Remains of the Day

Fun with Chat Roulette

Suggestions on how to improve Chat Roulette.

On the other hand, in its current incarnation, it's a great party drinking game. Open two laptops, set two people against each other with Chat Roulette open. The first person who ends up seeing another guy, uh, doing what I believe the French refer to as a "menage a un" has to down a beer.

Or how about Chat Roulette Roulette? Matt Haughey explains:

ChatRouletteRoulette: Four people in a room with laptops, everyone connects to ChatRoulette, first one to see a cock is out!

Go forth and create

Another older post I've just left hanging out there forever...

The joy of having your first novel reviewed by the New York Times Book Review quickly turns to horror when it turns out to be a succinct dismissal. Ronlyn Domingue writes about what that feels like.

Although the advice to have a thick skin was well-meant, it is emotionally dishonest. Sharing one’s writing is a naked act not intended for the meek. Harsh words can—and sometimes do—undermine the most confident, successful writers. It’s human. It’s okay. It will pass. Now, my guidance to myself, and others, is to have a permeable skin, one that doesn’t resist or trap the good or the bad. Reviews, critiques, comments come in, then move on. Then there’s space, inside and out, for something new.

Every artist experiences the little deaths that come with work in a creative field. In fiction writing seminars in college, every story you wrote would be read out loud, and then the others in the class would take turns offering their critiques. In film school, the same was done for our scripts, rough cuts, fine edits, final works.

Professors always counsel everyone to be civil with their criticism, to keep it about the work and not the person, but I suspect it's impossible to ever accept even the most even-tempered of criticism of one's work without suffering the smallest of deaths (the French use la petite mort in another sense, of course, but it's always felt more accurate here).

But even if your classmates and peers are respectful and professional, and for the most part I'd say my creative writing and film school peers were very much so, at some point if you're to succeed in your field you'll have to put your work out there for an audience that isn't in the same room with you, that isn't operating under the potential collateral damage of your potential subsequent feedback on their work. Then the gloves come off.

The internet has only accelerated that. It's given everyone a megaphone, and even if they're shouting into the wind (2 followers, one his mother, the other is Candy327, 5 tweets), Google or Twitter is saving their shouts for you to summon with a few mouse clicks. Before the internet came along, the cliche that "everybody's a critic" may have been true, but for the first time we can hear them all at once, all the time, one massive and stern Greek chorus of disapproval.

But whereas the chorus in a Greek tragedy at least spoke in meter, with a certain poetic eloquence, the anonymity of the web has reduced us to our most savage and bitter. We are all cavemen, all id. Civil debate and discourse isn't the norm in any large and open community online. 4Chan bullies prowl the hallways of the web like the high school thugs every awkward teenager dreads running into.

As a creator, you have to balance receptivity to criticism with the conviction of your creative choices. It's not easy withstanding the constant, withering glare of a million critics, but just in taking those steps to cross over from the darkness of the peanut gallery to the bright lights of center stage you've set yourself apart.

As for the millions of judges out there, I urge you, the next time you go to murder someone's book with your poison pen, try to write a book yourself. The next time you leave a movie theater ready to dismiss what you watched for two hours, try to direct your own short movie. What the world needs is not more judges. As the old saying goes, everbody's a critic.

Dramatizing the digital life

Virginia Heffernan writes about the challenge of dramatizing the online life.

Anyone who has followed fantasy football or an eBay auction at the office — and gotten away with it — knows that many of our everyday activities now look like work. Typing and scrolling and peering at a computer, you could be doing anything: e-mail, accounting, short-selling, browsing porn, buying uranium, getting divorced.

This odd accident of life online — the increasing visual homogeneity of our behaviors — may be a boon to procrastinators, hobbyists and multitaskers. But it has some victims. I don’t mean bosses concerned with productivity (who cares about them?). The crowd truly stymied by the merging of human activities are filmmakers. If fighting now looks like making up now looks like booking travel, as it does when people conduct their affairs online, how do film directors make human action both dramatic to viewers and roughly true to life?

Another anachronism that drives me crazy in the movies is continued reliance on analog answering machines so that either the audience or some other person in a room can eavesdrop on a voicemail meant for another person. Who owns one of those machines anymore? It's a crutch for unimaginative storytellers.

The geek shall inherit the earth

This much-blogged article by Garry Kasparov in The New York Review of Books is worthy of the attention. What's fantastic is Kasparov's deeper exploration of the impact of the rise of powerful chess software.

Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it's no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies.

...

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

...

The availability of millions of games at one's fingertips in a database is also making the game's best players younger and younger. Absorbing the thousands of essential patterns and opening moves used to take many years, a process indicative of Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours to become an expert" theory as expounded in his recent book Outliers. Today's teens, and increasingly pre-teens, can accelerate this process by plugging into a digitized archive of chess information and making full use of the superiority of the young mind to retain it all.

What's perhaps even more intriguing, though, is Kasparov's recount of the results of a chess tournament hosted by a chess website in which players were all allowed to play against each other with the aid of computers.

The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and "coaching" their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.

Can this result (weak human + machine + better process as superior option) be replicated in other areas of human-computer partnership? While Kasparov is talking about chess in this article, the fact that so many people now carry phones that are more powerful than the earliest personal computers has elevated the importance of human-computer collaboration. We are not yet the cyborgs of sci-fi imagination, but in some aspects of life, we're closer than we may realize.

The gap between those who can work in partnership with computers and those who cannot (for whatever reason, socioeconomic or generational or other) is evident in so many ways. Even among those who are computing-enabled, there are differences in ability. When I'm out with a group of people and we're looking for a restaurant, or directions, the people with smartphones with Yelp and Google Maps are more capable than those without. We can go further and observe that even among those with smartphones, some are better at using them to their full potential than others. Is that a result of superior process, or a stronger human?

Esoteria

Lindsay Beyerstein defends Y Tu Mama Tambien from a detractor who implicates the movie's female lead Luisa as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. What is a MPDG?

Onion AV writer Nathan Rabin coined the term to describe Kristen Dunst's character in a scathing review of Elizabethtown: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.

Natalie Portman is usually trotted out as Exhibit A in MPDG litigation.

I liked Y Tu Mama Tambien and endorse Beyerstein's defense against said charges. But I also enjoyed adding MPDG to my vocabulary.

***

A touching Roger Ebert story. No, not that one, though that is a great one that's gotten a lot of coverage recently, and deservedly so. In losing his voice, he found a new one in his online journal (his output has expanded into Twitter as well). I have my own Roger Ebert stories from having chatted with him a few times at Sundance, but I'll share those another day.

I DVR'd Ebert on Oprah today, but I'm not sure tonight is the night to watch. I must brace myself for the emotional impact.

***

"All the Good Stuff Always Happens in the Ladies Room" by Paulina Porizkova

It's a funny read, honest and not ironic. It evokes my sympathy when I read about her "frequent bouts of self-doubt and the occasional humiliation of being a celebrity past her prime" and I don't often feel sympathy for supermodels, the title granted her in her byline.

I link to it mostly because it reminded me that we live in an odd age when celebrities are writing at us in an unmediated fashion more than I can ever remember. Celebrity Twitter accounts, blogs, websites, and iPhone apps. I'm not sure what I should feel when a celebrity tweets from their high life: what other celebrity they just ran into, what it's like on the red carpet or on the movie set or the exclusive party they're at. It seems like vanity, or perhaps insecurity, or maybe they have nothing else to write about because their lives are really one long string of parties punctuated by an occasional gig that resembles work. I'm not sure how I feel about this other than it should be the subject of a Chuck Klosterman essay.

***

Shawn Blanc makes his plea for a good iPhone feed reader. I made a similar wish earlier this month.

I use three newsreaders on my iPhone today: Byline, Reeder, and NetNewsWire. Use might not be the right word. I bounce between them depending on my mood, but none of the three thrill or delight me yet.

I differ from Shawn a bit in my primary complaints about the three. Byline is the fastest of the three and allows offline reading which I love, but a few things about its UI irk me. One is that after loading its initial set of items, you have to click a link at the bottom to load more stories from your feed. But that link is placed right below a Mark All As Read link which I hit by mistake all the time. The second is the inability to select stories from an individual feed. Sometimes I don't want my full newsfeed, I just want the latest from one feed. I'd also love the option to save state the way Tweetie does so i can start browsing forward from the last article I was shown in my previous Byline session.

Reeder allows me to select individual feeds, but it doesn't save state. The worst problem is that it chokes on syncing all the stories from all my feeds. I spend a lot of time waiting for Reeder to register my screen gestures as it syncs; those long delays drive me crazy. I can't tell if my iPhone has frozen or if Reeder is just constipated (I have syncing turned on at startup so every time I launch the app I'm waiting around for something to happen). I've had to all but turn Reeder syncing off to use the app which is too bad because it has a lot of other features I appreciate.

As for NetNewsWire, on the iPhone it is essentially unusable for anyone with any healthy number of feeds. It feels as if my phone has just frozen.

My hope is that someone solves this on the iPad because that has the potential be a fantastic newsreader device, especially as the Kindle is not great in that area. An iPad with a great Google Reader app and access to browsing all the usual news websites through mobile Safari and a great ebook reader would be something I spend a lot of time with on the toilet. Did I say toilet? I meant "around the house."

***

Is this the same old woman who looks like a little girl from Orphan?

We need Bertrand Russell to answer this

If Twitter is down (as it is right now) and you can't use Twitter to complain about it, does anyone hear you?

Related meta phenomenon: the most common use of Google Wave thus far seems to be to complain about how useless Google Wave is. I tried using it as a collaboration tool for my team, but they revolted (more on what Google Wave desperately needs some other time).

Three random techie notes

Chris Messina proposes some new syntax for Twitter: slashtags, namely...

• /via - transported over from the blog world, where via has long been a standard for crediting someone for making you aware of something you're now sharing.
• /by - a method for direct attribution.
• cc - carbon copy, to be used if you want someone to see a tweet, as in "cc @eugenewei"

Web power users can be self-important about syntax, especially when it comes to open systems like Twitter, where the whole joy is in seeing how users take something atomic and simple and use it to build more sophisticated structures. But I think this proposed syntax is sensible.

---@---

Farhad Manjoo grabs a comment from a thread at Bruce Schneier's security blog and shares a sensible and simple process for devising online passwords that are easy to remember for you, hard to guess for others.

---@---

I've long used ecto as a blogging client, but some time ago it was bought by Illuminex, and since then, bugs have slowly piled up with no updates. When it was just the work of one lone developer, updates were posted regularly.

It's clearly time for me to look for a new blogging client, but I bring this up as another example of why I always hate when a piece of software I love, developed by a passionate individual or individual(s), gets purchased by a larger entity. There are many reasons things can go south--maybe the company just wanted to purchase the developer, not the software, or maybe the software becomes neglected among the dozens of priorities in the company, or maybe the urgency to serve the customers of that software well are diluted by the broader customer set of the larger entity--but the end result is often a tragic ossification for a once relevant product.

RIP, Ecto.

New apps for the iPhone

Two great apps for the iPhone dropped today. One is Tweetie 2, the second version of my favorite iPhone Twitter client. The original Tweetie cost $2.99 and was well worth it. When it was announced that Tweetie 2 would also cost $2.99 for all users, regardless of whether or not they had purchased the previous version, there were plenty of complaints.

I covered this in a Facebook discussion, but the $2.99 price for Tweetie 2 is well worth it for me. A few points for the grumblers:

• The iPhone app store does not support upgrade pricing, so the developer can't charge one price to owners of the original Tweetie and another price for everyone else. That's Apple's fault, not the developer's.
• One thing there is no shortage of is Twitter clients for the iPhone (or in general). If you don't feel $2.99 is worth it after reading the feature set, you have plenty of alternatives.
• I'm not sure you can buy a single drink for $2.99 at Starbucks.

Interact with customers of any product these days, especially a web-based product, and one realizes that among the industries the internet revolutionized was whining. You can build a product for free with your own sweat and tears, donate blood to raise money to help children with cancer, rescue some elderly people and puppies from a burning building, and someone will still write in complaining that you haven't cured world hunger and oh, why can't they choose f!@$face as a username because damn it, this is America and how dare you censor me!

Tweetie 2 is great. Full persistence and offline mode alone would've been worth the $2.99 for me. If you're a power Twitter user, it's the best client for the iPhone and one of the best iPhone apps period.

Also arriving today in the iPhone app store was Adobe's Photoshop.com app. Cheapskates can't complain about the price of free.

Anyone who has shot any photos with the iPhone knows they don't usually come out of the camera show ready. To date Apple hasn't added in basic photo touchup tools but plenty of apps have filled the void.* The Photoshop.com app with its basic transform and color/exposure adjustment tools is a very worthy addition.

Remember, friends don't subject friends to long pages of unedited crappy photos.

* Some other photo apps for the iPhone that are worthwhile, if not free, are Chase Jarvis' Best Camera and CameraBag.

Paper towels versus air dryers

Which method of drying your hand in a public bathroom is cleaner? Answer here.

I wonder if they air dryers evaluated were of the high-powered variety. In the Denver airport on my last business trip, I went to use an air dryer, and when I placed my hands beneath them, I was hit with a concussive jet of air so forceful it propelled me across the bathroom and through the opposite wall, leaving a person-shaped hole in the tiles.

Miscellany

Google Reader asked some notable folks what their top picks were for Google Reader. Good idea, but I find it a bit offputting that so many folks chose their own website as one of their short list? Their sites are already listed and linked under their names, are we to believe they really spend time reading their own writing in Google Reader?

***

This past weekend, I was driving home on the 405 and saw a massive, odd-looking cloud standing alone in a clear blue sky, like a single head of cauliflower poking its head up through a bed of smog. Then I realized it was smoke from the fires in the San Gabriel mountains. It looked like a scene from 24, as if someone had dropped a nuclear bomb on LA. Here's one tightly-cropped time-lapse video of the smoke from the fires.

To truly appreciate how terrifying it looks, watch this wider-framed time-lapse which will give you a sense of the magnitude of this latest SoCal conflagration.

***

Hitchcock is a storyboarding app for the iPhone that can use photos. You're limited to the fixed focal length lens of the iPhone, but I could see it being a handy tool on set. We were shooting our Alec Baldwin Super Bowl commercial earlier this year in NYC, and the director Peter Berg grabbed my iPhone at one point and used the camera to help us visualize a shot he envisioned. He mentioned offhand that he wouldn't mind having a simple tool on the iPhone for quick previz.

It's $19.99, but there are more specialty tools coming to the iPhone that aren't intended for mass audiences, and those can justify higher prices.

Incidentally, I wish the iPhone app store had a way to put apps on a wishlist, or save them for later view. I often see apps that I think I might want to buy later, and I never have a way to remember them. Like this one cool app I saw last week, what did it do again, it was something about...oh, forget it.

***

A BMW concept diesel-hybrid. As with all concept cars, it looks absurdly futuristic, but it's heartening to see higher end manufacturers committing to the sustainability movement. Design can lift up the mundane and make it desirable, and having manufacturers like BMW or Tesla pushing the high end of this market can only help.

***

On Japanese simplicity.

In just over 30 years Hello Kitty has become a multibillion-dollar model of resourceful minimalism within the global juggernaut of Japanese pop culture. From Tokyo to Tehran, her expressionless, barely sketched visage adorns key chains, backpacks, toiletries and even a Hello Kitty-themed airline jet. Late last year an entire maternity hospital with Hello Kitty imagery adorning bedspreads and birth certificates opened to great fanfare in Taiwan.

But why is she mouthless? Because when you look at Hello Kitty, or “Kitty-chan,” as she is affectionately known in Japan, she will feel just like you do. As Japanese anime critic Hideki Ono says: “Your brain projects the missing information, then your imagination fills it in and feels the pleasure of participation.”

The Japanese design aesthetic has a strong influence on my product team as all my designers are either Japanese or very into Japanese culture.

During my trip to Tokyo earlier this year, I couldn't help but notice that the metropolis of over 12 million people was so clean relative to other cities its size and population. Each night, as we walked back to our hotel after a day of sightseeing, several massive street cleaning vehicles would pass us on the road.

It's not that every part of Tokyo is tea gardens and bonsai trees. Any place with the urban density of Tokyo is going to feel overcrowded, and it's important, as many commenters on the article rightly point out, that cleanliness does not equal a low environmental footprint, even if that's the superficial impression.

I watched Miyazaki's Ponyo recently. Though it is on the surface a retelling of The LIttle Mermaid, it is at its core a story about humans trying to come to harmony with the environment and their natural surroundings. When he makes these movies, is he holding the Japanese up as paragons of that, or is he taking shots at them, too? Often his heroes and heroines are children. Is he issuing a call to the next generation to correct the environmental failings of their parents?

***

The resurrection of the suburban novel? I never read many suburban novels while growing up in the suburbs, but there is something to the thesis of this article, that the suburbs are about a state of mind as much as they are about a physical place. The post-war generation fled to the suburbs in search of a big house, a big backyard, a more peaceful and fulfilling existence. That they found a spiritual wasteland that filled them with an almost depressing boredom.

That feeling of disappointment or disillusion is one with broad applications and perhaps explains the enduring nature of the concept of suburban dystopia.

Knives and thumbtacks

Oh, what I wouldn't give for a Bob Kramer chef's knife (his knives are used by some of the most famous chefs in the world, like Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame). I'm on Kramer's waiting list, and I hope to make it to the top of it while I'm still in my cooking prime.

I received an e-mail from his mailing list saying he'd just put one of his knives up for bid on eBay. It sent a brief surge of excitement through me that lasted until I followed the eBay link and saw the current bid price.

***

Some famous people share their favorite places on Google Maps. Not a very long collection of people, though I was curious to see what places Ferran Adria of El Bulli picked out.

Nikon 24-70mm f2.8

Ryan Brenizer lauds the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 zoom lens. I agree as it has become my go-to everyday lens on my SLR.

It's not light, in fact it's a bit of a beast, but then again when I bring out my SLR I'm usually not optimizing around weight but around picture quality. If I want a light carry-around camera I either use my phone or my Panasonic LX3.

The Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Zoom Lens is not cheap at about $1,800 each right now, but most beginning photographers make the mistake of spending too much on the camera body and too little on lenses. Two reasons this makes little sense:

• The lens, much more than any of the modern SLR bodies you're likely to buy from Canon or Nikon, is responsible for image quality. SLR bodies from Nikon and Canon have reached a point where you really can't go wrong. But there are still shots you just can't get without the right lens. Now, at the margins, and for specialized uses, for example if you're a professional sports photographer, the SLR body makes a difference. But even there, the most important piece of equipment they own are their fast, top-grade lenses.
• Great lenses, or "good glass" as photographers refer to them, retain or increase in market value, camera bodies start losing resale value the moment they hit the market. Whereas Nikon and Canon will replace an SLR every year or two, roughly, the great lenses in their lines are often around for many years. Some lenses have never been replaced with a suitable equivalent and become highly coveted collectors items selling for thousands of dollars on eBay (for example, try to find a Nikon 58mm f1.2 on eBay, and if you do, it's likely selling for $3K).

Obscure but somewhat important Facebook setting

The future

MLB.com to stream full games to the iPhone. The first one is the Cubs-Sox game this afternoon.

I always thought this day would come, when I could watch Cubs games live on my phone, but it's still a thrill to have that day upon us.

Twilight

xkcd today was brilliant. Score one point for Stephanie Meyer.

On the other hand, the fact that Twilight won every award at the MTV Movie Awards made me feel out of touch, old. I suppose the awards at that ceremony are really just filler until the next prank or joke.

Two challenges

This Munsell hue test is a fun challenge of one's color vision. I was nervous taking it and perhaps overly excited when I submitted my arrangements and received a perfect score.

That might be my proudest accomplishment since breaking 100 for the first time on Flight Control on the iPhone (at $0.99 for a limited time only, Flight Control is a steal).

Here is a YouTube video of someone breaking 10,000(!?!) on Flight Control which makes breaking 100 seem like not such a great feat after all.

Kindle book pricing, and the Kindle DX

Short article in Wired a few weeks back about Kindle users protesting prices higher than $9.99 for digital books. It's as if users are valuing the books as just pure digital bits. When you buy books at a bookstore, you have some visual justification for why some books are more expensive than others. The book may be thicker, with more pages, or with glossy heavy stock paper with beautiful photographs, or an expensive leather binding. The varying form factor for books has allowed that industry to get away with much more pricing variation than, say, the music industry, where most CDs and LPs are shaped exactly the same, or the theatrical exhibition industry, where going to the movies costs the same regardless of what movie you're seeing and how much it cost to make (on an absolute basis, the cost variance for producing one movie versus another is much larger than in books and music). To the viewer, many elements of the moviegoing experience are the same regardless of which movie you're seeing: they are about the same length, shown in theaters that are shaped, for the most part, the same, with screens of roughly comparable size. That along with years of uniform pricing have pretty much ensured that the only theaters that can get away with varied pricing are ones offering a unique experience (e.g. a price premium for the massive curved screens of IMAX, or a price discount for the really old movies offered at second-run theaters).

With books for the Kindle, you have few visual cues to distinguish the value of one book from the other. And so it's understandable that users might be inclined to think every digital book should cost the same. In one sense, they're right, as the digital cost of storing one book versus another will not vary by much at all.

What is missing, of course, is the understanding of all that has gone into the production and marketing of that work, or a linkage between the quality of the book and the price. The uniform price that Apple placed on songs in the iTunes music store at launch ($0.99 per track) removed price variance as an element of the shopping decision, for better or worse. That is now a mental anchor, and any deviation seems, well, deviant.

As a retailer, Amazon and Apple have roughly the same costs for whichever digital book or song they sell, so I can understand their interest in standardizing the pricing and encouraging impulse buying with the simplified decision structure. I can also understand why a publisher or music label would prefer pricing variance, to better account for their costs in acquiring and marketing the different books in question.

As for my Kindle 2 , I have owned and used it just about long enough that I am ready to share an overall assessment soon (quick summary is that it's solid but with lots of room for improvement), but not long enough to avoid the disappointment of hearing Amazon announce the Kindle DX today. I've barely had my Kindle 2 for 3 months, and already a replacement has been announced?

I can understand and accept product obsolescence and early adopter risk in technology, in fact I'm well-versed in it what with iPods and iPhones and digital SLRs and laptops getting replaced by newer, higher-performance models every half year to a year, but the Kindle 2 barely started shipping 3 months ago. I feel like Kindle 2 buyers should have either received a heads up that the Kindle DX would be coming or that we should be offered an option for trading in our Kindle 2 for the DX. The Kindle DX seems a bit pricey to me at $489, not a slamdunk purchase, but one of my biggest issues with the current Kindle 2 is its screen size, and I would have liked to have known the DX was coming at this price point back when I was making my Kindle-buying decision back in February.

Amazon rarely disappoints me, but today it did.

Glass 40% full

There was lots of press hand-wringing last week about a Nielsen study showing that 60% of Twitter users quitting the service after one month. The press, many whom were late in jumping on the Twitter explosion, seemed to revel in their schadenfreude as they poured fuel on the meme of Twitter user retention.

The 60% of Twitter users who abandon the service after one month is less than the 90% of recycled news coverage that can't formulate an original thought. How many people abandon their weblogs? Among people I know, it's much higher than 60%. Does that mean the remaining blogs are worthless? For an answer, maybe we need to consult the mainstream media, and to do so, ironically, we probably have to scour their blogs. I can't think of a mainstream media outlet today that doesn't have at least several blogs as part of their daily output, though by the time they jumped on the bandwagon it was already the size of an aircraft carrier.

I confess to being a bit puzzled by Twitter when I first signed up in March of 2007. With few followers and just 140 characters per tweet, it felt like I was shouting through a battery-less megaphone under water.

A few things changed my feelings towards Twitter. One was the launch of Favrd, which helped to separate the wittiest tweets from the chaff (pun intended) and which drew man people into using it as an outlet for humor, rather than just mundane status updates. The second was the launch of an app that could sync my Twitter account to my Facebook status.

The last, and most important, is that the service achieved enough critical mass that Twitter search became a useful tool for me to track what people were saying about Hulu. Maureen Dowd may wonder "Is there any thought that doesn’t need to be published?" and may think "I don’t care that my friend is having a hamburger?", but someone else's meaningless status update is someone else's treasure. If you tweet "I am having a hamburger animal style at In-N-Out. Sweet heaven." and that becomes searchable a few seconds later, that is somewhat useful information for In-N-Out.

[As an aside, I like lots of Dowd's work, but I'm glad Evan Williams and Biz Stone gave better than they got in that interview. Funny stuff. I appreciate her opinions on lots of issues, but on this one she's out of her element.]

A better example is that when I know one of our (Hulu) tv ads is going to air on a certain program, I can get real-time feedback on what people thought. I can't get that anywhere else, not through Google, not through Facebook (because their status updates are not globally searchable), not through the press, nowhere. That is the heart of the Twitter revolution, and that's why companies like Google want to buy Twitter, because Twitter has carved out that significant mindshare on the web.

As to how Twitter can make money, I can think of several premium services that some clients would pay for. If I could, for our @hulu account, allow our users to subscribe to particular types of messages, all from the same @hulu account, I'd pay for that. Imagine that we had one Twitter account for each show on our site, and you could receive a tweet when a new episode hit the site, with an auto-shortened link to that episode. I can do that via e-mail today, but e-mail is slow and expensive and polluted by spam.

I have many other ideas, but if I post them all I might someday have to pay a fortune to use Twitter someday, so I'll leave it at that. This is no guarantee that Twitter will be a great service for monetization; turning massive traffic and mindshare into revenue is no sure thing on the web as many cases have shown (free e-mail accounts remain, for the most part, free, for example). But they've jumped onto the hockey curve growth trajectory track, cemented their place in the cultural zeitgeist, and achieved that ever-elusive first-mover advantage which generates increasing returns (RIP Pownce). So their ultimate destiny is largely in their control, which is all you can ever hope for as a startup.

NOTE: For those of you who find me decreasing frequency of posting here depressing, try following me on Twitter. There, my volume per post is lighter, of course, but my frequency of posting is far higher. 308 updates there in just over a year now, somewhat backloaded.

An iPhone game about kerning

For you typography geeks: Kern, a $0.99 iPhone game that challenges you to "precisely place a missing letter into a falling word while avoiding any unnecessary ligatures". That description made me smile. Learn more here.

Daisy chain

Along the lines of Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition) is If Homer's Odyssey were written on Twitter. And, while we're at it, Sportscenter Anchors Tell The Story of Jesus Christ. And speaking of Jesus, how about The Passion of the Christ: Blooper Reel?

This age we live in

Right now on Amazon, it costs more to purchase the MP3's for Neko Case's new album than it does to buy the CD and have it shipped to you. It's as if they're discounting the CD to compensate for the hassle of it's physical form factor taking up space in your home, having to be packed for your next move, etc. This is the opposite of what has been the rule to date, which is that it's cheaper to buy the digital good because they pass through the savings of foregoing shipping and handling of an actual good.

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Silicon Alley Insider reports with seeming surprise that Jeff Bezos is working in an Amazon distribution center for a week. That shouldn't surprise anyone--almost everyone at Amazon went to work in the distribution centers over the holidays for many years to help handle the spike in holiday orders (at the time, there wasn't enough temporary labor in any of the markets where the DCs were located to handle the seasonal volume surge, though in this economy it might be different). With increased distribution capacity and automation, such stints are no longer required annually, but when I left Amazon every new employee spent at least some amount of time working in customer service inquiries and the distribution centers. It was always part of being the world's most customer-centric company.

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I'm with Khoi Vinh on this one: the SXSW badges, program, and maps this year were all but unusable. Not to minimize the difficulty of producing these with a volunteer team, but one thought on how to leverage some talent is to ask for help from one of the many participating design firms or panelists in exchange for prominent credits on the materials, and maybe some free advertising inventory. One's work would certainly reach a very chatty and influential crowd there.

AT&T buried by geek overload at SXSW

AT&T is scrambling to add cell tower capacity to downtown Austin to deal with the crush of iPhone-using SXSW attendees. The first two days here I couldn't do anything requiring the 3G network here at SXSW. Without the conference wi-fi signal I would have been completely out of touch with the outside world.

Let this be a lesson to AT&T; this is hardly the last time a whole swarm of iPhone 3G users will amass for a short time at one location. If they don't anticipate these they'll continue to take a brand beating on the twitblognets from time to time.

On a related note, I've never seen so many iPhones in one place before. In a panel today a presenter used the term "Blackberry prayer mode" to refer to the stance people take when...well, it's self-explanatory. Substitute iPhone for Blackberry and it's just as descriptive.

Visible remains

Tyler Cowen:

One advantage of Kindle is that it provides a new tool for mental accounting. Call me irrational but formerly I could not read more than seven or eight books at a time without abandoning some of them midway. Kindle (like Netflix, I might add) gives me a new queue and allows me to have more "hanging," partially unread books at any point in time, yet without disrupting my mental equilibrium.

I have just one book on my Kindle so far, so I have not yet been able to gauge whether Cowen's assessment fits my experience. But it sounds like a reasonable hypothesis, especially considering I have to hurdle a metropolis of partially-read books on the scale of the trash-built apocolypse in Wall-E just to climb into bed.

MacHeist--free copy of DEVONThink

Follow some simple directions and get a free copy of DEVONThink for your Mac (not to mention hand utilities Hyperspaces and Overflow).

Steven Berlin Johnson has written in the past about how DEVONThink has helped him in researching and writing his novels, so I'm looking forward to giving it a whirl.

Miscellany

The new tv show Lie to Me is based on the real-life research of Dr. Paul Ekman into facial behaviors, or how muscles of the face reveal underlying psychology through microexpressions that are nearly unconscious or involuntary.

Ekman's system is called the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), and its companion is the Facial Action Coding System Affect Interpretation Dictionary (FACSAID). I first heard of Ekman's work through a Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker titled "The Naked Face".

You can purchase the training system for $260. Maybe it will pay for itself through your weekly poker game?

