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January 31, 2008

Augmented Driving

Matt says,

Things points to the fascinating idea of the "virtual cable" for driving directions in cars. There's been a lot of recent buzz about projecting data on car windshields. The virtual cable is a three-dimensional line drawn onto the road ahead showing you exactly where you're going. Trippy, probably distracting, but nonetheless fascinating.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 3:56 PM

January 29, 2008

rAchel's thoughts: I'm totally in love with Jad Abumrad's voice, which is, if you haven't listened to Radiolab, dang... >>

Radio Lab, OMG, Just, Radio Lab

The new Radio Lab podcast is sublime. Honestly, they could just say "blah blah blah" -- but apply their amazing production methods to it -- and I'd be sold. (In this case they talk to a guy who was commissioned to create background music for... a morgue. Amazing.)

It's the cadences that I love -- musical, verbal, pure sonic. These people are geniuses.

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Posted January 29, 2008 at 6:18 | Comments (1) | Permasnark
File under: Media Galaxy, Radio

Stark Oratory

Robin says,

Not his best speech ever, but I love the style and format Barack Obama's state of the union rebuttal. So stark, so plain -- all the dross of TV drained away. And then the lush, glowing animation at the end -- just a couple seconds long -- sort of seals the deal.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:35 PM

January 23, 2008

Saheli's thoughts: Matt, your post coincides perfectly with my finally watching the ubiquitous gossip girl. (Trying ... >>

Gossip Girl and the immersive A.R.G.

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By now, the A.R.G. has had a long and storied history stretching from The Blair Witch Project to Cloverfield. The classical model of the A.R.G.: someone notices a name in a movie trailer, or a website on a television show; they look it up online, and they suddenly find themselves holding a piece in a narrative jigsaw puzzle. Others stumble into the puzzle, they form a community, and the game is afoot. Piece by piece, the players fit together a picture that helps them solve whatever mystery the game's creators have spun.

One big drawback: if you stumble into one of these games late, catching up can be a chore. As far as I know, A.R.G.s haven't exactly been a model of thematic coherence or narrative deftness; it's not like catching up on a TV show or a comic book. The chase and the unfolding mystery are the fun. So unless you have worlds of time to devote to chasing obscure clues, the game might not hold much allure for you. These are the main reasons I haven't been able to get into any A.R.G.s yet, despite my being an utter nerd.

But I find that idea -- a fictional narrative kidnaps a piece of our reality and draws us into it -- delicious. What I want is for a series to use the Internet in a way that fully blurs the edge between reality and the series.

... Read more ....
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Posted January 23, 2008 at 6:48 | Comments (1) | Permasnark
File under: Media Galaxy

EveryBlock

Matt says,

Adrian, Wilson and co. have launched Everyblock, a mashup of several information sources down to the block level for different cities (currently Chicago, New York and San Francisco). The site is very pretty, especially the maps, and as you would expect, there's fun data hidden beneath every click. But it's otherwise hard for me to evaluate how cool it is, since I don't live in any of the included cities. How about it, residents?

Update: One surprise ... no RSS feeds? (Except this one.)

Update 2: Rex reminds me ... Poynter Online interview w/ Adrian (which is how I found out it launched).

Comments (4) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:52 PM

January 22, 2008

The Ideas! The Ideas!

Robin says,

Clive Thompson remains the single journalist most perfectly calibrated to my interests, and his latest essay for Wired is no exception. It's about science fiction:

If you want to read books that tackle profound philosophical questions, then the best -- and perhaps only -- place to turn these days is sci-fi. Science fiction is the last great literature of ideas.

From where I sit, traditional "literary fiction" has dropped the ball. I studied literature in college, and throughout my twenties I voraciously read contemporary fiction. Then, eight or nine years ago, I found myself getting -- well -- bored.

I had a friend in college who, upon hearing a science-fiction book recommendation that cited plot, characters, setting, etc., would reply: "Yes, yes, but what about the ideas? The ideas?"

(P.S. So yes, it's probably me who is actually calibrated to Clive Thompson's interests, given the nature of media. That's fine, too.)

Comments (35) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:49 PM

The Atlantic Rides Again

Robin says,

The Atlantic, favorite magazine of my middle youth, was kinda lame for a while there, but it's been getting good again -- a fact that had been bumming me out because, of course, I couldn't link to the subscriber-only stories.

Until today.

So let us celebrate the magazine's resurgence and web-savvy with a couple of pointers:

  • The new James Fallows piece on China is exactly what got me into the Atlantic in the first place: Themes of politics and economics, hugely abstract ideas, giant global actors and their dilemmas, etc. I love it that there's none of the usual attempt to concrete-ize and personalize here: No narrative intro with a factory worker in China, for instance. The only narrative in the piece involves the voyage of a U.S. dollar to China and back. I could not love it more.
  • Caitlin Flanagan's piece about Katie Couric was the last one I read in this issue, and I almost didn't read it at all. Thank goodness my train was slow, because it was a revelation, in large part because it's as much about Caitlin Flanagan as it is about Katie Couric. Beautifully written, too: Flanagan is a great storyteller and has perfect "tone control," if you know what I mean.
  • Comments (4) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:44 PM

Ghost of Flash Movie Past

Robin says,

You know how sometimes you read something you said or wrote a couple of years ago and, echhh, you just can't stand yourself? Well, I was surprised to see that I sort of still agree with 2004 Sloan:

"Choice and control are just too cool, too useful, and too satisfying to resist," Sloan said. "Add distributed creation and collaborative filtering, and you can come up with systems that are so much more flexible and efficient than anything happening in a modern newsroom."

