With any luck, I’ll be taking my grandchildren on visits to HomeStarRunner.com. “Kids,” I’ll say, “this is what I was spending my time watching back in the day.” “You mean, while you weren’t fixing the climate catastrophe?” they’ll ask. “Hush,” I’ll say, “and put your respirators back on. Strong Bad’s got a hilarious old-skool rap coming up, and you’re gonna need extra oxygen for the belly laugh.”
With any luck, I’ll be taking my grandchildren on visits to HomeStarRunner.com. “Kids,” I’ll say, “this is what I was spending my time watching back in the day.” “You mean, while you weren’t fixing the climate catastrophe?” they’ll ask. “Hush,” I’ll say, “and put your respirators back on. Strong Bad’s got a hilarious old-skool rap coming up, and you’re gonna need extra oxygen for the belly laugh.”
With any luck, I’ll be taking my grandchildren on visits to HomeStarRunner.com. “Kids,” I’ll say, “this is what I was spending my time watching back in the day.” “You mean, while you weren’t fixing the climate catastrophe?” they’ll ask. “Hush,” I’ll say, “and put your respirators back on. Strong Bad’s got a hilarious old-skool rap coming up, and you’re gonna need extra oxygen for the belly laugh.”
An example of “atompunk,” a style of imagining the 21st century from the vantagepoint of postwar America in the 1950s.
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/12/the-electric-friendship-generator/
An example of “atompunk,” a style of imagining the 21st century from the vantagepoint of postwar America in the 1950s.
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/12/the-electric-friendship-generator/
An example of “atompunk,” a style of imagining the 21st century from the vantagepoint of postwar America in the 1950s.
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/12/the-electric-friendship-generator/
“In the interim period, apps will be very successful,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mozilla’s mobile division, in an interview with PC Pro. “Over time, the web will win because it always does.” Google, with its investment in Web-based operating systems, is behind this too, and stresses how much money companies and users can save by going to the cloud. (No mention of the privacy lost however.)
So should mobile developers be learning objective-C (used for native iPhone apps) or HTML 5 + JavaScript (used for any old Web apps)?
“In the interim period, apps will be very successful,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mozilla’s mobile division, in an interview with PC Pro. “Over time, the web will win because it always does.” Google, with its investment in Web-based operating systems, is behind this too, and stresses how much money companies and users can save by going to the cloud. (No mention of the privacy lost however.)
So should mobile developers be learning objective-C (used for native iPhone apps) or HTML 5 + JavaScript (used for any old Web apps)?
“In the interim period, apps will be very successful,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mozilla’s mobile division, in an interview with PC Pro. “Over time, the web will win because it always does.” Google, with its investment in Web-based operating systems, is behind this too, and stresses how much money companies and users can save by going to the cloud. (No mention of the privacy lost however.)
So should mobile developers be learning objective-C (used for native iPhone apps) or HTML 5 + JavaScript (used for any old Web apps)?
#img1#This article from the New York Times discusses forensic photogrammetry, a way of analysing crime scenes with techniques familiar from 3D modelling. So if that job as a game animator falls through, there’s always CSI…
img1 caption=’Image from the New York Times’
>
#img1#This article from the New York Times discusses forensic photogrammetry, a way of analysing crime scenes with techniques familiar from 3D modelling. So if that job as a game animator falls through, there’s always CSI…
img1 caption=’Image from the New York Times’
>
This article from the New York Times discusses forensic photogrammetry, a way of analysing crime scenes with techniques familiar from 3D modelling. So if that job as a game animator falls through, there’s always CSI…
Image from the New York Times
Dec 132009
These whimsical projects by Aram Bartholl remind me of projects from this past semester’s Contagious Media class:
Dec 132009
These whimsical projects by Aram Bartholl remind me of projects from this past semester’s Contagious Media class:
Dec 132009
These whimsical projects by Aram Bartholl remind me of projects from this past semester’s Contagious Media class:
Dec 122009
About as far from Microsoft Word as you can get:
Dec 082009
I suppose it was only a matter of time before an industry of carpetbaggers would be knocking on the door of DIY political bloggers. Now, for the politician who wants his own blog so he can show he’s a “man of the people”: political themes for WordPress blogs (think stars-and-stripes banners and pictures of people shaking hands).
Ghostwriter not included. (via Craig Dietrich)
Several major publishers confirmed ongoing rumors Tuesday by announcing a partnership to develop an online “store” for digital publishing content. Condé Nast (Ars Technica’s parent company), Hearst, Meredith, News Corp., and Time Inc. are all involved in the project, aimed at bringing the traditional magazine experience to digital devices such as mobile phones, handhelds, and tablets. The venture does not yet have a name, but will eventually be open to all publications—not just those from the joint partners.
