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January 4, 2005
This Flash documentary by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson on the future of media describes a possible path from here to 2014 for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and the NY Times. I think it eventually goes off the rails, but it’s well done and, IMO, worth the 11 minutes.
From Germany comes this nicely-done game that pits you against the computer or another human, as you each try to take over the world by doing Google queries that turn up documents localized in various parts of the world. The game uses netgeo which finds the geographic location of the IP address of the page. Once you start the Flash app, you’ll get instructions in English…
Not only has Internet use cut into this country’s sacred TV time, we are not paying strict enough attention to the glowing screens in our living rooms. BIGresearch reports (via Center for Media Research) that a survey of 12,000+ “consumers” shows that we’re doing more multitasking while watching TV:
# 66.3% regularly or occasionally read the mail.
# 60.1% regularly or occasionally go online.
# 55.0% regularly or occasionally read the newspaper.
# 51.8% regularly or occasionally read magazines.
# 0.4% mentally undress Larry King
Please, America, let’s focus!
PS: I made up one of those statistics.
Larry Lessig is on The Connection for an hour, live at 11am, EST. Click for local times and stations, or for WBUR where you can pick up the live stream.
January 3, 2005
Kelly Freas, who I knew as the artist responsible for some of MAD’s best early covers, died in his sleep at age 82. Among his accomplishments, according to the AP:
For many years, was the main cover artist for MAD
Designed the official NASA patch for Skylab I
In WWII, he was stationed in the Pacific and in his spare time drew pictures of beautiful women on the noses of bombers. (So he was the guy!)
“Received 11 Hugo awards for his achievements in science fiction, five of them awarded in consecutive years”
And here I thought he was just the guy who made Alfred E. Neuman famously dopey.
Right Wing News lists the 40 most obnoxious quotes of the year. Most but not all are from the left. And some are truly obnoxious. If we did a left-centric one, we could fill it up just with Zell Miller-isms…
Here’s the link. Not much more to say.
I’ve reviewed The Lion King musical over at BlogCritics.org.
Peterme points to a terrific essay by Adam Mathes titled “Folksonomies – Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata” and sparks a discussion of whether “folksonomy” is a good or right term for the sort of thing that del.icio.us does. I happen to think it’s a keeper, but I also like Kirk Scott‘s “tagsonomy.” [Note: Jon Lebkowsky tells me that he was actually the one who came up with it. Kevin Marks seems to have come up with independently.]
January 2, 2005
Steve Johnson writes about a friend who lost a Rhodes Scholarship because of his use of italics. (I may be overstating a little.) It reminds me of my friend who had applied for a faculty position and was waiting to be interviewed at the annual American Philosophical Association meeting. His application was full of his scholarly accomplisments and achievements, the articles he had published, the dissertation he had labored over to support his bold thesis about Nietzsche, and just a few lines about his personal interests. He was waiting in the hallway as the current interviewee departed, and heard a faculty committee ask, “Who’s the next one?”
Answer: “The saxophone player.”
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