So on our latest show we talk to Dean Pomerlau. Dean’s a researcher with Intel and he’s working on how to control computers with your mind. For real. But besides that research, Dean also trains goldfish to do tricks:
And here’s more on computers that read your mind.
He also writes a blog about the feeling that you’re part of a big machine.
It wasn’t that long ago that Polaroid cameras were all the rage. The technology was exciting: press a button, get a picture. You didn’t even have to drop the film off at the drug store and wait a few days. But when digital photography came along, Polaroids didn’t seem quite so amazing. The company faded away.
Well, let’s not write an obituary just yet. On today’s show, we talk to Dave Bias. He’s with a group called The Impossible Project. They’re Polaroid enthusiasts who managed to buy up the last remaining factory making Polaroid film just as it was about to be dismantled. Now, The Impossible Project is manufacturing and selling it’s own line of instant film to be used with that old Polaroid you have in the back of the closet. We talk to Dave about film, cameras, chemicals, and what memories are supposed to look like.
Our boss lives in Los Angeles and he was telling us about the opening on Vacation Vinyl, a vinyl-only record store there. As I researched a bit, I also found Origami, another recently opened vinyl-only record store. It’s a boom!
Update: A third!
after Facebook photos show her appearing to have fun at a party.
There are many ways to be disturbed by this article.
1. A person on disability for 18 months with depression.
2. A health insurance company with such a sucky understanding of what depression is that they’ll make a determination based on photos.
Or my favorite
3. That insurance companies are sifting through Facebook photos at all.
Windows 7 installation went fine but it wanted you to uninstall iTunes and Google Toolbar?
And not just in a strange upside down universe but in Japan too. It’s the digital Walkman, not the cassette player.
You erased Michael Anthony from history like some out-of-favor Bolshevik? Sucks.
Instead you expect people to be okay with Wolfgang “Craft Services Table” Van Halen on a ride through history? Sucks.
Though I’m no fan of Sammy, I guess that whole era didn’t really happen? Sucks.
I’ve seen better character rendering in, well, I’m thinking, something in 1993…’s butt. Sucks.
The fact that this game isn’t called Eddie’s Delusion That He Is God And Control History And People’s Minds With His Strappy Guitar? SUCKS!
This game sucks.
Check back on that name in 10 years. He will be seen as either a brilliant visionary or something akin to the guy who predicted cities would be redesigned around the Segway.
Laurs recently predicted that apps for smart phones will, as a business, be as big or bigger than the internet in a decade. By the same token, Laurs predicts the development of new apps to level off as the leaders emerge and smaller developers can’t compete. I guess it’s kind of like when there were tons of American car companies in the twenties and barely three today.
It’s really easy to scoff at this idea of apps becoming that huge a business because apps are so new in our collective consciousness so they seem like a fad. I’ve got some thoughts on hype vs. cynicism and I’ll try to get them into a written form by later today.
And he knows how to use it. For painting.
He’s using Brushes, the same app used to create a recent New Yorker cover.
To me, this is really interesting not because of how advanced it makes the iPhone or how accepted it now is. I’m interested in this because of how refreshingly banal it really actually is as a piece of news. The iPhone and the apps attendant to it are tools, they are mechanisms for people to create things. What’s incredible about these Hockney paintings are the paintings themselves and the reflection of Hockney as an artist. What’s exciting about technology is the way it lets humans be humans in new ways.
