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February 29, 2008

This Is Not a Music Blog

Robin says,

No links to MP3s next week, I promise. But MGMT is super-fun. Try "Time to Pretend."

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:49 PM

Clouds

Robin says,

Neat bit of prose from Paul Ford. Here's my favorite part -- he's talking about his neighborhood:

My wife and I are visitors, tourists, not welcome or unwelcome. Sometimes the natives say hello--they wished us well after our wedding; they gave us some sparklers on the 4th of July; we gave them a case of beer--but just as often they do not. It's like being in a photograph of the Civil War. The subject of the photo is perfectly still, surrounded by ethereal blur. Online, the Google Maps "street view" of this block shows the men downstairs sitting in front of their club. They sit there every warm day. These people are the map.

You won't find another essay (story?) that jumps from street survival to server virtualization.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:12 AM

February 28, 2008

Snarkmarket Artistes

Robin says,

Track of the day: Santogold remixed by XXXChange. Just feels very Thursday-appropriate, you know?

Update: Hey, I have a question. What's the deal with these music blogs posting MP3s? Do they have special (unofficial) arrangements with labels? Or is it just sort of understood that it's okay to share MP3s as long as you practice restraint? I wouldn't mind dropping some tracks on Snarkmarket from time to time but it still makes my spidey senses tingle. Are my spidey senses stuck in 2004?

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:02 AM

Becoming an Economist

Robin says,

Dani Rodrik, leader of the development economics program at Harvard, explains how he chose economics as a profession. It's a short, simple story, but I found it totally charming. I wish more professionals and academics would take the time to tell these stories and make them public. It'd make for a good book, actually...

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:02 AM

February 27, 2008

Panoramania

Robin says,

Dan Tobin Smith. Click the "still life" section. Check out the super-wide images. They feel super zeitgeisty to me. Also, beautiful.

(Link via... my mom!)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:24 PM

Cold Country

Robin says,

20080227_nk.jpg

Bleak images from North Korea in the NYT. The first eight or so pictures look like scenes from a science fiction movie. Which I guess they sort of are.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:38 PM

February 25, 2008

Stratastencil

Robin says,

Javan Ivey presents an animation unlike any I've ever seen. (Note the digital pre-viz demo he did before embarking on the real animation. It's posted at the bottom of the page, with note: "Computers are dirty cheaters.")

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:53 PM

Vote Current

Robin says,

My colleague Dan wants you to vote for Current in the SXSW People's Choice awards. This might be one of those things where I find the video totally hilarious and charming only because I know Dan... but I don't think so.

P.S. I am going to SXSW Interactive this year! Drop me a line (or a comment) if you'll be there too.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:11 PM

February 23, 2008

Spore's Procedural Jams

Robin says,

Snarkmarket pal Aaron McLeran gave a GDC talk about his work on Spore's music system.

That link includes a small picture of the programming environment he used, but you've got to see Aaron interact with it live to understand how truly cool it is. It's this crazy hybrid of computer code and, like, circuit design, and the music keeps playing as he makes changes, so you hear it evolving and improving in real-time.

Bonus: Here's some video of Aaron demoing part of the game.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 8:50 AM

Is Etsy the Next Google?

Robin says,

Haven't even really processed this yet, but I like the boldness of the idea enough to pass it along: Is Etsy the next Google?

I will say I've heard more organic buzz about Etsy than any other company in the last several months -- from real people, not tech-nerd blogs -- and it's only accelerated lately.

Update: Jason Kottke thinks "Is X the Next Google?" headlines are dumb, and he is probably right. However, as part of the proud tradition of Google-based hyperbole mining, I have a soft spot for them.

Update: "Hyperbole mining"? I don't even really know what that means -- it's just the phrase that occurred to me, and it seemed right.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:16 AM

February 22, 2008

Peter's thoughts: Thanks! I mostly just thought that it was funny that RSS, yesterday's (or perhaps the day before... >>

Compute! Report!

Yo! I'm at the Computational Journalism conference at Georgia Tech. So far it is awesome.

I'm going to attempt to liveblog with a new tool I just learned about here -- it's past the jump.

Follow-up: My favorite new discovery from yesterday was probably Mark Hansen from UCLA and his Sensorbase project. Also, I gotta admit, Cover It Live is kinda cool.

Today: Andrew Haeg from MPR's Public Insight Journalism program is blowing my mind. The work they do isn't massive in scale, but it's exactly right: They're building a database of citizen expertise over time, and they can query it in lots of interesting ways. It's a complete reinvention of sourcing. It's not only electronic, either: They often bridge the gap and bring members of their database together in the physical world.

Something else: Just heard a great analogy: Wally Dean from the Committee of Concerned Journalists recounts the introduction of Doppler radar in local news stations. It was a grafting of (then very new) technology into newsrooms that was hugely successful. What's the next Doppler radar? What's the next bit of technology we can use inventively in the context of news? (Especially, perhaps, local news?)

... Read more ....
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Posted February 22, 2008 at 1:06 | Comments (3) | Permasnark
File under: Journalism

February 20, 2008

Game Remixes

Matt says,

I'm loving the clever remixes of old-school games at Retro Sabotage, brought to my attention by the fine folks at Grand Text Auto.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:28 AM

February 19, 2008

Sita Sings the Blues

Robin says,

20080219_rama.jpg

Nina Paley made an entire animated movie herself -- and it looks amazing. The blurb:

Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana.

The trailer is terrific. Reminds me just a bit of We Are the Strange in its mash-up of styles -- except way more coherent.

Nina Paley's been documenting the process all along, apparently, on her blog. Too cool.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:12 PM

iPhone Users Get All the Love

Robin says,

Whoah, whoah, whoah -- wait a minute here -- why can't us normal boring computer users have wallpaper this amazing?

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:02 PM

February 15, 2008

FreakAngels

Robin says,

20080215_freak.jpg

Warren Ellis launched a new webcomic today. Too early to tell if I'll be a fan, but at first glance, the art is nice and the design of the site seems very correct somehow.

Update: So, the site was designed by Ariana Osborne, whose own blog design is sort of totally amazing. It's split exactly down the middle between her own posts and the murmurings of her community. Mostly Twitter stuff, which as always eludes my affection, but still. There's something really interesting there.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:04 AM

February 14, 2008

What Is Videoblogging, Anyway?

Robin says,

Cool little deal over at Umair Haque's Harvard Business blog where he replies to a comment in video. It's super-fun to see his face and hear his voice after reading his stuff for so long. Way too long at 4:35, but I like the idea. Somehow the fact that video is reserved for a thoughtful reply to a comment seems remarkably... respectful, you know?

What do you think? How might video fit into "normal" blogs in interesting ways? How might text and video work together? (And I am excluding the usual "hey look at this embedded viral video" model here.) Any crazy ideas?

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:23 PM

Indiana Jones and the Whatever Whatever

Robin says,

Maybe it's just the nostalgic preamble that roped me in, but, okay, the new Indiana Jones movie looks great.

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 7:19 PM

EveryBlock Confidential

Robin says,

Rex continues his recent run of awesome, kinda-sorta-long-form original content: Here's a nuanced interview with Adrian Holovaty about EveryBlock. (Matt, note the mention of machine-readable metadata for "news blobs"! EPICBlock, yo!)

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 6:29 PM

Developer and Diarist

Robin says,

Wow, this is super-random, but great: a snippet of wonderful, atmospheric prose by... Blake Ross, cofounder of Firefox!

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:17 PM

February 13, 2008

The Morning After

Matt says,

It