Archive for February, 2005
Digital Gen Gap
I love trolling the sales aisles in bookstores, and often end up buying something even when I have way too many books on my “to read” shelf at home. I can’t pass up a bargain, and even more so I can’t pass up a great find.
Would the Beatles Really Mind?
The Grey Album, takes Jay-Z’s Black Album and remizes it using bits ‘n pieces of the Beatles White Album. And copyright holder to the White Album, EMI, has issued a cease and desist order to DJ Danger Mouse, creater of this mixed up concept. Somehow EMI’s position struck me as a little unfair, and I decided to locate a copy of the album and check it out for myself. It seems EMI has been shutting down distributors of the album, but they keep cropping up. In fact there was a mass protest on February 24, with hundreds of sites posting a copy of the album for free download.
10×10 view of the news
10×10 view of the news
In "A Fluid Look at the News" Wired highlights the work of Jonathan Harris on the 10 x 10 site. The site offers a visual view of the hour’s news, with images drawn from news stories and linked to the stories. Its hard to describe exactly how it all works — you just need to go there and check it out for yourself. Jonathan describes it as "Every hour, 10×10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time." His work looks great, and he is now on my radar screen for further investigation. Text is OK, but a visual imagery is a powerful way to represent vast amounts on information in a context that allows the human reader to quickly process it.
Fluent with IT
Being Fluent with Information Technology (1999), Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council. The report is available on line at http://books.nap.edu/books/030906399X/html/index.html .
