al gore

Books in the balance

Al Gore and interactive books! This blog post was made for me!

The interactions are super-slick—a trademark of the Push Pop Press platform. But if you ask me, it’s all a bit too textbook. For some reason everybody thinks non-fiction and educational stuff is the right content for this awesome new canvas, and I think it’s a mistake.

Here’s my prediction: the first truly meaningful (and truly popular) interactive book isn’t going to be about the environment or science or history. It’s going to be an absolutely jaw-dropping children’s book.

 

Monday tab dump

Some things worth sharing:

  • These photos by Ruben Brulat are like Where’s Waldo meets The Road.
  • The blogpost-of-fragments is actually not an easy thing to pull off! At least the BOF that does more than coast on the fake revelation of juxtaposition. Tim Maly pulls it off here. “Gradual calamity!”
  • Who knows what the future holds… but I bet Geoff Manaugh could make a pretty bad-ass movie. It would take place in NAKATOMI SPACE.
  • I like what the New York Public Library is up to with Candide here, though I haven’t found the bit that really clicks for me yet. I’m going to keep an eye on it as they add more. Also: It reminded me of Rachel Leow’s wonderful Google Map charting the Travels of Marco Polo.
  • You might have seen this already: Al Gore’s eye for typography. I just wanted to add that this jibes precisely with my experience of him; he has an incredible eye for detail, and in the, like, actually-cares-about-cool-stuff way, not the crazy-famous-person way.
  • Google Street View update (previously): Hmm, perhaps they’ll sell virtual billboards composited into Street View space.
  • A very cool new track from The Knife and some collaborators that are new to me: Mt. Sims and Planningtorock. I love it that, in 2010, this is almost pop music. It’s from an opera about Charles Darwin.
  • (Wait… The Knife made an opera about Charles Darwin?!)
  • Broadband yes; toilet no. (Via BA.)

Voilà!