January 2008 - Posts
I'm on the road again - a trip to the mothership in Redmond, Washington. Yesterday was my travel day, followed immediately by meetings. I'm hoping to get some time between events today to get some blogging done.
My transcontinental commuter reading was two items that contributed to a general feeling of a correction in the market of ideas.
The hot one online,
Is the Tipping Point Toast? refutes the conventional wisdom (taken from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point) that socially well-connected "influencers" have more power to spread ideas and trigger viral distribution. The spread of ideas, it argues, has more to do with how receptive the audience is than who the idea is coming from.
Needless to say, this turns a lot of the new ideas in marketing on their head. Faith in influencers goes hand in hand with the the notion the
Power Law means that if you aren't popular, you won't be. (That's not exactly what it says but it's hard to avoid that feeling.) Recasting the Web as a lottery of ideas is exciting.
I also read
this longer piece criticizing the practice (and celebration) of multitasking and multifunctionality . (It's from this past November.) Apparently not only does multitasking not work, it works worse and it's bad for your brain.
So there are no influencers, multitasking is a bad idea, tech bloggers are
out of ideas ... I'm feeling like
Pam Ewing waking up to find Bobby in the shower.
Five steps to good twittiquette - Something I can't get my head around with Twitter is that you don't have to actually be friends with the people you follow. For some reason I think of it as a fancy Instant Messenger and I can't imagine adding someone to my IM buddy list who I don't know. But if people are dealing with thousands of followers, clearly they're not expecting to befriend them all. A better analogy is probably subscribing to an RSS feed (that happens to work two ways) but at least you can do that anonymously. Contrary to the spectacle I make of myself on a regular basis, I prefer faceless lurking to social declarations. (I should add that the reason I care about this is that I feel like a lot of the online discussion is moving to new areas that are not monitored by the aggregators and memetrackers I use in writing Clicked. Lately I've been trying to find a good way to assess "the buzz" on Twitter. That may mean adding another memetracker -like the newly launched
TweetMeme - to my regular reading, but I'm getting the feeling that following a few significant individuals may be more fruitful.)
It's hard to imagine how to make a cooler video than
slow motion exploding skateboard tricks that are nearly disastrous and in a few cases apparently injurious.
Everyone is marveling at this
360 panorama of the cockpit of an Airbus 380 .
Last night's
State of the Union address in 60 seconds . (Not one of those bunny animations.)
I played with
Woonz a little this morning. Not unlike SeeqPod, you search for songs or artists and it finds mp3s on the Web and presents them in a player. Fewer features than SeeqPod but it had a download button for the songs instead of adding to a proprietary playlist, so you can take the songs more easily out of their player. Hard to ignore the likelihood that someone is getting ripped off somewhere along the way here.
The True Cost of SMS Messages - He basically does some reductive and comparative math to show the mark-up on texting. Looks like the kind of senseless greed that makes the market ripe for the runaway success of an alternative.
I can't get over
how bizarre the relationship is between Britney and her attending photographers. With one more layer of "meta" this whole thing could be a reality show. It's amazing that we actually know the names of some of the paparazzi now and they're making pseudo-celebrities of themselves by
stumbling in front of their own cameras .
Wool "stone" furniture (I also clicked this blog's post on a
sick Mazda concept car .)
Brattleboro to vote on arresting Bush, Cheney - Can you imagine such a thing? I'm not sure I can. Obviously an arrest could never happen but what actually
would happen? Police road blocks versus Black Hawk helicopters?
20 Tools for preparing for your death online - Morbid, but useful I guess.
I just caught
Mishare featured on CNBC. It allows you to share stuff between iPods. Cool. (Oops, the first time I clicked it, it loaded, the second time, the site is crashed, so I guess I'm not the only one who was impressed by that segment. Half of Wall Street probably just hit the site.)
The Edublogger is offering a series of instructions on Web basics. Looks like it's part of this larger site for
Edublogs Magazine .
Speaking of Web basics, check out this cool graphic that shows
what happens after you hit the "publish" button on your blog.
Southern racists adopt "Canadian" as a euphemism for "black."
"
Here's how the offices of web 2.0 companies look like ." Maybe it's because I've recently changed offices but I found myself unexpectedly interested in what it looks like to work at these places.
Whatever you do,
don't look the Google in the eye ! (Brief clever video.)
Looking at
this recipe for bacon vodka (basically bacon infused vodka) reminds me of when I was a bartender and went to a ridiculously expensive bar on the recommendation that the watermelon martini was out-of-control yummy. At the time it was common to make a watermelon flavor with peach schnapps and Midori but the result was always a little syrupy. This fancy expensive watermelon martini was light and refreshing. "How does he do it," I asked my friend-with-connections. "He uses real watermelon juice - squeezes it himself." I was shattered at the answer because to that point I'd thought all flavors had to be a magical concoction mixed from the wall of bottles behind the bar. On my next shift I "invented" the pickle martini. Mostly plain vodka with a bit of Citron and I'd sneak a small ramekin to a waiter and have them go in the kitchen and scoop out some of the pickle juice in the big bucket for the burger garnishes. Customers would taste it and marvel at how well I'd approximated the taste of real pickles. Amazing! So you can see how a piece on bacon vodka with a link to a
pickle juice sports drink would bring back fond memories.
P.S. If you're
going to do it , at least use the good stuff. And this is
definitely not the way to do it.
