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Paintings on silos, a new capital of Asia, typographic wallpapers, replica of Shanghai hardware store, EU Green card lottery and porcelain human bones for a biennale that celebrated contemporary artists who believe that art has to offer more than a spectacle continue
I love this chart, but maybe not for the obvious reason. Stanislas Dehaene’s Reading in the Brain (previously on Snarkmarket) has this revelatory section about how we recognize glyphs even when they come in many configurations. Think about all the ways the letter E can look: capital E, lowercase e, cursive e, funky-futuristic-font E, and so on. Our brains recognize them all (well.. almost all) instantly as E. They peel back the pixels or atoms and register the underlying letter-concept.
Anyway, looking at this chart, I realized that the bat symbol is totally a glyph! It’s beyond graphic design at this point. There are so many variations out there—many, many more beyond what you see above—and there is a lot of variation between them. But they’re all unmistakably the bat symbol. That’s cool.
I want to make something that becomes a glyph.
(Rob Greco asks which version is my favorite. For me, it’s an easy pick: 2005 all the way. But the modern choice is actually the most retro; the Batman Begins team reached way back into the early archives for inspiration.)
Robert Scoble has a good analogy:
Let’s go back a few years to when Firefox was just coming on the scene. Remember that? I remember that it didn’t work with a ton of websites. Things like banks, e-commerce sites, and others. Why not? Because those sites were coded specifically for the dominant Internet Explorer back then.
Some people thought Firefox was going to fail because of these broken links. Just like Adobe is trying to say that Apple’s iPad is going to fail because of its own set of broken links.
But just a few years later and have you seen a site that doesn’t work on Firefox? I haven’t.
What happened? Firefox FORCED developers to get on board with the standards-based web.
The same thing is happening now, based on my talks with developers: they are not including Flash in their future web plans any longer.
Regarding those blue boxes that indicate embedded Flash content in MobileSafari, think of it this way: Who can make them go away?
Adobe can’t. They can’t put Flash Player on iPhone OS on their own.
Apple could, but they won’t.
Users could make Apple change its mind by refusing to buy iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads because they don’t support Flash. That does not seem to be happening. In fact, iPhone sales are accelerating.
Web site producers could do it, by replacing or providing an alternative to the Flash content on their sites.
Uh, magical unicorns?
Adobe’s initial reaction to the iPad seems to be geared toward #3 — emphasizing publicly that iPhone OS devices are not capable of rendering the (admittedly, substantial amounts of) Flash content on the web today. Good luck with that.
Adobe’s fear, of course, is that #4 is what will happen. And with good reason, since I think it’s fair to say that we’re seeing this happen already. Flash evangelist Lee Brimelow made his little poster showing what a bunch of Flash-using web sites look like without Flash without actually looking to see how they render on MobileSafari. Ends up a bunch of them, including the porno site, already have iPhone-optimized versions with no blue boxes, and video that plays just fine as straight-up H.264. iPhone visitors to these sites have no idea they’re missing anything because, well, they’re not missing anything. For a few other of the sites Brimelow cited, like Disney and Spongebob Squarepants, there are dedicated native iPhone apps.
Kendall Helmstetter Gelner put together this version of Brimelow’s chart using actual screenshots from MobileSafari, the App Store, and native iPhone apps. The only two blue boxes left: FarmVille and Hulu.
The explanation is simple. Web site producers tend to be practical. Those that use Flash do so not because they’re Flash proponents, but because Flash is easy and ubiquitous. Few technologies get to 100 percent market penetration; Flash came remarkably close. A few years ago you could say that, effectively, Flash was everywhere. It made total sense for sites like YouTube and Hulu to go with Flash.
Flash is no longer ubiquitous. There’s a big difference between “everywhere” and “almost everywhere”. Adobe’s own statistics on Flash’s market penetration claim 99 percent penetration as of last month. That’s because, according to their survey methodology, they’re only counting “PCs” — which ignores the entire sort of devices which have brought about this debate. Adobe is arguing that Flash is installed on 99 percent of all web browsers that support Flash, not 99 percent of all web browsers.
Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That’s no longer true, and Adobe’s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.
What’s Hulu going to do? Sit there and wait? Whine about the blue boxes? Or do the practical thing and write software that delivers video to iPhone OS? The answer is obvious. Hulu doesn’t care about what’s good for Adobe. They care about what’s good for Hulu. Hulu isn’t a Flash site, it’s a video site. Developers go where the users are.
The Washington Post's article about OpenStreetMaps's "citizen cartographers" portrays it as the efforts of what I guess could be called lovingly obsessive locals who care more about getting it right than "a couple of guys driving a truck down a street."...
Photo: Erin Zimmer
In honor of the major storm making its way across the South, SE user lemonfair shares her technique for "sugar on snow," a familiar sight in many parts of the Northeast. Other users chime in with their memories of snow "ice cream" (snow, sugar, vanilla, and cream), and maple stick candy in Canada.
As long as snow has fallen, there have been those who figure out a way to "cook" with it. Do you have any snow treats to share?
Related:
Sugar on Snow: Maple Syrup on Snow Snack in Vermont
Filed under: Gaming, Features, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
Catan. If you've ever visited, there's a good chance you're passionate about it.
First unveiled as a traditional board game in 1995, the now-classic trading and settlement game has evolved over the years to include dozens of scenarios, expansions and reworkings, from limited edition game maps to browser-based Internet versions. Naturally, the Settlers of Catan is now also available for the iPhone [iTunes link], and it's a a damn good condensed version.
First things first. This is the full, but basic, game. The original ruleset isn't condensed at all, but none of the expansions are present in the current version. While long-time board gamers might scoff at simple "vanilla Settlers," the basic game as presented in Exozet's iPhone version acts just like the tabletop big brother. You can choose to play on the fixed beginner board or a random map, you can play with three or four people (or bots), you can trade, you can go for longest road, etc. All the things that make Catan such an enduring game are here, and that's great to have in your pocket.
Read on to find out more about Catan: the First Island on the iPhone (and iPod Touch).
The Game
The Settlers of Catan is, at heart, a game of collecting resources and building a collection of settlements and cities on a modular board, with the goal of reaching a set point total (between 8 and 12, but defaulting to 10) before the other players. Players who know the rules will be able to jump right in. You can set the animations to turbo and turn off the opponent comments for the fastest possible game. If you're quick, a full game can take around 10 minutes - about as much time as it takes some people to set up the tabletop version. Players who aren't familiar can go through a tutorial with digital Catan's familiar Professor Easy to learn how to build, trade and acquire points or read up on the game at Board Game Geek.
The App
The Catan gameplay doesn't suffer on the iPod's small screen. Each resource hex is clearly differentiated by both color and graphics, but colorblind players might have trouble figuring out which settlements and roads belong to which player since there are no player icons to be found. You'll have to rely on memory to kept things straight,
Figuring out how the game operates is superbly straightforward. Things blink when you can can affect them, the menus are easy to figure out and so on. If you know how to play the tabletop game and aren't totally new to the iPhone, you will probably know how to play the app in, at most, 90 seconds.
Take, for example, the trade screen. You can see the five resource types and how many you happen to be sitting on at any given moment. Flick one up towards your opponents and the number goes down. This is what you're offering. Flick one down towards your player avatar and the number goes up. Simple and clear. Click on the big green checkmark to try and seal the deal - and notice how this icon is located at the opposite side of the screen from the decline/exit button. Very smart.
If you get fed up with AI opponents trying to trade with you, there is an option to decline all offers for the rest of the turn. When you have the resources that you want already, this greatly speeds up the game (a good thing).
This brings up a point: who is this app's target audience? With the tutorial and the easy playing time, someone totally new to Catan could pick up the game and enjoy it. But, c'mon, the people who will be most excited about this are the hardcore players. A skilled player will be able to beat the game's toughest bots - William and Hillary - with some regularity, but there is still enough challenge here to be worth the five spot. If you're addicted to Catan and want ultra-easy access to a quick game (make your decisions fast and you can be done in ten minutes), this is the app for you. Hopefully, enough players will complain about the less-than-brilliant AI and we'll get another update to make them play better.
While it would be feasible to implement in the tabletop version, one new feature in the app is the "resource bonus." This setting allows a player to never go too long without getting at least a little something. Especially early in the game, a series of bad rolls can mean you're not building anything while your opponents erect cities all over the place. With the resource bonus option turned on, after five empty rolls, a player can simply select one resource of their choice.
A drought like this is less likely to happen if the dice option is set to Stack (or Stack5). When using Stack, the dice rolls have perfect distribution, so that if the game ends after exactly 36 rolls, you'll have seen every possible combination of two dice during play. With Stack5, five random options are removed at the start of the game and the numbers reset after 31 rolls. There is a deck of cards that Mayfair Games sells for the tabletop Catan version that does the same thing, but the extra text on those cards is not included in the iPhone version.
Speaking of mini-additions, the First Island is ripe for mini-expansions like The Great River of Catan or The Fishermen of Catan, and I hope we'll be seeing some of the more game-changing expansions like Seafarers or Traders & Barbarians. They'd better be working on these options. Seriously.
Looking even further down the road, should Exozet ever develop a larger version for the iPad, adding the 5-6 player expansion might also be cool, and players could play a tabletop game just by setting the iPad on the the table and going from there (dealing with cards hidden in players hands will be tricky, for sure). It's a thought.
Final thoughts
For some reason, Exozet thinks players want to listen to in-game music instead of their iTunes library. The game's music and sound effects can be muted, but is still doesn't allow your own music library to play; that's annoying, and one of the most-requested changes in customer reviews. Another downside is that there's no way (that we could find) to offer trades with other players on their turn. This is important if you're trying to offer 2-1 trades to stay under the 8-card robber hand limit, but because the game moves so fast it's not that much of a problem, really.
We'd also really, really love an undo button. The app is pretty idiot-proof, but mistakes do happen.
Finally, there's a bonus feature to this $5 app that hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves. The Settlers of Catan needs at least three players (the 2007 expansion Traders & Barbarians expansion for the tabletop game gave us a reasonable two-player ruleset, but it's not the same game) to get going. With this app, we now have a very good way to play real two-player Catan. It's a slight hassle to coordinate, but this app gives two people a third "player" whenever needed. Catan: The FIrst Island is the next best thing to having an extra friend around who's always up for another trip to Catan.TUAWCatan: The First Island brings tabletop gaming glee to iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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via www.loge13.com The New York Times today confirmed the death last Monday of Jane Jarvis. A sad day for Met fans. Jane Jarvis was a class act who touched millions of Met fans with her musical gift, and her often witty choice of between-inning tunes. Jane Jarvis was 94.
Has it been a long week for anyone else?
I’m excited that we got some PECOTA out to our subscribers earlier in 2010 than we’ve managed any previous year. Unfortunately, we’ve run into some problems of varying nature. Some of the problems have already been addressed, and we’ll continue to work on the rest.
We’ve been making a lot of changes to the process behind the scenes, and we don’t have all of the components working together without a hitch yet. In retrospect, we should have called this a beta release, as some of you have suggested in the comments. What we’ll be doing is releasing improvements as soon as we’ve got them, and we’ll do a better job of managing your expectations as far as the fitness of the entire system going forward.
To answer a few of your questions:
* we have no concerns about the PECOTA data shipping in Baseball Prospectus 2010. In fact, you’ll see a few improvements over what we’ve run in the book in the past. We’re looking into BABIP and GB% issues that are reflected solely in the depth chart processes (and, by extension, in the projected standings).
* PECOTA cards are coming… we’re hoping for next week on those, but we’re improving them a lot this year, and we’ve got work left to do on them, so we’re not able to guarantee a date yet.
Please keep an eye at Eric’s previous post about PECOTA, where we’ll announce updates in the short-term, or you can check out the Fantasy page or Fantasy widget on the front page to see when new data has been released.
We will get everything ironed out as soon as we can, but in the meantime, do not take the depth chart standings to Vegas. Thank you for your patience and continued support.
To close out the post, here’s a question: do you want us to push out data as soon as we have something close, with a “beta” tag on it until we’re sure about it, or would you prefer that we release data we’re more certain about a day or three later?
The hair bow has a long history, starting long before Lady Gaga's infamous white blond topper.
From Valentino's FW05 Couture messy bows to YSL's FW05 neat, loose bows, the up-do's been a must (if an under the radar must) for years.
But the clip on hair bows taking over your local drug store since Gaga's reign started are far too plastic-looking - and weird - to actually attach to one's head.
We're taking our inspiration from the hairbows at left, shot by one of our favorite new photographers, Zooey Grossman. High, messy, sexy... much chicer than a messy bun, but just as easy to do.
Click through for a DIY! Note: The only prerequisite is having long hair (obviously).
Lady Gaga - Shopping - Yves Saint Laurent - Health - Beauty
The New York Times today confirmed the death last Monday of Jane Jarvis.
A sad day for Met fans. Jane Jarvis was a class act who touched millions of Met fans with her musical gift, and her often witty choice of between-inning tunes.
Jane Jarvis was 94.
The Mets did a somewhat lousy job paying tribute to her during Shea Stadium's last year. Jane pulled back the numbers on the Shea countdown wall at Billy Wagner Bobblehead Day in 2008 but really, she deserved an entire day.
Of course, she was also impacted by the awful crane tragedy in March 2008, when a construction crane collapsed into a residential building.
You can read the obituary here from today's NY Times.
In honor of Jane Jarvis, here is a beautiful clip of her and her good friend Benny Powell playing a sweet rendition of "The Nearness Of You." Take care, Jane Jarvis. You were a treasure and a true Met icon:
According to Peter Keepnews of the New York Times, the original Shea Stadium organist, Jane Jarvis, has died at the age of 94.
According to Keepnews, Jarvis began her career as a jazz pianist and started playing at baseball stadiums in 1956 with the Milwaukee Braves, and then moved onto the Mets when they opened Shea Stadium in 1964, and she was a mainstay until 1979.
For more on Jarvis, check out the Times obituary here.
…hat tip to the Mets Police for the link…
The TV show The Wire is an incredibly instructive lesson on how the modern world works (besides being a great work of art). The recurring theme is how individuals with good intentions are stymied by large institutions. As the show’s creator says:
The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomics forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak.
What’s amazing about the show is you see in a very realistic and compelling way how, say, 1) the well intentioned mayor needs to get the crime numbers down to get his school reform passed so 2) he pressures the (well-intentioned) police chief to do so, 3) who in turn cuts off a (well-intentioned) investigation that wasn’t going to yield short term metrics, 4) which emboldens the gang leader being investigated, 5) who recruits a sympathetic high school student into a life of crime. And so on.
This blog is mostly about startups so let me tell a true Wire-like startup story. There is a large, publicly-traded company we’ll call BigCo. BigCo has a new CEO who is under heavy scrutiny and expected to get the stock price up over the next few fiscal quarters. Wall Street analysts who follow BigCo value the stock at a multiple of earnings, which are driven by Operating Expenses (“OpEx”), which are ongoing expenses versus “one time” expenses like acquisitions (called “CapEx”). (If you read analyst reports, you’ll see that stocks are generally considered, correctly or not, to have key financial drivers. The stock price is often those drivers times a “multiple” which in turn is often determined by the company’s expected growth rate). The “smart money” like hedge funds may or may not believe these analysts’ models, but they know other people believe them so place their bets according to how they think these numbers will move (see Keynes on the stock market as a “beauty contest”). (Financial academics who believe in “efficient markets” would say none of this is possible but anyone who’s actually participated in these markets knows the academics are living in fantasy land.)
All this means the CEO is fixated on growing BigCo’s revenues while keeping operating expenses down. A great way to do this is through acquisitons, which analysts consider one-time expenses (CapEx). Let’s say BigCo is currently growing at 20%, but their multiple suggests they need to grow at 30%. So the M&A team goes out and looks for companies they can acquire growing at, say, 50%, to get the average up. BigCo spends lavishly to buy these companies since the costs can be considered CapEx. They even have elaborate dinners and incur other large expenses that can be counted as part of the acquisition. Once the deal is closed they immediately start planning how to cut operating expenses from the newly acquired company. They decide the best way is to move the engineering offshore. This rips the heart out of the engineering-driven culture and as a result morale drops, product quality falls, and key people quit. But the short term revenues are up and operating expenses down, so BigCo’s CEO keeps her job and makes a lot of money off her stock options.
The winners here are the people who understand the system and play it cynically (hedge funds, BigCo’s CEO & board, perhaps the acquired company’s founders & investors). The losers are everyone else – the company’s customers, the employees who lose their jobs, and the stock market investors who don’t understand the game is rigged.
Tetris Soccer Edition
Who is that in the picture? Tell us in the Comments
Picture by: dunno source Caption by: dunno source via Our LOL Builder
I feel like I’ve seen this guy before. LP reissue now available from Mexican Summer.
Shared by Bud
This has to be understood as basically awesome.
Google just announced that its Apps Script scripting language is now open to all users of the Google Apps Standard Edition. Until now, Apps Script, which allows users to create scripts that automate common tasks in Google Docs, was only available to paying Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users. Every Google Apps user can now, for example, create scripts that automatically import stock prices into a spreadsheet, convert foreign currency amounts based on today's exchange rate or email team members when their task status is updated.
Sponsor
To access this new feature, just open up any spreadsheet in your account and look for the new scripts option in the tools menu.
Powerful - But Needs Some Programming Experience
Making Apps Script available to a wider range of customers is an important move for Google as it tries to compete with desktop office suites. Microsoft and most of its competitors on the desktop have long offered similar scripting features in their products. One of Google's advantages is that its scripts allow users to easily hook into Google's own APIs, which makes bringing in stock quotes or other data relatively easy.
Given that these scripts are written in JavaScript, building these scripts takes a fair amount of technical knowledge. Google has created a good set of tutorials to get you started. To create these scripts, users can use Google's online Web Script Editor or any other text editor. Sadly, though, Google doesn't offer a repository where Apps Script users can exchange useful snippets of code.
Discuss
Bad Romance by @capndesign @ambienttraffic @nataliepo & @liz, originally uploaded by buhny.I'm not there, but this is the next best thing.
The Omni Mouth: “We want to bring all five of our productivity apps to iPad: OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniPlan, OmniFocus, and OmniGraphSketcher.”
I’m especially a fan of OmniOutliner — and I want an outliner on iPad. This is great news.
First, the news: Google told me today that they would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense.
At a private meeting with a dozen and a half media people at Davos with CEO Eric Schmidt, President of sales Nikesh Arora, search boss Marissa Mayer, YouTube founder Chad Hurley, and counsel/”chief diplomat” (Schmidt’s joke) David Drummond in a Davos apartment dolled up with lava lamps, the execs discussed China, the company’s push into display, critics from France to News Corp., Android and its phone strategy, and news.
* * * AdSense: At the DLD conference in Munich Monday, Burda CEO Paul-Bernhard Kallen, on a panel with Drummond, said publishers wanted transparency and their “fair share.” I asked him, a fair share of what — AdSense? Kallen said yes. And that put a fence around this debate. Drummond went on to emphasize that publishers do not deserve a share of a search for a camera that doesn’t involve their content. He also said transparency could be discussed.
At today’s briefing, Arora said that the company was considering more transparency. I confirmed with Google’s people that this was new. I suspect that they’re not going to promise the possibility and not deliver something.
I’m happy about this because, with China, this seems to strike off my two biggest complaints — both in What Would Google Do? — about Google: its prior lack of support of free speech in China and its hypocrisy on transparency and ad rates.
* * * China: “We made a decision that was consistent with our values,” Schmidt said. “We’re not going to operate differently in China as opposed to the rest of the world,” said Drummond.
When is Gooogle going to do something? “It should happen soon,” Drummond said.
Was Google’s original stance on China — making it an exception to its own rules — a mistake? “We said consistently we would evaluate the position,” said Schmidt, “and people didn’t believe us.”
On the attacks, Schmidt said the company had a moral need to “make sure our systems are safe from attack anywhere.”
They wouldn’t discuss any details about any discussions with China. One editor asked whether Google was upset that other companies — especially those that also suffered attacks — have not come forward to openly support Google. I went farther and said that Microsoft had thrown Google under the bus and backed up over it. Schmidt repeatedly said that he manages Google, not other companies. “We speak for ourselves.”
Drummond said the problem of censorship is not in China alone. Hurley said YouTube is blocked in China, Turkey, and Iran “because of freedom of speech.”
“I believe this is an evergreen story for Google and other online companies,” Schmidt said. “As the world goes online, every country is going to have a discussion about what’s appropriate and what’s not. And a lot of these organizations [that is, governments] have not really thought through what they’re doing. We have a strong view about transparency.” [It's about to get a little stronger, it seems.]
Though Schmidt joked about Drummond as Google’s diplomat and apolgized for mixing metaphors, he emphasized that Google is not a country, does not set laws, and does not have a police force — or diplomats This is a government-to-government issue, he said.
* * * Google’s reputation: I asked whether it was lonely at the top, getting grief from France to Germany to News Corp to China. Is it because Google is so big? Is it because it is putting itself on the ledge? Is it a PR problem? Schmidt said no.
“Google is fundamentally disruptive because of our innovation,” Schmidt said. “Google, because of our architecture, does things at a larger scale than others can. We are in the information space, which everyone has an opinion on. … You asked me how does it feel from a Google perspective? It feels as if we’re in the right place.” These aren’t crises, Schmidt said. He treated them as a factor in doing business. “It’s constnat. It’s because it’s information that maters.”
* * * Innovation: Schmidt later talked about the difficulty we all know companies such as this can have: growing big and killing innovation. He talked about the canonical Silicon Valley story: a company starts, it innovates, it grows to middle age, it grows bored, it is sold to another company. Schmidt et al are clearly aware of that threat. Apple, he said, has “proven the model of innovation at scale.”
* * * Phones: Will they have a tablet? “You might want to tell me what the difference is between a large phone and a tablet,” Schmidt said.
How will they make money on phones? “Not to worry,” Schmidt said. “We do not charge for Android because we can make money in other contexts.”
The strategy, he said, is to establish volume for application development to follow. “The phone is defined by the apps,” he said.
Schmidt took my Nexus One and demonstrated Google Sky. Mayer said the guy in charge of mobile uses Google Goggles to take pictures of wine labels and search on them so he can sound smart: “It tastes of apricot blossoms.” Mayer told Schmidt about Layar (a very neat agumented reality program I wrote about here earlier); he didn’t even know about it yet.
* * * The economy: “The recession is very much behind us,” Schmidt said. “We see growth and successful businesses I think pretty much everywhere in the world.”"
* * * Display ads: Schmidt said the company is “trying to apply the science of Google to the display space. Display is likely to be our next really big business globally.”
Arora said that today marketers buy sites when they want to buy audiences. He said Google will “bring measurability to the process of display” and it is “trying to find a way for the industry to bring the entire inventory together.” That is, “most agencies and buyers don’t have the tools to aggregate across publishers.” Schmidt added: “Before the google question was applied to this, you couldn’t have scale.”
Isn’t this just an ad network? Arora said it would be a collection of networks, an exchange that would “allow you to separate the best owners of inventory from the best sellers of inventory.” I don’t understand what that means and will ask.
Aren’t publishers going to see Google as again disintermediating them and hurting their brands? I asked. Google said the platform will bring greater transparency, more inventory, faster, with scale and speed and that publishers who participate will gain more revenue from the inventory they have (and don’t sell). Indeed, I was talking with one newspaper editor before the meeting as he lamented the small size of the percentage that is sold.
* * * Relations with newspapers: “We depend on high-quality content,” Schmidt said.
Mayer said Google will help publishers make more money. It will create better advertising products for them, improving display. It will provide ads that are more relevant. It will support pay efforts.
She also said Google is working on making news as compelling as possible. “The issue is one of engagement online: if they spent more time online it would be much easier to make money with it,” she said and then added that publsihers must “bring the news to users’ digital doorsteps.” Amen. I’ve written often here about the challenges of engagement and the need to think distributed. Those are ripe areas for Google to help news.
* * * YouTube: Schmidt said he was very pleased with YouTube and that it was making money but he and Hurley wouldn’t get in the slightest bit specific about the definition of making money (profit? cash flow?) let alone numbers. “In the last year, Chad managed to figure out a way to make money using partners and their video content on YouTube,” Schmidt said. Hurley said it took longer than expected to get their because of delays in bringing in Doubleclick. He said they have a sales force selling video in 20 countries. They also recently made a deal with channels 4 and 5 in the UK to distribute content and they’re going to live-stream cricket.
* * * Pay: Will Lewis of the Telegraph asked “what’s it like being so brutally attacked by News Corp. What side of genius to you think their pay wall idea is?” Of course, Google’s execs didn’t take the bait.
They talked about hybrid business models and said they’d support them and pretty much left it at that.
* * * Globalization: Schmidt said a majority of Google users are outside the U.S. and he expects that soon most revenue will come from outside the U.S.
* * * : The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger on the briefing: Google as a country.
There were some fascinating exchanges between Oprah and Jay, who sounded as though he thought Winfrey was going to be more sympathetic than she proved to be. Winfrey said, “David Letterman called you, I think, the ‘Big Jaw’ Leno… and you hit back by talking about his infidelity.” Leno said, “Well, I did a joke about that, yes.” ”Even the audience went, ‘Ooo!’” noted Winfrey. ”But it was a good joke,” squeaked Leno. “Did you laugh when you heard it?”
“No,” said Oprah firmly, “I did not. I did not laugh. You know what, I thought that was beneath you.” Leno tried to defend himself. “But how many jokes like that have I done? I did one joke in the middle of the week and I never did another one. I had a cheap shot thrown at me, I threw one cheap shot back and I moved on.” Oprah asked, “So you thought one cheap shot deserves another?” Leno said, “Yeah, it’s OK.” Then Oprah asked, “Do you feel you’re being unfairly portrayed by the media?” Leno said, “Yeah, I think so.”
via Ken Tucker's TV
The Blank Generation - Blank Tapes NYC 1975-1985 In the '70s and early '80s, New York was broke as hell, but busting at the seams with creative energy. This first-time ever compilation of producer Bob Blank's work from his legendary Blank Tapes studios showcase a wildly diverse sonic menagerie - you got everything from underground disco like "Over Like a Fat Rat" and "Wax the Van" to Sun Ra's cosmic free-jazz to gritty no-wave skronk from Lydia Lunch and James Blood Ulmer. A collab from two venerable institutions, Strut records and DJHistory.com, this comp reminds us just how out-there New York's music scene has always been.
Beach House - Teen Dream Teen Dream puts a smile on our face, the kind that strikes when a gifted band comes through on its early promise. The Baltimore duo's third record preserves their trademark keys-driven melancholic haze but swaggers with new found self-confidence, adding further strains of strident soul to their darkly psychedelic folk. Lonely drum machines, guitar twang and Legrand's breathy voice make for a dynamic affair, by turns anthemic and intimate. With its all its narcotized star-gazing and blood-stained journal entries, it's the perfect breakup record, completing a veritable three-peat of lovelorn downer psych.
Lindstrom and Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool Cosmic disco guru Hans-Peter Lindstrom thinks big, having made a career out of dance floor burners scaled as epically as possible. On his new duet record with singer Christabelle, however, the Norwegian wizard trims the tunes way down without sacrificing an inch of inventiveness, churning out effortlessly-stylish 80's-tinged numbers by imbibing in equal measure from house, italo, electro and funk. Over the trippy, slow-mo production, Christabelle improvises coos, come-ons and slivers of pop-tunes that dissipate enticingly. Yeah we know it's only January, but trust us, this is one of the dance records of the year.
I am pleased to announce that i've just shipped Plack 0.99_01 to CPAN, the first dev release towards Plack 1.0.
What's New?
There's been lots of refactorings, renames and changes but first of all, this 1.0 release should be 99.9% transparent to the end users, and they don't need to change anything wrt how to use Plack. I carefully added backward compatibility code here and there when I rename things.
What this release would affect most are developers: middleware developers, server developers and framework developers. For the first two, I think I've communicated very well, and I'm already working with them on github, to keep their code up to date with the changes, while the changes required are so minimal, or even better, in most cases, none.
Plack is now officially PSGI "toolkit"
There's been confusions about what Plack is: Is it a middleware library, a mini framework or a web server. Though there's a google bomb campaign to link Plack with Perl Web Server (thanks everyone! :D) Plack is not technically a web server:
- Is Plack a framework? - No. It's a toolkit for frameworks
- Is Plack a web server? - Not technically, but has lots of adapters and handlers for web servers. It also bundles the reference pure perl web server: HTTP::Server::PSGI
- Is Plack a middleware library? - Yes, but something more than that.
