things less interesting than a pigeon walking in a circle.
Don’t worry if you don’t understand the indepth technical aspects of the internets, here are a couple of videos which will help you get surfing in time:
If that’s a little advanced, here’s a primer:
Happy Webbings!
Back in August 2008, Mark Zuckerberg posted on the official Facebook blog that Facebook had reached 100 million users. Now, only 4 months later, this number has grown 50%: Facebook now has 150 million users.
Wow.
Ah, the power of music.
via [monster-munch]
I blogged this over at the Disposable Memory Project, but I think its neat idea, and I know the founders of the festival would love as much coverage as possible, so I’m reblogging with a bit more gusto this time. Eric Slatkin and Carlton Evans started the Disposable Film Festival in 2007 to celebrate the ‘artistic potential of disposable video’:
“Everyone has become a Disposable Filmmaker: directors of Saturday night cell phone videos, actors under the eyes of security cameras, and narrators before their webcams. Let’s face it – we live in an age of disposable film. Now it’s time to do something creative with it.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I love it! This new world in which we live of such throw-away-able technology is truly awful – I can’t remember the last time i got something repaired over just buying a replacement, but the low cost of these devices (and increasing quality) also brings with it a generative side which is wonderful, and projects like the Disposable Film Festival bring the more talented homebrew film-makers to light. Being disposable and often low quality (in terms of their technical capability: grainy, blocky, jerky, poor zoom, poor focusing) often forces the producer to abandon all hope of making their work glossy and polished, and focus on the content and narrative. Whilst the ‘realness’ of the format has always given this sort of content a voyeuristic feel, which often seems to engender a certain type of story to be portrayed, increasingly talented people with nothing more than just a great idea or narrative they want to capture are doing just that. I think it helps bring forward the soul of the story. Surprise surprise, simplicity creates something special, yet again!
I went to listen to Clay Shirky yesterday afternoon, who very kindly signed my copy of ‘Here Comes Everybody‘ and I managed to have a brief chat with until Bill Thompson careered in and gave Shirky a bearhug. The majority of his discussions were over topics covered in the book, of how the cost (in pure economic terms) of creating groups or group activity has been so substantially lowered in recent years, that projects like this are bound to spring up. The rule for most is failure, perhaps only a half baked idea, or even just a great idea which doesn’t reach the audience it deserves, following a rough power law that only a tiny percentage of these generative and collaborative projects will succeed. Well, here’s hoping for success for the Disposable Film Festival, and any of its film-makers.
In other news, its the second week of my underemployableness. Last week was intentionally empty and devoid of activity. I took delivery of my new coffee machine (yom), played hours of XBox, watched all of the first season of Arrested Development, even went for a swim and ate copious amounts of food (in that order). This week, I shall mostly be doing ’stuff’. I was planning on taking a trip to Brighton (ice-cream, The Werks, the beach, and I like being on trains) this morning, but the weather is looking a bit crappy. Oh, and my iPhone needs charging after only a day of use. Lame.
Happy Fourth of July.
The decon crew are on their way to Valencia this afternoon for a weekend of sight-seeing, sunbathing, cultural persuits and maybe a drink or two. If you hear any stories of this lovely coastside town being invaded by helvetica clad warriors, don’t worry, we’re leaving on Sunday, hangovers in tow. I’m (frustratingly) not taking a camera as my digital compact is dead. I might buy a couple of disposables and go old school.
Lovely lovely wordie.
Create visually stunning tag clouds from any source of text.
Hasbro are giving away free cash! Print it out, and spend it whenever you please – providing you’re a little pewter boot, car, iron or dog.
Awesome! (I know how it feels)
It has always amazed me why we, as such a wasteful society, are happy to throw away half eaten meals, working electronics, tons and tons of perfectly useful stuff (and money) into landfill sites every year, but are obsessed with getting every last particle of toothpaste out of the tube.
This is one of the reasons to leave Hoxton:
American Apparel from Chris Garcia on Vimeo.