I recently saw a picture of the Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie. I don't know much about the movie but when I saw
NCC-1701.com I knew right away what it was for. (Funny, I don't think I could have told you that number off the top of my head but I didn't even have to think to recognize it.) Right now I can tune in three of the four screens so I'm guessing whatever they're revealing it incrementally.
Well, we probably could have seen this coming:
Warner sues SeeqPod . I still use SeeqPod regularly.
"Some women in Springfield are regretting their decision last week to
get a tattoo from a door-to-door tattoo salesman ." I mean honestly...
Top 5 Most Creative Uses for Old CDs - That mini-hovercraft idea is fun.
Battlestar Galactica prequel possible . (Even though I've now been working in the same building as the Sci Fi channel for at least a month I still have no insider info on this.)
Speaking of insider info,
the whisper in last night's GOP debate has been a bit of a hot topic in
my corner of the cube-o-sphere today. Just as Romney answers a question about Reagan you can hear a
whisper, "He raised taxes." The most interesting aspect of the story is
the changing nature of conspiracy theories. To me, the first, most
likely conspiracy theory associated with hearing a whisper on TV is
that the TV is trying to brainwash viewers with subliminal messages.
Most of the wild accusations I've seen online, however, follow in the
vein of the theories that followed the 2004 debate in which many
believed they could see the bulge of a listening device in Bush's
jacket. So the conspiracy preference seems to have shifted from media conspiracies to puppet candidate conspiracies.
ADDING: This turned out to be a hot enough topic that
Alex wrote up a story for last night's cover.
I've not found anyone here on the inside with a definite answer
as to whose voice you're hearing doing the whisper.
MSNBC's official
statement says something about a microphone malfunction but I've never
heard a microphone malfunction by generating speech. The good-sounding
theory that it was Brian Williams prompting Tim Russert to clarify his
question
is false .
Double amputee walks again due to Bluetooth Here's one for anyone having a bad day: It could be worse,
a bird could poop in your mouth on live TV .
A gallery of inside out teddy bears - Still pretty cute and nowhere near as creepy as
a naked Elmo .
Pinks the drag racing show on Speed Channel (definitely in the top 5 best things on TV right now) has a new version called "All out." I caught the first one last night. Surprise ending: A female driver won.
A Wheel-Shaped Hotel is Planned for Dubai Yesterday there were a lot links floating around about the internet war on Scientology.
This Grupthink collection is another good indication of just how much trouble the church is suffering at the hands of online detractors. If you check out the front page of Digg right now it's almost all about destroying Scientology.
Mostly light fare today as the compressed week seems to have lengthened my list of errands and meetings. The Web's biggest unspoken truth is that for all the LOLs typed and texted, almost no one is actually laughing out loud. Replacing this "false lolling" with the more honest and accurate
LOI (laughing on the inside) is a cause we should all be able to support.
Romney wins the black vote with
his expert use of colloquial African-Americanisms. NOTE: you might want to do some stretching before watching this because you could cringe hard enough to give yourself a cramp or pull a muscle.
Bill Clinton: 'Screw It, I'm Running For President' Mass Attack balancing game - I can't decide if there's any skill in assessing whether two little balls equal one big ball. By skill I mean outside of this game. If I'm good at this game, do I have a heightened sense of volume/area or is it just a matter of getting the hang of the game?
"A cargo ship
pulled by a giant, parachute-shaped kite will leave Germany on Tuesday on a voyage that could herald a new "green" age of commercial sailing on the high seas." (The whole story
in a diagram .) Not only is this a good idea but if it catches on it'll turn shipping ports into a pretty amazing spectacle.
Some inventions are too cool for their own good. I have absolutely no use for
a ring pistol but these photos make me covetous. A sure recipe for trouble and regret.
Pownce , the Twitter killer whose managing team includes Digg's Kevin Rose launched yesterday.
I lost a lot of time yesterday playing with timelines at
Viygo . I had a struggle with some of its functionality but on the whole I love the idea. It's odd that in all the enthusiasm for mashing up maps there wasn't a corresponding explosion in timeline apps.
Jerry O'Connell does
a great spoof of the Tom Cruise Scientology video in this video supporting striking writers.
Gawker fleshes out a point that may have already been floating around in your mind.
The web has been bad news for Scientology .
Wow, did you ever see the raw video of
the Empire State Building jumper ? As I recall he
ended up suing for not being allowed to jump. The audio is pretty good. The guy sounds like a real tool.
Amazing Backflip Wrestling Move - They played this on my local news the other day. I'd love to know how reliably it can be executed. What's the likelihood of falling on your face and snapping your neck?
For those too young to remember,
this is what a recession looks like - Even if you're not buying into recession hysteria, it's well written.
One Quintillion Pennies "As of today, you can play
full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website."
Thing-a-day invites you to make something every day for the month of February.
Speaking of "Day"s,
Delete Your MySpace Account Day is January 30th.
World's largest swimming pool - At some point "pool" must cross over into manmade lake. I'd love to see the machinery they use to keep it clean.
Popular web sites cast as characters at a party - Your monitor has to be big enough to be able to read their nametags. How funny you find this depends on how much personality you assign to the Web's major sites.
NOTE: Some cursing.
Woman caught on camera sunbathing on Mars This plane doesn't exist. - I'm always amazed at how much good stuff comes out of Airliners.net. (Random digression: I often think it's odd that news sites -and newspapers for that matter- don't feature a military news section or a faith news section. Given the amount of air travel, shipping, security and other air-related news, I wonder if there wouldn't be enough content to support an "air" section.)