So, PSGI is an interface and Plack is an API and tools around it, that you can actually run your server or application on. I hope it clarifies things more.
Plack::Request changes
(If you're a lucky framework developer that doesn't use Plack::Request like CGI::Application, Mojo, Dancer or Catalyst, then you can skip the entire section :))
The biggest change that would impact framework developers is that Plack::Request is now in core distribution. It is a good utility for middleware developers and framework developers, but it has a nature of a port from HTTP::Engine::Request which is a port from Catalyst::Request. That means some methods do not make much sense, or it has something applications or frameworks should do, rather than Plack should do.
Plack::Request internals have been rewritten and refactored a lot, so it's now designed to work in middleware components safely, by caching the parsed parameters as well as the post body in the env buffer or a temporary file, and you can instantiate Plack::Request as many times as you want in the middleware chain and it just works.
There are small incompatibilities: Some methods, such as parameters, path, cookies still work but behave now a bit differently, but for good purpose. It is to remove the oddness of parameters(), fixes the code/doc mismatch in the path handling and says good bye to undocumented weird Cookie serializations, originating from CGI.pm. We discussed these things on #plack IRC channel and it seemed everyone agreed that this change is a good change. (Or, whoever opposed to the changes were just silent :))
I apologize in advance that if these incompatible changes cause any problem or unexpected behavior on your application, and am happy to help if you have questions etc.
More changes before 1.0
I can't promise anything but I'm expecting 2 weeks or more before making Plack 1.0 release, the changes planned before that happens would include:
Keep questions coming in the comment or on the IRC!
- Dechunk HTTP requests and HTTP::Server::PSGI uses the temp buffer to implement psgi.input (being worked on topic/chunked-input branch)
- Some PSGI extension to allow non-blocking read from psgi.input and/or raw socket access, to make things like WebSocket possible
- charset decoding support in Plack::Request and Response
- Rename Plack::Server::* to their own namespaces
Reading through the comments of yesterday’s announcement that the PECOTA projections have been released, it is evident that there is a lot of concern over several aspects of the data, ranging from the projected standings to individual quirks. We understand and appreciate that this reflects a lot of passion for what we do here at Baseball Prospectus. To be blunt: we messed up, and are working to fix the issues.
One issue involves the run environment: individual player projections do not match up with the run totals on the projected standings.
Another problem revolves around BABIP, as defense was being double-counted (double-counted).
These and other issues are being worked on and we hope to have an update provided by the end of the day, to unmess up. Please stay tuned for further updates.
[Photograph: nycblondieandbrownie]
If those recent Lady Gaga cookies weren't enough, take a look at these Lady Gaga cupcakes replicating the Fame Monster and red veil looks by Blondie and Brownie. The two gals behind the blog baked them in honor of the Grammys this Sunday and hey, what do you know, today is also apparently National Lady Gaga Day.
Just opened: Blue Bottle coffee kiosk in the bathroom hallway of the Noe Valley Starbucks.
“Overrated” and “underrated” are overused terms in the blogosphere, particularly the sports blogosphere. Thank goodness I never fall into the trap of using them. But hey, it’s Friday, I can loosen the tie a bit.
What makes a baseball player underrated? It can be a number of things: not playing for a contender, not playing in a big market, not being verbose with the media, and, of course, not having skills that are commonly remarked upon. While I don’t know about Kurt Suzuki’s clubhouse witticisms one way or the other (one interview can be found here), I do know that he seems to meet the rest of the requirements.
Oakland has neither contended nor had excess national media coverage since Suzuki became their full-time catcher follow Jason Kendall’s trade to the Cubs during the 2007 season. Given the As’ recent performances, Suzuki might seem to be just another cog in the machine of the seemingly endless (to casual observers, anyway) rebuilding process in Oakland. But the whole point of an “underrated” post is to show that he isn’t just another player. Suzuki isn’t just another player. But to see this, one has to look a bit more closely than usual.
Offensively, Suzuki has been just slightly below average over his major league career with a 97 wRC+. CHONE has him slightly better than that at 99 wRC+, and the other projection systems see him as about the same. That may not be too inspiring, but one has to keep in mind that Suzuki is a catcher, and not many catchers can produce near-league average offense. Combined with his ability to play almost 150 games a season, in each of the last two seasons, Suzuki has been around three Wins Above Replacement. Not bad for a pre-arbitration player.
But wait, there’s more! While catchers like Mike Napoli and Jorge Posada have superior bats to Suzuki, not only do they play less games at catcher than Suzuki, they also have poor gloves. While FanGraphs doesn’t have catcher defense (yet), there are some sources for it. Rally’s Wins Above Replacement has Suzuki at +11 defensively in 2008, and +1 in 2009 (which matches my 2009 figure). That bumps his 2009 figure just slightly, but makes him about a 4 win player in 2008. CHONE projects Suzuki at +3 defensively for 2010.
Adding it all together, one gets a 3+ win player, which is about how the Fans have him projected. This again illustrates how valuable a player’s pre-arbitration seasons are to a team, and again, as I wrote earlier this week, it is particularly clear this off-season in light of the contracts recently given to below-average veteran catchers. While the As’ crazy-range outfield may get the bulk of the publicity, Suzuki is just as important to a team that might sneak up on their competitors in AL West in 2010.
Then again, if 42 fans understand how good Kurt Suzuki is, how underrated can he be?
Help TPM sort through the latest batch of White House visitor logs - now totaling 75,000 names.
The records cover the month of October.
Our previous coverage can be found here.
The spreadsheet posted at WhiteHouse.gov offers the visitor's full name, date of visit, who they met with and in what room.
The long list includes everyone from trick-or-treat guests on Halloween to regular tourist visitors, along with top CEOs such as Jeff Bezos who met with Obama during an event Oct. 8.
The White House has changed the way the data is presented, and it is incredibly difficult to view in a nice and tidy database. Here is a link to people who were inside the Oval Office, and here is a link to the thousands of people who met with Obama.
Norm Eisen, special counsel to Obama on ethics, detailed the release at WhiteHouse.gov.
From Eisen:
In September, the President announced that - for the first time in history - the White House would release visitor records. Last month, the White House released more than 25,000 visitor records from September 16 to September 30 as provided in the President's voluntary disclosure policy. Today, we continue to fulfill President's commitment to transparency by making available more than 75,000 White House visitor records from the month of October.Like last month, today's release includes visitor information for the Vice President and his staff at the White House Complex, the names and dates of visitors to the Vice President's Residence for the official events between October 1 and October 31, and the visitors to the Residence who appear on the daily schedules of the Vice President and Dr. Biden.
In addition, included in today's release are over 200 pre-Sept 16 visitor records that are responsive to more than 100 specific requests that the White House received from the public during the month of December.
Today's release builds upon the previous series of visitor record disclosures. In October, the White House released close to 500 records in response to 110 requests that were received throughout September. In November, the White House released 1,600 records in response to nearly 300 individual requests received throughout October. You can view them all in our Disclosures section.
Today's release is only one example of the many steps the President has taken to increase government transparency over the past year. This Administration's concrete commitments to openness include issuing the Open Government Directive, putting up more government information than ever before on data.gov and recovery.gov, reforming the government's FOIA processes, providing on-line access to White House staff financial reports and salaries, issuing an executive order to fight unnecessary secrecy and speed declassification, reversing an executive order that previously limited access to presidential records, and webcasting White House meetings and conferences. The release also compliments our new lobbying rules, which in addition to closing the revolving door for lobbyists who work in government have also emphasized expanding disclosure of lobbyist contacts with the government.
These efforts were recognized by a consortium of independent outside government reform groups that gave the Administration an A for its first-year actions making government open and transparent. And in this week's State of the Union, the President laid out a bold agenda for pressing forward on government transparency and reform.
Also, as we have previously noted, sometimes rather than providing clear information, transparency can have confusing or amusing results. Given the significant number of visitors to the White House, many visitors share the same name. Today's release includes the names of some notable figures (for example, Louis Farrakhan and James Taylor appear in this disclosure). The well-known individuals with those names have not visited the White House, but we have included the records of the individuals that did.
Finally, last month we noted that a small set of the September records were being withheld in order to conclude a national security review. That process has concluded and those records are included in this month's release.
In an interview with DJ magazine, Carl Cox talks about how his DJ setup has changed through the years.
What I am worried about and don't want to fall into, is dependence on too many screens to play a set. It's bad enough having one computer screen. After all, it's all about the performance and the people. I want to be looking at the crowd and them looking at me, interacting with one another. If we start getting dependant on screens it is going to ruin the art of performance.
(via @jessicadeva)
Tags: Carl Cox interviews music
Here's how Apple wants us to buy computers.
Typical consumer family:
1 iMac for everyone, 1 MacBook for travel, 1 iPad for the couch and 2 iPhonesProfessional user family:
1 Mac Pro for home/office, 1 Macbook Pro for the road, 1 iPad for the couch and/or clients and 2 iPhonesAnd when they're better, an AppleTV in every room.
My friend Adam, and others I'm sure, are concerned about this being a peripheral. While you clearly need a computer to sync the devlice, but I don't think there's reason for concern. If it's not true already, most homes will have one computer that acts as home base. You'll keep your music, movies, contacts, etc. stored there and everything else will sync with it. If you already have a laptop and a desktop, the laptop is as much a peripheral as an iPad would be.
Sure, the iPad is more geared towards consumption, but so what? As I've read a few times lately, the vast majority of time that most users spend on a computer is consumption, so it only makes sense to optimize towards that. If you don't want a consumption device, there are plenty of other options at your disposal.
Sidenote: I tried to keep this short, since I've already complained about the amount of interesting content being produced. My apologies if I added to your pile.
One of the fun things about pilot training is learning to do things the old way. I've just learned the art of plotting courses using an E6B, a glorified slide rule. Initially I mocked this old tech, but having learnt it I admire how simple and unmediated it is. And I can do all my calculations on a 65 year old whiz-wheel, my father's Army Air Force issue Computer: Dead Reckoning.The interesting side of the E6B is the wind correction part. If you've got a 20 knot headwind blowing 50° to your left, what angle do you need to fly straight and how much slower will you be going? It's a simple trigonometric problem, but it's too abstract writing it out and doing the arithmetic. On an E6B you just draw the wind vector, right on the computer, then rotate it to visualize the wind vector vs. your path. Then you read the course correction and speed change off the calibrated graph underneath your drawing. It's like a thousand little vector calculations were done at once and drawn on the paper for you to measure against. Very intuitive.The other side of the E6B is a simple circular slide rule for doing multiplication and division. It has scales for fuel consumption, distance and rate calculations, converting °F to °C, etc. Initially I used my iPhone for this arithmetic but I kind of prefer rotating the wheels and reading the numbers off the scale. The imprecision of a slide rule reinforces that everything is just an estimate. And I'm constantly sanity checking everything to make sure I'm didn't misread a scale by a factor of 10. That extra work seems to help reinforce the course planning.
I'm pretty sure as soon as I pass my pilot exam I'll never use an E6B again. It's much easier to use map-based flight planning software, or for that matter just to jump in the plane and let the GPS computer figure it out for you. More accurate, too. But the old way's kind of cool.
"Snow pea tips are so flavorful they don't need garlic or other aromatics when stir-fried."
Stir-Fried Snow Pea Tips
Come February my fingers grow restless whenever I pass by the seed packets at the hardware store. The days may still be ensconced in wintry weather, but I'm already dreaming of spring lettuce and summer corn. An entire row in my garden bed will be devoted to snow peas, not only for the bounty of sweet pods, but also for the tender and crisp shoots that grow abundantly from the stalks of the plant when the pods are nearing completion.
Around this time of year Chinese vegetable stands are full of snow pea tips, which, contrary to their name, don't actually refer to the tips of the pods but rather, the leafy growth near the pods. The fact that the leaves and stalks are actually edible is still overlooked by cooks and eaters.
Over the years I've become a snow pea tip proselytizer, explaining to anyone who will listen that the greens are extremely delicious and easy to cook to boot.
Snow peas tips are my all-time favorite green vegetable to stir-fry, a bold statement given the cornucopia of Asian greens that can be stir-fried. If you're a gardener, consider sowing a few extra snow pea seeds in the spring so you'll never run out of the plant during the summer.
From left: a tender section; a tender section with a bud growing in the middle; the tough, curly ends.
The edible part of the plant is the mid-section, which falls between the tough, curly tendrils at the ends of each plant and the thick stalks close to the central stalk of the plant. In the middle, the stalks are crisp and hollow and the leaves, tender and flavorful. The taste is reminiscent of the snow peas themselves, but with a grassier, fresher flavor that's unique to the plant.
Unlike most Chinese greens, snow pea tips are so flavorful they don't need garlic or other aromatics when stir-fried.
While I usually stir-fry snow pea tips as one course in a meal, sometimes I'll stir-fry an egg or two in the wok right after the snow pea tips are removed for a quick, delicious one-dish dinner. The greens are also pleasant when wilted into soup (though doing so will compromise the crunch of the stalks).
Finally, if you're buying pre-bagged snow pea tips from a Chinese grocer, look for bags that don't contain too many of the curly tendrils, which will have to be picked away and sorted into the refuse pile.
Stir-frying snow pea tips requires neither skill nor time, just some patience when picking through the tough stalks to guarantee delicate greens, soft yet resilient to the bite. They're a harbinger of spring's bounty.
From the Codex Atlanticus, this is a letter that Leonardo da Vinci wrote in 1482 to the Duke of Milan advertising his services as a "skilled contriver of instruments of war". From the translation:
6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river.
So, Leonardo was pretty much Q from the Bond films or Lucius Fox from Batman. But the artist was in there as well...at the bottom of his list, stuck in almost as an afterthought:
11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may.
Update: If Leonardo was a programmer, his letter might have read something like this:
4. Again, I have kinds of functions; most convenient and easy to ftp; and with these I can spawn lots of data almost resembling a torrent; and with the download of these cause great terror to the competitor, to his great detriment and confusion.
(via @bloomsburypress)
Tags: Leonardo da Vinci
The MTA has been building a tunnel to bring the LIRR into Grand Central. They're expecting it to be complete by 2016. The photo above is from a slideshow on WNYC.org showing some of the images of the dig. Ron Cohen, who is pictured, has been a foreman on this project for a year. If sees it to fruition, he will have worked underground for 9 years. That's insane.
Also worth noting, the workers have a choice of Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks coffee. According to the caption (Image #4), the workers prefer Dunkin Donuts.
Slideshow via Sean and you can read more about this on Gothamist
Today's a bittersweet day here at TPM. It's the last day here for Ben Craw, our longtime video editor. To celebrate Ben's departure, somewhat at my expense, here's one of Ben's most popular creations, a blooper reel of outtakes from the old TPMtv daily show.
Perry T: How come Omar Minaya didn’t trade to get Twins C Joe Mauer? He’s going to be a free agent, the Twins can’t keep him and he’d be perfect for the Mets.
Matthew Cerrone: I totally agree, Perry, Mauer would be awesome. But, the Twins love him. Plus, they’re opening a new ballpark soon, and so they’re about to bring in a whole new revenue stream that will allow them to keep players, instead of trading them early.
Also, Mauer LOVES the Twins, he grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, all of his family and friends are there and he’s very much proud and connected to that area. I mean, he lives in a log cabin. Put yourself in his shoes, and imagine you grew up a Twins fan, you love Minnesota, all of your family is there and you play for people who are a playoff contender every single season… would you leave?
There is quiet buzz in baseball suggesting Mauer and the Twins will likely work out a contract extension before the season starts, so to avoid tons of trade rumors this summer. I have heard the two sides could compromise and agree to a reasonable five– or six-year deal that will pay him around $25 million per season, or something like that. They like him, he likes them, they’ll have the money and he’s the best catcher in baseball. I’m sure they’ll find a way to work it out.
David Worthington interviews Brandon Watson, “director of product management in the developer platform at Microsoft”:
Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective-C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.
Yes, there is much jealousy from iPhone developers at the sacks full of money being made by Zune and Windows Mobile app developers.
Someone sent this to me ages ago and I forgot to post it but luckily I ran across it again this morning: A Failed Entertainment is a show at The LeRoy Neiman Gallery featuring the films of James Incandenza...you know, the ones from the 8-page footnote in Infinite Jest.
Included as a footnote in Wallace's novel is the Complete filmography of James O. Incandenza, a detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works. The LeRoy Neiman Gallery has commissioned artists and filmmakers to re-create seminal works from Incandenza's filmography.
No word on whether any of the filmmakers made JOI's Infinite Jest...I guess we'll find out if anyone emerges from the opening reception tonight.
Tags: books exhibitions Infinite Jest movies NYC
In his interview with SNY’s Mets Hot Stove last night, Omar Minaya was asked why he did not pursue a more-experienced, better-defensive first baseman, to at least platoon with Daniel Murphy.
Minaya said Murphy got much better playing first base as last year went on, pointing out that Murphy was essentially learning the position, on the job, as a rookie, in New York.
“You’ve got to give the kids a chance,” Minaya said.
Minaya said he did not acquire a veteran first-baseman, like an Adam LaRoche, because he believes in Murphy, but he also didn’t want to block top-prospect Ike Davis.
“I’m excited about Murphy, but I’m really excited to talk about Ike Davis,” he said.
“You’re talking defense, here’s a guy who in Spring Training we’re going to be talking about, I know he’s going to push our buttons… Not only does he have power, he’s an outstanding first baseman and he’s a young man, and he’s exciting. We love Ike Davis.”
…so, you’re saying you like Ike Davis… wow… ok, then…
Yesterday, in his list of the Top 100 Prospects in MLB, Keith Law of ESPN.com said Davis has ‘raw power,’ especially against right-handed pitchers, but, ‘he doesn’t hit left-handed pitching at all,’ concluding, “A full year in Double-A and Triple-A to work on pitch recognition and on improving his approach against left-handers is probably critical for his future as an everyday player, but he has a chance to be an above-average one if he can shed the platoon-player tag with more reps.”
I was thinking about her three Mondays later, after the NFC Championship Game, when I was sifting through e-mails from devastated Vikings fans, and I realized that, for some readers, I apparently have turned into the "Sports Whisperer." They channel me as an outlet for their pain.Why me? Because I have a column and an e-mail address. Because, as a Red Sox fan, I suffered through a lifetime of losing lowlighted by two of the worst defeats in sports history. Because I once wrote the "Levels of Losing" as a way to quantify sports pain. Because things worked out for me; the Red Sox won titles in 2004 and 2007. If any stranger could understand your anguish after a heartwrenching loss, it's me. You don't even have to trap me in a car and blare Coldplay. Just send me an e-mail. via sports.espn.go.com In the sports world, that's job security.
According to Baseball Prospectus, PECOTA projects the NL East to end up as the following:
…well, that will be a problem… and what happens to the Marlins… yikes… i actually expect the division to be a lot closer than this, with the winner reaching around just 85 wins… yes, i think it’s gonna be THAT division…
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art have a Super Bowl bet...the loser loans a significant piece of art to the winner for three months. The directors of the two museums trash talked back and forth via email and Twitter before agreeing on the paintings to be loaned.
"Max Anderson must not really believe the Colts can beat the Saints in the Super Bowl. Otherwise why would he bet such an insignificant work as the Ingrid Calame painting? Let's up the ante. The New Orleans Museum of Art will bet the three-month loan of its Renoir painting, Seamstress at Window, circa 1908, which is currently in the big Renoir exhibition in Paris. What will Max wager of equal importance? Go Saints!"
(thx, stuart)
Tags: art football sports Super Bowl
Like so many elements of today’s national pastime, the structure of minor league baseball has a direct lineage to Branch Rickey. The first sabermetrician, as it were, created the modern farm system around the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Almost nothing about baseball back then is the same today, and yet, the minor league ladder is never questioned. Each Major League team has six affiliates, to which they assign a contrived order of importance: Rookie League, A-ball, Triple-A, you know the drill. Players are given promotions when they’ve shown a “mastery” of a level, which is almost always either on the back of a hot streak, or because there’s someone below that is ready to take their spot. And for going on 80 years, we’ve simply assumed this is the way it should be.
With the goal that player development should be about building confidence and refining skills, I today offer an idea for change. My series on sinkers last week found how often good pitchers are let down by bad defenses at the lower levels of the minor leagues. With this suggested change, an onus would be put on young position players to value defense more, which can’t be a bad thing. Here’s my (fun?) six-step program to creating an entirely different Minor League structure:
1) Determine the best position for each regular season, full-time player.
2) During Spring Training, rank the players at each position defensively, in four quadrants: great, good, bad, terrible.
3) Do an extensive evaluation of the proportions and park effects at each affiliated minor league stadium.
4) Determine the groundball aptitude of all minor league pitchers, and like you did, separate the players in four quadrants: the most to least worm-burning pitchers.
5) Use this to build your minor league teams:
– Team 1: Groundballiest pitchers with great infielders, terrible outfielders, smallest stadium.
– Team 2: Second groundballiest pitchers with good infielders, bad outfielders, second smallest stadium.
– Team 3: Second flyballiest pitchers with bad infielders, good outfielders, second largest stadium.
– Team 4: Flyballiest pitchers with terrible infielders, great outfielders, most cavernous stadium.6) Develop a series of challenges for each player that involves assignments to different teams to challenge their learned skills.
Yes, I think this is unrealistic, and no, I don’t think it is necessarily better than the current system. It’s Friday, though, and there’s no harm in having some fun. It also accomplishes some neat things:
1) It creates the best environment for pitchers to succeed. You’re playing to the pitchers’ strengths, and as a result, giving your best fielders the most chances to continue to improve their skills.
2) It creates a clear path for coaching assignments. For example, team 4 is most likely to be filled with power pitchers, who typically struggle with change-ups. The organization’s pitching coach that best teaches the change-up is thus assigned to this team. And so on.
3) The biggest weakness, without question, is that it would have disproportionate effects on offensive performance. Since it’s unlikely any other team would do this — the rest sticking to the traditional structure — you’re risking putting a “Triple-A” caliber hitter into a “Low-A” league/environment. And vice versa.
4) This all makes the farm director more important than ever before. With an understanding of his farm system, the director would be responsible for moving players around when they aren’t being challenged, and finding the best (and most ready) players to be called up to the Major Leagues. This shouldn’t be a difficult task, but it’s certainly asking more from the position.
At the end of the day, the minor league ladder still exists for the same reasons that closers, five-man rotations and sacrifice bunts do: because no one is willing to overtly challenge convention. Any editorial to do so is, admittedly, hot air, but this is still one structure that seems to skate by without questioning. I hope to hear about your opinions about the current structure, my suggested one, or any other ideas you guys have for change in the comments.
I just got some photos of the Justeeds (and friends) exhibition at the Hillyer Art Space in DC, and notice that the closing party is TONIGHT! A closing party for the Justseeds show and a fundraiser for Mountain Justice organizing at Hillyer Art Space from 7-11, Friday Feb. 29th.
"Join us for an evening of multimedia resistance featuring Appalachian Old Time music with "Here's to the Long Haul" and a screening of the film "Mountain Top Removal".
Also Featuring:
*A new limited edition screen print by DECOY
*New photo works by Emma Cassidy and Chris Eichler
*Anti-Mountain Top Removal artwork and design by RVLTN$5 admission, FREE for those attending Funk the Warming! Proceeds will benefit Mountain Justice and Hillyer Art Space's local art programming. Look HERE.
John Hodgman on Salinger’s passing.
My thanks to 37signals for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed to promote Sortfolio. Sortfolio is a web site that helps web designers find clients and clients find web designers — visually. The best way to find a designer is to browse examples of their previous work; the best way for designers to pitch themselves is to show off their work. That’s how Sortfolio works.
Plus you can filter by price and location and all sorts of other cleverness. No surprise that a site that’s all about finding good designers is itself very well designed.
London designer Haniboi has some nice screen prints for sale in his shop.
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: haniboi, screen printing
Never came so close to crying from an xkcd comic. (via)
Max Rodenbeck
Musicians Aditya Bhasin and Nimai at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2009; photograph by Wasfia NazreenPerhaps it was the squirrels and peacocks leaping in the foliage overhead. Or maybe the way the rambling grounds of the Diggi Palace divided into separate tableaux—here Gulzar, a venerated Urdu poet, recited before a rapt audience, there a pair of London publishers toasted a trio of hard drinking and smoking Kashmiris, while over on the lawn tablas thumped and sittars whined. All this made it hard not to feel like a figure in an outsized miniature, such as those late paintings of the great durbars of the Raj, in which suited British officers faced off against far more splendidly plumed native rulers. Yet the Jaipur Literature Festival, now in its fifth year, is determinedly void of pomp and hierarchy.
With all events free, and plenty of music to relieve the droning of authors, it is a thoroughly cheerful jamboree, attended by giggling schoolkids, Bollywood houris, bearded ideologues and bookish aunties. With Indian power surging in literature as in industry, the festival reflects auspicious celestial shifts, too. Literary stardom seems no longer to be, as it was until recently for all but a few Indian writers, something conferred in London or New York. India’s most famous writers, and especially those who write in English, still tend to live abroad. But they face a rising challenge from those who have remained at home, where the my-funny-Indian-family trope has happily been dumped in favor of hard-hitting investigative reporting from the likes of Basharat Peer on Kashmir, or the team of Tehelka magazine exposing the brutality of police tactics for crushing Maoist insurgents; scouring social criticism from resurgently angry Dalit, or Untouchable writers such as Kancha Ilaiah, Omprakash Valmiki and Des Taj Kali; and teen-bloggers’ exposes of high-class high jinks from young writers such as Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Anjum Hassan, and Ira Trivedi. Chetan Bhagat, a Mumbai investment banker-turned-cult novelist, recently scored a first, selling in India alone over a million copies in English of his One Night @ The Call Center.
Much of the fun, as well as the utility of the five-day event, stems from its blending of overseas writing with a subcontinental range that extends from India’s own plethora of native literatures to those of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet—and this year, even the quaintly remote Kingdom of Bhutan. HS Narula, a construction mogul who sponsors the festival, gave a further boost to regional writing with the surprise announcement that, starting next year, he plans to fund a $50,000 annual prize for South Asian literature.
Namita Gokhale, one of the festival’s co-founders and driving spirits, says that from the very beginning she has sought to avoid its becoming some kind of literature-themed Club Med for frolicking Westerners. In a fortuitous division of responsibilities, Gokhale, herself a prolific writer as well as a publisher, seeks out representative talent from nearby, while the ebullient William Dalrymple, now permanently resident in Delhi, devotes his Tigger-ishly infectious energy to bringing in the best from abroad. This year their combined effort has resulted in well over 200 writers and performers, together with some 20,000—mostly Indian—visitors. The quality and variety made for painful choices about simultaneous events: Claire Tomalin on the art of biography or Michael Frayn reminiscing on his travels? A session highlighting writers from Rajasthan or another on Gujarat? A showcase for the latest Indian chick-lit, chaired by Chetan Bhagat, or a discussion of the Kama Sutra?
An evening performance during the 2010 Jaipur Literature Festival; photo by TeamworkThere were some exalted moments. Alexander McCall Smith, a rumpled and witty literary maharaja sitting haloed in white hair, explained his prodigious output as the result of rising before dawn and turning out two to three thousand words a day in a sort of mildly dissociative trance. Roberto Calasso, now completing the seventh volume of his encyclopedic evocation of ancient myth, sounded a note of ecstasy that echoed the previous night’s chanting of Sufi qawalis with the pronouncement that “Reading and writing are perhaps the last access left to us to meet with the gods.”
In a starkly utilitarian counterpoint, Lawrence Wright amused a different audience by emptying his backpack to reveal the tools of trade that helped build his Looming Tower, including a fearsomely voluminous legal-pad-sized list of contacts, the slow perusal of which served to intimidate recalcitrant interviewees into squealing, “because they felt surrounded.” Amit Chauduri spoke of writing paragraph by paragraph, seeking form, shape and compression in each, before moving on, while Vikram Chandra spoke about the universality of the detective story, whose formulaic quest has become, in the modern world, “a secular version of the search for meaning.”
