May 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Goldfish training and psychic computers
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.
1 tag
Polaroid Revisited
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...
April 2010
1 post
2 tags
One's an anomaly, two's a trend!
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!
November 2009
1 post
Patient with depression denied coverage...
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...
October 2009
1 post
Wait a second.
Windows 7 installation went fine but it wanted you to uninstall iTunes and Google Toolbar?
September 2009
1 post
Walkman outsells iPod
And not just in a strange upside down universe but in Japan too. It’s the digital Walkman, not the cassette player.
August 2009
1 post
July 2009
4 posts
Ilja Laurs
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...
David Hockney has an iPhone
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...
Want to see a MINDBLOWING zoomable picture of an...
Here’s one!
June 2009
24 posts
I will not comment on the news that...
Sega is now making a robot girlfriend for lonely single men. I won’t comment on the fact that it/she/huh is 15 inches tall and has big, well, bulges. Oh never mind. Don’t click here.
Facebook's plan for world domination...
or at least Google domination, spelled out in this excellent Wired article. Apparently CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s central theory is that people will want an interconnected “friend”-based approach to finding information online as opposed to the mountain of dry impersonal data delivered by Google.
But while, the anti-Google swagger will get the most notice in this article, I was really...
Tom McCarthy, a man for our season
mrgan:
Oh, hi. Meet Tom McCarthy, professional badass dude. What’s that? All you see is a painfully average white guy? He kind of reminds you of your buddy Derek, the one who works in a bookstore?
Let me clarify. Tom wrote and directed The Station Agent (2003), one of the more grown-up and damn humane movies of the decade; you know, a story with a dwarf character who’s not a moronic joke. Oh,...
I used to work at KUOW. It was an exciting place... →
Stupid Internet
It has this way of saving everything you ever wrote and making you look dumb just for saying in 2007 that Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone. And then jerks like John Moe laugh at you.
(found on Daring Fireball)
I am inspired
by Anil Dash’s cancellation of the term FAIL:
Because it marks a lack of human empathy, and signifies an absence of intellectual curiosity, it is an unacceptable response to creative efforts in our culture. “Fail!” is the cry of someone who doesn’t create, doesn’t ship, doesn’t launch, who doesn’t make things. And because these people don’t make...
Vince Young
He’s a quarterback for the Tennessee Titans of the NFL. Last season, after losing his starting job, getting booed, and getting injured, he left his house without his phone but with a pistol, this after mentioning suicide several times over the course of the day. An APB was sent out and he was finally tracked down.
I haven’t heard much on the story since then but recently saw a short...
Metablog suggestion
Can we start a blog just of all the names of other hyper-specific blogs that make me laugh?
I think yourlogomakesmebarf.com could be on there (currently down after being Boinged and probably overwhelmed). So could gothsinhotweather.com .
Kodu
What is it with Microsoft and inscrutable names lately? Kumo? Bing? Natal? Latest is Kodu, which is a new project to let everyone, even kids, build their own video games. It should be available on Xbox later this month.
Recently, my Charlie (age 8) reeeeally wanted to make a game based on Greek mythology (because he’s been reading these) and he couldn’t believe there wasn’t an easy way to...
What this tree was most likely thinking when it...
“More than anything I would like to grow to become a chair for some goddamn hippy. Yep, the noble beauty of a tree would be best expressed in the curvature that matches some hippy’s hemp pants-clad ass. Thanks FATE!”
Google Wave will probably be in beta for a long...
and heavily reliant on other parties to really help it realize what it could be.
But then, doesn’t that describe all of us?
Will anyone buy a Hummer?
The Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company will!
The era of big government?
An illustration of just how much of corporate America is now owned by the government following the GM bankruptcy. The results may surprise you.
May 2009
50 posts
Video games and homosexuality
Interesting story.
The new Zune can support HD radio
That seems to be one of the big selling points. Honestly, I couldn’t write this stuff.
Technology doesn't dumb us down, it frees our...
Says a dude in the NYT last year. Good read.
But if you could get rid of all your movies and...
If you could get rid of all your books and replace...
Twitter on Paper
It has finally arrived.
The path to The Path
We’ve had the slow food movement, please welcome the slow gaming movement. I’ll play along eventually I’m sure.
Jobless rate of African-Americans in Michigan to... →
Bing?
Kumo? Wha?
Microsoft, which apparently has a search engine, would like you to know that they have a search engine. And they’ve decided to rename it with a verb instead of a noun. Read!
Amazon getting physical?
First stamps, now storefronts?
Yeah, speculative. But intriguing to keep your eye on.
A Conversation with Charlie (age 8) About...
HIM: Dad, is To Kill A Mockingbird a real book? ME: Yes. HIM: Do they really kill a mockingbird? ME: No. HIM: Does anyone get killed? ME: Yes. HIM: Why do they call it that? ME: It’s an analogy. (pause) HIM: Does someone at least turn into a mockingbird?
What will you need to get massive data on to...
Stamps.