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Chase Jarvis offers 5 tips for shooting better pictures with your iPhone. He also recommends two apps for the iPhone, CameraBag ($2.99) and Pano ($2.99), both of which I use and enjoy.

I put the prices there because I know some people don't like to pay for any apps, but if there's one thing I urge people to do this year it's to pay for things that provide value, even if they're things you can obtain illegally for free. Whether it's software or music or movies, with the Internet it's easier than ever to reward people directly for work you appreciate. When apps for the iPhone cost less than a Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwich, there's really no excuse. Do the right thing, fight the recession, reward people who do great work that improves your life.

Two other iPhone photography apps that I recommend: Photogene ($2.99) and QuadCamera ($1.99). The iPhone camera is not going to win any prizes for picture quality, but the use of these apps should improve your snaps noticeably. Your Facebook and Flickr friends thank you in advance.

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Speaking of iPhone apps, I've reached the nine page, 144 app limit. I don't use all the apps all the time, so it's not a problem to delete a few, but the limit seems somewhat arbitrary, and at some point in the near future I can see having more than 144 apps that I'd use semi-regularly, or at least often enough that I wouldn't want to have to be deleting and installing apps all the time.

Paging through nine pages of apps doesn't exactly play to the iPhone's interface strengths (some ability to group apps or nest them in folder would be handy) but it's certainly not unusable.

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Amazon's Universal wishlist feature allows you to add products from other websites. Not sure when this launched, but it's an idea I recall being bandied about at Amazon many years ago.

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Metacritic compiles top 10 lists from movie critics across the land (they need to fix their HTML header as it still reads 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists in my browser tab). I'm still waiting for their year-end compilation graphic that assimilates all these top ten lists into a master best-of list. I'm not sure if they're producing it again this year, but I hope they do.

Gee, thanks SEC

The SEC is probing Apple's handling of Steve Jobs health. After years of letting banks get away with all sorts of egregious behavior, after missing out on blatant scammers like Madoff, now the SEC is going to make a big deal of investigating Steve Jobs health? What a joke.

The SEC is like the security guard who was on duty while your house got robbed clean.

Steve Jobs taking 6-month medical leave

Here's his letter:

Team,

I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.

In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.

I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple’s day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.

I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.

Steve

Very concerning. I hope he comes back healthy and strong.

Onward into 2009

There's this shot in The Wrestler, a steadicam shot behind Mickey Rourke as he walks through the back offices of a grocery store out to the deli counter. It echoes many other shots in the movie, from better times for Randy "The Ram" Robinson, and the visual reference is unmistakeable and poignant.

But just in case you're oblivious, the sound designer slowly mixes in the sounds of a raucous wrestling crowd chanting his name, just as he hears it when he prepares to walk out through the curtains at a wrestling event. It rises to a crescendo just as he's about to walk through the hanging plastic flaps out to the deli counter.

I wish they'd had the restraint to leave the shot as is and leave out the audio clue. What was an understated and lyrical moment is transformed into something overly sentimental, and I felt that way about many instances of the score in the movie which is otherwise shot in an unfussy, documentary style.

Besides that, though, it's a very moving film. You don't just feel for Randy "The Ram" Robinson but for Mickey Rourke who is nearly unrecognizable, at least to me. This is the guy from Diner and 9 1/2 Weeks?

***

The Israel Consulate is using Twitter to manage their message during this military campaign against Hamas. It's a challenge, trying to communicate complex messages with a 140 character limit, as many organizations are learning while trying to use Twitter for unmediated communication with users. Lots of URL shorteners and common online abbreviations are used, lending an oddly casual air to what are serious messages.

Two perhaps adventitious consequences of this medium: the character limit forces a concise and often more forceful statement of a message, and users who write you are forced to adhere to the character limit also, so it's a level playing ground.

***

Jay-Z crossed with Radiohead = Jaydiohead (from DJ Minty Fresh Beats)

***

A movie trailer that is just one scene, perhaps not truncated or edited down from what appears in the movie itself? Effective.

***

Given NYC's economic dependence on the finance industry, you'd expect Manhattan real estate to have taken a disproportionate beating in this recession.

In fact, New York's real estate market is proving more resilient in this downturn than that of other U.S. cities.

Today’s Case-Shiller housing price figures indicate that New York City’s prices dropped 7.5 percent in the last year, while prices in Los Angeles declined 27.9 percent. Nationwide prices dropped 18 percent. New York is the only major metropolitan area with prices that are still 90 percent above prices in January 2000. According to National Association of Realtors data, New York is the only city in the continental United States, outside of San Francisco Bay, where median sales prices remain north of $500,000.

Despite Wall Street’s suffering, the New York area’s unemployment rate, 5.6 percent in the latest figures, is lower than that in many other major cities. The comparable unemployment rate for Los Angeles is 8.2 percent. The comparable number for Chicago is 6.4 percent.

What's going on? Economist Edward Glaeser attributes it to faith in the city's talented citizens and concentration of said people.

New York still has an amazing concentration of talent. That talent is more effective because all those smart people are connected because of the city’s extreme population density levels. Historically, human capital — the education and skills of a work force — predicts which cities are able to reinvent themselves and which ones are not. Those people who are continuing to pay high prices for Manhattan real estate are implicitly betting that New York’s human capital will continue to come up with new ways of reinventing the city.

***

The first album of 2009 that's gathering critical buzz and mp3 blog lust: Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion

***

The statistics behind the B.C.S. are not just inscrutable but fundamentally flawed.

Statistically, the system is such an abomination that at least one expert — Hal S. Stern, a professor of statistics at the University of California, Irvine — advocated that no self-respecting statistician should have anything to do with it. In an article published in The Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports two years ago, he wrote that the B.C.S. computer rankings serve as little more than a confirmation of the results of the two opinion polls the system also uses to create its rankings. The people who run the computer rankings, he noted, have never been given any clear objective criteria to design their programs, and they are not allowed to use the score or site of a game in their calculations. Stern urged a boycott, a refusal by the community of statisticians to lend credibility to a system he regards as scientifically bankrupt.

In the end, it comes down to money.

“The six big conferences don’t want to share money with the smaller conferences,” Stern said. “That to me is the story that people don’t tell.”

I've never understood the fascination with college football. The quality of play is noticeably inferior to that in the NFL, the BCS system encourage Division I powerhouses to pad their non-conference schedules with patsies, most players on teams are complete unknowns so the individual storylines have no range, the concept of the student-athlete is a farce at many schools in football, and the B.C.S. system, as noted above, doesn't clarify anything at season's end.

It feels like college football fans watch in part to try to reclaim some bygone university solidarity.

***

According to CNET News, one of six sure things for 2009 is that Hulu will start its own porn site.

The Wi-Fi High Club

This post is being written from 30,000+ feet on a Virgin America flight from NYC to LA. The PA announcement was fuzzy, but I think it noted that this was one of 3 Virgin America planes outfitted with a wi-fi service they've dubbed GoGo.

Unfortunately my power outlet isn't working, so my online time may be limited. But for now, I've got wi-fi on my laptop, ESPN on Dish Network on my seatback entertainment system. Just connect my cellphone and my overstimulation is complete.

Google Calendar finally supports iCal

Google now supports the CalDAV protocol, so you can more easily sync Apple iCal with Google Calendar.

Now if only iCal would sync with Exchange. Stupid protocol incompatibilities.

The risks of being an early adopter

Great, my assistant is quitting on Dec. 8. You'd think in a recession she'd be grateful for the work. I guess I wasn't paying her enough. The truth is, I never paid her a dime, but then again, she never asked. Well, it was fun, and useful, while it lasted. Maybe someone can revive the service as iwantjoanholloway.com?

Pownce is closing shop, too, and this before I ever posted a single thing to my account. Aping Twitter's service and adding some just midly useful accoutrements didn't do it for them, no surprise.

Yes, in times of recession, some sort of revenue model matters.

Guided bullets

Maybe the crazy bullet-bending reality of the movie Wanted isn't so far-fetched.

Like a Wii OS

A video demo of a Minority-Report-like interface.

In the near-term, for us classical music aficionados, I'd love a Rock Band-like game for the Wii or another console that allows me to control an orchestra by waving a baton-controller. True, it would be a niche game, but I'd pay a premium for that.

The sacrifices of office

One casualty of Obama's victory in the Election: e-mail and his Blackberry.

But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

How crazy is it that the most important leader in the country can't use e-mail?

Red announcement

UPDATE: Here's the news. A lot to absorb, but basically, Red is going to turn their entire product line into a modularized model so you can slowly upgrade over time rather than having to buy entirely new cameras over time. The number of sensors from the company is growing like rabbits and will include a 617-sized sensor in the future! Lastly, they're building a Red 3D camera which looks unbelievably cool.

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Tomorrow, Red, the digital cinema company, is announcing something big about their upcoming 3K and 5K cameras, Scarlet and Epic. They've posted a countdown timer on their homepage.

Jim Jannard, company founder, has been building up the announcements in the Red user forums.

We will announce the new Scarlet and Epic programs on Thursday Nov. 13th.

I want to say that no one has any idea how incredible this announcement will be. Call this hype... please. I am quite sure that the announcement will be called a "scam". Should be a lot of fun to hear the reactions. I can't wait.

Jim

Not many companies do a better job of publicizing themselves with no PR department than Red. Jannard's honesty and participation in user forums is refreshing.

The new Macbook Pro

It's hot. I want one.

Apple has posted a video about the creation of the 13" Macbook that features some footage of the elusive Jonathan Ive ("Jony"), one of the current pantheon of design deities. Can't help but love the way the Brits pronounce aluminum, and watching those machines carve the unibody out of a solid 2.5 pound block of aluminum is engineering porn. Someday I would love to work on the design of a physical product.

I was back at Stanford recruiting last week, and I assign Apple all credit and blame for the dozens of product design majors who visited our table.

Fake celeb Twitter accounts

The use of Twitter for basic info, where you are, what you're doing, is not nearly as amusing as using it as a new comedic form, among which one of the more amusing niches is fake celebrity tweeting.

You know of Fake Sarah Palin by now, but one order higher on the complexity scale of humor is interaction between fake celebrity Twitter accounts.

Here's Fake Megan Fox replying to Fake Michael Bay:

@michael_bay has a saying: "I turn things from boring to awesome. Then I turn them from awesome to Bay."

My favorite fake Michael Bay tweet:

If Im groggy in the am I get a triple venti espresso from starbucks and dump it on the first homeless person I see in downtown LA. It works.

Every character on Mad Men seems to have their own Twitter accounts, though they don't quite do it for me. Part of the charm of those characters is their entrenchment in that time and the inscrutability of their inner lives, so the self-conscious and reflective nature of a Twitter account doesn't fit (AMC briefly had Twitter take them down, though they've since been restored).

New Macbook Pros

Daring Fireball has, via Engadget, details on the new Macbook Pros to be announced today (which, to be fair, includes some speculation). I'd be surprised if his report was far off from the truth. Most of the updates are minor and/or cosmetic, like the switch to the Macbook Air-style keyboard, a new single-piece aluminum chassis, and a clickable glass trackpad. The biggest deal, to me, is the inclusion of two Nvidia GPUs, the 9400M and the 9600M GT.

Selfishly, the more people out there with computers with modern, high-powered GPU's, the smoother Hulu videos will play. Some users write in complaining about videos that stutter, and in most cases it's either a computer that can't keep up or problems in the network. The videos, I can assure you, play fine--it's an easy thing for us to test in-house to remove the variable of the network and the computer from the equation to test the underlying video.

HD video from DSLRs

The Nikon D90 and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II (Canon's SLR names are way too convoluted) both shoot HD video in addition to serving as DSLRs.

But one problem of shooting HD video with a CMOS is that since there is no real shutter like on a motion picture camera, each "frame" is captured by simply capturing lots of images per second with that CMOS. If you read it 24 times a second, you get 24 frames.

But if the CMOS doesn't refresh fast enough and the camera moves while the CMOS is refreshing, the bottom of the CMOS might be reading part of the image from a different time than the top of the CMOS, and that rolling shutter produces a bad motion wobble or skew (what Jim Jannard calls "jelly movement") as in this sample video footage from the D90.

Here are some sample unmodified Quicktime movie files from the Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Suffice it to say no serious filmmaker will be throwing away a camcorder after purchasing either of these DSLRs (unless that child you're filming doesn't move much; what, little kids run around?).

I'm sure they're fine still cameras, though. So few people make large prints anymore, so digital SLR resolution has been sufficient for their primary purposes: web galleries, 4x6 prints.

Geek references in Oscar Wao

The Amazon users' verdict on Spore: DRM bad

The restrictive DRM of Spore is one of the primary reasons it currently receives an average rating of 1 star at Amazon. That's across 2,123 reviews at last count, spurred on in part by the organizing power of the web, where DRM is a dirtier word than most four-letter words.

What is Spore's DRM? From what I've read, you have to connect to the web to activate the game the first time you install it, and you can only install the game on three computers before you have to call EA for permission to install it again. I have an old copy of Movie Magic Screenwriter that I bought years ago that had a similar DRM model, and I have to concede it's been a real hassle over the years. You have to be very careful to retire a computer from your installation count when you get a new computer or install a new operating system or have a hard drive fail on you, and you're stuck keeping that box of software around forever.

I hate DRM, it never thwarts the people it's focused on. Take iTunes. I buy a song on iTunes on one computer, and getting it to another computer is a hassle. If I copy the song to my iPod or iPhone, I can't pull it back down to my other laptop, even if both are computers I register among the 5 that I authorize to play those songs. I can never remember which computer my iPhone is synced to, but keeping my music in sync between all my Macs is way too difficult. This is probably due in great part to pressure from the music labels, but regardless of whose fault it is, the honest consumer suffers.

On gaming platforms, DRM is a tough pill to swallow when the competition from consoles is so stiff.

Meanwhile, Metacritic gives Spore an average review of 86 out of 100. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle as the web tends to attract polarized opinions. I haven't played Spore, but I doubt it's a 1-star game if you consider just gameplay. But as a form of mass protest, this is an effective one. If you're Electronic Arts, you sure as hell better listen and respond. Brands are meaning, and those meanings are written by more than just Will Wright and the employees at EA. And if you're on the fence about buying this game, you're going to hesitate when you see the following user review distribution.

Maybe the Democrats need to spread rumors that McCain and Palin come with DRM.

New iPod Nano

If the new iPod Nano, supposedly to be unveiled on Sep 9, doesn't look like the pictures on this web page, this 3rd party iPod case manufacturer is going to have a lot of wasted inventory (another leaked photo via Engadget seems to echo the previous photos).

I use my iPod all the time, but it's harder to get excited for every next iPod release. The differences from one iPod Nano to the next aren't that significant anymore; they tend to center on greater storage for the same price. The major form factor benefits have been realized.

Not that there's still not huge revenues and value to be extracted from the iPod line. Google's search ranking algorithms haven't noticeably improved (to my eye) for many years, but they continue to rake in cash because no competitors have been able to leapfrog them.

Digital cameras of note

Trailer for Knowing starring Nicolas Cage. Notable as this movie was shot on the Red One, recently profiled in Wired magazine.

I had a chance to visit Red headquarters last week and play with a couple of Red Ones they had set up with different lenses and configurations. What's amazing about the Red One is that what it allows a filmmaker to do is potentially shoot, edit, and output a 2K resolution movie (the Red One shoots 4K but 2K is close to the resolution of what you see in most movie theaters) all using equipment you can afford and put in your own house. On the price-performance curve, if you plot every camera from your average camcorder you can buy at Best Buy to something like a Panavision 35mm camera or even an IMAX camera, the Red One is an outlier.

The sensor in the Red One can be thought of as similar to the 12 megapixel sensor in your digital SLR, except the Red One can shoot 24 fps (or higher, if you want to overcrank), whereas your SLR shoots maybe 11fps in burst mode and eventually has to stop to clear its buffer.

If you can't afford a Red One, which while cheap is still a $17,500 body, todays specs for the new Nikon D90 should be really intriguing. The D90 follows in the footsteps of other Nikon Digital SLRs, but there's a twist. This 12.3 megapixel SLR can also shoot HD, 720p, 24fps video.

As David Pogue points out, there are some limitations:

• Shooting HD, the max shot length is 5 minutes.
• The audio is mono.
• The camera shoots in .avi file formats that eat up a ton of memory card space.
• Once you start recording video, autofocus no longer works.

The last one was the biggest disappointment to me as it would have been amazing to shoot a fast-moving subject in high dev without having to have an AC (assistant cameraperson). On a professional film shoot, when making a movie, the 1st AC is responsible for pulling focus, or adjusting the focus on the lens during a shot. So there is no autofocus on a professional film shoot, like you have on a prosumer camcorder. But that's by design. Anyone who's watched a consumer home video and watched the focus drift in and out as the camera's autofocus struggles to figure out where you want focus to lie knows that manually controlling focus is one of the professional cinematographer's tools, not a hindrance.

But for the average consumer, shooting their child at a soccer game with their D90, having the full capabilities of the Nikon's autofocus systems to track their child as they spring towards the camera would be amazing.

Still, all that being said, adding HD video capabilities to an SLR is a nifty trick. I don't need a D90, but I'd sure love one. It won't be too long after these are released until we see the first short film shot entirely on the D90.

By the way, you can buy a Nikon mount for the Red One so that it accepts Nikon lenses to shoot with also. Every day, digital SLRs and digital camcorders converge.

The world's most powerful copying machine

Transcript of a great lecture by Cory Doctorow on the Internet and copyright law. Besides covering DRM and copyright law, Doctorow touches on some of the same points Clay Shirky raises in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, about the implications of the lowered costs of collaboration using the Internet.

Adium 1.3

The new version now adds Facebook chat connectivity.

New Firebug

Firebug 1.2 out today.

Tech product reviews: Kodak Zi6, Microsoft Photosynth

Positive review of the Kodak Zi6, which is the little handheld video camera that's like the Flip except it shoots HD (720p up to 60fps).

I'm curious about the audio quality, but I have a Flip, and if the Zi6 combines the Flip's simplicity of use and portability with HD quality it seems like a handy little gadget. Not even film school students and camera snobs always want to deal with busting out a full-sized camera and pro-level gear.

***

Walt Mossberg reviews the upcoming Microsoft Live Labs release of Photosynth (releases this Thursday to the public for free). The demo seems to have floated around for years, and I'd long since given up hope of seeing it in the wild (when's the last time anything from Microsoft Labs made it into the public?). So to hear it will be released as a website for free for anyone to use is a pleasant surprise.

Mossberg has mostly positive things to say. Sadly, the Mac version is not ready yet, so it's Windows only for now.

I've been testing this service for about a week, and while it has its flaws, I believe that Photosynth offers a dramatic new way to use your photos and to share them with others.

Photosynth works within a Web browser, using a small plug-in you install. Currently, it works only in Windows, using Microsoft's own Internet Explorer browser or its rival, Firefox. A Macintosh version is in the works, but for now, you can't even view others' synths in the Mac operating system.

When Photosynth works right, the results are wonderfully satisfying. But it takes some skill to get a set of photos the service can match up well, a quality Microsoft calls being "synthy." Ideally, portions of each slice of a 3-D scene should show up in at least three photos, with 50% overlap between them. After you upload your pictures and Photosynth does its best to make them into a 3-D scene, the service assigns them a percentage number that indicates how synthy they were.

Interestingly, you can only run Photosynth on a Mac if it's running Windows XP or Vista via Boot Camp, not via Parallels or VMWare Fusion. The error message if you try to use Photosynth on a Mac:

Unfortunately, we're not cool enough to run on your OS yet.

Into the uncanny valley

I still don't think "Emily" has crossed the uncanny valley--in fact, she may just have gone deeper into it--but there's no doubt she's a big improvement over previous efforts towards realistic human facial expressions in digital animation. There's still something not quite right, especially with her eyes. But it's a visible step forward.

8 short notes on the day of Phelps' 8th gold medal

You wouldn't think a man would have much leisure time in a race in which he sets a new world record of 9.69 seconds, but Usain Bolt had enough of a lead at the end of the men's 100-meter dash to blow out finger pistols, flash Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella triangle hand sign, and check his watch.

If I were racing against him, I'd be intimidated just seeing "Bolt" on the back of his jersey.

***

I thought I saw Michael Phelps ride across the pool to his last medal ceremony standing on the backs of two dolphins, holding a trident.

***

I was wondering about something at dinner yesterday and saw that someone else had asked Marginal Revolution the same thing: for such a populous country, why has India won so few Olympic medals?

***

Visual evidence that Nikon has made a huge comeback against Canon in the professional sports photography market. Look at the lenses in this shot of the press photography area at the Olympics.

Black lenses are likely Nikon's mounted on D3's, while the light gray lenses are the Canons that used to dominate.

***

Is it worth carrying an airline-mile credit card? Probably not unless you are a big-spending, high-flying, elite status traveler. I ditched mine several years ago in favor of various cashback cards.

***

Is it really possible Anthony Lane didn't know right away which actor was playing Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder? From his review:

He is a doughy, balding monster with big spectacles and even wider hand gestures, all his power distilled into profanity: a grotesque update, if you will, on the movie executive with the shock of white-hot hair, brought to life by Rod Steiger, in “The Big Knife,” more than fifty years ago. It took me half the running time to realize who was playing this new beast, and it was only his voice that triggered the recognition; I suspect that there will be gasps during the end credits, as people see his name and find themselves rethinking the whole movie, marvelling at what could have inspired so stiff an actor to unfurl and bounce around.

Roger Ebert also thinks some people will not recognize the actor behind this cameo:

The movie is a send-up of Hollywood, actors, acting, agents, directors, writers, rappers, trailers and egos, much enhanced by several cameo roles, the best of which I will not even mention. You’ll know the one, although you may have to wait for the credits to figure it out.

Really? I think most every person in the theater will know who it is right away.

***

As if it wasn't already hard enough to tell what people really look like from their carefully chosen and touched-up Facebook profile photos, soon we may all have access to software that can automatically enhance facial attractiveness. This SIGGRAPH paper discusses the technique and shows some results which were validated by independent ratings.

***

Ah, only in Texas.

Nibblets

Facebook's profile updates are rendered in an odd tense, in a very Facebook-centric view of the world. You change your profile to married, and instead of writing, "Scott changed his relationship status to married" it reads "Scott is now married." Never mind that he may have been married for years; in the Facebook world, nothing is so until you declare it so in your profile.

What happens if you change your sex? "Fred is no longer male"? Your birthday? "Susan is no longer born July 7, 1978"?

I am going to change my relationship status to king so it reads "Eugene is now king."

***

As of Friday morning rehab, I am sans crutches. This is a big moment for me, and an even bigger moment for my armpits.

***

To the person who came to my website via the Google search "eugene wei the dark knight" yesterday: yes, I am Batman.

***

Speaking of Batman and my crutches, I didn't buy Harvey Dent's conversion in The Dark Knight. But I can empathize with the personality-transforming power of physical injuries or deformities. Having one bad leg, not being able to exercise, has definitely made me grumpier these past two or three months.

I walk by a homeless guy, and I flip a coin. Heads, I give the guy the coin. Tails, I kick him with my walking boot.

No, not really. But not being able to run or work off occasional frustration has left me snippier. I'm like Harvey Two-Leg.

***

Lebron vs. Yao Ming in the Coke ad "Unity" from Smith&Foulkes for W+K Portland.

***

One of the restaurants I wish I ate at before moving from NYC is Blue Hill at Stone Barns. This glowing review with its gorgeous photos is like a megaphone for that regret.

***

Cleverly written commercials for dandruff shampoo that could be done by any one who knows After Effects.

***

Why read The Watchmen, which has spiked in popularity now that the non-geek masses have seen The Watchmen trailer playing before The Dark Knight? Bryan Caplan says: "The Watchmen is the Best... Utilitarian Parable... Ever."

I've never thought of it that way, but having read that graphic novel probably five times in my life, I'd have to say it makes sense.

***

"Tarantino's Mind" (short film)

Steve Jobs calls Joe Nocera

Rising the charts at the NYTimes most blogged articles is "Apple's Culture of Secrecy" by Joe Nocera.

On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not.

And why is it called Bluetooth anyway?

The director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute warns his staff to limit cell phone use to minimize cancer risk. While no studies have detected a link, that does not necessarily prove that there isn't a link. It reminds me of the Bill James article "Underestimating the Fog" (PDF) in which he noted that just because past studies haven't detected clutch hitting doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Cell phones and bluetooth headsets emit non-ionizing, microwave radiation. That much we know. Do they increase your risk for brain cancer? To conduct a study of that magnitude would take years and years and cost millions of dollars. It's unlikely anyone will fund a study like that.

So we're all part of a real world experiment. Here's how I see it playing out. Some people will get brain cancer 20 years from now from high cell phone use, and they will bring massive lawsuits against the cell phone companies. But one special person will gain superpowers from all that radiation, a sort of slow burn Bruce Banner. But this hero's powers will only be active in large metropolitan areas, will wane when going through tunnels or riding in elevators, and will come with some inexplicable state and local taxes.

One risk from bluetooth headsets that has been confirmed: wearing one will make you look like an idiot.

Related:

• Tips to reduce cell phone radiation exposure
• CNET's list of highest-radiation cell phones.

iPhone 2.0: the hangover

Versus all previous phones, my first generation iPhone was like a supermodel. Now, with the update to 2.0 version of iPhone software, which offers many, but not all, of the benefits of the 3G model, the downsides to dating a supermodel have taken center stage: the petulance, the tantrums, the inability to get ready on time (speaking metaphorically, of course, as my experience with supermodels has been limited).

No one should review a tech product without using it for some period of time, and having used my first generation iPhone with the 2.0 software for a few weeks now, I'm not so sure that the benefits have outweighed the setbacks, a tough thing for an early adopter to admit. I have a high tolerance for the frustration of life on the cutting edge, but in this case it feels like two steps forward, two steps back.

I've experienced many of the problems reported by other 1st-gen and 3G owners after having updated to the 2.0 software. Most noticeable and galling is interface lag. In a touchscreen device, this is deadly, because you tap again and again in frustration, thinking the device is frozen, and then you hit the home button, but when the device finally catches up it issues all your commands in sequence and bounces you out of the application you were in because you hit the home button.

Many more random crashes? Yep, those too.

Over at Signal vs. Noise, David lists a lot of the gremlins that are plaguing the 3G. I wonder if some if this isn't related to memory leak in some of the new applications. What's ironic is that when I jailbroke my iPhone previously and installed some unapproved apps the iPhone still seemed snappy and responsive. Not that I've installed "officially approved" applications built with the iPhone SDK, the phone seems sluggish and unstable.

Another things that bugs me: when any of the apps update, they get bumped to the last page of your home screen, rather than staying in the same place. Imagine if every time one of your Mac applications was updated, it shifted in your dock to the far right. I don't think I'm unique in relying heavily on spatial memory, so this is a bad thing.

Though I had fun installing and trying a ton of applications when the store first opened, none have altered my life. Some, like Facebook or Google, are ones that don't offer much more than what their mobile Safari interfaces do. Others are useful, like Pandora, or fun, like Enigmo, but they are vampires on battery life.

iLounge has a good, comprehensive review of the new iPhone 3G, and they give it a B. Their summary of its pros and cons:

Pros: A faster and more capable version of last year’s breakthrough mobile phone, preserving the world’s best cell phone operating system, a strong combination of voice and data communication features, and iPod-class audio, video, and photo functionality, while adding impressive third-party software expandability and features for business users. Offers enhanced compatibility with international telephone networks, including high-speed towers, as well as keyboard and language support for users in most of the world’s countries. Now includes GPS for limited purposes, and superior sound quality, particularly through its redesigned headphone port.

Cons: Overall cost of ownership is higher than prior model, despite regressing from last year’s stunning design, screen quality, and pack-ins. Battery life for key phone and data features is significantly worse than before, such that users will likely require inconvenient mid-day recharging. Service contracts require additional payment for 3G data services, despite inconsistent or unavailable regional coverage and performance; callers reported certain in-call sound inconsistencies. New model further decreases compatibility with past iPod accessories, including popular ones, while both camera and screen now have noticeable color tints. Defects and battery replacement will likely require Apple Store or other warranty attention during period of use; purchasing and activation can range from simple to confusing or nightmarish depending on your local service provider.

One benefit of the apps is that U.S. users can send free SMS Messages via the AIM app. It's a bit of a hassle, you have to text to a person's phone number, and years of carrying a cell phone means I don't recognize as many phone numbers as I once did, but paying $5 to send 200 text messages is one of those great telecom scams that so endear them to users.

The one positive to come out of this, if there is one, is that I'm glad I didn't wait out in line for a 3G. Supposedly the iPhone 2.1 software update is around the corner, and hopefully that solves some or many of these issues. If not, perhaps it's not the 3G but the real 3rd generation iPhone that I need to wait for.

Watchmen comics set in motion

Watchmen comics set in motion: chapter one now available for free at the Apple store.

Purchased song sync via the iPhone

Important science

Scientific American interviews an expert in kinesiology and neuroscience to ask if someone could really be Batman. The conclusion was that it might be possible, but only for a short while before your body broke down.

Was this really a deep question people needed scientific verification for?

iPhone 2.0

MacRumors noted that the iPhone 2.0 firmware leaked early this morning. I grabbed it and decided, even if it wasn't official, that it was probably the same as the final release given that it was the day prior to the iPhone 3G's release.

While I waited for the somewhat large download (~250MB) and during the lengthy install process, I grabbed a bunch of apps from the iTunes app store. It was like Christmas.

I'm going to play with these new apps for a while before upgrading to the iPhone 3G. As most of the early reviewers have noted, most of the upgrades this day can be had by iPhone 2G users simply through the software update. GPS and 3G certainly would make many of the apps more snappy and useful in more places--ensuring many of my apps run more quickly more places will be the primary reason I upgrade--but given how much time I spend at the office or at home right now (I can get Wi-Fi in both places), I'm able to get a feel for all these apps and hang on to my cheaper phone plan for the time being. Even though I'm in a new walking boot as of noon today, I wouldn't enjoy standing in it for hours fighting others to get one of the first batch of 3G iPhones.

