So you’ve got four windows open on your desktop, and the one you want to drag your file into is at the bottom of the stack? A French researcher has imagined a method of leafing through overlapping windows to get to the one you want, almost like a book.
I think you’ll have to watch one of the video demonstrations on this page to fully comprehend the coolness of this user interface scheme.
Take a look at Fujitsu’s entry in the e-paper wars. It’s not as pretty as Sony’s Libri
Great Ask MeFi question: Why are infomercials so darn addictive?
Most of us have been pulled in by an early-morning infomercial at some point, right? I remember being up late one night as I was packing up my dorm room after my junior year in college, when the infomercial for Nads came on the TV. Drawn at first by my incredulity that anyone would actually name a product “Nads”, I quickly got sucked in by the fun Australian accents, the video (shown over and over) of a wife waxing her husband’s back hair, and the infectious exuberance of the product demonstrators. (“I got Nadded!” one of them squeals.)
One of the staged scenarios for the infomercial features a group of ladies cheerily talking eyebrow waxing over cocktails around a picnic table. One of them mentions that Nads is organic, and another wonders aloud what it would taste like. At that point the lead product demonstrator whips out a spoon, grins conspiratorially at her tablemates, and digs right in to the tub of bright green hair removal cream.
The next day, I was telling all my friends about this amazing show. Most of them couldn’t wait to see it, and one of them had caught it too. The next night, we waited for “Nads” to air again, and this time we were ready with a tape in the VCR. That summer, we watched “Nads” over and over. It was great.
To this day, when I see Nads available for sale in any drugstore or supermarket, I feel a tiny frisson of delight.
The last best infomercial I saw was for a ceramic hair straightening iron, which proves that you don’t even have to have any shred of consumer interest in the actual product to find its infomercial fascinating.
Last year, NPR took a look at the infomercial in honor of the genre’s 20th anniversary.
Update: More highlights from the Nads infomercial, which posed as a show entitled “Worldwide Health and Beauty Discoveries.” Ha! I love it! I got Nadded!
Surprisingly interesting: the LiveJournal mood tracker. Also: wow, the United Airlines flight attendant uniforms were beautiful in the late ’60s (and then took a drastic turn towards utter hideosity from which the airline still struggles to recover). (Both via Things.)
And from Gadgetopia: I want this keyboard to exist NOW.
Snarkmarket favorite Roy Peter Clark laid down the immortal Truth about journalism in a Washington Post chat today.
Nice! EPIC gets a mention on must-read gay blog Towleroad. Robin, Aaron, we have truly arrived.
When I read the transcript of today’s White House press briefing with Scott McClellan, I knew someone was going to pull this “McClellan’s a rhetorical genius” bit. Nonsense. People did the same thing with Ari F., and I call foul. Dogged question avoidance does not make one the second coming of Cicero.
In fact, from The New Republic last March (subscription required):
Fleischer was in this sense the perfect Bush press secretary. His ability to prevaricate and dodge, without betraying himself through physical or verbal tics, represented a kind of genius. Alas, what came so easily to Fleischer utterly eludes McClellan. If the two of them ever sat down at a poker table, Fleischer would probably walk away with all of McClellan’s money and the shirt off his back.
Again, nonsense. In many of Fleischer’s most heated press exchanges, he reverted to the exact same rote repetition thing McClellan does here. Both men do a perfectly functional and transparent job of stonewalling the White House press corps. Wouldn’t a true rhetorical genius be so slick and insinuating about his point that you wouldn’t even recognize it was just the same thing with different wrapping paper?
Google Blogoscoped brings us a mock-up of “Paul’s” personalized Google News home page. Methinks Paul would quickly get bored with this arrangement.