Meanwhile, Tina Brown, a Jaipur regular, regaled a lawn-full of celebrity-spotters with tales of Princess Diana, and Niall Fergusson appeared with his date Ayan Hirsi Ali, who shared her own tell-all tales of the wickedness of Islam. There were huddles of uniformed schoolchildren, too, to flatter lesser lights with indiscriminately sweet demands for autographs. The talk that permeated the festival, though, was about how to sustain it in the future without losing its relaxed intimacy, or turning it into a tourist attraction. Gokhale and Dalrymple, who are backed by funding from Narula’s DSC Limited, insist that it will stay in the appealingly unpretentious Diggi Palace, and remain open to all. Let’s hope so.
It seems that Jason Wu's world domination knows no bounds --the designer is making his first foray into the big wide world of accessories with a line of of sunglasses exclusively for high end eye-wear store Modo. According to Wu, "It was a natural progression," he explains, "I wanted to put my stamp on an item that would be accessible to a broader market and with an inherently chic connotation—sunglasses." The sunnies, which land in boutiques this month, come in four styles in pricey-looking subtle colors like onyx and caramel. We're especially loving the Sophia Loren-worthy Seberg and unisex Earhart, perfect to gift to your boyfriend then steal for yourself! Though the price-tag isn't exactly recession-friendly at $275, at least you know you'll probably be shading your eyes with the same plastic as Michelle Obama.
Ezra parses Axelrod empty threats:This is depressing. In point of fact, the Republicans can have it both ways. That's what a filibuster does--it allows you to block legislation with arcane rules, while taking cover behind a facade of majority rule. I find Axelrod's tough talk about shining a "bright light" on Republican obstructions to be just that--talk. In this administration, on this initiative, calling out Republicans means complimenting Chuck Grassley for being serious about health care, while Grassley does all he can to grind this bill to a halt."The Republicans have it both ways," David Axelrod said in a conversation with a handful of journalists this afternoon. "They have the ability to block, but they assign us the responsibility to govern." But pressed for the White House's answer to that dilemma, Axelrod fell back on platitudes. "They either work with us or they have to pay the price for working against us," he replied. But what price?
For the last year, Republicans have worked, assiduously and effectively, to derail the Democrats' legislative agenda. This, in fact, was a constant in Axelrod's remarks. "They made a decision they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed." It's been an inarguable success for the Republican Party. Health-care reform is on life support. Republicans just won a Senate seat in Massachusetts. Election experts are beginning to talk about a potential Republican takeover in November. There is no case to be made that the GOP is in a worse position than a year ago.
Which made Axelrod's threats of consequences a bit tinny. "If they want to block everything," he said at another point, "they will be held to account." Later: "We are going to very visibly seek their support moving forward, and we will shine a bright light on them when they don't." Asked whether the administration had a new strategy for doing any of that, Axelrod had no real answer.
Harry Reid is claiming "we're going to do health care reform this year," but I don't believe him. Obama is saying he doesn't quit. I like how that sounds. I have no idea what--specifically--it means. The White House needs to look at the score. Republicans aren't afraid of your "bright light." Nor should they be.
[Image: Via montenegro.com].
Somehow this morning I ended reading about a small artificial island and devotional chapel constructed in Montenegro's Bay of Kotor.
"In 1452," we read at montenegro.com, "two sailors from Perast happened by a small rock jutting out of the bay after a long day at sea and discovered a picture of the Virgin Mary perched upon the stone." Thus began a process of dumping more stones into the bay in order to expand this lonely, seemingly blessed rock—as well as loading the hulls of old fishing boats with stones in order to sink them beneath the waves, adding to the island's growing landmass.
Eventually, in 1630, a small chapel was constructed atop this strange half-geological, half-shipbuilt assemblage.
[Image: Via Skyscraper City].
Throwing stones into the bay and, in the process, incrementally expanding the island's surface area, has apparently become a local religious tradition: "The custom of throwing rocks into the sea is alive even nowadays. Every year on the sunset of July 22, an event called fašinada, when local residents take their boats and throw rocks into the sea, widening the surface of the island, takes place."
The idea that devotional rock-throwing has become an art of creating new terrain, generation after generation, rock after rock, pebble after pebble, is stunning to me. Perhaps in a thousand years, a whole archipelago of churches will exist there, standing atop a waterlogged maze of old pleasure boats and fishing ships, the mainland hills and valleys nearby denuded of loose stones altogether. Inadvertently, then, this is as much a museum of local geology—a catalog of rocks—as it is a churchyard.
In fact, it doesn't seem inaccurate to view this as a vernacular version of Vicente Guallart's interest in architecturally constructing new hills and coastlines based on a logical study of the geometry of rocks.
Here, the slow creation of new inhabitable terrains simply takes place in the guise of an annual religious festival—pilgrims assembling islands with every arm's throw.
“Millions of people now own Kindles,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com yesterday. That surprised analysts, who thought that Amazon would sell 2.5 million or so of the devices by the end of 2010, nearly a year from now.
We’ve checked with our sources, who have been amazingly accurate on the number of Kindle’s sold over the last couple of years. The total number of all types of Kindles out there in users hands hit 3 million sometime in December, says a source close to Amazon. And that was before the new model with worldwide data hit. And before Amazon started offering free Kindles to select long-time customers.
The Kindle now has real competition from the Barnes & Noble Nook and, more so, from the Apple iPad. But so far at least Amazon has had amazing success with their device. Which is even more extraordinary since the only place you can buy the Kindle is Amazon.
"Max Anderson must not really believe the Colts can beat the Saints in the Super Bowl. Otherwise why would he bet such an insignificant work as the Ingrid Calame painting? Let's up the ante. The New Orleans Museum of Art will bet the three-month loan of its Renoir painting, Seamstress at Window, circa 1908, which is currently in the big Renoir exhibition in Paris. What will Max wager of equal importance? Go Saints!"
Filed under: Hardware, Multimedia, Cult of Mac, Books
In my post yesterday I touched on the likely long faces at Amazon H.Q. in Seattle. The iPad is something I'm sure they wished hadn't happened, but of course it did, and I thought I'd take a closer look at the competition between the Amazon and Apple devices.
First off, if you were thinking of buying a Kindle DX, I'd say forget it. The iPad is a knockout punch to that device. At just ten dollars cheaper than the low end iPad, there just is no contest. The two devices are the same size (both are 9.7"), but the iPad has a color screen and can do a lot of things that Kindle just can't do. Yes, the DX has free 3G wireless for buying books, but the iPad has 802.11n, and for most common usage, it just isn't that hard to find a place to hook up. Book prices may be a bit higher on the iPad, but they will be in color and multimedia with the promise of moving video, color charts and pictures, and so on. I also consider the on-screen keyboard an advantage for the iPad -- the keyboard on the Kindle is basically a waste of space.
As a travel companion, all you can do on the DX is read, although there is a rudimentary browser, and more functionality coming Subscriptions are another Kindle selling point, but it's not a stretch to believe that Apple has something like that coming as well. Comparing the iPad to the Kindle DX, I just don't think there is any contest, and Amazon is going to be forced to think about how they are pricing and marketing the Kindle DX.
OK, on to the standard issue Kindle at U.S. $259.00. This decision is a bit trickier. It's about half the cost of the low end iPad, has a smaller screen, but does have built in no-charge 3G. That's mainly for buying books, as web browsing is pretty painful. Once again, books seem a bit cheaper on the Kindle at this stage, but I've noticed prices creeping up. Battery life with wireless off is about 2 weeks, and the iPad can never touch that.
For the immediate future, Amazon has far more books on offer, but that will likely change over time. If you have the smaller Kindle, I would not have anxiety about the iPad if you are mainly a reader. If you have the DX, I'd feel a bit queasy.
It's likely you'll be able to read your Kindle books on the iPad, just as you can on your iPhone or iPod touch, but they'll be black and white, with no rich illustrations. Amazon will stress that the iPad will be a great place to read Kindle books, but I don't think in the long run that's a cogent argument.
Looking out to the future, I think the odds favor the iPad. As an author myself (of a book about a sixties film producer), the idea of converting my dead tree book to something with short film clips and even musical examples makes me giddy. As a consumer, I'll want to get books that have those kinds of features.
In the early days of technology, new inventions tend to mimic the old. The TV was really a small movie screen, with radio quality audio. In fact, a lot of early TV was really old radio shows repackaged with pictures, i.e. Jack Benny and the Lone Ranger.
The Kindle mimics the book reading experience. It does it well, with crisp and ease of use. Apple seems to want to take the experience beyond just mimicking a book, and creating a new experience. Publishers will have to extend themselves to meet those goals, and so will authors.
In the short term, these gradual changes will be invisible, and I'll happily keep using my Kindle. In the long term, devices like the iPad will win us over and evolve our relationship with our media, just as the iPod did.
How about you? Second thoughts about a Kindle? Or a Nook. Or a whatever?TUAWiPad vs. Kindle: Which way to go? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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President Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod said that despite saying jobs is his No. 1 priority and offering no deadline for getting health care passed, the president remains intent on getting a plan passed so Democrats can get on with campaigning on its merits.
Axelrod said today during a briefing with reporters and opinion-makers he would not entertain "what happens if it doesn't work," because it would be "a great political mistake to walk away from this issue."
"There were plenty of people who said before the speech last night, just stand up there and say 'It's over.' Say 'We tried,' and move on because it's too politically difficult," Axelrod said. "And that's not what he did and we are working closely with folks on the Hill to develop the way forward and get this done and that's all we're focused on, on health care, is getting it done."
Axelrod, who has worked with Obama for years, said the president wants to allow Democrats time to process the new political reality of 59 Senate seats but he wants them to "go back at it soon."
Presented with Democratic complaints that Obama was not more specific in his health care remarks during his State of the Union, Axelrod said he would not discuss tactics.
"When heads cool a little we will decide the best way to move forward," he said. "We haven't transitioned away from it ... we are going to take the steps we think hold out the most promise to getting this done."
Axelrod refused to tip his hand about where those talks would be headed beyond detailing the difficulty of working with such a diverse caucus and that the White House-Capitol Hill negotiations remain very active.
Asked about reconciliation, Axelrod said it could only be used for portions of the bill but did note wryly, "reconciliation is a tool that is there to be used."
He also declined to give any sort of timeline for getting it done, saying that Obama used deadlines last year to "drive the legislative process." He does believe Democrats will be able to successfully campaign on its passage once it does.
"I don't know anybody who has put more chips in the middle of the table on this than he has," Axelrod said.
While attempting to work with Republicans (Obama is addressing their retreat in Baltimore tomorrow), the president has no illusions that it would be easy to get the GOP to cooperate with the midterm elections looming large, Axelrod said.
But he said supporters who gave $25 during the campaign "want us to make the maximum effort to see if we can put together coalitions to get things done."
"We may have to work with what we have here ... the country needs to know that we tried to do it, that we reached out that we tried that opportunity," Axelrod said. "We're going to make a good faith effort, it has to be on them, it's not going to be on us."
Axelrod said the party plans to highlight obstruction tactics, including the record number of filibuster attempts for legislation that ultimately passed with wide support.
In 2009, Republicans "didn't pay enough of a price for what was a determined strategy not to work with us," he said.
We’re in yr iTunes
killing yr doodsvia: elspethjane: knowyourmeme
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), on health care reform:
The opponents of reform have found their bumper sticker, their slogan, their rallying cry, it's one word: No. You can read that on a bumper.Our bumper sticker has -- it's just way too many words. And it says, "Continued on next bumper sticker."
Dude has not lost the funny.
Cult of Mac: “I thought it would be interesting to find out what some Mac and iPhone developers make of the iPad.”
Molly recounts the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Assets: Edgar Allen Poe’s Birth Home, Poe, Old Photo of Poe, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, Elizabeth “Eliza” Arnold Poe, Portrait of John Allen, Cover: First Edition of Tamerlane, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, Edgar Allan Poe’s Pit and the pendulum, Poe, fantastic front, New-York Mirror Edition of The Raven, Sarah Helen Whitman, Poe Grave, poe mystery 1990, Combs Poe 1, Richmond, VA - James River, Richmond, IN - Whitewater River, Richmond, VA 1919, poe’s tamerlane, Edgar Allan Poe - Army, addison-031, Poe Family Tree, Stoke-Newington, map england 1660-1892, Wi, South Bohn-Serz, Al Aaraaf Tamerlane and Minor Poems, Poems, v-learned1, Annabel Lee, Fall of the House of Usher, Poe’s Grave, Westminster Burial Ground, old america, old Baltimore, Broadway Journal, Spiral, New York Map 1842
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, SDK
Turns out a camera in the iPad may have been closer than we thought -- Engadget has been diving into the SDK released yesterday (NDAs be darned, I guess?) and discovered that the ability to "Take Photo" is still hidden in the iPad's code. Of course, the device doesn't actually have a camera, but the fact that there's code written for one could mean that prototypes of the device did have a camera, and/or that we'll eventually see one in a future revision.
There's a few other interesting things sneaking out of the SDK as well, including the fact that "popovers" (those windows and menus that were popping up in the video yesterday) are listed in Human Interface Guidelines as iPad-only flair. That would make designing for the two platforms pretty different -- while it's certainly possible, as we learned yesterday, to run iPhone apps on the new platform, it seems like Apple is telling developers that iPad apps will have a very different feel than their smaller predecessor's versions. A year from now, the two platforms may end up being different markets entirely.
Update: The "touch to return to the call" bar made the trip to the iPad, too. Makes it more likely that this is just vestigial code.TUAWiPad SDK allows you to take photos and other insights originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud.
Shared by BudAbout 18 months ago, we published a graph showing that Unicode on the web had just exceeded all other encodings of text on the web. The growth since then has been even more dramatic.
Wow
Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252 or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode can represent thousands: from Arabic to Chinese to Zulu. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing.
This graph is from Google internal data, based on our indexing of web pages, and thus may vary somewhat from what other search engines find. However, the trends are pretty clear, and the continued rise in use of Unicode makes it even easier to do the processing for the many languages that we cover.
Searching for "nancials"?
Unicode is growing both in usage and in character coverage. We recently upgraded to the latest version of Unicode, version 5.2 (via ICU and CLDR). This adds over 6,600 new characters: some of mostly academic interest, such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs, but many others for living languages.
We're constantly improving our handling of existing characters. For example, the characters "fi" can either be represented as two characters ("f" and "i"), or a special display form "fi". A Google search for [financials] or [office] used to not see these as equivalent — to the software they would just look like *nancials and of*ce. There are thousands of characters like this, and they occur in surprisingly many pages on the web, especially generated PDF documents.
But no longer — after extensive testing, we just recently turned on support for these and thousands of other characters; your searches will now also find these documents. Further steps in our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
And we're angling for a party when Unicode hits 50%!
Posted by Mark Davis, Senior International Software Architect
Learn programming the easy way!
(via jeb)
We've told you in the past about the multiple ways you can keep track of us at your computer and on-the-go. Now, for you iPhone and iPod touch users, there's a new way to follow us - and other sites in the 'ist-a-verse - while you're away from the computer. Today, thanks to some hard work from the Gothamist Tech Team, we've launched the first version of the istaverse iPhone app. You can select any of the Gothamist network's 13 sites to keep track of while you're out and about and, best of all, it's FREE.
You can download the app by clicking here [opens iTunes].
City officials, architects, planners, and public health advocates crammed into the Center for Architecture last night for the unveiling of New York City's Active Design Guidelines.
Heralded as a first-of-its-kind collaboration between four city departments -- Health, Transportation, Design and Construction, and City Planning -- the effort underscores that New Yorkers, as much as we like to think of ourselves as a city of walkers, need to live healthier lifestyles.
The statistics touched on last night (included in the manual’s opening chapter), reveal that the majority of adults in New York City are either overweight or obese. More alarming, perhaps, is that 43 percent of elementary school children are overweight, and the rate is rising.
As sobering as those numbers are, Health Commissioner Thomas Farley stressed that the city’s effort "is not just about lowering obesity rates, but also about addressing diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, depression, and cognitive decline.” Such chronic diseases, he stated, are exacerbated by how we currently design the built environment and may be quelled with even the most moderate amounts of exercise, whether it be from walking, bicycling, or even climbing the stairs.
To this end, livable streets activists will find much to applaud in the pages of the Active Design Guidelines. Inside, many elements of the city's new Street Design Manual are further substantiated with research indicating that safer streets will translate to a markedly healthier city. From mixing land uses to -- yes -- addressing the supply and location of parking, the guidelines focus on the role urban design should play in making a New York City a healthier place to live.
While this is a far-reaching and impressive document that other cities should seek to emulate, it is, in the end, only guidelines. The hard part, as always, is executing the wisest policies and enacting the right recommendations.
Phase One of the 2010 PECOTAs are here!
Before you get too excited, just breathe. The first bits are the Weighted Means spreadsheet for players expected to play in the majors this year, the PFM, and the first-crack depth charts. (We’ll be purging the 2009 comments from the depth charts and turning Fantasy subscriptions on momentarily, so please stay tuned on those.)
There’s been a lot of work put in to these cards this year. The entire PECOTA system has been converted from an absolutely ginormous spreadsheet application – one that couldn’t even be opened on a three-year-old laptop – into an executable program that can be run at any time. That really doesn’t affect the current PECOTAs in any way – but it leads to an extreme simplification of the input process. And that means that we should be able to make in-season PECOTAs without too much hassle; still enough of a hassle that there won’t be daily updates, but I think monthly updates are within reason (he says now, before actually doing one).
The other advantage to this is the ability to run a PECOTA for any other year as easily as we run it for this year. So the translated projection for Wade Boggs in 1982, his rookie year, was .314/.388/.410 and a .277 eqa; we got a .343/.399/.438, .296 eqa, in-line with his 80% percentile score. Dwight Gooden’s 1985 PECOTA says he could strike out 204 batters in 174 innings - at the 50% level as a 19-year-old. It gives Willie Mays 40 more home runs for the time in 1952-53 when he was in the military, which would have given him an even 700 for his career. There’s a lot of ideas just waiting to have this new toy turned onto it (and a lot of PECOTA cards from the past to think about building).
I haven’t turned much attention to the PFM yet this year – other than to verify that that the current PECOTAs do load in, and the dollar values are reasonable for the stats they work with. I do have some ideas for that as well…
There are a couple of fields missing in the weighted means page. One is the Upside – unfortunately, I need to finish running the card data to get that info (its based on the best 6 years forecast out of the next 10). I know that’s a stat people look for – at least, I know *I* look at it - , and I’ll add it as soon as the cards give me the answers.
At a laundromat in Brooklyn, a revolving cast of characters conduct business, people-watch, sell, argue, flirt, and gossip. Oh, and do their laundry.
Tags: NYCEvery other Saturday, Carlene James climbs into bed at 10 and sets her alarm for 2:30 a.m. She rises without rousing her husband and four kids. By 3, she is at the Clean Rite. She chooses this moment to do her linens. She requires three super-giant washers, and there are exactly three. At this ungodly hour, competition is zero.
She is 36, a school office manager. Her apartment building has its own laundry room, but it's too slow there. "I'm very fussy with my clothes," she said. "I put soap in during both cycles. I'm always here when they're done so no one touches my clothes. I once got in an argument with a guy who said I was taking too many dryers. That's why it's good to come at 3 a.m."
Dear Redfox,
What are you, some kind of cultural imperialist? France is the old regime. Also, pictures of yourself are exceptionally dull. Next you will be telling us about what you ate for lunch and whether or not it gave you indigestion. BORING. We demand new looks for a new era!
Dear Internet,
Very well.
Say you’re Apple. It’s a few years ago. You make and sell computers.
You see the rise of web apps, and you notice people talking about how desktop apps are done. Desktop apps are done because, with web apps, people can login from anywhere, any machine, and get to their stuff. That’s cool, and you know it’s cool.
You make computers and operating systems, and you think to yourself: “How can I sell computers that are pretty much just web browsers? How is a Mac better than a Dell or a Sony in that case?”
I think the first thing you do is make sure you have a great browser. Faster and better than the competition. And keep at it, don’t let up.
Then you think to yourself: “What if people didn’t have to just use any machine they find? What if they have their computer with them all the time?”
I think you then work on making great laptops, so people actually can have their computer with them most of the time. You make the hardware and OS and software so great that people want these laptops.
Then you think to yourself, “People aren’t carrying their laptops to the grocery store! They don’t always have their computer with them.”
You decide to expand your definition of computer: you make iPhones. And then iPads. You make beautiful hardware and software — you create an experience so new and compelling that people lust for these things.
You open these up to developers, too, and hope a hundred thousand flowers bloom, since that makes these devices all the more valuable.
And it works!
You’ve avoided the bleak future where computers are nothing but web browsers, where user experience is struggling to hit 1995 levels of quality, where all you’re making is a dumb terminal that can show pictures and play video, where you’re back to being the “beleaguered” Apple, whose product is a commodity easily matched, or close enough, by other companies that charge less.
Instead you’re this Apple, the one that reports record sales and profits.
Good job, you!
The New Yorker has made the 13 stories they published by Salinger available to everyone. Here, to revisit, is Janet Malcolm’s 2001 defense of the post-Catcher Salinger. And here is that horrifying article from a few months ago about how the kids can’t even read him. Also, here are two more immediate reactions to his life and death.
The first is from Alex Balk:
I’ve spent the last twenty years or so being embarrassed about J. D. Salinger. His thoughts are so clichéd! The language is so dated! There is nothing he has written that would seem insightful to anyone but a searching, frustrated teenager! Thinking about that in light of his passing, it’s fairly obvious that those reactions are all part of having read and loved almost everything Salinger wrote when I was a searching, frustrated teacher. The embarrassment I feel when I think about J. D. Salinger is actually the embarrassment I feel when I think about that kid who loved those books and felt like they finally helped him to understand a world that seemed so unfair and incomprehensible. I don’t know whether or not that makes Salinger a Great Writer In The Canon, but if someone has so much of an impact on you at a tender age that you’ve essentially incorporated the reading of his work with that specific moment of your life I think it’s probably fair to say that he was at least a great writer. I wouldn’t go back and read those books any sooner than I’d go back to that point in my life, but, on reflection, yes, that writer was pretty great.The second is much shorter, but equally profound.
If you know anything about London's Carnaby Street, you're probably familiar with the phrase flower-power. Home to the swingin' '60s and mod designers like Mary Quant and Biba, Carnaby Street is the place to find all things "hip and groovy". To celebrate Liberty of London's Carnaby Street store's 50th anniversary, Nicholas Kirkwood unleashed his inner flower child and created the perfect perennial printed platform. Staying true to his signature sky-high silhouette, this shoe is the perfect marriage of peace, love, and serious height. But hold tight hippies, cuz these shoes don't hit stores until the end of May! (Nitrolicious)
Yesterday, Howard Zinn passed away. A former World War II bombardier turned life-long activist, teacher, and radical historian, Zinn inspired and touched the lives of many. His watershed book A People’s History of the United States told the stories of atrocities and brutality, activism and organizing often ignored by mainstream accounts of US history. His anthology of primary sources, Voices of a People’s History of the United States led to the founding a non-profit organization holding dramatic readings of the works across the US: “By giving public expression to rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past—and present—VOICES seeks to educate and inspire a new generation working for social justice.”
Democracy Now! aired an hour-long tribute this morning. If you subscribe to Netflix, you can watch this documentary on his life and work. There’s more audio, video, and text at howardzinn.org.
Last night, the fashion press was alerted that one of Lady Gaga's latest get-ups was fashioned out of Kymaro body shapers. Everyone from the LA Times to the Huffington Post ate it up, running stories declaring Gaga an equal opportunity dresser. The "As Seen on TV" full body girdle promises to take ten pounds off a paunchy figure. Pretty sexy, right?
In all honestly, we didn't believe this for a second. While Gaga's ensemble does somewhat resemble the nip-and-tuck contraption, it seems odd that her costumers wouldn't use a better quality fabric. According to the barrage of complaints we found regarding Kymaro online, it doesn't sound like the girdle can smooth anything, let alone be used in a bondage costume.
So we did some digging.
Artists Talib Kweli, Q-Tip and John Legend have paid their respects to famed author Howard Zinn after it was reported he passed away from a heart attack yesterday.
[Visit SOHH.com for more information]
Cuse: And also, we also are aware that answering questions inevitably raises other questions. We call it the Big Bang conundrum. Lindelof: A.k.a, Kate’s plane. Cuse: Yeah, if you go back and you say, "OK, Jacob is obviously someone who was of great significance to the mythology of the show, but who was before Jacob? And then but who created that person?" If you go back in the universe you can say, the universe was created in an event called the Big Bang, but then you can inevitably ask the question, "Well, what was before the Big Bang?" I think the audience has to have a sort of respect for the fact that there is only a circumscribed set of answers that we can ever give. And we’re not sitting here trying to evade our responsibility to provide answers. We are going to answer the questions that, for us, feel like they need to be answered and we feel like we have some cool and satisfying answers for them. via featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com From The Watcher's "The 'Lost' Lowdown," an epic three-part interview with Cuse and Lindelof, with no spoilers. It's going to take a while to read.
All 101 episodes of Lost are available on Hulu right now (US only). The season premiere is in 5 days...plenty of time to catch up on all ~73 hours of plane-crashing, hippie-communing, smoke-monstering, eye makeup-wearing, nicknaming, time-jumping weirdness.
Tags: Hulu Lost TV
Thanks to FastIgnite, a startup advisory firm, for sponsoring Venture Hacks this week. This post is by Simeon Simeonov, the firm’s founder and CEO (and formerly a partner at Polaris Ventures). If you like it, check out Sim’s blog and tweets @simeons. – Nivi
The best strategy for not having to fire your co-founders is to not bring them on board in the first place.
One of the most common early-stage startup mistakes is building a weak founding teams. Since a good team is often the closest you can get to a good business plan, this one anti-pattern is the cause of many company failures. Before we dig into why this happens so frequently and what entrepreneurs can do about it, I want to share one of the formative stories from my early days as a VC.
An entrepreneur who should have fired his co-founders
Many years ago, I met a 20-something technical founder who had recently left graduate school with interesting technology in the enterprise search and knowledge management market. Beyond his compelling personality and the technology, he had an impressive approach that allowed him to deliver benefits to users without prior user setup or explicit user actions, using desktop and email client integration. To use a current analogy, it was like Xobni but better.
A week later, he came to Polaris with his founding team. He had three co-founders. They all had grey hair and so-so backgrounds. Over the course of an hour, I learned one of the three was a relative who, after hearing about the idea, pushed himself onto the team as “the business guy” and then promptly brought in a couple of former co-workers as co-founders. The net effect was that a backable founder had become essentially unfundable. I passed on the deal. As expected, the company went nowhere. I am friends with the founder and would like to back him some day.
This is an extreme example, but it underscores the randomness by which founding teams are created. Three disclaimers before we dive into the issues:
- I’m not advocating that an entrepreneur goes it alone. Much has been written about the costs and benefits of partners when starting a company. I’m advocating for more thoughtfulness about the building of a founding team and more creativity around how to make progress with limited resources. See Venture Hacks’ post on How to pick a co-founder.
- I’m not advocating that what’s best for the company in an abstract sense should trump personal relationships or commitments that have been made. I am advocating for greater care in making commitments and more openness around the balance between business and personal spheres.
- I’m focusing specifically on founding teams here, but many of the lessons apply equally well to hiring in very early stage companies (before product/market fit has been proven).
How weak teams get built
Arrogance and ignorance, in small doses, are powerful tools that help entrepreneurs focus and execute against overwhelming odds. In larger doses they make a dangerous poison that kills startups. In most cases, they are the root cause behind weak founding teams.
It’s no secret that startup business plans tend to evolve over time, sometimes substantially. Yet, at any given point along that evolutionary path, many entrepreneurs are over-confident that, this time, the plan will succeed. Then they look at the founding team and, if they think they are missing a key role, they may bring a co-founder on board. This process repeats itself up to the point where either the company converges to what it will likely end up doing in the next few months or the founding team gets to a size that makes additions practically impossible.
I recently met an entrepreneur who started working on a consumer social media idea about a year ago. Thinking he was building a small dot-com, he brought on a college buddy who had done Amazon Web Services work as a chief technical officer (CTO). In a few months, the idea shifted toward working with agencies. He brought in a VP of marketing from the agency space, because he was confident that was where the opportunity was. After a few more months, the team realized there was only a services business in the agency space. Now they are pivoting towards expert identification/collaboration in enterprises, and neither his CTO nor his VPM is right for the team.