"But unlike most newsrooms, these processes don't come with values baked in," Sloan added. The goal is that they are "executed by people who are dedicated to the notion of fairness, integrity, and truth-telling. On an individual level -- especially insofar as we are bloggers and media-makers -- we can decide we want to adopt those values for ourselves."

Not long ago I met Sam Gustin, who wrote this most recent Googlezon retrospective, and found him a thoroughly modern reporter: trained in shoe-leather fundamentals (in part during a stint on the New York Post metro desk -- yow) but also totally conversant in, and excited about, new formats (he writes for Portfolio.com now -- everything from blog dispatches to reported essays like this one).

Also: In the comments over at Portfolio, the editor of The Issue chimes in, which reminded me that I was going to link over there. Worth a peek.

Comments (3) | Permasnark | Posted: 2:17 PM

January 20, 2008

Bang the Drum of Time

Robin says,

Here's another one from Current UK that doesn't make any sense when you describe it: People, ages one to one hundred, bang a drum. See? Indecipherable. But you have to go watch it, because it will put a little extra shine on your soul this weekend. (Those guys are on a roll!)

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:20 AM

January 18, 2008

Portrait of the Language as a Young... Er... Tongue?

Robin says,

Brilliant photo mosaic of the English language. This is another one of those things that's hard to describe -- but see if you can guess where all the plant-related words are.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 9:01 AM

Not Safe For ...

Matt says,

I watched this ad three times. (NSFW, via Reddit.)

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:52 AM

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!

Robin says,

Ah, remember how large the Newbery Award used to loom? It seemed like every other book in the elementary school library bore one of those golden foil badges. Was just reminded of this by a lovely Ypulse post about the latest winner, a book called "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" by Laura Amy Schlitz:

Originally written in the form of monologues to be performed by her students, the Baltimore librarian wanted to make sure every one could get a part in the production of this piece. And no one wanted a small part.

There are 17 roles, a substantial piece for every single person in her fifth grade classes. She said in an interview that she wrote it with all of her students in mind. She remembered being so disappointed and sad when she would get a token tiny part in the school plays of her own childhood. If for only three minutes, she wanted everyone to be big, to be a star.

I am so going to read this book.

Also, as long as we're talking kids' stuff: Check out Peter Sis. His picture-books Starry Messenger (about Galileo) and The Tree of Life (about Darwin) are over-the-top beautiful and good.

Comments (2) | Permasnark | Posted: 12:12 AM

January 16, 2008

Machines and Style

Robin says,

The wow-never-thought-about-it-that-way comment of the day:

I'm hoping the muscle car style dies with the internal combustion engine just as the Edwardian style died with the steam engine.

From Steve DeKorte, he of the Platonic blog design.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 5:58 PM

Writing in China

Robin says,

Very interesting (and long) write-up of literature in China over in the Guardian. There's this whole burgeoning scene of new writers with (of course) hugeaudiences, totally invisible to (ignored by?) the English-speaking world. Wish I could download Mandarin reading skills.

This bit caught my eye:

The general manager of Penguin China, Jo Lusby, is even more emphatic. "All credible interesting writing in China begins online at the moment," she says. "It's given an added boost because it exists in a relatively free space outside of the tight constraints of traditional publishers."

Super-interesting, right?

(Crossposted to Current.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 11:46 AM

What's All This Fancy Stuff For, Anyway?

Robin says,

My favorite MacWorld analysis of all comes from Short Schrift:

At any rate, if Jobs' vision of Apple is an increasingly large number of devices on which we can watch Zoolander, I find myself much less enthusiastic about that vision or that world.

Agreed. Let's use technology to disrupt old formats and invent new ones -- not just deliver the same ol' stuff more efficiently.

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 8:56 AM

January 13, 2008

Meta-Tilley

Robin says,

Eustace Tilley is that be-monocled dandy who you associate with the New Yorker. He was on the cover of the first issue in 1925, and now they're having a contest celebrating his foppish visage. (Not a fan. I think he's freaky.)

Mark Chadwick's entry definitively and preemptively gets my vote: He took the algorithmic approach and created a mosaic out of every single cover of the New Yorker.

Comments (1) | Permasnark | Posted: 10:43 PM

January 12, 2008

The Old Cement Bridge

Matt says,

With ample and heartfelt apologies to Franklin Christenson Ware. (Bookslutty.)

Comments (0) | Permasnark | Posted: 1:30 PM

January 10, 2008

Inside the Black Box

Robin says,

The best thing about it only being January 10 is that I can say, without reservation, that this is the best thing I've read all year: n+1's interview with a hedge fund manager. It includes a useful window into a little-known, but super-interesting, component of modern markets: quantitative trading driven by computer programs!

n+1: And so the computers themselves are making these trades?

HFM: You build the models and the computer does the trading. You actually do all the analysis. But it