Twitterholic Top 100 for Vancouver
Hmmm… I’m not sure if being #61 on this list is a good thing or not!
Listing of Entries Tagged as 'Observations & Culture'
Savings Account Comic Released
A true labour of love, my friend Maurcio just released his latest comic, Savings Account.
“A short comic book story about an old woman with nothing to lose. Written by Juliana Azevedo and illustrated by Mauricio Pommella.”
The artwork is splendid and the story is an original. So please consider supporting independent artists and buy it now!
Banned by Metallica!!!
I was having lunch with the Erics today, and the discussion turned to the new Metallica album. Suddenly I remembered a screencap I took back in the day (8 years ago, actually).
It was summer 2000, and the Internet was a wild frontier: usernames couldn’t have @ symbols or spaces, Google was not a verb, people thought downloading music illegally was awesome, and Metallica set the tone for years to come.
Not with their music, but with their hot and fast legal action. It seemed an abstract thing to see Lars cart away crates of seized download records from Napster HQ on TV. But it hit closer to home to me when one Monday I came into work, booted up my computer, and was informed that my Napster account (Woody_the_Bear) was BANNED BY METALLICA. Sweet!
(Click image for larger version)
That just sounds so frickin’ cool, though, don’t it?
Ironically, I didn’t even download ANY Metallica at the time (nor have I ever), because I thought they sucked and sold out. And now I just encourage everyone to Bittorrent the new Metallica album and bootleg their concerts with their cellphone cameras (I would never do that myself, of course). Or, better yet, I encourage people to support and BUY music from some of these lesser-known, but quite deserving artists instead. (Not that they sound ANYTHING like Metallica, but whatever)
Some of the faves on my current iPhone playlist include:
- http://www.tvontheradio.com/
- http://www.amazon.com/Ruun-Enslaved/dp/B000F1HGW4
- http://www.oceansize.co.uk/
Guest Post on the VIDBLOG
Feel free to check out my guest post on the VIDBLOG, where I wax cranky on the further erosion of mystery in modern life (thanks to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the internet at large):
http://2008.vidfest.com/2008/05/20/losing-my-mythology-to-the-social-machine/
Vandalised Bus Shelter Ad in Van, #1
On my way to work one morning, I noticed that someone took the time to make this “statement”. This is graffiti in the first degree–it takes some premeditation to get the roll of tape, the marker, and walk out this sign and carefully cover up the right letters. Or maybe it’s some activist construction worker from the nearby condo building site?
So, of course, out came the iPhone for a quick pic snap.
The Most Effective Way to Visualize Complexity
You’ve heard it before: “We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge“. Of course this isn’t an entirely new thought. There have been lots of elaborate methods proposed to combat this predicament we’re increasingly finding ourselves in. Google seems to do a good job of helping us out with sorting our data.
But I think the onus of meeting this challenge also lies somewhere else…
Rat Brain
Wow, this is really cool. The visualization itself rocks. Then I read about the research and effort behind it…
Graffiti Wall for the Richmond Winter Festival
There’s some really cool stuff happening in Vancouver. Here’s a kick-ass touch-screen project from my buds Alex and Brett featured last weekend at the Richmond Winter Festival–
Design Thievery, or Design Inevitability?
I realize that this article is about more than the SearchMash ”controversy”, but I want to comment on that aspect for a moment and leave the explicit thieves aside for now…
Design is meant to be consumed. When we create “designs”, we are communicating to an audience. For effective communication to take place, we need to communicate using forms and modes that are in keeping with the visual language of the audience which we are communicating with.
Fight the Power, Arrogant Apple
(Photo from http://www.newlaunches.com/)
Dear Steve Jobs:
Did you know this is the age of Web 2.0? Mash-ups, multi/cross-posting, distributed computing, virtual storage, shared media, crap loads of video, and consumer choice… this is reality today. You even use YouTube and Google Maps as services on your iPhones.
Yet, if you know this, then why is my iPhone crippled unless I use a hack to reclaim it? If I want to use my iPhone as a PDA, sans-AT&T, I should be able to.
And how come I lose my entire non-backed-up iTunes library if my computer crashes? Even your smaller competitors let me download my music again if I lose it.
Otherwise, you guys rock. Thanks for listening, most of the time.
Crowd-sourcing for Ketchup
Crowd-sourcing is being utilized again by our advertisers, this time for the next great Heinz commercial. Starting August 27th you can vote online for your favorite from a group of 15 finalists, all hosted on YouTube. As with the Doritos piece, the caliber of some of the work is quite impressive. Of course, with the nearly 4000 entries, it’ll be tough going wading through tons of real stinkers. I wish the judges good luck and good speed in narrowing thousands down to the top 15!
