy (which he's occasionally candid about) which is keeping US troops in Iraq permanently. So for instance, last week, when McCain's campaign pushed the nonsensical claim that Obama had embraced McCain's position, their release stated that Obama had...
now adopted John McCain's position that we cannot risk the progress we have made in Iraq by beginning to withdraw our troops immediately without concern for conditions on the ground.Again, a few clauses floating in the air to try to game people into thinking that McCain's actually for withdrawing American troops from Iraq too, just a bit more responsibly, with a little more "concern for conditions on the ground" and so forth, when in fact he's for keeping American troops there permanently.
Even the fine scrutiny of Obama's language threads back to the last five years of policy by deliberate lying, which McCain is now carrying on.
So, what exactly is Silverback? It’s “spontaneous, unobtrusive usability testing software for website designers.” It gracefully records the on-screen action, including mouse clicks, as well as video and audio of the subject so you can create a library of usability testing videos to share or review later.
The Genesis of the Idea
Great software is the usually the result of people “scratching their own itch,” and Silverback is a perfect example. Clearleft has been doing basic usability testing with a video camera and tripod since they opened their doors. It got the job done, but it wasn’t ideal. They had spent some time exploring other options, but none of the solutions met their needs.
One day, a friend of theirs participated in a usability study run by Leisa Reichelt. He noticed that she had created a simple little hack to run iChat video and automatically create screen captures every 5 seconds in order to create a single file showing the screen as well as the test subject’s reaction. One thing led to another, and Clearleft decided they could take this idea to the next level, and the vision for Silverback was born.
Figure 1 The blank slate guidance helps you dive right in without the need to read instructions or configure anything.
Early Concepts & Mockups
We spoke briefly about the development process and how the application has evolved since the early concepting and prootyping phases. Andy graciously shared some of the early wireframes and mockups of Silverback. They were able to ultimately stay very true to their original vision, but the departures and evolution of the ideas are are very interesting.
Wireframing
Like any concept, Silverback’s interface has evolved through a series of sketches, wireframes, and mockups to become the application that is today. (Figure 1) Naturally it’s not an exact replication of the early concepts because ideas change and technical limitations rear their head. The example preferences screen shows some of the basic options as well as comparing the original wireframe to the preferences pane as it exists today. (Figure 2)
Figure 2 While there are inevitably some variances, the resulting application has stayed true to the original concepts.
The wireframes show the concept of projects and sessions, and the only significant changes are how they are organized and presented on the screen. (Figure 3) The export options have also been moved into the save dialogue where they are more appropriate (Figure 4), and the final interface provides a higher level of user feedback about the video and exporting configuration.
Figure 3 Even in the initial versions, the sessions worked with the concept of a project. During the development process, the interface for managing projects has necessarily evolved to be more complete, but the original underpinnings are still evident in the wireframes.
Figure 4 The quality options for exporting have migrated to the save dialogue, but the project, subject name, date, length, and notes for sessions have stayed the same.
Mockups
Wireframes are, by their nature, fairly abstract. They generally serve as an exercise in thinking and understanding and don’t need to be high-fidelity. That fidelity isn’t necessary until the mockups. Like the Silverback wireframes, the initial mockups help show an interesting evolution. On Silverback, like any project, things changed. Whether it’s technical constraints or usability enhancements, they embraced the change instead of religiously focusing on following the mockups.
Figure 5 The original mockups show the right pane as being a single all encompassing
Andy also spoke about the implementation saying that the graphical parts of the interface were actually the most difficult aspects to get pixel perfect. When setting out to design a desktop application, there was hope that they’d be able to avoid the issues of multiple browsers that we have to deal with in web development. Unfortunately, developing desktop apps isn’t without its share of inconsistencies. From UI quirks to tracking down bugs on different physical machines with different software and hardware configurations, the team had equally frustrating moments developing for the desktop.
Figure 6 The list of users was migrated into its own pane.
While some aspects inevitably changed, it’s clear the final product didn’t stray far from the original mockups. (Figure 5, 6, and 7) The clear evolution of the application from wireframes, to mockups, to working desktop app is a wonderful example of working within constraints and adapting to new information over the course of a project. Change isn’t a bad thing. Of course, it’s important to manage change, but it’s not something to be afraid of.
Figure 7 The area for video was originally designed to be much different. That area of the screen has now evolved to present context-relevant information based on whether it’s pre or post recording.
