Alright, first up, what’s been playing non-stop for me. Sadly, Swedish House Mafia is breaking up, but a good remix:
A great piece over at JoHo about mourning Aaron Schwartz
Hmmmm, more Star Wars movies, that will be running parallel to the next trilogy.
Funny or Die adds commentary to Jodie Foster’s bizarre speech.
Fun facts about Morgan Freeman:
That’s it for today, have a great one!
Alright, let’s see what we have today. First up:
It may be almost 70 degrees (and I’m in shorts in January), this is awesome:
The White House has denied the request to construct a Death Star. But go read the response, someone is a great writer, and a huge nerd, it’s awesome!
A magical 3-in-1 connector from CES, seems strange it took this long to come up with this, but it should make Apple users very happy.
The Dark Knight Trilogy, condensed to three minutes. Spoilers, obviously:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-af-Pru2USc
Violence erupts over the AP/Chicago manual wars. Via The Onion, of course.
For all the Myst geeks out there, this totally reminded me of the entrance to Channelwood:
The Good Men Project takes on bathroom graffiti. The image is worth clicking through.
What is less popular than root canals, used car salesmen and even Nickleback? Congress.
I’ve been listening to this almost non-stop, I think the beginning of it is kind of bland, but halfway though it picks up:
Saving sound in a bottle, pretty cool idea.
Also via The Onion, so true, or at least, close to the truth:
Monks will now accept prayer requests via text, pretty cool!
JoHo has a good post up about the suicide of Aaron Schwartz, one of the founders of Reddit, and one of the creators of RSS.
While there were of course a wide range of things that made me change jobs, this certainly was up there among the top of the list.
Music recreated from The Hobbit, Part 1:
That’s it for now, have a great one!
Another quick update for you. First up, open this link and play this song in the background for the next hour. It’s the theme from Jurassic Park slowed down 1000 times (but kept at the same pitch)
Check out these awesome images of a “cloud tsunami“
Today (or at least in ten minutes), is National Darwin Day! Hooray!
Want to bet on the National Dog Show? One, you probably have a gambling problem, two, Slate has you covered on who to bet on.
Want hot soup delivered to you each week (in Pittsburgh)? City Paper profiles a new business, pretty awesome!
And finally, I’ve never heard of National Geographic’s Director of Adventure, but I want it, so I can have this office:
So, here’s what’s going on with SOPA/PIPA, from the PR Breakfast Club:
Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who heads the House Judiciary Committee, expects his panel to resume consideration of the House bill in February. Even President Barack Obama has not exactly killed it.
Rep. Smith will most likely adjust the House bill so it can get an consensus. The same will be done in the Senate. And since President Obama has received campaign donations from Hollywood and the internet industries, according to the Washington Post, he will try to find a way to satisfy both sides of the coin.
Update for everyone, here we go:
First up, the new video from the British Heart Association:
Copyranter covers a Big F’in sale in Japan. Really.
Possibly the most inane correction ever:
Joho covers the reaction to “Free Hugs.” There are two, but the image posted is just awesome.
This video has been making it’s rounds, check it out:
Copyranter showcases this shower curtain. I kind of like it, but could never see anyone actually paying money for it:
Unplggd takes a look at various types of light bulbs and their energy consumption.
And I Heart Pittsburgh finds this amazing cut map on Etsy:
That’s it for now, back soon with more!
Joho once again comments, the Net is a place. Not just a medium, or a space, but a place:
It is a weird place in which proximity is determined by interest, rather than a space in which interests are kept apart by distances. It is a place in which nearness defeats distance. It is a place, not just a space, because spaces are empty but places are saturated with meaning: Place is space that has been made to matter to us. The Internet is a place.
Once again, JoHo reminds me of something that is easy to forget, but a basic truth:
The Internet is not a medium. We are the medium
JoHo points me to this article, touting the death of web 2.0 next October. And truth be told, it’s hard to take the date seriously (more in a moment), it’s really a measure of the mentions of the phrase “web 2.0.” And while that may be true, I think we’re here to stay, at least for a while longer.
Although, just to add, it’s hard to take the article seriously, since it seems to seriously consider Orkut a big-time social network.
Anyway, I tend to agree with JoHo on this, just because this period of the Internet is more focused on user-driven and user-created content, does not mean we’re going to leave that. The Internet is a conversation, and this period is a time when those previously consuming are now engaged, for good or for ill, and actively participating in the conversation.
Will the conversation ebb back to the other side? We’ll have to wait and see, although I’m thinking we’re going to see a mix, and something new, in the future. I do like how the ending of the article was phrased:
The big question, of course, is what will Web 3.0 be like? And the answer, I suppose, is that if we knew that then we wouldn’t be here.
The Myers-Briggs test is a way to classify your personality. A similar test has popped up but in regards to the Internet:
1. Exceptionalist (E) vs. Ordinarist (O). Exceptionalists believe that the Internet is exceptional, extraordinary, and disruptive, the way, say, the printing press was. Ordinarists believe that the Internet is just another new medium, no more revolutionary than, say, CB radio.
2. Technodeterminist (T) vs. Contextualist (C). Technodeterminists believe that the Net by itself brings about transformations against which it is futile to struggle. Contextualists believe that technology by itself does nothing and changes nothing; other factos determine the effects of technology.
3. Optimist (H) vs. Pessimist (P). Optimists believe that the Net is, or brings about, good things. Pessimists believe otherwise. (Note: Since everyone believes their beliefs are true, everyone thinks they are a realist. When someone actively asserts s/he is a realist, s/he is actually asserting a form of counter-optimism, i.e., pessimism.) (Note: The “H” stands for Happiness or Hope.
I think I’m an ECH (but it’s a weak C).
Some fun things to muse about from JOHO:
First, the idea that no matter what we are experiencing, we are framing it for others consumption. I find myself doing that a lot, and especially how I choose my words (although I think that is me being more of a writer than a speaker, so I constantly rewrite as I think about speaking, but anyway):
but I now find myself shaping experience according to how I might present that experience in public: finding the words, deciding what might be interesting in the experience to someone other than me. Blogging has given the public yet more of a grip on the shape of my private experience.
He continues:
Is that good? I dunno. I don’t even know if it’s generally true. I’ve worried before that the little homunculus in my brain that is always scribbling away is a personal mental disorder. (Shut up, homunculus! I don’t care what you say, I’m posting this anyway!)
Which is all followed up the next day by this:
in the age of broadcast, we fashioned experience so that we were stars of an imaginary broadcast; in the age of the Web, we fashion experience so that we are bloggers with a non-massive, semi-social, potentially interactive readership. Under this fact-free analysis, the Web’s fashioning of our experience should be understand in _contrast_ to the celebrity-based stories we made of our lives during the Age of Broadcast.
Interesting stuff all around.