The advent of user comments may make it easier to find and qualify the jewels, but given that the best comments will come from the most-connected submitters, it may boil down to a popularity contest. Despite the hopes for the great media democratization that the web provides, it’s still marketing and promotion that’s king. It just looks different now than ten years ago.
$57,000 for the winner? That’s a real bargain for Heinz. Near-infinite proposals, cheap labour, great content, Darwinian selection–it sounds like Nettwerk CEO, Terry McBride’s prediction at the VIDFEST 2006 keynote that the creative services will be crowd-sourced within 10 years is coming close to fruition (a prediction for which the keynote crowd itself was quite vocal over in the extreme negative)!
But getting back to Heinz, this is one of my favorite entries:
Inventive Guerrilla Marketing Stunt Misfires…
Apparently, the placing of mysterious electronic devices at major transportation hubs is cause for concern. Go figure.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070511/ap_on_re_us/suspicious_devices
What a boon for these guys, I’m sure. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, even if Turner is a short a little cash for legal fees. But what about Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens? Sounds like a bit of scapegoat-ism going down… Hopefully the bonus covers it.
The CIA Should Have Listened to mod7…
We called it over a year before 9/11: http://headlines.mod7.com/?y=2000&m=05&d=16. Check out all the new old mod7 headlines for this month: http://headlines.mod7.com/.
The Problem of Nothing Issue 2
Digital artist, Mark Stuckert, launches issue 2 of his mysteriously titled “The Problem of Nothing“. Check it: http://www.theproblemofnothing.com/
FULL DISCLOSURE: Although Mark is a former W.G.Arndt™ design student, I unfortunately can take little credit for his mad genius. Except, perhaps, for the occasional coding tip.
Surely, this must be a joke…
“Dubai-based real estate firm Omniyat Properties plans to construct a tall building in Dubai modeled after the Apple iPod. The name of the 24-story tower: iPad.”
After decades of consumer products being driven by architectural form (IKEA, Modernism, cheap Eiffel tower statuettes), will pop consumerism drastically drive the form of architecture in a clearer (or shallower) public dialogue? And what happens to the meaning of the building when the iPod is no longer the public’s object of desire?
http://www.salatti.net/ipod-come-modello-per-la-nuova-torre-progettata-da-omniyat/
I guess this isn’t a whole lot different, in concept, from past pop architectural “icons”: Longaberger HQ, Mmmm…, Lucy, Dino.
What’s Your Gnibber?
http://blog.bigsnit.com/index.php/2006/12/08/387
Ha ha! Sounds like a Futurama character.
Will keyword representation on blogs be yet another measurement of the technology divide? It certainly an indicator of public focus (mainstream and geekoid), although I’m not sure what that means in the big picture.
Regardless, before Gnibber gets too widely accepted, let me point out some statistical shortfalls:
- I suppose Technorati is the premiere blog aggregator, but is it truly representative?
- A standard measure of time would need to be established as a baseline, or the numbers are meaningless. GNP is usually annual for obvious reasons. I think a Gnibber should always be daily. Just because. (But then we would need accurate population numbers on a daily basis. Oh dear, this is getting too complicated.)
- Any number that needs to resort to negative exponents is retarded. Therefore, a Gnibber should be per thousand to bring the number up to something more meaningful. (Gniberths? Wouldn’t that be fun to say over and over again - instant lisp.)
- Places with higher Gnibbers aren’t always the coolest places. However, the comparison of Vancouver to Toronto does indeed confirm that Van is far cooler than TO, as does this comparison:
“Canada” posts the past 1 day
(12/10’s avg Gnibber = ~0.22, using the new per thousand metric).
“United States” posts in the past 1 days
(12/10’s avg Gnibber = ~0.03).Granted, there are more variations on United States (USA, US, the States, the Great Satan, etc.) than on Canada, but it sounds odd that the Canada should outrun the US by a whopping 7 times.
Celebrate 7
Seven year itch, seven days in the week, seven deadly sins, Shabbat, lucky number seven, Kazakhstan, nitrogen, bell character, white dwarf stars, pure water, number of heavens, human cognition, hot cyborgs, James Bond, John Elway, Mickey Mantle, Wonders of the Ancient World, ages of man, seas, chakras, chmod 777, dirty words you can’t say on TV [warning to the kids: lots o’ obscenities here], mod7.
Why do we celebrate only anniversaries divisible by five, when the sevens certainly seem to have some deep cultural significance, as well? Never mind that we have five fingers per hand–that body-centric thinking is sooooo prehistoric. It’s all about the mind now, baby.
