June 30th, 2009
A very strange story that’s blowing up over the internet is the apparent acquisition of our favorite swedish service, The Pirate Bay. The strange thing, though, is the company buying it, Global Gaming Factory X:
Global Gaming Factory X is, in their words, the “biggest network of internet cafés and gaming centers in the world,” making this story even more bizarre than it appears. This is sort of like GameFrog buying Demonoid, or, I don’t know, Laser Quest buying Empornium. Odd, is the point.
July 4th, 2009
Have fun, and try not to get shot by rogue bottle rockets. That would cut back on my readership, you know.
Happy 4th of July.
July 3rd, 2009
The Gas-Run era of cars is nearing its end; electric motors that acclerate to sixty in less than a few seconds are here, and there’s no doubt that they’ll get even better. Yet, there is still one last last marvel of the petrol-powered car: the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport
The acceleration is so immediate you can feel your eyeballs deform under the G-forces. It’s a sensation of isolationist joy, an out-of-body awareness that you’re moving faster than the world can react. Bystanders vaguely remember seeing a flash of expensive paint a few seconds after you disappear over the horizon; entire generations of insects die on your prow. Passing other motorists becomes a dangerous entitlement that has you resenting oncoming traffic for hogging your “VIP lane” — especially when you realize that you can outrun not only the 5-0’s cruisers, but their helicopters, too. If they wanna catch you, they’re gonna have to dust off Airwolf and drag Jan Michael Vincent out of rehab.
July 3rd, 2009
XHTML2 development has been abandoned in favor of HTML5:
Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C’s position regarding the future of HTML. A FAQ answers questions about the future of deliverables of the XHTML 2 Working Group, and the status of various discussions related to HTML. Learn more about the HTML Activity.
(Via Daring Fireball)
July 3rd, 2009
Hell hath no fury greater than Apple’s scorn:
The relationship between Apple and NVIDIA, the manufacturer of the graphics chips in most Macs for quite some time now, appears to be souring at an exponential rate. Electronista reports that negotiations between the two companies to continue their business relationship are not going well, with Apple accusing NVIDIA of being arrogant. According to a source with access to NVIDIA, Apple is on track to cut NVIDIA off as a graphics chip provider for the next 3-4 years.
July 3rd, 2009
It’s the Potter-Effect all over again. The actors, especially Noah Ringer (the youngest) will end up being 18 when the character he plays is 12.
July 3rd, 2009
Grant Wahl:
“All that we care about at a minimum is that he committed himself to us,” Donovan said. “As time has gone on, that has not proven to be the case in many ways — on the field, off the field. Does the fact that he earns that much money come into it? Yeah. If someone’s paying you more than anybody in the league, more than double anybody in the league, the least we expect is that you show up to every game, whether you’re suspended or not. Show up and train hard. Show up and play hard. Maybe he’s not a leader, maybe he’s not a captain. Fair enough. But at a minimum you should bust your ass every day. That hasn’t happened. And I don’t think that’s too much for us to expect. Especially when he’s brought all this on us.”
Beckham’s an overhyped player past his prime — it’s no surprise that his move to L.A. has been this awful.
July 3rd, 2009
A discovery toward improving memory has been found:
A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals’ ability to remember objects they had seen.
Memory is an imperfect thing; it is never the same, always constructed differently. Perfect memory isn’t necessarily what we should want to have — some things are meant to be remembered.
July 3rd, 2009
Marco Arment discusses why he created Instapaper:
“The goal of Instapaper is to facilitate the attentive reading of web content, as opposed to skimming. So many people read content by subscribing through feed readers with a thousand posts a day; it promotes the quick skim content instead of the deeper, thoughtful interpretation of the writing. ”
It’s about bringing back long-form content on the web — back from the drudge of empty posts consisting of lists, rather than valuable meaning.
