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November 17, 2007
Dave’s convinced me. I’m going to ask for my family to contribute toward buying me a Chumby for Chanukah. Using it simply as a (rather small) digital picture frame practically justifies the price by itself. Add in its openness and general coolness, and I want one!
November 16, 2007
The Berkman Center has received a $4 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (for four million, we spell out the entire name) to support the Center’s tenth anniversary and beyond.
This is fantastic news. The Berkman Center is part of Harvard Law but relies on the kindness of others for financial support. From the Berkman posting about the MacArthur grant:
Over the past decade, through a series of grants, as well as substantive involvement in the center’s work, MacArthur has been instrumental in the success of numerous Berkman efforts, such as: OpenNet Initiative, the Digital Media Exchange, Digital Natives, Global Voices, and the study of citizen media. These have led to numerous policy changes, two books, and two spin-off organizations — one non-profit, the other for-profit.
Thank you, John D. and Catherine T.!
October 19, 2007
There’s no nice way to put this. Last night I won the “Mover and Shaker” of the year award from the Mass Technology Leadership Council. Apparently, my three summers at Macarena camp have paid off.
But seriously, thank you, MTLC! [Tags: mtlc ]
September 23, 2007
I’m only a little bit into Bioshock, but so far it’s the most immersive game ever. Its game play may turn out not to hold up as well, but as of now, it’s actually got HalfLife2 beaten. It plops you rather literally into a utopia-gone-sour created by a suave visionary named Andrew Ryan (who, I’ll bet, is as to Ayn Rand as Howard Roark is to hard work). The graphics, the sound, the voice acting, the settings — post-WWII sf — all work to make the city feel like there’s an entire world behind it.
I’m still just warming up. It may get tiresome or disappoint in any of the ways that games, narratives, and computer programs can disappoint. But so far, it’s swell. [Tags: bioshock games halflife]
September 19, 2007
Keynote’s ability to animate objects has gotten much better in the new version (Keynote ’08, v 4), but it’s still not up to PowerPoint. The biggest gap at this point is it’s inability to loop actions. This may be because Keynote apparently doesn’t let users interrupt animations, so a loop would loop forever, making for an especially ineffective but oddly hypnotic presentation. Also, and less important, Keynote is surprisingly sparse with the graphic shapes it provides, and those shapes aren’t as manipulable as PowerPoint’s. E.g., PPT gives control points for block arrows so you can adjust the head, provides “smart” workflow connectors, etc.
Way more important to me: Keynote doesn’t always let you say two effects should run at the same time. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I was finding this frustratingly unpredictable until I realized that in some cases it would allow simultaneous actions that were in slide sets I imported from PowerPoint. (Keynote’s import and export facilities are awesome.) As soon as I altered the action in Keynote, the “do action with” option went away, leaving only the “do action after” choice. If I’ve diagnosed this correctly (and, really, what are the chances?), then Keynote can display behaviors it doesn’t allow users to create.
Weird. But it does leave the possibility of exporting the deck to PowerPoint, doing the animation work, and importing back into Keynote…except you’ll lose Keynote’s over-the-top eye candy, especially for slide transitions.
(I’m not a Keyspan expert, although I’m pretty good at PowerPoint. If I’m wrong about any or all of this, please set me straight. Thanks.)
September 8, 2007
When you’re tempted to borrow the Dave Barry trope of adding “And, by the way, that would make an excellent name for a band,” you can share the name at NowFormABand, a site created by Aanand Prasad. Recent names include: Foxy Morons, Clot, CornSquat and Eat More Chemicals.
None of the names I saw match the pure, godawful ridiculousness of my band’s name in high school: Wheel and the Spokesmen. Even today I can play a truly awful rendition of “This Diamond Ring”…
(Link via Yesh Omrim.)
September 2, 2007
I’ve posted a new issue of my newsletter. You can read it here. You can subscribe for free here.
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The Privacy Non-Principle: Privacy is too squirrely for principles. We need to keep it difficult. The Web as perpetual embarrassment: Suppose the norms never settle down? Are hierarchical organizations hierarchies? Or: Why don’t we salute our bosses? Do all organizations have hierarchies? Not by any reasonable definition of the term. Vowels or Consonants: Some of us are vowelers, some are consonantals. Wanna make something of it? Tip: Scanning is a pain. Snapping is easy. Cool Tool: Librarything.com |
August 24, 2007
I think I “run” faster when listening to my iPod because I have it cranked it up so loud — I have middle-aged hearing loss, also known as “Why do today’s youth mumble? It’s a sign of disrespect!” disease — that it masks the sound of my panting. That can’t be a good thing.
In only vaguely related news, I find fascinating the explanatory hypothesis of why we have out of body experiences. If I understand it (and there is no chance that I do), the idea is that the brain constructs the sense of having a persistent body by synthesizing the various streams of internal and external sensations. When those streams fall out of synch, the brain, which would rather be wrong than confused, synthesizes a body standing slightly outside of the one it’s actually in. Ah brains! Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em!
August 11, 2007
Here are 60 tools that may make your gMail experience better… (Thanks to Henk Nouwens for the link, via Twitter.)
July 27, 2007
It’s Doc Searls‘ 60th birthday in a few days.
Sixty is old. But it wouldn’t be fitting to call Doc an old man. He’s not. Durn, he’s spry for his age!
No, Doc isn’t an old man, but he is about to become an elder. He didn’t get there just by watching the years go by. He got there by working tirelessly for the public good of the Web.
Doc thus will be entitled to the perqs given to elders:
When he talks, you look up from your damn laptop.
When in an Internet cafe, Doc’s packets get sent first. You can just wait in line, sonny boy.
Before your press the “post” button on your blog, you will now spend a few seconds thinking to yourself, “What would Doc say about this?” You will then obey your inner Doc.
If Doc gets crotchety on your ass, you have to sit there and take it. (Not to worry, though. Doc is one of the least crotchety people ever.)
I don’t care if Doc keeps linking to the same YouTube video. You’ll laugh at the end as if it were the first time.
Doc is now entitled to not reply to up to six emails a day. And he doesn’t have to let us know which ones they are.
Happy birthday in a few days, and much love now, Doc!
[Tags: doc_searls village elders ]
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