Well, mod7’s seventh anniversary is coming up…
Canadians are working more hours than they were in 2000
The recent work/life balance event I put together has got me thinking (again) about the way I spend my work time and the nature of what is “work”. Stephen Beck sent along this interesting link: a story on the Stats Canada study on how much Canadians are working. It makes me wonder who these slackers in British Columbia are — working an average of 1700 hours a year? That’s about 34 hours a week, minus two weeks vacation. Up to this point in the year, I’ve put in over 2100 hours, and I’m on my way to wrapping up with over 2200.It’s very interesting looking back. In 2001, I felt like I worked my butt off, really didn’t like what I was doing as much (more managing than designing), and felt like I was already approaching burnout. But when I now look at my hours for that year, it was 2200 — less than I’ll probably end up hitting this year. But this year, even with two kids and arguably more stuff happening on the side, I feel like I’m more balanced, profitable, and more satisfied with work than ever.
It certainly seems true that the nature of your work and the rewards of your work situation impacts your efficiency and the perception of how much your “work” drains away from “life”. Last year (2005), I think, was the perfect balance for me — 1900 profitable hours worked, with about 6 weeks of time off (including parental leave): that equals happiness!
Work/Life Balance Event Designed by Wil Arndt
The Wil Arndt-designed “work/life balance” event was held tonight at the Vancouver Film School. Can you rise to the top of your field, work less, and not sacrifice your family, interests and personal life? Passionate audience members joined an all-star panel in a lively discussion about work, life, and everything in between.
Thank you to our distinguished panel: Co-moderators Wil Arndt (mod7) and Gordon Ross (Vice President, OpenRoad) facilitate a cross-industry panel, including Stephen Beck (Principal, Engine Digital), Ron Bignell (Electronic Arts), Mark Busse (Industrial Brand Creative), Eric Karjaluoto (Principal, smashLAB), Robert Ouimet (Partner, At Large Media), Lisa Vogt (Managing Partner, McCarthy Tétrault LLP), and Jeremy Thorp (Electronic Media Instructor and Designer, blprnt.com). And thanks to New Media BC for sponsoring the event.
Further reading (courtesy of Gord and panel members):
Balance is Bunk!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-life_balance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Race
From the Canadian Government
Article on Statistics Canada Study
An Exercise in Crisis Spinning
In the wake of his racist barrage captured on stage, Michael Richards has hired a public relations expert, someone who’s hopefully quite adept in the ways of spin. Here’s part of what New York publicist Howard Rubenstein had to say on Richards’ behalf:
“Michael apologized profusely. He wants to heal the tremendous wound that he’s inflicted on the American public, and on the African-American community.”
Apart from the obvious and frightening underlying issues at work here — issues that point to a lingering and deep-seated racist grip still at work in America — it will be interesting to follow this story from this angle, to see how (and, truly, if) Mr. Rubenstein can help dig Richards out of this one.
If, somehow, he actually succeeds, I may never believe anyone in the media ever again…
(Side note: man, are cell phone cameras getting good these days, or what?)
The World Justified
At the risk of sounding like some kind of pro-north dictator, after looking at this interpretation of the world’s landmass, it kind makes sense why the northern hemisphere dominates the world culturally and militarily.
The creators of this work have other cool and shiny things on their website, http://www.detanicolain.com/.
Thanks for the link, Richard.
Re-Living my Youth Just Got Easier
Man, I frickin’ LOVE the internet. I thought critical parts of my childhood where lost forever. Not so!
They even have long-lost faves, M-M-M-M.A.S.K., Mighty Orbots (visually stunning), the hillbilly-riffic Moog stylings of the Land of the Lost, the wicked strat-noodling git solos in Thundercats, and Tranzoooooor-Z!
Rad Touch Screen Research Out of NYU
Touch screens are kinda cool, but you’ve probably never thought about one drawback most of them share: the “mouse” mentality. Most of those devices are just glorified mouse pointers. That means you can only “click” or “hover” on one tiny part of the screen at anytime.
That all changes when you go all multi-touch interaction like these dudes (and dudettes?) from NYU.
Check out that video demo–that’s pretty rad touchscreen action, yo. We’re talking Minority Report futurism, man. Think using both hands on the screen at the same time. Think sharing the screen with many other participants. And this isn’t about using this for some dumb museum kiosk. This comes all so closer to removing the whole monitor/keyboard/mouse paradigm from everyday computer interaction.
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/
Sure, it’s probably really slow in practice, and the potential applications just barely scratch the surface. Now, the BIG question is: HOW DO I GET ONE??!!
