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Twaffic

Posted on December 7, 2010 | Leave a comment

Ashton Kutcher tweeted this morning that he hopes The Johnny Cash Project, a Chris Milk/@radical.media production, wins the Grammy for best music video of the year.   The website for the project allows anyone to draw single frames from the video and strings them together, creating a crowd-sourced product that is never the same twice. Now that there are tens of thousands of people on the site checking out or contributing to the project, I thought I’d just add to the site traffic by blogging about it here.  Part of my job is sorting through the CMS and approving images for the video.  Here’s a hint: no porn, no slurs, no hate. Otherwise, go crazy.

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“The Night of the Navy Blue Blazer”

Posted on November 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Check out what Radical made for Tommy Hilfiger’s 25th anniversary collection.

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Tickle Me Typo

Posted on February 18, 2010 | 1 Comment

A search for a “laptop” on the Toys “R” Us website produces 439 results.  Overwhelmed by these options, I decided to narrow the search to the 3-4 year old age bracket, which brought the count down to 21 PC-like toys.  I find this markedly-reduced number no less disconcerting, however; there are 21 laptop products for customers who are, essentially, toddlers?  It’s never to early to introduce another glowing rectangle into your child’s life…

The collection includes products like these:

This investigation into personal computing options for small children was precipitated by an article on Bits two days ago about the Fisher-Price iXL, an $80 iPad imitation — let’s call it the iPadlet — complete with apps, a touch screen, an SD-card slot and a USB port.  Utter insanity.  That it ‘opens like a book’ is an ironic slap-on-the-face for those dinosauric purists who might argue that such products represent yet another turn away from the bona fide book and the literacies it engenders.

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Facebook’s Birthday Makeover

Posted on February 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

Yesterday was Facebook’s sixth birthday, and, as a gift to itself and all its friends, it has begun to rollout of a new design that anchors and organizes navigating power on a meatier left sidebar, features the search box up front and center, and streamlines the menu bar by removing most text and adding new icons.  For a more detailed report of the changes, see PC World.  The redesign has been met with criticism (Surprise!), but, as usual, once users get the hang of the new site the grievances will subside.  According to TechCrunch, Facebook also plans to provide free e-mail service in the hopes of becoming the next big webmail provider.  “Internally it’s known as Project Titan,” writes Michael Arrington, “Or, unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.”  Nothing like a birthday to prompt a makeover and the addition of a few lofty items to one’s lifelong to-do list! [Photo from Techie Buzz]

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Moving Television Online

Posted on February 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Tonight, The Wall Street Journal’s Ethan Smith reports on the big plans of a small start-up called Move Networks Inc. that hopes to bring television to the Internet.  Unlike Hulu or YouTube, which offer a patchwork of content of mixed quality, Move has the technology to allow streaming of high quality, consolidated television content and would reintroduce the sort of planned watching that the Internet has discouraged.  There are a few extra perks of the online experience, Smith writes, like being able to scroll backwards in time on the guide and watch shows after they’ve “aired,” a la DVR.  Some of the financial backers of Move include media big-wigs like Comcast, Microsoft and Disney, but whether they’ll make deals to share content when the time comes is unclear/doubtful.  If Move is successful, cable television and its infrastructure could be the latest technological fossils, resting in a dusty pile above landlines and VCRs. [Photo from Move Networks on WSJ.com]

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iPaddling Upstream

Posted on January 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

Okay. I promised I’d tune back into the Apple tablet hubbub when the fateful day came. Well, today was the day, and, while I can’t break a promise, I’d like to state the obvious, aggregate a few opinions, and be done with it.

Responses to the announcement of the Apple iPad have been overwhelmingly negative (common crits: giant iPhone, awkward size, no camera…). It’s been picked apart by Gizmodo, its “under the hood” capabilities questioned by lalawag, and the Onion, ever the barometer of popular opinion, has implied that it’s as though Steve Jobs pulled an all-nighter and the iPad was the result.  [For a view on the bright side, see the Apple iPad page].

David Pogue’s reaction has just been published on NYTimes.com, and, as usual, his appraisal is level-headed and he cautions us not to jump to conclusions. The iPad offers an incomparable reading/watching experience, perhaps at the expense of creating; it’s a “sack of potential” over which we should not hyperventilate.

So that’s that. Until I hold one in my hands, I’ll leave the opining to the techies.

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Follow the Glowing Rectangles

Posted on January 20, 2010 | 1 Comment

Back in June, the Onion “reported” that we spend 90% of our lives staring at glowing rectangles. Folly has been one-upped by fact: this morning, the Times brings us news of the results of the latest Kaiser Family Foundation study on children and their use of media devices. Compared to their last investigation in 2005, which found that kids spent just under six and a half hours using media, 8 to 18-year-old kids today are spending upwards of seven and a half hours a day glued to devices. Add in multitasking and you’ve got approximately eleven hours of content packed into seven and a half hours of attention.  I can’t say that I’m not part of this trend; I fall asleep and wake up to the glow and tones of media devices. But when I was eight, we had a television with a VCR and local-only channels, a telephone, a fax machine and a backyard.  Guess where I spent most of my time?   I learned what it was to “play” before I knew what video games were and before the Internet was widespread; I fear for the generation whose blocks and tea sets are digital.

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Tablet Rumors, Illustrated

Posted on January 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m back from a brief hiatus and ready to report on the latest tablet rumors (and commence the revelry of senior spring the writing of my thesis). Information just keeps (re)cycling in: Techland, providing a roundup of tablet gossip, cites BGR‘s Apple insider scoop (“out of control” multi touch gestures, “basically an iPhone on steroids”) and the green room blog‘s visual representation (see above) of the rumors, complete with ratings of their likelihood. January 27 is the day of days; until then I will stay out of it and let the mill continue to churn.  As for last week’s attempted one-upmanship by Microsoft, the hype over the Apple tablet is stronger than ever because, well, Microsoft’s HP tablet seriously underwhelmed at the CES.  See PCWorld’s for a review of Why the Microsoft-HP Tablet is Such a Disappointment.

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For the Curmudgeon

Posted on January 5, 2010 | Leave a comment

In today’s Guardian online, Cory Doctorow offers a set of guidelines for the social media naysayers.  If you’re too pressed for time to come up with original criticisms (or read the whole article), these are the tried and true objections to social media that help folks like Brian Williams (see question 2nd from bottom) become super popular: social media is A] inconsequential B] ugly and C] ephemeral.


So, who doesn’t know what this whale picture means? Yeah, I thought so. As Doctorow writes, “Criticising social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook is as pointless as knocking people who discuss the weather.”


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Easy Being Green

Posted on January 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

I just learned about Brighter Planet’s 350 Challenge while reading Cyrus Patten’s post on Mashable, “10 Easy Ways to Green Your Website.” For every blogger that posts the green ‘badge’ on his or her site, Brighter Planet offsets 350 lbs of carbon in his or her name. Cool idea, easy to participate. Check out my badge on the sidebar, just below the index.

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