The first app I paid for is one of my favorite so far: MLB.com's At Bat ($4.99). It allows you to get video highlights from MLB games, even games in progress. On Wi-Fi, the landscape full-screen video quality is very good. It's a fantasy baseball/reality baseball fan's dream come true. Finally we've realized the full potential of mobile video for MLB fans. I only wish that box scores were part of the application; it currently redirects to MLB's WAP site to see that info which seems odd.

Some applications don't seem like huge improvements over their Mobile Safari renditions, but many are huge improvements over their current mobile browser versions. Many new apps take advantage of iPhone's ability to approximate your physical location, one of the great and hitherto unrealized potential benefits of mobile phone computing. Some apps recommend restaurants and other services in the area, while others promise to notify you of where your fellow iPhone-wielding friends are. Tracking/stalking your friends will be so much easier if they're fellow iPhone users.

When you think of the range of data and functionality an app can take advantage of: your address book, your physical location at that moment, the iPhone camera, the Quicktime video player, your calendar, the Accelerometer, multi-touch, the speakers, the microphone, among others, I'm certain we haven't yet seen the mindblowing application that I know is waiting to be written. It's ironic that you can write many apps for my iPhone that you couldn't write for my Macbook Pro.

Beyond MLB.tv's At Bat, other apps I dig so far include Shazam, which, once fired up, can tell you what a song is when you let your iPhone listen to it; the award-winning Twitterific, which seems like the last Twitter client I'll ever need; Urbanspoon, the part slot machine part Magic 8-Ball app that lets you shake your iPhone to get a random restaurant suggestion nearby you, and Exposure, a Flickr photo application that has a Near Me button that shows you photos taken near your physical location.

In the course of this day, I went from one-legged to one-and-a-half legged (the damn hard cast is off, and in its place a soft boot, though I'm not yet ready to ditch the crutches), and it feels like my iPhone took a similar leap in functionality. MobileMe indeed.

Rock Band 2

Rock Band 2 is coming in September, exclusively on the XBox 360, then on to other platforms later in the year. More music, new peripherals, new online modes, but backwards compatibility for DLC and previous instruments.

Exclusive on the XBox 360 at launch? I guess that's just too bad for me and my PS3 version of the game.

Bluetooth headsets

With a new law banning cell phone use while driving unless you're using a headset going into effect in California shortly, and with renewed suspicions of the dangers of cell phone radiation on the brain, it's time for me to take the plunge and purchase a Bluetooth headset. I had one early model a few years ago but lost it.

I hate the look of Bluetooth headsets in the ear, they look like props from some bad sci-fi movie, but they're more attractive than being thrown through your own windshield or having a tumor growing out the side of your head.

There are nearly 800 results in Amazon's wireless accessory store if you search "bluetooth headset." So tell me, dear readers, what headset do you recommend?

I think in maybe 10 years I'll short a bunch of cell phone manufacturer stocks as a hedge against brain cancer.

Tweet

Sometimes honesty is the best policy. Actually, more often than companies think, honesty is the best policy when it comes to problems. As in this post from a Twitter engineer about their downtime problems. The web is a giant rumor mill, and the longer companies hide the truth, the more people pile on, and at some point the web is both so vast and interconnected that it's like an echo chamber in which you can't control a story once it's picked up steam.

I signed up for Twitter early on, then ignored it for months as I didn't get much out of it, but I've come around to the idea of it as a really focused, stripped-down social networking application, albeit one that has not scaled gracefully.

Some have turned tweets into a comic art form:

New curse: "May Ry Cooder discover your people's traditional music."

More tweet goodness here.

***

Orson Scott Card rips J.K. Rowling for her lawsuit against a small publisher for their book The Harry Potter Lexicon.

To the victor go the spoils

Joel Spolsky, at the end of his recent "Architecture Astronauts Take Over":

Why I really care is that Microsoft is vacuuming up way too many programmers. Between Microsoft, with their shady recruiters making unethical exploding offers to unsuspecting college students, and Google (you're on my radar) paying untenable salaries to kids with more ultimate frisbee experience than Python, whose main job will be to play foosball in the googleplex and walk around trying to get someone...anyone...to come see the demo code they've just written with their "20% time," doing some kind of, let me guess, cloud-based synchronization... between Microsoft and Google the starting salary for a smart CS grad is inching dangerously close to six figures and these smart kids, the cream of our universities, are working on hopeless and useless architecture astronomy because these companies are like cancers, driven to grow at all cost, even though they can't think of a single useful thing to build for us, but they need another 3000-4000 comp sci grads next week. And dammit foosball doesn't play itself.

Now that's a business strategy I hadn't thought of: using your vast financial resources to essentially corner the market on programming talent. Hah.

I don't know what Microsoft and Google have all their developers working on, but there's no doubt that it's a great time to be a developer. After English, or perhaps before it, the most valuable language for a kid to learn is a programming language.

In all seriousness, it's more than money that makes Google such a formidable recruiter of technical talent. There's a mythology, and feeding into it is the 20% time, the foosball, the free meals, all of that. The same mystique attaches to a company like Pixar. It's not cheap, and the companies invest heavily in it, but it pays back in recruiting efficiency.

And it helps, of course, to be the market leader.

More current songs

I wish Rock Band would add some more genres of music to its downloadable song lineups. There are too many heavy metal and classic rock tunes for my taste. Judas Priest? Boston? Do people in Rock Band's core demographic really know how to sing these tunes? I sure don't, and neither do my friends.

What do you see?

One of yesterday's hot Internet stories was this photo from the White House website which appeared to show Dick Cheney leering at a nude female sunbather.

In a bit of PR control, and perhaps as evidence that we see what we want to see, the powers that be released a larger version of the photo which reveals that the reflection in his sunglasses was nothing more than a hand holding a fishing rod. [via popurls]

***

A plug to watch Arrested Development on Hulu via Airbag's Longboard: "Thanks to Hulu, the world no longer has an excuse for not watching Arrested Development. Sometimes the Internet just gives and gives and gives."

Another fun place I found a Hulu embedded video: in Sasha Frere-Jones New Yorker blog.

***

PicLens, a cool browser plugin I often use to show people photos on Flickr, has a beta version that supports YouTube video browsing in Firefox, including Firefox 3b5, and IE. I couldn't get any videos to actually start playing, but I saw it working in a demo. Select a video and it starts playing right there within PicLens' 3-D wall.

Firefox 3 versus Safari 3

John Gruber with a great comparison of Firefox 3 and Safari 3 beta browsers for the Mac. His preference is for Safari 3, though he notes that Firefox has some important advantages.

I've been using these two browsers (Firefox 3 b5) for a few weeks now as well. I prefer Firefox 3, for a few reasons. As Gruber notes, Safari is a memory hog, and given the number of applications I have open at once, Firefox's efficient memory usage makes a difference. I hate that Safari doesn't offer that option to open up with the tabs from your last session. Such a simple fix, I have no idea why they haven't added that after so many generations now.

And, of course, there's Firebug. Indispensable, and even better now that version 1.2 is in alpha. The Web Dev Toolbar is another useful plugin, and I use FoxiPod just about every day.

But Gruber is also right in that both are a step up from the previous generation: faster, more powerful and functional.

UPDATE: According to ZDNet, Firefox 3.0 b5 holds a slight speed edge on Safari 3.1, though both are faster than their previous versions, Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Safari 3.0.4.

Shout out from Gruber

Hulu got a nice little review from John Gruber at Daring Fireball today. It's always a bit more exciting to read about your work at a site you frequent in your own day-to-day life, and Daring Fireball is a daily read for me.

Hulu, the NBC-and-Fox-spearheaded free online video service, is out of beta, and it’s pretty sweet. The video quality is good, the selection is good, and the advertising is remarkably minimal — two mid-show ads of 15 or 30 seconds for a 22-minute show, for example. Individual skits from Saturday Night Live, like this one from Saturday’s show, are commercial-free. Real movies, like The Big Lebowski and The Usual Suspects have just two or three minutes of commercials — and are uncensored. They even have good URLs.

No download option, alas, so there’s no supported way to watch these things on your TV, but it’s pretty damn cool overall.

Some really cool free things

Work has been so busy recently I haven't had time to pass along some great free Internet services I've been using for a while now.

Sandy, the virtual assistant. I don't have a real-life assistant of my own, but Sandy sometimes makes it feel as if I do. I have a fondness for command-line interfaces, and being able to fire off a quick e-mail to Sandy saying "Remind me to pick up dry cleaning at 9am tomorrow" and having "her" e-mail and text me at that time the next day is very handy. Besides the simplicity of the service, the other thing I enjoy is the pseudo-personalized nature of Sandy's replies. I asked her to remind me of something earlier, and Sandy began her reply, "Wow! You're up late!"

Tripit - Where Sandy's abilities end, TripIt takes over. Most people I know book their travel online, and in the process receive all those oddly formatted travel confirmation e-mails. Then you have to sit there and enter the information into your calendar. It's a pain in the butt, and don't ever do it again. Instead, just forward those e-mails to plans@tripit.com, and TripIt merges all of them into a master itinerary, adding maps and driving directions and weather and all sorts of other useful information. You can print it, send it to your calendar, send it to your phone, forward it to friends and family, or even enhance it with custom information. Ingenious.

Instapaper - Like many people who've grown up with the web, I exhibit symptoms of Internet-attention-deficit-disorder. I regularly have 20+ tabs open in my browser, and I've long searched for a simple way to save a tab to read later so I can close it out for the time being. Instapaper is the simplest solution yet. Add a simple Read Later bookmarklet to your browser, click it when you want to save the web page to read later, and you're done. Visit Instapaper later and all your saved articles are there to read.

Fortune

We (Hulu) got a write-up in Fortune today. It's one of the more detailed profiles of the company so far.

Liftoff

Tonight's episode of Mythbusters settled, among other things, that long-standing Internet debate about whether or not an airplane on a conveyor belt moving backwards (like a treadmill) at a speed equal to the airplane's normal ground speed during takeoff would lift off or not.

The answer? The plane does take off. The thurst of the airplane engines acts on air, not on the ground through the wheels.

Technorati Tags: mythbusters, science, tv

Bloody Monday

Zooey Deschanel is coming out with an album of tunes with M. Ward. They call themselves She and Him. Indie people everywhere swoon. Stream the songs at this MySpace page, pre-order the album Volume One from Amazon.com. The new Magnetic Fields is streaming on MySpace, too.

I enjoyed the film City of God, and now we have City of Men, with City of God director Fernando Meirelles as producer. View the trailer here. The movie starts a limited run in the US this Friday.

Old school civil rights leaders turn a cold shoulder on Obama.

It's pretty clear Blu-Ray is going to win this high-def DVD format war. The downside, in the near term, is that it's near impossible to get a Blu-Ray DVD from your Netflix queue.

I think it's safe to classify "I drink your milkshake" as a meme now. I saw the movie last week and enjoyed it, and damned if there haven't been some stellar scores this year by folks you think of as rockers first: Jonny Greenwood and Nick Cave. I'm a huge fan of Brahms' Violin Concerto and of Arvo Part, so to put music by both in that movie is almost like cheating.

Technorati Tags: barackobama, bluray, DVD, film, m.ward, movies, music, netflix, obama, politics, video, youtube, zooeydeschanel

Some random links perused over the holidays

Tyler Cowen lists policy areas in which his views are uncertain. It's refreshing that even an economist of his stature can admit that he is uncertain on so many issues. Cowen links to Arnold Kling's list of what he is certain about.

Vladimir Putin is Time's Man of the Year? Interesting.

RIP Borat, RIP Ali G. May you live on through the annoying and lousy impersonations of thousands of young males across the world.

Google, without asking permission, decides to share all your shared items in Google Reader with all of your GMail contacts.

Warner joins the DRM-free movement at Amazon's MP3 store.

M. Night Shyamalan has another of those twist movies in the works, releasing next June: The Happening.

Sleeveface is the art of augmenting the art on a record sleeve with your own body. You can't do that with a CD cover, unless, of course, you are a really small person.

Firefox - always in front

Annoying and now frequent bug nagging me on my Mac: my Firefox browser window suddenly decides it always deserves to be in front, no matter what. The only way to get move it out of the way is to minimize it or close it. Does anyone have a fix for that?

Plugins like Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar make it the browser of choice for work, but shoving its way to the front at all times makes Firefox a rather rude houseguest.

Firefox 2.0.0.9, Mac OS X 10.5.1

Finally...internet access at new apt up and running

Akira-like electric motorcycle prototype from Japan. (official website in Japanese)

Moby offers some free music for film students, indie filmmakers, and others for their non-profit film projects.

A cool use of the Hulu.com embed player. Extends the water cooler discussion of great moments in your favorite TV shows to the web, allowing you to not just tell people about the scene but show it to them as well.

Luxilon

Peter Bodo has an interesting post over at Tennis.com about the impact of the tennis racket string technology on the modern game which I hadn't considered when discussing Federer and the evolution of tennis the other day. Federer agrees that at some point, passing shots and returns became far easier to hit, lowering the effectiveness of the net game, but he attributes it to racket strings:

I mean, I used to play obviously much different at the age like Djokovic. I would chip and charge, serve and volley a little bit, play like my idols basically: Becker, Edberg, Sampras. They all did it, so for me it was like I got to play the same way.

Then I realized things were slowing down. The new string generation came along where returning and passing shots was made easier. It was harder to attack in some ways, you know.

Tennis Warehouse has a list of ATP Top 500 players who use Luxilon strings. Roger Federer isn't listed (he's a Wilson guy), but the Wilson strings he does use are actually a combination of Luxilon ALU Power Rough and Natural Gut.

Federer is reputed to have been as fanatical about the development of his racket (the Wilson K Factor KSix-One Tour 90) as, say, Lance Armstrong was about the specifications of his bike. Of course, most professionals are probably meticulous about the tools of their trade, but it's not surprise that the only ones we hear about are those at the top of their sports. You give me Federer's racket and and put a wet spaghetti noodle in his hand and he still probably beats me love and love.

Traditionalists in sports like golf and tennis like to complain about technology and its impact on their sports, but all I care about is that advances in technology continue to reward those with the best fundamentals and skills, that we continue to see beautiful game rise to the top. Far better for tennis fans to enjoy the awe-inspiring virtuosity of Federer on the court than pure bangers like Richard Krajicek who just served their opponents out of the stadium. Tiger Woods can hit the ball a country mile, yes, but he has a near fundamentally perfect golf swing and mental fortitude and work habits that are legendary. If they changed golf ball technology or golf clubs, would Woods suddenly fall back to the pack? I doubt it.

Interesting trivia about Federer and the men's professional game in general: what % of points did Federer win in his US Open Final against Djokovic?

The answer is 119 of 222 points, or 53.6%. For the entire year, Federer has won something like 56% of the points he's played. You'd expect the number to be higher for someone who's probably the greatest tennis player of all time, but that's the sport. A few points here and there make all the difference.

D3...serious hotness

Workaround for sending MMS messages using your iPhone. The iPhone camera isn't that hot, but sometimes you just want to send a photo to someone on the spot. Being able to send a photo of decent quality to someone instantaneously using whatever you used to snap the photo is one of those things I would have thought would be commonplace by now, but it's not. Some people have camera phones, but the photo quality is terrible. Others have decent phone cameras, but then the recipient can't view the photo in high resolution. Or you have a digital camera that doesn't have wireless access and a keyboard for typing in contacts.

Speaking of cameras, Nikon and Canon continue to pound the living daylights out of each other on the digital SLR cage fight. Canon introduced the EOS 1DS Mark III, with a 21-megapixel full frame sensor. Today, Nikon came back with the D3, with a near full-frame sensor (a first for Nikon in its digital SLR line), but more importantly, a max ISO rating of 25,600, or "64X what was commonly regarded as high-speed film." It shoots up to 9 frames per second with Autofocus tracking and up to 11fps without.

ISO 25,600? Criminy, that thing will see in the dark. 11 fps? HDMI video output? A virtual horizon function which lets you know when the camera is perfectly level? a 920K dot LCD?!

Once you start collecting some lenses by either Nikon or Canon, it's tough to justify switching, and both are close enough in performance that there's no reason to. But I'd been jealous of Canon's full-frame sensors on its digital SLRs. When Canon announced the 21MP 1DS MKIII, I was a bit envious, but the features on the D3 are much more exciting to me than the 21MP's. That ISO setting, if it's actually usable, may mean leaving your flash at home for so many more situations. Even if it relies on some digital voodoo like the D2X required to reach ISO 1600, the D3 has a still impressive 6,400 top end ISO if you don't resort to digital shenanigans.

Also, the Canon 1DS MKIII costs a jaw-dropping $8,000. Yes, it may perform at medium format quality levels, but at that price you could just buy a medium format camera.

Check out the DPReview preview of the D3 which streets in November. Here's Ken Rockwell's preview.

I wet my pants reading about the D3. All I can say is me...want...now. If I get one, I'm going to set it next to my iPhone in the hopes they mate and spawn some of the sexiest gadgets ever.

Also among the Nikon announcements: an AF-S 14-24mm f2.8 lens. I want one of those, too, as Nikon has really been lacking in the wide-angle lens category for its digital SLRs because of the multiplication factor on its previous sensors.

A new pair of glasses for the web

Adobe announces Moviestar, a new version their web video Adobe Flash Player 9, with support for H.264. It also includes a new audio codec called High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC).

So we may not have to put up with the low quality Flash video at YouTube for much longer. Though it is one of the better codecs for producing high quality video at low file sizes, H.264 is not a magic bullet. But used well, it can offer "good enough" quality for full-screen viewing on a computer without crazy download times.

Adobe has posted one demo. Viewed at full screen, i wouldn't call it high def, but it's sufficient for standard def for today's bandwidths. You can retain the minimal latency of today's Flash video while adding a welcome boost in video quality.

I used to think such intermediate forms of video quality wouldn't be needed for long if Internet bandwidth to homes continued to increase at the rates predicted by Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth. But I feel like Internet bandwidth to the home hasn't improved much for me in the past several years. I'm actually putting up with slower bandwidth here in LA (DSL) than I had a few years ago in Seattle through a cable modem.

True streaming high def over the web is not yet a reality. Someday, but not today.

Some links, some involving Jason Bourne

Ben Affleck hoping Jason Bourne has sidekick in next movie.

Trailer for Lars and the Real Girl, starring Ryan Gosling. Clever premise.

Scary view into the C.I.A.'s interrogation techniques. Scary stuff, especially the details on the interrogation technique called waterboarding. I'd say we need to call Jason Bourne to expose these practices, but the public already knows what's going on.

Gruesome death: man bitten by his pet black widow spider and then eaten by his other pet lizards and insects. Is this story true? Those generic photos make me skeptical.

A poster of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone, produced entirely using the text of the script. From a company called L.A. Pop Art which specializes in using this technique called micrography to produce such prints. The pieces they have for sale don't interest me as consumer products, but I'd love to see the technique generalized so that you could order a custom print of any picture generated entirely from the text of your choice.

A popular article that circulated among the technorati a few weeks ago: In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich. Hard to feel sorry for people who have a couple million and still feel poor.

Technorati Tags: film, humor, movies, newyorker, tech, trailer

Ads, ads, ads

A trailer for the movie version of Kite Runner, posted by Yahoo alongside a video ad for The Bourne Ultimatum (at least it was last I checked) that plays at the same time, obscuring the audio of the trailer. Two ads fighting for control of your speakers. Yahoo must be hurting.

Another case of advertising gone wrong: this QSOL print ad. Sex and servers: sounds like a trashy novel set in the Bay Area.

Technorati Tags: advertising, movies, tech, trailer

.Mac still sucks

I scrolled through a recap of Tuesday's big Apple product unveiling, waiting for the .Mac announcement that would blow me away, and it never came. The feelings of the large contingent of disappointed .Mac users is reflected well here. I end up paying $99 a year to sync all my Macs and backup some files.

I wouldn't care so much if it were cheaper, say $19.99 a year. Or, if you keep it at $19.99, up the storage space to 100GB or some non-trivial number that would allow for full backup of all my music files and documents.

Macs themselves are as hot as ever, though. I'm slowly steering everyone in my family to Macs. The last time I was visiting my parents I spent a good hour trying to speed up their Windows desktop. It had slowed to a crawl, and it's been so long since I've worked on a Windows computer that it took me a long time to decipher all the random software that had leeched onto the system like mold. You can only re-install the operating system and start fresh so many times before you just recommend they dump the thing for something lower maintenance. I see one of the new iMacs in their future.

Technorati Tags: apple, Mac, tech, web

So that's how it works!

Funny link [Via Pogue's Posts].

Make sure to move your mouse around a bit or you may find it cryptic and uninteresting.

Technorati Tags: humor, web

Some old notes and links

VMWare's Fusion may top even Parallels and Bootcamp as a way to run Windows apps on your Mac.

After downloading the first iPhone software update, I've found the iPhone to be generally more stable. Mobile Safari was crashing a lot just before the update. Now? Not as much.

Why are U.S. health care costs so high relative to the rest of the world? Perhaps because American doctors make so much more than their international peers and because of the way they are paid--by the procedure. I'm not sure the right answer is to put doctors on a salary. If the services American doctors provide are superior or more specialized, it may be worth the money. Arnold Kling blames a different issue for soaring healthcare costs, arguing that what we have in the U.S. is more health care insulation than insurance.

Baseball Prospectus posted an interview with Dr. Alan Nathan, physics professor and also chairman of the Science and Baseball committee of SABR. In response to a question about counterintuitive baseball truths as related to physics, he offered three, the last running counter to a baseball axiom:

One example is that the grip the batter has on the bat does not play a role in the ball-bat collision. That is, a batter could just as well let go of the bat an instant before contact, and it would not make a bit of difference to what happens to the ball. Most people tend to be very skeptical of this conclusion, since they believe a batter "muscles" the ball when it is in contact with the bat. But, that is not what happens, as shown not only "theoretically" but also experimentally.

Another example has to do with the ability of the batter to track the incoming pitch. In fact, it is really impossible to do so. So, just like my previous example, the batter could just as well close his eyes when the ball is halfway to home plate and it won’t affect the outcome of the swing.

A final example: Can a batter get to first base quicker by running through the base or in a head-first slide? Most people believe the former. I believe the latter. The essential physics is that by sliding with outstretched arms, the batter reaches the bag before his center of gravity reaches it, whereas those two times more or less coincide when running through the bag.

Technorati Tags: apple, baseball, economics, iPhone, Mac, software, tech

TGI...oh shoot, it's Sunday night

Amazon Flexible Payments Service launches. That was the last product I worked on before leaving Amazon. After finishing a product definition and filing for a patent or two for the payment web service, I left for NYC and the film world. It had been so long since I'd heard anything about it that I though it had been killed, but I'm glad to see it make it to market. Just glancing at some of the service highlights, it seems to be have retained almost all of the cool features we envisioned for it, especially the flexible instructions. In the next year or so, some people are going to build some really cool payment apps using this service. There isn't the option for free person-to-person bank debit transfers, however, which, though it wouldn't make any money for Amazon, would enable some cool consumer apps.

GMailSecure is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that forces GMail to use https.

Meemix is another one of those Internet radio sites like Pandora or Last.fm that tries to serve up music that you'll like. I've played with the beta a bit and it seems to be choosing songs well. But goodness gracious that is one confusing interface. Whoever designed that page did Meemix a huge disservice. There are all sorts of non-standard icons everywhere, the majority of which might as well be hieroglyphics. You cannot underestimate the importance of a clear, simple interface for a new product like this, especially one fighting for mindshare in an already crowded space. Pandora, iLike, Last.fm, The Filter, and on and on. I don't track the stock market and venture capital space enough to say whether or not we're in the midst of another bubble, but there are definitely plenty of markets that are overcrowded. They can't all survive. If they truly intend on treating this as a beta that they'll learn from, they better clean up that interface pronto.

The NYTimes outs Fake Steve Jobs: he's played by Daniel Lyons, senior editor at Forbes. Thanks, NYTimes, for now shaving in half the fun that we all had reading Fake Steve Jobs' blog.

Gilbert Arenas is the Microsoft of the NBA. He got outed for stealing someone's joke about shark attacks and posting it to his blog as his own, and after some folks called him on it, he responded on his blog.

Let’s not forget, “Hibachi” was stolen too. Brendan Haywood used to say it before me. But I recognize good stuff and make it popular. Now “Hibachi” is patented by Agent Zero, son.

I’m not a thief, I just reused it.

Know who is a thief? The guy that is trying to sell the domain name of GilbertArenas.com to me. It’s my name! I have to buy it back from him. Now that’s stealing, borrowing, whatever you want to call it.

Technorati Tags: amazon, Apple, email, Firefox, google, music, stevejobs, web, webservice

Reinventing the Wheel

Reinventing the Wheel : A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition was formerly named Code Name Ginger, a reference to the working name for what would eventually launch to the world as the Segway.

It's a rare firsthand behind-the-scenes account of the launch of a high profile tech device, and perhaps of more interest, of the man behind the legend that is Dean Kamen. It's rare because the captains of industry, e.g. Gates, Jobs, Bezos, have little to benefit from allowing a reporter unfettered access to their lives. The image we have of these people is received, for the most part, through the filter of Public Relations. It is akin to always seeing actors with their makeup on.

Author Steve Kemper was invited to document the creation of Ginger by Kamen himself, and he had near unfettered access for a large chunk of the Segway's development. But when the product leaked to the press with details only available through Kemper's book proposal (the retributive deed of a jilted editor at one of the publishers?), he was booted from Kamen's good graces and from the offices of the Ginger team before the product launched to the world. And so the momentum of the book comes crashing to a halt near the end, but what remains is a good read.

I've ridden a Segway. It's a lot of fun, something that needs to be experienced to be appreciated, but against most standards--the pre-launch hype (hysteria?), the expectations of Kamen the Ginger team, the expectations of investors like John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins--the device has been a disappointment.

There are a few reasons the device failed to meet expectations. One is that it's expensive, a couple thousand dollars. I can buy a cruiser bike here in LA for $300. The second is that they fit into a very strange niche: they're useful for covering distances in between those short enough to talk and long enough that you'd drive. If I had one, the main use would be to commute to work. But LA's sidewalk network is not extensive. If I took a Segway onto the road here in LA I'd be roadkill about five minutes after merging into traffic. In NYC, pedestrians would pull you off your Segway and beat you up if you tried to jockey with them for space on the sidewalk. For longer distances, getting one down into the subway system and onto a subway car would be so difficult as to be impractical.

Where do you park your Segway? I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving it outside, even if no one could ride the thing away. If I had a couple bags of groceries, how would I carry them? When a geek contemplates the Segway, they see a device so cool and revolutionary that it will change the world. When the average person sees the Segway, they see an expensive device that doesn't fit into the world they live in. What are the problems it solves? Being kinder to the environment is not a sufficient purchase driver. People do not vote for green with their pocketbooks unless the impact to their lives is neutral.

What is the market for the device? A great product without a market is in trouble, whereas a lousy product with a great market may survive until it improves or until superior products flood the space.

Another reason for the Segway's disappointing sales, and one I think is underestimated, especially by the geek set, is the mortification you feel when riding around on one. I think a lot of people would be embarrassed to be seen riding around on one in public. Some of it has to do with pop culture and how it was quickly depicted in shows like Arrested Development as a visual gag. But more damaging is that when I see someone on a Segway in public, wearing a bucket of a helmet, rolling along, my first impulse is laughter. Though the perception is unfair, riders seem like people who are too lazy to walk. Perhaps it's because people on Segways don't appear to be moving very quickly, or because they seem so still when standing on the device, gripping the handlebars. I don't think of that person as using the Segway in lieu of a trip in the car. I think of them as using the Segway instead of walking or biking.

A more desired reaction would be to think that the rider was aiding the environment, that they were hip, an early adopter, a trendsetter, the first on the block to get the hot new toy. Do other people think that, or am I the only one who would be a bit hesitant to subject his public image to scrutiny by riding one of these around town? It may seem like a minor branding issue, but it's hugely important.

Compare that to my iPhone. The first week I owned it, every time I pulled it out I felt like a celebrity nipple, so great was the attention it attracted. The Segway is really sexy from a geeky standpoint, but really geeky (in the bad way) from a consumer image standpoint.

Maybe it was ahead of its time. Given the elevated stature of the environment in recent months, perhaps the device would have had a greater success if it had launched a year or so ago as a powerful volley against pollution and global warming. If, at the same time An Inconvenient Truth came out, Al Gore and Leonardo Dicaprio appeared on every TV show possible, riding around on Segways, pushing them as one way to prevent impending environmental apocalypse; if every high profile celebrity in LA and NYC were given one and were seen riding around town on one; then maybe, just maybe, the device might have launched to greater sales and momentum. Not the type of sales predicted by some of the early investors, but stronger than the ones seen to date. Riders might have the sense of pride that Prius owners feel when passing each other on the road.

I also suspect that he devices best bet for catching on lies somewhere outside the U.S. Americans love their cars, and the country is built around them. Overcoming that requires not just solving practical problems but surmounting cultural inertia.

Reinventing the Wheel : A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition

Technorati Tags: book, gadgets, science, tech

Two for Tuesday

Trailer for Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (written by Anderson, Roman Coppola, and Jason Schwartzman).

I saw a demo of Microsoft Labs' Photosynth a long time ago. It looked amazing, and now it's in beta. Unfortunately for me it only works for Windows Vista or XP users running IE or Firefox, but if I qualified I'd be putting it through its paces.

Technorati Tags: film, movies, photography, software, trailer

Thanks to the linear forward motion of time it's Friday

Jim Jannard reports that the Red team has been able to shoot useable footage with the Red One rated at ISO 4000. Pretty amazing.

David Lynch to direct a commercial for Gucci's next perfume.

MIT neuroscientists identified the neuronal mechanics of déjà vu. Much to my disappointment, they have nothing to do with a glitch in the Matrix.

