[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E77HpMMbDYc]
via youtube.com
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Google Plus gets one thing really, really right.
When Google Wave came out and I was given an invite by kind friends who tolerate my perverse desire to try out Cool New Shit, I paid it forward by raffling my own parcel of invites off on Twitter with a haiku and limerick contest. What goes around comes around, it seems: after I went all passive-aggressive on my negligent Googler friend who really should have gotten me in on this Cool New Shit, two other friends had sent me an invite. Bless!
Whoever says Google Plus is a lot like Facebook isn't wrong. 'Sparks' is a stupid buzzword. I haven't yet tried 'Hangout', the casual group video chat thing, but considering that my friends all live in very diverse timezones I don't see this becoming a part of my life. And the previously introduced +1 button, Google's answer to the Facebook Like button, is still a me-too response to something I always considered kind of dumb.
But Google Plus looks nice, works well, is ubiquitous and unobtrusive at once, and there's one thing, one central thing, that it gets super duper right about social networking.
All the major social networks, from LiveJournal to Facebook to Twitter, support Lists or Groups and they're all kind of not very awesome. It's a chore to manage who you put in those groups, and if you want to see the activity in a particular list or share something only with one list and not another, expect to click and double-check a whole lot more.
While 'Circles' seems like another stupid buzzword, this is the part that Google has got really, really right.
Organizing your contacts into Circles is quick, intuitive and fun. Let me say that again, to make sure you don't read any unintended irony into it: organizing your contacts is fun. Have some Kool-Aid.
Circles are central to Google Plus, not tacked-on afterthoughts like Lists and Groups are pretty much everywhere else. They give you security and privacy, but they don't feel like a tool for keeping secrets. You're encouraged to think about what your friends and contacts have in common with you, with each other, what you're interested in sharing with them. Circles even comes pre-populated with sensible Circles for you to use: Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following, but you can add as many as you like.
There's stuff I deliberately don't share on Facebook because I've got some coworkers on there, or that I don't post to Twitter or LiveJournal because it's too public or because managing the privacy levels on those is a chore I never got into. When I see something interesting on Google Reader I'll sometimes hit the Share button for my handful of followers, or I'll excerpt it and post it to my blog, to then be autoposted across my myriad social networks. Or sometimes I'll e-mail it to either my nearest friends or my family.
We're all constantly thinking about what we share with whom, not just because we have secrets to keep, but also because you want to share some things specifically with those people with whom you share those particular common interests. With Circles, Google has figured out the best currently existing way to make those decisions natural and easy in social networking.
In Google Plus, it's almost no effort to share or post something in public, with a Circle, with a single person or with five specific individuals. It's baked in; as elemental as the To: field in e-mail. I always know who I'm sharing it with, and that doesn't just help me keep my dirtly little secrets: it also frees me to geek out about stuff that probably the majority of my friends and acquaintances don't care about because I can share it specifically with the people who do.
Google Plus learned from Wave and Buzz. From the former it learned that people have to be able to understand what it's for right from the get-go; from the latter it learned that people, you know, value their privacy. From both, it learned that nobody wants to be the first guy with a fax machine, so Plus is rolling out across Google's holdings, and will integrate more and more of their services. Bring it, Big G.
Still, those buzzwords. Circles? I mean, it fits, and the UX is symbiotic with the word, but still. Actually, it probably helps best to imagine Circles as a social Venn diagram with you in the center.
And as we know, Venn diagrams are super cute.
- Alex Vance
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Synchronized hand and finger tapdancing. Yeah, really!
We No Speak Americano ft. Cleary & Harding. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iANRO3I30nM]
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
+Usted, +Sie, +Vous: Google's new foray into Social exposes an interesting linguistic quandary.
It frustrates me no end that my Googler friends take their NDAs so seriously and every new announcement from Big G catches me completely by surprise. Harrumph.
The newest thing is Google+. While I certainly won't be betting money either way whether this time, this time for real you guys, Google's going to strike a chord with the online social graph, especially given the paucity of concrete information (though the introductory videos are really good) there's a small, subtle, yet complex problem with the service.
One of the top-level items in the new experiment's structure is called +You.
Doesn't seem like much of a problem, right? Not in English, no, but English is one of the only European languages that only has a single form for the second person. The rest of us still use two: formal and informal.
