‹‹ May 29, 2008 ››
Internet Week New York Commercial
Commercial for our new project at IADAS: Internet Week New York (cooler embed vid coming soon)
‹‹ December 18, 2007 ››
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Solution for Too Much Email
This is a great little Internet blip. Over at his newish blog Mahmoud Ahmadinejan – President of the Islamic Republic of Iran – uses a post titled to read or to write to explain that the reason he hasn't been posting much is because he receives so much email from his posts, he has to allocate most of his blogging time to reading all the correspondence from his blog. My favorite part of the post is his apparent solution to his popularity problem:Also some of my trusted students have shortened the long messages for me and have prepared a statistical report regarding all of the messages which I have read and studied those too. God willing, a portion of the overall analysis of the messages and its interesting results will be posted on the blog in the future.
But evidently his faith in statistical reporting isn't that great, as he ends the post with:I would like to use this opportunity and ask those of you who intend to send me messages through blog, to make it as brief as you can. Thank you.
‹‹ December 11, 2007 ››
Much Better Than This
Screen Snap of Rafael Rozendaal's "Much Better Than This"
Last week at our Webby Night in London put on by our good friends at Poke London, I was fortunate to meet Rafael Rozendaal, an Internet artist whose work I've admired for a while. The screenshot above is of Much Better Than This. The piece is a thousand times more sophisticated and ethereal that this snap conveys, so click through for the full experience.
Visit NewRafael.com for more of his work.
‹‹ October 26, 2007 ››
The Spike Toaster
Many of you will know that I have a certain fetish for hotdogs. In fact, thanks to thoughtful birthday present from Nate I am even the proud owner of a Hot Dog Diggity Dogger.
(left) Spike Toaster / (right) Hot Dog Diggity Dogger
But last night I encountered the holy grail of hotdog - the spike toaster - at Dogmatic, a portable gourmet hot dog stand which spends most of its time across from Magnolia at the Bleeker Street playground. What you do see is you plunge your baguette directly over the spike which creates the perfectly toasted pocket for the hotdog.
When I first saw that Dogmatic was using a baguette for bread I was skeptical. (Usually it is the sign of a bad hotdog, frankly), but it turned out to be amazing.
But at nearly $1000, it'll probably be some time before the spike toaster sits next the diggity dogger on my counter.
More HotDog Readings:
- Dogmatic's "Corporate" Video
- Review of Dogmatic at psfk.com
- Miriam Webster's Definition of a HotDog (for those of you who think sausages aren't hotdogs)
‹‹ October 19, 2007 ››
(Analog?) Locative Love Art
Human Sandwich Board Sign, On Street, Lower East Side, NYC
I love that the stencil says MIM even though he calls her Mimi
‹‹ September 24, 2007 ››
UN Watches Ahmadinejad's Speech
Outside UN cafeteria
The media room emptied here at the UN just a bit ago, as everyone headed outside the cafeteria one floor up and gathered around a small TV with closed caption to watch CNN's live coverage of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University.
‹‹ September 24, 2007 ››
"Tipping Point" for climate change
(left) In UN Press Conference Room #1 / (right) at Achim Steiner Press Briefing
I just attended a briefing with Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Program. Mr. Steiner was impressive as he negotiated thorny questions about the US's perceived indifference to this UN session. (In fact, President Bush has scheduled what some call a competitive if not subversive meeting: Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and Climate Change)
But one of comments that struck me was Mr. Steiner's claim that "climate change has reached a tipping point; it is no longer the sole preoccupation of scientists." Mr. Steiner argued that Climate Change is now seen as a major challenge by everyone - and that this meeting with more than 160+ countries participating was a symbol of that evolution.
Indeed, the energy here is extremely positive, with literally dozens of heads of state – from Sarkozy to President Wade of Senegal – standing up and encouraging the world to tackle the problem. But in the end one gets the sense that they are all here to encourage a few distinct countries - China, the US and India – to wholeheartedly commit to this process.
‹‹ September 24, 2007 ››
Live from United Nations
Very excited to report that I am here at the UN today for the UN Special Session on Climate Change credentialed as Press. For the past few weeks we've (IADAS & Webbys) have been working with the UN Foundation in a consulting capacity on something I think is pretty historic: leading online bloggers are, for the first time, covering a major United Nations meeting here today at the UN in NYC. And we've assembled a fantastic group of climage change focused bloggers:
They are :
Brian Beutler, Gristmill.Grist.com; Jasmin Chua, UN Dispatch; Blake Hounshell, Foreign Policy; Joel Johnson, BoingBoing Gadgets; Ezra Klein, Prospect.org; Sameer Lalwani, The Washington Note; Juliana Rotich, Global Voices Online; Kate Sheppard, Stop Global Warming; Kay Steiger, Campus Progress.org; and Matthew Yglesias,
You can read more about it via the UN Foundation's Press Release on Blogger day
More to come... Update: UN Dispatch Live from the UN has all the reports centralized on their site.‹‹ December 15, 2006 ››
Waste More Want More ?
That seems to be a basic trend of Americana as identified by the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States and outlined in today's New York Times Article Who American's Are and What They Do.
Some interesting tidbits:* 92 Million Americans bought a product online last year
* Americans used the Internet on average 183 hours last year -- surprisingly low from my perspective
* Americans create on average 4.4 lbs of garbage a day, each!
But this quote seemed odd:
The distinctive effect of technology has been to enable us to get entertainment and information while remaining entirely alone,” Mr. Putnam [a public policy professor at Harvard] said. “That is from many points of view very efficient. I also think it’s fundamentally bad because the lack of social contact, the social isolation means that we don’t share information and values and outlook that we should.”
Perhaps he's attempting to characterize TV or just over generalizing, but from my pespective one of the great things about the 'Net is that it has changed the way we gather and view information -- whether its sharing links with friends or participating in massive group filtering on sites such as Metafilter or Digg from a private experience to something very social.