A few sites that I've just started playing with: Swaptree is a site that allows you to swap media products with other people. You pay for postage. I may start listing all my stuff on here since I've since resigned myself to the fact that most of my old DVDs an CDs and books are just about worthless used. Geni is a free website that allows you to build and maintain a family tree. Everyone you add to your tree can then build on it, and in just a week or two my tree has sprouted into something resembling a small shrub.

Technorati Tags: camcorder, camera, cinematography, filmmaking, gadgets, medicine, commercial, Red, science

Live from the Emerald City

This post broadcast from the Emerald City, where yours truly attended Audrey and Matt's lovely wedding this weekend (some pics here). Seattle's gorgeous summer weather arrived early (for the Pacific Northwest) this year; it's actually warmer here than in Los Angeles. The only problem is that I have one of the worst summer colds I've ever experienced and have been hacking myself awake every night for a few hours. I'm popping decongestants like they're SweeTarts. If this is my last post ever, know that I probably choked to death on my own phlegm in the middle of the night.

***

Telekinesis is an iPhone Remote application that allows you to access files on your computer via your iPhone.

Red is a popular brand name for high end products. Besides the camera, we now have SRAM working on a sub 2000g component group called Red (for those of you who are non-cyclists, a component group is all the stuff that goes on your bike frame (outside of your wheels and pedals and handlebars; components include your cranks and derailleurs and brake levers, stuff like that). Always good to have a bit of competition for the two market leaders, Shimano and Campagnolo.

The rumors are confirmed: Dan Patrick is leaving ESPN. The peak of ESPN's quality was when Patrick and Keith Olbermann hosted The Big Show. He faded from view for me in recent years as he moved over to the radio. I didn't even own a radio in NYC.

Dress like Roger Federer at Wimbledon. You're sure to impress in your all-white blazer and warm-up trousers when you show up for local club match, at least until you pull your hamstring in the third game. That was some final between Federer and Nadal, by the way. Those two epitomize the peak of the modern tennis game now; compare that to, say, footage of an Edberg-Becker final from back in the day and it's a totally different game.

You think you're always waiting a long time for the woman in your life to get ready? Lián Amaris Sifuentes took it to another level. She went through the usual preparations for a date but slowed them down to fill 72 hours, and she performed it in Union Square this weekend (so close to my old apartment!). NYU professor R. Luke Dubois shot the performance on three high-def camcorders and will compress it into a 72 minute video. Dubois has used this technique before, compressing previous Academy Award Best Picture winners into one minute. Some examples are posted here (Amadeus or Titanic, e.g.). That's what it must be like to have one's life flash before one's eyes. Trippy.

Technorati Tags: apple, art, cycling, ESPN, gadgets, iPhone, tennis, software, sports, tech

iNotes

Very little evidence supporting theory that poverty breeds terrorism. I find that reassuring.

In a Q&A about some device called the iPhone, Walt Mossberg says Apple will add Flash support to the iPhone browser through an early software update.

Alessandro Petacchi out of the Tour de France after doping charge. His urine sample after the third of his five stage wins at this year's Giro d'Italia showed an unusually high level of albutamol, an asthma treatment. He holds a therapeutic use exemption for its use, but he exceeded the permitted level of 1,000 nanograms/millileter. Well, there goes the top sprinter in the Tour. I'll still watch, though. I just got back on my bike the other day for the first time in ages, and on the 4th I went with Tory for a climb up Malibu Canyon Road. That climb kicked my butt all over the road but I survived to summit.

Crazy battle at Kruger National Park in Africa, caught on video. Some unlikely twists and turns. I think I caught Jeff Van Gundy in there, hanging onto the leg of a Cape Buffalo. I've seen enough specials to know that Cape Buffalo never leave a man behind (thx to Mark for the referral).

Verizon COO Jack Plating sends internal memo titled iWhatever, throws out some brave talk in the face of the iPhone. He is true in that the network is Verizon's first and most powerful advantage. But Verizon handsets are not impressive at all.

I had lunch with Robert today, and the cafe was broadcasting highlights from Wimbledon. We were talking about Federer's loss in the French Open final to Nadal, and Robert thought that a big problem is that Federer was not extending on his first serve. He was keeping his first serve motion in too close, resulting in his ghastly first serve percentage. You wouldn't be able to tell from the final score, but based on the % of points Federer won on his first serve, he would have won that much had his first serve gone in more. One of these years, Federer will break through against Nadal at the French. He's played well enough to do so in the past, but it just hasn't happened there at Philippe Chatrier.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cycling, economics, gadgets, iPhone, nature, politics, sociology, tech, tennis, terrorism, video, web, youtube

Google buys Grandcentral

Google buys GrandCentral. I signed up with GrandCentral when it was in beta but never really used it. It sounds good in theory, one number and voicemail box to unite them all, but I never felt compelled to switch over. Google's purchase is validation, of sorts, so perhaps I'll revisit the service.

Technorati Tags: business, google, phone, tech

An iPhone report

You don't really know someone until you travel with them, right? I've hung out with my iPhone for a weekend now, and we've really hit it off. I'm only the eight thousandth person to throw my thoughts out, but here are some random thoughts on my new baby.

Let's start with the negatives, many of which are missing features:

• The device is a slave, in part, to AT&T. You don't have to search far for the horror stories spawned this weekend as the iPhone forced hundreds of thousands of customers to interact with AT&T.
• Recessed headphone port--noted earlier.
• No GPS which would've made the Maps feature even more killer than it already is. I'm hoping that when GPS is available I can send mine in for a GPS receiver insertion, but I've already set aside a fund for iPhone 2.0. Maybe when GPS is incorporated it can be used for anti-theft tracking so I don't have to stress so much about losing her.
• Mediocre 2MP cell phone camera with no flash--better than the one I have on my Verizon LG phone, but it's not going to replace my Canon SD800 for pics of friends when out and about.
• Volume is a bit soft--maybe I'm going deaf from listening to my iPod at such high volumes the past several years, but my iPhone at max volume is softer than other phones I've owned.
• Speaker is not that loud or clear. Not surprising to me that they can't fit a great speaker with a huge amp in such a tiny device, but if you're wondering about the speaker quality, there you go.
• Can't go to landscape mode in Mail. You really can't screw up typing in the larger keyboard of landscape mode, but that view only appears for the web browser right now.
• Need SpamSieve for the iPhone, or I need to start using my GMail account a lot more to filter out the spam. It's been a long time since I've had to deal with spam one by one, and it's not pretty. So far I haven't found a method to delete a group of e-mails so I've been zapping spams one by one which, as anyone knows, is painful in this day and age of spam overload.
• No copy and paste. I haven't tried that function on devices that don't have physical keyboards, but perhaps there's an elegant way to implement it. I almost think the iPhone could do with an extra button that does different things in various contexts, but I know previous efforts with such all-purpose triggers, like the one they put in BMW cars at one point, have been unsuccessful.
• No Flash or Java for the iPhone implementation of Safari. It's easy to take Flash and Java for granted now, until you lose them and realize that so many Web 2.0 sites rely on them for basic interface functionality.
• Web page rendering is just a hair slow for pages that have loaded already. Even once a web page finished loading, if you scroll down a page quickly, the browser will stop to render the next section of the page, presenting you with a grey and white checkerboard pattern while you're on hold. I've encountered this even if it's just a page of pure text. It's not that bothersome to me, but I'm surprised it occurs even with lightweight web pages.
• No video capability for the camera. I had visions of using the speaker phone with an onboard video camera to do futuristic video phone chats with other iPhone or video iChat-enabled people, and they remain just that, visions.
• No RSS reader.
• No to-do items in the Calendar, something that would help it as a PDA replacement.
• The calendar from your Mac is flattened upon entering the iPhone so all appointments are listed together. When you create items in the iPhone Calendar they can only be sent to one iCal calendar on your Mac.
• One time my iPhone got stuck in this odd state where Maps and iPod kept bouncing me back to the home screen. I finally solved it by turning the device completely off.
• Need to allow more third-party app development for the iPhone. I don't mind Apple's closed loop system in many cases because the solutions are so good, but in general, open systems speed the pace of development. For now, I've created a Bookmarks folder in Safari called iPhone and have been tossing interesting iPhone web apps in there, but I'd prefer to be able to select your own icons for the home screen.
• Can't load your own ringtones. I'm not a huge ringtone person, and I'm proud to say I've never paid money for a ringtone, but I would like to load my own. I guess I'll have to wait a while to use the THX deep bass note as my ringtone.
• No voice dialing or recording.
• Can't use it as an iPod disk drive.
• I haven't found an optimal grip for two-thumb typing.
• No manual management option for the iPod's music, video, and photo content. You have to choose playlists or albums in iTunes and iPhoto for the iPod to sync to automatically. You can be creative in iTunes with smart playlists to manage your music at a finer-grained level, but I don't understand why you can't manually drag songs and videos and and off the iPhone like you can with any other iPod.

A lot of these issues can be addressed by a software update. I'm already giddy at the thought of finding that first iPhone software update available. I've always preferred electronic devices that are software upgradeable; even my home theater pre-amp can be upgraded via software. It's exciting when my PS3 grabs a software update and suddenly can up-res regular DVDs. It's a shame the iPhone doesn't have room for hardware add-ons, like additional memory, but I've never owned a cell phone long enough to make too much use of hardware add-ons anyway.

On to the good:

• AT&T reception in my apartment has improved a lot since the first day I moved in. I don't know how a single person like myself can judge the antenna quality of the iPhone and the network quality of AT&T, so we'll have to wait for more stringent testing to judge this aspect of the phone.
• On the first sync, all my Address Book contacts, e-mail account settings in Mail, and iCal appointments moved right over to the iPhone. I'd never had a phone that could sync its contacts with my computer, so I still have to move phone numbers over from my old phone, but hopefully this will be the last time I ever have to do that.
• Maps is awesome. I don't have one of those GPS screens in my car, but now I won't feel so uninformed when stuck in traffic in my car in LA which is all the time.
• The iPhone feels like a device from the future. I love just flicking my fingers across the screen to scroll the display. Pinching, twirling, tossing--I feel like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
• Speaking of the display, it's gorgeous. Bright colors, solid resolution.
• The glass screen is sturdy and elegant. It does smudge, but you don't see the smudges when the screen is lit up. The device feels like a luxury device with its high quality build and heft.
• Visual voicemail is fantastic. Setting up my voicemail box with screen prompts was so much more enjoyable than setting up past voicemail boxes using audio prompts. Now I just need the feature to automatically encode all voicemails from voice-to-text and I may be able to delete some voicemails without ever having to listen to them.
• When trying to move the cursor to a specific spot in a block of text, you place your finger done roughly where you want it to go and a magnifying glass view pops up to allow for fine-grained control. Some interface specialist can put that on their resume and has a claim to fame for life.
• The YouTube videos encoded via H.264 look better than the YouTube Flash videos on my desktop computer. That's ironic. You know how I hate the Flash video quality of YouTube. It's odd that the onset of the iPhone that's driving YouTube to recode the rest of its videos to H.264. Now when can we choose to view those on YouTube.com as well?
• There's a switch on the side to flip the phone to silent. Why didn't any of my previous phones have this? So convenient.
• Surfing the web via Safari is surprisingly pleasant for a device this small. Double-tap to zoom is intuitive. For many trips, I no longer need to bring along my laptop. For simple tasks--checking e-mail, web-surfing, listening to music--the iPhone works just fine.

Most important of all, the experience of using the iPhone is an enjoyable one. I've owned phones that have had better cameras, the ability to shoot video, and other features the iPhone lacks. But a customer experience does not comprise a list of features. If so, the iPod wouldn't be the runaway market leader. I really enjoy the experience of using the iPhone as it is now, and I can't wait to see how it transforms with its first software update.

At a minimum, the entry of a player like Apple into the market should raise the game for other mobile manufacturers which is something they really needed. Every one will benefit, even those who don't like Apple and its products.

The most annoying thing about the iPhone is the caustic debate between iPhone lovers and haters (a subset of the general Mac and non-Mac religious war). You can't avoid it if you're curious to read evaluations of the device; it spills out and overflows out of every comment thread. Many people who don't want an iPhone feel intent on calling it an overpriced piece of garbage, and iPhone fans are labeled zealots. Reasonable, centrist dialogue has a hard-time seizing the high ground on the web, and the iPhone launch has put a megaphone to the shouting match. No drama, please.

Technorati Tags: Apple, gadgets, iPhone, ipod, phone

Pepper

Lots of good stuff in this week's New Yorker:

• James Surowiecki gives an overview of prediction markets which he is qualified to do since he wrote The Wisdom of Crowds
• Alex Ross on Sibelius
• A short piece by David Sedaris
• A short story by Stuart Dybek
• Louis Menand reviews Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
• Anthony Lane reviews The Transformers and Rescue Dawn

MacArthur Grant winner Luis von Ahn is using online games to allow humans to help solve computing problems. For example, he's using human evaluations of photos to give computers an aesthetic judgment sensibility. The games, when they're show ready, will be online here.

Taiwanese director Edward Yang died yesterday of complications from colon cancer. He was 59. His film Yi Yi is humane and moving, not to mention a fascinating specimen of Asian long-shot cinema.

AllofMP3 now officially dead, shut down by the Russian government. It seems, however, to have arisen from the dead under a new URL.

Technorati Tags: film, movies, music, newyorker, tech

Recessed headphone port - curses!

The biggest downer about the iPhone so far is that most third-party headphones don't work with the recessed headphone port. Some folks have found creative solutions to avoid buying the $10 headphone adapter. I'm not sure why the headphone port is recessed. I really hope it wasn't to drive sales of headphone adapters, but I doubt it since Apple doesn't even manufacture the adapter. Many earphone manufacturers are likely scrambling to include an iPhone adapter with their headphones in the near future.

That said, that's one of the few iPhone problems that doesn't seem solvable by a software update. The iPhone is not perfect, but it's such a leap beyond my plain Jane Verizon LG phone that I feel like I'm cheating on my wife with a twenty-something model (just a hypothetical; no I'm not married). I keep finding excuses to fiddle around with my iPhone; the display is just that gorgeous and fun to play with.

There are hundreds of iPhone first impressions on the web. I'll try and add a few of my thoughts later today, when I'm back home for the evening, but it's safe to say that the iPhone is the most addictive new Apple product since the original iPod.

Technorati Tags: Apple, gadgets, phone, iPhone

iPhone--it was who we thought it was

David Pogue publishes the first official iPhone review I've seen yet in the NYTimes. Very comprehensive and worth reading for all who want a balanced report from someone who's tested it firsthand. Some highlights and lowlights:

• the glass screen doesn't scratch easily though it smudges
• the software is fast and beautiful and simple to use
• the phone is fun to use; once you buy the phone, you choose your phone plan at home in iTunes
• call quality is average and dependent on your AT&T signal strength
• e-mail and the web browser are great, and so is the battery life (Pogue suspects you'll recharge once every other day); however, someday the battery loses its charge and will have to be sent to Apple for replacement
• no chat program, voice dialing, or memory card slot
• you can't install programs from anyone other than Apple
• web browser can't handle Java or Flash
• the 2MP camera is good, but only for motionless, well-lit subjects, and it doesn't capture video or send MMS photos (i.e., picture messages). =(
• a biggie: typing on the screen keyboard can be frustrating, and Pogue doesn't see it besting the BlackBerry on that front
• the biggest issue all along for me is confirmed, to my dismay: AT&T's network is lousy
• the EDGE network is super slow; web browsing will be painful

After the crush of hype, it turns out most of what was rumored and suspected about the device turns out to be true. Since I always carry my iPod and cell phone with me, the iPhone is attractive as a way to consolidate gadgets, and it sure would be great to get the real-time traffic reports via Google Maps here in eternally-congested LA. However, I had such a lousy experience with AT&T (in its Cingular guise) that I feel comfortable not waiting in line on Friday. I really wish Apple had found a better partner for this venture.

UPDATE: Walt Mossberg has his review of the iPhone up now as well. Here are some of his thoughts, which confirm my worst fear, that the iPhone is held back by being tethered to AT&T's network (when it isn't connected via wi-fi). Overall, he still liked it, but like Pogue, notes that it isn't a grand slam:

We have been testing the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the country. Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smart-phone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.
The Apple phone combines intelligent voice calling, and a full-blown iPod, with a beautiful new interface for music and video playback. It offers the best Web browser we have seen on a smart phone, and robust email software. And it synchronizes easily and well with both Windows and Macintosh computers using Apple’s iTunes software.

It has the largest and highest-resolution screen of any smart phone we’ve seen, and the most internal memory by far. Yet it is one of the thinnest smart phones available and offers impressive battery life, better than its key competitors claim.

It feels solid and comfortable in the hand and the way it displays photos, videos and Web pages on its gorgeous screen makes other smart phones look primitive.

The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review — was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart software that corrects typing errors on the fly.

But the iPhone has a major drawback: the cellphone network it uses. It only works with AT&T (formerly Cingular), won’t come in models that use Verizon or Sprint and can’t use the digital cards (called SIM cards) that would allow it to run on T-Mobile’s network. So, the phone can be a poor choice unless you are in areas where AT&T’s coverage is good. It does work overseas, but only via an AT&T roaming plan.

In addition, even when you have great AT&T coverage, the iPhone can’t run on AT&T’s fastest cellular data network. Instead, it uses a pokey network called EDGE, which is far slower than the fastest networks from Verizon or Sprint that power many other smart phones. And the initial iPhone model cannot be upgraded to use the faster networks.

The iPhone compensates by being one of the few smart phones that can also use Wi-Fi wireless networks. When you have access to Wi-Fi, the iPhone flies on the Web. Not only that, but the iPhone automatically switches from EDGE to known Wi-Fi networks when it finds them, and pops up a list of new Wi-Fi networks it encounters as you move. Walt was able to log onto paid Wi-Fi networks at Starbucks and airports, and even used a free Wi-Fi network at Fenway Park in Boston to email pictures taken during a Red Sox game.

But this Wi-Fi capability doesn’t fully make up for the lack of a fast cellular data capability, because it is impractical to keep joining and dropping short-range Wi-Fi networks while taking a long walk, or riding in a cab through a city.

***

Short interview with Atul Gawande in the Freakonomics blog.

***

Today is the day of silence for Pandora and other Internet radio sites to protest the increase in licensing fees for online radio (a move driven in large part by the RIAA). Save Net Radio!

***

The Beastie Boys' are on Flickr.

***

Paul Shirley, having played with both Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant, assesses the possibility of the two of them playing on the same team:

Having spent a similar amount of time in the semi-intimate company of both men, I can say confidently that two people couldn't be more different. Kevin Garnett is one of the most impressive humans I've ever been around.

Kobe Bryant isn't.

Technorati Tags: Apple, basketball, camera, flickr, gadgets, gawande, medicine, mobile, music, NBA, nytimes, phone, photography, pogue, puppy, radio, review, sports

Video 3-pack

I got a crush on Obama (Youtube video) - goodness gracious.

How to wash your filthy keyboard? Put it through the dishwasher (Quicktime). Looks light it actually works with the right types of keyboards.

A quick tease of a trailer for Pixar's next animated movie Wall-E (next movie after Ratatouille, that is).

Technorati Tags: film, howto, movies, obama, pixar, animation, trailer, video, youtube

Memorial Day weekend

I am really sick: eyes watering, nose running, throat burning. My sinuses and chest are so congested I feel like I'm breathing through one of those coffee straws. A lot of people at school seem to be sick; one professor just canceled a class tomorrow morning. It's odd to see a cold seize hold around school when the weather is 70 degrees and sunny every day.

I have not slept as much or as regularly this quarter, and this weekend was really packed. Perhaps the lack of sleep has compromised my immune system. Whatever the cause, here's a sick day worth's of content.

Saturday I spent as 1st AC (assistant cameraperson) on a classmate's shoot. Since this was a reshoot, we had the luxury of a 2nd AC, and it made life a lot easier. Last quarter we had one AC per shoot, and that's a lot of work for one person. You have to load and download film, take focus measurements, guard the camera, swap lenses, check the gate, clean filters, move the camera into position, swap the camera from sticks to dolly and back, pull focus, keep a camera log, set the T-stop on the lens, run a stopwatch on shots to calculate how much film was run and how much is left, mark and clap the slate, write camera reports, and more. It's a very technical position, but I enjoy it. The day started early, with a 5AM alarm buzzing in my ear. When I got home at the end of the day, I told myself I'd take a quick nap and then head out to meet up with a few friends. I woke up at 5AM the next morning.

Sunday was spent at a wedding in Laguna Beach. I know nothing about the city other than what I'd seen on a few episodes of that MTV show of the same name (that show was shot beautifully on Panasonic Varicams, I believe). I'm not sure the city had any say in the matter, but that show forever cemented that town's image among most of America as the place where wealthy, self-absorbed teenagers ply their Machiavellian schemes to climb the social ladder.

Monday, on a last-minute suggestion from Mark, I attended the last day of the Star Wars convention at the LA convention center (the official title of the event was Star Wars Celebration IV). I consider myself a moderate Star Wars fans (enjoyed eps IV-VI, watched eps I-III out of devotion), but next to the types of fanatics you'd imagine at a gathering like this, I felt like Paris Hilton at a Mensa meeting.

At one T-shirt booth I asked a vendor if she had a particular Boba Fett t-shirt in large.

"Which one?" she barked.

"The second one from the right, top row?" I replied, taken aback by her hostile demeanor. She looked over her shoulder and then back down at some book she was reading.

"That's Jango Fett," she muttered, and paid me no further attention. Oops.

This being the last day of the convention, the schedule was very light on Lucasfilm-generated content. Most things to see were created by vendors or fans, from droids, action figures, and models to fan films and costumes. One room featured dozens of decorated Darth Vader helmets, much like the ubiquitous cows that appeared on city sidewalks a few years back. Darth as Lady Liberty? Or the Unabomber?

At another booth, as I looked over some artwork, a boy of about 8 or 9 years old walked behind me holding a yoda lightsaber, one of the ones that lights up and makes lightsaber sounds when swung through the air. A booth clerk, in his early forties, stopped the boy.

"The yoda lightsaber?" nodded the man in approval. "Strong choice."

"It's my first one," said the boy, beaming.

"That one's very light," the man explained. "Good for people who use a one-handed fighting technique, like me." He proceeded to demonstrate with some shadow-fencing, but one of his parries smacked me in the back of my head.

"Sorry, man," he said.

"Easy there, Jedi," I said, rubbing my head.

I watched a couple of fan films in the screening room. The ones I saw were all 2005 award winners. "One Season More" is an animated short that imagines Luke Skywalker's yearning to leave Tatooine as a musical number. It has the suitable mix of love and satire that characterizes the best of fan homages. It's one portion of Star Wars The Musical. This year's winners and entries can be seen at AtomFilms.

No plans for a new Star Wars movie were unveiled, but one welcome bit of news was the announcement of a new CG series from Lucasfilm Animation: The Clone Wars. Here's a sneak peek. I really enjoyed the last animated series, Star Wars - Clone Wars, Vol. 1 and Star Wars - Clone Wars, Vol. 2. This looks to be in that style.

Tuesday morning and early afternoon I spent at Disneyland with Alan, Sharon, and my two nephews Ryan and Evan. What do Disney and Lucas have in common? Both appropriated stories and built entertainment empires. Lucas took strands of Japanese film and set them in another universe (Lucas was originally supposed to direct Apocalypse Now, and Star Wars is his version of that movie, about how a small force--the Rebels--can overcome a larger force--the Empire--through sheer force of will). Disney took Grimm's fairy tales, which were indeed grim, and gave them happier endings and an animated life.

Since the last time I visited Disneyland, over 10 years ago, the most apparent change is that the price of admission has more than doubled. But seeing it all through my nephew Ryan's eyes helped me to appreciate just how enduring a piece of culture Disney built. He was so excited he was a live wire--no nap needed on this day.

While sitting with my nephew on It's A Small World, he almost jumped out of the boat he was so pumped up. That ride doesn't look like it's been updated one bit since my parents took me on it when I was a child (I thought perhaps we'd see young children in India answering customer service phones, or Chinese kids sewing Nikes, but the ride retains its idyllic view of the world), and yet it still kills with youngsters.

Something I wondered while wandering the park: what happened to the Mickey Mouse Club? Why isn't that show still running? Look at some of the talent that came out of the sixth and seventh seasons of the most recent incarnation of the show, which ended in 1994: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, and Ryan Gosling. That's the pop music equivalent of the 2003 NBA Draft that produced Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh, among others. The Mickey Mouse Club was so competitive that Jessica Simpson and Matt Damon failed to make the cut. I'm not sure why they ceded that space to the likes of American Idol. If Disney doesn't bring back that show, I hope they've at least retained the services of the casting director/talent scout.

------------------------------------

I miss walking the streets of NYC. Google Maps Street View allows me to revisit old favorites. Here's my old apartment.

Microsoft Surface, coming Winter 2007, is one of the early products pointing towards the gesture-manipulated touchscreen interface seen in Minority Report.

An upcoming June software upgrade will allow it you to watch YouTube videos on the AppleTV.

The 2007 Cannes Film Festival winners. From what I've heard from folks who attended, the lineup of movies was very strong this year.

Christopher Nolan is going to shoot some of The Dark Knight in IMAX format. Most features that have been projected in IMAX theatres are simply 35mm films blown up. Since they weren't framed for the IMAX theater, I find many scenes incomprehensible unless you're sitting in the back row. Audiences viewing The Dark Knight at an IMAX theater will see the movie switch aspect ratios from whatever the 35mm aspect ratio is to 1.43 to 1 when the IMAX scenes come on screen.

Based on Gallup Polls, America is willing to elect a black or a woman for president, but if you're gay or an atheist (or both, I presume) your time has not come.

Darren Aronofsky disses the DVD for his movie The Fountain. It doesn't have a commentary, but Aronofsky has said he recorded one himself and will post it online soon so you can listen to it while watching the movie.

as many of you can tell it is light on the extras as compared to my previous dvd releases.

everything at the studio was a struggle.
for instance: they didn't want to do a commentary track cause they felt that it wouldn't help sales.
i didn't have it in me to fight anymore.
whatever.

so:
niko, my friend who did the doc on the dvd came up with a novel idea.
we recorded a commentary track ourselves.
we're gonna post it on a site soon, http coming soon.
you can play it and watch the flick and hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cannes, dvd, film, filmmaking, filmschool, microsoft, movies, music, politics, disney, starwars, tech, tv, video, youtube

GIF (Good it's Friday)

Ivan Basso confessed to "attempted doping," and now Bjarne Riis admits that he used EPO during years that include his 1996 Tour de France win. Eric Zabel and Rolf Aldag, who rode for Telekom during the Riis and Ullrich Tour de France wins in the 90's, also fessed up to EPO use. So did Telekom rider Bert Dietz. And Udo Bölts, and Christian Henn. Cycling is detoxing, and it's necessary, though not pretty.

On this the weekend of the Star Wars convention here in LA, psychiatrists have diagnosed Anakin Skywalker, later Darth Vader, of having a personality disorder. It sounds so obvious as to be an Onion headline, but apparently it's not. If you read me this line, I'd swear it was satire:

The diagnosis came to [psychiatrist Eric] Bui, a Star Wars fan, as he watched the series. "I thought to myself, 'That guy is crazy.' But he's not crazy. He's borderline."

Speaking of Star Wars, there's a rumor going around that George Lucas will announce a new Star Wars movie tomorrow at the convention (Saturday).

New ride at the Kennedy Space Center simulates 17,500 mph liftoff of a Space Shuttle. Now that sounds cool.

90% of handset owners believe iPhone is better than their current phone. That's when you know your marketing and brand are strong, when your product hasn't even reached consumers and yet they're crowning it the champ.

Michel Gondry directs Natalie Portman in the video for Paul McCartney's "Dance Tonight." Maybe not as conceptually brilliant as his other videos, but he still is able to pull off his effects in camera. Here's another Michel Gondry video, for Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water," which is built around a supremely clever conceit.

Someday our kids will laugh at us for ever having been impressed with regular old HD resolution. By then they'll be watching Ultra HD, with a resolution of 7680 x 4320 (16X sharper than HDTV), shot on cameras that can capture 4000 fps.

Technorati Tags: Apple, cycling, doping, drugs, gadgets, michelgondry, movies, music, psychiatry, HD, sports, starwars, tech, theonion, video, youtube

The unbearable lightness of the internet

According to Stephen Cass, the internet (the digital bits that make up the 40 petabytes of information that comprise the web) weighs 0.2 millionths of an ounce, or roughly the same as the smallest grain of sand. There's poetry in that.

Technorati Tags: internet, science

Write what?

If Ticketmaster's fees weren't painful enough, their online captchas are out of control. The other day, I tried to buy some tickets on their site. Part of the way through their purchase pipeline, I encountered this captcha:

GHU??Y

I tried something, and it was wrong. So next I got this captcha:

I thought BEMGOAG or BEMGDAG. I'm not sure which one I tried, but it was wrong. Was I going blind? Did I need a new prescription?

One more appeared on screen:

Finally, one I could handle. I raised my arms and channeled my inner Johnny Drama, "Victory!"

Then the next screen informed me that the concert had sold out.

Ticketmaster has to be one of the least customer-friendly companies out there, but perhaps the problem is that they're not seeking to deal with human beings. I think their captchas are designed not to weed out robots but humans.

Technorati Tags: captcha, ticketmaster, web

Tidbits

Lousy placement of a Yahoo ad at a baseball stadium.

Mozy offers 2GB of free online file backup for Mac users. Their unlimited backup service is only $5 a month which is not a bad deal. You get backup religion the first time your hard drive dies and takes your MP3 collection to the grave with it (Disclosure: that link contains my referral code, and for every four customers I refer I get 1GB additional free backup).

"As Hotel Prices Rise, a Villa May Be a Bargain" - the headline says it all. I want to stay in a villa!

Mmm, now this is some fresh sashimi (YouTube)

Technorati Tags: food, humor, internet, tech, travel, video, web, youtube

Updates from the Apple Keynote event at NAB

Updates from today's Apple event at NAB thanks to Engadget. And the relevant info is at Apple's website now, too.

