October 25, 2005
Jetrosexuals
From Iconoculture comes this classic. AirTroductions is a like a dating service while flying...
"Whether you’re looking for a date in Los Angeles, a business networking partner in Tokyo, or just someone to share a cab from Kennedy to Midtown, look no further. You’ve found AirTroductions™."
Much like other online-dating services, users build online profiles with photos and a blurb. Before a trip, they search the archive to find people taking the same flight. If they spy someone with potential, they pay AirTroductions $5 to contact the other user.
Like speed-dating, only much longer...
Classic. Can you imagine trying to avoid someone on a plane after a disasterous encounter!
Datingbuzz & Kulula. Come girls & boys, play nicely now.
Posted by sdehaast at 10:30 PM
June 07, 2005
The Sky Has Fallen...OMG!!
Well you'd think so reading all the misinformed Mac zealots out there with regard to the Apple/Intel announcement.
"Apple have betrayed us all never again will i use a mac and no more will they be as pc users flock to buy osx for pentium 4s i wish i was there i would have bood" moron
Don't get me wrong, I'm an Apple evangelist, and love my Powerbook, and I think the Intel thing is a great thing.
It does not mean that you will be able to boot up your Taiwanese clone on OS X.
Do you really think Apple is going to throw away its absolute brilliance in design and allow any machine to run it? Nope, I didn't think so. Intel inside is different from Tiger on the outside.
For one, the move to Intel allows Apple to get some radically bumped up laptops. The PPC chip runs way to hot to put a G5 in it, unless it looks like this.
So according to Om Malik, this move is primarily centred around the laptops and other portable devices - a Mac Tablet on the horizon I see. The high end, professional G5's out there will still be around for a quite a while.
"First, this deal is going to be all about the laptops, especially those which can handle OS-X nicely, are light weight and consume less power. Because if that was not so, then Apple could as easily have signed a deal with AMD, which makes better x86 chips for the desktop. IBM has failed to deliver the low power consuming yet muscular versions of its G5 chips fine tuned for Powerbooks. Secondly, I think Apple will exploit Intel’s chips for often rumored Tablet PC, that could have features in common with Nokia 770 tablet. I would not be surprised that Monday morning, the announcement circles around XScale, or low powered Centrino chips." Om Malik
Then there's the DRM factor inside these chips (Pentium D) - Hollywood loves that. Just think - pay-per-view movie off iTunes Music Store, thanks to the cozy relationship built between Apple, Intel and the studios.
UPDATE: I forgot about the fact that Intel is also buiding WiMax functionality into their chips as well. Interesting cocktail.
Apple is about the digital home, not about computers.
Think consumer electronics.
Think different.
Steve does.
Posted by sdehaast at 11:45 AM | Comments (2)
April 16, 2005
Digital waste
With all my talk about bits vs. atoms, one still needs a physical embodiment to make the bits comes alive. And so we have a new wave of digital glut and waste.
Check out this photo exhibition by Chris Jordan - Intolerable Beauty — Portraits of American Mass Consumption. Amazing, scary stuff.
Like these dead cellphones.
Posted by sdehaast at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)
December 06, 2004
p2p
Just realised that the biggest peer-to-peer network around are the cellphone users. Right now it's just SMSs and MMSs, but with data rates being boosted soon, watch the ding-dong battle with DRM (digital rights management) get heavy. Read this or this for some insightful stuff around DRM.
The thing with cell network based p2p, you're no longer anonymous. There's a billing solution in place already (either at the network or on your SIM card.)
Cell networks, you hearing this?
Posted by sdehaast at 03:13 PM
KazaaGate 5
Some sense at last, from outside the courts, echoing my sentiments.
“At the end of the day a business solution would be better than a legal solution,” he said. “The record industry is spending a lot of money in this case and it all just comes off the bottom line. You have to wonder how many muso's are being dropped to fund this case.”Malik questioned the industry's motive as not solely about protecting artist's rights.
“Have you heard any artists saying it's a real bad thing? It's really a question of the [distribution] technology and the Internet.”