July 2nd, 2009
The Multi-Touch gestures on Apple’s more recent laptops have been a boon for users; they allow simple actions to be performs with a few fingers and a slight twist of the wrist. They don’t only work for standard Apple applications either; with MultiClutch gestures can be assigned to keyboard shortcuts on a per app basis. For my upcoming MacBook Pro, I was planning on using this for many of my applications, including Firefox. Thanks to some thoughtful developers for FF, I won’t have to:
Did you know you can switch tabs in Firefox by making a twisting motion with your fingers on a multi-touch surface? I did. Turns out I’ve been doing it for months — I thought I was late to the party and was too ashamed to mention it to anybody for fear of an epic internet ribbing (”What, you just figured that out?”). But no, apparently it was top secret and highly experimental. That was in the beta, though; it looks like the official version has reduced it to a hack. Fortunately, mastering this multi-touch-enabling technique will allow you to tweak your gestures, resulting in everlasting glory.
Very useful, time-saving, and simple. Nice.
✖
July 2nd, 2009
Chris Brown discusses the types of decisions that make football the most intellectual sport around:
One of the many reasons that football is the greatest of all games is that it encompasses every type of decision we humans are capable of. There are the carefully planned decisions coaches make leading up to a game: Who should start? What will our opening plays look like? How can we defend against this scheme? There are snap, in-the-moment athletic judgments: Who has the ball? Is the receiver open? Is the hole inside the guard or outside it, where will the running crease be? And there are what I call “golf swing decisions,” which combine the reflective moment with the snap-athletic judgment: When should I snap the ball to time up with the motion man, while still getting off a good snap? I need to blitz through the A gap between guard and center, but what if they are in a slide or gap protection scheme and close that off? Should I try a rip or swim type move? I’m receiver and need to run an out route, but when if the cornerback comes up and jams me and I need to run a go route, how should I use my hands, eyes, etc?
Within every second their are decisions that can shift the outcome of a play, and they come in all kinds of forms.
July 2nd, 2009
Another reason why the iPhone is a computer killer:
Remember that time you were on tour with The B-52’s and had a great idea for a song, but there was no recording equipment to be found? Oh wait, that was The 88. Well anyway, The 88 recently recorded their latest single with nothing but an iPhone and the Sonoma Wire Works Four Track application, according to The Loop.
(Via TUAW)
July 2nd, 2009
Despite the grotesque actions and the sickening events of “A Clockwork Orange”, it was a stunning and affecting film that really resonates with me; Kubrick just knew how to control the emotions of the viewer, and Malcolm McDowell gave one of the greatest performances I’ve seen on film. Film School Rejects looks back:
Back when I was in high school, this movie came to me at just the right age. I had that spirit of invincibility matched with just the right undertones of knowing everything (alongside a love for classical music and thinking too deeply about bullshit) that makes Alex the most charismatic figure in the world. This is probably the most disturbing aspect of the film. Through Stanley Kubrick’s writing and directing, and McDowell’s portrayal of Alex, the main character becomes the audience’s best friend despite the horrors that he launches into the world. He’s essentially a guy you’d feel totally comfortable loaning money to, knowing full well that it would be in his pocket while he was punching the woman he’s raping in the face. He’s an anti-non-profit. Someone you want to be loved by who only has love for himself and for his kicks. The only real reason it works is that he seems so childishly innocent. Even while he’s committing grotesqueries, there’s something about him that makes you think, “Aww…the kid just doesn’t know any better.”
July 2nd, 2009
The next version of Facebook for the iPhone has been previewed, and it look good:
It’s been a big day for Facebook, with news earlier this morning that the social network will soon be totally revamping its privacy settings and making it easier to share with the entire web. Now developer Joe Hewitt, who is responsible for Facebook’s massively popular iPhone application, has posted a note to the site describing some of the new features we can expect from the latest iteration of the app, which he says is “98% done”. Hewitt doesn’t give an exact release date, but we can likely expect it very soon.