Horror, blood and gore effects tutorials - They're individual tutorials on the horror theme from different sites collected in one place.
That video of Amy Winehouse smoking crack
Mitt Romney's son called his father pretending to be Arnold Schwarzenegger:
What he's probably using is something like this
Schwarzenegger sound board .
Contact lenses with circuits, lights a possible platform for superhuman vision - Last Thursday I took my wife to get laser surgery on her eyes. The facility allows family members to watch the surgery on a TV screen. I didn't think I'd watch because eyeballs are a weak spot for me. I get squeamish just watching my wife put contact lenses in. I imagined it'd be something like that scene in
that Salvador Dali movie when the razor blade goes across that lady's eye. Or worse,
that scene in Minority Report with the stomach turning popping and squishing eyeballs rolling on the dirty floor and in the little zip lock baggie in his pocket... urk!
So I watched the beginning of the surgery through barely parted fingers. But it was surprisingly clean and simple. A circle the size of her iris was cut nearly all the way around and then peeled back with what looked kind of like the pick a dentist uses. That sounds horrible but it didn't look much different from a contact lens, just a floppy clear membrane, no goo or blood or anything gross. They scrape (smooth?) the surface under the lens with the side of the pick, which also sounds horrifying but the texture looks a little like what a grape looks like with no skin. Again, no goo, no stringy gobs of sinew. Even the laser wasn't
what I expected . Instead of something intense and cutting it was little circular bluish flashes straight at the eye's surface (removing layers of cells, as I understand).
For what it's worth, because I've come to learn that this is something everyone wants to know, the recovery was close, but not quite what it had been hyped to be. After the procedure my wife was told to sit with her eyes closed for ten minutes, during which time they watered like crazy. It's true that we were out of there only a few minutes later and she could indeed already see better than before, but really, her eyes were in no shape for looking. She said it felt like she had her contacts in inside out and she kept her eyes, still watering, closed for the drive home. After a nap (medicine aside, it's mentally exhausting to have your eyes cut open) she awoke with no more discomfort in her eyes and the kind of good vision you hear about. The quality of that vision seems to be improving with each day of healing. The healing is helped, apparently, by the regular application of special eye drops.
One unexpected consequence of the event is how it has put all other purchases into perspective. "Hey, I bought a motorcycle fender." "Oh? I bought the gift of human sight." I mean really, other than a life saving organ transplant or maybe the cost of adoption, is there anything more valuable? Yesterday my son was helping to flip the morning French toast and waved his spatula a little close to his mom's face. No harm, no foul, but for a moment I had that reflex, "Hey, we just paid good money for those eyes, don't go whacking them with the spatula!" But that would hardly have been the point, would it? There's no question that the eye surgery place is a total money factory (They had patients lined up one after another. I saw them in the waiting rooms we had just been sitting in looking nervous in their sterile shower caps.) but it's very odd to try to assign a monetary value being able to see unaided.
Wow, here's one for the tech bloggers. Not only is Web 3.0 described here but Web 4.0 too.
All in a handy chart . (Note the piece's recommendation of
Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App? It's always easier to understand with examples.) Web 4.0 is what they're calling "The Ubiquitous Web." It's not hard to imagine a Web that's everywhere if you're walking around with a wifi robot eyeball like the one in the link above. (This was a much cleaner "speaking of" segue before I decided to insert the laser surgery story.)
I was only half paying attention to the Sunday morning talk shows but I didn't hear it mentioned that in fact
Obama won Nevada, not Clinton . (Ok, so there might be some question about what it means to "win" a state. Clinton got more votes, but since the point of the primary is to get more delegates,
which is what Obama did , surely that gives him the win, no? For that matter, I see that Obama won the same number of delegates in N.H. as Clinton even though he had fewer votes. What a screwy system we have.)
Urban Legend ER - If every urban legend was true.
NOTE: One exclaimed F bomb.
Macbook Air parody ad HairMixer - Take a face from one photo and hair style from another photo and mix them. It's preloaded with celebrity photos but you can upload your own as well. Theoretically a good way to try out a new haircut.
Remember my complaint to the guy working the Canon booth at CES about the flashes on their Rebel XT cameras? The "business card solution" is one of
several camera flash tricks mentioned here.
The idea behind
Price Hub is that you shared how much you paid for a car or truck so others can know what the going rate is and make sure they get a reasonable price. I remember seeing something like this built around salaries for different job titles as well.
HDRcreme is a photo hosting service and community exclusively for HDR photos.
I've heard a lot about this
Optimus Maximus keyboard but this is the first time I've seen it demonstrated in detail (more than I needed actually). The idea is that each key is a little screen so you can design its appearance as well as designate its function. And it gives you a few extra keys to program how you want as well.
Did you ever see this
Couch Surfing Project ? Travel the world sleeping on people's couches? Those numbers are pretty extraordinary. Looks like it started back in 2004. Related:
8 Tools to Help You Travel Forever and Live Rent Free It's OK if you don't know who
Corey Delaney is and if you want to skip this item it's OK if you never know who he is. In short he's the latest person to be elevated to fame by the internet for basically being a tool. I think it was
this interview that kicked
it all off. The show's anchor tries to get him to apologize for being a party dude upsetting his neighbors with a massive party that ended with a police raid. Now people slap his digital effigy to make themselves feel good.
