The Online Photographer: Whaddaya Mean, 'Not Here'?

The Online Photographer: Whaddaya Mean, 'Not Here'?: ""

(Via .)

Marketing

Wonderful, classic Bill Hicks:



'Nuff said.

Ain't it the truth

Cardboard boxes are more fun: "

Holyjuan writes...

Greg's Star Wars Trade Federation MTT 'Troop Carrier' arrived. We took it out of the box. Here he is playing with it.

(Via MAKE: Blog.)

Song of the day

A "tune" created from Mac interface sounds:



Catchy, eh?

The GarageBand project and the audio file are both available at Apple Soundtrack | The Cleverest.

(Via TUAW .)

More people with too much time on their hands

Videogames Blind Us With Science

Clive Thompson has a good piece in Wired about computer games considered as science: kids jointly exploring and analyzing the underlying properties of a game and its components as an example of the scientific method. They go through a process very much like the discourse in scientific journals, experimentally verifying theories about the game's behavior.

I'm a little concerned that this approach to learning analysis, figuring out the behavior of a preprogrammed system, implicitly depends on a Creator of the system. Isn't that a poor assumption to have as an unconscious foundation for scientific research?

Thompson makes much of the fact that the kids deny that their process has anything to do with science, then goes on to decry the state of science education as the presentation of boring facts. Well, there's nothing new about that, just like history is presented as boring dates and literature is presented as boring poems. (Fortunately, I enjoyed Homer in spite of anything a grad student teaching freshman English could do to desiccate him.)

This isn't news. The best teachers are, and have always been, those who have a real love for their subject and are able to share their excitement with their students. The eternal problem is how to find such teachers and compensate them appropriately.

Games Without Frontiers: How Videogames Blind Us With Science

The truth about Chrome

Tim O'Reilly passes this along from someone who really gets it about Chrome:

Microsoft Missing the Boat on Mobile?

Joe Wilcox notes:

...Let me be absolutely clear: Chrome is not a Web browser, it's an application runtime. Chrome is really Google Gears with a browser facade. Sure, Chrome is based on Webkit and has browser legacy, but the product's core capabilities—and Google's objectives for them—is running Web applications. Chrome is a development platform, but in the cloud instead of on the PC.

(Via O'Reilly Radar.)

Words fail me...

Giant robotic ball throwing marimba + wine glass player

What's Better Than Free?

Kevin Kelly, in his great Better Than Free article, talks about eight "generatives" that yield value in a world of endless free copies. These generatives include

"Embodiment -- ... And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive...

Patronage -- ... The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something..."

He talks of patronage in terms of listeners' willingness to pay something for Radiohead's downloads. I think he missed detailing a valuable point there: closing the feedback loop between audience and performer. No recorded performance and no payment can begin to capture the energy moving back and forth between a band and the people dancing a few feet in front of them. That's where I get and give real value.

(Via KK Lifestream.)

Not all experiments work out

Here's that variac I smoked:

Tim O'Reilly on the MS/Yahoo deal

Microsoft plus Yahoo! Strategic Assets in Email: "By Tim O'Reilly

So much of the chatter around Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo! revolves around competition with Google in the online advertising market. While that is a huge market, one that Google now dominates, and one that Microsoft has a jones for, that's a very narrow way to view the combination. And for Microsoft, it could be a fatal mistake to take the battle to Google on its own ground. That's the very mistake that companies like Netscape made in competing with Microsoft."

(Via O'Reilly Radar.)

I still haven't seen any reasoned look at the impact on Flickr!