The first step will involve developing open standards for the participating publications—not just to address formatting issues, but also to make it easier to sell ads in the new format. According to the official announcement, the companies say that the goal is to offer a publishing platform that can be used on multiple devices while maintaining the “distinctive look and feel” of each publication.
“For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops,” explained John Squires, the venture’s interim managing director in a statement. “Once purchased, this content will be ‘unlocked’ for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform.”
Such a project has been rumored for some time, however, with many observers describing it as the “Hulu for magazines.” It has also been widely reported that Condé Nast and gang are specifically aiming to bring content to the as-yet-unannounced Apple Tablet, but the companies don’t go any further than saying the venture is meant to target all types of devices. (Condé told Peter Kafka last month that Apple won’t even acknowledge that it has any tablet plans, so it certainly doesn’t seem as if anyone’s in cahoots on that one.)
This brings up a major challenge that publishers will have to face as this project progresses: the lack of a distinct product genre that would be ideal for reading magazines in digital format. The Kindle and other e-book readers already have their own format for reading publications like newspapers, and while some enjoy reading the daily broadsheet on a Kindle, it’s not the same experience as reading physical copy. The screen limitations of e-book readers also wouldn’t fit well with the traditional magazine layout. Tablet PCs are still quite expensive and far from mainstream products—it’s hard to imagine that more than a few customers would buy a tablet PC. The iPhone and iPod touch are good for reading small snippets on the fly, but few people sit down for a hardcore reading session on such a tiny screen. Without an obvious hardware go-to, such a storefront will have a hard time taking off.
And as far as the storefront itself, no one knows when it will arrive. So far, the companies offered few juicy details about it aside from the fact that it will exist at some point. If implemented well, it could help boost the struggling publishing industry, which has been trying to find ways to bring its content to the digital world without sacrificing the magazine layouts we know and love and the ad revenue that comes with them.
The flip side is that this could fall flat—Internet users are accustomed to being able to copy and paste passages, share articles with others, and manipulate content to fit their needs. Will a “tabletized” version of a magazine layout be able to offer that kind of flexibility? Users have also become accustomed to seeing a lot of magazine content online for free. Will they want to pay extra for a digitally-recreated magazine experience? We won’t know the answer to this and other questions until more details are available. One thing is certain: the online experiences—especially the missteps—of the music, television, and movie industries demonstrate the challenges of bringing an old media format to a digital medium.
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I think more of our graduates should be launching startups. While many U-Me graduates end up taking entry-level jobs, we New Media professors don’t deliberately prepare them for the bottom rung of a megacorporation. We struggle to get them to think for themselves.
The conclusion of Paul Graham’s essay on startups versus jobs puts a nice spin on this:
“People just don’t seem to get how different [a startup] is till they do it. Why? The key to that mystery is to ask, how different from what?
“Once you phrase it that way, the answer is obvious: from a job. Everyone’s model of work is a job. It’s completely pervasive. Even if you’ve never had a job, your parents probably did, along with practically every other adult you’ve met.
“Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to be like a job, and that explains most of the surprises. It explains why people are surprised how carefully you have to choose cofounders and how hard you have to work to maintain your relationship. You don’t have to do that with coworkers. It explains why the ups and downs are surprisingly extreme. In a job there is much more damping. But it also explains why the good times are surprisingly good: most people can’t imagine such freedom. As you go down the list, almost all the surprises are surprising in how much a startup differs from a job.
“You probably can’t overcome anything so pervasive as the model of work you grew up with. So the best solution is to be consciously aware of that. As you go into a startup, you’ll be thinking “everyone says it’s really extreme.” Your next thought will probably be “but I can’t believe it will be that bad.” If you want to avoid being surprised, the next thought after that should be: “and the reason I can’t believe it will be that bad is that my model of work is a job.”
http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html
In his response, Bruce Sterling sums up the connection between artistic and entrepreneurial innovation nicely:
“Basically, founding a start-up company almost exactly like winging it in the world of art or literature, except without any art or literature.”
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/11/what-tech-startups-are-really-like/
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“Police arrested a senior vice president from Island Def Jam Records, saying he hindered their crowd-control efforts by not cooperating. The crowd at a mall where Justin Bieber was appearing got out of control, and police wanted the man to send a tweet asking for calm; he refused and they arrested him on a felony assault charge ‘for putting people in danger.’”
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/mGXH9PO__N8/Police- Arrest-Man-For-Refusing-To-Tweet