The entrepreneur in this example is a smart guy. But he didn’t have enough experience to understand what would be required for a co-founder role over the early evolutionary path of the company. He didn’t fully appreciate the opportunity cost of making these early hires given his limited recruiting network and the pre-product, pre-funding stage of the company. Further, he did not know how to evaluate a VP of marketing. He ended up with a communications-oriented exec who — beyond lacking understanding of the enterprise domain — is not very helpful in general with product marketing issues. This is how ignorance hurts.
What VCs think about bad co-founders
Keep in mind that when you recruit or you pitch investors, they don’t get the benefit of the history that might explain your decisions. Let’s imagine what goes on in a VC’s head:
“Shoot, this is a backable entrepreneur and the idea may have legs but the two other founders are B players and a poor fit for the company at this point. I could talk to the lead founder, but I don’t know about the personal relationships on the team and this can backfire. Also, I don’t want word getting out that I break founding teams. This can hurt my dealflow. Anyway, the CEO showed poor judgment in bringing these people on board. Also, there is still a lot of recruiting work to do whether the team changes happen before or after an investment. Frustrating… this could have been a good seed deal. Now it’s too complicated. I’ll pass using some polite non-reason.”
Agile founding teams
There is a principle in agile development that centers on minimizing wasted effort. One of the cornerstone strategies — supposedly one of Toyota’s rules, too — is to delay decisions until the last responsible moment. Because the future is uncertain, the idea is to make decisions with the most information. The emphasis is on “responsible,” because a lot of procrastination is bad too.
Last week, I wrote about how to raise money without lying to investors with this same principle. The logic also applies to building strong founding teams. Because you don’t know what your startup will end up doing, it can be a big mistake to hire the best people for this point in the company’s life.
The obvious solution is to build an amazing team of well-rounded, experienced athletes who can do anything that comes their way. The Good-to-Great companies put the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus. If you can do it, more power to you. However, you may have a few problems…
Entrepreneurs Anonymous
I am an entrepreneur, and I have team-building problems:
- I am not exactly sure what my company will do.
- I have limited resources and can’t have many people on my team.
- My recruiting network is limited.
- My company, especially pre-product and pre-funding, may not be very attractive.
- I may not be the best person to evaluate people in _______ and _______.
Ten rules for building agile founding teams
Here are some specific strategies for building founding teams. There are no silver bullets. Some of the advice is contradictory and situation-specific. Caveat entrepreneur.
- Network, network, network. Learn how to learn through people. It’s the fastest way to understand a new domain. Value negative feedback. It often carries more information than a pat on the back. Expand your recruiting network, so you get access to better talent.
- Set clear expectations. When getting involved with someone, establish the right psychological contract from the beginning. Talk about what might happen if there is a pivot in an unexpected direction.
- Go easy on titles. Don’t give out big titles unless you have to and, even then, question why you have to. You can always “upgrade” someone’s title later if they perform well. They’ll appreciate it. On the flip side, big titles can cause many problems when you recruit or raise money.
- Structure agreements well. Founders should have vesting schedules with some up-front acceleration. In some cases, you can bestow founding status without giving founding equity with accelerated vesting.
- Be honest with and about your team. Get in the habit of discussing team fit with the business plan in an open, non-threatening manner. When you talk to experienced investors or advisors, be honest about the limitations of your team. Most likely they see any warts just as well or better than you, and you can only win by showing you have a firm grip on reality.
- Hire generalists early. Hire specialists later.
- Hire full-timers reluctantly. You can only have a few of them in the early days, whether they are co-founders or not. Be picky. Don’t fall for the chimera of “If only I hire a __________, then I can _________.” This may be true, but only if the person you hire is perceived to be good and does a good job. The perception of the quality of your team is as important as reality for recruiting and fundraising.
- Find experienced part-timers. Sometimes you can get a lot of value out of very experienced people even if they only spend a few hours, or a day, each week with you. The key is to do this over a period of time and build context. Over time, experienced part-time employees can help in the process of building the company. They can help make many decisions — for example, around team-building, financing and the business plan — as opposed to any one decision. This is how I work with startups through FastIgnite. Depending on the situation, I’m an active advisor or co-founder and/or acting CTO. Other people, like Andy Palmer, take on a board or acting CEO role.
- Find the right investors. Seek investors who pride themselves on their recruiting abilities and have a track record of helping startups build teams. These investors may see the holes in your team as an opportunity instead of a problem, as long as they feel confident the company is a good recruiting target. Some firms have internal recruiting teams led by experienced former executive recruiters. Examples include Benchmark (David Beirne) and Polaris (Peter Flint). Others, such as General Catalyst and Founders Fund, favor partners who are former entrepreneurs with deep networks and team-building experience.
- Fire your co-founders. If you are behind the 8-ball and see your team as a key constraint, you should do something about it. Don’t wait for an investor or someone else to do it for you.
If you successfully apply these strategies, you stand a better chance of going after the right people at the right time and bringing top talent on board.
You may not even have to fire your co-founders.
For years it was the label that people loved and loved to hate and now it's gone. Miramax - the company founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein that made stars of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith and a host of others - is dead. The doors have closed, all the staff fired effective today. Yeah, the Weinsteins were legendary bullies and widely hated for their treatment of foreign language - particularly Asian - film but, at its peak, Miramax was also clearly the leading taste maker of its age.
It is almost religious orthodoxy in the tech community that “open” is better than “closed.” For example, there have widespread complaints about Apple’s “closed” iPhone app approval process. People also argue Apple is making the same strategic mistake all over again versus Android that it made versus Windows*. The belief is that Android will eventually beat the iPhone OS with an “open” strategy (hardware-agnostic, no app approval process) just as Windows beat Apple’s OS in the 90’s.
With respect to requiring apps to be approved, consider the current state of the iPhone platform. There are over 100,000 apps and thus far not a single virus, worm, spyware app etc. (I don’t count utterly farfetched theoretical scenarios). As a would-be iPhone developer, I can report firsthand that the Apple approval process is a nightmare and should be overhauled. But what’s the alternative? Before the iPhone, getting your app on a phone meant doing complicated and expensive business development deals with wireless carriers. At the other end of the spectrum: If the iPhone OS were completely open, would we really have better apps? What apps are we missing today besides viruses?
With respect to the strategic issue of tightly integrating the iPhone/iPad software and hardware, a strong case can be made that Apple’s “closed” strategy is smart. Clay Christensen has given us the only serious theory I know of to predict when it’s optimal for a company to adopt an open versus closed strategy for (among other things) operating systems. The basic idea is that every new tech product starts out undershooting customer needs and then – because technology gets better faster than customers needs go up - eventually “overshoots” them. (PC’s have overshot today – most people don’t care if the processors get faster or Windows adds new features). Once a product overshoots, the basis of competition shifts from things like features and performance to things like price.
The key difference today between desktop computers and mobile devices is that mobile devices still have a long way to go before customers don’t want more speed, more features, better battery life, smaller size, etc. Just look at all the complaints yesterday about the iPad - that it lacks multitasking, a camera, is too heavy, has poor battery life, etc. This despite the fact that Apple is now even building their own semiconductors (!) to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the iPad. Until mobile devices compete mainly on price (probably a decade from now), tight vertical integration will produce the best device and is likely the best strategy.
*It’s worth noting that Steve Jobs wasn’t the one who screwed up Apple. Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976. He was pushed out in in May 1985 when the company was valued at about $2.2B. He returned in 1996 when Apple was worth $3B. Today it is worth $187B.
Stylistically, I thought Obama struck the right note last night. He seemed confident and relaxed, and I thought the moments when he stepped out of the role of speechmaker and spoke in a more conversational tone were especially effective. And those quick humorous asides—like the line about it being clear that he didn’t do health-care reform for the political benefit—were winning.
Substantively, there was nothing especially surprising in the speech—with the exception, perhaps, of the call to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But the lack of surprise was, in a sense, a good thing, since it suggested that Obama was not panicking as a result of Scott Brown’s victory. And the major initiatives he called for make a great deal of sense, including most importantly an expanded jobs program and a hiring tax credit. The proposal to use bailout money to fund $30 billion in lending to small businesses also seemed like a political winner that would also be economically useful, albeit on a small scale. The call for massive investments in new nuclear energy plants was also intriguing. It brought both sides of the aisle to their feet, but investing in nukes has been a hard sell politically since the nineteen-seventies, both for the obvious reason and because their upfront costs are immense. It’ll be interesting to see if anything comes of that idea.
What I liked best about the speech, though, was the rhetorical tone that Obama struck. It was not a memorable speech in terms of the language, but it was forthright and seemed not at all defensive. It did a good job of balancing partisan advocacy with the kind of common-ground rhetoric that comes naturally to Obama. Most important, it placed jobs at the heart of the speech, which is where they belong, both politically and in terms of policy. And it was good to see Obama do this without being obviously or stridently populist. After the speech, a couple of pundits described Obama’s opening reference to hating the bank bailout as a call to arms, but it didn’t come off like that at all. Instead, it seemed like a honest statement of fact: everyone hates the bailouts, but they had to be done. And what followed was right on point: what matters now is not vengeance, but repayment (the bank tax) and substantive reform, so that the bailouts don’t happen again. This felt like Obama at its best: acknowledging people’s anger and the justice of it, but always drawing the discussion back to rational, pragmatic grounds.
The speech was too long, though.
Josh MacPhee Kropotkin 1892 $10 An experiment of sorts, this quote from anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin is graphically constructed entirely out of the patterns on the insides of business envelopes. Each pattern is a different color, and various layers are dropped out to create the letter forms. Click on the image to see more detail. I have been increasingly interested in Kropotkin because of his desire to synthesis the best aspects of anarchism and communism. His brand of anarchism was deeply rooted in the social, and the need to build community and the commons. full color digital print 18"x24" signed/unnumbered/stamped on back
I made a life-size cardboard iPad and some paper sketch templates for Instapaper interface design.
One surprise when fake-“using” the cardboard iPad: I can use the whole keyboard with just my thumbs, holding the iPad in the air. And I can use it surprisingly quickly. My assumptions about input limitations may have been premature.
An interesting take from TPM Reader SR ...
Maybe it's just because I'm a poli sci major turned lawyer, but that moment when he turned to the Supremes and took them directly to task forDred Scott IIthe Citizens United opinion, and then watching the majority look completely taken aback as the other branch of government stood up, looked at them and cheered actually stunned me a bit.I know I've never seen anything like that happen in a SOTU and if anything like that has ever happened before in a SOTU or a joint session, I must have been hung over the day of the lecture in college. Even the fireside chat in which FDR unveiled his court packing scheme, as dripping with patrician condescension and barely concealed venom as it was, didn't go second person and directly in their face the way Obama did tonight.The Supremes are used to wafting into the House in their black robes, sitting dispassionately through the speech and wafting ethereally out again on a cloud of apolitical rectitude. It's like they forget they're there because they're one of the three branches. And I truly don't think it ever occured to them that crassly injecting themselves into the sordid partisan fray of what they like to call "the political branches" with that catastrophic decision would cause the President to treat them like people who'd injected themselves into the sordid partisan fray. (And why should they? After all, they got away with Bush v. Gore with barely a dent in their credibility). I even thought I detected a bit of "told you" coming from the four in the minority.
I think we saw a bit of history made tonight, and no one noticed except the Supremes themselves.
Just heard the sad news, Howard Zinn died Wednesday of a heart attack. I know all of us here at Justseeds were inspired by this great historian. These are some big shoes to fill...
image by Rober Shetterly
Filed under: iPhone, App Store, SDK
It's been a long time coming, but the last hurdle is gone -- Apple has lifted the restrictions against 3G VoiP calls from the iPhone Software Development Kit.
The implications of this are pretty huge. Not only does this mean that VoIP apps like Skype [iTunes Link] can now be easily updated to allow VoIP access over 3G on the iPhone, it also means that the 3G-enabled versions of the new iPad should be able to take full advantage of VoIP over 3G as well. The iPad does come with a microphone and a speaker, so while you won't be able to hold the device up to your ear like a phone (although it would be pretty funny to watch you try), calls over Skype or another VoIP program should theoretically be just as clear on the iPad as they are on the iPhone's tiny speaker. This has the potential to really shake up the wireless industry, especially in the U.S. -- with pay-as-you-go 3G on the iPad costing no more than $30 a month, the iPad suddenly seems like a very attractive alternative to the iPhone with its far more expensive (and contractually obligated) carrier plans.
iCall [iTunes Link] has already been updated with VoIP over 3G enabled, and with all restrictions now lifted, it seems like it's only a matter of time before Skype and other VoIP apps follow.
[Via Gizmodo]TUAWiPhone SDK updated: VoIP over 3G now permitted originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 22:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The name doesn’t bother me that much. It could be worse.
Its great that the iPad can create Pages/Keynote/Numbers documents, but how can you get them off the iPad? Can the iPad connect to my wireless printer? Can I somehow connect a USB flash drive?
My first thought was that I would never have a reason to use it. But I know when I’ll use it. I would use it right now, right when I’m hanging out on my bed, home from work, with no desire to touch my laptop, but knowing that my iPhone isn’t quite enough.
While I understand why it uses iPhone apps, I do wish it could run real OSX apps. It doesn’t really bother me that Apple completely controls what can go on the iPhone, but there are certain things that I wish could go on the iPad that probably never will due to the closed nature of the iPhone app store. For example, Perian. Perian lets you play tons of video formats on your mac. I doubt we will ever have this for the iPad (unless its jailbroken, of course). It just seems so… limiting.
The iBook concept, is of course great, even if it’s not totally original. What I don’t like the idea, of, however, is having to possibly buy the same book two different ways on two different Apple-backed stores. What if I want a readable copy for when I’m home, and an audio copy for when I’m in the car? I’d love for Apple to somehow sell bundles of both. I mean seriously, it might actually get me to read again. Though I think I’d have to make the text huge to ever even try to read an entire book on-screen.
My biggest issue with the iPad is the whole data price thing. $30 a month for unlimited 3G data is great. But what if I’m already paying for unlimited data for my iPhone, and I have a 3G USB stick for my MacBookPro? Multiple monthly payments for the same stream of unlimited data.
Someday AT&T is supposed let those of us in the US use our iPhones for tethering, and then I’ll just use that for both my laptop and an iPad. Otherwise, the best option is to probably get a MiFi. Though I still say none of this is ideal, and there should be some sort of unlimited data deal for those of us who already have iPhones who want to pay for laptop tethering. [So I buy the 3G model of the iPad, but I only pay one extra tether-data fee that applies to tethering from my iPhone and the 3G data on my iPad.]
So… will I get one? Yes. I think for me it’ll mainly be something I use when I’m too tired to face my laptop. Will I get my mom one? Yes. Will I still need to bring my laptop home on the weekends? Yes.
So, I say “yes” to the iPad. Not “wow”, but, “yes”.
A review of tonight's "Friday Night Lights" (which, for a few more weeks, debuts Wednesdays at 9 on DirecTV's 101 Network) coming up just as soon as I walk into some hit-or-miss cooking...
My quick take on the iPad: this really is an entirely new class of device. Not because of the form factor (neat!) or the technology (fast!) or the vertically integrated content distribution channel (smart!). Instead, the iPad is something new because of its intended use. I see the iPad not as the next evolution of the personal computer, but instead the beginning of the family computer.*
It looks like a great machine to travel from the living room to the kitchen to the kids room to the bedroom. We'll search the web on it, read the news on it, the kids will do email on it, play Brushes and Bejeweled on it, and it'll be the perfect complement to the Sunday afternoon TV football ritual. We'll use it to control the music in the house, and do some quick bet-settling during dinner. I'm sure we'll eventually enjoy some multiplayer "board" games on it, or read a book on it, or watch a TV show on it. And the kids will argue with each other over who gets it next. (Dad will.)
Essentially, this is already how my iPhone gets used when I'm at home. So a family iPhone with a bigger screen? Sign us up.
* To be clear, I define "family" in the most expansive How Berkeley-Can-You-Be kind of way. I thought about using the term "social" computer, but the term "social" has been so deeply coopted to imply "social networking" or "social media" that it just doesn't fit here. Yes, of course you'll use the iPad to do those things, but that's not what I mean in defining the device this way. Thus "family," which implies lots of things, including multiple individuals living under one roof, sharing things with one another. It's my lens, and I'm seeing through it.
It’s not as if I haven’t had a point of view on all of this tablet computing device stuff that’s been lighting up the Internets for the past several months, but for professional reasons, I’ve had to keep mum. Suffice it to say, I’m really excited about Apple’s iPad, announced today, and I’m even more excited about what can be done with it.
However. I’m pretty sure that I’m in the camp that believes that this is not the salvation that most publishing companies have been looking for. Not that the device falls short in some way, but rather because nothing can save publishing as it’s been operating for the past several decades. The iPad does nothing to change the brutal mandate that has been pushing publishers to change for these many years; if anything it compounds the imperative.
As a general principle, there’s no way around evolution, and in this specific instance the reality is that there is no direct translation of the print experience to digital media. That is, the content can be translated, but it’s not likely to be as literal as many might expect or even hope. Those looking to the iPad to return us to some semblance of a print-like reading experience are basically wrong, I believe. In fact, lots of really smart people will continue to get this wrong going forward. We’re all still figuring out. That’s the definition of an opportunity.
9:02 PM: Pre-released remarks about Health Care Reform seem fairly restrained and bland.
9:06 PM: Entering the phony everybody likes each other phase.
9:16 PM: See the full text of tonight's speech.
9:18 PM: Maybe everybody could feel better if they just left the hall and found a few bankers to string up? Sort of everybody get it out of their system.
9:20 PM: Did any Republicans stand and applause for the bank tax?
9:21 PM: Guess the earlier decision to keep all this good stuff secret wasn't such a good idea.
9:22 PM: Just reminded what a wanker John McCain is. Need to remind myself every once in a while.
9:25 PM: Wait, Republicans are whooping and cheering for the jobs bil? Tax cut on high income earners?
9:26 PM: Eric Cantor and John Boehner don't have the right facial gestures for when the camera pans on them.
9:28 PM: It's always hard to remember the precise way things happened before. But the Dems seem particularly eager and antic in their cheers. Not what you'd expect from a Democratic party supposedly so down on the president. And I'm not saying they're not. They are. But I wonder whether there's not some level nervous energy, wanting to get excited.
I’ve said the following in a previous Unfiltered post as well as my most recent chat, but I’ve seen it come up again a few times since then, including in Will’s recent “Focus” post: Baseball Prospectus 2010 will have an index. It really, truly will. By Odin, Zeus, and Babe Ruth, there will be an index.
Look, we feel pretty rotten about the absence of an index in the 2009 edition. We had a perfect storm of things go wrong, and it was put to us that if we insisted on an index the book might be late or not-at-all. Also, they threatened to shoot a puppy. Several puppies. Really cute ones. We figured it was better to have a book without an index than an index without a book. Note that we are with a new publisher this year. The Index Incident is not the whole reason we moved, but it’s not unrelated either. We take anything that compromises the reader experience personally.
This year we had a far more pleasant experience cooking the book and an index was part of it, prepared with care by Christina Kahrl. It is really, really there. Honest. Again, we contritely apologize for last year’s omission, but it is a thing of the past. The index is back and it is here to stay.
gauging altruism and how priming changes behavior
Shared by Jake Dobkin
I saw a great HCB career retrospective at the national museum in Santiago, Chile about 5 years ago- probably the single most important show I've been to for learning what good photography actually is.Upcoming at MoMA: a retrospective of the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson.
For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs -- and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. MoMA's retrospective, the first in the United States in three decades, surveys Cartier-Bresson's entire career, with a presentation of about three hundred photographs, mostly arranged thematically and supplemented with periodicals and books.
After MoMA, the exhibition will visit Chicago, SF, and Atlanta. Quite excited for this one.
Tags: art henricartierbresson MoMA museums NYC photography
a little perspective
"If the new Maker's Mark bourbon is a success, it may prompt other American distillers to release more 'what-if' experiments."
Dedicated fans of American whiskey received some interesting news last week. As reported on What Does John Know? (the blog maintained by Malt Advocate publisher John Hansell) Maker's Mark is adding another whiskey to its lineup.
Maker's Mark already produces one of Kentucky's most popular bourbons, and the new whiskey will be identical to that sold in the iconic wax-dipped bottles, except the spirit will undergo a few months of additional aging in barrels that contain staves of toasted oak.
The process isn't new—a similar approach was employed several years ago by Compass Box for its Spice Tree vatted malt until the Scotch Whisky Association intervened and forced the producer to change its process. The practice of tweaking the final stage of the aging process to produce a different character in the spirit (I wrote about cask-finished spirits late last year) isn't new either.
But what is notable is that this practice is being undertaken on a bourbon; until recently, it seemed that most experimentation was taking place in Scotland with their distinctive single malts.
That's not to say that Maker's Mark is the first out of the gate of bourbon innovation. Over the past few years, Woodford Reserve has released several unique styles of bourbon as part of its Master's Collection, including a whiskey finished in Sonoma Cutrer barrels, as well as the most recent release of a bourbon aged in casks composed of extra-seasoned oak, which gives the whiskey a bombastic character of cocoa, spice and molasses.
And Buffalo Trace has an extensive series of experimental whiskies (though very limited in quantity and distribution) that tinker with almost every aspect of the spirit's production and aging.
These whiskies are similar to scotch single malts such as the annual releases from The Balvenie which have been finished in different types of barrels (the most recent release was finished in Madeira casks, which gives the Speyside malt a gorgeous, dates-and-honey character), or the line of innovatively finished whiskies from Murray McDavid, in that they're limited edition, get-it-before-it's-gone bottlings.
But according to Hansell, Maker's Mark aims to make this new bourbon a regular part of their product line, and if other distillers follow a similar path this could be a very exciting time for American whiskey.
While sales of bourbon and rye have blossomed over the past decade, there's been relatively little large-scale activity with these kinds of experiments, especially as compared to the variety of finishes and styles seen in the world of scotch whisky. If the new Maker's Mark bourbon is a success, it may prompt other American distillers to release more "what-if" experiments and perhaps expand their product lines as well.
It'll likely be a few more months before the new Maker's Mark appears in bars and liquor stores, and as curious as I am to try the new whiskey, I'm even more interested in what happens afterward.
Are you a fan of American whiskies? What kinds of innovations and experiments would you be interested to try?
About the author: Paul Clarke blogs about cocktails at The Cocktail Chronicles and writes regularly on spirits and cocktails for Imbibe magazine. He lives in Seattle, where he works as a writer and magazine editor.
In times of plenty, relocating for work usually means a better job or a higher standard of living. But in today’s tough economy, many are finding that they just can’t find work or maintain their standard of living where they currently live. It’s especially bad in New York and California, two places where the economy is suffering and the cost of living remains high. Many of these financial refugees are ending up in Texas, a place where the cost of living is low. And many of those that are relocating are in the very lowest income bracket, a further indication that money is their motivation for moving.
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personal finance – Mint.com
Right at the end, Jobs showed a street sign marking the intersection of "Technology" and "Liberal Arts". I guess that means that kottke.org is now in direct competition with Apple, Inc. YOU'RE GOING DOWN, STEVE! via kottke.org #teamkottke
Filed under: Apple Corporate, Hardware, Portables, Apple
Even though this morning's presentation had Apple calling themselves the "largest mobile device company" in the world, apparently they're in the processor business now, too. The just-announced iPad doesn't carry any special Intel or Nvidia CPU -- it's a homecooked 1GHz chip called the Apple A4. Apple says it's designed for high performance and low power, which is probably how they got that crazy 10 hour battery life and one month (!) standby life. We guess that PA Semi acquisition was a good idea.
We've been hearing for a while that Apple was picking up chip designers and hiring specialists for chipmaking, and it looks like the A4 is the first release (fourth produced?) product of all of that. It'll be interesting to see how their first major foray into silicon works out.TUAWApple making its own chips starting with the A4 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The new iPad from Apple, presented in typical Steve Jobs fashion as game-changing, will, in fact, revolutionize the way we read magazines. Combining the rich visual content of a print publication, the ever-changing immediacy of a website, and the portability of an e-book reader, the iPad is something new. Pentagram's Luke Hayman, designer of, among others, Time, New York, and Travel + Leisure, was asked how this new format would change the world of magazines and came up with five ways off the top of his head. A reversal of a decades-long trend "For as long as I'm been alive, publication formats have been getting smaller. First, oversized magazines like Life and Esquire either disappeared or switched to conventional formats to save money on paper and mailing. Then editorial content started moving online, shrinking to fit computer screens and then even smaller for PDAs and 140-character tweets. The iPad represents the first time this trend has been reversed. Instead of smaller, more low-res content, we have the chance to get bigger, brighter, sharper content. Designers used to making it smaller may have trouble learning the go the other way." The end of frequency "Say goodbye to the idea of monthly magazines, or weeklies, or dailies. Print publications, already under siege by the Internet and 24-hour news cycle, will have to learn to adapt to a world of instantaneous updates. This is most obvious for news and business publications, but it's just as true for fashion, entertainment and specialized titles." A reset on advertising "The mean little conventions of online advertising—banner ads, pop ups, and so forth—aren't popular with readers, with advertisers, and certainly not with designers. The iPad's a new medium that will create a whole range of opportunities. Once people start exploiting what it can do, we may see the kind of creative renaissance that will deliver the next George Lois or Lee Clow. People will start subscribing to certain i-mags just for the ads alone." A new way of telling stories "Editors have been telling us for years that people won't read long stories online. Yet they will read 1,000-page novels on their Kindles. What will they be willing to read on their iPad? I predict the return of long-form journalism. At the same time, visual storytelling will take deeper, richer forms. Information design will be more important than ever. Something like New York's Approval Matrix that we designed back in 2005 with Adam Moss is popular in print but will really come to life in this format. Some people might subscribe to it all by itself." A new role for print "If digital magazines with rich, uncompromised, real-time content corner the market on delivering what you need to know right now, what's the point of print? I think that the publications that end up enduring will be the ones that exploit what print alone can do. The best ones will be things that you want to save, not toss in the recycling bin. They'll project a sense of craftsmanship and permanence. And each one should be an object that just feels terrific in your hand. If you're spending most of your free-time holding an iPad, you just might welcome a change of pace."
There's a new Apple product in town. And yes, it has a really bad name. But soon enough, there'll be a slew of accessories to match this new plaything. Some are sure to be stylish, while others will certainly veer towards disgusting.
Here's what I'm hoping for:
Vers wooden case. I picked up Vers' wooden iPhone holder at Minimal in San Francisco over the holidays. Not only is it super sturdy, but it's also the most attractive case I've ever seen for a gadget. That is, if you're a sucker for mid-century-inspired design like I am.
Lanvin zip-up satchel. I'd love for the fashion house to convert one of Alber's cotton carryalls to a cover for my shiny new contraption.
Philippe Starck-designed display stand. Since the iPad's suppose to replace books, I might want a well-designed stand for which to display it on my coffee table.The real-life existence of these products will make the chances of me actually buying this thing much more likely.
Neil S: Matt, I think people are missing the obvious when it comes to Ben Sheets. Why would an injury-prone player even want to come to a team like the Mets, who’s medical staff is suspect at best? I am also sure that Sheets looked at the recent he said-she said drama over Carlos Betran’s knee surgery and decided he wanted no part of this team. Who can blame him?
Matthew Cerrone: I know on pretty good authority that Sheets would have signed with the Mets, because he hoped to stay in the National League, where he knows the hitters best, and he’d have been in a pitcher’s park. But, the Mets never made an offer, because they knew it would have cost them more than they were willing to spend, which, from what I can gather, was around $7 million. In the end, he signed for $10 million.
You know, I wonder if the A’s see Sheets as a $5 million starting pitcher; figuring, if he begins the season, say, 8–2, and they’re behind in the race – in what is a very, very competitive division – they can trade him for prospects and only be in for half his salary.
That said, I’m sure they trust he’ll be healthy, and the team will be successful.
It’s an interesting gamble.
The worst-case scenario would be he gets hurt in April, and that’s that.
Actually, the worst-case scenario would be he’s awesome, the A’s stink and trade him for prospects to the Mets, who are hovering around .500, and then he hurts himself.
