GeekBox

Greenfield on Moblogging

Adam Greenfield writes about moblogging from the vantage of someone who has been around the net and the world enough to understand its significance and possibilities.

Client/Electronicat

When I was younger finding new music that I liked seemed easier. Commercial and college radio introduced me to all kinds of stuff that I still love. These days I can't stand to listen to radio. Commercial radio is completely worthless except for the occasional late night set when they play more songs than commercials and they don't play the same 5 songs. College radio still plays bits of brilliance, but I can't structure my life around their schedules. In these days of everything on demand I have lost patience for the broadcast model of shows only being available in realtime. There are some internet radio stations that manage to be more consistently listenable, thus alleviating my frustration with the realtime nature, however it's a rare surprise to hear something new that I love which jumps out with a unique personality. With net radio I end up listening to audible techno wallpaper.

Maybe because it is suspiciously similar to a lot of the early '80s new wave that I still love, the whole Electroclash thing has buoyed my feelings about music over the past year or so. In New York it was apparently the trend of the minute about two years ago, but it seems to be largely under the radar otherwise.

I do occasionally find new stuff surfing around on the net. Going through 20somethings' blogs and profiles is a good way to find out what's cool. I think that is how I picked up on Ladytron - easily the best band for me of the past year.

I was just reminded of Heavy.com from reading through this blog, which is interesting in its own right.

There was a point to this... oh yeah... on Heavy.com they've got a bunch of cool videos including one for Client. You can also go to Client's web site and pick up a few free MP3s or watch more video. While they aren't going to replace Ladytron for me, I was very happy to find them.

Which reminds me...

About two months ago I was in NYC and while in a painfully trendy boutique in the East Village (I wish I could remember the name) I heard something that I instantly knew I had to have. I asked the guy behind the counter what it was and without a word or much in the way of facial movements he acknowledges my question and hands me the CD case. I guess in his eyes I was either too old or too obviously not a city resident to even talk to. The band turned out to be Electronicat and the CD was 21st Century Toy. Fortunately I wrote it down because I didn't quite remember the name right. I ended up ordering it used through Amazon. Not quite instant gratification, but I was happy. It's a fantastic, quirky CD.

6 Seconds

Go to 6SecondVideos now. The minimal interface of this version actually seems more intriguing but there is also all kinds of Flashy fun available (including a some explanation and credits).

[via del.icio.us via Many to Many]

Massive Photo Archive

I've been meaning to post about this since I first saw it.

Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.

Indiana University's Digital Library Program and the Indiana University Archives invite you to explore what Cushman saw. Here you can view his photographs as well as read contextual information about Cushman's life and work.

Definitely start with their highlights section. You can also search through the collection using a fairly extensive set of metadata about the slides or browse by location etc.

What is interesting is that even though he wasn't necessarily the most impressive photographer from an artistic or technical standpoint, he did start using color slide film fairly early, he consistently took a lot of pictures and he documented them better than most people. The photos sat around for a while in the university's archives for many years. It's only with some historical distance that these seemingly pedestrian photos started to take on some significance.

From a personal perspective, I like looking at the pictures of places that I've been to or lived in - it is fascinating to see what life looked like to an ordinary person. We start to remember the past through movies and books of professionally taken images. This is the past unfiltered. Search for "haight" and look at the pictures of "hippies" on the Haight in 1967. While there is certainly a ce plus ça change, ce plus c'est le même chose feeling for anyone who has visited the Haight in the last 35 years, I do notice that the shoes are different. It's a small detail, but despite all the kids that want to dress like it is still the '60s or the '70s, they wouldn't get that detail right. Movies from that time period tended to over-exaggerate the outfits.

The collection isn't exhaustive enough to really represent the whole of what was - in this case there are only 29 pictures in the series - but it does provide a glimpse that is inarguably representative of a particular day and place, in a way that a staged movie or carefully composed professional photo never is.

[via MetaFilter]

Why Patents Suck

What he said.

[via Kottke]

Salon on Vacation

So WTF is going on at Salon? Judging by their latest cover stories, it seems like the editorial direction has gone off the deep end. Today's lead story about dinosaur rock really clinched it for me. Earlier this week there was this little thing where we finally captured Saddam Hussein. As much as I hate Bush and think he might have even timed the announcement for maximum benefit, I'm shocked that Salon has just passed on this story altogether (ignoring the AP stories - those don't count).

It used to be that Salon would break important stories and provide important insights. It seems like they are just so far from being profitable that they cannot manage anymore.

Services VS Products

I've read Customer-owned Networks: ZapMail and the Telecommunications Industry before, and perhaps you've seen it, but this essay is really crucial to understanding what will happen with the mobile phone carriers.

Right now they are concentrating on selling services at the expense of rebates and incentives on hardware, but I think that model is ultimately flawed.

It's similar to the reason that Apple gets it with the iTMS and other companies that are trying to rent music don't get it.

If you charge for services you have to make them make economic sense. Verizon charges me $5/month for unlimited picture messaging. Then my phone takes at minimum 9 button presses (more like 12-15 after selecting the picture and the recipient - that's without even giving it a name or subject!) to send each picture message, which I have to do one at a time. As a consequence I'm discouraged from actually using the feature. It also encouraged me to look into ways to get the pictures off my phone directly, thus circumventing Verizon's revenue model.

I haven't actually done it yet, but it seems that I can spend about $30 for a USB cable, download some freeware and then grab pictures off my phone in bulk with a couple mouse clicks in a couple minutes instead of waiting and waiting for the pictures to be sent over the air and the zillions of key presses just to send the damn things. Plus I avoid the ridiculous charges.

The carriers and the phone manufacturers think that people will primarily send photos one at a time to other mobile phone users, in which case $.25 a message and a dozen key presses doesn't seem that bad, but if you start to use your phone more like a camera, the model breaks down. Real digital cameras only cost money per use if you actually print pictures, and even the worst desktop software doesn't require anywhere near the number of interactions to download twenty pictures.

Basically people don't like trolls. It's not a very good business model. Users will figure out ways to route around them.