Stunning political advocacy Flash. This is one of the most effective pieces of political advocacy I’ve ever seen. Ben Cohen, the Ben of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, narrates a short Flash movie for TrueMajority.org, in which he explains — using Oreo cookies — the way that the federal budget is currently apportioned, and how little rearrangement would be necessary to renew all of America’s social programs. The examples are vivid and charming, and the logic is compelling.
Archives for February 2004
Music Plasma
Check out the awesome visual music mapping interface musicplasma.com. Type in your favorite bands and it maps out funky relations with others of similar style or musical influence.
Multiple Protocol IM for OS X?
Now that I’m using my Mac more and more (Thank god for OS X!) I’m trying to find decent replacements for the applications I actually use regularly under windows.
One of those apps is Trillian, which is an Instant Messaging (IM) client that supports multiple connection protocols (AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, and Jabber). Trillian’s not perfect, but I have some friends that use AIM, some that use Yahoo, and some that use ICQ, and Trillian allows me to run one client and chat with them all.
So far, I’ve found Proteus and Fire for OS X, but I’ve read both are shakey… I guess I’ll find out. What I really wish is that the fine folks at Cerulean (who make Trillian) would see fit to do an OS X port. That would be sweet.
Drool…
LaCie has announced a 1TB drive… 🙂 Of course, it’s currently $1299, but I remember when the first 1GB drives hit the market at $1000… three years later, we were all buying 30-40GB drives for $200…
German Band Release CD with Blanks for Burning!
“German band Eisbrecher has decided to make a statement for its fans and for music consumers in general and is releasing their album Eisbrecher with 2 blank CD-Rs which have the same label as the CD itself. Alexx Wesselsky (singer and head of the group): “We are of the opinion that the music buyers are criminalized enough and have been made responsible for the wretched state in the music industry. We are giving them the chance to make 2 legal copies for private use with ‘official blanks’.”
Cinema Now
I’m not quite sure how I missed this one… but here it is, movie delivery via the net from CinemaNow! You can either download the entire movie file to play later, or you can have it streamed to you. Now, I have no desire to sit at my PC and watch movies, but it’s also trivial to hook my PC up to my TV (and that ability is becoming more and more common each day). Of course, CinemaNow was started by Lions Gate along with Microsoft and Blockbuster. I haven’t used it yet, but I’m going to try it out… it represents a possible future for content distribution, and another potential outlet for independent films that might not get wide distribution otherwise.
Why IDs Create a False Sense of Security
Bruce Schneier has written a really excellent piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, called “How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism: IDs and the Illusion of Security“. He raises several excellent points about how merely having an ID these days is essentially meaningless, and why the ID of using IDs as a stalwart of national security is a dangerously flawed idea.
Superbowl Half-Time Craptacular!!
Um, okay… Janet Jackson and Kid Rock? Apparenly I missed something. I didn’t realize they still had careers. It’s like I’ve been time-warped to 1997!! Help!!
I mean, seriously, no one expects it to be good but c’mon. P. Diddy has resorted to ripping off Toni Basil??! I’m going to fire up Garage Band and launch my musical career posthaste. Apparently, I have enough talent in my average turd to get a spot in the Superbowl half-time show.
Not even Janet’s tit could save this monstrosity. And I’m sorry, if that wasn’t a planned exposure (and I could care less one way or the other) then why did she have on that sunburst nipple ring/pastie on under the bodice? Hmm?? Accident? Me thinks not.