The “Final” Interface
One of the reasons Silverback succeeds is its focus. It’s not trying to be a screencasting application, although it could easily be used as one. It’s not trying to be an overly complex solution, either. It’s focused completely on enabling you to capture, store, and export videos of people using software. There’s no editing functionality or unnecessary features. Silverback dutifully performs its job without distractions. (Figure 8)
Figure 8 Silverback presents a simple and intuitive interface for browsing and recording all of your usability tests by project and test subject. There’s even space to jot down notes.
Blank Slate Guidance
Having worked with some of the earlier releases, it’s very clear now the amount of thought and attention that’s gone into making the application easy to use from the moment you download it. (Figure 9) There’s no configuration. You’re ready to go as soon as you open it, and it helps make sure you can get started without ever having to ask, “What next?”
Figure 9 Once you create a project, you still need to create sessions, and Silverback makes sure you don’t get lost along the way.
iSight Preview
Figure 10 The iSight preview pane provides a quick preview of the subject and video just above the button for starting the new session. The preview also provides a subtle outline for helping to ensure that the subject is centered on the screen. And if you’re iSight is disabled, the preview pane appears blank and doubles as a reminder so you don’t start recording without it.
With each session, Silverback helps you get started with a preview of what the camera sees just above the button to start the session. (Figure 10) Within the preview, there’s even a subtle outline to help make sure things are centered and that the videos of the subjects are consistent. It’s not always necessary, but it’s subtle enough that it doesn’t get in the way if you don’t need it.
Of course, sometimes the iSight isn’t enabled or the machine may just not have one. In the case of the disabled iSight, you won’t accidentally start recording and miss the video because the preview pane makes it obvious when you’re not capturing video.
Getting Started
One of the simplest, but most thoughtful features is the initial screen you see when you start a session. Instead of immediately beginning to record, it displays a temporary screen and instructs the test subject to press the spacebar to begin the session. (Figure 11) This way, the screen is blank before the session begins and there’s no need to start the session by reaching around them or swapping seats.
Figure 11 When you start a session, it displays a holding screen until the test subject is ready to begin. This makes it easier to start it for them and help them get going from a blank slate.
Export Previews
After recording a session, you still have to export it to Quicktime in order to be able to watch it. Depending on the length of the video and computer speed, the process can sometimes take a while. As a result, you’d probably rather not have to export, wait 30 minutes, and then view the video only to find out you exported with the wrong settings.
Figure 12 The export previews each show the video preview in a different location based on the export preferences.
Thankfully, Silverback shows a small preview of the video along with the captured video of the subject so you can tell what the export will look like. You can choose the size and location of the iSight video and optionally hide it or make it semi-transparent so that it’s less likely to obscure any screen activity. What’s nicer is that the previews automatically update based on the current settings in the preference pane. (Figure 12)
Export Options
There are a plethora of options when you export your videos. You can choose where the iSight video is located as well as the size of the iSight video. (Figure 13) There’s even an option to have the iSight video be semi-transparent so that it doesn’t obscure any of the screen activity. Of course, there’s also quality and size options for the final quicktime movie as well.
Figure 13 The exported video includes an ever-present video of the test subject. The size and location is easily configurable.
What’s nicer is that you can change the settings each time you export the video. That way you can try several different options or create different versions at different sizes and quality for different purposes. So you could create a high quality version that you keep on your laptop for presentations and a lower quality version for distributing to other team members.
Figure 14 The exported video shows when and where the subject clicked on the screen with circles that gradually expand and disappear.
Capturing Clicks
In retrospect, it seems obvious that we’d want to capture clicks, but after exporting a session and watching the quicktime video, I was pleasantly surprised to see they had thought of it. Conveniently enough, Silverback overlays small circles that expand and then disappear to help show when and where a test subject clicks. (Figure 14)
Exception Handling
Recording audio and video is a tricky thing. There are dozens of edge cases that could lead to an incomplete or corrupt video. The hard drive could fill up, applications could crash, or maybe there’s a hardware problem. Capturing and seamlessly handling these edge cases can be the difference between a successful session and unsuccessful one. Silverback has you covered. (Figure 15 and 16)
Figure 15 Silverback makes sure to draw attention to any potential technical glitches before a recording begins.
Figure 16 Silverback also provides immediate feedback if a recording failed. That way you’ll know if you need to go ahead and take more extensive notes, or potentially schedule another session.