Final Cut Studio 2 includes Final Cut Pro 6, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Color, Compressor 3, and DVD Studio Pro 4.

There's also a marketing video talking about how to use FCP6 with the Red camera, and here's the NAB reel highlighting content edited by FCP.

I wish I had time to sift through all the details today, but I have a lot of work to do for class today, using, what do you know, FCP.

Technorati Tags: Apple, filmmaking, finalcutpro, hd, Mac, editing, software, video

Google Desktop, now for the Mac, too

Google released Google Desktop for the Mac. You can download it from the Google Software for the Mac page. The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) has an early review (it seems to hold up against Spotlight).

Technorati Tags: Apple, google, Mac, search, software, tech

Image spam

Those of you who use Apple Mail might wish to add this rule to catch annoying image spam. I used it in combination with a few other home-grown rules and SpamSieve to keep my inbox clean enough to eat off of.

And, if you're bored with the conventional Mail icon and tired of waiting for the new Star Wars stamps, you might wish to change your Mail Dock icon. Checking my e-mail is so much more enjoyable when my cursor can caress and click on, say, Alessandra Ambrosio instead of that red-tailed hawk. Instructions on how to change your Mail.app icon are here.

Technorati Tags: Apple, email, Mac, spam, software, tech

Rock, live from 30 Rock

According to a deviantART post, the average human eye has 576 megapixels of resolution.

Submit a question now for Alfonso Cuaron who will answer questions live on Amazon.com this coming monday at 6pm PDT.

I found out from my sister Joannie that Chris Rock opened SNL last week with some election chatter: "And for those doubters out there who keep asking the question 'Is America ready for a black president,' I say 'Why not?' We just had a retarded one."

Technorati Tags: biology, amazon, SNL, television, tv, video

The Big Red One

The Nike+iPod is a fun running accessory, but exercise caution before using it as a serious training tool.

David Pogue offers an overview of Grandcentral, a site that offers to consolidate all your phone numbers under one phone number which will ring all your phones simultaneously when dialed. I signed up during the beta a couple months ago and got a number but never used it. Pogue notes a number of nifty features that have been added since their launch, so perhaps it's time for me to dig that number out.

Neal Gabler recently wrote an op-ed in the LATimes titled "The Movie Magic is Gone." Kristin Thompson finds seven points in Gabler's article and states her case against each.

Another film shot mostly digitally: Zodiac was shot uncompressed with the Viper FilmStream camera in 4:4:4 1920x1080/24p. Here's a thread on cinematography.com discussing the look of the film. Here's the product page for the Viper, and here's an American Cinematographer article in which Paul Cameron discusses his experimentation with the Viper in shooting Collateral.

Right now, the HD video camera receiving the most use at our school is the Panasonic HVX200. The unreleased HD video camera with the most buzz right now is the Red One. Side project of Oakley founder Jim Jannard, the Red One looks more like some powerful weapon from some first person shooter than a video camera. Here's a gallery of video footage shot with the Red One, and here's one massive 4K frame capture down-converted to 8-bit JPG. The big buzz around this camera is its sensor size: 24.4mm x 13.7mm (Super35mm). The camera is intended to offer the same depth of field as 35mm Cine Lenses instead of the higher depth of field that characterizes most video. The Red One will retail for $17,500.

A working editor weighs in on Avid vs. Apple, having recently switched from Avid Media Composer to Apple's Final Cut Pro. I've tinkered with Media Composer but am more familiar with Final Cut Pro. I like some things about Media Composer better, and it is still more the industry standard for big motion pictures, but Final Cut Pro just has more momentum and resources behind it. Most film students can't afford an Avid system and are taught to edit on Final Cut Pro systems. I think Avid needs to make a stronger push to make inroads with the next generation of film editors.

Technorati Tags: Apple, business, camcorder, editing, film, filmmaking, finalcutpro, fitness, gadgets, hd, ipod, movies, phone, avid, running, sports, tech, video

Grab bag

Interview with the producer of Mad Hot Ballroom over the adventures of music clearance. Considering all the pitfalls, it's a miracle any documentaries get made.

Ha! Apple launches new product-unveiling product.

skrbl is a handy web-based whiteboard.

The NYTimes now offers a TimesSelect University Discount, free access to TimesSelect to those who have a .edu e-mail address.

Technorati Tags: Apple, documentary, humor, IP, movies, music, nytimes, web

I'm still alive

Winter quarter, first year film school, they own me. Just two more weeks to go, though, and I'll be back to a more humane schedule. For now, though, immersion is the word that comes to mind. Cheers.

Adobe plans to offer an ad-supported online version of Photoshop within the next half year. That's a better idea than Photoshop Elements, the neutered version of Photoshop. It will be interesting to compare revenues from Photoshop Elements (most of which is probably a bounty paid to Adobe by other companies who bundle PS LE in with their products) with ad revenues from an online version of Photoshop.

If you want to shoot slow motion, it's best to do it "in camera" as opposed to in post in Final Cut Pro or some other editing software. To see why, watch this video displaying the results side by side.

Fascinating article in this week's NYTimes Magazine about the quest for an evolutionary explanation for the belief in God.

Useful tips from a former Verizon sales rep.

A great tip to speed up Apple Mail, and a follow-up on how to automate that process.

Final Cut Pro 6 on slate to be announced at NAB. Also rumored is Final Cut Extreme, a hardware-accelerated version of Apple's video editing software to compete with Avid. A few years from now, an interesting HBS case study can be written on the battle between Apple and Avid in the non-linear editing market.

Ouch.

Technorati Tags: adobe, anthropology, Apple, cinematography, email, evolution, film, Mac, mail, photo, photography, photoshop, howto, software, tech, tech, traffic, video, web

Gridlock

Google Maps finally added real-time traffic info for many U.S. cities to its online site (this feature was previously available only on their mobile version). Living in LA, I have to check traffic maps almost every time I leave the apartment.

Google is no longer the child that can do no wrong. Looking at the LA traffic map, for example, you realize that their traffic overlay obscures the actual highway numbers. That's a severe interface bug. It's not noticeably superior to sigalert, the most commonly referenced LA traffic site. The one thing Google has going for it is that the traffic data is combined with its map site so you can everything in one place. Trafficpredict.com is also useful in LA as it allows you to look up historical time slices.

Some useful mobile implementation of traffic with a GPS device is what we ultimately need here in LA. There may be such a device already, but I haven't come across it. The problem is that traffic data doesn't exist down the the local street level here in LA, and residents here all hop off of the freeways when things get ugly. I don't know how many times I've been trying to drive with an LA Thomas Guide in my lap, trying to find any possible shortcut through the endless stretch of gridlocked metallic coffins we call cars. The LA Thomas guide for LA and Orange County is the size of most world atlases, but it only covers part of LA.

Technorati Tags: LA, maps, traffic

Why is my suitcase always last to appear on the airport carousel?

MacRumors has a roundup of all the rumors surrounding next week's Macworld in San Francisco. With all the leaks and speculation, it's difficult for Apple to continue to surprise anyone at the show, but I'm hoping they still manage to.

Download two tracks off the new album by Air, Pocket Symphony. (thx to Wolf Notes)

Richard Dawkins calls the execution of Saddam Hussein an act of vandalism because it deprived us of the opportunity to study his mind, something Dawkins considers a prime piece of evidence in the study of cruel dictators. I have no idea if that's true--can one learn that much from an individual mind/brain?

Scientific American lays a popular myth to rest: peeing on a jellyfish sting doesn't do any good. Try a little vinegar instead.

Gracenote is working to license lyrics from all the major labels with an eye towards offering a legal, commercial, and accurate song lyric service to launch in early 2007. Good news for karaoke on the computer services (I don't actually know if there are any, but I'm sure there will be soon if there aren't already), though not as big a deal with all the unofficial lyric resources all over the web.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, music, mp3, science, tech

Wordloaf

Among the many cool-sounding shows I haven't had time to see recently is "All About Walken," a show featuring a bunch of Christopher Walken impersonators.

The Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta releases this Friday. Rumor has it that the Universal Binary will "scream" on the new Intel-based Macs.

Monthly upload bandwidth lifted from 20MB to 100MB for free accounts at Flickr. I though they should have lifted those a while ago, but better late than never.

I was fuming mad at the world today, well, mostly Bank of America for their shoddy (read: nonexistent) integration between branches in different states, and then I went back to watch episode 6 from this season's Simpsons, and by the end of the episode I was smiling again. Go grab a torrent. With guest appearances by Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen, and another comic turn by J.K. Simmons reprising his J. Jonah Jameson from the Spiderman movies, it's an instant classic. And yes, I don't watch much TV anymore which is why I'm recommending an episode that aired sometime during the Kennedy administration.

Technorati Tags: animation, humor, photography, photoshop, simpsons, software, theater, tv

I think she said "I'm an arse"

Meaningful Machines has come up with a clever software algorithm for language translation.

Maybe when their software is out of beta we can get Rosie O'Donnell a copy to beta test.

Technorati Tags: language, software, tech, youtube

Black Monday

Dry Shampoo. Spray in, wait two minutes, and brush out. What will they think of next? Useful on a film set, or if your livelihood depends on looking good all the time (comme moi), or if you're confined to a bed because some Kathy Bates-like character has gone Misery on you. Or if you are this guy.

The Dragon is the most revered sign of the Chinese zodiac, so Chinese birth rates in Dragon years escalate, leading to crunches in providing schooling, medical services, etc. Some economists conducted a study which debunks this superstition, but I still look for a healthy increase in sales of lingerie, champagne, and roses in China in mid-2011, leading into the next Dragon year in 2012.

In a game that had clearly become a draw, Vladimir Kramnik made a stunning mistake late in his second game versus the computer program Deep Fritz to allow the software to checkmate on the next move.

James Surowiecki on Nintendo and how it has found profitability with products like the Wii while Sony and Microsoft rack up huge losses in their efforst to win the console war. There are many markets that are not "winner takes all." We're #3! We're #3!

In this week's New Yorker, George Saunders can't resist offering his two cents on Borat, and I read it, and it is probably the most trenchant critique of the movie yet. Borat is, as M refers to Bond in the the latest offering, a "blunt instrument." The irony of it all is that Cohen's burgeoning fame is undermining his ability to find gullible targets, forcing him to pick on easier and easier targets (lawsuits notwithstanding) and transforming him from David to Goliath. I laughed at many moments of the movie but was disappointed at all the material recycled straight from the TV show.

Technorati Tags: beauty, business, chess, china, gaming, geek, goods, humor, movies, newyorker, products, georgesaunders, software, video, youtube

Q&A

Thanksgiving stuffing--in the bird or out? Mark Bittman recommends out, in which case it's dressing, not stuffing.

Do you really need a 1080p TV, or will 1080i suffice? You're probably okay with just 1080i, marketing literature notwithstanding.

Does Daisuke Matsuzaka throw the gyroball or not? Will Carroll published a new article (you have to be a subscriber to read it, unfortunately) on Baseball Prospectus today stating that he does believe now that Matsuzaka throw the gyroball, but that he doesn't yet have control over which type he throws. There appear to be two variations that differ based on the tilt of the axis of rotation. If it points up, the ball moves more laterally away from a right-handed batter (all this assumes a right-handed pitcher). If it tilts down, the pitch actually breaks in on a right-handed batter. Carroll pointed to this video of Matsuzaka as having the closest rendition of a pure gyroball:

You know what I enjoy about watching Japanese pitchers? They tend to have long, deliberate motions with high leg kicks, long windups, with hands and feet tracing wide arcs around their bodies (many also have these odd pauses or hitches that mess up the batter's timing). It's old school. Not many pitchers have such motions anymore (as a Cubs fan, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood's super simple deliveries come to mind, in contrast to a guy like Kevin Appier). I love watching old videos of guys like Luis Tiant or Sandy Koufax, with their huge leg kicks. Every pitch looked like a complex series of coordinated motions requiring maximum exertion to pull off correctly.

Technorati Tags: baseball, cooking, electronics, food, gadgets, pitcher, pitching, gyroball, recipe, shopping, thanksgiving, turkey

Daisuke Matsuzaka

Baseball Prospectus examines Daisuke Matsuzaka to see if he's really worth spending $20 to $30 million on, just for the right to even negotiate with him. The answer? He probably is. He might just be the second best starting pitcher in baseball after Johan Santana. I want to see the gyroball.
UPDATE: Rumor has it the Boston Red Sox won the bidding war for negotiation rights with an offer of somewhere between $38 million and $45 million. Wow.

For your next vacation, won't you consider a virtual tour of World of Warcraft with Synthravels, the first online virtual travel agency?

The NanoNuno umbrella dries off with a simple shake. The secret? Nanotechnology. That image on their website makes it seem as if the umbrella emits some kinds of forcefield.

Technorati Tags: baseball, gadgets, geek, MLB, online, pitcher, pitching, gaming, sports, travel

Sonos

My part-time roommate Dave got the Sonos for his house back in Seattle and raved about it. Joel loves it too. Two points make a straight line, right?

Sounds like a nifty solution for those who want to distribute music from their computer to anywhere in the house though it's certainly not cheap.

Technorati Tags: electronics, gadgets, music, wireless

A few geeky links

The Hannibal is one mean DVR/media center thingamajiggy.

This is a really good summary of Amazon's web services strategy. Having been on the web services team when I left Amazon, I'm surprised more people didn't pick up on this sooner.

DivX for Windows 6.4 enables 1080 HD creation, both 1080i and 1080p.

Technorati Tags: divx, DVR, electronics, gadgets, HD, amazon, tech, webservices

My new weblog feed

For those of you who read this weblog via one of my RSS feeds, I apologize for not having updated those since I upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type. I'm still here, but I've changed my feed address. The new one is here and can also be seen on my actual website in the right column.

Please use this new feed. The old ones have been retired, and this new Feedburner feed should be compatible with any feed reader.

Firefox 2 config tweaks

A very useful list of Firefox config tweaks for those of you who've jumped up to Firefox 2.

Man's severed arm attached to his groin until it can be moved back to original spot (Warning: photo is somewhat freakish).

Insight into the somewhat unique business model of the Washington Post: a metropolitan, local paper, and priced as such, but with the reach to contribute to the national news scene.

Stay the, uh, course

On the way to class this morning, I heard the following sound clip (it comes at the end of that minute and a half clip) from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, relaying President Bush's intention to retire the phrase "stay the course" when describing his Iraq policy.

Because it let the wrong impression about what was going on. And it allowed critics to say well here's an administration that's embarked a policy of not looking at what the situation is, when in fact, it's just the opposite. The president is determined not to leave Iraq short of victory but he also understands that it's important to capture the dynamism of the efforts that have been ongoing to make Iraq more secure and therefore enhance, uh, the clarification, or the greater precision.

It's more amusing when heard live. I wonder if Snow cries in front of his mirror every morning.

The rise of YouTube allows everyone to post their own Daily Show-esque comedic video montages: stay the course. Continuity is not necessarily some virtue; politicians should change their minds and messages as their understanding of situations changes. But to say "we never said that" when people can so easily pull footage of you saying exactly that just makes you look like an ass. In the last election the Bush team nailed Kerry on his flip-flop on the Iraq vote, so seeing them sweat and squirm while issuing all these false denials feels like the proper circle of hell for them to stew in.

P.S.: Firefox 2.0 has been released officially.

Printing instead of faxing

It doesn't work for Mac users, but for those of you running Windows XP, PrinterAnywhere sounds like a great app. This software allows you to share your printer via the Internet so friends, family, and associates can print directly on your printer when they need to send you something. I'd prefer doing that over faxing whenever possible.

Tangerine

Tangerine is a Mac OS X Tiger app that lets you create playlists in iTunes based on BPM and beat intensity patterns. Very cool.

The fashion equivalent of Superman donning his cape: from plain Jane to model in 60 seconds.

A washing machine commercial with a clever conceit (Quicktime).

Google buys YouTube

$1.65 billion!

If you can't build it, buy it built

The Netflix Prize offers a $1 million prize to anyone who can take anonymous ratings data from Netflix's database and build a recommendation system 10% better than their proprietary Cinematch system.

Netflix knows how customers rated certain movies. They withhold some of that data and ask that you come up with an algorithm that predicts how customers would have rated those movies based on their other ratings and the ratings of other customers. You submit your results, and if you can beat Cinematch's results on those withheld results, fame and fortune await, though you have to turn over your algorithm to Netflix but also share it with the world, which is interesting.

For each customer's movie rating, Netflix provides the date of the rating, the title of the movie, and the year of release.

Monday

David Remnick profile of post-presidency Bill Clinton in The New Yorker. Clinton is by far the most fascinating president of my lifetime.

UPDATE: Parts 1, 2, and 3 of Clinton's now legendary interview on Fox.

***

Drool. Drool.

***

I've always wondered why the sun made me sneeze, and now I know; photic sneeze reflex.

The condition occurs in 17% to 25% of humans with more common occurrence in Caucasians than other human races. The condition is passed along genetically as an autosomal dominant trait.

***

The September 2006 Stanford Book Salon selection was Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. It's one of my favorites, and the homepage for the Salon (an online book club) has a transcript of an introduction by Nancy Packer as well as links to a reading group guide to the novel and an interview with Wallace Stegner.

***

The Madden cover jinx strikes again. Spooky how consistently it works its evil eye. Fantasy football players were warned not to pick Alexander with their first round pick this year, and the non-superstitious who ignored the advice are now left scrambling to pick up Maurice Morris.

Ray Lewis is perhaps the only player who avoided the curse when he appeared on the 2005 cover, but since he plays on defense he only affected the small portion of fantasy football players who draft individual defensive players.

There is one logical reason why the curse might exist, and that is simply because a player who is featured on the cover is likely coming off a career year, and most players regress after such seasons. Still, many of the regressions were caused by severe injuries...somewhere the ghost of John Madden is screaming, "Boom!" as he sticks a pin in a Shaun Alexander voodoo doll.

iTunes 7.0 crash-happy

I updated iTunes to 7.0 today, and now it crashes every time I try to play a song on my MacBook Pro. Not good, not stable. Just my environment?

Whatever it is, it's driving me nuts.

UPDATE: Looks like I'm not the only one. More complaints here. I would recommend waiting for 7.0.1 to upgrade unless you're dying to download movies.

If you can't beat'em (or build'em), buy'em

There's an unconfirmed rumor that Fox has purchased YouTube. If true (and it wouldn't be entirely unexpected), then I know one thing: Fox overpaid. Not that YouTube isn't a fantastic site to spend time on, but it's another one of those sites that attracts plenty of people's attention but can't efficiently monetize it.

Happy Labor Day

A thorough explanation of why Chinese is so difficult to learn. I grew up hearing Chinese in the house and even attended some Chinese school, and I found it to be a bear. I never did really learn to write or read cursive Chinese handwriting very well (yes, Chinese has both print and cursive, like English), another item I'd add to this writer's litany of complaints. Just when you think you've memorized a character, someone scrawls it in their own cursive style and it's as if someone took a print character's brush strokes and tied them in butterfly knots. Of course, without cursive, writing Chinese, with its numerous strokes, is like writing English in neat block capital letters...sloooooooooow).

Curse of the Golden Flower, a movie by Zhang Yimou, starring Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat, releases this Christmas season (trailer). Yeah, I hate dandelions, too, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them a curse.

Crocodile hunter, felled by a stingray. Stung through the heart by a stingray...brutal. I guess it should be obvious from their names, but I didn't realize stingrays were that dangerous. Earlier this year, on a dive trip down in the Turks and Caicos islands, Dave and I fed stingrays just off the beach with some fish our guides had brought along for that purpose. We were soon overrun with stingrays, and one ran up my back and bit me. I popped out of the water, and Dave said the ray had drawn blood. Shortly thereafter, two lemon sharks wandered over, and I hustled out of the ocean.

Get your bootleg Van Goghs and Da Vincis: a city in China is the world's leading producer of reproductions of famous paintings. It doesn't surprise me one bit.

A computer program named WebCrow defeated dozens of human competitors in a crossword puzzle competition. Humans managed to defeat the program in two Italian crosswords featuring lots of puns and political clues.

That green lump that resembles playdough, the one they dump on your platter of sushi? That's not wasabi. Real, fresh wasabi is rarely served at sushi restaurants, but whenever a sushi restaurant offers it I'll request it. Real wasabi is not as hot as the faux stuff, but it's better for you. Unfortunately, the real deal costs a fortune.

Michael Apted's next in his Up documentary series is about to release. He interviewed many children at age 7 about their lives and dreams for 7 Up, and since then, he's gone back to check up on them every 7 years (each doc in the series is named after the age of the characters, so 14 Up, 21 Up, and so on). This next installment will be 49 Up. All the previous installments are on DVD.

The new Sunday Night Football theme (MP3) is by none other than John Williams.

Four words no man wants to hear: bleeding in the scrotum. It's been that kind of year for the Cubs.

HiveLive is a site that allows you to post and share files and information among public or private hives, or groups of people.

The Statistical Review of World Energy 2006, by British Petroleum, including historical data series in Excel format.

You got the touch! Feel, feel, feel, feel, feel...feel my heat!

Corddry leaves TDS, I leave NYC

I spent the entire weekend packing. I want to shoot myself. Before I go dark for my cross-country move, a few links from my final bit of housecleaning here.

I complained just the other week about the quality of YouTube videos. Stage6 is a YouTube knockoff, but using DivX encoding, so the video quality is much much better (for example, or another). Its selection is so miniscule it's laughable when compared to that of YouTube, but I look forward to the day when we surfers can have both selection and quality in online video aggregators. There's no reason we can't right now.

Speaking of YouTube, I'm Really, Really, Really Excited! Every hot new online community crowns its stars, and Bree (lonelygirl15) is YouTube's. I'm reminded of the mystery video footage which generated a cult-like following in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

Rob Corddry's has spread his wings and flown the Daily Show coop. Last Thursday was his last episode, and he follows in the footsteps of Colbert and Carell as Daily Show stars who sought greener pastures. The Daily Show is the Oakland A's of comedic television, launching talented funnymen but unable to retain their services once they achieve stardom. Except for Jon Stewart, of course. He's The Daily Show's Billy Beane, I guess.

I always wondered if the movie Sideways sank sales of merlot, and a brief scan of some older articles on the web seems to indicate only a mild effect, if any. But pinot noir sales got a boost. I'd been a fan of pinot noir for a few years before the movie came out, but the movie spurred a boost in production that has flooded the market with pinots that lack the earthy taste of the terroir that I loved. Many pinots now taste like syrahs, and it seems as if you have to spend upwards of $25 to $30 a bottle before you find a decent pinot.

Two researchers claim to have solved the "cocktail party problem," or how to separate one recorded voice from a group of other voices and sounds.

Tony Jaa's The Protector (I guess The Weinsteins weren't too impressed by its original title, Tom Yum Goong) is a huge letdown, especially after Ong Bak, but you wouldn't know it from the trailer, which features Jaa depositing his elbow and knees in a variety of unfortunate stuntmen.

Majority of "To Cross Street Push Button" buttons in NYC are placebos. I've long suspected that most "Close Door" buttons in elevators are also dummies, also.

A perfect 99

With videogames having shot to the forefront of pop culture, the annual release of the Madden NFL Player Ratings is almost as momentous an occasion as their actual performance on the field. Players check their virtual ratings with as or more critical an eye as they do the fine print on their contracts. This year, seven players achieved the perfect overall rating of 99:

• Champ Bailey
• Antonio Gates
• Walter Jones
• Shane Lechler
• Peyton Manning
• Lorenzo Neal
• Ed Reed

Whoooa Nellie, can't wait to line up to punt with Shane Lechler, I will bring the rain.

Farecast now serving 55 cities

Farecast now offers airfare predictions for 55 U.S. cities.

Skeptics

Cool video of James Randi helping Johnny Carson to stump famed psychic and spoon-bender Uri Geller. Here's a clip where Randi exposes how one faith healer "heals."

Ghost Hunters is a TV show on the Sci-Fi channel in which two plumbers moonlight as TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) who investigate paranormal disturbances with a skeptical eye. In most cases, the paranormal activity can be explained after some on-site sleuthing. Sometimes, though, they can't explain the phenomena, though I can't point to which episodes those are because I've never seen the show.

Debris

The holy grail of video game graphics is ray tracing, and it may not be more than a few years off.

Michael Moore is working on a documentary called Sicko about the American health care crisis, but he's running into a problem. Every time he appears on scene to film a family's struggle against health care injustice, the family is suddenly given health care. It's Moore's version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

David Wain is shooting The Ten, a series of ten stories, one for each of the ten commandments. The cast includes Jessica Alba, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Bradley Cooper, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Paul Rudd, Liev Schreiber, and Ron Silver, among others. Wain is probably most known for directing Wet Hot American Summer, so expect a remake of The Decalogue. If Wain needs to reduce his cast for budget reasons, it's not a stretch to think of a way for Jessica Alba to cause me to violate all ten commandments.

The sequel to Signs: Mel Gibson's Signs (of Anti-Semitism). It's tough not to think of this whole Mel Gibson debacle and think "Apocalypto."

Wondering who to pick as your fantasy football kicker? Neil Rackers. (YouTube clip, reminiscent of the Ronaldinho commercial).

Perhaps she is the Mark Fidrych of blondes, who burned too brightly, too soon, only to fizzle out at 25.

Places, spaces, races

Wal-Mart pulls out of Germany (thx to Derek for the pointer). Though Wal-Mart international is still the fastest growing segment of the behemoth of a retailer, it has learned that it's formula needs to be customized for specific markets.

In Germany, Wal-Mart stopped requiring sales clerks to smile at customers — a practice that some male shoppers interpreted as flirting — and scrapped the morning Wal-Mart chant by staff members.

Wal-Mart’s German experience also taught it to use local management. The company initially installed American executives, who had little feel for what German consumers wanted.

“They tried to sell packaged meat when Germans like to buy meat from the butcher,” Mr. Poschmann said.

Some of Wal-Mart’s missteps — selling golf clubs in Brazil, where the game is unfamiliar, or ice skates in Mexico — are so frequently mentioned, they have become the stuff of urban legend. But even more subtle differences in shopping habits have tripped up the company.

In Korea, Wal-Mart’s stores originally had taller racks than those of local rivals, forcing shoppers to use ladders or stretch for items on high shelves. Wal-Mart’s utilitarian design — ceilings with exposed pipes — put off shoppers used to the decorated ceilings in E-Mart stores.

Beyond the ambience, Wal-Mart’s shoes-to-sausage product line does not suit the shopping habits of many non-American shoppers. They prefer daily outings to a variety of local stores that specialize in groceries, drugs or household goods, rather than shopping once a week at Wal-Mart.

“They have stacks of goods in boxes,” said Lee Jin Sook, 46, a housewife sitting on a subway in Seoul. “That may be good for some American housewives who drive out in their own cars.” But Koreans, she said, prefer smaller packages: “Why would you buy a box of shampoo bottles?”

Wal-Mart is also not the low-price leader in many international markets.

***

A preview of Mac OS X Leopard. Spaces will be useful for my multi-tasking work style, though I'm not sure I need anything to encourage my hyperlink-fueled attention-deficit disorder. And also from WWDC, the Mac Pro, which sounds like a worthy successor to the Powermac G5.

***

Magnum in Motion features multimedia essays from Magnum photographers. Here is one example, on the Tour de France, with some gorgeous black and white photos of France.

***

Forgot to post this last last week, when Ken pointed it out to me, but the FDA finally approved Mexoryl for use in the US. Mexoryl is the magic ingredient owned by L'Oréal that has made L'Oréal's international sunscreens more effective than US sunscreens at blocking short UVA waves. US residents went to great lengths to get their hands on L'Oréal sunscreens, from purchasing it from online Canadian pharmacies to paying three to four times the retail price to obtain it from certain Upper East Side drugstores in Manhattan.

The first L'Oréal product containing Mexoryl to be sold in the US will be Anthelios SX, a daily moisturizing cream. Look for it this fall. As noted previously here, you can also go with Neutrogena's new Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock or Age Shield Sunblock.

Product feature: does the body good

A gallon of milk on Amazon.com inspires hundreds of customer reviews. Ships from Gristedes in New York. I priced out what it would cost to ship to me here in NYC, and it came out to $30.24, with expedited shipping, which I highly recommend for milk.

Toyota about to pass GM to become the world's largest automaker, though they've been fighting some quality issues recently. I remember when our family first purchased a Toyota Cressida, it might as well have been a Bentley to us. We later participated in the Camry tsunami.

Domaines Ott and French rosé wines are the new hot summer drink. What I find most surprising from this article, though, is that Alex Kapranos, lead singer of Franz Ferdinand, is a food columnist for The Guardian, and Jay McInerney is wine columnist for House & Garden.

"My other vehicle is a Gulfstream." I just enjoy that article's title. Private air travel is tough on the environment because of the outrageous fuel consumption, so I always try to airpool when I take my jet to Aspen or Jackson Hole, cuz that's how I roll. Okay, that's not true. I've only flown in a private jet once, and that trip confirmed that private jets is heaven compared to the human cattle call that is commercial air travel.

Floyd Landis's B-sample came back positive, so his team Phonak fired him. Now USA Cycling and the US Anti-Doping Agency will prepare a case against him while Landis and his team prepare his defense. It will be months before we hear a verdict, though the court of public and media opinion works has already issued theirs. On the "Top Ten Landis Excuses" piece on David Letterman, number nine was "Who can resist Balco's delicious 'spicy chipotle' flavor." Landis posted a statement on his weblog yesterday and a response to the B-sample positive test today.