Quick sidebar, here. English used to have two versions of the second person, too: you and thou. The latter is still used by the Amish, among family – which is how it was traditionally used. You'd say thou to your family and friends, it was the informal second person; you'd say you to an elder or an authority figure. It always struck me as weird that Modern English speakers consider the archaic thou, thee and thy to be pompous and lofty. According to eminently reliable sources (Wikipedia) this is due to the exclusive used of thou-thee-thy in early English translations of the Bible which, with the exception of Shakespeare, represent the only contact modern speakers of English have with those words. In the context of such a solemn holy text, it's no wonder that this form of the second person seems lofty – despite this being the exact opposite of how it was actually used in conversation!
Back to the action. When I visited the Google+ site it was automatically localized into Dutch and I noticed in the top left, where I'd expected to see +You, the rather odd +U. It took me a while to figure out this two-character combo was the Dutch translation of +You – u is indeed the Dutch formal second person. It's how you address a teacher, elder stranger or a cop. It's weird to see it out of context, so it took me a while to parse, and I was strangely uncomfortable with it.
I think I'd have been just as uncomfortable with +Jij, which would be the informal address, since it's a bit rude for a web service to address me so casually without so much as an introduction.
Which is a weird problem. It's not even a problem so much as… an oddity. I can't quite articulate how I feel about it, or how I'd solve the issue, only that I can feel it's not quite right.
Given Google's excellent track record in internationalizing their services I'm quite certain that substantial discussion took place about whether to translate +You as +Jij, +Du, +Tu and +Tue, or +U, +Sie, +Vous and +Usted.
I'd be very interested in learning the arguments that ultimately led them to choose the latter path.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Movies summarized by severed hands.
I can't get the one in the first row (the watched one holding the thing, or the rightmost in the second row with the tattoo, or the first three on the bottom row.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Guinnes world record: fantastic street chalk painting by Qi Xinghua
via moillusions.com
Couple of making-of shots here: http://www.moillusions.com/2011/05/chalk-drawing-that-won-guinness.html?utm_s...
Wonderful stuff.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Yes, This Baby Cheetah Is Smiling At You
Come on, admit it: this photo just made everything a little bit better, didn't it?
via dcist.com
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Buster Wilde Episode 22: One of my favorite strips.
via baddogbooks.com
You know, even though I put together the damn book, after digitally remastering at pains-effing-taking length the original comics, I still check the Buster Wilde site every day for new strips.
( http://baddogbooks.com/busterwilde )
Even though I've seen every pixel on there hundreds of times before. It's nice to remember the days when we'd feverishly check the Buster Wilde site on FurNation every other week to see if maybe some new strips had been posted!
I'm particularly fond of this one because it shows such a broad spectrum of Buster's emotions! This is why we love him :)
Also, don't forget, if you're not going to Anthrocon, you can pre-order now: http://furplanet.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=526
And if you are going to Anthrocon, hit the FurPlanet table early. They're bringing a ton of books, but a classic like this priced at $12.95? Yeah, that's gonna fly.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
The ugliest word in our language: "Geüpdatet" #ugh #wordnerd
The Dutch are a pragmatic lot, and considering the language's relative paucity in vocabulary it's common practice to adopt and naturalize loanwords from the countries around this staunch little nation, and those with whom we share dubious cultural connections from the colonial era. We say weekend, babysitter, sixpack and deal without a second thought.
The Flemish in neighboring Belgium actually speak a far purer form of Dutch, choosing to construct new words like the Germans: a droogzwierder is a clothes dryer (we borrowed the French centrifuge) and means literally dry-slinger. While this (to us) curious vocabulary, coupled with the gentle lilt of the Flemish dialect, causes us to see them as our mild-mannered and provincial southern neighbors, I'm feeling more and more like they have the right idea.
I'm all for the evolution of language. New ideas need new words; a changing vocabulary changes the collective body of thought (gedachtengoed, one of the best Dutch words) and means that people are thinking about new things. I'm even tolerant of certain deteriorations of established language; recently I had a discussion with friends on Twitter about the mutation of certain idioms (chomping at the bit instead of champing, all the sudden instead of all of a sudden) and I posited that there comes a point where so many people are saying a particular phrase wrong, that by consensus, that becomes how you say it. I could care less is so rapidly dominating the original and more logical phrase I couldn't care less that this argument can soon be made, and when I'm convinced it's happened I'll put my money where my mouth is and say the nonsensical new version in conversation.
But then there is geüpdatet.