Session Avatars
Whenever you’re browsing back through old sessions, sometimes it can be difficult to remember a session based just on the subject’s name. So, to make things a little more visual, Silverback automatically creates an image of the test subject to use as the avatar for each session. (Figure 17) That way, you can remember a session based simply on the subject’s face.
Apple Remote
Figure 17 A picture of the test subject is used as the avatar to assist in finding and remembering sessions.
Finally, one of my favorite features is that Silverback works with the Apple remote if your machine has one. (Figure 18) You can pause and restart the recording without having to be at the keyboard. This is a subtle but incredibly valuable feature. If you’re running a session and the subject is sitting at the computer, it can be physically awkward to get to the keyboard and press the necessarily awkward keyboard shortcut to pause or finish the session. Enabling the use of the Apple remote makes this part of the process measurably easier.
A Brave New World
Silverback is in a great place to bring usability testing to the masses. It will be possible for anyone to quickly and affordably create convincing and useful videos to help improve software. It won’t provide some of the more advanced features of a complete usability lab, but it will be more than enough for most people. All it needs to do is help designers and developers see their products through the eyes of the user, and it achieves that purpose very well. In doing so, it will expose the majority of the flaws as well as strengths.
Personally, I feel that one of the most exciting aspects of Silverback is the potential for getting increased buy-in, understanding, and involvement from executives and team members who can sometimes be too busy to attend usability sessions in person. Creating a report of the results with a word processor or slideshow just isn’t effective enough, but enabling them to watch videos of real people with real facial expressions and audio is.
Summary
Figure 18 One of the most convenient features of Silverback is the ability to use the Apple remote to play and pause a session.
Silverback will be a great addition to any web developer’s tool kit. With it’s thoughtful interface and ease of use, the team from Clearleft has a winner on their hands. It should be available to the public in the next few weeks for around $50, and it will work on both Leopard and Tiger. I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about the potential for software to really help make a difference. Nobody will have a legitimate excuse not to do at least a few sessions of usability testing, and the result will be better web sites and software for everyone.
Congratulations and thanks to the team involved with bringing such a great product to life.
- Andy Budd, Concept Creation and Wireframes
- Sophie Barrett, Project Management
- Jon Hicks, Logo and UI Design
- Paul Annett, Quality Assurance
- Martin Redington, Development
"...I was witnessing Metcalfe's Plateau, a place where the value of the network no longer increases with each additional node. In fact, thanks to spam (as deemed by me), the value of the network had started to decline, I was looking for other places to spend my time online."
Andrew flagged this post for me at TheNextRight, which claims that our series of posts last week on BMW Direct and their oddly inefficient direct mail fundraising is actually an attempt to 'delegitimize direct mail fundraising', which would be a bad thing in the author's eyes since this is one mode of mass-fundraising where, he says (and correctly), that conservatives have a "tactical advantage."
In any case, the author, Soren Dayton, makes a number of claims to argue that our reporting makes no sense. And I'll try to follow up with a post explaining why his arguments don't hold water. But what I really wanted to flag for you is that he links approvingly to a site called Election Journal, which appears to be a sort of one-stop shopping for all bogus GOP claims of election fraud designed to aid voter suppression efforts.
Some of it almost reads like parody -- here's a post about the Alabama AG calling out the Bush Justice Department for its blase attitude toward vote fraud.
I'll definitely be bookmarking it. Sort of ground-zero for the 'vote fraud' bamboozlement, or at least the clearing house.
Dear Lazyweb,
I could use some Linux xscreensaver debugging help. I made some fairly large changes to make it cope with the brave new RANDR world where monitors can be hot-swapped and have their resolution changed willy-nilly. Please apply this patch and test some things for me, k? Launch xscreensaver with -verbose to see what it's actually up to.
"Bad" would be 1) crashing, 2) part of your desktop ever being incompletely blacked out by a screen saver, 3) running savers on video outputs that don't actually have monitors attached to them.
If you have (or can has) more than one monitor:
- Do they all go blank when xscreensaver activates?
- Do things look right if you add a monitor while the screen is blanked? While it is non-blanked?
- Likewise when changing the resolution of the monitors using the "xrandr" command.
- Does it correctly realize which monitors are actually attached to the system and in use?
- Try configuring your machine to use the old-style multi-screen mode (where you have displays :0.0 and :0.1, and no Xinerama or RANDR.) Does it still behave sanely?