The pilot for Aaron Sorkin's new TV show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip leaked onto YouTube this week, then was promptly pulled. So I can just link to this 6 minute promo (begins with a riff on Network, beats up on NBC's own SNL, and makes a joke about Sorkin's coke habit) and 30 second trailer. Anyhow, this is all an excuse to tell a short story about my apartment hunt in L.A. At the first apartment I went to visit in Santa Monica, a bald guy named Evan answered the door. He looked really familiar, like someone I'd seen on TV or in a movie, but I just couldn't place him. So I didn't say anything. He showed me his apartment and was really generous with his time, explaining the neighborhood and its nearby attractions. He mentioned that he'd done the New York to LA move also, and that I should keep an open mind to LA (I'm in depression over leaving NY for LA right now). He never mentioned his work, but after I left his apartment, and as I was filling out an application, I realized who he was. Evan played Charlotte's flame Harry Goldenblatt on Sex and the City, the role for which he's most known, and he'll be in the pilot of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I didn't end up taking his apartment because I got a roommate and needed more space, but it seemed appropriate that he be one of the first people I met in LA.

Google announces "All Our N-gram are Belong to You," which I think is pretty generous of them.

Lowest common denominator

YouTube has the selection lead, and that has led it to a huge lead in the online video clip library space. It did the smart thing and went with a video format that almost anyone on any platform can play, and that is Flash video (.flv files).

But here's the thing: Flash video looks like crap. It is the Ford Escort of video formats. On many YouTube videos I feel like I'm trying to watch a 12-inch black-and-white television through the wrong end of binoculars. If you were to start a competitor to YouTube, and it would be silly to do so at this point, one thing you could do to win my allegiance is to use Quicktime as your default codec. Doesn't have to be HD. It doesn't even have to be another company; YouTube could offer Quicktime as the Lexus to its own Toyota.

If I want to watch a blank white screen with no sound (oh, how modern), I want to see it in quality.

Write my lips

IBM's ViaVoice Toolkit for Animation, when it's finally perfected, will vastly simplify the process of synchronizing an animated character's mouth with speech. If you have IBM ViaVoice R10 for Windows, you can download the toolkit.

Someday, this will revolutionize Conan O'Brien's "lip-synched interviews with famous people" segments, as well as spawn hundreds of amateur Pixar-like shorts on YouTube.

Big and healthy

Interesting article from the Sunday NYTimes about how humans have suddenly become larger and healthier in the last 100 years: "human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before." Scientists are in disagreement as to why, though the article focuses on one theory that says that what happens in a human's first two years of life has a huge impact on their health later in life.

Photosynth

Photosynth, a new technology from Microsoft Live Labs, looks very cool. It's a bit difficult to explain, but it can take multiple photos of a place and build a 3-d model of that location using the photos. Then it places those photos back into the 3-d model so you can explore the scene using the photos. This video does a better job of explaining the technology.

At Eric and Christina's wedding, they printed out flash cards with vector art cartoon pics of each of them for a game we played during the reception. They used a technology from Microsoft Research that can create vector art from still photos. Also very cool, and hopefully something that will be released as consumer software in the near future.

The black box that is the Netflix similarity score

Note: I'm no statistics major, so if I'm completely missing the boat here, I hope some of you stats geeks will correct me.

Netflix's Friends page changed sometime in the past few days, perhaps over the weekend. I noticed it yesterday. The most curious new feature is that all of my friends are given a % similarity score relative to me. For example, under Robert's name, I see: 86% similarity to you.

My inclination was at once to believe that Robert had pretty decent taste, but perusing the similarity scores of my friends, I found some of them to be somewhat odd. Of all my friends, Eleanor ranked lowest in similarity to me, at 54%. I may not be a fan of Grey's Anatomy, but anecdotally, that seemed low to me.

I searched the site to see if there was an explanation of how this similarity score was calculated, but I couldn't find anything, not even an explanation of how to interpret the score. If the score is 54%, does that mean that if we both watched a movie, there's a 54% chance we'd both rate the movie exactly the same? Or does that mean that 46% of the time, one of us would like the movie and the other person would dislike the movie? Or something else entirely?

If you click on the similarity score, the site displays a list of all movies you've seen in common with that friend and how you each rated the movie. Thankfully, the overlapping data between Eleanor and I was only 38 movies, so I put our ratings into a spreadsheet. Of those 38, Eleanor hadn't rated 8 of the movies yet, so I dumped those out of the data and looked at the remaining 30.

Of those, we had the exact same rating for 19 of the movies. So of the 30 movies we'd both seen, we had the same rating for 63.3% of them (Netflix allows you to rate a movie on a 5 point scale, from 1 through 5 stars). Of all the movies we'd seen in common, including those Eleanor had not yet rated, we had the exact same score for 50% of them.

Of the 11 movies we differed on, Eleanor gave 1 additional star on 8 of them, I gave 1 additional star on 2 movies and 2 additional stars on 1 movie. At any rate, that information didn't help me to understand the 54% similarity score. On the 30 movies we'd both rated, Eleanor's mean rating was 3.53 stars, mine was 3.40 stars, and the mean of the difference between our ratings on the movies was .13.

Netflix assigns a textual description to each of its 5 star rankings:

• 1 star equals "You hated it"
• 2 stars equals "You didn't like it"
• 3 stars equals "You liked it"
• 4 stars equals "You really liked it"
• 5 stars equals "You loved it"

By that system, a rating of 1 or 2 stars was a negative review, and 3 stars up equated to a positive review. If Eleanor and I differed on our ratings but both assigned a movie a negative or positive review, then in my mind our ratings were not as different as if one of us had assigned the movie a negative review while the other assigned it a positive review.

Of the 11 movies we differed on, in only 3 cases did one of us assign a positive review when the other assigned a negative review. So of 30 movies we'd seen, we had both given the movie a thumbs up or thumbs down in 27 of them, or 90% of the movies we'd both rated. This rendered the 54% similarity score even more peculiar to me.

I looked up some collaborative filtering papers online, and it seemed that the Pearson linear correlation coefficient and cosine similarity were two popular methods for calculating user or item similarity in collaborative filtering online. I couldn't do cosine similarity in Excel (at least not easily), but Excel did offer a formula for calculating the Pearson coefficient of two arrays, so I calculated that for Eleanor and my ratings. Our Pearson coefficient was .564 (correlation coefficients range from -1 to 1). Close, but it didn't match up to the 54% similarity score.

I decided to look at relative similarity scores to see if they meant more. Audrey had a 75% similarity score to me according to Netflix, so by any number of measures, we should be more similar in our movie tastes than Eleanor. But a quick look at the facts didn't support that.

Of the 103 movies Audrey and I both rated, we had the same rating on 38 of them, or 36.9%. Audrey's average rating was 3.75, while mine was 3.36, and the average of the difference of our ratings was .39. Our Pearson coefficient was .454, or lower than the Pearson coefficient between Eleanor and me.

I don't expect Netflix to reveal its methodology for calculating similarity scores. Most companies are protective of their personalization algorithms. Even if I knew how Netflix calculated its similarity scores, I'm not sure it's much more than a minor curiosity. If you knew some people were similar to me in our film ratings, the way that would help me on a movie site is to use those people's ratings to predict which other movies I'd rate highly. Netflix probably already does that. If Netflix explained how the figure was calculated, or even how to interpret the figure, it might be more meaningful.

Having used the personalization features of lots of sites, I find the most useful personalization feature to be item similarities, e.g. Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also bought" feature. Attempts to use similar people to predict my tastes has always yielded mediocre results. I haven't encountered any sites that have really cracked that nut, and that's not surprising. There's no accounting for taste, especially those of creatures as complex as human beings.

Still, if someone out there can explain the similarity scores, drop me an e-mail (commenting doesn't work right now; my e-mail address is on my homepage). I'm curious.

UPDATE: Eleanor wrote to tell me that I show up as 85% similar to her in her Friends page, even though she's only 54% similar to me in my Friends page. Audrey says I show up as 80% similar to her on her end, or 5% lower than she shows up on my end. I'm guessing that even movies we haven't rated must factor into the similarity equation.

SeisMac

SeisMac is a freeware application that allows you to use your Sudden Motion Sensor-equipped MacBook, MacBook Pro, iBook, or PowerBook as a seismograph. I'm not sure why this would be of interest to anyone, but it struck me as cool, and since I'm moving to Los Angeles, maybe it will come in handy.

Wikipedia celebrates 750 years of American Independence

=).

The commemorative page is one of the most detailed on the site, rivaling entries for Firefly and the Treaty Of Algeron for sheer length. According to the entry, the American Revolution was in fact instigated by Chuck Norris, who incinerated the Stamp Act by looking at it, then roundhouse-kicked the entire British army into the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm a big fan of Wikipedia, which was profiled in the New Yorker this week. It may on occasion be inaccurate, but it can be corrected instantly, and it is far more current and broad than a paper encyclopedia. It is the reference that only the web could have created, and it is the one the web deserves. It takes an occasional beating for its misstatements, but consider IMDb, another user-content generated reference which most people treat as gospel. I think IMDb proves that user-generated content, if moderated by a small cadre of super-users, who may come from the broad base of users themselves rather than the company's employees, can be assembled into highly useful references in very short order.

Comments not working

By the way, I am aware that commenting is erroring out on my site. Something to do with the MT-Blacklist plug-in. At any rate, I'll be upgrading to Movable Type 3.31 within a week, so commenting should return shortly.

Preview Skype for Mac with video

Here.

iCal day

Today is iCal day, when the default icon for the Mac calendaring app iCal happens to show the correct date.

The header from the footer

The Daily Mail hires a lipreader to decipher what Materazzi said to Zidane to provoke the header heard round the world. It turns out Materazzi called Zidane the equivalent of n***** and then said "we all know you are the son of a terrorist whore." And then, "So just f*** off." Given Zidane's Algerian background and quick temper, the headbutt is not at all shocking. I'm none too fond of Materazzi; he's a well-known punk. Still, I think if you're Zidane, you hold off on retaliation until after the game. Then, at the exchange of handshakes, you pull Materazzi's jersey over his head and then pound his face into the turf. It's not like this is the first time someone has used truly offensive trash talk to take another team's best player out of the game. If they miked more players in sporting events, people would be shocked at the type of things you hear on the playing field. [from Kottke]

In New York Magazine this week, a quick and dirty guide to happiness, with lots drawn from Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness, which I've just about finished. Among the tips of interest:

• Those who seize the first option that meets their standards (which don’t have to be low, just defined) are happier than those who insist on finding the perfect solution.
• Don’t go to law school. Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than members of other professions.
• Send the kids off to day care, summer camp, and boarding school. On a day-to-day basis, caring for children creates roughly the same level of satisfaction as washing the dishes.
• Take the local, and don’t wait for the express. Inaction gnaws away at the mind relentlessly.
• Order from the same takeout menu every time (as long as you're not ordering takeout every night of the week). Variety is the spice of life only for heavily repeated experiences.
• Take advantage of your exercise machine’s “cooldown period,” because adding a slightly less grueling epilogue to a grueling but valuable experience—like a workout—makes you more willing to repeat it in the future.

Bubblesnaps, a quick and dirty way to add speech or thought bubbles to your pics.

For Mac users, a way to play Quicktime videos in full screen without paying for Quicktime Pro.

An interesting dialogue at Slate between Jason Furman and Barbara Ehrenreich on the merits of Wal-Mart for the American working class. Decision goes to Furman, I think, though it's a bit of a mismatch as Ehrenreich acknowledges.

Ninja lessons [from Thrillist]

From Skype, for its US and Canadian users, 3 weekends of free SkypeOut calls to the UK, Mexico, and Japan.

Some nifty covers for download.

A more secure shoelace knot. I use another method that may be equivalent. I don't make two loops to tie my shoelaces. I make one loop and then tie the second lace around it once before pulling the second lace through to form the second loop. If I just swing the second lace around my thumb twice instead of once before pulling the second lace through, the knot never seems to come undone.

Parallels for Desktop for Mac is $49.99 through July 15, then its price goes up to $79.99. ArsTechnica gave it a positive review.

42, of course

Stephen Hawking asks Yahoo Answers: How can the human race survive the next hundred years? Sounds more interesting than it actually was. That's not really the type of question you toss out to the Internet. Maybe he just wanted a good laugh. For his next question, he should post some absurdly difficult quantum physics problem.

According to this Microsoft Labs adCenter predictive tech, my website should appeal primarily to <18 year olds, with the next largest demographic being 18-24 year olds. Having seen these results, you can expect increased coverage of Ashlee Simpson, Lindsey Lohan, and NSync here.

Useful guidelines for placement of punctuation vis-a-vis inverted commas, one of those grammar issues that always bedevils me.
UPDATE: Jenny was quite distraught that I'd consult the Brits for grammar. We Americans have our own rules for these situations.

I'm watching the World Cup final right now, but during halftime, I watched some Zidane videos on YouTube to maintain the mood. Smooth.
UPDATE: Hmm, I wonder if Zidane's OT headbutt will make it into any of these videos. Oh, those hot-tempered Frenchmen. Live by Zidane, die by Zidane.

A gambler's sale

Delicious Monster is holding a Gambler's Sale on its popular app Delicious Library. Every week the price goes down $5 until they've sold a secret number of copies, or until 4 weeks have elapsed. You can buy now or wait for the price to go down and risk that the sale will end before you get your purchase in. It's a bit like a clearance sale in which a retail store keeps reducing the price on items until they get rid of everything in inventory. If you wait, there's a chance that snazzy shirt you want will go down in price even more, but there's also a chance some other shopper, one who's not quite as cheap as you are, will walk off with it.

Swimmin' with Dylan

Download the instrumental version of "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley, as well as "Nel Cimitero di Tucson," the spaghetti western track Danger Mouse sampled for Crazy. Something to tide us over while we wait for Paris Hilton's cover.

True height measures the effective height of a basketball player. Good news! Tyrus Thomas measures out as nearly a 7-footer in true height. I'm pumped up for the Bulls upcoming season, though it will still be ugly on offense.

Shina Tsukamoto's horror film novella Haze on Region 2 DVD.

Soundtrack.net has a sneak preview of James Newton Howard's score for Lady in the Water. Oddly enough, the soundtrack includes a bunch of Bob Dylan covers.

Wired Magazine has a profile of banned Tour de France technology. Most are just bikes that fall under the UCI minimum weight limit, though, and for a recreational cyclist that's nothing to get excited about. A few ounces here or there isn't going to turn the average club cyclist into a champ, and trying to descend a long, steep mountain on a featherweight bike is terrifying.

A long-standing conspiracy theory holds that the moon landing was staged, perhaps by Stanley Kubrick. The moon hoax is so popular that NASA had to address it.

Shaken, not stirred

Apple has lowered the price of Shake, its video compositing and effects software, from $2,999 to $499. It's most well-known for being used for some of the effects in The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King. Very cool.

Mixed nuts

"Happy Mornings" is a commercial for Folgers, though it's difficult to see how.

The winner of Bruce Schneier's Movie-Plot Threat Contest involves the destruction of Grand Coulee Dam, triggering a chain reaction that knocks out the rest of the dams on the Columbia River and leaves the West Coast without power for months, taking down the U.S. economy in the process.

Well, if the terrorists do go after Hoover Dam, perhaps our best hope is to send in the Transformers, who are already doing work at Hoover Dam. On that note, is this test footage of Optimus Prime from the new Transformers movie?

As for terrorist plots, the one that's scaring New Yorkers right now is the aborted plot to gas NY subways (as described by Ron Suskind in his new book The One Percent Doctrine, excerpted in the latest issue of Time).

Not new, but still cool music video: man juggles in time to Fatboy Slim's "That Old Pair of Jeans" (thx Ken). That's one of the two new tracks on Fatboy Slim's greatest hits album Why Try Harder, releasing tomorrow.

The new Apple "I'm a Mac" ads are clever and funny. But are they all that effective in moving Windows users over to Macs, or do they just preach to the converted? I'm with Stevenson, I think it's the latter.

Raising children doesn't make one happy. In fact, when children finally leave the next, parents experience an uptick in happiness. So writes Daniel Gilbert in an essay for Time. But, he notes, that capacity for humans to sacrifice for the good of their children is why we have holidays like Father's Day. At his weblog, Gilbert includes footnotes for those interested in delving more deeply into the research cited. Gilbert is the author of Stumbling on Happiness, a fascinating book I've just started reading this past week.

At Winged Foot this weekend, a score of 5 over par won the U.S. Open. That's not entirely surprising as the U.S. Open always has the toughest setup of the four golf majors. As long as the course is equally tough for everyone, the final score relative to par doesn't matter. But Matthew Rudy of GolfDigest.com feels this year's setup rewarded robotic play, with little decision-making required, and punished the world's true best players. Ron Sirak of Golf World disagrees.

Google Browser Stync

Bill Gates to transition out of full-time role at Microsoft in July 2008.

Google Browser Sync--umm, not show ready. It disabled my SessionSaver add-on, and now I lose my tabs whenever I close out of Firefox. I thought Google Browser Sync was supposed to preserve your browser tabs, but it just plain doesn't work. Sometimes it asks me if I want to reopen some tabs from my previous session, but they're never the tabs I had open when I closed out of Firefox. I was excited when I first heard about Google Browser Sync, but after a few days of use, I'm going to remove it. There was a time when every Google release was a pleasant surprise, but the bar has been lowered.

And speaking of tab preservation, why isn't that functionality just built into Firefox and Safari?

Superman Returns tix are available online now from sites like Fandango. I recommend seeing it in IMAX 3D, if there's such a theater near you.

No whammy indeed.

An estimated 16% of FEMA funds for Hurricane Katrina victims was misspent. Con men used false identities to obtain assistance checks to spend on anything from sex-change operations, Girls Gone Wild videos, vacations, and season tickets to the New Orleans Saints. Yes, some of that FEMA money went to waste. I'm referring, of course, to the person who purchased the Saints' season tickets.

In tribute of Father's Day, Nike is airing a commercial Sunday featuring Tiger Woods and his father. You can watch it online now.

Be careful when you get a haircut during World Cup. I was a barber shop getting a haircut when Peter Crouch scored for England today, and the guy cutting my hair was so excited he nearly gave me the Michael Madsen Reservoir Dogs special with his clippers.

Every time I see Dwayne Wade go by a defender to finish at the hoop, I wonder what Michael Jordan would have done in this "no hand check" era. Goodness gracious.

Can't Mark Cuban hire a copy editor for his blog? Isn't he a billionaire?

This modern art anecdote reminds me of the piece of modern art that was thrown out by the janitor at a museum because he thought it was trash. The artist couldn't have been more pleased with the outcome.

He Poos Clouds

Listen to clips from the new album from Final Fantasy He Poos Clouds, featuring vocals from Arcade Fire's violinist Owen Pallett over a string quartet. Pallett is an unabashed nerd--son of two entomologists, he scored a videogame at the age of twelve and two operas by the age of twenty-one--and this album is an attempt to modernize each of the eight Dungeons & Dragons schools of magic. Yep.

iToors sounds cool in concept--Podcasts for travelers to various cities--though the content on the site is still skimpy. For now there are podcasts for Paris, Prague, London, Glasgow, and Santa Monica(?!). The site also has a search engine for suggesting books, movies, and music to accompany a trip to each city, though again the cupboards are still quite bare. I'll withhold judgment until I hear their NYC podcasts, releasing sometime this next month. In general, though, I think the podcast market for travelers is underserved right now, especially having just returned from a month long trip in which my iPod was a permanent fixture. No podcast can replace a seasoned guide who can answer questions that pop into your head as you stroll around town, but a podcast is sure to be cheaper.

Handy list of useful Mac OS X freeware.

The Flock web browser beta is now available. It's a Mozilla-based browser with built-in features to simplify common web activities like bookmarking, blogging, newsreading, and photo-browsing.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times, which I saw the NYFF in 2005, is playing in a few theaters around the country. The movie comprises three shorts, each starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen as lovers, in 1966, 1911, and 2005. Though the overall movie is uneven (the second segment was a bit inert), the first segment, "A Time For Love," is romantic, gorgeous, and unforgettable. The movie's trailer is here (Quicktime). You can get a flavor of Hou's tranquil lyricism from his commercial for Air France also (click "Voir les films TV" and then "Le Ponton"), a commercial I saw more than a few times while traveling through E. Europe.

A glitzy annual benefit to sponsor breast cancer research is titled What A Pair! We may not have found the cure yet, but there's no shortage of cringe-inducing puns.

Nike + iPod

The Nike + iPod Sport Kit is available for pre-order for $29 and works with iPod Nanos. The website says you have to own or purchase a pair of Nike+ shoes, and Nike's just don't fit my flat, wide feet. They're made for people with skinny feet and normal to high arches. But since the only distinguishing feature of the Nike+ shoes seems to be a pocket under the insole to hold the wireless sensor, it certainly seems possible to hack another pair of running shoes to hold the sensor. I'll need to study a pair of these Nike+ shoes to see what's so special about the sub-insole notch.

Revisiting 2 Nov 2004

Reserve your pair of Blu Fom sneakers commemorating Core77's eleventh anniversary. A collaboration between Fila and Core77, the limited run of 300 sneakers is available from Core77.

Google Sketchup is now available for Mac OS X. Google Earth Release 4 is now in beta.

Did Bush steal the 2004 election? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks so. Cat Power, after her concert Friday night, told the audience to go out and read this article. Farhad Manjoo of Salon thinks Kennedy is off base. Then Kennedy and Manjoo traded another series of verbal parries.

Brushed chrome kitchen appliances are so yesterday. Give me a cast-iron range (really, because I can't afford it).

Looks like Sutton Foster is finally getting her own domain name to replace the Geocities page that was the top Google result for her name. She deserves the upgrade, Geocities being the trailer park of the Internet. I saw her in The Drowsy Chaperone Sunday and in Thoroughly Modern Millie a few years back. She's a charmer, and her story is the stuff of movies: unknown pulled out of the chorus to play the lead.

HDR

Nathan Myhrvold on the future of digital camera technology. A while back at a wedding, Jeff mentioned to me that he'd returned from a conference at MIT where he'd seen demos of a camera that would take three exposures of every photo, basically automatically bracketing every photo to address exposure problems with scenes of high dynamic range (HDR). That technology hasn't even launched yet, but impatient photographers have leaped ahead with a partial solution, taking multiple exposures manually at different exposures, then blending them in Photoshop CS2 or Photomatix, or both, to create HDR photos. This is despite the fact that HDR displays are too expensive for mass-production.

Having a camera that could bracket shots near simultaneously would solve the issue of trying to handhold for multiple exposures, though you couldn't do it by varying the shutter speed given that you only have one lens. What you'd have to do is have multiple sensors, each with a differing sensitivity. Or you could just have one sensor with a much wider dynamic range. Being able to capture HDR with just one photo would solve the problem with creating HDR pics right now, which is that your subject has to be, for the most part, stationary.

One area where this type of technology would be particularly useful is wedding photography. Trying to capture the brilliant white of a wedding dress and the ebony black of a tuxedo side by side is a photographic challenge. Expose properly for the dress and the groom's tux looks like a solid block of black. Expose for the tux and the bride looks like a face nestled in a blinding explosion of white. Most wedding photographers have switched to shooting digital, and the speed of the digital workflow certainly benefits the photographer. But to my eye, black and white film still does a superior job of capturing the dynamic range of most wedding portraits. If one was to be married this year, I'd recommend asking one of the wedding photographers to shoot medium format film, especially for bride-groom portraits.

I have not played around with HDR much, but last last weekend while in DC visiting my sister I came across some dramatic cloud formations moving with urgency over the Mall. I bracketed a few shots so I could experiment with HDR in Photoshop CS2, clouds being perhaps the most popular element that drives photographers to turn to HDR processing (the texture of clouds disappears when photos are overexposed which is almost always in single exposures since landscapes below tend to be darker). I didn't have a tripod, unfortunately, and so I had to handhold. Not ideal, but I don't enjoy hauling a tripod around when sightseeing.

This one I shot out a window of the Hirshhorn seemed to come out the best, though I still need to play around with the settings in Photoshop and Photomatix to learn how each affects the final output.

Photoshop seems to produce more natural-looking images, while Photomatix can leave you with more saturated and dramatic HDR but also more artificial-looking images. Do a tag search on "HDR" in Flickr (over 25,000 results and rising) and you'll find some truly bizarre-looking HDR photos of images that don't require the effect. The end result often resembles some garish, digitally drawn watercolor.

Here's another one from this past weekend, when I took a visitor out to see The Statue of Liberty.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Google Browser Sync is a Firefox plugin that syncs your Firefox browser settings across all your computers. Useful to me because I'm always bouncing between my desktop and laptop.

Al Qaeda leader Zarqawi is dead, killed in an air strike north of Baghdad.

Jon Stewart vs. Bill Bennett on gay marriage. If you wanted to send someone from the right to match wits with Jon Stewart on this issue, Bill Bennett probably isn't on the shortlist.

The Yoda backpack makes it seem as if Yoda is hanging on your back so you can look like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back. Pair this with a Force FX lightsaber and, well, you might as well lop off your manhood and put it in that backpack because it won't be getting any use.

Speaking of Star Wars, the DVDs for the original, unaltered Star Wars trilogy, Eps IV through VI, are being released in September, and the fans are already killing them with customer reviews on Amazon.com. All three DVDs currently average about 2 out of 5 stars in customer ratings. It's not just that fans are being forced to buy yet another set of Star Wars DVDs but that the original, unaltered movies will be released in non-anamorphic widescreen and will not have a new Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix. Some fans say it's just the original laserdisc transfer (I own those laserdiscs, by the way). Oh, the horror.

An online strategy guide to rock, paper, scissors. There's even a book in print called The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide. I went to a book reading/signing by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner today. It was fun to finally meet them in person. They mentioned that they're going to write a sequel to Freakonomics to be titled SuperFreakonomics. Their talk strayed to the topic of rock, paper, scissors. Phil Gordon is going to throw a $50,000 rock, paper, scissors tournament so Levitt can study the play. It just so happens that Levitt is studying the human ability or inability to randomize. He mentioned some initial studies that indicated that football (I think he meant European football) players are superior strategy randomizers. He's not sure why. If given 4 strategies to employ against each other, the optimal mix is something like 40/20/20/20 (or so Levitt said), and football players do that naturally. Rock, paper, scissors is a good test of that human ability. Gordon believes that some people are gifted randomizers and can consistently win at rock, paper, scissors, but it sounds like Levitt's skeptical since different people make the rock, paper, scissors finals each year.

Chip Kidd is the guest blogger at PowellsBooks this week. Among the his to-do's for the week:

• Design a cover for Christina Garcia's forthcoming novel, A Handbook to Luck.
• Construct and photograph a miniature set for Martin Amis's new novel, House of Meetings. By Thursday morning.
• Redesign a poster for a Pedro Almodovar film festival.
• Do the mechanical for Robert Hughes's Goya, newly in paperback.
• Get an approval on a jacket for a book on the history of relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Middle East (by Zachary Karabell).
• Do research on a poster for Sofia Coppola's upcoming film, Marie Antoinette (I'm so, so behind on this and Sony's being very patient).
• Design a cover for a play by Cormac McCarthy, entitled Sunset Limited.
• Do same for Kim Deitch's new graphic novel, Alias The Cat, which I am also editing. And which rules.
• Reconfigure my design for the Surprise CD by Paul Simon in order to adapt it to, of all things, vinyl.

Even Danny Meyer's wife and kids have to wait in line at the Shake Shack.

This day online

A copy (PDF) of the affidavit from the investigation into Human Growth Hormone use by Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley. He names lots of other players who use steroids, but those names are blacked out. If MLB believes that the taint of steroids needs to be removed from the sport, they will need tougher policies, otherwise the hits will just keep on coming.

Royals hire Tom Emanski to teach then the fundamentals of baseball. I love those Tom Emanski commercials, from the wooden endorsement from that paragon of defense, Fred McGriff, to the hypnotic video of 14 year olds with perfect fundamentals executing relays and pivots at second base.

At long last, Google releases the Google Video Player for the Mac.

Slate compares and rates photo websites on their self-published photo album services and judges Shutterfly the winner. Flickr wasn't even mentioned, an odd omission considering its popularity as a poster child for Web 2.0. Flickr doesn't allow you to print hardcovers, but through a partnership with Qoop you can print glossy Photobooks.

Microsoft pooh-poohs Google Spreadsheets' functionality, as expected. Most people I know who use spreadsheets use a fraction of Excel's functionality. Excel is super expensive, and now those folks have a free alternative. A few years back at Amazon we tried sharing an Excel spreadsheet over our network, and it was a disaster. I'm not saying Google Spreadsheets' collaborative features are superior (the invite they sent me yesterday didn't work until just this morning), but I can see using it to share spreadsheets with lots of people who don't have a copy of Excel from work. Just in the next week I'm going to test it to figure out travel expenses with a friend and to analyze a potential fantasy baseball trade. Google Spreadsheets isn't going to replace Excel for corporate users. If you have to build a sophisticated model, you're not going to use Google Spreadsheets. Frankly, I'm looking forward to more of these web service apps to fill the basic home user's needs, ones which have been overserved by expensive, bloated applications like Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office.

Speaking of online spreadsheets, an alternative to Google Spreadsheets is EditGrid. Here's their product comparison, built in their own product. Looks pretty nifty, but facing off against Google and then Microsoft, they'll be a bit like the Devil Rays trying to catch the Red Sox and Yankees.

Implanting a magnet in your fingertip provides a sixth sense, an ability to detect strong electromagnetic fields. The magnet was implanted in the author's ring finger because it was deemed least valuable of the fingers. The procedure sounds sketchy; body mod practitioners just use ice as the anesthetic.

Poof

In the end, the Geniuses at the Apple store couldn't get my hard drive to function enough to recover any data. Being the Geniuses that they were, they also failed to call me to inform me of this fact before they tossed out my old hard drive and replaced it with a new one. I spent a few happy days last week thinking all my data could be recovered, then was hit with the horrific realization that it was all gone when I booted up my computer to find a pristine hard drive.

It turned out that the piece of crap backup program that came with my Lacie Firewire drive hadn't been backing up properly for at least half a year, so a good chunk of my e-mail, music, and photos just evaporated. In this day and age, losing the data on your hard drive is like having a couple robbers walk out with your furniture and music collection. Very depressing. Living in the digital era, it's almost as if nothing happened if it wasn't documented and digitized into pictures, e-mail.