Too bad we’ll have to wait for push notifications until later this summer — that would be the killer feature.
(Via Techcrunch)
July 2nd, 2009
Though it’s not a complete change, it’s a new way of utilizing the MTV logo and brand:
On-air, the ‘new’ logo serves a purpose. Remaining stationary at all times on the screen’s upper left corner, the logo is treated as an anchor for a new navigation-like system. Reminiscent of interfaces on the web, program information and progress bars are oriented next to the logo, showing how far viewers are into the current program (ala YouTube) and which terrible reality shows are coming up next.
It’s nice, and the animated spots are very nice; instead of having the color within the logo (like in the past) they have made the other elements of the brand more vibrant, while leaving the logo clean and monotone.
July 2nd, 2009
Hollywood has moved on from the board game genre, and positioning themselves for a dump on classic video games:
When movie studios are developing big budget big screen movies based on Stretch Armstrong and Candyland, I knew it was only a matter of time before Hollywood started to mine some of the classic video games of the children of the 70’s/80’s. Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to win the film rights to the classic Atari video game Asteroids. Newcomer Matthew Lopez, who came out of Disney’s writing program and did work on Bedtime Stories, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Race to Witch Mountain, has been hired to write the screen adaptation.
Can’t be worse than Transformer’s, though.
July 2nd, 2009
When a user can see how far a long a process is, even if that indicator is not fully representative of time left, it makes the process seems shorter. This is the reason I hated the removal of the loading indicator in the location bar of Safari 4; it left the user with a vague spinning wheel that didn’t even try to indicate progress. UXBooth has a nice write up about such loading indicators:
Computer users travel a thousand miles a minute online. It can be assumed that a user is not committed to your specific process at any given time. While a load time is being endured it is safe to say that users do not wait on that page but also work on completing other tasks at the same time. Users do not sit down and open one web page at a time, that is not the way it works. While your user is waiting it is critical you give them the option to leave the window unattended. Also, as the process ends you may be alert them in a subtle way, as to not interrupt any other expeirence they are currently involved with. Some options may include a low volume beep or a status update in the title of the web page or window.
July 1st, 2009
Ryan Block’s (Former Editor of Engadget) new brainchild is finally up after an extended pre-release period:
Well, for starters it’s the gadget site we’ve always wanted. We both love devices and spend an insane amount of time playing with them, writing about them, talking about them, and thinking about them. We’ve waited for years for somebody to make a gadget site we could go hang out at all day — when no one did it, we just decided to do it ourselves and make sure that it went beyond everything else out there.
The actual genesis of gdgt sprung from an idea Peter had for a site where people could create and share lists of products they had and wanted, and an idea Ryan had for how to build the world’s greatest gadget database. On their own both ideas were alright, but when we combined them we wound up with something way greater than the sum of its parts. After our work at Engadget and Gizmodo, we knew gdgt had to be different from the rest of the technology sites out there, yet make total sense as soon as you saw it.
It even has a spiffy introduction video.
July 1st, 2009
The inclusion of the em-dash on iPhone OS 3.0 was a great inclusion for the typography-minded people; otherwise, we’d have to use hyphens, which are a lame substitution for it. Apple included it, but the conspicuously, the en-dash (shorter version) was missing:
The iPhone can render the en dash correctly, but it is impossible to type it on the keyboard. There may be a way to type it from one of the many international keyboards on the iPhone, but if so I haven’t found it yet. There is one workaround with the new copy and paste function of 3.0: if you are desperate to use an en dash, you can copy it from someplace else and paste it where you want it such as in an e-mail. For example, you could copy the en dash above from this web page, and I am happy to provide this service free of charge.