As I said, the idea of touch screens are kinda cool, but the execution of their lame uses usually sucks these days. Like those smudgy, cludgy screens you see at real estate sales centers, or next to exhibits in museums… museums that are trying to get hip with the multim3dia kidz by spending $100k developing a kiosk that wastes your time by making you wade through 5 minutes of tacky “interactive” PowerPoint-like presentations, when the same amount of learning and information could have been gained just by reading the stupid exhibit description or talking to the janitor. Never mind the scores of kids crowding the thing successfully hacking into the badly-hidden Window 98 / Internet Explorer combo that powers the “experience”. Man, have we fallen for the kiosk-developer’s pitch or what?
So when you think touch screens, I hope you think bigger than what we’re used to… I want to live in a touch screen box, baby.
Lego Fun for the Week
People love their Legos. The little plastic blocks inspire an almost fanatical obsession to create new worlds and new devices. It’s a marriage of labour, wonder and geekdom unparalleled. Legos are the first pixels: with basic ‘digital’ units of colour and space, Lego engineers craft all sorts of things.
We have the Lego pinhole camera:
Visit the Lego Pinhole Camera Site
And now we have digital Legos; this is my daughter’s and my current XBOX addiction:
Advertising with Clean Grafitti
The dudes have got it going on: http://symbollix.com. Guerilla street marketing, advertising, and public art — and the police don’t know what to make of it, ’cause there’s probably no law against cleaning public property… Brilliant!
Who Writes Wikipedia?
Aaron Swartz’s investigation and article into the evolution of Wikipedia content is interesting. The typical ‘80/20′ rule (80 percent of the work is usually done by 20 percent of the people) seems to be upended. Calculating raw content ‘volume’ (number of bulk letters added instead of number of overall ‘edits’), Aaron deduces that Wikipedia is content-managed by the masses, not a core group of about 500, as the Wikipedia founder believes. A good read: Who Writes Wikipedia? (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)
Listr 2.0 - Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughts
OMG, these company names are for real! Listr 2.0
Tribble Ad Agency » The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs
Wow, this is funny: Tribble Ad Agency » The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs
Prosecutors to monitor Madonna act
Prosecutors to monitor Madonna act: Those Germans shouldn’t charge Madonna with “insulting religious beliefs”, they should prosecute for “insulting good taste with tired, banal posturing”. Wearing a crown of thorns in a concert? Please, how 1995. Now if she’d wear a Qur’an brassier, that might be more relevant to the times.
MS Live Labs’ Photosynth
My secret mole at Microsoft passed this little top-secret project over to me:
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html
Wow, what a brilliant concept — use the world’s photos to reconstruct a location.
(Also worth checking out are the other lab-like projects that the Evil Empire is working on: http://labs.live.com)
Here’s a snippet from my MSN Messenger conversation with said-mole:
jeff jeff jeff cat! says:have you seen this? http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html jeff jeff jeff cat! says:should try leveraging it for jerde v2 Wil (Mod7) says:wow, that’s @#$% [ed] wicked Wil (Mod7) says:i wonder how they will address temporal change Wil (Mod7) says:i.e., my photo of the woodward’s building that isn’t there anymore jeff jeff jeff cat! says:very interesting.. i wonder if thigns would gradually deconstruct Wil (Mod7) says:maybe timestamps. etc might help, combined with a little ‘timestamp’ voting where more images of a particular location exist \ Wil (Mod7) says:but, yeah, with incomplete, multi-tiome coverage Wil (Mod7) says:it could be a wild look jeff jeff jeff cat! says:it is effed up.. what you were asking about “what if a building goes away” jeff jeff jeff cat! says:that’ll be a feature soon enough.. since photos have a timestamp, they’re thinking of letting you look at a scene chronologically.. and possibly into renaissance time (using paintings & etchings). Spladow! Wil (Mod7) says:pow!~ that’s HOT jeff jeff jeff cat! says:yeah dude.. soon enough there will be a public version. The crazy thing is - there’s NO human input. All the positioning, stitching, recognition, 3d, etc. is automated by robots Wil (Mod7) says:THAT is what computers should be doing Wil (Mod7) says:i’m so impressed jeff jeff jeff cat! says:Almost as cool as the software is the mechanics behind it. It’s a bit much to get into, but i’m glad to know there are smart smart people out there. Wil (Mod7) says:what’s interesting is how that emerged from a rapid visualization tool
Blog Safely
Read up here on how to blog safely– and anonymously – and avoid getting fired, arrested or ridiculed for what you publish on your blog.
Yes, I said arrested!
IP masking, anonymous ghost pings, paper shredding, records policies, obscuring identifying details: wow, this is some decidedly anti-Web-2.0, hackerly, spy stuff.