After a week, I've almost gotten my computer back the way it was. After almost five years using a computer, it fits as comfortably as your favorite pair of jeans. If I've failed to return your e-mail recently, know that it's probably because I don't have it anymore. I can't wait until all my data is stored on some remote server and backed up daily by some third party.

If there is any benefit to this, it's that my computer was cleared of the clutter that tends to occur through regular use. I tend to be a packrat in the physical world, and I'm no different with digital assets. If someone stole all my clothing, I'd be devastated, not to mention naked, but in some shadowy corner of my mind I'd be thrilled at the opportunity to rebuild my wardrobe from scratch.

Google Spreadsheet

Google is releasing a web-based spreadsheet tomorrow. Here's a sneak peek, and a page to sign up to test it out. I'm quite curious to see how this first version performs. Some of Google's most recent releases have failed to live up to lofty expectations, and Excel is my favorite MS Office app.

Cover up

A list of exceptional cover songs, complete with MP3 downloads of the originals and the covers, so you can judge for yourself.

If, like me, you love seafood, especially fish, you'll find this updated list of guilt-free fish a handy reference. All these types of seafood are low in contaminants and not overfished. Here's an accompanying article. Put your fork down, your hands up, and back away from the Chilean sea bass.

If you go to the Nacho Libre website and navigate to the Nacho Libre Confessional, you can watch video clips from the set, starring Jack Black. Some of the episode titles of this video podcast include "Prelude to a waxing" and "Montezuma's Revenge." Just seeing Jack Black in costume, with the mustache, acts as sort of a comedic colonic.

Samples of the 6 new Microsoft typefaces.

A super score returns

SoundtrackNet reviews the new Superman Returns soundtrack by John Ottoman and offers sample clips from each track. I don't have high expectations for the movie as a whole, but two aspects of it really excite me. One is that 20 minutes of the movie, mostly action sequences, will be shown in IMAX 3D. The other is hearing some of John Williams' classic Superman cues revived for the big screen.

Use Javascript to add sidenotes to your web page. Awesome. I'll have to implement this since I'm so parenthetical happy.

It's not always better to buy than rent. Chris offers this rule of thumb: For every $100 you spend in rent a month, you�d be better off buying up to $12,500 in property instead. Tim Harford discussed the rent vs. buy decision recently and noted that renting has many hidden benefits.

8 special edition new flavors of M&M's, all with cutesy puns for names like Eat, Drink, & Be Cherry or Orange-U-Glad. I'm a sucker for limited edition candies, but $49.99 for a tin?

The folks behind the book The Wages of Wins: Taking Measure of the Many Myths in Modern Sport apply their metrics to Michael Jordan and confirm the popular opinion: he was the best ever.

SOAP

The first, lo-fi trailer for Snakes on a Plane.

Greasemonkey script to encrypt your GMail using public key encryption.

Farecast is in beta. You tell it where you want to fly and when (U.S. only), and it tells you whether plane ticket prices are likely to rise, stay flat, or go down, giving you another data point in deciding when to buy. Right now, the only two cities from which you can check fares are Boston and Seattle, so it doesn't do me much good, but if you live in one of those two cities and want an invite to play with the beta, drop me a line. I still have a few of my 25 invites left.

Comme ci, comme ca

What if someone steals your Mac laptop? Undercover is a piece of software for just that type of scenario. Report your laptop stolen, and the next time it connects to the Internet it will send network info and snap pics with its iSight. 10 minutes later, a team of Delta commandos armed with semi-automatics will crash through the skylight and neutralize the perps with tear gas and rubber bullets (okay, I made this part up, but it would be fantastic as a premium plan). If authorities fail to recover it promptly, the software will simulate a screen failure.

One other thing that Europe has over the U.S.: sunscreens with mexoryl which do a far better job of blocking UVA rays. Unfortunately, mexoryl is still banned by the FDA. The NYTimes covered this a while back. Mexoryl-based sunscreens are thought to reduce wrinkles, so as you can imagine, a healthy bootlegging trade has cropped up here in NYC, where you can get your hands on it, at a ridiculous price, if you ask at the right drugstores on the Upper East Side. You can also purchase it online from Canadian pharmacies. I'm kicking myself for forgetting to snag a couple tubes while in Europe.

The puggle: half pug, half beagle. For the NY bachelor who needs a NY-pint-sized dog that is, in the words of Thrillist, "passably masculine."

A Frankensteinian commencement speech spliced together from celebrity commencement speeches across the country in 2006. Did Jodie Foster really quote Eminem? Oh Clarice! My guess is that line was received with the silence of the lambs.

Ryan Seacrest breaks bad news.

Does Meg love Jason?

Does Meg love Jason? Meg and Jason are the Brangelina of the blogosphere.

OS X and Win XP, live together in perfect harmony

Parallels is not free, but it's an even niftier way to add Windows to your Intel-based Mac than Boot Camp. You can run the two in parallel, as the name suggests, and XP bootup from OS X is a speedy 15 seconds. You can also run Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2, any versions of Windows back to 3.1, or even MS-DOS.

I'm eyeing the MacBook Pro like a shark circling a sinking cruise ship, wondering if I should eat the first passenger to float away from the ship or if I should wait a while for the ship to sink further and scatter some meatier fare.

***

If, like me, you bought an Epson Inkjet printer in the past several years, you might qualify for benefits from the settlement of this lawsuit. Epson was sued for indicating that ink cartridges were empty before they were really empty, thus driving up replacement cartridge sales (where the profit margins are much higher). I really love the prints from my Epson, but printer manufacturers are like beefy home run hitters or politicians. When they're accused of impropriety, people lean towards guilty until proven innocent.

The settlement offers $45 of credit from the Epson store, $20 by check and $25 of Epson store credit, or 25% off the Epson Store with a max discount of $100.

***

After the tilt-shift simulation craze in Photoshop, next I plan to participate in the HDR photography craze. It may mean lugging a tripod and giant ball head along with my camera to E. Europe, but it should be fun. The best HDR photos have a gorgeous, semi-artificial look.

Tidbits

Google Calendar launches.

Good essay by Chuck Klosterman on the emptiness of Barry Bonds breaking the Babe's HR record. At this point, however, it's not the sure thing it once was. Any minute, his body could just fail and and force him into retirement. Maybe the very substances that allowed him to make his late career run at the HR record will break him down just short of those milestones, a modern day Greek tragedy. Malcolm Gladwell suggests that perhaps we need to send in the forensic economists.

San Diego Serenade reenacts the bottom of the 10th inning of Game Six of the 1986 World Series in RBI Baseball. Conceptually brilliant, and I can't imagine how long it must have taken, but it's not super compelling watching RBI Baseball. If he could've gotten the ball to actually roll through Buckner's legs, that would have been unbelievable.

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, uses economics to answer mundane questions from readers of the Financial Times. For example, should a man leave the toilet seat down, as his wife demands? Sadly, the Financial Times requires a subscription to read the full columns or archived Harford articles, but Harford's website contains the gist of most of his responses.

An advance commitment from government to buy vaccines when and if they are developed would increase industry R&D in developing cures for low-probability, high-impact diseases (full PDF Report for download).

Yep, this gif is freaky, and so are these sculptures.

Scott Van Pelt does impressions of Mel Kiper and Stephen A. Smith (MP3). He should just do these impressions full-time when he's on Sportscenter; it would be funnier than his usual schtick and would finally complete the circular path that Sportscenter has taken towards becoming a parody of itself.

Sudoku robusta

Table Tennis, the next videogame from Rockstar Games. Surprisingly for a Rockstar game (at least based on the trailer), there doesn't appear to be an option to go on the other side of the table and bludgeon your opponent with your paddle.

If you're into Sudoku, IronSudoku offers a solid once-a-day online Sudoku puzzle. I'm still more of a fan of crosswords (once you learn the techniques to solving Sudoku, it just seems like brute force application of those techniques every time out), but Sudoku has its own appeal. It's like numeric Minesweeper.

YouTube video of giant centipede eating a mouse. Yeesh, I didn't realize they were carnivores. It's like something from Skull Island.

Boot Camp

Mac Boot Camp Beta, a preview of the software in Leopard that will allow you to run Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac.

That strange falling sensation when you sleep? It's a hypnagogic myoclonic twitch.

A NYTimes Magazine profile of The Wiggles, my nephew's favorite band.

Vitamins and poison pills

Here are those snazzy opening titles from Thank You For Smoking.

***

Are vitamins really good for you? Well, I guess we can wait to see what happens to Ray Kurzweil. Most of the harmful effects of vitamins seem to arise in studies with high dosages. Should be interesting to see Barry Bonds and Kurzweil in about twenty years.

***

Once solely the domain of Corporate America, poison pills have come to the NFL. The Seahawks inserted a clause in their offer to Vikings receiver Nate Burleson that the contract would become guaranteed if he played five games in the state of Minnesota. So of course the Vikings did not match the offer, not that they would have even without the clause. I'd be surprised if these types of poison pills were allowed to stand. If you're allowed to make up random poison pills, then the entire concept of matching offer sheets is negated. You can make up anything to prevent a team from matching your offer.

***

Ryanair turns a profit by discounting plane tickets heavily and making up for that with fees for most every other flight amenity. It's difficult to ascertain exactly how the airlines turns its profit just from reading the article--it could be primarily a result of a low cost structure rather than gimmicky fees--but you can't argue with their results in a tough industry.

***

The most popular movie in South Korean history is King and the Clown, a movie inevitably compared to Brokeback Mountain for depicting a gay male relationship.

***

I would be remiss if I didn't record here that this was the first year that March Madness was streamed online, for free. This was a well-designed first effort, complete with a Boss Button, which would transform the streaming video window into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with one click.

***

The cost-of-living in NYC is so high, I don't feel quite as guilty as I otherwise would in using the local Barnes and Noble and Sephora as a personal library and medicine cabinet. I still do feel guilty, but on the other hand, there's something of the New York survivor spirit in the frugality of such tactics. I have no idea if those high-falutin moisturizers really reduce aging, shrink pores, and restore a youthful complexion, but $50 for an ounce is probably too high a price to find out with my hard-earned savings.

Yesterday I stopped in B&N to flip through John Dewan's The Fielding Bible, which I do have on order, though from Amazon.com. It attempts to bring defensive evaluations to another level by using data from Baseball Information Solutions.

Instead of just looking at statistics, Dewan and company used video of every batted ball the past several seasons and translated each into a vector composed of direction and velocity. Then they computed which of those balls should have have been turned into an out by a particular fielder. That provided each defensive player with an expected number of outs, and the main statistic in the book is how many plays each player made versus expectation, the plus/minus. The book includes some other statistics for each position to evaluate things such as fielding of bunts for corner infielders and throwing arm for outfielders (the only position not evaluated is catcher).

Some of the book's conclusions align with widely held assumptions. Ichiro is the best right fielder (though the trend is one of decline). Orlando Hudson is probably the best defensive 2B in the game. Manny Ramirez and Adam Dunn are atrocious in left. Torii Hunter is fantastic in CF.

Bill James contributes an entire chapter on Derek Jeter's defense, a much debated topic. After putting Jeter through several different defensive evaluation systems and watching video of Jeter's best and worst plays, James, a noted contrarian, concedes that Jeter's defense is indeed lousy (Adam Everett evaluates as the best shortstop three years running, and it isn't even close). Hey, Jeter counts among his ex-girlfriends Jessica Alba and Adriana Lima; please allow us this one grudging flaw in his game.

At any rate, it's a fun compilation of stats to pore over, the type of book to bring to a ballgame and use to incite heated debates between innings.

42

Lots of exciting finishes in March Madness this year, no doubt. Color me George Mason green and yellow. Just remember, Cinderella may wear a glass slipper, but you still should have her remove them at the door.

More on the Final Four: of the over 3 million entries in ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge, 4 people picked all four teams in the Final Four correctly. About 2/3 of entrants didn't pick a single one of the Final Four teams. I wonder how many of the 284 people who picked George Mason to win it all actually go to or went to the school.

Maybe 42 really is the answer to the secret of the universe?

The proper way to pour ketchup.

Everyone thanks those in our volunteer army who are fighting in Iraq, but if a draft were instituted, everyone would raise bloody hell. During times of peace, signing up for the military seems like a decent deal, but these days, the Army is missing its recruiting numbers despite lowering its standards and raising its cash bonuses. It's one of the ugly truths about the Iraq war: those who fight the war are the ones who don't have more attractive options. The issue is close to my heart because one of my editing class projects was Edet Beltzberg's upcoming documentary on army recruiting. Much of that footage was wrenching to watch.

Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, gives a karate chop to the throat of the current Administration for the war on Iraq. I'm almost done reading Inside Delta Force, his account of the founding of Delta Force and his years in service. The book is in the news now because David Mamet used it as inspiration for his new TV show "The Unit" on CBS. The book isn't quite as thrilling as I thought it would be, mainly because Haney can't reveal a lot of classified methods and anecdotes. As for the TV show, I'm not so sure all the actors are cut out to deliver Mamet-ese. I enjoy his dialogue much like I enjoy a bloody chunk of prime grade beef, but in the hands of the wrong cook, even the finest cut of beef can be turned into lunch room salisbury steak. Haney's dismissal of the effectiveness of torture is a damning indictment of the abuses at Abu Ghraib from a different perspective--torture doesn't gain effective intelligence, Jack Bauer notwithstanding.

This might be the coolest bath toy you could buy for your toddler. I wonder if human fear of snakes is innate or arises from reading the Bible or watching movies like Anaconda, a movie which mostly developed my fear of Jon Voight in a ponytail.

Movies from Sundance always seem to be trickling into theaters. Brick was one of the consensus group favorites of our Sundance crew two years ago, though I thought the conceit of setting a film noir in high school lost its novelty appeal by film's end, giving way to a somewhat unsatisfying potboiler ending. Still, it's a gas to hear high school kids spewing hard-boiled dialogue, and what better place to transfer the stock characters of film noir than high school, a time in our lives when most of us were trying on personas in a massive game of social fencing. As compared to most multiplex fare, Brick is joltingly fresh. The movie won the Originality of Vision award at Sundance, and that was the appropriate honor to bestow on that movie.

Thank You For Smoking is the latest of this year's Sundance babies to hit the big screen. Like Brick, the movie sprints out of the blocks with gorgeous opening credits and loses breath by the finish. No one wears sleaze better than Aaron Eckhart, though, and the movie shares his charming cynicism. Until Nick Naylor (Eckhart) loses his nerve, the movie is a pleasant smartass. Rob Lowe and Adam Brody as a CAA agent and his assistant had industry insiders at Sundance crying with laughter. For those who want Eckhart neat, instead of on the rocks, try In the Company of Men, in which he played one of the more memorable characters many people have never heard of.

David Bordwell wants more from contemporary film criticism. More than just opinions or insights, he wants to learn approximately true things about film. Something tells me the two movie blurbs above probably don't meet his standard.

James sent me a link to this amazing single hand of poker between Phil Ivey and Paul Jackson. Whereas many players hide behind sunglasses, Ivey eschews them in favor of his cold, piercing gaze, against which sunglasses might be the only defense against going blind.

Deep Note

These past few months, I've been staring at a computer screen for so many hours that my vision is starting to go. I find myself wearing my glasses more and more often, and though they are so mild as to be almost cosmetic, it still feels like a defeat. The default font size in Final Cut Pro is tiny, but thus far, I've refused to give in and blow it up. A few times during the day, I go and stare out the window and try to focus on something far off in the distance. Inevitably, my visual target remains blurry, much the way some childhood memories become with each passing year.

***

I try to refrain from political ranting here, but it does amaze me how much our Prez seems to get away with. Even when he's caught in bald-faced lies, even when he's wiretapping us, even when the iconic image of the Iraq war the world over is of a prisoner being tortured, the next day it always seems to be back to normal (V for Vendetta, which I saw last Thursday night at the Lincoln Square IMAX, is more than a bit absurd, but that any of it even has any resonance with the current administration is outrageous). Perhaps there's some sort of political equilibrium point, such that a constant onslaught of negative news tends to diminish each in significance, the way that most people in the world rate themselves as roughly equal in happiness, despite the wide disparity in living conditions.

Well, "incompetent" is at least a start.

***

An alcohol concentration of 60% or higher seems to be the magic number for off-the-shelf hand sanitizers.

***

I know kung fu. Not quite. But sort of.

***

Wake-up calls from Maria Sharapova? Did anyone else try these or was I the only doofus? This supplied some of the motivation I needed on my voyage back from graveyard shift hours to normal hours. Unfortunately these seem to have been discontinued.

***

Tonight I went to the premiere of Lucky Number Slevin at the Ziegfeld Theater. I hadn't seen a movie at the Ziegfeld before; it's gorgeous. The screen isn't as massive as that of Cinerama, but the seats and interior are much more cozy and plush, with a classy old school styling, and the sound system is first rate. Definitely the nicest theater I've visited in NYC, though the Lincoln Square IMAX is impressive as well, more for its technical specifications.

Back to the movie. I saw it at Sundance in January, but what I'd forgotten is that the soundtrack is by J. Ralph, his first effort for the silver screen. He's most well-known from his song "One Million Miles Away," featured in the famous Volkswagen Jetta commercial "Big Day" (Quicktime). You can hear "One Million Miles Away" and other J. Ralph tunes at his website (which allows you to stream most of his tunes) or on his MySpace page (which only streams four of his songs).

His Lucky Number Slevin soundtrack is ear-catching. For some reason, he appears to have something against Amazon.com as the soundtrack is an exclusive to Barnes and Noble. It releases next Tuesday.

As I was seated and waiting for the movie to start, my phone rang. I thought it was Scott, who'd promised to call when he'd made it into the theater, so I immediately picked up and said, "I'm in row F, seat 12."

"Um, I'm looking for Eugene Wei?"

"Yep, I'm in row F, seat 12, I just stood up. You see me waving?"

"Uh, no. Actually, I'm calling from ___, and I wanted to chat with you about your application. I'm a professor there."

"Oh. Oops. Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry."

We went on to have an over-the-phone interview in the theater, while throngs of people milled about socializing and looking for their seats. Thankfully these things never start on time, and everyone was absorbed with scanning the theater for any of the many stars in the movie. My mind was racing and the environment was distracting. Maybe I should have postponed the call. Too late now; I'll be second-guessing myself for a few weeks.

He seemed like a really friendly guy. His specialty was sound, and he'd done lots of work for THX. I told him my favorite THX trailer, other than the original Deep Note (WMV), was the one featuring The Simpsons, the one that ends with Grampa Simpson standing up and shouting, "Turn it up! Turn it up!". I've never been able to find that on DVD, though he said it was out there somewhere. The THX Deep Note is one of my ten favorite sounds in the world. When I hear it, I just stand up and raise my arms in joy, always embarrassing for whoever is with me at the movie theater.

Someday, at the symphony, I'd love it if the orchestra, just before beginning the concert, all joined in to play the THX Deep Note, maybe before playing something like Shostakovich's 5th.

APC hack

This hack may only be of use in Manhattan, where the lines at the post office for human post office clerks are never short.

Much to any tech-saavy customers delight, he USPS joined the customer self-service movement a while back by installing machines/kiosks called Automated Postal Centers at many of their branches. By following directions on a touch screen, you can weigh letters and packages and purchase postage using your credit or debit card. This saves customers the trouble of waiting in line for their most common mailing needs.

The reliability of these machines, though is poor, and the glitch in the interface is that the APC often allows you to go all the way to the end of the process before informing you that, due to one error or another, you have to go to wait in line for a clerk after all.

When that happens, I've found a workaround that seems to be effective most of the time. From the opening screen, instead of hitting the "Mail a letter or package" button, press the button that says "Look Up Information." Then, press "Look Up Domestic Mailing Costs." Weigh your letter or package, type in the destination zipcode, and the machine will tell you the postage. But then it will also offer an option to purchase that postage. You can then proceed to purchase the stamp with your credit/debit card.

For some reason, that method always works, even when proceeding down that "Mail a letter or package" branch of the menu fails.

It's not just rock stars and actors

When you think of names like Einstein, Feynman, what comes to mind? How about some of the 20th century's preeminent swingers? Size matters - chicks dig the big brain.

[Feynman] even kept a picture in his office of one acquaintance, buxom adult film star Candi Samples, signed, “To Big Dick, Love from Candi.”

At the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos, the assembled brain trust was as hard-partying as a troop of college kids on spring break. Weekends with the physicists were “big and brassy,” replete with poker and booze. They played so hard that the program tried to quarantine the women’s dorms; as one boss euphemized, “The girls had been doing a flourishing business of requiting the needs of our young men.” So many babies resulted that Robert Oppenheimer (or his boss, nobody’s really sure), himself having tried to run off with the wife of Linus Pauling and bed the wife of another colleague, was told to halt the extracurricular activities. (Oppenheimer didn’t.)

Victoria

Portable cloaking technology finally a reality?

In search of the mythical pitch called the gyroball, a baseball thrown with the rotation of a football spiral, or a bullet, and nearly unhittable.

Beware the flirtatious IM stranger, especially if you're a college basketball player about to play a big game.

Fastest growing city on Earth: Chongqing. The two times I've been to China, I'm always amazed to travel through towns like Chongqing, that no one has ever heard of, all with populations larger than New York City.

...the planet's population is currently split almost right down the middle: 3.2 billion in the city, 3.2 billion in the countryside. But by the start of 2007, the balance will have tipped decisively away from the fields and towards the skyscrapers.

I predict more men will be asking for jalapenos on their Subway sandwiches.

Tree Hugger

Sony Playstation 3 to launch in November, 2006...this and more news from the PS3 conference. Blu-ray DVD playback, HDMI output, 60GB HDD, full backwards compatibility. No price announced, though.

Set up your Netflix account to default to HD-DVDs. Not sure why they haven't distinguished between HD and Blu-ray, since those are incompatible formats. Not a whole lot of titles on the docket, but you can sign up to be notified when the initial titles release at Amazon's HD DVD store or its Blu-ray DVD store.

Keepvid.com, for preserving those treasured videos from sites like Google Video, YouTube, Vimeo, and others of that ilk.

My sister had to mock up a fake videogame box cover for a class project. Her game was a satire of first person shooters, an eco-terrorism game called Tree Hugger. Yep, that guy who just tossed his empty soda can on the sidewalk is about to be lined up in the crosshairs. Severe? Perhaps. Similar policies in Singapore seem effective. I was taken aback mostly because this is my little sister we're talking about. Yes, we are one crazy family. You can click on the image for a larger view.

You might not be the only one betting on college basketball this week.

Tutorial on simulating tilt-shift photography using Photoshop. So much fun!

Deleted scenes from Star Wars

I hesitate to link to this because it feels like I'd just be speeding its demise, but for all I know these aren't that new anyhow: deleted scenes from Star Wars (Episode IV). Probably of interest only to the hardcore fans, as some of this is just behind the scenes footage.

Based on Gross National Product per capita, what is the 77th richest country in the world, wealthier than India, China, and Bulgaria? EverQuest.

Microsoft's Origami revealed, with a less friendly name of Ultra-Mobile PC. I'd like to see someone wear this on their belt like a cell phone. That is sure to impress the ladies.

The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

On the new revelations surrounding Barry Bonds steroid use, which most people suspected since his physical transformation into a human Bobblehead, the claim that most saddens me is that Bonds started juicing to grab the spotlight back from McGwire and Sosa. It's as if the movie Amadeus had been reversed, and Mozart was the one fuming over Salieri. I feel sorry for Bonds, in a way. For such a gifted player, he's always seemed so bitter and angry, arrogant yet insecure. Well, once the book hits the street, it should serve as a truth serum one way or another. Lance Armstrong always sued anyone who made public accusations that he doped. Despite Bonds's alimony payments, I think he could afford to take legal action if the book made false accusations. Meanwhile, I don't know Bud Selig, but I can't help picturing him with a copy of the book on his desk, a blank and shellshocked look on his face, just like President Logan on 24. He'd turn to his Mike Novick equivalent and plead, "Mike, tell me what to do."

Hoth 2014

The Chappelle Theory: "He knew that at the same time he was signing his record-setting deal, there was a secret cabal of powerful African-American leaders from the business, political, and entertainment industries working together to ensure that the third season of Chappelle's Show would never happen."

It's not too early to start campaigning for the Winter Olympics. Ice planet of Hoth, 2014!

FoxiPod uses Greasemonkey with Firefox to allow you to download MP3s directly into iTunes, something I'd been wishing I could do in Firefox for a long time. Safari dumps MP3s into iTunes already, but when doing so it initiates playback right away which can be disruptive.

Curling audio clip mash-up (MP3). Sure seemed like curling got a love of media love, even if in jest, this year.

Judith Harris first came to prominence for her groundbreaking book The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, which argued that a children's peers were far more influential on their personality development than their parents. Now Harris has written a new book, No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, which updates and builds on her earlier work. I look forward to reading it.

Rakebreak.com

Rakebreak.com allows you to recover some of the rake you pay at many popular online poker playing sites. Many sites will cut Ratebreak.com in a chunk of the rake it takes from you. Then Rakebreak gives most of that back to you, keeping a bit for yourself. Refer friends, and if they accumulate $400 in rake, you get a $50 bonus. [via Thrillist]

What is Microsoft's Origami Project, which is being unveiled this Thursday? The most popular theory seems to be an "ultraportable lifestyle PC," a sort of jack-of-all-trades gadget that combines all your devices into one: digital camera, camcorder, cell phone, MP3 player, PDA, Internet access device, e-mail device, and portable picture display.

The Sony Portable Reader System (PRS-500) is up for sale at SonyStyle.com for $349.99. I'd want to experience the screen resolution of one of these babies in person before plunking down that much cash, but electronic readers do geek me up, and this is the most promising model yet. The first thing Sony needs to do, however, is give this baby a name. PRS-500 is not sexy at all. Hmmm, maybe something like Origami Project, if that's not already taken. [via Engadget]

In the Minnesota Timberwolves game last night, Kevin Garnett tossed a ball into the stands in frustration and hit a fan in the face. Garnett was ejected, and rightfully so (a young girl to his right, perhaps the man's daughter, burst into tears), but my eyes rolled at footage of the fan being wheeled out on a gurney by medical personnel. From being hit in the face by a basketball? A player with a $100 million contract hits you in the nose with a tossed ball, and television cameras all swing around to focus on you--that's the time to bust out your best Oscar performance and get a good lawyer on the phone. But I think the guy probably realized that even the U.S. legal system would have a hard time finding in his favor when you have grade school kids being nailed in the face by hard red rubber dodgeballs every day in P.E. On a positive note, I'm sure the guy will be happy with his parting gift, likely to be some signed paraphernalia by KG.

Hot rumor at the NFL Combine is that Vince Young scored a 6 out of 50 on the Wonderlic test, though the latest news is that the grader may have scored the test wrong, though his score wasn't much better. Wonderlic must have some good lawyers because I couldn't find a complete sample Wonderlic test online anywhere, though ESPN.com once published a sample 15 questions that everyone online is forced to cite when posting about the test. Supposedly, Matt Leinart scored a 35, and the average score for an NFL prospect is about 19. I've never seen any studies that demonstrate any correlation between Wonderlic score and NFL performance, though Young's score would make him the lowest scoring starting QB in the NFL. That score would likely hurt Young's draft stock, not necessarily because his test score means he's unable to grasp an NFL playbook but because like many standardized tests, it's a test of your willingness to study for a defined task. A score of 6 would indicate that Young's preparation for the Combine was spotty, at best. He knew it was coming. So the latest news is that Young retook the test and scored a 16, and that he'll take the test a third time.
[related: Pro Football Weekly published scores for lots of players from last year's NFL draft]
[update: I did manage to find a sample Wonderlic test online]

Whatever People Say I Am Thats What I Am Not

Google Pages is a free, online web page creation tool.

Whatever People Say I Am Thats What I Am Not, the mega-hyped new album from maybe the most hyped new band of the last year, released yesterday. The good news is the album is a whole lot of damn fun, and the hype is forgivable because the band allowed MP3s of their tunes to float around the Internet for a long time before they released their work. That helped to build the buzz and a fan base. Even before their CD released, they sold out a few concerts in NYC before most people could hit redial on their phone. It helps to be good, yes, but it also helps to realize how to feed the machine that is the Web hype monster with some choice cuts. Cheap, efficient marketing.

NYTimes food critic Frank Bruni reviews NYC's midtown Hooters in his new blog. "They may wear skimpy attire, but they have big hearts."

The Manhattan Trader Joe's could be opening in mid-March, ahead of schedule. Some localization will occur: Two-buck Chuck will be three-buck Chuck due to Manhattan inflation.

Tiger Woods annihilates his first opponent in The Accenture Match Play Championship, 9 & 8 (basically, Tiger won every hole of the match, nine in a row, with 7 birdies and 2 pars). Even I, with my terrible game, might have been able to eek out a tie on one hole on the front 9. Before the match, Ames had made a comment about Tiger's driving to the press, saying, "Anything can happen, especially where he's hitting the ball." After the match, when asked if he had any response to Ames' comments, Tiger responded, "9 & 8." Just this once, it would have been great if trash talking was allowed in golf. Every time Tiger sank a birdie putt, he could've turned to Ames and said, "How do you like where I hit that ball, you $*@#!?" Everyone knows if trash talking were allowed, Tiger would be even more dominant than he is. He'd be like Jordan, just cruel and relentless.

I forgot to point out yesterday that Sports Guy's latest column, summarizing his NBA All-Star Weekend trip, was awesome.

236 phrases/keywords censored by a Chinese blogging service. Among them:

• Set fires to force people to relocate
• Hire a killer to murder one's wife
• Fetus soup

A Bug's Death

This parasitic wasp story is the hot story on the web, and it is indeed fascinating and lurid.

Speaking of bugs, yesterday I had to grab a quick dinner before running out to give a short talk, so I stopped at Republic in Union Square for the first time. Two bites into my noodle soup, a ladybug floated up to the top. I know they're supposed to be good luck and all, but not when their corpses are bobbing up and down in my broth. A surprised waiter took the bowl and had a chat with another waiter nearby about where it might have come from, all within earshot of me, the horrified customer. Turns out the ladybugs come from the bathroom. I got out of there before my mind could dwell on how the ladybug had journeyed from bathroom to kitchen.