July 1st, 2009
iPhone developers already have the beta for OS 3.1, and it has some nice improvements:
According to numerous sources, many items got some love in this beta, including Voice Control now working over Bluetooth (for iPhone 3GS users, that is). The AT&T profile has been updated to 4.2 (enabling MMS to work), the iPhone now vibrates when moving icons around, third-party apps now having APIs to access and edit videos, and the baseband firmware is now version 5.08.01. Additionally, editing video no longer saves over the original by default, allowing you to save a copy and preserve the original for transferring later. Finally, several improvements have been made to OpenGL and Quartz.
Not a huge update but a few nice tweaks. The ability to edit videos while saving the original is huge fix, though. Editing should have given you that choice in 3.0, but thankfully 3.1 should remedy that.
July 1st, 2009
I’ve had my iPod touch for over a year now, and in that time it’s been my most used gadget by far. Having an internet browsing device like the touch is invaluable; everywhere I can find WiFi, the internet is really in my pocket. The value of the Touch has been almost immeasurable for me; that’s why I’ve been surprised that no one has really made a competitor that tries to capture that same experience. Well, it seems like Dell is stepping up to the plate:
Engineers at Dell Inc. have been developing a pocket-sized device for tapping into the Internet, said people familiar with the company’s plans. The gadget would run on Google Inc.’s Android software, these people said. Two people who saw early prototypes described the device as slightly larger than Apple Inc.’s iPod Touch, which is similar to the iPhone but does not have cellphone capabilities.
An Android device rivaling the iPod touch would be refreshing, especially if it was equipped with Multi-Touch to ease browsing. If Dell can even come close to matching the touch in quality — It’ll be a hit.
June 30th, 2009
Go help spread the word:
Firefox 3.5 — code-named Shiretoko — is set to launch on Tuesday, June 30th! How cool would it be if we could set off fireworks worldwide to celebrate? We’d light up the night country by country, town by town, to show the world just how amazing Firefox is. Just like New Year’s, only better — since you get to see who “launched” the fireworks. We’re going to make a big bang by spreading Firefox with Social Media.
And, we need your help! You can be part of the Shock heard round the world. Tell others what you love about the newest version of Firefox. Our community is everything to us, and when it comes to spreading Firefox, nothing is more effective than word of mouth marketing. So we want to get everyone involved in introducing Firefox 3.5 to the world. Let’s keep the momentum going for a full 24 hours as we spread the message around the world, one time zone at a time.
June 30th, 2009
“Let The Right One In” is a Swedish film that probably ranks among my top movies. It’s a highly romantic, charming film, that just happens to have a vampire as one of its central characters. The American version of this is in production with David Reeves, director of Cloverfield. Like many upcoming films, I’ve been bullish; with some new info coming out of that, I’m getting really excited:
“I was just hooked,” Reeves recalled recently. “I was so taken with the story and I had a very personal reaction. It reminded me a lot of my childhood, with the metaphor that the hard times of your pre-adolescent, early adolescent moment, that painful experience is a horror.”
He seems like he understands what makes this film special — the personal nature that pervades this film, not the vampire-genre tropes that are only a small part of the film.
(Via SlashFilm)
June 30th, 2009
Khoi Vinh has a nice write-up on the great type-casting (hah!) in “Doubt”:
That subtle but meaningful harkening back to the typographer’s personal history, his works and his ideas, and the subsequent link drawn to the subject matter of the movie makes for sharp, canny typography. It’s not just Cheltenham’s aesthetic benefits that are conscripted into service for these titles, but also the ideas that typeface evokes. As typographic selections in cinema go, it has to rank up there among the smartest, and certainly among the most conceptually rewarding I’ve seen.
Too bad the DVD designers didn’t follow the lead of the film; they ended up using Trajan, the go-to typeface for movies. Typical.
June 30th, 2009
Sebastiann over at Cocoia has a nice little review of that gorgeous custom-made stencil kit for iPhone UI designers that was released a few weeks ago.