Try it .
Speaking of "what are you famous for again?" Migabon is a young girl (I think, there's debate about her age) who just sits and stares at the camera. According to the YouTube counter, hundreds of thousands of people want to
see her do this . Recently
she spoke but that doesn't give much more insight into her popularity. Explanations range from "pedophile bait" to "secret messages with her eyes."
Trendy Web thing you probably should pay attention to because it's only going to get bigger before it goes away: Little cartoon animations from Japan. Best thing since Ren and Stimpy?
Maybe I'm tired from a long week but I laughed out loud twice during
this trailer for the new Tina Fey movie .
Feminism issue of the day: Are you
troubled by a Target ad's placement of a woman's spread legs at the center of a bull's eye? To my eye there's no denying the intended visual focus of the ad - I definitely look "there" first when I look at the ad. I'm less certain about the message that's coming with it. I wouldn't exactly call it a sexy ad but the more
arguments I read the more I'm coming around to the interpretation that it encourages women to "think with the little head."
How to mind control customer service reps Pioneering research shows ‘Google Generation’ is a myth - Not surprising really since we've already noticed that a generation raised on typing text messages to each other and reading from a screen isn't necessarily better at writing or more literate. The Web's affect on patience and attention span is interesting though.
One thing I'll never understand, if ads
can be so clever , why are there boring ads?
I'm more forgiving of boring wood stacking but apparently there's
room for creativity there too.
Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years - What's weird about this research is that it's phrased as though humans would naturally live much longer if only it weren't for a couple of genes that promote aging. I've read other studies about reduced calories and longevity. In my head I'd understood it to mean you get more life out of the engine when you run it less. Makes sense. But this study seems to be suggesting that reducing calorie intake does more than just run the engine less, it causes these couple of pro-aging genes to signal less (or more poorly?) and that's what extends the lifespan.
If you know anything about genetics at all you're smarter than I am on this subject so I appreciate anyone's input on whether I'm understanding this correctly.
I lost some of my morning this morning to
this guy's photos .
Speaking of getting lost in photos, the
Library of Congress is putting huge numbers of photos
on Flickr . "Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist."
Why it's a bad idea to be a dick to people at your company's annual product show
ADDING NOTE: Wow, you know you're a nerd when you don't even notice you're linking to a blog about sex. This link is basically clean but clicking through to the home page or any of the links in the side columns could get you to some nakedness. Sorry to anyone who had to find that out on their own. Thanks to Lydia for bringing it to my attention.
How to Write a Novel in Two Months - It's strange to see this kind of advice because it really comodifies the book and writing process generally but there's still good advice here in terms of preparation and even just getting words on the page that you might eventually go back and re-work once you've flushed your brain of a block.
Yahoo implements OpenID - You'll recall this is an idea to get rid of the problem of having a different login for every site you visit. Adding the Yahoo user base to the cause is a big boost.
Time Warner tests Internet usage-based billing - This would be the one thing that would make me finally lock my wireless - sorry freeloading neighbors. As a Time Warner customer I look forward to any specifics on how much bandwidth one has to eat to produce a really regrettable bill.
Weirdest excuse ever . The Department of Justice can't send press releases to Talk Points Memo anymore because their e-mail address list is full.
Top 8 Most Amazing Tree Houses I've seen the ad for Anthony Bourdain's new show a million times but I haven't watched it yet. I see
his blog getting some link attention.
What Jupiter sounds like . Apparently they're electromagnetic vibrations that are translated into sound. Sounds about what a huge planet in space should sound like though.
Stan Lee tribute art Why I'm doomed to forever be a jeans & t-shirts guy.
The Disintegrator - a 288-band, 40-round-per-second rubber ban machine gun. (I know what you're thinking but at least they're 7 really cool seconds.)
Steve Rubel thinks tech bloggers have
grown lazy and aren't setting the world on fire with their big ideas anymore.
(
Major digression ahead but bear with me. ) While studying feminism in college I read
a book that posited that women's rights had advanced more as a result of technology than activism. The invention of the birth control pill, for example, allowed women new freedoms and flexibilities, enabling them to adopt new roles in society. The feminist movement as a philosophy was only heralding the inevitable and did it in such an agitated and confrontational way that it generated unnecessary animosity between the sexes, doing more harm than good. At one point, as I recall (and again, this was in college, more years ago than I care to calculate, so what I remember may be entirely different from what the book actually says), the feminist movement was likened to people standing on an elevator going up, with everyone chanting and mentally willing it to go up. The technology was going to make it go up anyway and the activists were fooling themselves (and flattering themselves) into thinking they had anything to do with it.
Before I drift too far from Rubel's post on lazyblogging I'll just add that I don't necessarily subscribe to the elevator theory but I always keep it mentally close to remind myself to notice whether people are fooling themselves and/or taking undue credit.
So my first reaction to Steve's complaint that suddenly the big blog thinkers aren't blowing minds with their big ideas anymore is that they probably weren't doing so in the first place. Social Networking and the stampede of Web 2.0 toys and concepts that stormed through Web discourse in 2006 weren't empowered or enabled by the keyboard clattering class. More likely the technology took a turn and programmers followed and thereafter came the tech blogging ambassadors who could understand what was going on and explain it to the rest of us in terms that made us all eager and excited. So it's not a matter of tech bloggers running out of ideas, it's a matter of technological turnover and waiting for the next big thing to develop.