Cute, when they're not in your soup

The Maria Antoinette trailer in HD.

Make sure to patch your Firefox.

Yet more Brokeback remix action. Where's Frodo and Sam? Aragorn and Legolas? Agent Smith giving a lapdance to Morpheus in The Matrix?

The Terrible Triad

I had a terrible flashback when I saw Carson Palmer crumple after suffering a torn ACL and MCL and damage to the media meniscus. That injury is commonly referred to as the terrible triad because they tend to occur together. The knee is just a stubborn joint, it can bend forward until the leg is straight, and it can bend backwards until your foot hits your butt, and that's about the extent of its operation. It's not so good with side to side forces, like a big defensive lineman rolling into it from the side.

The good news is that ACL reconstruction has come a long way. In the old days, they wouldn't even bother repairing the ACL, and athletes would just back out and play with an unstable knee, though it was highly recommended that you strengthen your muscles around the knee. My doctor actually gave me that option, but I didn't want to limit myself to sports requiring only straight-ahead linear motion, like running or cycling. My docs didn't bother repairing my MCL, but they did take a piece of my hamstring to replace my ACL, and they snipped a bit of my torn meniscus out and stapled the remainder together with some biodegradable material that just dissolved after a while. A half year of rehab later, and I was back out and running around, with the added benefit of being able to predict inclement weather with my reconstructed knee.

***

This hard drive is a real brick.

***

Play Windows Media files in your Quicktime player on the Mac.

Bob Loblaw

What foods to buy organic (lots of fruits, meats, and baby food), and what not (seafood).

Analysts guess that Sony's Playstation 3 will cost $499 when it's released, as opposed to the $399 that the Xbox 360 theoretically costs now, though if you want one right at this very moment you'll probably pay a lot more than that on eBay.

Skype 2.0 for Windows offers free video calling. Non-Windows XP users don't get the video calling feature, but that means we get to continue calling in the nude, so we've got that going for us.

Nikon to halt production on all but two of its seven film camera bodies, phasing them out one by one. My old Nikon film camera is already starting to display that healthy antique glow.

No go on running Windows XP on the new MacBook Pro, at least for now, but you can run Vista if you can somehow get your hands on a beta copy.

John Madden Arrested for possession of turhumanheaducken (I've flirted with the turducken for many a Thanksgiving now, so James just had to pass this along to me).

Digi-portraits - Sweet! I want one!

Kobe vs. Lebron tonight, though it's really lame in the NBA that star players almost never guard each other, so it's really more like Lebron and Kobe tonight, on the same basketball court and occasionally within a few feet of each other. John Hollinger compared the two statistically (ESPN Insider subscription required), and to summarize, Lebron won out by the slightest of margins.

Google Earth finally supports Macs

Hallelujah!

No free lunch

So you own and use lots of Mac apps and are wondering whether or not they'll run on the MacBook Pro and its Intel processors. Here's the skinny.

New Mac apps bearing the Universal symbol will run on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. This includes Mac OS X, iLife ’06, Safari and Mail. Other apps will run on Intel-based Macs with the aid of Rosetta.

Pro Mac Apps－Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Aperture, and Logic－won't run on Intel-based Macs. Owners of those apps will have the option of upgrading to a Universal version of the app for a fee, and those are expected to be available by March 21, 2006. Full details here.

An extra $49. Seems like Apple should just allow existing users to download an update, but they've got the users hostage on this one.

Apple of my eye

Oh, new MacBook Pro, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways (starting with $2,499 of them). Will you be my Valentine?

The Webcomics Examiner's Best Webcomics of 2005.

Anthony Lane looks back on the year in movies.

Download the Mac beta for Adobe Labs (formerly Macromedia) new application Lightroom, a competitor to Apple's Aperture. For many people who just need an application for photo retouching and processing, either Lightroom or Aperture is likely a better choice than Photoshop, which has always been bewildering in its complexity to newbies (I say "likely" because I've yet to try Aperture or Lightroom, though I'm downloading the latter now; I wish Apple offered a tryout copy of Aperture).

The pre-beta version of Filmloop is available for download. This is photo-sharing software that pushes pics in a slideshow to other people's desktops. Apple today announced that iPhoto in iLife 06 will include a feature called Photocasting, which allows users to push iPhoto albums to other iPhoto users through .Mac. I'm surprised Flickr hasn't released something similar (Flickr allows you to publish your photos as an RSS feed, but that doesn't pass the grandma ease-of-use test). If I ran the show at Flickr, I'd have a lot of people focused on cranking out an app like Filmloop ASAP. This all reminds of PointCast, the first popular push software for the web. It went kaput, but everything old is new again. For Christmas I wanted to get my parents one of those digital picture frames that could display pictures all of their kids would upload. I did some research on the Ceiva service, and it turned out to be a massive disappointment, with outrageous annual subscription fees. So I got them something else, with the hopes that I could just find a way for all the kids to publish photos to their desktop instead. And without even a request to the Lazyweb, my wishes are nearly answered.

IMDb plot summary for Roberto Benigni's next movie Tiger and the Snow, to be released in 2006 in the U.S.: "A love-struck Italian poet is stuck in Iraq at the onset of an American invasion." I'm all for the resilience of the comedy and the human spirit in the face of tragedy, but jeepers creepers.

The humane way to kill a lobster, a short article dedicated to David Foster Wallace as a response to his essay "Consider the Lobster," an article originally written for Gourmet and which provides the title for his latest essay collection. Besides being humane, that is just an impressive move with which to show off your chef's knife.

If you want a copy of Flash Gordon by Mike Hodges on DVD, you can find it on Amazon Canada. I saw this on television in Taiwan in 1982 during a family trip, and it's one of the earliest movies I saw that left specific scenes impressed in my memory. In one scene, some sort of competition, Flash and someone else take turns sticking their hands in holes in this giant mound of dirt. I forget what happened if you chose poorly; some creature chewed off your hand? In another, Flash and his adversary wrestle on a moving circular floor with spikes that would emerge intermittently. If you fell off the side off the floor, you fell to your death, I believe. Finally, at the movie's conclusion, Max von Sydow's Ming the Merciless is impaled by the spike on the nosecone of a spaceship, a fitting end for the criminal in a cheesy, kinky, quintessentially 80's movie. I wonder why this DVD is out of print in the U.S.; I'd like to see it again.

B-Dazzle Scramble Squares

Christmas Day, I woke up to find Mike and Joannie working on a puzzle at the breakfast table. Nine squares, each with either the head or tail of a wolf on each side. The goal was to arrange the nine squares in one 3x3 grid so that the heads and tails matched up. There were four different wolves.

I spent a half hour before breakfast trying to tease it out, to no avail. I always got 8 pieces in place, the but the last piece never fit.

Rich and Carol let me bring it home with me to finish. At Derek's house I spent another hour on it, beginning to develop a system. 9 pieces, each of which can go in 9 positions, and within each of those 9 positions, each piece could be rotated into one of 4 orientations. The number of combinations is staggering: 9! * 4^9 or 95,126,814,720. However, one quickly realizes that the easiest way to solve the puzzle (short of using a computer algorithm) is to start with one piece as the center piece and then work out from there. You can choose any side of the center piece and there will only be several other pieces that connect to it. From there, there are only several pieces that can connect with those two pieces, and you can quickly determine which just don't work. It took me about five or six maddening hours of using that method to finally stumble across the solution, pictured below.

There may be other solutions, though I'm not certain. I know that in order to preserve my sanity I'm not ever going to touch this puzzle again.

Makes a great stocking stuffer, though. The puzzle is deceptively simple, the rules are easy, and you can drive people crazy with it. The puzzles are manufactured by a company called B.dazzle, Inc., and they're called Scramble Squares. You can purchase any of the dozens of variants of the Scramble Squares directly from B.Dazzle online for $9.95 each. There's an online sample puzzle at their website.

Compound juices

For the longest time, I thought Seth Rogen, who played Ken on Freaks and Geeks, pulled a reverse Kirstie Alley and lost a ton of weight in order to play Logan Echolls on Veronica Mars. I finally paid attention during the credits and realized that Echolls is played by Jason Dohring. Same face, same voice - they look like brothers.

***

On so many airplane flights, they don't have apple juice or cranberry juice, but they do have cran-apple juice. SKU and space-saving decision, or the fingerprints of the powerful cran-apple lobby?

***

At the grocery store near Derek's apt in Chicago, Bartlett pears were selling for $0.59 a pound. I wanted to cry when I saw that. Those same pears sell for $2.49 a pound at Whole Foods in Union Square.

***

Sign up for the beta test of AllPeers, which looks like it will be a killer extension for Firefox.

***

Since we have such a big Brady Bunch-esque family, we instituted an annual Christmas gift exchange several years back. Every year I use the Excel random number function to assign everyone another member of the family to shop for, and all we have to do is purchase for that one person. It reduces the holiday shopping stress by at least one magnitude of order, and everyone receives something substantial. The days of receiving three pairs of socks, a book, and a $20 GC to each of four different stores is over.

I highly recommend the same for those who are driven bonkers by holiday shopping.

Back from holiday break

They say writing is a muscle (and I believe it), and if so, mine is weak and out-of-shape after a holiday break with no writing, minimal time online, and wave after wave of consumption of various holiday foodstuff. Come to think of it, I'm just flab all over. Much of the popularity of New Year's fitness resolutions can be explained by timing, New Years coming directly after typically the most protracted and gluttonous of American holidays.

Just as with going to the gym, every day I don't write adds to the output I feel I need to generate the next time I do write. After a while it feels impossible to make up for all the lost time. The only way to get rolling again is a little chunk at a time.

***

Do people still eat geese, or is it an anachronism from Dickens' novels and a time before people learned to appreciate other fowl? I never hear of anyone eating a Christmas goose anymore. Is it not good, or is it just too much hassle to farm-raise geese to make it a grocery store staple? Geese don't seem to be endangered. I see them everywhere.

***

The BT Technology Timeline - BT has a futurology department, and they've built this interactive timeline that runs out to 2051 (which probably covers the remainder of my life expectancy). My first thought on seeing this was that some lucky SOB's job is to sit around and predict the future. The second was that even the most advanced futurologist has no clue when the Cubs will finally win a World Series.

Lots of fun to play with, though there's little in the way of supporting evidence. A cursory kicking of the tires spilled these nuggets (my notes in parentheses):

• Androids will make up 10% of the population in 2015 (ensuring that already awkward blind dates will begin with the administration of the Voight-Kampff test)
• The world's population will peak at 10 billion in 2039 (you think finding an apartment in Manhattan is tough today)
• Virus crosses over from machine to human in 2025 (because some eager SOB forgot to do the Voight-Kampff test before jumping into the sack)
• Rise of a global machine dictator - date unknown (Skynet?)
• Robot superior to humans in 2030 or so (well, we still have 25 years to enjoy our supremacy)
• Creation of The Matrix in 2030 (related to the prediction above?)
• Fully telepathic communication in 2049
• Brain downloads in 2049 (shortly thereafter, someone will write a plug-in to allow direct sending of brain logs to all the major weblog software packages; confusion will reign as the term blog is re-appropriated to refer to brain-logs)

Arthur C. Clarke: "...any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic..."

***

Some guys TiVo'd the previous night's Texas Lotto drawing and then bought their buddy a matching ticket that day. Then they set up a camcorder, played the drawing while their buddy was there, and put the video up on Google Video. I hope they take their buddy out for dinner or something. That's just cruel.

At any rate, it's just an example of a type of humor which seems to be at the peak of its popularity: laughing at the person in the dark, the person who is being honest and genuine. It's the modern ironic mode of expression as entertainment.

Punk'd. The Ali G Show. All those reality television shows in which contestants are kept in the dark as to the real premise of the show, like My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance. Even The Colbert Report, at times.

I hope this mode of humor hit its saturation point in 2005. There's a mean-spiritedness at its core that isn't that funny and is only tolerable in small doses, a level it has long since surpassed in mass media.

***

While searching for a copy of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner on DVD, I stumbled across Nostalgia Family Video, a site which carries just such hard-to-find movies on DVD. The aforementioned DVD is just one of many gems in their catalog.

WhatTheFont?

I haven't tested this, but it sounds cool. Upload an image of some text to identify the font.

Artists and poets do it better. Or at least more. Yes, confusions of causality and whatnot. I suspect actors like Colin Farrell and Waren Beatty were classified as artists, skewing the data set.

Some new Google Extensions for Firefox: Google Safe Browsing (phish repellent), and Blogger Web Comments.

Sneak listen to John Williams score for Munich. As a fan of the oboe, I fancy #8, "Avner and Daphna."

This American Life downloads via a Greasemonkey script.

The Chronic of Narnia Rap from SNL (takes a long time to load, but worth it, and the fact that you have to vouch for an SNL clip link is itself a comment on the sad state of affairs over there).

Bleaghh

Monday, at the gym, I felt nauseous on the treadmill. I stumbled home, then spent the next 24 hours curled up with a water bucket nearby, hovering on the edge of puking my guts out. I disobeyed two of Anthony Bourdain's precepts from Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly: I ordered seafood on Sunday, and that seafood was in the form of mussels from a chef I did not know personally. Never again. On a positive note, my calorie count was quite low that day.

NBA to create a searchable database of all its video footage. We'll all be able to spin our own highlight reels, depending on how well the footage is indexed.

Before you visit MoMA in NYC, grab some audio tours or podcasts for your iPod. For example, grab an MP3 Acoustiguide about the latest special exhibition, Pixar: 20 Years of Animation. MoMA even encourages you to create your own audio tours of your favorite works of art there, for others to enjoy, complete with images from MoMA's online collection. I'm sure some good ones have been created already; it's on my to-do list now, too.

Microsoft's inability to manufacture more Xbox 360's for their holiday season launch is a huge misstep. They finally got release position on Sony, then failed to press their advantage. Even Steve Ballmer's kids don't have one.

You can buy extensions for your powerstrip to avoid the annoying loss of an extra outlet to a bulky transformer, or you can just purchase a next generation powerstrip like the PowerSquid.

Paris by night, a gorgeous nighttime panoramic shot of the City of Lights (1.8MB file). More visual foie gras here. Damn I miss Paris. [via Me-Fi]

Trailer for Mission Impossible 3, or M:I:3, I guess. No director ever has ever had to utter the words: "With more intensity, Mr. Cruise."

One of those strange ways the world has ceded some privacy online is through WeddingChannel. Every wedding I've attended the past several years has posted all its registries online for the world to discover through a simple name search on bride or groom. You can even look up old registries, as for Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, or those of some ex you're still stalking, to see if they're tying the knot, and if so, what sort of cookware they'll be using in the home they're making with someone else. Fun way to kill a few minutes.

Every release of Firefox justifies a revisit of the most useful Firefox Extensions. SessionSaver is the most useful to me because of the sheer number of tabs I have open at once, and NoScript makes web surfing a much more serene experience, but it's the aggregation of all of my extensions that make Firefox my browser of choice.

First full-length trailer for The Da Vinci Code. There's nothing subtle about this trailer, which basically is the equivalent of a freaky albino monk coming to your front door and dragging you kicking and screaming to the movie theater to turn over your $10.50.

ITSM

All the cool kids (web dorks) will be cranking out iTunes signatures today, thanks to Jason Freeman. iTSM cranks out a representative montage of song clips from your iTunes library based on criteria you select, like play count or rating. C'est chouette, hein? Makes a great "name as many tunes in this as possible" contest clip generator.

Background on the relationship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and how Tolkien convinced Lewis to switch to only using initials for his first name. Wait--I meant how Tolkien was instrumental in converting Lewis to Christianity, their friendship, and their eventual falling out. Sounds like fodder for a movie, with Anthony Hopkins reprising his role as Lewis and Ian McKellen as Tolkien.

The trailer for Sofia Coppola's Mario-Antoinette is out. Set to "Age of Consent," from the best New Order album, Power, Corruption, & Lies. The musical choice feels SCoppola-esque, non? When Sarah Flack came to speak to our class, she mentioned that she was in the midst of editing it, and we all thought, "I wish I was Sarah Flack." And I added, "I bet she has health insurance."

One of my favorite music videos of all time is Gondry's video for "Like a Rolling Stone" by the Stones. This short article discusses the making-of, and the video is part of the awesome DVD Director's Series, Vol. 3 - The Work of Director Michel Gondry. There's still controversy over who invented the image-warping virtual cinematography effect, but anecdotally it's most often referred to in reference to The Matrix effect or the Gap swing dancing ad (Quicktime). Nowadays, the effect is used in lots of ads--the Really Bend it Like Beckham title sequence is cool (one of the lower links on that page). Someday maybe they'll release a version of this interpolation software for use on your computer at home, and then the world will be flooded with hundreds of frozen time snowboard jump Quicktime movies.

Girls on Aslan! Kong with Ann Bust! SFW.

Error message from my most recent Google Search:

We're sorry...

... but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google

What that's all about?

Firefox 1.5

Firefox 1.5 officially released, available at Mozilla's new URL.

Hornets, Mechanical Turks, and swords, oh my

If you absolutely can't wait to see Tom Yum Goong in American theaters, you can pre-order the VCD. The quality will be terrible, though, so I recommend making the soup instead and waiting for the movie to arrive on the big screen.

How to defend against Teen Wolf.

Once a year, Popular Science publishes a list of the Worst Jobs in Science. This year's list included a link to this bizarre video clip (MPEG) of a ballerina dancing around a NASA robot which resembles a giant, umm, unmanned vehicle. Yeah.

Red square: keep away, if you can. [This and the next two links via Me-Fi]

A condensed jpeg of Ground Zero from straight overhead, a short while after 9/11. The not condensed version of the photo. Meanwhile, with scant media buzz, construction on the new World Trade Center began two days ago.

Sword swallowers actually do swallow swords, though the swords rarely reach the stomach. I saw a sword swallower in China put a long fluorescent light down his throat, and then they turned off the house lights and he turned on the lamp, and we could see the light through the skin of his throat. Now there's a great opener the next time you want to start a conversation with an attractive stranger at a bar.

One of the last projects I heard about when I left Amazon.com and its Web Services team looks to have launched, sort of: The Mechanical Turk. It allows software developers to add human intelligence to their programs, because there are still many things humans do better than computers. A devious use might be to have humans interpret captchas for your automated ticket hoarding program. A less nefarious use might be to help an AIBO interpret human facial expressions or tone of voice. What incentive do you have to help out a computer program with tasks like these? Cash. Reminds me a bit of that marketplace for human talents in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

Curbed's Eater publishes the complete list of 507 restaurants in the New York Michelin Guide.

Thrilling if gruesome video (Windows Media File) of a couple dozen giant hornets massacring a colony of some 30,000 honey bees in order to plunder the honey and larvae. By massacre I mean they just use their jaws to bite the bees in half, one after the other. Sheesh. I tried to trace the movie back to its original poster, but gave up after about ten or so hops, so I'll credit J-Walk, who published some great references on Microsoft Excel and who maintains a prolific weblog.

This week's Out of 5 is a good one: They Got It Right the First Time - Great Songs Better Known Via Inferior Covers

Silly Billy

Panasonic launched a blog called Def Perception to discuss its HDV 24p camcorder the AG-HVX200 and high def filmmaking in general. To request a free instructional DVD on the AG-HVX200 (for U.S. customers only), go here. B&H is pre-selling a kit with the AG-HVX200 and two 8GB P2 cards for $10K.

Wednesday is the day when Michelin releases its New York restaurant star ratings, with the release party that evening at the Guggenheim. Who will receive the coveted three-star ratings? Early favorites include Per Se and Alaine Ducasse. As a way of going long Per Se, I snagged a reservation for mid-November.

Yesterday, I attended a Halloween party with my nephew Ryan, looking as adorable as ever in his deluxe Thomas the Tank Engine costume. The parents association that sponsored the party hired a clown to perform, and I was so busy chasing Ryan with my camcorder that Anita had to point out that the clown was none other than David Friedman, from the Andrew Jarecki documentary Capturing the Friedmans. David was one of Jarecki's original subjects since the documentary began as one about birthday clowns. David seems to have shaken off any stigma from his father's pedophilia conviction and continues to work as the clown magician Silly Billy. Only in NY.

Ken reminded me that Cool Hunting linked to this collage of cassette tapes, many of which the two of us used to purchase by the dozens to dub our music. So many of these images still seem as vividly familiar as if they were sitting on my shelves now. Ah, those days when a metal cassette tape was like gold.

Apps for doing this on a Windows PC have long been available, but now Mac users can treat a GMail account as a hard drive using gDisk.

My old roommate Scott, in an aside, guessed that I'd heard of a movie titled Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson. Well, I hadn't, so I looked up the plot summary: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, let loose a crate full of deadly snakes. Well, a title doesn't get too much more literal than that, and though it's not due out until 2006, it's already inspired a long and often chuckle-worthy thread of over 100 proposed sequels.

A list of John Peel's most treasured 7-inch singles. The White Stripes are big winners, with an amazing 10 spots on the list.

James forwarded me this little easter egg video of Yoda breakdancing, from the Star Wars, Episode III - Revenge of the Sith DVD, releasing tomorrow.

"is comprised of"

One of the most common usage errors in English is the phrase "is comprised of." A Google search for the phrase returns 20.8 million results. A whole comprises the parts. In most cases when people use "is comprised of" they should use "comprises" or "is composed of." For example, "New York City comprises Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens." The incorrect usage is so popular, though, that fighting it might prove a losing battle.

Worthwhile usage lessons like this can be found in Garner's Modern American Usage, an essential reference for writers.

***

A hack: free SkypeOut calls. I'll need those and much more after reading this article on how much money you need to truly have "f*** you money" in NYC. Basically, without going into the detailed calculations, the article said I'll be eating ramen, watching pirated DVDs on my old laptop, and stealing wi-fi from my next-door neighbor for the rest of my life. Just passing through, just passing through.

***

The Michelin Red Guide 2006 New York City will be unveiled next week at the Guggenheim. Some of New York's prominent chefs weigh in. Anthony Bourdain provides the gossip:

The big question is who will get a top ranking: The thinking is that Ducasse is a shoo-in for three stars. If they don’t give it to Ducasse, it will just be a terrible slap. And if they don’t give three to Per Se, that’s really a huge turd in the punch bowl. If Per Se gets three, and Ducasse doesn’t, that’s a whole other political situation. At least that’s the girls’ talk—you know, when the chefs are all sitting around bitching and gossiping. As for Zagat, it’s devalued. It’s like, “Some say ‘delicious’; others say ‘smells like cat pee.’

Danny Meyer puts it all in perspective:

Particularly in its first year of publication, a Michelin star will represent nothing but upside for any restaurant. This year, the guide will award but not remove stars from any restaurant. Many will be helped, none will be hurt.

***

Evidence suggests that many U.S. Senators profit off of insider trading. That's not shocking considering how connected they are. What Martha Stewart did is hardly the exception to the rule, but making an example of her seems unlikely to curb the practice. Perhaps the only way to halt this, and it's not practical, is to prevent anyone in a certain position or job level from trading on certain publicly-traded stocks (like CEO's and Senators). This would constrain their investment options, but then again, they're rich.

***

This list of the 20 best license-free fonts on the web should have included any of the Peter Saville New Order/Joy Division fonts. They're flat-out gorgeous, and they're free. Now I just have to figure out how to convert them for use on my Mac.

Not on the bandwagon, or maybe I am

Jason Lee always seems to play a cantankerous sidekick in the movies, which is why his good-natured simpleton in My Name is Earl is such a pleasant surprise. Funny show.

I'm not one of those Cubs fans who wants the White Sox to lose. It's not a zero sum game fore baseball in Chicago, despite how many fans on both sides behave. I'd love to see Chicago with a national champion in its midst again. That's not to say a White Sox World Series victory will mean a fraction of what a Cubs World Series win would mean to me.

I love the version of the Jarhead trailer that is set to Kanye West's "Jesus Walks". It may be just a case of the music carrying the moving images, but when Jamie Foxx says "I...love...this...job" in cadence to the music, that's a beautiful thing. I've been editing army footage in class, and this trailer is driving me nuts because I'm overwhelmed by an inclination to set the footage to Kanye West.

Lincoln Burrows does escape from prison. I was walking back from class last week and he walked past me on the sidewalk. I couldn't place him except as the guy who had to escape from prison on that television show on Fox. How many degrees from fame are you when people recognize you from commercials for a show they've never seen because Fox blitzes all its programs with in-house promos?

Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 is rearing its head again in NYC.

To absolutely no one's surprise, some of the first content available for the video iPod is adult.

I'm not even sure exactly what Apple's new software Aperture does, and it costs $499, but already I want it. Apple seems to release something I want every other week now. I surrender, just take my Visa.

Life's so hectic right now, and I'm exhausted, so this is all you get, just a few brief thoughts and rabbit droppings.

Pocket lint

Studies fail to find any link between diet and cancer. If people believe in the cancer-fighting benefits of tomato sauce and antioxidants and fiber and beta carotene, that peace of mind is not without value.

A helpful rundown of all the cases for the iPod nano.

James sent me this link to some crazy-ass breakdancers in the Redbull BC One competition. Too bad the video stream is so choppy.

Fascinating article about the constant influx of Chinese who immigrate to America through NYC and then ship out immediately to some of the more than 36,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. A few interesting factoids: there are more Chinese restaurants in the U.S. than McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger Kings combined. The market price for getting oneself smuggled into the U.S. is upward of $60,000. Those Chinatown buses that offer $15 one-way rides from NYC to Boston or Washington originally sprang up to transport these workers, but now they carry quite a number of non-Chinese looking for cheap transportation.

Economic integration cited as one of the main reasons for improved test scores in Raleigh school district. This is one of the main reasons why some education reformers believe the answer to education woes is not to segregate all the best and/or wealthiest students in their own schools. It's a tough sell to the parents of those kids, though.

Downloadable subway maps for many major cities for your iPod. Great, except New York City's MTA and San Francisco's BART have filed cease-and-desist letters. Some graphic designer just needs to make their own versions for this guy. No reason to wait for them to license it to him. That's just ridiculous. The latest update is that he's making progress on his own version of the NY Subway Map.

How can you tell if a woman loves you?

If you’re Gael Garcia Bernal: She loves you.

If you’re not Gael Garcia Bernal, but you’re willing to sit through a “GGB” marathon and agree for 10 consecutive hours that he is indeed the most beautiful and talented man alive—and so down-to-earth, too!—and afterward agree that his portrayal of Che Guevara would have earned an Oscar nod were it not for the implicit politics, agree that taking Spanish classes is a great idea, or salsa, or tango, whatever, agree, agree, agree, and that night lying in bed after sex that ends with her screaming, “Si! Si!” wonder aloud, “But you’re happy with me, right?”: She loves you, man—no one can compete with that Latin bastard. Forget about it.

Customized colors for your iPod Nano, at a premium of $85

Giant Squid! And the whale

The giant squid has finally been captured on film!

Longtime readers know what a big deal this is for me. Next we need video footage of a giant squid battling a sperm whale. For me, that's the real world equivalent of Godzilla vs. King Kong.

Loosely related, Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale is playing this week at the New York Film Festival. I caught an 8 AM screening of the movie at Sundance in January. It nearly killed me to get up at the crack of dawn to drive in from Salt Lake City, especially because I was the only one of my group left at the fest, but it was worth it.

Baumbach, most known up until now as Wes Anderson's friend and frequent writing partner, based his latest movie on his childhood experience with his divorced parents. Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels play the parents suffering from marital problems, and the movie chronicles the effect of their divorce on their two sons, especially older son Walt (Jesse Eisenberg). As an added treat for New Yorkers, the movie was shot in Brooklyn, where Baumbach grew up.

Baumbach has a similar sense of humor as Anderson, wry and ironic. Lots of tannins, but a hint of fruit in a long finish. In the opening scene, each of the two sons pairs off with a parent for a doubles match. Jeff Daniels tells his son Walt, in a hushed but serious tone, to hit to his mom's backhand because it's her weaker wing. Walt does so, setting up a smash for Jeff Daniels that nearly decapitates Laura Linney. That Daniels celebrates the point sets the tone for the movie--humorous, wistful, and melancholic. The title refers to the squid and the whale at the Museum of Natural History; its significance becomes clear once you see the movie.

As to my fascination with giant squid, I'm not sure how it all started. I loved whales and other giant sea creatures as a boy, as well as 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. I love eating squid, too, though I only acquired a taste for it later in life. Mom made me eat it as a child. I should have listened to her then, not just about the squid, but about keeping up with my piano lessons.

Tomorrow's technology today: fusion and nanotechnology, in consumable goods form

Banana Nutrament has an MP3 of David Bowie and Arcade Fire singing "Wake Up" together. Bowie vocals on one of my favorite songs of the last year...cool. I'm going to see Arcade Fire on Central Park Summerstage Thursday evening. It will be my first Central Park concert.

How efficient is the Red Cross? Is there a better charity to donate to when crises like Hurricane Katrina strike? It's the most linked to charity for donating to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, but someone expressed reservations about how efficiently the Red Cross channeled those funds to aiding victims. I don't know the answer, but I found this evaluation in which the Red Cross online earned a four star rating (out of four). Not sure how objective or accurate this evaluation is, though I was hoping more knowledgeable folks had already done the legwork on this. The president and CEO, Marsha Evans, does indeed make a really generous salary ($450K a year, according to this site), though overall program expenses seem reasonable at around 5.6% of revenues.

The new iPod Nano is cool (the ROKR is not), most people agree, but while I love my iPod(s), I really hope the quality control on this new edition is better than that on previous editions. I don't know anyone who's purchased an iPod who hasn't had to bring it in for repairs at some point. Ironically, my most reliable is my first one, the first generation iPod. My other iPod, the Shuffle, is temperamental, like a crazy girlfriend.

Stream the new Sigur Ros CD Takk

Yet another Godfather novel on tap for next year. Sounds like this one weaves the Corleone saga with the Kennedy assassination.