The past perfect tense of regular verbs in Dutch typically get the prefix ge- and see their root modified according to some fairly organic rules of pronunciation. Ik hoor means I hear, and ik heb gehoord means I have heard. We do this with loanwords as well. Further, since eu is a unique vowel in Dutch (and totally unpronouncable to English-speakers) in cases where the e and u must cohabitate but be pronounced separately, we use an umlaut to indicate that the u is a distinct phoneme.
Updaten has been absorbed, ever so pragmatically, into Dutch, but the past perfect tense -- which has been accepted by the dictionary authorities -- is this horrific mongrel of language laws that are wholly incompatible with the word in question. The ge- prefix I can just about understand, but the -t at the end? Clearly it's an issue of the ear, with English past tense updated sounding so natural that a Dutch writer wants to replicate it -- but since we're adopting the word, it should have a suffix in line with our spelling. What's worse nobody ever pronounced the -t when saying the word.
There is a solution, though. Dutch and English are so similar in their origin that, really, we should be able to treat update lexically like we treat similar Dutch verbs which intrinsically include a preposition: up and date can be treated like distinct components of the verb. There's a handy dandy precedent in the phrase up to date, so This doesn't exactly solve the issue of a very inelegantly incorporated loan word, but it does at least mitigate the ugliness somewhat.
I'd like to take this opportunity to propose this superior alternative.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:
Upgedate.
- Alex F. Vance
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Jen Miller visits a porn production: "Viagra is to porn what cotton gin was to the textile industry."
"You're adorable, Rev. Why don't you do porn?" Joe asked....
"Because I still believe I'm going to be America's sweetheart and that someday I'll win an Emmy."
"Well, you could always fluff," he suggested.
"I've been warned not to fluff. Plus I don't have the focus."
"A Xerox machine. They could copy their 'parts' in the movie and then you could sell the copies on eBay," I offered.
"That's not a copier. It's a scanner," Kenny said.
Joe opted to shoot the first scene in the red-carpeted office and the second scene in the hallway. Keith had festooned the hallway walls with a festive duct-tape mural that spelled S.E.X.
...
After a few takes Joe called cut, and it was time to shoot Kenny and Heather doing it on a leopard-print blanket in the hallway.
"Joe, I know it's my one duty and I failed the last time, but where's the lube? I'll make sure I don't lose it."
"Heather doesn't need it. She's very wet. She'll drown us all."
"We should cut to a shot of the crew wearing emergency ponchos like we're at a Gallagher show," I suggested.
via nerve.com
Delightfully witty account of a plucky NY gal reporting on what it's like to make a porno.
Anti-Boogie Nights, tiny scissors, and really cold water.
http://www.nerve.com/love-sex/i-did-it-for-science/i-did-it-for-science-adult...
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Small things at sunset: an exercise in macro photography.
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649
Being a proper Dutchman, I try to get my money's worth out of any investment. My Nikon D3100 camera is no exception.
Noticing that the sunset gave some lovely soft light I headed out to see what I could find worth shooting within walking distance. I noticed some weeds growing between the cracks of the cobbles on the brace of a roundabout and decided that would be tonight's theme: small things at sunset. I wasn't exactly dressed for crawling around in the muck, so it was also an exercise in blind shooting. There was no way I could see the little LCD screen from those low angles, so I got some practice guessing the composition and trying to get the focus points in the right position. Shooting three hundred shots of very similar subjects also gave me some good practice in rapid triage of the resulting images, more critically comparing them over a few rounds of judgment to find the best ones.Full set here: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjv9Aksh
Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein chill in the smoker's loungs in 1925
From the deep and delirious archives of Awesome People Hanging Out Together.
http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com
There's something about that tumblr. Just seeing those photos without their context really connects you with the fact that these were living people who had conversations with each other, rather than historical figures known for their achievements.
Also, Kurosawa and Coppola: http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/post/6513701967/akira-kuros...
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Buster Wilde returns to the web in glorious hi-def – and the book is available for pre-order!
[gallery] At the turn of the century, seemingly from nowhere, there emerged a fantastic webcomic about an outrageous gay werewolf (sorry, weerwolf) called Buster Wilde, written and drawn by the enigmatic artist Scot Zellman.
A homophobic and thoroughly dour salaryman by day and a fabulous creature of the night by, well, night.
For over a decade, those strips, in grainy little GIFs as per the state of the web when they were posted, thrilled new readers and gave greymuzzles something to talk about at parties.
"Do you remember Mutant Malibu Bob?" We'd chuckle and nod.