Late last year we released the Social Search experiment to make search more personal with relevant web content from your friends and online contacts. We were excited by the number of people who chose to try it out, and today Social Search is available to everyone in beta on google.com.
We've been having a lot of fun with Social Search. It's baby season here on our team — two of us just had little ones, and a third is on the way. We're all getting ready to be parents for the first time and we have lots of questions. So, what do we do? We search Google, of course! With Social Search, when we search for [baby sleep patterns], [swaddling] or [best cribs], not only do we get the usual websites with expert opinions, we also find relevant pages from our friends and contacts. For example, if one of my friends has written a blog where he talks about a great baby shop he found in Mountain View, this might appear in my social results. I could probably find other reviews, but my friend's blog is more relevant because I know and trust the author.
While we've been enjoying Social Search (and having babies), we've been hard at work on new features. For example, we've added social to Google Images. Now when you're doing a search on Images, you may start seeing pictures from people in your social circle. These are pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr. Just like the other social results, social image results appear under a special heading called "Results from your social circle." Here's what it looks like:Looking at the screenshot, you may notice two new links for "My social circle" and "My social content." These links will take you to a new interface we've added where you can see the connections and content behind your social results. Clicking on "My social circle" shows your extended network of online contacts and how you're connected.
Clicking on "My social content" lists your public pages that might appear in other people's social results. This new interface should give you a peek under the hood of how Social Search builds your social circle and connects you with web content from your friends and extended network. You can check out your social circle directly by visiting this link. (Note that it may take some time for the connections and content to update.)
We think there's tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we're just beginning to scratch the surface. We're leaving a "beta" label on social results because we know there's a lot more we can do. If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile, where you can add links to your other public online social services. Check out this short video to learn more:
The new features are rolling out now on google.com in English for all signed-in users, and you should start seeing them in the next few days. Time to socialize!
Posted by Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead for Social Search, and Terran Melconian, Technical Lead for Social Image Search
From my post on aiaio:
I'm no gadget prognosticator, and as an Apple shareholder, I hope I'm wrong. But this looks like it's going to be a bit of a niche product, at least at first.I'm guessing that the iPad will have a fantastic user experience, be a wonder to behold and use, but give very little practical reason for purchase. At $629 and up for the 3G model, I'm certainly not giving up my Kindle thoughts, since I already have an iPad Nano (you know it as the iPhone) in my pocket to do the iPad's heavy lifting. And I didn't even mention the keyboard dock. What the heck?I'm not selling my AAPL just yet, though. People had their doubts about the iPod, and look how that worked out. And who knows? Maybe there's a huge market for people that want iPhones without giving up their non-smartphones.
I suppose the problem is that I, like everyone else, was waiting to be OMG BLOWN AWAY by a new device that, in many ways, I already own. Taken on its own, the iPad is a nice device, if not a worldwide game-changer at first blush. The real news is that Apple's hype machine got the best of us all.
I've been monitoring the Engadget feed like everyone else, and I can't give a full verdict until I play with it, but at a glance, I'm not excited by Apple's new iPad.
Why? First, because of what it is:
More important, though, is what it isn't. Apple, of course, is often ahead of the game with its focus. The first iPod did nothing but play music; the iPhone didn't do copy-paste or Exchange sync; and so on. And perhaps the iPad will be more successful because of what Apple deliberately left out of it.
- A big iPhone. Truly, that's how it is modeled, from the OS outward. Which means it has a similar form factor, the same beautiful glossy screen, and the same interfaces... which makes it just as scary to drop and very hard to put in one's pocket. True, the niche is different; Apple is targeting the "I don't want to lug my laptop" crowd with the iPad's 9.7" screen, half-inch depth and 1.5-lb. weight, all good things. But it's not a true laptop replacement, as I'll detail later.
- A 3G device--on AT&T's network. The last thing AT&T needs (and that anyone is going to want) is more devices crowding its 3G bandwidth with unlimited-use devices. If this product is a hit, T is in for a rough year.
For my $499 and up, though, I'd expect to have some of these things in the iPad, all of which are purposefully missing:I'm no gadget prognosticator, and as an Apple shareholder, I hope I'm wrong. But this looks like it's going to be a bit of a niche product, at least at first. It may turn out to be an incredible gaming and reading platform, in which case I will gladly make my retractions and add one to my own gadget stable. But from here, thus far? Color me iUnderwhelmed.
- Multitasking. Apple spent a long time demonstrating iWork, but without multitasking, users can't pingpong between apps to reference data, copy-paste or preview. Productivity is decidedly secondary.
- Featherlight specs. Yes, one and a half pounds for this device is very nice. But a Kindle weighs 11 ounces, an iPhone less than 5. It's a portable device that's only somewhat portable. More like a coffee-table device (as expected) than one to tuck under the arm.
- A camera. What self-respecting Internet-centric gadget ships without a camera in 2010? Between chat, photo and video, cameras have become an expectation, not a perk. And the last thing an iPod user will want is wired peripherals. (Also, as reminded by @chrisfahey: no handwriting or voice recognition.)
- Enticing pricing. Sure, the $499 starting point is alluring, but at $829 for an all-in model, it's not as cheap as it looks.
Of course, I could always be wrong.
In his posthumous memoir coming out next week, former NYT managing editor Gerald Boyd reveals that disgraced NYT reporter Jayson Blair "spied on colleagues" and regularly provided inside NYT information to the New York Observer.
Boyd says that he and then-executive editor Howell Raines discovered, in the wake of Blair's reignation, a "string of emails" between Blair and the Observer's "Off The Record" columnist, Sridhar Pappu, in which Blair regularly helped the reporter with stories on NYT -- for a period of eight months before Blair quit the NYT amid widespread charges of plagiarism and fabrication of stories.
The emails "revealed a friendly relationship between the two," Boyd wrote.
Blair's resignation led to the eventual dismissal of both Boyd and Raines from the NYT, an episode recounted in depressing detail in Boyd's book, "My Times: In Black and White," set for publication next Monday. The Observer's John Koblin has already reported on other revelations in the book, including Boyd's harsh characterization of NYT culture editor Jonathan Landman, who then led the metro desk, as lacking "decency and integrity."
The depiction of the Blair-Pappu connection is especially interesting in light of the fact that, shortly after the news of his transgressions broke, Blair gave his first post-resignation interview to Pappu and the Observer -- a huge scoop at the time. ("So Jayson Blair could live, the journalist had to die," Blair famously told Pappu in a conversation held in Blair's apartment.)
According to Boyd, Blair had begun leaking information to Pappu in August 2002 about "staffing decisions, newsroom strategies, and dispute," in reply to Pappu's regular email questions.
Boyd was particularly incensed over the fact that Blair had leaked a list to Pappu of all the NYT reporters who had been assigned to the paper's Iraw coverage -- "including," Boyd said, "names, locations, phone numbers, dates they were to travel, and other comments."
"The information was confidential and competitive," Boyd fumed, "and its release was potentially life-threatening."
Boyd said he felt "deeply betrayed" by Blair's role as a newsroom source. He added that Raines had considered sharing the information about Blair's spying with the team of reporters assigned to investigate Blair's behavior for the paper. Raines told Boyd he would "discuss the possibility" of revealing the emails' contents with NYT publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
But it wasn't clear to Boyd whether, in the end, Raines ever did anything with the information.
Reached for comment this afternoon on Boyd's account, Blair told The NYTPicker via email: "There's nothing in there that I'd disagree with."
Pappu responded to Boyd's claims this afternoon by noting that Blair was "just one of many sources I would speak to" at the NYT on regular basis.
"Any information [Blair] or anyone else gave me was then double or triple sourced before I put it in the column," Pappu told The NYTPicker via email. "I would say my relationship with him was as cordial as anyone I spoke to on the beat. I never knew Jayson personally and I never met him until our sitdown interview in 2003."
Since leaving the Observer, Pappu has written for the Atlantic Monthly and the Washington Post. Blair recently revealed that he has become a "certified life coach" in Ashburn, Virginia.
We're seeking comment from Pappu and will update when we hear from him.
East of Havana is a blunt, unflinching close-up on the lives of these young rappers compelled to address their generation’s future from the confines of a Cuban ghetto. Soandry, Magyori, and Mikki are the defacto leaders of Cuba’s rebellious underground hip hop movement. In America, Hip-Hop like other musical formats is very much a commercial product not necessarily known for being a potent political player. The music is generally aligned with leftist politics and defines itself as being generally opposed to authority. However the Hip-Hop Industries’ push to elect Barak Obama to be President has all but made the music a staple of “Democrat get out the vote drives”. via hiphoprepublican.com I'm going to watch this.
Jason Chen, in the pre-game Gizmodo liveblog of the Apple announcement: "We’re still about 10 minutes away from the event starting. I wonder if the guys backstage are vomiting from nervousness. I would be."
I didn't actually vomit, but yes. That's the feeling. And thinking about it now makes my palms sweat and my stomach churn, a year and a half later. What got me through it was the support from the fantastic people at Apple, who I'm thinking about today.
While Republicans spent the last several months threatening to filibuster the Democrats' health care reform bill in the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scrambled to secure 60 votes -- only to have the whole fragile arrangement blow up when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts senate election last week -- we kept hearing that the relatively recent rise in filibuster threats was a bipartisan phenomenon. Both parties are guilty of this when they're in the minority, we heard.
It's true that there has been a decades-long uptick in the use of cloture filings -- often to overcome filibuster threats -- by whichever party is in the majority, but the best measurement of that trend shows an explosion since Republicans were consigned to minority status after the 2006 election.
Check this out:
These are the numbers on cloture over the last several decades. Often, but not always, cloture is employed by senate majority leaders in response to filibuster threats from the minority. Cloture isn't always necessarily correlated with filibusters, but broadly speaking, the two often go hand in hand.
What's particularly striking here is the GOP's use of filibuster threats, and the correlated increase in Democratic cloture motions. Take, for instance, the huge spike in cloture motions filed from the Republican-led 109th Congress in 2005-2006 to the Democratic-majority 110th in 2007-2008.
"It is the most striking in history," American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norm Ornstein told TPM.
What happened, Ornstein says, is that during the last two years of President George W. Bush's second term, Republicans offered "no initiatives to speak of."
The initiatives were coming from the Democrats, and the Republicans wanted to kill 'em, or slow things down.Republican filibuster threats, Ornstein said, were "like throwing molasses in the road."
Of course, not all cloture motions are direct responses to explicit filibuster threats. Sometimes majority leaders use cloture filings to do preliminary headcounts and try to avoid wasted time on legislation that can't muster enough votes.
Still, Ornstein largely attributes the stark rise in cloture motions in the 110th Congress to Republican delay and obstruction tactics.
"You're not gonna see that sharp jump up just because you're tracking heads," he said.
This is a very real change in the culture of the Senate.Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor at George Washington University, told us that it's not just Republicans who employ delaying and obstructionist tactics that the Democratic majority tries to overcome with cloture.
"Both Democratic and Republican minorities have been willing to exploit the rules pretty aggressively," she said, adding that "it certainly seems that Republicans are more aggressive with it."
Filibusters in the Senate require a 60-senator cloture vote to overcome -- before the mid-1970s, cloture required a 67-senator cloture vote.
For decades, beginning with the introduction of cloture as a formal procedure more than 90 years ago, it was rare for senate majority leaders to file for cloture. As Senate historian Donald A. Ritchie told us Monday, it was just too tough to secure 67 votes -- and thus very difficult to force the end of filibusters through cloture. From 1919 to 1970, cloture was never filed for more than seven times in a two-year Congress. You can see the Senate's breakdown of the numbers here.
Things heated up about 35 years ago, when the Senate voted to change its cloture rules, lowering the filibuster-ending requirement from 67 votes to 60.
At the same time, the Senate was becoming more partisan than it had ever been, Ritchie said. Before the cloture change, strict party-line votes were relatively rare. But in the years that followed, the ideological spectrum of each party began to shrink, leading up to today, when, as Ritchie put it, "we have much more party discipline right now than we've ever had."
With senators closely toeing the party line in a way that Ritchie said they rarely had before, senate majority leaders of both parties have in recent decades begun filing for cloture more and more frequently -- largely as a way to gauge whether they have 60 votes for a bill before they expend time and effort on it on the Senate floor.
While Ritchie went to great pains in our discussion Monday to paint the rise of cloture as a bipartisan phenomenon, it's not entirely clear that's true. For instance, the two largest spikes in cloture filings in the last 20 years seem to be motivated, at least in part, by Republican obstructionism.
When Republicans were a Senate minority in 1991-1992, there were 59 cloture filings. When President Clinton took office, with Republicans remaining the minority in the Senate, that number shot up to 80 in 1993-1994.
When Democrats reclaimed the Senate majority in the 2006 midterm elections, cloture filings shot up from 68 in 2005-2006 to a record 139 in 2007-2008.
It's important to note that there's not a direct and complete correlation between cloture and filibusters.
"We don't know, always, whether these jumps in cloture are because there's more obstruction or because majority leaders need it to lend some degree of predictability to the floor," Binder said. "In reality, it's probably a bit of both."
But clearly, Binder said, "the behavior of the minority is largely responsible for what the majority is doing here."
So while it isn't the whole picture, the rise of party-line filibuster threats has at least contributed to the increasing frequency with which majority leaders have employed cloture.
"Nothing in the Senate changed," Ritchie said. "It's just that the people that voters elected have changed."
Jake made a meta-list consisting singly of my RTDjacobs account, where I retweet ("RT") the best stuff on twitter. It's like blogging, but less. Fun! Sadly, the list is blank. It appears retweets don't show up in lists. I asked Jake for comment: "That seems a bit odd, wouldn't you agree?" I would, Jake. I hope Steve Jobs or Barack Obama step up and fix this oversight.
“When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.”
- Alan Kay (via azspot)
In the latest episode of Working Class Foodies, host Rebecca Lando goes on a food tour of Flushing with Adam Roberts of The Amateur Gourmet and Dan Delaney of VendrTV. After eating the pork and leek dumplings from White Bear, she gets inspired to make them at home. Learn how to make the dumpling skins, filling, and dipping sauce by watching her video, after the jump.
How to Make Chinese Dumplings for the Super Bowl w/the Amateur Gourmet & VendrTV
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Seriously Asian: All About Dumplings
A Walkable Dumpling Tour of Flushing
Dumplings-Centric Flushing Food Itinerary
You may have heard about this one. Yes, it's another post about Apple's new "tablet". The device will be unveiled later today, but that hasn't stopped games execs getting slightly overexcited about this potential new platform. Bart Decrem, of iPhone game maker Tapulous, is particularly keen:
The center of gravity in gaming is moving away from the console to these other devices. We're going to wake up a year from now and see that this is a very important part of gaming
The big publishers are interested too – EA Sports' Peter Moore, for one:
If it's got a great screen, some buttons, you can turn it on and it connects to the Internet, it's got the ability to be a games machine.
Former Sega boss Simon Jeffrey strikes a note of caution though, at least to those developers expecting to easily port over their iPhone titles. He argues the games made for the device will need to be deeper and more engaging than a typical iPhone/iPod Touch game.
Anyway, all will be revealed later and then you can decide yourself if your traditional games console has been superceded. My guess? Don't throw out your 360/PS3/Wii just yet…
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[Photograph: pepsithrowbackhub.com]
We here at SE finally got our grubby hands on some Pepsi Throwback, the special-edition Pepsi made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. You would not believe how hard it is to find that stuff. Is that part of Pepsi's marketing plan? To create an artificial shortage and get people talking about it?
Anyway, having learned a thing or two from Kenji's meticulous testing methods, we engineered a double-blind taste-test. I decanted three different soda products—Throwback, HFCS Pepsi, and as a wildcard, Coke Zero—into three identical unlabeled bottles marked simply A, B, and C. I then left the room and had Erin decant those into sets of cups marked 1, 2 and 3. We had each noted the contents in a codebook beforehand for sorting-out afterward.
The six of us in the office then tasted, trying to see if we noticed any difference. From the tasting notes:
Pepsi Throwback (votes: 3 of 6)
"Not cloyingly sweet — good carbonation."
"Not that sweet up front but gets syrupy. Weak sugar aftertaste. Kinda caramely flavor."
"Most mellow of the bunch."
Pepsi HFCS (votes: 2)
"OMG! All starting to taste the same!"
"Noticeable aftertaste, vaguely metallic."
"Sweet, kinda stale, Fakey but clean."
"Sharper flavor going down."
Coke Zero (votes: 1)
I threw in Coke Zero because I wanted a third drink to shake things up. I figured Diet Pepsi would have been too obvious, as would regular Coke. So I rotated in the Zero. Everyone pegged it as either Diet Pepsi or "a diet drink" right off. Erin, a big Coke Zero fan, pegged it as Coke Zero right away but didn't say anything until after the test.
"Coke Zero? More sweet and flatter than #1 [Pepsi Throwback]."
"Hint of melon. Weird!"
"Most sweet."
"Little less sweet, a little more "cola"/deeper flavor."
Speaking for myself, I found the difference almost negligible, which was disappointing. I've long been a fan of Mexican-import Coca-Cola, which is made with real sugar, and when Pepsi released the first wave of Throwback in April 2009, I thought I could discern an obvious difference that took me back to the soda-filled days of my youth (I grew up in a Pepsi family but defected to Coke in college). I thought the taste-test would prove definitively (at least for me) that the real-sugar Pepsi did taste better.
Have you tried it? If so, what did you think? Noticeable difference? And if you think so, did you try a blind taste test?
How cool is this collage of heroes and villains by Jack Teagle? It’s made up of a series of smaller individual paintings, and his Flickr stream has all sorts of other drawings, sketches, and comics.
(via Luke Pearson’s Tumblr)
Posted by John Martz on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Art, batman, Comics, Jack Teagle, star wars, superheroes
Alot of noise was made about Johan Santana's early arrival to Port St. Lucie Tuesday. It is great to see him healthy and recovered from surgery.
We can count on Johan. The rest of the rotation is what will make the difference in 2010. And one of the biggest wild cards is Ollie Perez.
Last spring, Ollie was lambasted for showing up overweight and uninspired after signing a big contract. Here is the 2009 spring Ollie:
And here is what Oliver Perez looked like in Pre-spring training: January 26, 2010:
Gotta like the beard. makes him look even more psycho than he already was. Also good to see him forging a bond with Johan. If he can learn a few things about poise, Ollie may be able to channel his potential into a breakout year.
Yes I know it's only January.
One more Heidi ... for now (evil laugh):
I'm not sure if the color really comes across on your screen, but this dress is BLUE. Blue blue blue blue blue. The closest I can come to describing it is that this is the blue that I assumed they painted the Avonlea hall:a deep, brilliant blue, the shade they use for painting carts and wheelbarrows.
Despite it being probably not so good a color for a community hall on Prince Edward Island, I quite like it as a dress!
Here's the bodice -- note the lining which I deliberately pressed to show, for a kind of piping effect without the work:
And the same lining as the bodice for the pocket:
I have at least one more Heidi left to come -- I managed to cut out FOUR of them in one evening, assembly-line style, and have finished one. Seriously, at this point I hardly want to wear anything else -- they're just so comfortable!
Andrew offers one:The importance of Obama's fiscal pivot is two-fold. The first is that, after the spendthrift Bush years and the fiscally crippling but necessary response to the recession, it's the right thing to do. Given the precarious state of the world economy and the fragility of the dollar, it's actually an urgent thing to do. And again, the real issue is long-term entitlements and defense and the collapse of the revenue stream. If we do not fix this soon, the next generation can say goodbye to any prosperous future.
The second element is political. It is simply astonishing that the GOP is now posing as a party of fiscal responsibility. It's like Bristol Palin campaigning against teen pregnancy. They cannot be allowed to get away with this canard without a thorough accounting of their own profound responsibility for the current state of affairs. Obama was forced to spend in his first year to avoid a second Great Depression. He must be careful not to overdo it and risk a double dip. But he must make solvent government his core objective and he must pound that home day after day, even as he also focuses on jobs. Without that kind of reform, no one should have long term faith in the US economy - because its political system is failing it.
Andrew also notes that it's largely a symbolic measure, but has faith that Obama will eventually move to the hard choices around defense and entitlement. I don't know. I think the way Obama has evidently decided to fold on health-care leaves me with little faith that he'll actually do the hard work.
It is, potentially, like this with all presidents. And I heard his point the other day about being happy with serving as a great one-termer. But I'm struggling to understand what he deeply, truly believes in. What he believes must be done right now. What he'd fall on his sword for. Again, maybe it's this way with all presidents, and maybe my larger beef is with electoral politics. I'll sort it out over the next few weeks.
All I know is when I read things like this, I just feel like, "what's the point?"
Who says girls don't know science? Not Li Boynton. The science genius and high school senior has been asked to sit next to Michelle Obama at tonight's State of the Union address. Conducting some serious science experiments since she was ten, check out her most recent endeavor:
Boynton's premier achievement as a young scientist was creation of a method to test for water pollutants by using light-generating bacteria. The student found that the microscopic organisms generated less light as the water's toxicity grew.By placing a bacterial culture in a light-tight box with a digital camera and processing the results through a free computer program, Boynton was able to reliably and cheaply test for half a dozen common pollutants. The technology, which won top science and engineering fair honors, has potential for testing water purity in developing nations where more costly testing procedures are not an option.
Worldwide, approximately 1 billion people lack access to safe water; 3.5 million die each year as a result.
She also finds out today if she has won the Intel's Science Talent Search for this research, which is the nation's highest honor for high school science studies. I don't doubt this is the beginning of many major contributions Boynton will be making to the field -- and to the world. Good luck, Li!
Pic via Melissa Phillip Chronicle.
Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times says it’s unlikely anything will happen between the Rays and free-agent 2B Orlando Hudson, as they’re content using Ben Zobrist, Reid Brignac orSean Rodriguez at second base.
Original Post at 8:06 am:
John Morosi of FoxSports.com believes the Rays, Nationals and a mystery team are interested in Hudson.
Morosi speculates that the mystery team is the Twins, and says the Rockies will only look to sign Hudson if they can get him at a bargain price.
Last week, Ladson of MLB.com said the the Nationals are only willing to give Hudson a one-year deal, worth around $3.25 million for the season.
…the Mets clearly have some money to spend, seeing as they chose not to sign John Lackey, Bengie Molina and Joel Pineiro, and so, it seems to me, the best way to improve the team would be to acquire hudson, who will upgrade the team’s defense up the middle… because, again, i just don’t see how Luis Castillo fits in with the grad plan of pitching, speed and defense…
That said, the Mets are not mentioned in Morosi’s report about Hudson.
The young never appreciate robust telomere length until they’ve lost it.
Reminds us of the Tom Hanks Trash Can
If you don’t know who David Thorne is, I’ll remind you – he is the genius that gave you the “spider drawing” email mayhem. Then there was the “Party in Apartment 3” escapade and the “design me a logo” piece of genius.
But he didn’t stop there – our boy decided to give the people at BlockBuster Video a nervous breakdown as well.
Sit back and enjoy this..
It all started when they (BlockBuster) sent him a “your video is overdue” letter:
Enter, David Thorne:
From: David Thorne
Date: Sunday 8 November 2009 2.16pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: DVDsDear Megan,
Thank you for your letter regarding overdue fees. As all four movies were outstanding examples of modern cinematic masterpieces, your assumption that I would wish to retain them in my possession is understandable, but incorrect. Please check your records as these movies were returned, on time, over three weeks ago. I remember specifically driving there and having my offspring run them in due to the fact that I was wearing shorts and did not want the girl behind the counter to see my white hairy legs.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Monday 9 November 2009 11.09am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: DVDsHi David
Our computer system indicates otherwise. Please recheck and get back to me.
Kind regards,
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Monday 9 November 2009 11.36am
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
Yes, they are definitely white and hairy. Viewed from the knees down, the similarity to two large albino caterpillars in parallel formation is frightening. People who knew what the word meant might describe them as ‘piliferous’, although there is something quite sexy about that word so perhaps they wouldn’t.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Monday 9 November 2009 1.44pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: DVDsHi David
No I mean our records indicate that the DVDs have not been returned. Please check and return as soon as possible.
Kind regards,
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Monday 9 November 2009 4.19pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
With the possible exception of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the movies were not worth watching let alone stealing. In Logan’s Run, for example, the computer crashed at the end when presented with conflicting facts and blew up destroying the entire city. When my computer crashes I carry on a little bit and have a cigarette while it is rebooting. I don’t have to search through rubble for my loved ones. The same programmers probably designed the Blockbuster ‘returned or not’ database. Also, while one would assume the title Journey to the Centre of the Earth to be a metaphor, the movie was actually set in the centre of the earth which, being a solid core of iron with temperatures exceeding 4300˚ Celcius and pressures of 3900 tons per square centimetre, does not seem very likely. Waterworld was actually pretty good though. My favourite bit was when they were on the water but the scene when Kevin Costner negotiated for peace, ending the war between fish and mankind moments before the whale army attacked was also very good.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Tuesday 10 November 2009 3.57pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDavid
The DVDs are listed as not returned. If you cant locate the DVDs, you will be charged for the replacement cost.
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 10 November 2009 5.12pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
I have checked pricing at the DVD Warehouse and the cost of replacing your lost movies with new ones is as follows:
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay $7.95
Waterworld $4.95
Journey to the Centre of the Earth $9.95
Logan’s Run $12.95
I have no idea why Logan’s Run is the most expensive of the four movies as it was definitely the worst. Have you seen it? I wouldn’t pay $12.95 for that. I would use the money to buy a good movie instead. Probably something with Steven Seagal in it. The entire premise comprised of living a utopian and carefree lifestyle with only three drawbacks – wearing seventies jumpsuits, living in what looks like a giant shopping centre and not being allowed to live past thirty. This would seem logical though as I would not want a bunch of old people hanging around complaining about their arthritis while I am trying to relax at the shopping centre in my jumpsuit trying not to think about the computer crashing.
I was recently forced to do volunteer work at an aged care hospital. Footage of these people during Tuesday night line dancing could be used as an advertisement for the Logan’s Run solution. The only good aspect of working there was that I halved their medication, pocketing and selling the remainder, explaining the computer listed that as their dose and they were welcome to check knowing their abject fear of anything produced after the eighteenth century would prevent them from doing so. I also swapped my Sanyo fourteen inch portable television for their Panasonic wide screen plasma while they were sleeping, explaining that it had always been that way and their senility was simply playing up due to the reduced dosage of drugs.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Wednesday 11 November 2009 1.21pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsHi David
I have not seen those movies so I dont know what you are talking about. I prefer romantic comedies. If you have the movies we can’t rent them so we lose money and the fees are based on what we we would have made from renting them and we also have to purchase movies through our suppliers not from DVD Warehouse.
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 11 November 2009 3.28pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
I myself am also a huge fan of romantic comedies. Perhaps we could watch one together. I have a new Panasonic wide screen plasma. My favourite romantic comedy is Fatal Instinct although it did not contain enough robots or explosions in my opinion and I was therefore unable to truly identify with the main characters on a personal and emotional level. Recently, I was tricked into watching The Notebook which was about geese. Lots of geese. It also had something to do with an old lady who conveniently lost her memory so she could not remember being a whore throughout the entire film. I don’t recall a lot of it as I was too busy being cross about watching it. In a utopian future society she would have been hunted down and killed at thirty.
In regards to the late fees, I understand the amount is based on what you lose by not being able to rent the movies out. You probably had people lined up around the block waiting to rent Logan’s Run. For eighty two dollars though, I could have purchased six copies of it from DVD Warehouse or, as I have heard he is a bit strapped for cash, had Kevin Costner visit my house in person and re-enact key scenes from Waterworld in my bathroom.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Thursday 12 November 2009 3.16pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsHi David.
Restocking fees are:
002190382 Journey to the Centre of the Earth $9.30
003103119 Logans Run $7.90
008629103 Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay $6.30
000721082 Waterworld $5.70
Total: $29.20 – I have deleted your late fees and noted on the computer that the amount owed is for the replacement movies not fees.
Kind regards,
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 12 November 2009 7.42pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
Those prices seem reasonable. I do not want Logan’s Run but will pick up the other three when I come in next.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Friday 13 November 2009 12.51pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsWhat? The $29.20 is the cost of the replacement DVDs for the store.
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Friday 13 November 2009 1.15pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
That makes more sense, I was wondering what I was going to do with two copies of each movie.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Friday 13 November 2009 2.33pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsWhat do you mean by two copies? Are you saying you found the four movies?
