Video blogging is hot. Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft for PodTech.net (whose servers are so overloaded they can’t even load a homepage). And then, he mentions this: Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That’s, what, a year or […]
June 6, 2006
Tufte’s “Beautiful Evidence” About to Ship
Very interesting thread on complex bookmaking. Start around March 9 to pick up the recent info. He’s self-published 1.2 million books since 1983, and the detail with which he prints these books is unbelievable. Highlights from the link above: * We await a test printing of some of our color tints (e.g., hows does 2% […]
May 23, 2006
Nike+iPod
Amazing advance in product sophistication. Apple partners with Nike on a blockbuster idea. Buy special (Nike) running shoes with a sensor in the footbed. The wireless sensor talks with a small receiver pluged into the dock connector of the (Apple) iPod. A special version of software takes over the display, and adds voice feedback cues […]
May 20, 2006
They Call It A Brand
In contrast to privacy and civil rights, US consumerism continues to be healthy. Friday saw the opening of a 20,000 sq. ft. Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. It’s open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The entrance is a remarkable glass cube, which you enter to descend down to the underground […]
May 19, 2006
What Filmmakers Do For Fun
Here’s a novel idea: Make a film, and charge people $1 to be listed as a producer. The result is a one-second film with 90 minutes of credits. THE 1 SECOND FILM is a 70mm non-profit collaborative film bringing thousands of diverse people around the world together to create film history: ‘The biggest shortest film […]
May 14, 2006
Flying Carpet
Great idea: This project consists of an aerial view of the Sacramento River that is woven into a carpet for the floor of a pedestrian bridge connecting the terminal to the parking garage. This image represents approximately 50 miles of the Sacramento River starting just outside of Colusa, California and ending about 6 miles south […]
May 3, 2006
Who Knew? [episode MMMDCLLXXXVIII]
Yesterday the mailpeople delivered a random new item to my box: The Produce News, “National News Weekly for the Produce Industry Since 1897.” Headlines include “Industry groups release lettuce safety guidelines,” “At Gourmet Garage, the centerpiece is produce” (here’s a photo I took there in December 2000), and “Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee unveils new logo, […]
May 2, 2006
An Anti-Traction, Mobility Denial Material
New Scientist describes a patent for a “riot slimer.” Riot police or troops would wear a back pack with three cylinders – one containing compressed air, another filled with plain water and a third containing a supply of very dry, finely ground, polyacrylamide powder. A nozzle, resembling a shower head, would blasts two separate jets, […]
May 1, 2006
.NET on OS X?
Can someone confirm this rumor I heard last night: Microsoft is porting the .NET runtime framework to Mac OS X. [Note: Currently just a rumor!] If this is true it’s a pretty big deal. With Apple currently offering dual-boot software to run Windows XP on Mac hardware, and the likelihood that they will offer virtualization […]
April 27, 2006
Secret Doors
Tilting stairs, rotating bookcases, disappearing wall stashes. Fully installed starting at $10,000 and DIY kits starting at $1,500. Creative Home Engineering is a registered contracting company that adds value to homes by integrating silent, automated hidden passageways. A Hardy Boys fantasy come true.
April 21, 2006
Subtle Changes Over Time
Photohistory of the Netflix mailer, from 1999 to the present. 2000: Customers are asked to peel off a sticker to reveal Netflix’s return address. The design is eventually deemed too complex. A well-captioned tour through iterative product design – what is the most convenient, cost-effective, earth-friendly, practical DVD mailer? (Remember that you want to send […]
April 14, 2006
Regulating Sliced Bread
I am tired of buying pre-sliced loaves of bread that have an odd number of slices. WTF? What do you do with one slice of bread? Is this some sort of industry handout for the songbirds or something? There oughta be a law.
April 5, 2006
N-Dimensional Web 2.0
Many people are trying to define “Web 2.0” – what it is, what it means, how to build Web 2.0 apps, what makes a company a Web 2.0 company, etc. All of those efforts fall short, because Web 2.0 is n-dimensional. Web 2.0 is “reflecting more complex multivariable situations.1” Today I learned of a new […]
March 26, 2006
Ambient Advertising
Elegant in-bathroom advertising. What can one say? It’s probably just the beginning. via Wealth Bondage.
March 24, 2006
Photoshop Compiler Conversion
Being a software engineer working on Photoshop doesn’t sound like a lot of fun these days. I’d say they have a good long 9- to 12-month slog in front of them. And at the end of it, who knows what they’ll have. It’s a complete re-write of a very large desktop app. Good luck y’all. […]
March 19, 2006
Official Phone of 37signals & Ruby On Rails
The next Internet trend: Ruby and Rails geeks buy the Motorola PEBL phone because David and Jason both raved about it. Less Phone, that sort of thing.
March 13, 2006
Usefulness and The Banality of Business
Umair hit one out of the park with his post on Usefulness and The Banality of Business. There’s this curious notion in America: everything must be useful. This is why, at heart, there’s little, if any room, for thinking; for the long-term; for the creative. It’s the naive culture of the market taken to an […]
March 9, 2006
ActiveSalesforce
Wow. Salesforce.com is now offering a connection adapter for Rails. ActiveSalesforce (ASF) is a Ruby on Rails framework connection adapter that provides direct access to Salesforce.com managed data via AppExchange Web services API and Rail’s ActiveRecord model layer. Standard and custom objects, standard and custom fields are all automatically surfaced as active record attributes, simplifying […]
March 8, 2006
A New Kind Of Showerhead
I’d like to make a new kind of showerhead, one that has more impact. As a simple example, who decided that showerheads are useful only for cleansing the body? There are many other things a showerhead could do for you. For instance: * If you never wanted to shave your legs again, or somewhere else […]
March 2, 2006
Hotel Marlowe, Cambridge, MA
While I was in Boston (Cambridge), I stayed at the Hotel Marlowe; first time. The Marlowe is part of the Kimpton Group boutique chain – “Every hotel tells a story” – found in all the upscale cities you’d expect. It is very close to the SoL offices, and attached to the Cambridgeside Galleria mall. I […]