Nod no more, my friends.
Bad Dog Book sis proud to bring Buster to print, and then some.
All the strips have been digitally re-mastered, carefully scanned from the massive originals in artist Scot Zellman's secret vault, digitally polished up and prepared for print.
All Buster's antics are back from beyond, and to seal the deal we've included over fifty pages of sketches and notes from the artist's archives, giving glimpses of the development of the strip and its characters. Not to be missed.
And to celebrate Buster's return (in glorious hi-def), the web strips are being reissued. The first eight strips are up, and there'll be another added to the website every day. Visit baddogbooks.com/busterwilde!
I can't tell you how stupendously excited I am about this, I really can't. Bringing Buster back from the murky mists of Intenet history has been a secret goal of mine since I started Bad Dog Books, and six years later, it gives me immense pride to bring Scot's fantastic work to print and the web in all its glory.
Enjoy!
- Alex
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
And just like that, Apple stops trying to win on the web.
Obviously last night's announcements during the Stevenote at WWDC left me giddy.
When the next version of OS X is released in July, it'll cost $29.99 and only be available via digital download. Apple's commoditizing the desktop/laptop not by diminishing its value, but by 'demoting it to just another device'. Bold and ballsy.
iOS 5, coming in the fall, is a strange bag of candy. The new Notifications should finally fix what has long been a sore knee for the iPhone faithful. Wireless syncing, OTA delta updates and limited background auto-downloading helpt iOS catch up to Android and Windows 7 in a few technical areas. I'm definitely going to enjoy the new camera features.
The odd thing, though, is the Twitter integration. System-level. This means there are two system-level accounts available on iOS: Apple ID and Twitter. None of the other supported account types, such as Exchange, Gmail or Yahoo, are supported in this way. It's very odd that Apple should hop on one particular bandwagon.
I recall seeing that OS X Lion supported Web Accounts, where you can enter your credentials for Google or Yahoo or Facebook and use those in relevant apps, such as Mail and Contacts. I'd have thought that this kind of system-wide architecture, supporting a number of large web companies, would be the way to go for iOS. Maybe that's coming. Maybe Facebook just played hardball and Apple dropped them like MobileMe, who knows.
Speaking of which...
MobileMe was a $99-a-year suite of web services that replaced the ailing .Mac suite before it, and while the web apps for Mail, Calendar and Contacts were very slick (and I mean very slick) the whole thing just wasn't worth it. MobileMe offered web galleries for photos, but initially you couldn't view these on your iPhone (and later you needed a special app to do so) and you could only upload photos from your iPhone via e-mail, five at a time.
Steve publicly flushed MobileMe on stage with a biting quip when he introduced iCloud, a new broad-reaching service free for iOS users. This offers live syncing of mail, calendars, even photos, across iOS devices, Macs and PCs. I'm salivating with anticipation, I'm not ashamed to admit.
MobileMe will continue to operate for 12 months and then be shut down, and Steve more or less gave the impression that iCloud is his company's answer to it. But this means something very crucial:
Apple is giving up on web apps.
Without MobileMe, there are no online photo galleries, no web mail, no online calendars. Apple feels that if you have your iPhone in your pocket, you're all set, and that other services do a better job of pleasing the masses than they could do themselves.
Apple knows well and good the value and power of the web, and its importance. They know well and good that not everyone can install iCloud on their work machine, and that if you're on the street and your phone gets nicked, you'd be pretty fucked as an iCloud customer -- you wouldn't be able to walk into an Internet café and look up a phone number from your address book. You need an iCloud capable device with your credentials.
So it seems they're just surrendering. Let Flickr take care of photos on the web. Let Twitter be the social network. Let Apple be Apple.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Photos from last week's promenading through my beloved city Amsterdam.
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649
On a relatively bright and moderately sunny day I headed into Amsterdam with a friend who had a bit more experience with photography.
While the temptations of the city's shops and sights soon lured us from our stated goals, we nevertheless got a few decent shots off.
I miss my city so much. I'm happy where I'm living now; it's cleaner and much, much cheaper. But I yearn for the noise and age and life of my beloved Amsterdam.
See the full gallery on my Flickr account.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Travis Ratledge (of Too Small The Limelight) performs Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" and is fucking SENSATIONAL.
I'd heard he was preparing this a while back and had been looking forward to the result. It turned out pretty goddamn magnificent. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT35BTIsxGs]
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
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