MeganFrom: David Thorne
Date: Friday 13 November 2009 2.57pm
To: Megan Roberts
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDsDear Megan,
Yes, they were on top of my fridge the whole time. Unfortunately I have a blind spot that prevents me from seeing this area of the kitchen as it is also where I keep my pile of unpaid bills. Last night I slept on the kitchen floor with the fridge door open due to my air conditioner being broken and the temperature outside exceeding that of the centre of the earth. As my fridge emits a high pitched ‘beep’ every thirty seconds when left open, the vibrations from this caused the DVDs to wriggle forward over the space of many hours before toppling from the edge and I awoke to find them beside me on the pillow. As you have already waived the late fees, I will drop them off tonight and we will call it even.
Regards, David.From: Megan Roberts
Date: Friday 13 November 2009 3.43pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: DVDs
Ok.
[thanks misha]
I Blog New York: Your Guide to Gotham's Best:Very long Village Voice thing that profiles 18 NYC indie bloggers.
This site has a new look! I had some rare free time last Sunday morning so I changed the colors and made up a new header image. I haven't been posting much here beyond my delicious bookmarks, but I'm hoping this new look will help motivate me to post more.
Here's roughly how it worked. I started with the Sea of Japan palette at Color Lovers:
Then I flipped through a couple design books and stock art for inspiration. Here are a few that were sources for the new look:
IBYS Logo, c. 1929, Euro Deco
Sociedad Anonima Mariano Vila letterhead, 1933, Euro Deco
Indian Matchbox, Matchbox Labels
I also stumbled on an antique compass image I liked in a Google Image search. Then I threw all of these into a blender, added Futura, and pow—new header. So thanks to those sites, books, and designers for inspiration. I'm not sure how this will get me blogging again but at least this is a non-automated post.
This site has a new look! I had some rare free time last Sunday morning so I changed the colors and made up a new header image. I haven't been posting much here beyond my delicious bookmarks, but I'm hoping this new look will help motivate me to post more.
Here's roughly how it worked. I started with the Sea of Japan palette at Color Lovers:
Then I flipped through a couple design books and stock art for inspiration. Here are a few that were sources for the new look:
IBYS Logo, c. 1929, Euro Deco
Sociedad Anonima Mariano Vila letterhead, 1933, Euro Deco
Indian Matchbox, Matchbox Labels
I also stumbled on an antique compass image I liked in a Google Image search. Then I threw all of these into a blender, added Futura, and pow—new header. So thanks to those sites, books, and designers for inspiration. I'm not sure how this will get me blogging again but at least this is a non-automated post.
What? Why the fuck not?
[via @karllong]
Cool article on using slime molds to model best connections in complex networks. Key thing is that the molds do as well as engineers, so therefore, there must be some simple principles governing the building of these networks. And we won't need engineers anymore?"Tokyo’s is not the first transport network to be modelled in this way. A study published in December by Andrew Adamatzky and Jeff Jones of the University of the West of England used oat flakes to represent Britain’s principal cities. Slime moulds modelled the motorway network of the island quite accurately, with the exception of the M6/M74 into Scotland (the creatures chose to go through Newcastle rather than past Carlisle)."
I'm not a Democrat; I don't much care about the scorekeeping of who has more seats in any given chamber of Congress. But I do think there are things that need fixing in this country, and one of the most important is acknowledging when things are going the right way. More to the point, we need to find a way to use our collective powers of amplification for something that helps us, instead of as a reward for distracting us.
Tonight will be the President's State of the Union address. I'm very interested in what he covers, not least because the address will be the start of a two-way dialogue, as I outlined on the Expert Labs site. I think that's a pretty big improvement over simply addressing our elected officials.
But the world I inhabit, at the intersection of tech and media, is far more obsessed with what Apple's going to announce about its tablet. People who write about gadgets for a living gotta pay the bills, and I love cool stuff as much as the next guy. What leaves me at a loss, though, is how many otherwise sane and sensible people give their time and energy freely to help support a company like Apple that, despite its elegant designs and generally excellent products (I use many of them), certainly doesn't need free PR from some of the most talented people on the web.
Though Apple is a reasonably progressive company, they explicitly don't give a shit about poor people. (Let's pretend I found a nicer way to say that.)
Who does need your help? I'd say the current administration does. Because the biggest difference between now and 18 months ago is not that President Obama has gotten elected; It's that those who support his agenda have gotten lazy about helping in the effort. Remember "We're the ones we've been waiting for?" Well, it seems like a lot of people got tired and gave up on themselves. What if all the energy that went into free promotion for the Apple tablet went into free promotion for what's been achieved so far, in the hopes of encouraging more achievements in the future?
The Feature List
I know, I know. the conventional wisdom is "Obama ain't done nothin'!" But that's clearly bullshit. Obviously, political opponents are going to parrot that idea, but I'm surprised that even supporters are lazy enough to believe it without fact-checking. Perhaps everybody's attention spans have been a little too shortened by chasing the next Apple rumor, because the facts are obvious. In one year, here's what I caught (you might have your own list):
- The last U.S. Marines are leaving Iraq.
- Credit card companies can no longer charge interest on fees, and can't retroactively raise your interest rate on existing balances.
- We know who visits the White House, and who they're affiliated with.
- There's a quarter billion dollars more funding for National Parks, and $50 million more for the National Endowment for the Arts.
- We responded, imperfectly but with heart and sincere effort, to the disaster in Haiti. Just as we wish we had after Katrina. Leadership matters most in emergencies.
- Our current President readily admits when he's made mistakes, respects the validity of arguments that he disagrees with, and has members of the opposing party in his cabinet.
- The Department of Homeland Security now allocates its security spending according to threats, not by spending the same amount of money on Montana as it does on New York.
- My 401k is up 30% since the current President took office.
- Our President asked both corporations and individuals to reduce their electricity consumption. He asked politely.
- Trains. There's a plan to build more rails and more trains for transporting actual humans around the country.
- The Matthew Shepard hate crime bill was passed.
Now, that's just my list. These matter to me. Maybe you have your own list. Or maybe there's only have a wishlist of features for an Apple tablet. The difference is this: Our current President is listening to what your requests are, and wants to hear them. Steve Jobs doesn't give a fuck about you. I promise. I'm typing this on an Apple keyboard hooked up to a MacBook, and I don't use Windows anymore, but I guarantee you that Steve Jobs is not going to get those last Marines out of Iraq.
And I know, I know, people will piss and moan about the stuff this administration hasn't gotten done yet. So my question is this: What did you do to help? Did you do 1/10 as much as you did to get these folks elected? Did you do as much, today, as you did to help Apple sell billions of dollars of products that you get no stake in, that don't help make life better for you and your friends and neighbors? What are you waiting for, somebody to ask nicely? I'm asking nicely: Please find a cause you care about, and beat the drum to stir up public sentiment to support it. Make it your wallpaper on your new tablet.
I'm not scolding you; I'm scolding me.
I had to ask myself these questions. Sure, I've got a bunch of tweets about Apple features that I want to request, and of course I'll watch the Stevenote as rapt as when I watch the State of the Union. But we all have a choice to make about how we invest our time, attention, and passion. And I'll bet in eight years, today's tablet is gonna look an awful lot like a first-generation iPod looks today. Some efforts age better than others.
My goal here isn't to browbeat anybody, or to lecture. I'm in the same boat as everybody else who loves technology. But my personal reckoning has just shown me that a bunch of libertarian-leaning geeks in Silicon Valley who refuse to engage with government and civic society at all are never going to make an impact on most of the things that actually make a difference in our lives. Everybody in Silicon Valley will tell you they have a gay friend, but they couldn't stop Prop 8 or get the hate crimes bill passed. Probably everybody at Apple thinks "We should do more to support the arts!" but they weren't funding the NEA. There will be no iTrain.
Right now there are a lot of hopeful, and possibly deluded, people in the old-line media businesses who hope that an Apple tablet will prop up their failing magazine, newspaper or television businesses. Those of us who are digitally savvy are probably having a chuckle at their expense, snickering at their wishful thinking. But Apple will invest a lot more in saving any given book publisher than they ever will in saving civic society, in protecting individuals' rights, or in engaging in diplomacy to neutralize the threat of violent extremists.
I'm gonna try to spend at least as much time advocating for issues I care about as I do for the purchase of new gadgets. I hope that even those who disagree with me on those issues do the same. Maybe there'll be an app for that.
I'm not a Democrat; I don't much care about the scorekeeping of who has more seats in any given chamber of Congress. But I do think there are things that need fixing in this country, and one of the most important is acknowledging when things are going the right way. More to the point, we need to find a way to use our collective powers of amplification for something that helps us, instead of as a reward for distracting us.
Tonight will be the President's State of the Union address. I'm very interested in what he covers, not least because the address will be the start of a two-way dialogue, as I outlined on the Expert Labs site. I think that's a pretty big improvement over simply addressing our elected officials.
But the world I inhabit, at the intersection of tech and media, is far more obsessed with what Apple's going to announce about its tablet. People who write about gadgets for a living gotta pay the bills, and I love cool stuff as much as the next guy. What leaves me at a loss, though, is how many otherwise sane and sensible people give their time and energy freely to help support a company like Apple that, despite its elegant designs and generally excellent products (I use many of them), certainly doesn't need free PR from some of the most talented people on the web.
Though Apple is a reasonably progressive company, they explicitly don't give a shit about poor people. (Let's pretend I found a nicer way to say that.)
Who does need your help? I'd say the current administration does. Because the biggest difference between now and 18 months ago is not that President Obama has gotten elected; It's that those who support his agenda have gotten lazy about helping in the effort. Remember "We're the ones we've been waiting for?" Well, it seems like a lot of people got tired and gave up on themselves. What if all the energy that went into free promotion for the Apple tablet went into free promotion for what's been achieved so far, in the hopes of encouraging more achievements in the future?
The Feature List
I know, I know. the conventional wisdom is "Obama ain't done nothin'!" But that's clearly bullshit. Obviously, political opponents are going to parrot that idea, but I'm surprised that even supporters are lazy enough to believe it without fact-checking. Perhaps everybody's attention spans have been a little too shortened by chasing the next Apple rumor, because the facts are obvious. In one year, here's what I caught (you might have your own list):
- The last U.S. Marines are leaving Iraq.
- Credit card companies can no longer charge interest on fees, and can't retroactively raise your interest rate on existing balances.
- We know who visits the White House, and who they're affiliated with.
- There's a quarter billion dollars more funding for National Parks, and $50 million more for the National Endowment for the Arts.
- We responded, imperfectly but with heart and sincere effort, to the disaster in Haiti. Just as we wish we had after Katrina. Leadership matters most in emergencies.
- Our current President readily admits when he's made mistakes, respects the validity of arguments that he disagrees with, and has members of the opposing party in his cabinet.
- The Department of Homeland Security now allocates its security spending according to threats, not by spending the same amount of money on Montana as it does on New York.
- My 401k is up 30% since the current President took office.
- Our President asked both corporations and individuals to reduce their electricity consumption. He asked politely.
- Trains. There's a plan to build more rails and more trains for transporting actual humans around the country.
- The Matthew Shepard hate crime bill was passed.
Now, that's just my list. These matter to me. Maybe you have your own list. Or maybe there's only have a wishlist of features for an Apple tablet. The difference is this: Our current President is listening to what your requests are, and wants to hear them. Steve Jobs doesn't give a fuck about you. I promise. I'm typing this on an Apple keyboard hooked up to a MacBook, and I don't use Windows anymore, but I guarantee you that Steve Jobs is not going to get those last Marines out of Iraq.
And I know, I know, people will piss and moan about the stuff this administration hasn't gotten done yet. So my question is this: What did you do to help? Did you do 1/10 as much as you did to get these folks elected? Did you do as much, today, as you did to help Apple sell billions of dollars of products that you get no stake in, that don't help make life better for you and your friends and neighbors? What are you waiting for, somebody to ask nicely? I'm asking nicely: Please find a cause you care about, and beat the drum to stir up public sentiment to support it. Make it your wallpaper on your new tablet.
I'm not scolding you; I'm scolding me.
I had to ask myself these questions. Sure, I've got a bunch of tweets about Apple features that I want to request, and of course I'll watch the Stevenote as rapt as when I watch the State of the Union. But we all have a choice to make about how we invest our time, attention, and passion. And I'll bet in eight years, today's tablet is gonna look an awful lot like a first-generation iPod looks today. Some efforts age better than others.
My goal here isn't to browbeat anybody, or to lecture. I'm in the same boat as everybody else who loves technology. But my personal reckoning has just shown me that a bunch of libertarian-leaning geeks in Silicon Valley who refuse to engage with government and civic society at all are never going to make an impact on most of the things that actually make a difference in our lives. Everybody in Silicon Valley will tell you they have a gay friend, but they couldn't stop Prop 8 or get the hate crimes bill passed. Probably everybody at Apple thinks "We should do more to support the arts!" but they weren't funding the NEA. There will be no iTrain.
Right now there are a lot of hopeful, and possibly deluded, people in the old-line media businesses who hope that an Apple tablet will prop up their failing magazine, newspaper or television businesses. Those of us who are digitally savvy are probably having a chuckle at their expense, snickering at their wishful thinking. But Apple will invest a lot more in saving any given book publisher than they ever will in saving civic society, in protecting individuals' rights, or in engaging in diplomacy to neutralize the threat of violent extremists.
I'm gonna try to spend at least as much time advocating for issues I care about as I do for the purchase of new gadgets. I hope that even those who disagree with me on those issues do the same. Maybe there'll be an app for that.
According to Ken Davidoff, from Newsday, the Mets never made an offer to Ben Sheets, who signed today with the A’s; nor did they make an offer to Jon Garland, who signed today with the Padres.
Davidoff says the Mets were aware of the going rates for both pitchers, ‘and deemed them to high.’
However, he believes the Mets are still in talks with free-agent RHP John Smoltz.
… i’m going to assume free-agent LHP Jarrod Washburn isn’t a possibility, based on reports linked to in a previous post… this means the Mets will be left to choose from a pretty broken-down group of pitchers, if they intend to add someone to the starting rotation… from the list, i am not sure any one player will be better than Jon Niese or Fernando Niese… and so, where does that leave us, 18 weeks since the final game of last season…
… Ted Berg and i, as well as others, have been saying all off season that the team’s goal should be to not make any stupid mistakes, so the team can be in good position for future moves, which will allow for real, significant changes this summer and the subsequent two off seasons… and so, so far so good…
… the problem, however, is they made only one major addition to the roster, in Jason Bay… but he will hopefully be replacing Carlos Delgado’s production, so it’s not technically an upgrade, it’s just replacing one bat with another…
…to be honest, i am not sure what the team’s game plan was at the start of the off season, when Jeff Wilpon told WFAN they had just two or three holes on the roster, all of which could be filled through a combination of free-agent signings and trades… which was the same day he said Ownership would give Omar Minaya the resources he needed to put a Championship team on the field… which was the same day omar said he feels it is always easier to win when playing ‘National League baseball,’ complete with strong pitching, speed and defense… and so, 18 weeks later, where are the strong pitching acquisitions, and how exactly does bay fit in with speed and defense…
… nevertheless, the Mets did not go out and give crazy contracts to John Lackey, Joel Pineiro and Bengie Molina, and they didn’t give an eight-year deal to Matt Holliday, all of whom they were wise to avoid; and the other pitchers they passed on, such as Jason Marquis and Randy Wolf, are just so-so talent, making more money than they’ll probably deserve… yes, the Mets were calm and cool and did not make a move just for the sake of making a move… and that’s great… i admire that… but, if restraint was the strategy, i still don’t know what the plan was to improve… or, was the plan all along to just add a bat, monitor the pitching markets for a bargain, spend if it was a player worth spending on, and, in either case, regardless of who was or wasn’t acquired, pray really, really hard for the health of Johan Santana, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and the returning players from last year’s roster… because, in the end, no one acquisition will be as important as having their own stars return to form… i have no idea if that strategy will pay off, but it seems we might soon find out…
By the way, to follow Davidoff on Twitter, go here.
Ben Sheets signing with Oakland did not surprise me in the least. GM Billy Beane has been making these kinds of deals for years now. What does surprise me is the money because usually on the heels of the announcement of the contract, I have nearly always been left wishing my team had been in on that player at that price. This time? Not so much.
The reported deal is for $10 million guaranteed with some as of yet unknown incentives thrown into the mix. In a straight vacuum, I think this is an overpay. On a one year deal in this winter’s economic climate, Oakland is paying Sheets like a three win pitcher. Three wins is solid pitching and there’s a decent chance, we will know more when they are leaked, that at a three win performance level, Sheets will be triggering some of those salary incentives, meaning he would have to pitch even better to justify the contract.
Neither CHONE, nor the nearly universally optimistic fans project Sheets to even be able to accrue three wins of value due to his very real injury concerns. It is important to remember that the injury that cost Ben Sheets all of 2009 was not his first, or even second or even third arm-related injury. A list of pitching-important injuries to Sheets in the last five years includes his elbow, hand, shoulder (twice) and back.
The 31-year-old last pitched a quasi-full season in 2008 and was worth about 4.5 wins. If he managed to reproduce those 200 innings thrown in 2010, I would expect something around 4 wins thanks to aging, injury-related decline and regression. Dock him another half win for the league switch into the American League and even at full health, I’m not confident Ben Sheets is better than 3.5 wins.
The signing does not come in a vacuum though. The AL West is very tight based on projections and Sheets, even at an expected 2 or 2.5 win total value represents a significant upgrade to Oakland’s win totals, which pushes them into the discussion for the division. As we have discussed plenty of times this offseason, those wins at the edge of the playoff picture are worth a lot of marginal revenue. There is also something small to say about signing Ben Sheets away from Texas and Seattle, both rumored to be interested. It leaves me in a weird balance between not liking the deal for them because of the cost, but liking the deal for them because of the increased playoff odds.
It is also strikes me as odd to see Oakland take risks with high payroll players. Injury reclamations are nothing new, but before they have always seemed to land them on the cheap, possibly luring them with the guarantee of playing time. This time around, Sheets had plenty of suitors and Oakland paid for it. Nevertheless, given Oakland’s position, still, as the fourth best team in the division on paper and the one year nature of the contract with Sheets, do not be surprised if Sheets’ name is on the trading block come summer. That would be another of Billy Beane’s specialties.
David Carr had an interesting piece in the NYT yesterday:
This Wednesday, Steven P. Jobs will step to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and unveil a shiny new machine that may or may not change the world.
In the magician’s world, that’s called “the reveal.”
And the most magical part? Even as the media and technology worlds have anticipated this announcement for months, Apple has said not word one about The Device.
That’s the most amazing thing about this run-up to the event. So much written (including several thousand words from yours truly), and Apple has not once said one word publicly about the device.
(I talked to Carr for this piece, and he quotes me as saying that Apple doesn’t “do prototypes”. To be clear, I mean they don’t unveil or reveal prototypes publicly. They of course build many prototypes internally.)
About 200 people gathered in URLs Café at Yahoo! last night to take in the first installment of the Crockford on JavaScript lecture series. Douglas took the audience through a selective history of computer science and programming languages, focusing on the evolution of those features and conventions that would later give shape to JavaScript.
While we’re working on video from last night, we wanted to share a few pictures and to let you know that we’re adjusting our ticketing limits — if you visit the lecture series page and follow the RSVP links, you’ll now see availability for some of the sessions that had previously been listed as sold out.
Note to the Reader: I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure that what follows constitutes a genre-busting moment in the annals of sportswriting. So, just prepare yourself for that, is what I’m saying.
What you’re reading when you’re reading these words is Carson Cistulli’s most recent submission to the All-Joy Team. If you’re unfamiliar with the project, then you’ll want to read the introductory posts (yes, plural!) some time before you shuffle off this mortal coil.
In the meantime, you’ll be fine knowing that this is an attempt to compile a 25-man roster of current players most capable of providing joy to the sabermetrically inclined.
Today, shortstop (categories in parentheses).
SS: Ben Zobrist, Tampa Bay (1,3,5)
Sometimes you’re enamored of a player because he rises from relative obscurity to the top of the WAR charts on the strength of power, patience, and a glove than can handle almost any position admirably. Other times, it’s because a normally courteous internet presence threatens violence against your person unless you include him (i.e. Zobrist) in the Fake Team you’re composing.In this case, it’s both.
I’m sure I don’t have to remind present company about Zobrist’s criz-nasty 2009 season. I don’t have to, but I will, anyway. Regard:
40.1 park-adjusted wRAA
Pow!
26.4 UZR
Bang!
8.6 WAR.
Schla-gong!!!
Owing to the East Coast/West Coast-style gang war currently going on in re peak years, I feel uncomfortable saying whether the 28-year-old Zobrist has already had, is about to enter, or is currently in the midst of his peak. One school of thought — a.k.a. probably the only school that would ever grant admission to someone like me — is that it doesn’t particularly matter: Zobrist has made his bed, lied in it, fallen into a deep asleep, woken up the next day, driven to Tropicana field, hit a bunch of homers, gone to the club with R. Kelly, gone to the after party with R. Kelly, gone to the hotel lobby with R. Kelly, hired a car service to bring him home, and fallen back asleep in/on/whatever that very same bed that he made earlier. In other words: he’s the realest of the deals. Ya heard!
Another point in Zobrist’s favor — and one that makes him a Category Five player — is the presence of the letter Z in his surname. It’s a well-known fact that Zs are reserved only for the coolest of the cool dudes: Bay Area yoga instructor and occasional left-handed starter Barry Zito, German filmmaking ubermensch Werner Herzog, and Wu-Tang founding fathers The RZA and The GZA.
The BZA — as he’s known to absolutely no one — is projected by CHONE to bat .268/.368/.463. ZiPS is even less optimistic: .261/.356/.443. My Intution says “Funk dat.” And much like Sex Panther cologne, 60 percent of the time, my Intuition is right every time.
Oh, and to the guy in the back who’s all, “Hey, why’d you pick Zobrist to play shortstop when he’s clearly more valuable as a second bas- blah blah blah,” here’s my reply: First, I think it’s pretty obvious we all agreed to call him “The BZA.” Get it right, please. Second, I’ve already made it abundantly clear that I will not always be “utilizing reason” or “using facts” to support these selections. If you have problem with that, take it up with the transparent eyeball:
Prison officials said they banned the game at the recommendation of a specialist who said it could lead to gang behavior and escape fantasies.
Filed under: Hardware, Multimedia, Cult of Mac, Education, Apple, Apple History
Earlier this month we took you down memory lane for a 1987 video that Apple produced about a futuristic product called the Knowledge Navigator.
It was a super smart, full featured tablet with internet connectivity, video conferencing, datebook and browser. It also contained a nifty personable digital assistant.
Ten years later, Apple was still selling the idea of an enhanced tablet. One of our readers sent us this YouTube video of a concept that Apple sent around to educators. It had a lot of the same great technology, like video conferencing and browsing, but the video shows a variety of form factors, including a desktop unit, a tablet, and a small hand held device.
It's pretty clear Apple has done a lot of thinking about what a tablet should do. Who knows if any of these concepts will get into tomorrow's announcement, but the technology is pretty much here to make the dreams into some kind of software/hardware reality.
Will an Apple tablet change the world? Stay tuned.
Thanks to Fred for the Apple nostalgia!TUAWApple and the tablet go a long way back originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Only 35 users have signed up to access Newday's web site since they put up their $5 a week paywall three months ago.
35 people -- "as in a decent-sized elementary-school class," John Koblin at the New York Observer reports.
See Also:
- Pay for Newsday On The Web? That's Jimmy Dolan's Idea
- Could New York Times' Paywall Kill Its Social Media Traffic? Not According to Executives
- New York Times Executives Pitch Their Metered Model
The National Board of Review gave Wes Anderson a Special Filmmaking Achievement award for Fantastic Mr. Fox; Anderson accepted the award in the medium of stop motion animation.
Tags: fantasticmrfox movies video Wes Anderson
Blog posted here.
This news piece by Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford has an odd tone:
People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.
This opportunity, however, comes with a sizable catch: Steven P. Jobs.
Mr. Jobs, the chief executive, made Apple the most important distributor of music by imposing its own will on the music labels, bullying them into accepting Apple’s pricing and other terms. Apple sold lots of music, but the music labels claimed that iTunes had destroyed the concept of the album and damaged their already deteriorating bottom lines.
Music industry executives may well not like what’s happened to their industry, but is it really bullying from Apple? Or isn’t it simply that Apple does not do what the music executives wish? That Apple runs its music store its own way? What the music industry really doesn’t like is the whole idea of downloads. They want to go back to selling $18 discs. Pre-iTunes, “music downloads” were pretty much all free bootlegs.
The print publishing industry should be so lucky to have iTunes do for them what it’s done for music.
Roger Hodge, whose rise from the state of Texas to Harper’s intern to, in 2006, the magazine’s editor in chief was even heralded in a New York Times profile, is departing. Hodge generally held steady, and was present for a significant and extremely forward-thinking web overhaul, despite some early troubles in his tenure. Ellen Rosenbush—the managing editor since 1989, five years before Hodge was an intern—has been named the acting editor.
Let us take a moment to reflect on how long Apple Tablet rumors have been going around. Spymac posted videos of a tablet called the ‘iWalk’, way back in 2001, before the iPod was even announced. In fact, I think its fair to say that the crazy iWalk-type hype before the iPod was released had a lot to do with Slashdot’s famous “no wireless. less space than a nomad. lame.” post. People always attribute it to the Linux crowd’s failure to understand human factors (even, generally, when dealing with fellow humans), but I think it had as much to do with the millennial lather the blogs had worked each other up to ahead of the iPod’s release. Nothing could have been exciting enough to not be a letdown for CmdrTaco.
To my recollection, Apple has been dealing with both tablet rumors and the Internet echo chamber since before Taylor Swift was born. Deal with it, Vampire Weekend. You’re not that special, Harold Ford. Remember Taligent? Pink? General Magic? I guess, to be fair, its not just rumors. Apple has actually released a tablet device at least once, the Newton line of Messagepads, and possibly more times depending on how you count the various spinoffs’ products. Oddly though, in light of the current hype, these products failed to set the world aflame. All that’s left of General Magic is OnStar, that service that remotely locks people in their burning cars. (General Motors…General Magic? COINCIDENCE? Yes. That is exactly what it is.)
Part of the fervor has to be attributed to the incredible confidence people have in Steve “this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.” Jobs. I came across this Feb ‘96 Wired interview with Jobs the other day.
Its fascinating because half of it accurately predicts not only the future, but specifically, the parts of it Jobs and Apple are going to be involved in, but the other half, well, Jobs’ thesis is that WebObjects is going to completely redefine software development. WebObjects, née Enterprise Objects Framework, is perhaps the sole large piece of software inherited from NeXT that is not in some way fundamental to Apple’s current success.And yet, I’m reminded of something Gruber wrote back in ‘08
[Jobs is] consumed by his work, and I think it’s only in the last two or three years that Apple has gotten to the point where Jobs feels he has a decent set of crayons at his disposal. In Jobs’s mind, the iPhone is only the beginning of what a truly flourishing Apple can produce.But still: Taylor Swift has never lived in a world where Apple Tablet rumors did not exist (or a world where the Berlin Wall did exist, but we’re keeping our focus on the important things for now). If you know someone named Finn, say a nephew or a student in one of your classes, chances are overwhelming that he’s in the same boat. Let’s just hope tomorrow’s press event isn’t a letdown for Taylor, or for the Finns.
