I am not a seer.

 Tech  No Responses »
Oct 122005
 

Well, I’d prefer a smartphone, but this will have to do for now.

I was kinda right, but equally kinda wrong, in my predictions for the announcement. I was right that it would basically be an upgraded version of the iPod Photo, but I was wrong that it would only be used for music videos. Close to right, but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades. Anyway, the video functionality is a nice gimmick but I can’t see myself spending $2 (or any amount of money) on music videos. Probably not TV shows, either, but I’m willing to think about that. At least there you’re looking at a convenient alternative to Bittorrent. Also, I was (disappointingly) wrong about the upgrade to 40/80 gigabyte hard drives.

Nobody saw the remote coming, as far as I can tell. Clearly part of a larger plan to turn the Mac Mini into a media center. This is a plan I support, although it may or may not be doomed by the Xbox360 and/or the Playstation 3. Should be fun to watch that battle, even if it makes me reluctant to invest money in any of the three.

No more posts today. I have a life, I swear.

 Posted by JHW at 4:31 pm

The Believer is not just metareviews.

 Art  No Responses »
Oct 122005
 

Here’s an interview between Chip Kidd (who is a graphic designer responsible for dozens of book covers, including Jurassic Park, as well as an author and photographer if I’m remembering correctly) and Milton Glaser (the legend who came up with the “I [heart] NY” design). A taste:

CK: Did you make any money off of it?

MG: No. It was all pro bono.

CK: Oh my God. “I ‘Heart’ New York” was pro bono! Yikes! Frightening!

MG: No, that’s what it should be. You want to do things like that, where you feel you can actually change things.

CK: Yes, and affect the culture. Do you mind that the logo is ripped off so much?

MG: No. I mean, look, we have such a weird idea of the relationship of design to the culture, but—I believe the best people in the world are involved in making things. There’s this talk I give in which I compare the idea of Thanatos and Eros, the instinct towards death and the instinct towards life. And people who make things are on the side of Eros. For the right project, you can get good people—the best people—to work for nothing, which is one of the characteristics of being in the world of Eros—you don’t work for money, but you certainly work for your peers’ approval.

 Posted by JHW at 2:09 pm

quick post

 Tech  No Responses »
Oct 122005
 

Is this the new iPod? We’ll see soon enough. That wide screen would be an improvement for watching video.

 Posted by JHW at 12:47 pm

assorted fascinating links

 Links, Tech, Writing  No Responses »
Oct 122005
 

Nomar saved some lives in Boston Harbor.

Kurt Vonnegut tells a hilarious joke. Here it is, as stated in the story: ‘Seems the Martians have landed in Manhattan and checked into the Waldorf. That’s the bad news. “The good news is, they only eat homeless people . . . and they pee gasoline.”‘

Today is Apple’s big announcement. I’m predicting a minor update to the Powerbook line and an upgrade of the iPod–40 and 80 gigabytes, with the ability to transfer and play music videos from iTunes. This will demonstrate the feasibility of a real iPod Video (just as soon as Apple gets the copyright/DRM stuff sorted out with Hollywood–so sometime in 2017 or so). And I’m still holding out hope for the long-rumored iPDA.

 Posted by JHW at 9:23 am

blogging is the new friendster

 Media  7 Responses »
Oct 122005
 

Get ready for an influx of stories that amount to “hey, grandma–the whippersnappers have a new fad. They call it ‘Blogging’!” To be fair, this one is actually pretty good. The Post manages to avoid mentioning LiveJournal or “the online journal that gave the only hints to the girl’s mysterious disappearance,” which is nice, and they look beyond the mere existence of blogs and go on to consider both the purpose (at a level more complex than “it’s like a diary, but it’s on the internet!”) and the value of it:

Although it may feel good to blog, psychologists warn that going public with private musings may have ramifications, and that little research has been done on the consequences of the Internet confessional.

“I certainly don’t advise anyone to do it. They’re taking a big risk,” said Patricia Wallace, a psychologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins University and author of “The Psychology of the Internet.” People open themselves up to cruel comments, and worse: identity theft, for instance, or even losing a job for kvetching about a boss.

I don’t mind cruel comments, but if one of you guys steals my identity or fires me I’m gonna be pretty annoyed.

The article does make an interesting point: why do some people consider posting something on the internet to be the equivalent of writing it in a private diary? In addition to the obvious failure of the metaphor, why should the same thoughts/feelings motivate the two acts? If I post something here, it’s not because I wouldn’t feel comfortable with anyone else reading it (quite the opposite, really). I guess the appearance of anonymity can be pretty persuasive–”I can spill my guts and say what I really think about everything, and nobody will know it was me”–but I would hope that at this point anybody with access to the internet realizes that internet anonymity is at best shaky and at worst utterly illusory.

At any rate, it’s pretty lame that the Post didn’t leave the URLs for the blogs they looked at in the piece. What’s the point of talking about your blog if you can’t whore it out? (You’re looking at Hello World, in case you forgot.)

 Posted by JHW at 7:37 am
© 2011 Hello World Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha