Forbes: Andrea Spiegel's de.tech.ting: The Real Story Behind Charlie Sheen Joining Twitter
Enablers.
“If you didn’t hear, yesterday Charlie Sheen joined Twitter. Today he very well may reach 1 million followers (as I type he’s already passed the 900K mark). How did it happen? Why all of a sudden did he wake up and decide it’s Twitter time? And how was it that Charlie Sheen went from non-twitterer to hardcore twitterer overnight? Short answer: he got a lot of help from a team of experts at Ad.ly, a small Beverly Hills start-up that focuses on celebrity endorsements via Facebook and Twitter.”
Combining hundreds of landmark snapshots into one ghostly, layered photo.
“Series of photographic works entitled ‘Photo Opportunities’, from hundreds of snapshots of tourist locations found on the Internet. By collecting and then bringing together successive layers of around a hundred similar ‘photo souvenirs’, these images conjure up questions about representation and memory of places.”
Getting people to re-enact old photos. Wonderful.
“I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.”
“In early January, President Barack Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act of 2010, which is expected to create hundreds, possibly thousands, of noncommercial FM stations.”
A good overview of LPFM and how the recent legislation happened.
“Tumblr2WP makes it super simple to transfer your Tumblr content to your own, self-hosted WordPress install. This tool will create a WXR (WordPress eXtended RSS) file from your tumblr site which can be imported into WordPress.”
Makes nice little wooden voice recorders.
“I am an artist. I like sound. I build things. I grew up in the country. I now live in the city. I believe everyone’s voice should be heard. I like wooden toys. I like electronics and technology. I hold hope for the future. I believe in experimenting. My interest in expanding how we experience and control sound has led to my developing prototypes intended to reinforce musical instruments as collaborative, sociable objects to be experienced in community.”
“Technology is not an abstract entity. Technology, like art or literature or music or mathematics, is a human endeavor. It is made by people and, as such, is imbued with their values, hopes, foibles, and passions.”
Perspective on the perspectives on the internet: those of the Never-Betters, the Better-Nevers, and the Ever-Wasers. “…what made television so evil back when it was evil was not its essence but its omnipresence. Once it is not everything, it can be merely something. The real demon in the machine is the tirelessness of the user. A meatless Monday has advantages over enforced vegetarianism, because it helps release the pressure on the food system without making undue demands on the eaters. In the same way, an unplugged Sunday is a better idea than turning off the Internet completely, since it demonstrates that we can get along just fine without the screens, if only for a day.”
Honolulu Pulse: Scene+Heard: Getting to know Matt McVickar
My new friend-through-friends and fellow musician Sabrina interviewed me for her blog on Honolulu Pulse, the Star Advertiser's online nightlife section.
Vulture: Arcade Fire, and the ‘Never Heard of It’ Grammys by Nitsuh Abebe
”…the tweets offer a funny reminder that one kind of center really does hold: That no matter how dominant and predictable something might be in your world, it is still a weird, marginal thing to most everyone else.”
“Co-hosts Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa take a look at the latest tech news and happenings. Then they talk about HTML 5 with Dan Leuck and Matt McVickar.”
I was on Ryan and Burt's weekly show for my involvement with Ocupop's redesign of the HTML5 logo. It was my first time on live radio. Fun!
“I stumbled on this unsettling story of an obscure Pokémon bootleg/art-hack that I thought might be neat to share on here. I think this originated from 4chan, so I’ve no idea if this hack actually exists. It probably doesn’t, but it’s still a great concept/tale!”
The Morning News: How to Say I Love You by Paul Ford
Ends with Paul’s and Mo’s vows, which are great:
“I will not hide anything from you except surprises.
I promise to let you make fun of me.
I promise to meet you at the emergency room with a book and a sweater.
I promise to always see and treat you as an equal.”
For when an app has a keyboard shortcut symbol and you can't figure out which key they mean.
“The symbols below appear in menus and represent keys that are used in keyboard shortcuts. Some of these symbols also appear in the help and are referred to as ‘modifier keys.’”
“…here’s a Q&A with Matthew, who was kind enough to agree to an e-mail interview the day after the HTML5 logo was unveiled. He was quick to point out that it was a team effort, and that Ocupop Creative Director Michael Nieling headed the project and designed the logo itself.”
“Perry’s ouevre is nasty, sticky and a little bit stupid; it’s a kind of Hello Kitty-themed update on Carry On; fruit-scented lube on a rather imposing black dildo. It works perfectly because the American ideal of the teenager - wholesome and optimistic - is of course at odds with its reality of unprotected sex and casual drug use.”
“The data used to calculate when museums are quiet is gathered from foursquare. Foursquare is designed to show popular trending places or where your friends are. I instead used it for antisocial purposes. A small cron job checks the /herenow endpoint in the foursquare api a few times an hour. The number of people present is logged for each venue that is tracked. Once a week these checkins are aggregated and passed to the frontend web application hosted on Heroku. The graphs are generated in SVG using Raphael in the browser.”