This country, and probably the world, is clearly divided into two group: fans of the game of baseball and those who think that baseball is the most boring thing on the planet. For non-fans of the game, watching it is like torture. Even for most fans, especially those like me who never played the game, watching every single pitch can sometimes be dull. I can't differentiate all that well between pitch types and I know nothing more about pitching or hitting than one can learn from watching a lot of baseball (which I think isn't all that much.) But why, then, do I love the game so much? Like most fans, there was a point in baseball history that turned me on to the game. It made me fascinated by the complex beauty of the game and ever since, I have loved every moment of Major League Baseball. via www.baseball-reference.com
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Shit, I'd go to NZ if I got to do it this way.When the so-called "friendly skies" are mentioned, a few airlines in particular come to mind: Virgin America, Singapore Airlines and Qantas, for starters. Starting today, you can safely include Air New Zealand in that discussion. In a bid to turn long-haul international travel on its head, the outfit has today revealed a freshly outfitted Boeing 777 with a coach cabin that easily puts every coach cabin found in the US to shame. Designed by Recaro, the world-class coach area includes 11 rows of Skycouches that can actually fold flat in order to create (admittedly short) beds for two. The best part? The "third seat" in the row will only cost a couple 50 percent of what it normally would, making it somewhat more affordable to buy a bed without springing for first class. You'll also find power sockets, USB ports and iPod connectors in every single coach seat, leaving the plane a Gogo-module away from being absolutely perfect. Pop those source links below for a hands-on at the Auckland unveiling by our good pals at Gadling.Air New Zealand 'revolutionizes' coach cabins: power, USB, iPod support and Skycouches originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 11:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The device will be called the slate, the new Finder will be called Canvas. via www.sippey.com I haven't seen this elsewhere, but it's fairly obvious. The clues are not tea leaves, they are outlined by the rules of the English language. It used to be the "Finder" was the best navigator for the computer user because that's how we interacted with our machines. We "found" things (Let's hope Sippey makes a "Lost" joke, and I'll insert it here). Apple wants to declare the Maclet release a watershed event, so they're going to do it by restarting the Finder.
Examiner column for January 27.
To that question, many college and graduate students answer “yes.” There are some who are put off by the scandal of Monica Lewinsky, and whose parents figure being an intern would infect their child with some D.C. “virus” that might be habit-forming.
However internships come in all shapes and sizes, and the vast majority do not involve questionable practices by employers or hideously long hours. They exist in drug rehab clinics in Virginia, and in magazines looking to upgrade their websites. They are in every television station, and every newspaper. Rug companies and alumnae newsletters hire interns, as do museums, Wolf Trap, and all manner of charitable organizations. Wherever there are jobs, there are interns who do some of those jobs for free, with a smile.
The Washington Post “Jobs” section on January 24 had a useful article by Vickie Elmer, listing website resources and tips for prospective interns. Every college and university in the area has department-sponsored internships that earn credit towards a student’s degree, as well. I am the internship sponsor for George Mason University’s English department and, in the two years I’ve held that position, I have never seen an internship that hasn’t benefited both employer and intern.
Current economic instability makes internships even more attractive. For employers, it’s like a trial run with a new employee, with no financial sacrifice or feeling of obligation. For students, internships supply an opportunity to prove how ready they are for the responsibilities of the workplace. The valued qualities of reliability, punctuality, and conscientiousness—hard to judge in an interview--will either surface during the course of the internship, or they won’t; that’s precisely what every employer wants to know, and what all students want to prove they possess.
Resources mentioned by The Post include the website DCInternNet.com, which posts a list of available internships, an online list of 800 internships from Vault.com (for a fee of $14.95), and the guide by Deirdre Martinez titled, “Washington Internships: How To Get Them And Use Them To Launch Your Public Policy Career.”
George Mason University’s Career Services has an online list of available internships, as do many departments at Mason and other local college campuses. The English Department’s website is: http://pwr.gmu.edu/internships/students.html.
English writing and editing internships at GMU are not terribly popular, mostly because students hesitate to call and schedule interviews with prospective employers. That’s less surprising when you factor in that interns work for little or no pay, and many students are paying for their tuition and books out of part-time job earnings.
The investment of time, however, is well worth it for any student who can afford to devote 10-16 hours a week for a few months of on-the-job training. It’s a dry run of the “real world,” without many of the scary consequences attendant with inexperience.
The interns who’ve received credit for their work in my department have all undergone steep learning curves that will help them secure and keep jobs in the future. They’ve learned about office politics, and some of the unwritten rules of the workplace. A few have secured permanent, paying jobs. For any student who can afford the time, it’s a win-win endeavor.
I don't know if these two photos depict the rumored Apple tablet or not, but I *do know* I want 5000 words from Errol Morris that attempt to answer these two seemingly related questions in an attempt to determine their authenticity:
1. Which photo was taken first?
Tags: Apple Apple tablet Errol Morris
2. Why was the tablet moved between photos?
I don't know if these two photos depict the rumored Apple tablet or not, but I *do know* I want 5000 words from Errol Morris that attempt to answer these two seemingly related questions in an attempt to determine their authenticity:
1. Which photo was taken first?
Tags: Apple Apple tablet Errol Morris
2. Why was the tablet moved between photos?
Here’s one thing you have to say the Obama administration has been remarkably efficient at: managing to piss everyone off. The president’s proposed spending freeze is certainly no different: Republicans say it doesn’t go far enough, House Democrats say they won’t support it, Paul Krugman calls it “a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008.” More importantly, Spencer Ackerman wonders why defense funding will remain untouched in spite of the fact that there’s plenty of unnecessary spending that could be cut. Oooh, I can answer that one: The American people are both credulous and inconsistent, and it has now become perfectly clear that rational solutions to our raft of problems can only be employed if they show results within seconds of being put into place. Welcome back to the age of the V-chip!
This is such a clever product! Message-in-a-Cookie Cutter Set from William Sonoma (via Just Our Story) can be customized with your own words by simply arranging the included letter or word stamps to spell out your desired text. The creative possibilies are endless...and delicious! xo Ez
Pardon me as I make one of my rare non-stat posts.
This country, and probably the world, is clearly divided into two group: fans of the game of baseball and those who think that baseball is the most boring thing on the planet. For non-fans of the game, watching it is like torture. Even for most fans, especially those like me who never played the game, watching every single pitch can sometimes be dull. I can't differentiate all that well between pitch types and I know nothing more about pitching or hitting than one can learn from watching a lot of baseball (which I think isn't all that much.)
But why, then, do I love the game so much? Like most fans, there was a point in baseball history that turned me on to the game. It made me fascinated by the complex beauty of the game and ever since, I have loved every moment of Major League Baseball.
For me, the point in time at which my love for the game ignited was Kirk Gibson's home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. It was an incredible moment. I wrote about it previously here and here. The things that made that moment special for me were, in no particular order: 1) the underdog Dodgers beating the seemingly unbeatable Eckersley, 2) Gibson hitting a homer on such an ugly looking swing and in such obvious pain, 3) Jack Buck's simple and organic call of not believing what he just saw, and 4) Gibson's very cool and spur-of-the-moment fist-pump as he rounded the bases.
As time has gone on and I've watched baseball with many other folks, I've seen the love take hold of other new fans. One time was during the 1993 National League Championship Series. In Game 1, the Phillies beat the heavily-favored Braves (as they would eventually do in the series as a whole.) When Kim Batiste got a hit in the bottom of the 10th inning, the TV feed got a wonderful shot of John Kruk motoring around 3rd base when, even in the days before high definition, he could clearly be seen chewing like mad (not sure if it was gum or tobacco.) The friends I was with, who were all new to baseball, were giddy at the thought of somebody chewing while running home on such an important play. With much screaming as Kruk scored, these folks were absolutely hooked on the game.
Another case of new love for baseball occurred in 1997. I was sitting in the living room with a friend's family as we watched this game between the Pirates and the Astros. After the top of the 9th inning, the Pirates' Francisco Cordova had not yielded a hit or a run, but the Pirates hadn't scored either and the game continued. I explained to the family that no-hitters were rare but pitching 9 no-hit innings without the game ending was even rarer. I explained that if the Pirates could score in the bottom of the 9th, we would see an exceptionally rare feat--a no-hitter that ended without the winning team's pitcher on the mound. However, a young Billy Wagner blew away the Pirates 1-2-3 and the game went to extra innings. Ricardo Rincon retired the Astros in the top of the 10th without yielding a hit, and the Pirates got another shot at the rare event in the bottom of the inning.
After a couple of runners reached on walks, Mark Smith pinch hit for Rincon. I believe the announcer was Gary Thorne and that I watched this game on Saturday Night Baseball on ESPN. He mentioned how Smith was batting to try to give the Pirates the shutout, the no-hitter, and the win. Just as those words came out of his mouth, the pitch was delivered, and Smith absolutely crushed it for a very deep and very obvious homer and Thorne continued his sentence by adding, "...and he got them all!!!!"
Shivers went down my spine and those of everyone else in the room. It was an incredibly cool ending to a game and one of the most fun baseball moments I've ever witnessed. For people who had never witnessed baseball for, these people became real fans. I can even say that one of the people in the room that night went on to marry a major-league player who is still playing today. How about that?
Anyway, tell me your story of when you became a baseball fan.
A mountain in central China is renamed Avatar Hallelujah Mountain as officials claim it inspired scenery in the sci-fi blockbuster.
I commented on a YouTube video: We also have the last U.S. Marines leaving Iraq, which is tangible progress.
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Wow that's awesome.
via core77.comJinsun Park’s Color Picker concept is just one of those things that hits that sweet spot between practicality and whimsy – a wonderful place to be with your product should you want to capture people’s imagination and have them spend some money on it.
Who wouldn’t want a pen that uses the world around you as a palette?
Update: Thanks to Andrew for pointing out a similar project from MIT from 2005.
At GeekWeek, Mike Le offers up his 20 greatest extended takes in movie history. Don't say I didn't warn you, but you'll be on that page for a while.
The one on that list that slays me every time I see it is from Children of Men. (Le has it at #4 on his list.) Don't watch if you ever plan on seeing the film; it's spoilerful, and the experience of seeing it in the middle of the movie is mind-blowing.)
Alfonso Cuarón reportedly used digital effects to stitch that scene together. Via Wikipedia comes this piece on the film at Animation World Network. I'll quote at length, just to turn this into a continuous shot blog post:
The shot was filmed in six sections and at four different locations over one week and required five seamless digital transitions. Moreover, the camera records the action with a continuous movement that would actually be impossible to create in reality. ...
The plates were shot from a "doggy cam" shooting through the cut-off roof. The director, the cinematographer and the camera operator were actually seated on top of the car, thanks to a special rig, while the vfx crew and other technicians were hiding out of camera range around the traveling car. ...
Given the length of the scene, the team opted to use as much of the original plates as possible, re-timing, warping and painting to reposition actors and parts of the vehicle where they didn't quite line up from section to section. Photographic textures of the entire interior of the car were taken to create a 3D model that could be used to align the 3D tracking data for each section of the shot. The roof was replaced throughout the entire shot, while the dashboard, windscreen and parts of the front doors had to be created in CG in several instances to allow for a smoother transition between plates. ...
The live-action ambush was greatly enhanced by CG Molotov cocktail, a shattering digital windshield, a bullet hit and blood spurt and even a CG biker and motorcycle to augment a stunt performed during plate photography.
Frankly, for me all of this digital post production makes the shot more impressive. Cuarón and his team had to know what's possible with the technology, and plan, shoot and stitch together accordingly. Hitchcock (whose Rope comes in at #19 on Le's list) and Welles (Touch of Evil at #2) would have loved to have the tools that Cuarón has at his disposal today...
Related point. I'm not a big music video watcher, but three of the ones that have stuck with me over the past couple years are from Feist: 1234, My Moon My Man and I Feel It All are all one take vids.
via thedesigninspiration.com Do you drink coffee? I bet you will like it more hereafter because we will feel the incomparable charm of coffee art together. Coffee foam art is, in short, making fancy coffee in various styles by using espresso, milk and chocolate topping. It is not only a kind of enjoyment in taste but also in vision. via thedesigninspiration.com
Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation – Yet another Lisp book. Apparently I can't get enough of these…
So the Obama Administration is preparing to announce a freeze on Federal discretionary spending through 2013.
And they are proposing it in the middle of a the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
Apparently, it's a political decision made in response to a single election. Great. A single U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts is now dictating fiscal policy for the next three years.
It might at least make some sense if it were a smart political decision. But there's nothing to suggest that it's anything but unalloyed idiocy.
In 1937, FDR followed the same course, pulling back his stimulus programs that had been boosting the economy. The results were catastrophic. The economy tanked. And so did the fortunes of the Democratic Party. Predictably, Republicans won 79 seats in the 1938 midterms.
Fortunately, FDR recognized his mistake and reversed course, increasing spending and boosting the economy -- even before the start of World War II.
Flash forward seventy years, and President Obama is making the same mistake, probably with the same consequences.
Except this time he's got the benefit of history. But he's refused to learn history's lesson.
It seems impossible to believe, but there it is. One of the worst decisions -- if not the worst decision -- that the administration could make. And they've made it.
Such a waste.
UPDATE An administration source says that he believes that discretionary non-security is not frozen at 2010 ex-stimulus levels for 2011, but is instead bumped up from 2010 to 2011--that the freeze part applies to fiscal 2012, 2013, and 2014.
For some time I have been worried about fifty little Herbert Hoovers at the state level. Right now it looks like I have to worry about one big one:
Jackie Calmes: Obama to Propose Freeze on Some Spending to Trim Deficit: President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.
The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.
The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, from air traffic control and farm subsidies to education, nutrition and national parks. ut it would exempt the budgets for the Pentagon.... The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional debt the government is expected to accumulate over that time...
There are two ways to look at this. The first is that this is simply another game of Dingbat Kabuki. Non-security discretionary spending is some $500 billion a year. It ought to be growing at 5% per year in nominal terms (more because we are in a deep recession and should be pulling discretionary spending forward from the future as fast as we can)--that's only $25 billion a year in a $3 trillion budget and a $15 trillion economy.
But in a country as big as this one even this is large stakes. What we are talking about is $25 billion of fiscal drag in 2011, $50 billion in 2012, and $75 billion in 2013. By 2013 things will hopefully be better enough that the Federal Reserve will be raising interest rates and will be able to offset the damage to employment and output. But in 2011 GDP will be lower by $35 billion--employment lower by 350,000 or so--and in 2012 GDP will be lower by $70 billion--employment lower by 700,000 or so--than it would have been had non-defense discretionary grown at its normal rate. (And if you think, as I do, that the federal government really ought to be filling state budget deficit gaps over the next two years to the tune of $200 billion per year...)
And what do we get for these larger output gaps and higher unemployment rates in 2011 and 2012? Obama "signal[s] his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit," Jackie Calmes reports.
As one deficit-hawk journalist of my acquaintance says this evening, this is a perfect example of fundamental unseriousness: rather than make proposals that will actually tackle the long-term deficit--either through future tax increases triggered by excessive deficits or through future entitlement spending caps triggered by excessive deficits--come up with a proposal that does short-term harm to the economy without tackling the deficit in any serious and significant way.
As Jackie Calmes writes, this isn't a real plan to control the deficit but a "symbolic" one:
[O]ne administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have larger symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers’ earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said. “By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget,” the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.
As another deficit-hawk points out: it would be one thing to offer a short-term discretionary spending freeze (or long-run entitlement caps) in return for fifteen Republican senators signing on to revenue enhancement triggers. It's quite another to negotiate against yourself and in addition attack employment in the short term. The fact that the unemployment rate is projected to remain stable over the next year means that there is a 30% chance it will go down, a 40% chance it will stay about the same, and a 30% chance that it will go up--and whatever it turns out to do, the administration's budget has just given it an extra bump upwards.
Jonathan Zasloff:
Obama’s Self-Inflicted Lobotomy Proceeds Apace « The Reality-Based Community: I’m trying to think of what could possibly be a worse plan. Let’s see: we might be entering a double-dip recession and unemployment is in double-digits, and you are going to freeze spending? What in God’s name are they thinking? Perhaps the worst thing about this is how it cedes the ideological ground to the Republicans. At some point someone must make an argument for government. I think it was former Senator Paul Simon who said: “give the voters a choice between a Republican and a Republican and they will choose a Republican every time.”
What next? The rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon as Treasury Secretary? Or do we already have that?
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Google just announced an interesting update to Google Reader. Google's online feed reader now allows you to track changes on any page - even those that don't feature an RSS feed. Google will create its own custom feeds for these sites and update the feed whenever it notices a change. Google Reader will display a short snippet of the page changes in the RSS feed.
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Until today, Google Reader would simply respond with an error message if you tried to subscribe to a site that didn't offer an RSS feed. Now, Google will simply create a new feed for the site and track updates. It's not clear how often Google plans to ping these sites, however.
Thanks to this, you can easily track the latest discounts on Macys.com or updates to Zillow.com's homepage.
As far as we were able to see, Google Reader creates very clean RSS feeds for these items. While Google doesn't make it obvious, you can find the newly created feed by clicking "show details" in Google Reader. Thanks to this, you can subscribe to this new feed in any feed reader and not just in Google Reader.
There are, of course, a number of other sites that also allow you to track when something changes on a site. ChangeDetection.com, for example, is a popular online service that will alert you whenever a page changes. Unlike Google Reader's new feature, ChangeDetection.com also gives you a very detailed overview of of what exactly changed and what the page looked like before. The service also offers an RSS feed of these changes.
Discuss
How do I support and reward the excellent curation of the local bookstore if I want the ebook version of something I find? – Kellan
I am not a unsophisticated consumer of science fiction. And finding new material to feed the book addiction is something I spend a not inconsiderable number of cycles on. Yet, there I was standing in Borderlands last week, and books to buy were jumping off the shelves. 2-3 of “my authors” had new books out that I hadn’t heard about. (tho 2 of them are on low rotation right now, as they’ve disappointed me of late) A book multiple friends had mentioned but I’d failed to track was featured. And I found several other new promising options, none of which I had heard of, and several of which aren’t normally available in print in this country.
Low Paper Diet
And I was stuck. You see, I’m on a pretty strict dead tree diet right now. I simply don’t have to the space to store books. And while I’m at it I’d rather not incur the carbon debt of chopping down trees, mass printing on paper, warehousing and transporting a product which is statistically likely to be pulped before ever being purchased. Clearly I’m getting a huge amount of value out of Borderlands, but I didn’t really have a way to include them in the exchange. I wasn’t even sure I was really comfortable wandering next door to their newly opened cafe and settling in with my Kindle as I was inclined to do.
Micro-slicing the pie vs trickle down?
Charlie Stross wrote a really great post recently, The monetization paradox analyzing the value chain of content production right now, summed up as,
“Google could in principle afford to pay every novelist currently active in the English language out of the petty cash.” – Charles Stross
Amazon is doing something similar. Capturing greater value then they’re providing. (and I love Amazon) I visit Amazon.com, I visit the Amazon.com Kindle Store. And I walk away empty handed. Amazon captures the value when I buy a book for my Kindle, but aren’t providing sufficient tools for me to do this. Without Borderlands, Amazon would have gotten no $$ from me last week, as it is, they did all right.
So how do I cut my local bookstore/curator in? I asked on Twitter and the consensus emerged around “buy the book, steal the ebook”, or “tip the bookstore.” (thanks to waferbaby, dajobe, BOBTHEBUTCHER, benprincess, timoni, carlcoryell, bhyde, and rabble for feedback!)
One of the ways I know I’m getting old is most of the time stealing media isn’t worth it. This also is a product of consuming outside of the most mainstream troughs, and genuinely liking/respecting most of the players in my media supply chain. I’ve got sitting on my drive detailed specs for building a relatively high throughput personal book scanner, and in the moments when I’m honest with myself I’ll probably never build it.
Open Questions?
Which brings me around to, how do I tip bookstores? And if there a viable model of funding that allows me to express my generalized appreciation of the existence of these important curators while getting some specific value back, a Kickstarter inspired model if you will? Would anyone besides me use it I wonder? How does this interact with Charlie’s ideas of a subscription model for writers? Given a semi-hyphothetical open e-reader with a radio could we partially fund bookstores with a real world version of Amazon affiliate links?
Unfortunately I still don’t have the answers, but I wanted to write down the problem, am I’m going to keep looking into it. Meanwhile if you know of anyone experimenting with this, I’d love to hear about it.
(so concludes the latest in this week’s series of blog posts written by the simple expedient of scaling up a tweet by a 30x inflation factor)
[Photographs: Fashionably Independent]
- Lady Gaga Cookies: What to do with your gingerbread men cutters the rest of the year. [Fashionably Independent]
- Turnip Confusion: Is that a turnip or a neep or a swede? [Guardian]
- Haiti: Pizza-and-ribs joint in Port-au-Prince becomes a soup kitchen. [CSM]
- Umami: It tastes different from palate to palate. [SFC]
- Little Saigon: Finding authentic Northern Vietnamese food in SoCal. [OCR]
- Mate Tea: The South American drinking ritual that tastes like barnyard. [HP]
- "Organic": It doesn't necessarily mean pesticide-free or locally grown. [BBC]
- IKEA Tapas: Dishes like empanada de albondigas, a cross between the iconic Swedish meatballs and an Australian meat pie. [Brisbane Times via TFS]
- Slice Poll: Would you eat this pizza?
- AHT Poll: Have you sent back a burger?
- SENY: Who makes the best Buffalo wings in NYC?
The most important thing the Jets did, though, was how clearly they identified a new philosophy, i.e., they repeatedly said they wanted to be a tough, aggressive, hard-nosed team, who would run the ball and be a top-rated defense, and then they found a coach who was consistent and believed in that mindset, and then acquired and drafted players to carry it out. via www.metsblog.com
A message to OpenStreetMap: "I am currently in Port Au Prince with the Fairfax County Urban Search & Rescue Team (USA-1) out of Fairfax, VA, USA. I wish there was a way that I can express to you properly how important your OSM files were to us. Most of our team members own their own Garmin Rino and 60CSx units on top of the units we already have in the cache. Having these detailed maps on our GPS units is a big deal. Shortly after discovering your work I quickly spread the word and transferred the street level maps onto as many Garmin units as we could before sending the American rescue teams on the streets. The team members are thrilled to have this resource you have created. I wish you could see their faces light up when I take their GPS unit and tell them that I'm going to give them street level detail maps. They have been working VERY hard and anything that can help them in every aspect of their mission here is greatly appreciated. I am spreading the word about this work to all rescue and humanitarian teams on the ground here in Haiti. Please be assured that we are using your data - I just wish we knew about this earlier. THANK YOU!"
After putting it off forever, I’m finally joining linkedin. When it imported my address book, it found the former president of my college’s psychology club (I volunteered to be vice president when they found out there could no longer be co-presidents). Man she drove everyone insane.
Anyway, apparently her description on linkedin is that she is a stylus at a local hair salon. I can’t believe it.
So… yeah… add me on linkedin!
Artist Alicia Traveria made these awesome Futurama brain slug-themed cupcakes for a birthday celebration. Cherry buttercream brains...delicious. [via Craftzine]
Related
Photo of the Day: Ghost Cupcakes
Photo of the Day: Pac-Man Wedding Cake
Photo of the Day: Thanksgiving on a Cupcake
Photo of the Day: Domokun Cupcakes
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Until today, Google Reader would simply respond with an error message if you tried to subscribe to a site that didn't offer an RSS feed. Now, Google will simply create a new feed for the site and track updates. It's not clear how often Google plans to ping these sites, however.
Thanks to this, you can easily track the latest discounts on Macys.com or updates to Zillow.com's homepage.
As far as we were able to see, Google Reader creates very clean RSS feeds for these items. While Google doesn't make it obvious, you can find the newly created feed by clicking "show details" in Google Reader. Thanks to this, you can subscribe to this new feed in any feed reader and not just in Google Reader.
There are, of course, a number of other sites that also allow you to track when something changes on a site. ChangeDetection.com, for example, is a popular online service that will alert you whenever a page changes. Unlike Google Reader's new feature, ChangeDetection.com also gives you a very detailed overview of of what exactly changed and what the page looked like before. The service also offers an RSS feed of these changes.
Discuss
Filmmaker Ira Sachs and journalist and filmmaker Adam Baran's film series Queer/Art/Film features gay and lesbian artists presenting films that, as Sachs notes, "remind us there's no limit of what's possible, both in terms of content, and in terms of form." The series, which runs the last Monday of every month through April, beings tonight at the IFC Center with Justin Bond screening Ken Russell's The Devils. Other presenters include Antony Hegarty, who's showing The Lost Films of Charles Ludlam next month, Rodney Evans and Barbara Hammer. Here, Sachs and Baran talk about presenters resembling the films they choose, good art and bad art, and why Lady Gaga owes a lot to Bette Midler.
Why did you pick these artists to present?IS: We pick artists we like, who are bold, who seem in some way, literally or figuratively, to have been influenced by cinema; people who are queer in some way that seems essential, but without any given criteria for what that means.
AB: And they have to be willing to show up! We are definitely interested in people who don't shy away from their sexuality -- or the cultures that have sprung up around that sexuality -- in their work. We hope the series creates a whole new set of heroes for queer artists like ourselves to learn from, and take strength from. We want to expand the canon, and the pantheon of queer artists and heroes.
Were you surprised by any of the movies chosen?
IS: What I've noticed is how close the films resemble the artists who choose them. It reminds me of how dog owners so often seem to look exactly like their dogs. The relationship between the work, and the artists has felt organic and essential, as if John Cameron Mitchell is a direct descendant to Joe Orton, or Sarah Schulman is a kissing cousin to Chantal Akerman.What film would each of you pick to show?
AB: I was surprised during our first cycle that more than one artist wanted to choose a film by Derek Jarman. It tipped me off to the fact that there must be some kind of Jarman revival going on -- quite possibly because his films are now largely available on DVD and anyone can just Netflix them. We actually had Matt Wolf, who directed the great Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination present the film, Blue. Kenny Mellman, who had toyed with showing War Requiem, ended up showing The Bea Arthur CBS Special from the late '70s, and that was a surprise that actually worked out really well.
IS: I recently made a short film, Last Address, about New York artists who died of AIDS, including Charles Ludlam, David Wojnarowicz, Ethyl Eichelberger, Jack Smith, Ron Vawter and Cookie Mueller. I'd like to do an evening of their films, interviews, performances....
AB: Ira turned me on to a wonderful, neglected film by the French director Patrice Chereau, L'Homme Blesse, that I adore and hope people rediscover in America. I've also told Ira on more than one occasion I would love to show Bette Midler's '80s concert film Art or Bust, which fills me with glee and tears every time I watch it. The show was Midler's homage to "art" -- emphasis on the quotations. She comes out costumed as a Degas ballerina, and starts pulling fabric over her head and doing Martha Graham moves in the middle of a ballad. It's wild and very rock 'n' roll, and definitely needs to be re-discovered. Bette's humor and personality is the thing I find so lacking in the new gay icon Lady Gaga, who's sort of an act without a personality behind it -- though she's working on it. Queens need to come and get schooled by Bette!
How did you two meet?
IS: We met through my boyfriend Boris Torres, a painter who Adam interviewed for Butt magazine, and then we found out that we both are culture vultures, in a very similar way. We like the same kind of stuff, but we not necessarily the same exact things. Adam likes bad art more than I do.
AB: I like good art AND bad art, but my definition of bad art is quite different from Ira's. He doesn't like any film that doesn't totally work or is bad on purpose, but I am quite a fan of camp and can often find something quite fascinating to latch onto in any good or bad movie - a performance from some great queer character actor like Marjorie Main or Edward Everett Horton, or the deliciously awful acting you find in some of the Grand Dame Guignol films of the 60's and 70's. My definition of bad art would be Avatar, not Happy Birthday, Gemini. And if you get that reference, date me.
The Queer/Art/Film series runs through April 26 at the IFC Center, 323 Ave. of the Americas. 8 p.m, (212) 924-7771. 8 p.m. $12.50.
So, what are the ghosts? Your wife and kids complaining about the shows you watch? Seriously though, the “Puckman” could be the most awesome bookshelf ever constructed. It’s available in glossy white and black, but you would be a fool not to get yellow.
Product Page (Pricing on Request via Hometone)
BP is closing in on it’s seventh year of BP Premium. I can remember being as nervous as prom night — and if you know the story about my prom night, well … Back in 2003, I was new to Prospectus, coming on board to a place that, to me, was as unreachable as Yankee Stadium had been when I was playing.
As other outlets, such as the New York Times, have vacillated on similar content models, and as the whole world waits on the Apple tablet changing everything, BP’s still chugging along, costing the same price it did back then and working to earn your money and trust by working hard to give you exactly what you want. No, this isn’t a leadup to tell you that BP’s raising the price. We didn’t do it when the economy was booming and we won’t do it when the economy is doing … well, whatever it is that it’s doing now.
We’ve made some changes along the way. We’ve added writers … and lost writers. We’ve added comments. We’re working hard to revamp the PECOTA cards to make them more useable, something you’ll see very soon. Add in a redesign that will allow us to get you information faster and even more behind the scenes changes that would just bore you.
But we’re curious - what’s the ONE feature you would like to see added at BP and (here’s the kicker) how much would you pay to see it added?
Uh oh. More Apple tablet-related news? It would appear so, as we have just been briefed on what could be a solid Apple / Verizon connection.
One of our connects just told us that Verizon Wireless has a “kick off” event in the beginning of every quarter that covers and goes over new things that are in the pipeline like devices, products, services, etc. for store managers. Except, this kick off is coincidentally on this coming Wednesday, and additionally, we’ve been informed there will be a “live webcast” that everyone attending will be viewing around 1PM ET. Use your imaginations and let them run wild in the comments — we’ll see if this turns out to be related to any sort of Apple product/s pretty soon!
Thanks, Eugene!
I know you’ve been wondering: Why won’t the Democratic majority force Republicans who threaten to filibuster to actually do some filibustering? Because they’d enjoy it too much.
Good news for the clumsy, if you stagger into a rare Picasso painting and rip a 6" hole in it -- you will not be charged for the painting. On Friday a woman fell into just such a painting while taking a class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.
The Met's conservation studio says they can fix it, and that it will be back on display for a Picasso retrospective they are having.
The museum was kind enough not to identify the woman, who is apparently unhurt.
This scenario plays through my mind often when visiting museums, it's good to know that they don't have you shot right there in the gallery as an example to others.
Woman Collides With a Picasso [NYT via BuzzFeed]
Those wildly colorful Hubble telescope photos...how do they get them to look like that?
The colors in Hubble images, which are assigned for various reasons, aren't always what we'd see if we were able to visit the imaged objects in a spacecraft. We often use color as a tool, whether it is to enhance an object's detail or to visualize what ordinarily could never be seen by the human eye.
See also this informative Reddit thread.
Tags: Hubble telescope photography space
My son, who’s just started “Computer Labs” at school, came home all eager to tell us about this “Google” thing on the Internet. So far, we haven’t particularly encouraged computer use at home. We got into an interesting family talk which was reported back to the teacher, then Lauren and I found ourselves invited to come in and teach the Internet to the class. So we set up scratch blogging space; this ended up being instructive both for them and us.
I went and spent $8 for a decent class-related domain name, and Lauren whipped up a WordPress blog, which there was room for in her current hosting package (BTW, she’s been very happy with Canadian Web Hosting). My son’s in a learn-Mandarin program in a school where a high proportion of the students are of Chinese ancestry, so we used the nice Simple China theme.
Then I made a bunch of Author accounts for the blog, with names like “Bouncy”, “Chilly”, “Groovy”, “Happy”, “Jumpy”, “Peachy”... English has an inexhaustible supply of anodyne adjectives ending in “y”. I printed out a little slip for each student with their account and password.
I asked the class “Who’s allowed to write things on the Internet?” Blank faces; someone offered “The government?” I said “Anybody!” and had them visit the empty class blog-site. A chorus of “Wow, cool!” We showed them how to log in and use WordPress’ admirable “QuickPress” feature, and for their first outing I had them post what they’d had for breakfast.
Which went mostly OK, with only one post claiming “boiled human hearts”. Then I asked them “Did you all tell the truth?” and went with the homily about not necessarily believing what you read on the Net. I think it hit home.
Then I asked them why they thought we’d given them the funny names and they got it right away; I suppose they’d already had the dangerous-Internet briefing. Can’t hurt to reinforce it.
Next, we were going to teach the notion of a link, but the class, mad with the joy of posting, was slipping away from us; there over a hundred posts by the end of the hour. It started to get a little dicey, with one fifth-grader having “hated the frikking math test” and another making a jokey allegation about their teacher, but the joke might have gone sideways on the Net.
Anyhow, it was mostly OK and the kids had a blast and maybe learned some things. After I got back to my office, I deleted the questionable bits and disabled further posting while wondering whether it’d actually been smart to unleash 26 ten-year-olds on the big wild Internet. But on balance, my heart was warmed by all the raw giggly eagerness.
The last post before I shut things down.
ni hao i hav a gran gran she was great then she died
Awwwwwwwww.
1. Lots of great performers are set to play the first Lilith Fair tour since 1999 including: The Gossip, La Roux, Janelle Monae, Cat Power and Metric. The updated list of artists and cities (including NYC) is here, but no dates yet.
2. The second season of Rupaul's Drag Race premieres one week from tonight, February 1, 9 p.m., on LOGO.
3. Here's a total hipster overdose including: hipster grannies, hipster gangland tattoography, superhero hipsters, hipster activity books and 76 more.
4. Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of canned beer.
5. T.C. Boyle will "read, discuss and sign" copies of his new short story collection Wild Child on Friday, January 29, 7 to 9 p.m. at the powerHouse Arena (37 Main Street, DUMBO).
6. Check out artist Jef Aerosol's tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat.
New York
Thistle & Clover Sale
What: Thistle & Clover's favorite fall/winter clothing and accessories are now up to half off during their end-of-season sale. Scoop up goods from indie designers Cloak & Dagger, Lewis, Wren, Dace (pictured), YMC, Tylho, and more.
When: Ongoing sale
Where: Thistle & Clover, 221 DeKalb Avenue, (between Adelphi Street and Claremont Avenue); 718-855-5577.
Temperley London Sample Sale
What: Amp up your winter wardrobe with new sale pieces from Temperley London. Their annual sample sale features 75% markdowns on pre-fall '09 and autumn/winter '09, including a luxe biker jacket (now $660), a mini Cocoshell dress (now $460), and a Heaven tunic (now $330).
When: Thursday, January 28, from 8 to 8 p.m.; Friday, January 29 and Saturday, January 30, from 11 to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, January 31, from noon to 6 p.m.
Where: Temperley London, 453 Broome Street, 2nd Floor, (between Mercer and Greene streets); 212-219-2929.
Click through for more NYC and online sales after the jump...
The Art of the Title Sequence highlights the impressive Sherlock Holmes opening credits, including an interview with the designer.
Tags: movies Sherlock Holmes
(via picturebox feature)
Publishing trade rag Media Industry Newsletter reports that several glossies saw a major uptick in first quarter advertisements, including Marie Claire (up 23% from last year to 255 pages), InStyle (17% to 512 pages) and Lucky (17% to 237 pages).
While that's all good news, we of course have to remember that more ads do not equal more money. There's a huge chance that Marie Claire, despite the fact it's doing better than last year in terms of ad pages, didn't make much bank. (We won't know until the Publisher's Information Bureau releases 1st quarter sales figures in a couple of months.) Vogue's ad pages may be flat, but they claim not to negotiate rates, so are their results actually better?
Regardless of whether this news means magazines will be able to bounce back from the recession's crushing ad market, titles are attempting to reach beyond the traditional avenues of growth. GQ, for instance, sold 12,000 January issues via iPhone for $2.99.
Gotta start somewhere, right?
In my “Tablet Musings” piece two weeks ago, I speculated that Apple’s imminent tablet probably won’t support Flash, for all the same reasons the iPhone doesn’t. Reaction to this was polarized — typically either “duh, of course it won’t” or “no way, it has to support Flash”. You can see both reactions represented in the thread on my piece at Hacker News. One group is going to be very surprised come Wednesday.
I’ve been writing about this saga for two years. My fascination with the subject is fueled by the fact that it’s so polarizing, and that it encompasses both technical and political issues.
On Flash and Mac OS X Application Crashes
Two weeks ago I wrote:
To my knowledge, Apple controls the entire source code to the iPhone OS. That’s not to say they wrote the whole thing from scratch. Many low-level OS components are open source. But they have the source. If there’s a bug, they can fix it. If something is slow, they can optimize or re-write it. That is not true for Mac OS X, and Flash is a prime example. The single leading source of application crashes on Mac OS X is a component that Apple can’t fix.
Several readers asked me for the source for my accusation contained in that last sentence, that Flash is the “leading source of application crashes on Mac OS X”. (And good for them for asking; I’m not sure what I was thinking including that without sourcing it.)
Here’s the deal. On stage at the WWDC 2009 keynote address last June, Apple senior vice president of software engineering Bertrand Serlet was explaining the new web content plugin mechanism for Safari in Snow Leopard. Rather than run within Safari’s application process, web content plugins now run in their own process, so if they crash, they (usually) don’t crash Safari itself. You get a broken little rectangle in the page where the plugin was executing, but the browser itself stays running.
Apple did this for two reasons. Serlet’s stated reason on stage was “crash resistance”, as mentioned above. As for why such crash resistance was worth implementing, Serlet explained that, based on data from the Crash Reporter application built into Mac OS X — the thing that asks if you’d like to send crash data to Apple after a crash — the most frequent cause of crashes across all of Mac OS X are (or at least were, pre-Snow Leopard) “plugins”.
Serlet didn’t name any specific guilty plugins. Just “plugins”. But during the week at WWDC, I confirmed with several sources at Apple who are familiar with the aggregate Crash Reporter data, and they confirmed that “plugins” was a euphemism for “Flash”.
In other words, in Apple’s giant pile of aggregate crash reports — from all app crashes on all Macs from all users who click the button to send these reports to Apple — Flash accounts for more of them than anything else. That doesn’t mean Flash somehow causes crashes in any various app. Presumably, most of the time it’s Safari or some other browser playing Flash content. And it’s worth noting that this doesn’t necessarily mean Flash is particularly crash-prone or poorly engineered. Think of it as a formula like this:
total crashes = (crashing bugs) × (actual use)
Flash’s number and severity of crashing bugs could well be somewhat low and it would still account for a large number of total crashes because it’s actually used all the time — by any Mac user with Flash content playing in a web page. And, if Flash Player for Mac OS X actually is poorly-engineered overly-buggy code, well, that’s even worse.
But there’s another reason why Apple created this new external process architecture for web content plugins in Snow Leopard: it was the only way they could ship Safari and the WebKit framework as 64-bit binaries. Flash Player is only available as a 32-bit binary. (This is true for other third-party web content plugins, like Silverlight, but Flash is the only one that ships as part of the system.) 64-bit apps cannot run 32-bit plugins. Apple doesn’t have the source code to Flash, so only Adobe can make Flash Player 64-bit compatible. They haven’t yet. So if Apple wanted Safari to be 64-bit in Snow Leopard (and they did), they needed to run 32-bit plugins like Flash in a separate process.
Maybe you don’t believe Apple that web content plugins are the most frequent source of crashes on Mac OS X. Maybe you don’t believe me and my unnamed sources at Apple that it’s Flash in particular that accounts for this. That’s cool, skepticism is good. So then in that case, maybe Bertrand Serlet blamed “plugin crash resistance” for political reasons, just to stick a knife in Adobe’s back, and the only reason Apple went with this external-process architecture was for the 64-bit/32-bit incompatibility.
But that just shines a light on the fact that Flash is still a 32-bit binary despite the fact that Apple wants to go 64-bit system-wide. Flash remains 32-bit and there’s nothing Apple can do about it. Instead of being able to make Flash 64-bit themselves, Apple had to engineer an entirely new plugin architecture.
This is why Apple wants to control the source code to the entire OS. If they want to go 64-bit with iPhone OS, it’s entirely in Apple’s own control to do so. And what happens if Apple goes to a new CPU architecture? For the components Apple controls the source code to, they can recompile for the new architecture. If the entire system doesn’t recompile cleanly for the new architecture, they can work on it until it does. For a component like Flash, where Adobe controls the source code, Apple instead has to wait.
Which situation do you think Apple is happier with? Mac OS X, where they had to create a new web content plugin architecture because Flash crashes frequently and isn’t 64-bit? Or iPhone OS, where they control the source code to every single component, and can do whatever they want, when they want?
Point is, even if you think Flash Player for Mac OS X is the greatest piece of software in the world and that a Flash Player for iPhone OS would run just fine, too — there’s no denying that Apple executives have and continue to say anti-Flash things publicly. Apple doesn’t say much about Flash, but what they do say doesn’t sound like the sort of things they’d say if they were looking forward to supporting it more rather than less.
The Proprietary Web
It’s probably pretty clear to regular DF readers that I don’t care for Flash, and that I’m hoping Apple never includes it in the iPhone OS. Might as well make my biases clear.
Why? At the core, because Flash is the only de facto web standard based on a proprietary technology. There are numerous proprietary web content plugins — including Apple’s QuickTime — but Flash is the only one that’s so ubiquitous that it’s a de facto standard. Flash is the way video is delivered over the web, and Adobe completely controls Flash. No other aspect of the web works like this. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are all open standards, with numerous implementations, including several that are open source.
The simplest argument in favor of Flash support on the iPhone (and The Tablet, and everywhere) is that Flash is, by dint of its popularity and ubiquity, part of the web. But the best argument against Flash support is that it is harmful to the web as a whole to have something as important as video be in the hands of a single company, and the only way that’s going to change is if an open alternative becomes a compelling target for web publishers.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. Publishers use Flash for web video because Flash is installed on such a high percentage of clients; clients support Flash because so many publishers use Flash for web video. Apple, with the iPhone, is solving the chicken and egg problem. For the first time ever, there is a large and growing audience of demographically desirable users who don’t have Flash installed. If you want to show video to iPhone users, you need to use H.264.
Apple isn’t trying to replace Flash with its own proprietary thing. They’re replacing it with H.264 and HTML5. This is good for everyone but Adobe.
And yes, I know Flash does much more than just play video. But that’s the main thing everyone is talking about when they talk about Flash not working on the iPhone — video. And when you talk about others uses for Flash, you’re talking about serving as a software runtime, and whether you like it or not, Apple has a clearly stated opposition to third-party software runtimes for iPhone OS, and that policy seems to be working out pretty well for them.
Here’s an email I got from a DF reader:
I was in line waiting for a coffee on Christmas day. In front of me was a kid, about nine or ten, who had an iPhone. He clearly had gotten it that morning. He was pushing frantically at a white box on a web page with the broken plug-in symbol. He was squeezing it, swiping it. He was frustrated and on the verge of getting pissed with his new toy. It seemed like he was trying to hit an online game page, probably one he was used to playing on the family PC. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. I leaned over and said, “It won’t load Flash. It won’t play your Flash games.” His mom, ignoring him up to that point, was triggered by a stranger talking to her kid. “That’s okay honey,” she said, “we’ll get you a game from the App Store.” His response to this? He started working that device even harder. He didn’t want an App Store game; he wanted his Flash game. And that iPhone suddenly took a huge dive in value to him.
Like it not, Apple needs to come to terms with this. If only for the kids.
I think this anecdote, and this reader’s takeaway from it, accurately captures the feeling behind much of the “Apple has got to bend on this eventually” sentiment that’s out there.
But think about it from Apple’s perspective. How do you think this situation turned out in the long run? Do you think the kid told his mom to return the iPhone for a refund? Or, do you think they went home and started buying games from the App Store? That there was a period of initial frustration due to Flash games not playing doesn’t change the fact that they (a) bought an iPhone and (b) were set to buy games from the App Store.
I’m not arguing that Apple’s apparent executive-level antipathy toward Flash is about anything other than Apple’s own interests. (I do think, though, that Apple’s WebKit team is genuinely idealistic about helping the web as a whole.)
But while Apple may be acting spitefully, they’re not spiting themselves. The iPhone’s lack of Flash has not hurt it one bit. Perhaps that will change in the future, if Flash someday proves popular on other mobile platforms, but don’t hold your breath.
Flash Performance on Mac OS X
In addition to the principled concerns outlined above regarding Flash being proprietary, there are also practical issues. One, Flash’s aforementioned crashiness on Mac OS X. Second, crashiness aside, its performance on Mac OS X is not as good as it is on Windows. And for video playback specifically, Flash’s performance pales compared to H.264 played through QuickTime. This is not subjective. My machine is a two-year-old MacBook Pro. It plays full-screen H.264 video through QuickTime without problem. When I play full-screen Flash video, my fan kicks in within a few seconds, every time.
I’ve been hard on Flash Player for Mac OS X, but this performance situation is not entirely in Adobe’s hands. On Windows, Flash makes use of hardware decoding for H.264, if available. On Mac OS X, it does not. This is one reason why Flash video playback performs better on Windows than Mac OS X, and also why H.264 playback on Mac OS X is better through QuickTime (which does use hardware decoding).
According to Adobe, though, this is because they can’t. Here’s an entry from their Flash Player FAQ:
Q. Why is hardware decoding of H.264 only supported on the Windows platform?
A. In Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate when to support this feature on Mac and Linux platforms in future releases.
Adobe platform evangelist Lee Brimelow recently posted a weblog entry addressing this:
But let’s talk more about the Flash Player on the Mac. If it is not 100% on par with the Windows player people assume that it is all our fault. The facts show that this is simply not the case. Let’s take for example the question of hardware acceleration for H.264 video that we released with Flash Player 10.1. Here you can see some published results for how much the situation has improved on Windows. Unfortunately we could not add this acceleration to the Mac player because Apple does not provide a public API to make this happen. You can easily verify that by asking Apple. I’m happy to say that we still made some improvements for the Mac player when it comes to video playback, but we simply could not implement the hardware acceleration. This is but one example of stumbling blocks we face when it comes to Apple.
I’m aware of no reason to dispute this. Windows is more hospitable to a third-party runtime like Flash than Mac OS X. I think most would agree that Apple is an opinionated company (to say the least), and they make opinionated products. The runtimes Apple cares about are Cocoa and WebKit. The Apple way to play H.264 is through the QuickTime APIs (and really, as of Snow Leopard the new QuickTime X APIs), not to write your own H.264 playback code that seeks to directly access hardware accelerators.
You can argue about why Apple has taken this stance. One could argue that it’s pragmatic — that Apple doesn’t allow third-party software access to things like hardware H.264 acceleration because it seeks to maintain a layer of abstraction between third-party software and the underlying hardware. One could argue that it’s political — that Apple is happy to make Flash look bad performance-wise because Flash is competitive with Apple in several different regards. (E.g. you may wish that Hulu, which is entirely Flash-based, worked on your iPhone and worked better on your Mac. Apple wishes that Hulu’s content was going through the iTunes Store.)
I would argue that it’s both — that Apple’s distaste for Flash Player is both a matter of engineering taste (that third-party software should only have access to high-level APIs) and politics. But objectively, regardless of what you personally wish Apple would do with regard to Flash, if Adobe needs Apple to grant them further access to the hardware to make the Mac version of Flash Player better, what are the odds that they’d get that sort of low-level hardware access on the iPhone OS? (Hint: zero.)
I’ll leave the last word to Apple COO Tim Cook, who a year ago said, “We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.”
Flash is owned and controlled by Adobe.
Over the weekend, in a thread over at Tango’s blog, the idea of a “Sabermetric Library” was raised. As noted over there, one of the positives of the academic journal process is to catalog the work that has been done, making it easily searchable for future readers who are not following the discussion in real time. The statistical analysis crowd doesn’t have that kind of formal structure, which makes it difficult for those who come later to catch up on what has already been done.
Rather than employing a full time “librarian” to keep up with the most recent work, I thought perhaps we could just attempt to crowd-source this idea. So, that’s what we’ll attempt to do in this thread.
In the comments below, I’d like to encourage you to think back to influential articles that you’ve read about the game, and if you can, link to them. If they were written a book, link to it at a particular bookseller of your choice that carries it. If you can quickly summarize the conclusion, even better.
It doesn’t have to be an epic research piece that changed the face of analysis (such as Voros’ piece on DIPS), though those obviously fit in here, too. But if there is a blog post somewhere that explained something in a way that allowed you to understand it for the first time, link to that. If there was an interesting discussion on a popular topic (Blyleven for the HOF, maybe), then link to that.
The goal would be to populate the comments with enough resources to allow someone to go through and read a Best Of The Sabermetric Community collection of writings. There are a lot of good writers out there doing good work, but given the size of the internet, some of it can get lost in the shuffle. Let’s preserve the pieces that deserve to be kept alive, and at the same time, create a resource for those who come along in the future to find out about the work that has already been done.
In order to keep the layout easy to read, I would ask that you refrain from commentary about this post. Please limit comments to the format of linking to important pieces, with necessary comment about that piece as an abstract of sorts. If this takes off as I hope it does, we’ll do a discussion thread on another day about potentially culling the list, giving space for people to argue for or against any of the linked pieces below.
The most striking feature of Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency was the amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected. The most striking feature of Obama’s presidency a year later is how thoroughly that movement has disappeared.
In part, it disappeared because the Obama team let it disappear, as Obama moved to pass what was necessary — the economic stimulus — and what he aspired to — health care — by exclusively playing inside baseball with Congress. The president seems to have thought that his majorities in the Senate and the House were so big that he never really had to mobilize “the people” to drive his agenda. Obama turned all his supporters into spectators of The Harry and Nancy Show. And, at the same time, that grass-roots movement went dormant on its own, apparently thinking that just getting the first African-American elected as president was the moon shot of this generation, and nothing more was necessary.
No, that’s not why most of our support, hope, and engagement has disappeared. It was another, bigger problem that did it: everything we had Hope™d for has either not panned out, been compromised so far as to be unrecognizable, or seemingly been forgotten.
We wanted universal health care, and nearly all of us took that to mean a tax-funded, single-payer system like nearly every other advanced country in the world. I don’t think many “young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots” pre-election-Obama fans would recognize the current effort, renamed from “universal health care” to “health care reform”, as remotely accomplishing what we had in mind. We’re told to accept this massive “compromise”, which does little but further entrench and amplify nearly every problem with the health care system, because it’s the best we’ll do for the next few decades.
We wanted definitive action to be taken to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know it’s not as simple as everyone just flying home one day, but we wanted a firm, near-term timeline for withdrawal. The few administrative actions on this front, so far, haven’t been promising.
We wanted an end to legislative and regulatory corruption from lobbyists and the revolving-door pattern. Nothing significant has been done about this except last week’s Supreme Court decision that made it worse.
We wanted the criminal injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration to be recognized and prosecuted. That was judged to be too politically expensive and was quickly forgotten. If we did that, Obama would have a difficult time getting his other major policy goals accomplished.
We wanted comprehensive Wall Street reform. Our hopes haven’t quite been completely crushed on that front yet, but something tells me they’re about to be.
For the campaign of Hope, we’re not seeing a lot of encouragement from the leader or the legislative majority that we elected. The campaign of “yes, we can” has resulted in an administration of “no, we can’t.”
Blaming all of the federal government’s problems on the leader of the executive branch who has only been there for a year is short-sighted and misplaced. But to us — the people who largely got him elected — he was largely promising to fix not only specific policies and issues, but some of the dysfunctions that cause the government to be so corrupt, inefficient, and ineffective. But so far, we’ve seen almost no results for almost every major issue. It’s hard to keep our hopes up for long when all we’ve seen is repeated disappointments, compromises, and giveaways.
Maybe we’re frustrated with ourselves for incorrectly believing that one executive election would be able to do anything we considered significant. Like getting duped by a salesman, we’re more frustrated not in the unfulfilled promises, but in ourselves for believing them.
We’ve been taught that our government, ostensibly a representative democracy, is effectively neither. We’re powerless. We’ve had the civic engagement beaten out of us. Friedman’s assumption that we think our job is done is condescending and incorrect. We’ve been shown by all three branches of the federal government that they’ll do whatever they want regardless of popular opinion, that common sense and the people’s best interests don’t matter, and that there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it.
Rocketboom Tech’s Ellie Rountree interviews Boxee founders Avner Ronen and Idan Cohen. Boxee is a featured app in the Intel Atom Developer Program for MIDs. Music by Podington Bear.
This episode was created in collaboration with Intel!
The accent isn't perfect (Herzog's distinctive voice is difficult to impersonate well) but there are some great lines in this.
Tags: books Curious George video Werner Herzog
Mike Shaver’s blog about Mozilla forgoing H.264 support in the HTML <video> tag is getting a lot of play, predictably from the /. crowd.
It’s a shame, because it’s a childish and facile argument. Here’s the gist of it.
For Mozilla, H.264 is not currently a suitable technology choice. In many countries, it is a patented technology, meaning that it is illegal to use without paying license fees to the MPEG-LA. Without such a license, it is not legal to use or distribute software that produces or consumes H.264-encoded content.
In short, the very idea that something is patented and requires licensing is prima facie proof that it is intolerable. Going on:
These license fees affect not only browser developers and distributors, but also represent a toll booth on anyone who wishes to produce video content. And if H.264 becomes an accepted part of the standardized web, those fees are a barrier to entry for developers of new browsers, those bringing the web to new devices or platforms, and those who would build tools to help content and application development.
Yeah, can you imagine if any other technology were encumbered by patents? They’d have to pass on the costs to customers too! Imagine if television were patented, or if automobiles involved 100,000 patents… surely those products could never exist and never be affordable.
There is a case to be made against patents and intellectual property as a whole, but this blog doesn’t make it. Instead, it blithely refuses to acknowledge that we do live in a world of IP, decrying its costs as if they are out of the ordinary or unjust. Ultimately, it flees back to the intellectual dead-end of “everything should be in Ogg”, a stance so untenable that even Stallman conceded it was a non-starter, four years ago.
A final irony: by refusing to support H.264, Mozilla bolsters the primary alternative for video on the web: the Flash plug-in, which is not just patent-encumbered but proprietary, available only from Adobe and only in those environments where it serves the company’s strategic ends. Shaver, to be fair, admits that proprietary plug-ins are bad too, but declines to say they’re far more bad than patent-encumbered standards. Instead, he holds out for a pollyannaish vision of completely free web video technology, naming Ogg as his moral standard-bearer, without acknowledging Ogg’s lamentable but obvious feet of clay.
Do you drink coffee? I bet you will like it more hereafter because we will feel the incomparable charm of coffee art together. Coffee foam art is, in short, making fancy coffee in various styles by using espresso, milk and chocolate topping. It is not only a kind of enjoyment in taste but also in vision.
I believe coffee foam art is popular because it adds comfort and a special gift to an already dreamy and friendly drink. Plus, when else do you get a chance to drink art? Never! Looking at the following cups of coffee, appreciating the lovely animals, plants and characters on the surface, would you actually be able to drink such a fancy and pretty coffee?
Quick Post
In an op-ed, Anil argues that we shouldn't depend on any one service for communication. Aside from being a tinkerer, that's one of the main reasons I host my own blog. No matter how the publishing system may change, my site stays consistent. It's also why I communicate I communicate in a variety of places.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/22/dash.twitter.shutdown/
So, there have been some changes around here ……a new decade, a new design (thanks Intuit Small Business “web tools”!), a new URL, a new back end (wordpress), and even some new projects / things / whatever have been added to the “things i made” section………….I hope you like all these changes, ….(ps – if u r reading this in a feed reader of course nothing seems different, so please click here to see what i’m talking about)
So, first things first,…. I have new XML feeds. My news feed, which used to be here: http://www.beigerecords.com/cory/rss.xml, is now located here: http://www.coryarcangel.com/feed/atom. I have put a redirect in, so you all should be fine, but some feed readers are pretty wonky, and also i’m pretty bad with these things, so i would suggest u unsubscribe from the old one, and subscribe to the new one,…thanks!.
Also I have added a new feed, one for my Hot Links, which is a combination of my activity on my delicious, my buzzfeed, my youtube, and my supercentral accounts. If you like web junk, this is the feed for you. That feed is here: http://www.coryarcangel.com/feed/lifestream-feed/, but of course you can just peep these on the home page as they are running in the left column, or the archive which is here.
So yeah, I’ve been meaning to do all of this for like 3+ years, so I am happy I finally got around to it. In the words of Jermaine Dupri, ”Cuff links come into your life when you get past 25, 30 years old.” Please shoot me an email if you notice anything not working or whatever…….& thanks again for visiting my website(!).
Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs that keep America on the cutting edge. The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things, is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things. Without inventing more new products and services that make people more productive, healthier or entertained — that we can sell around the world — we’ll never be able to afford the health care our people need, let alone pay off our debts.Obama should bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: “What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over” — and make that his No. 1 priority. Inspiring, reviving and empowering Start-up America is his moon shot. via www.nytimes.com The New York Times is basically a blogging company now. Their only strong reporting comes out of LA, their star features are all design-driven, and only the op-ed features are unique.
This may be a little more answer than you wanted, but I figured I'd err on the side of comprehensiveness. Funky basslines are important. via ask.metafilter.com, via anildash