June 30th, 2009
Apple demands a certain level of control with their App Store; they don’t want something that people would be offended with on the store. With the recent addition of rating system to the store, we thought that they would be a little more lenient to Apps, essentially opening it up to some more risque titles. Yet the system put in place is still too vague and unspecific to work:
That’s the key point to all of this: The ratings range from making no sense to having way too much gray area. Apple is expecting developers to rate their apps correctly, but if it simply doesn’t allow anything in the last two categories to get through, of course those developers are going to wiggle their apps into the “safe” categories. Any why shouldn’t they? A lot of those definitions appear to be the exact same. And that’s probably why we’re seeing a lot of apps that aren’t supposed to get through, slip through the system.
Flat out: The system is broken.
The situation Apple puts developers in with the App Store approval process is hell. Even as consumers, the prospect of being restricted to the whims and tastes of tight Apple reviewers is sad. This is the downside to a closed model: we’re dependent on one gatekeeper to access an entire world of applications; if the gatekeeper sucks, everyone in the ecosystem gets screwed.
June 29th, 2009
What’s amazing wasn’t how they kept 35 news organizations quite; it’s that they were able to keep overzealous Wikipedia users from reporting the journalist’s capture:
Earlier last week, New York Times reporter David Rohde escaped from a Taliban prison. He had been a Taliban hostage for the last seven months, but the general public had absolutely no clue. In a joint effort by The New York Times and Wikipedia, the story was kept quiet until his daring escape. In November 2008, Rohde was captured and held hostage by the Taliban, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal. But until he managed to escape, most of the general public had absolutely no clue. To prevent Rohde’s value in the eyes of his captors from rising, the New York Times kept more than 35 major news organizations from reporting on the story. They believed that the publicity from reporting his capture would inflate the value of Rohde’s life, increasing the difficulty of negotiating for Rohde’s release.
June 29th, 2009
John Cairns at Film School Rejects has a nice opinion piece regarding his bafflement over Transformers 2 and it’s huge box-office performance over the weekend. I completely agree; the movie is utter garbage, yet people are still going out to see it.
June 29th, 2009
Ever since Toy Story 3 was announced (way back in 2007), I’ve been cautious about it. The prospect that there would be a second sequel to one of my favorite childhood films was disconcerting; there are rarely any good third films of a franchise (Return of the King as the exception.) Some information coming from animator Angus MacLane, director of the short “Burn-E” and one of the head animator’s on “Wall-E”, has calmed my fears:
“I feel like we’ve grown up making these movies, and each of the films represents where the filmmakers were at the time of making the films,” MacLane said in an exclusive interview in Burbank, Calif. “Certainly we’re approaching this film 10 years later, so I think we’re sort of coming at it from the standpoint of [Andy] has grown up, and we’ve grown up with these toys, and we have a reverence for them, but we also have different things as a priority.”
MacLane assured fans that he and his Pixar colleagues take Toy Story 3 seriously. They would not make a cheap knock-off sequel (ahem, Disney). And he said the new installment will mark the true conclusion of a trilogy.
The exciting themes about this film, like tackling the idea of adulthood and growing out of childhood, have sparked my interest. Also, their promise of a serious conclusion to a series as great as “Toy Story” has set my expectations high, even for a Pixar film. I’m predicting that it’ll be my film of 2010.
June 29th, 2009
FSJ welcomes Palm to war:
But hey. Maybe you’ll lure away some of our developers. Maybe you’ll lure away some customers too. So this is your business plan: You’re going to set up a Camaro car lot across the street from the Mercedes dealer, and put up some bright balloons and streamers and maybe some huge signs about how your cuh-raaaazy prices can’t be beat! Oh, and maybe some kind of big inflatable dog or something. And a bouncy castle for the kids! Free hot dogs! Girls with big hair, wearing shiny shorts and tiny T-shirts! A year’s worth of free gas!
Yeah. Good luck with that. Really.
Steve is so eloquent.
June 29th, 2009
This ad actually makes you want to click; it’s very funny, engading, and addicting. Ads like this are what we need to save advertising.
(Via Michael Mistretta)