cell death

Nice piece at the always-on-network today by steve baker from tomato design fame (and, full disclosure, the president of the company I'm working for, eduardo sciammarella) about the transition from cell phone to mobile device. Lots of good numbers, use scenarios, etc. Written for business folks, mostly I think, but trying to get these folks to realize that providing cell phone service is a thing of the past.

All it takes to start that revolution is one device—a handheld network device, something very like the Palm TX, Sony PSP, or Nokia 770—with a Bluetooth headset. (After all, what use is a QVGA screen on a handset that's pressed up against your sweaty ear?) With VoIP, a web interface, and a broadband-wired world, the cellphone is a museum piece. Get ready for the ODMs in Asia to churn out hundreds of millions of low-cost devices. Pop in a WiFi CF card, and you're ready to roll. Did someone say dumb pipe?

cnn headlines

was killing some time today and read this article on CNN.com about the new laws allowing bars to stay open as long as they want to. The yellow-ish headline is actually an example of the way the article itself criticizes headlines for not giving an accurate portrayal of the new law. It sort of makes my head hurt.

link

guitar hero controller proof of concept

here's a quick video (~20 seconds) of the guitar hero controller used as a controller for a super-basic synth I cooked up in 5 minutes...

unfortunately, I can't as of now read any of the analog data from the whammy bar in, which I'm really disappointed about. It's showing up as a potential element in the max hi (human interface) element, but it's not spitting any data out. Anyone out there know how to test specific elements in the hi object, rather than just having all the data shoot through the main output. Like, is their a route object I can hook up or something, like "route element 10". Perry, I'm looking at you...

Anyway, this is a pretty basic proof-of-it-working setup... after work today I want to add some sampling support, and maybe make a really quick video-contoller patch (I swear I've made about 50 simple video controller patches and haven't saved any of them anywhere I can remember) with some ultra-psychadelic effects... then drink a couple beers and rock out in perhaps the dorkiest way possible.

Link (qt)

bubblegeneration.com

ian rogers pointed this out today at this strange conference.

Very interesting, despite the jesus-christ-come-up-with-a-better-name use of Media/Web 2.0

The media industry is changing. Radical technological, management, and business model innovation is reshaping all segments of the value chain. This is the result of nothing less than a fundamental inversion of mass media economics, as well as the strategies that dominated those economics.

carnage

on the freeways tonight... won't be leaving work for awhile...

guitar hero

totally wails. anyone want to play after seminar this wednesday?

I need to get another axe.

cool flickr icon mosaic-ifier

my friend peter hacked together a python script that recreates your flickr icon from a mosaic of stuff from your photostream. or, as he wrote me:

So I was teaching myself Python this afternoon and I whipped up this script that downloads your Flickr buddy icon, decomposes it into indivudal pixels and then reconstructs it with the pixels being replaced by photos from your photostream which match the original pixel color.

link to full size image