I'm always open to changing my mind and that's pretty much definitional to first reactions anyway. It's interesting to note the comments on the entry not only agreeing with Steve but seeing parallels in other areas over the same time. What's the explanation for the political blogosphere having lost its sizzle? Is it all simply a matter of novelty? Did a wider adoption of Web tools dilute online discourse in such a way as to create a sort of
September that never ended ? There is a lot of criticism in the comments of services like Twitter that discourage long-form posting.
Speaking of reducing noise and encouraging richer discourse,
check out the trick they're using in this chat room: they've added a bot that kicks you out of the chat room if you say anything that's ever been said before in that room, ever. It looks at the entire history, all of the logs, and makes sure what you say hasn't been said before.
Still speaking of noise,
Tweet what you eat might seem like exactly the kind of idea that's filling the Web with pointless noise, but in fact, a lot of weight loss plans encourage tracking what you eat as a way of diagnosing what might be wrong with your diet, so a way to collect quick tweets might be a handy way of keeping track.
Map of languages in Europe . Note to myself 15 years ago: Just because it's Spain doesn't mean they all speak Spanish.
You've probably seen this covered in your mainstream press but since Macworld pretty much owns online tech discussion this week I feel obligated to point out the crown jewel of the show, the
MacBook Air -"a computer that
the company billed as the world's thinnest notebook -- small enough to fit inside an interoffice mailing envelope." The real big deal of it is that it uses a flash (solid state) hard drive instead of the typical spinning disk. That keeps it cooler and faster and few moving parts to wear out over time.
Speaking of Apple toys, the idea of using a
phone as a wireless Web cam is pretty appealing. Now if they can only crank up the quality of phone video.
Why does it feel like every time I read a new term for a new Japanese fashion trend it goes back to a same-looking big, impossible
list of micro-classifications ? Is "gyaru" the overall term for this kind of fashion?
NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber Nine-Eleven - I've been seeing bits of this story but I keep dismissing them as akin to the
old e-mail tax hoax . But now that I've stopped to read more closely it seems there are some legitimate concerns about what the government wants to do and what it might actually be able to do if it generates enough panic and hysteria.
The
local paper where that
UFO sighting in Texas is making all kinds of news is referring people to the
Mutual UFO Network .
Do deaf people really prefer
porn with deaf actors ? I haven't watched any but it seems like a pretty thin gimmick to me. The
founder of a deaf porn company says there's a real difference though. "ASL is the common thread of the deaf community and the social behaviors -- such as eye contact, body language, facial expressions and vocals (deaf people are loud!) -- are unique to our culture. You won't find that in mainstream adult movies."
NOTE: Both of these links are work safe (other than having the word "porn" in large font in the headlines) and the links they contain are well marked as far as what's safe and what isn't.
The Wheelman looks cool and has a cool soundtrack on the video but that's not enough to hide the fact that I would surely end up ripping at least one leg off my body.
Robots Evolve And Learn How to Lie - "We aren't the droids you're looking for. Have you seen Sarah Connor?"
The top ten best ever . Don't dismiss it, read it with your brain. You'll not need to read another top ten list again.
80 million tiny images - "We present a visualization of all the nouns in the English language arranged by semantic meaning."
A little easier to appreciate than the above link: "This article presents
some spectacular data visualizations and infographics which manage to combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information."
Every rule of thumb on Earth in one place. Users contribute and rate them.
Concerned citizens everywhere are invited to submit their designs for a
universal Nanotechnology Hazard Symbol .
I'm not sure why this is big news but I see the cable folks are running it in their news cycle. You can see the whole thing on
Gawker or its related site
Defamer .
I don't find it as creepy as some people are writing. I mean, it's weird and he seems pretty weird, but it's not a total scandal. What seems most odd is all his talk about helping the world. Did I miss his major acts of philanthropy? Or is the idea that he's helping the world by spreading the message of Scientology?
More interesting than the actual video is whether the Church of Scientology will be able to get it off the Web on the basis of some kind of copyright claim. Not likely: "Gawker is now hosting a copy of the video; it's newsworthy; and we will not be removing it."
"A new Silicon Valley startup called International Data Security (IDS) has sent some big waves through the data storage industry by announcing its intent to set up
a fleet of data-serving cargo ships ." Part of the idea is to use seawater to keep the servers cool but the other part is that it can float into international waters so the sites it hosts aren't beholden to any home nation's laws. Meanwhile, what's the error code for "server is at the bottom of the ocean?"
How The Writer's Strike Gave Us The Best Late-Night TV Ever - It's pretty refreshing to see some of the naturally funny late-night hosts just being themselves - though I have to say Bill Maher's show was a bit of a struggle this past week. P.S. This is the first blog entry I've run into using embedded
Hulu clips. It's still in private beta but I guess the embed feature works.
The physics of surviving a 500-foot plunge .
That Gizmodo writer has been banned from CES. They frame members of the press who are critical of their prank as
sucking up to corporations . Scoble
doesn't buy it . (Neither do I, and as I said, I'm sympathetic to people who want to make statements with similar stunts.)
Speaking of Gizmodo, this is a pretty fascinating discovery they've made:
1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple's Future - Includes side by side comparisons of Braun products and Apple products.
One Hundred Percent EDIBLE Googly Eyes! These eyes actually google - though there's something about using pill casings that makes me uncomfortable. P.S.
What a fun blog !