While Malik has some empathy for his former employer losing millions of dollars to p2p related piracy, he has reservations about litigation as a solution.
“Some lawyers are on $10,000 a day. That money could be better spent on artists and coming to a solution.”
Posted by sdehaast at 03:10 PM
Now no excuses for those restaurant cellphone slobs
From Boing Boing, WSJ amongst others.
"Restaurant owners everywhere, tired of hearing people blather on their cellphones from their tables, have started building phoneless phonebooths for them to use. So far, designs include plush, velvet-lined booths, and an English-style phonebooth."
Anyone familiar with McLuhan's Media Laws will recognise this reversal.
"Beginning with Bacon and Descartes in the modern era, science came to be understood as the conjunction of cause and effect. Since Aristotle specified the causes of human action, it seems surprising (in hindsight) that no one ever proposed four effects to complement them, especially as ours is supposed to be a 'scientific age'. Finally someone did propose those four effects: McLuhan. Unfortunately this amazing accomplishment has been either systematically misinterpreted or completely ignored.McLuhan's thesis is deceptively simple, yet extremely powerful. In summary it is this: All human contrivances exhibit four types of effects which together subsume all of the kinds of consequences we encounter and experience. Those four effects are:
# (1) Retrieval - everything new contains some existing elements from the cultural inventory;
# (3) Enhancement - new contrivances provide improved performance compared to the old;
# (2) Obsolescence - new contrivances render previous models or versions passé;
# (4) Reversal - we tend to over-do the new, until we run out of benefits and into detriments.The combination of the four causes and the four effects is the most comprehensive and capable framework that has been developed so far whereby to evaluate the impacts and implications of new technologies. The other way of saying this, is that no competent or serious technology assessment is possible outside of McLuhan's framework, now that it is available. This is particularly true of anyone who might aspire to build on McLuhan's legacy in terms of either media studies or technology etymologies."
Source
Posted by sdehaast at 02:22 PM | Comments (1)
December 03, 2004
More Kazaagate
Some more very funny coverage of the Kazaa trial:
"Sharman SC Meagher was away today and Dispatch was told ...it was not true that his absence was due to the fact he had managed to bore himself in to a coma."
and
"Altnet SC Steven Finch owned most of the day, but his ownership was akin to when you own a hot potato and it's burning the crap out of your hands and you toss it around in futility thinking ‘any second now it'll cool down' until you think ‘stuff this for a joke it's too frickin hot' and you throw to whoever is in front of you because you want to spread the pain. Or maybe that's just me. Anyhoo, today's hot potato was spoofing."
Fascinating trial. Read it if you have time.
Posted by sdehaast at 10:56 PM
December 02, 2004
KazaaGate
For those interested in one of THE landmark cases regarding the battle between atoms (record companies) vs bits (kazaa), there's a great running commentary going on here
Some of it is very funny:
"When the day wound up around 5pm, Hemming and Morle headed for a conference room down the hall. I followed and just before the door shut I asked the Warrior Woman for a quick word.WW: Hello Garth
Dispatch: How do you think it's going?
WW: Im leaving my lawyers to comment on everything to do with the case, Garth.
Shuts door.
Dispatch: But the judge said you can all talk now, remember?
The door is still shut.
Dispatch: Are you really happy now that you're finally getting your day in court?
Door offers no answer.
Dispatch: They say you don't control the company but you're CEO, how's that work?
Door is wooden.
Dispatch: How will we know what a Warrior Woman looks like in a fight if you won't take the witness box?
Door can not speak because it has no capacity for speech. There can be no doubt that I look very silly right now.
Meanwhile, Speck (hardman of Internet piracy; can't be stopped by the Federal court) was talking to a journalist from Australia 's most expensive newspaper. Speck is a copper basically, so the journalist starts hammering Speck with in-depth technical questions. Despite being an unstoppable hardman, he hasn't got a clue what this bloke wants from him."
Posted by sdehaast at 11:31 PM