- Can you configure your X server to use just the Xinerama extension and not the RANDR extension? Try that too.
If you have only one monitor, you can still test this. Use Ctrl-Alt-KeypadPlus and Ctrl-Alt-KeypadMinus to change the resolution of your monitor without changing the resolution of your desktop, so that bumping the mouse against the edge of the screen pans across your desktop. (You might need to turn off the Xinerama and RANDR extensions to make this work, I'm not sure.)
- When xscreensaver launches, the savers should always be the size of the monitor (you shouldn't be seeing a zoomed-in portion of the saver, you should be seeing the whole thing.)
- Lock the screen. While the screen is locked, zoom in and out. The xscreensaver window should stay the size of the visible portion of the screen.
- With the screen locked, bump the mouse against the edge of the screen. The screen should remain covered.
Please let me know how that goes...
Filed under: OS, Hacks, Cult of Mac, Mods, Flickr Find
While browsing Flickr this afternoon, we came across a shot of a Nintendo DS running Macintosh System 6 in emulation on reader Ken Fager's Flickr stream. Of course, we contacted him to ask how he did it. Here's what he had to say.
First, grab a DS flash card and install MiniVMacDS onto its root directory.
Once that's done, place the Mac Plus ROM into the "vmac" folder along with a System 6/7 install disk (you can make a blank disk image using Disk Utility).
Finally, turn on the DS and select MiniVMacDS. It will boot the disk images. From there, install (minimal) System 6 onto the blank disk image.
Ken notes that it's a bit pokey, but hey, this wasn't done for speed! Have fun if you try this for yourself. Thanks for sharing, Ken! We love it.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
The Associated Press reports that Wal-Mart plans to spend $400 million on locally grown produce this year, which the company defines as anything farmed within a state’s boundaries. The company’s Commitment to You web page states that the company “realize[s] the important role that American farmers play in today’s society — both in terms of ensuring our high-quality food supply and supporting the local and national economies.” The local-food buying program, it continues, “reflects our ever-important goal to provide consumers with quality, affordable, home-grown agricultural selections.”
But it would not be far-fetched to think that the retailing giant (the largest public corporation in the world and the largest U.S. food retailer) also has other, less lofty, motivations. Such as reducing fuel expenses: with diesel fuel prices going through the roof, buying tomatoes from a neighboring county instead of Florida or California can save money in fuel and labor.
Indeed, Wal-Mart’s Checkout blog last week bragged that by optimizing the 12 million pounds of peaches it sources from 18 different states and distributing the product locally, “Wal-Mart saved 672,000 food miles and 112,000 gallons of diesel fuel…[equaling] more than $1.4 million.” Wal-Mart may also see a financial benefit in reducing its exposure to nationwide food-safety scares and their aftershocks — dark clouds could be hovering over fresh, out of season tomatoes for a long time — by providing more accurate information about the food’s provenance.
If one can get past the irony of a leader in the globalization of the food chain, whose stores have paved over countless acres of U.S. farmland, claiming to be a booster of local producers, Wal-Mart’s initiative has potential to improve local food systems by teaching shoppers about the joys of eating what’s in season, providing a new market for regional farms, and helping customers gain a better understanding of the origins of their food.
The devil is in the details. For example, Wal-Mart has a history of squeezing suppliers for lower and lower prices. A 2005 article in the New York Times recounted how Wal-Mart asked for a 20 percent price cut from the Organic Valley dairy cooperative after it had been the primary organic milk supplier for three years. Organic Valley CEO George Simeon said, “Wal-Mart allows you to really build market share. But we’re about our values and being able to sustain our farmers. If a customer wants to stretch us to the point where we’re not able to deliver our mission, then we have to find different markets.”
In the AP article, local-food expert Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, expresses concern that Wal-Mart will buy only from the largest growers, thus preventing the smallest farms from getting any of the business. Over time this could lead to regional consolidation and possibly the replacement of small, diverse farms with large monocrops grown for Wal-Mart. These same concerns were raised back in 2006 when Wal-Mart announced plans to jump into the organic food market. (See Michael Pollan’s blog posts for the Times — 1 and 2 — and the paper’s editorial.)
If Wal-Mart’s initiative is successful, I wonder how it will affect its state and federal lobbying strategies. Will it put some of its lobbying muscle into farmland preservation? Or into removing the prohibition on vegetable and fruit planting on USDA program lands? Or will it seek to impose ever more draconian food safety regulations on its suppliers?