Japanese Bug Fights - Awesome. (Now I want to raise fighting bugs.)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - If I'm nearly crying just from watching the trailer, it goes on my "no thanks" list.
I finally got around to watching that
Bill Gates keynote video . (And
the Slash segment I heard so much about. Which only highlights my criticism of Guitar Hero: Why not just learn to play the damn guitar? It's not that hard and it's WAY cooler.) Everyone I know who watched these clips had the same comment: "I wonder how much
*insert famous person* got paid for that."
Also
that world's biggest hockey fight video , the most amazing part of which is that no one lost a finger.
I have some assorted CES links I neglected to share the other day but I'm trying to catch up on my Web reading (that is what Clicked is about after all) so here's a bit of what I clicked.
Gizmodo's stunt at CES would almost be funny if the stakes weren't so high. They used some of those universal TV-turner-offers to randomly shut off videos displays at the Consumer Electronics Show. I can understand the urge since there is probably no other more gratuitous display of video screens - imagines millions of square feet of the Best Buy TV section. But the whole point is the TVs and what they're displaying. And more than that, companies have
paid a lot of money to be there to display them. And even more than that, they stand to make or lose a lot of money depending on how those displays are received. And on top of it all, thousands of people have very limited time, energy and attention to spread around the show so any down time is especially costly.
I like the idea of using those universal turn-off remotes for when you walk into a bar and no one is talking and all eyes are gobbed on the TV - when TV is infringing upon what should be a social situation. Even interrupting sports viewing makes a statement of sorts. I'm not sure I see the statement in the Gizmodo stunt.
How to actually win a fist fight Mr. Potato Head makes octopus pal - I know animals in zoos are given stimulation like this to keep them healthy and active but I wouldn't have guessed an octopus would have the capacity for play.
How to talk to girls at parties - (There's an audio link at the bottom if you don't want to read it.)
NOTE: Usually it's a pain in the butt that I often skip over obvious instructions and introductions when I see a page of text and just jump into the reading. In this case it worked well for me because it gave the piece extra intrigue. If I'd noticed the big banner at the top I might not have bothered. I'm trying not to say more so you have the same chance. It's a relatively long piece of text so click it when you have ten minutes or so and yes, "girls" can click too.
What I was expecting from the above link was something more like this: How to Have Less Awkward Conversations:
Assuming Rapport - "Assuming rapport" is such great advice for doing anything social I can't recommend it highly enough. "You simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends." Of course, don't act like you're closer than you are and kiss a stranger on the mouth and ask to borrow money, but if you trick your brain into thinking you're talking to a friend, you'll relax a lot, your mind will loosen up, and the person you're talking to will feel more comfortable. That's the best "how to talk to girls" advice I know.
Every now and then I click something that gives me the sinking feeling that I've been out of the loop on a major Web development. I'm embarrassed to say
I hardly know anything about ARGs . And even knowing what I don't know isn't going to help me much in explaining it. ARG means Alternative Reality Game and from the descriptions in this entry it sounds like the kind of viral advertising that leaves you interested in the content but not quite sure what they're promoting. Like remember that video of the UFOs that turned out to be a video game promotion? Imagine that with multiple parts and fake sites and blogs that keep the questions going. That's the alternative reality. This piece is full of links to examples - almost none of which are familiar to me so I'm going to have to spend some time clicking in here to get caught up.
You suck at Photoshop is a Photoshop lesson with a twist. If you don't use Photoshop, give it a try anyway.
Number 2 is also funny (in the same way, so that's assuming you thought the first one was funny) but
NOTE: a curse or two.
"Do blacks actually spend more on
consumerist indulgences than whites?" The inspiration for this piece is Bill Cosby's criticism of black people buying expensive sneakers but what immediately came to mind was the Chris Rock bit on buying fancy rims for your car. The short version is that people keep up with (and try to impress) the Joneses as part of human nature but if you're not living next to any Joneses and instead you have the more wealthy Smiths for neighbors, the Smiths are so far out of your league that you don't try to compete or impress them and therefore you spend less on conspicuous "signals" of wealth.
"As of November,
Countrywide was the second largest online advertiser spending a whopping $57.6 million on online advertising, according to Nielsen/Netratings." I've seen seeing the CNBC breaking news banner about Bank of America getting ready to buy Countrywide for what seems like two days now but the significance to me didn't resonate until I read this piece. It's a good illustration of how bad financial news can cascade through the economy.
At the rate people are dropping out of the primary races
this game may be obsolete soon. I thought it was just a silly video about the candidates doing Kung Fu but the video is actually an introduction (which you can skip when it gets annoying) to a Street Fighter style game.
Welcome to Clicked. If you're not familiar with this blog, usually I post links and descriptions of sites around the Web in an effort to track online trends. But for the next 26 entries I share my picks of what I saw that was interesting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. The posts stretch across the next three pages so don't stop when you reach the bottom of the page.
For all of my cynicism about the press event after the first day of the show, the exhibitors were not corporate conspirators but interesting and enthusiastic up-and-comers. One of my favorite items of the whole trip was the Arantix bike frame from
Delta 7 Sports . It's made of carbon fiber and kevlar but draws its strength from the geometry which they call
IsoTruss . This frame is so light, I swear my cell phone is heavier. The rep said the frame itself would retail for 7 grand and a complete bike will cost $12,000. I'll never own one but as I said to the rep, if they get picked up in something like the
Robb Report they'll sell them faster than they can make them and be jillionaires by this time next year.
Technologically enhanced furniture was everywhere at CES. Lots of massage chairs and gaming chairs with built in speakers. There was also a segment of interactive chair (more
real virtuality ) that was meant to make your television viewing more immersive by shaking you with bass notes.
The Buttkicker is an external system you can put under the leg of your couch that will rumble you with every explosion and gun shot. I sat in a chair that had the system built in. It was comfortable and kind of fun but I'm not sure I'm missing not having one.
I took this shot of the
i-Fi chair because it reminded me of
the Maxell ad (at the time it was blasting Led Zepellin's Black Dog). The rep roped me into sitting in it for a while. This uses the audio signal as opposed to a motor like the Buttkicker. It also has a range of twirly knobs set into the arm rest to control how much and in what manner you want to vibrate when the jet plane flies across the screen.
Something I've seen as a trend in tech generally is an effort to unite our various toys into a single interface/login/controler/phone number/e-mail address. There were a few examples at the show but one that had an impressively flashy display was the
X Lobby . it's really billed as an entertainment system because it can control all of your various media inputs but the screen that caught my eye shows live video of each room in your house and lets you control the temperature and lights. It has a touch screen or a remote control and it all works through that black box there in the lower right. The guy told me they go for 4 grand but you get a thousand bucks off if you buy at the show before the end of the week.
I mentioned the volume of video cameras being offered at CES in an earlier entry but here are a couple of stand-outs:
In case you were curious how they do those "street view" maps, one look at the Tele Atlas truck should answer all of your questions.
The shot below is of a subsidiary of GE. I remembered the GE part so I could disclose the relationship (GE owns NBC) but I forgot to note the actual company. That's not the point so much anyway. The point is the extent to which video culture is being pushed at CES. The idea here is to put these cameras up all over your house and yard, even in the dog house. You can then monitor everything from that small screen on the second shelf.
Do you remember the scene in the Flash Gordon movie when he has to stick his hand in a random hole in a stump (
The Treebeast ) and hope he isn't fatally bitten or stung or whatever? That's how I felt just before posting the "Can't talk. Gawking." entry on Monday. I couldn't find an outlet to save my life and my laptop battery was dead flat. Just as I was contemplating finding a vending machine or something to unplug I found this ugly mess powering an ATM machine, a PDA charging machine and half the convention hall. I held my breath and plugged in an nothing blew up. Woo hoo!
The celebrities at CES are a large part of their marketing but I only ran into a few and half the ones I did see were NBC people. Then again, I wasn't really looking for celebrities and I still managed to find a few so that's a pretty good hit rate.
There was a massive throng gathered in the LG area with their attention turned toward a large box draped with a red sheet. Wow, I thought, an actual, literal unveiling of something. so I wormed my way closer and waited for the big reveal. Then the marketing lady got on stage and told us there'd be a special guest.
And theeennn they played the trailer for Iron Man. I thought for sure Robert Downey, Jr. was going to walk out. No such luck. It was
Jon Favreau , the movie's director. And the unveiling was of the first Iron Man suit in the movie.
Later in the day I wandered into the
Gibson tent. Just as a performer was coming on stage.
Natasha Bedingfield . (
MySpace ) I was surprised at how easy it was to just walk right up and take pictures.
It's cheating (and usually not allowed) to take pictures of famous NBC colleagues but since the NBC Universal booth was out in the open and I wanted to show you what it looked like anyway, here are the people I ran into while I was there:
Nancy O'Dell was there to participate in the launch of the
new Access Hollywood site .
CNBC's Maria Bartiromo might be the hardest working media person down there. It's easy to forget that CES is as much a business show as it is a tech show. She was interviewing business luminaries in the late afternoon on Monday and when I came in at 9 a.m. on Tuesday she was already there doing more interviews.
Ring mouse! (I have no idea.)
Not only did a lot of the attendees have accents (indicating a strong international presence), but some of the presenters barely spoke a word of English. I'm not the kind of person who gets angry over that but it did make for some awkward exchanges.
It's a little hard to make out but the shot below is of electronic cigarettes and cigars. I asked the guy what they were for and if they were meant to serve as an aid to quit smoking. I asked the question three times, three different ways in as simple language as I could but the best I got was, "It's similar like smoking." So there you go.
Another one that still has me stumped was an amalgam of companies who put together a remote house-monitoring system that allows you to check on your house and have a robot perform tasks for you in response to a call from your cell phone. There are four sites listed on the info sheet (I'll upload a picture later tonight):
Toshiba ,
Roboporium ,
Transvirtual , and
FTL but what I don't understand is if you can already control your house through Toshiba's Feminity, what does the robot do?
The crowd around the LG cell phone watch display was so eager you'd think they actually did something. My own interest wasn't really piqued until the employees started turning away people with cameras. "No photos please, no photos please." I guess because it's a concept product they don't want to spread too many details? -or it was just a game of simple showmanship.
Later an NBC colleague named Scott Budman came by to interview an executive about the watches. I pointed out my NBC affiliation to a publicist and was allowed to photograph the interview.
The folks at
Holide had no problem with me photographing their mp4 watches. Eight gigs of flash memory and remarkably light.
The coolest watch technology I saw at the show was a GPS watch from
Garmin . The functionality is impressive enough, tracking your path, guiding you on a pre-set course, tracking your pace, etc. but what's really neat is that it doesn't work with buttons. The bezel feels your touch (it reminded me of the touch pad on a laptop) so depending on how you touch it you access different functions and menus.