(Via Paul Krugman)
I work occasionally as a fill-in librarian at a local public library that serves a community of about 5,000 people. This is the community I am moving to next month, up the road from where I live now, and while technically it puts me out of the “rural” designation, it’s still pretty rural. Last week and the week before there was a horrible tragedy that rocked the whole community. Short form: a local girl Brooke Bennett, went missing and her body was discovered a few days ago. The most likely suspect at this point is an uncle who is on the state sex offender list.
First off let me say that I’m quoting from news stories only. Our official staff position is “no comment” and I’m sticking to that. Here is why this is a library issue.
- The initial reports, when the girl was simply missing, was that she had met a sexual predator online via her MySpace page. That garnered the predictable media outcry as well as some very good stories about safety online.
- It also resulted in law enforcement coming to the library to take the public PCs. You can read the library director’s statements about this in this article in the Burlington Free Press. The librarians waited for a court order, and gave the computers to the police once they received one. The computers have since been returned. The library had an internet policy in place to guide their actions in this situation.
- As more details emerged it became clear that the MySpace angle was not just untrue, it was the opposite of what people had thought. The person who abducted Brooke had actually logged in to her MySpace page to try to create a fake scenario where she was meeting a “predator” when in reality she was meeting him. IP addresses from these interactions were given to law enforcement by MySpace and were, as near as I can tell, instrumental in helping them determine the sequence of events of this crime and narrow down the suspect list considerably. The older articles still reflect the “internet predator” angle when, like most abductions, the criminal was someone from the victim’s own family.
- And as far as data goes, danah boyd has a very good article about MySpace when DOPA was more on the table in 2006. One of her useful facts “Statistically speaking, kids are more at risk at a church picnic or a boy scout outing than they are when they go on MySpace. Less than .01% of all youth abductions nationwide are stranger abductions and as far as we know, no stranger abduction has occurred because of social network services.”
- The accused man is being charged, as of this writing, with kidnaping. This is because kidnaping at a federal level carries a possible death penalty sentence and is, I assume, a bargaining chip. The law regarding this is one that I wasn’t totally aware of “the 2006 Adam Walsh law — named for another abducted child — allowed federal prosecution of such crimes when they are facilitated by the Internet.” Worth knowing for any of us who provide Internet access to the public, I think.
- The library has set up a book display dealing with this very difficult topic — books on MySpace, the death of a child, dealing with grief — and encouraging conversations.
So, this is all incredibly upsetting and destabilizing to the community here. While I hope that you never have to deal with something like this at your library, there may be some instructive or useful pieces of information here that I felt might be worthwhile to pass on.
Aza Raskin:
Computers programs lost something important when displaying a splash of color stopped being one line of code. As a kid, I remember being able to type “plot x,y” on the Apple II to throw up a phosphorescent splotch. When the simplicity of the one-line plotter went away, so did the delight at being so effortlessly generative — in a visual way — on the computer. ContextFree.js is a stab at making it easy again. It’s like a grown up version of Logo (or at least the Turtle Graphics part of Logo).
If you remember Logo, you know how cool this is. If you don’t, trust me, check this out. And as Ryan Singer points out, the UI that Raskin created for the Algorithm Ink “IDE” is quite clever, too.
I’ve got one more privacy related post, but this is just a few things I’ve seen, noticed and liked. My goal for the summer was to catch up and stay caught up on RSS feeds, either through thinning my list, developing better habits or deciding to only follow friends and family, or only work people. I did a little of all of those and have been caught up for weeks now, even through ALA.
- Quick privacy-related link: why
iswas it so hard to find Google’s privacy policy? Also, if you’re not familiar with the Google/Viacom lawsuit, now is a good time to get familiar.- Speaking of Google, does anyone feel, like Sarah does, that they punk’d us?
- Ryan Dechamps tries out an EEE PC thinking about its potential use in a public library setting.
- Laura does some thinking out loud about the 2.0 aesthetic and what matters to us versus what matters to our patrons.
- David Lee King talks about Twitter best practices. Some very sensible suggestions for people who are newly starting out with Twitter, the how and the why.
- An older but good post from Lichen about a session she went to at NELA about library-wise IT proficiencies. That is, what proficiencies should we expect all library staff to have?
Mule Design is hiring!