You may recall my occasional complaint about the materials used to house electronic devices. Usually, the only time we see wood used in the construction of a gadget is when it's a personal modification or kit. So I was keeping an eye out for alternative materials as I wandered the show and did find a few examples.
Wooden frames on digital photo displays were common.
Though I don't have a photo, what reminded me of this whole category was seeing a display of
USB 2.0 ExecCams . Some are even made in marble. The hardware comes from
ANC .
Below, wooden headphones and ear buds from
iNN .
SanDisk was displaying a line of flash drive jewelry made with precious stones set in gold. Hand made and heavy as heck.
Interestingly, a class of gadget using natural material housing is what might be called "nostalgia," a name I saw on one booth. More like "retro" than "steam punk," there were a number of examples of digital audio systems built into an old-time-looking radio or cabinet box.
Burning records to CD is part of the point of these units.
I wonder if the nostalgia theme for audio equipment is rooted in a the general audiophile snobbery that says music sounded better before digital. On the extreme end of audiophile throwback I found a few booths using
vacuum tubes . The first time I saw it I thought it was just a cosmetic gimmick and like a fool I reached out and touched one of the tubes, burning the back of my finger. Hopefully no one buys the one with my knuckle hair cooked to the top of it. In a twist that I think would make some audio fanatics scoff, there were even tube amplifiers with iPod docks. What makes this a silly proposition is that it's pretty widely recognized that music sounds terrible in the mp3 format, so plugging one into an expensive system would be fruitless. By the way, when I say "expensive one" I mean I heard one woman tell a visitor to her booth that her tube units would retail for 7 grand.
There were a few displays of personal products with solar panels. Some of them had a survivalist purpose and others were about charging your gadgets.
Below is a display at the
Eneloop Battery booth. I'm not sure if those are actual solar panels because the company makes rechargeable batteries so I don't know if solar is their domain but it does represent a general awareness of solar (and green-ness) at the show.
Though it should be obvious, I never realized that that at conventions like this all the car audio guys and quite a few of the satelite navigation guys have amazing tricked-out custom cars to showcase their wares. I felt a little guilty looking under the hood when the product display was in the trunk, but this was a real fun area of the show. It took great restraint to take as few photos as I did.
Since this isn't quite CES tech I'm going to put this behind the "read more" button as well. Tech fans scroll on, car fans, this way.
CONTINUED >>
When we see coverage of the gaming conventions invariably there are photos of the booth girls. CES doesn't have quite the same culture for that. There were still a lot of pretty girls selling stuff or modeling with products but for the most part it was much more subdued. In fact, the model at the Vuzix may have been too hot for the audience. I saw guys giving her a wide berth, looking squeamish and uncomfortable. "Those aren't real," one muttered. "What do they call them, booth babes?" said another feigning a casual indifference. Or maybe I was projecting as I realize I didn't manage to take a picture of this one.
I'm going to move the rest of this behind the "read more" buffer. There's nothing unsafe for work here but for the sake of those who'd rather skip the subject, this way is better. CONTINUED >>
Here's an interesting lesson for exhibitors: make sure your display isn't cooler than your product. Example number one was the amazing glass laptop that drew my interest along with several other people.
As we gathered around trying to figure out how to turn it on, a nice woman came over and explained that everyone had been doing that all day but in fact it was just a display laptop to show how their product, a laptop holder for your lap, worked. We all walked away dismayed.
Later I saw this cool egg workstation with built-in speakers and laptop tray. Neat!
Oh, the product is the laptop which has a new faster processer? Meh.
The kicker to the glass laptop story is that I did eventually find a glass laptop that's about as cool as the fake display one. It's a kit from a company called
Benica (I don't see it on their site, so it might be a show special).
And not only that but I also found a better lap cooler.
I don't know if I ever mentioned it here but at home I keep my laptop on a bamboo cutting board. Mostly because I don't want to turn my testicles into silly putty but also because it keeps the fan clear and no one likes a hot lap anyway. This thing from
Just Cooler plugs into a USB port and actively cools AND has speakers built in. All it needs is a glass laptop.
Reader Mark G left a comment the other day asking about buzz about the Blu Ray/HD DVD format war. That was before
the Paramount announcement rumor (ADDING: Oops,
not so fast ), which has clearly turned the tide in Blu Ray's favor but I still have some perspective from CES that's worth sharing.
(For those who don't follow this story, there are two competing formats of high definition DVD. While there are some practical differences between the two, the real battle has been over who can sign the most exclusive agreements to shut the other other and have the most to offer consumers.)
This is Newsweek's
N'Gai Croal being interviewed on G4 on Monday, being asked the Blu Ray question. His answer is that Blu Ray's deal with Warner was such a big win that it's just a matter of time before Paramount and DreamWorks come over to Blu Ray as well. He said that HD DVD might have a nice trick in offering hybrid players (that play both formats) but that would take away the cost advantage that has been a big selling point for HD DVD.
Later I happened by the HD DVD tent where a presentation was being given on the benefits of HD DVD. I didn't stay for the whole thing, but talking point number one was the lower cost.
Then I passed the Blu Ray tent and they too had a presentation. Their presenter was considerably more smug and he was busy listing all the exclusive deals Blu Ray had signed.
The funny thing is that CES put the two right next to each other in the conference hall.
