I have been posting links and general things I'm liking over on Twitter, so let's say for now, we're on a brief extended hiatus here at davidmichel.com and until further notice you can Find me on Twitter at @dmdlikes

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.‎

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.

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.

(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)
  
  ]]> +00:00 http://www.davidmichel.com/archives/000127.html Human Sandwich Board Sign, On Street, Lower East Side, NYC I love that the stencil says MIM even though... 127@http://www.davidmichel.com/
  Human Sandwich Board Sign, On Street, Lower East Side, NYC

  I love that the stencil says MIM even though he calls her Mimi
  

  ]]> +00:00 http://www.davidmichel.com/archives/000126.html Outside UN cafeteria The media room emptied here at the UN just a bit ago, as everyone headed outside... 126@http://www.davidmichel.com/
  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.

  Google News has the roundup on the speech

  ]]> +00:00 http://www.davidmichel.com/archives/000125.html (left) In UN Press Conference Room #1 / (right) at Achim Steiner Press Briefing I just attended a briefing... 125@http://www.davidmichel.com/
  (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.

  
  

  ]]> +00:00 http://www.davidmichel.com/archives/000124.html Very excited to report that I am here at the UN today for the UN Special Session on Climate... 124@http://www.davidmichel.com/ 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. ]]> +00:00 http://www.davidmichel.com/archives/000123.html That seems to be a basic trend of Americana as identified by the Census Bureau’s 2007 Statistical Abstract of the... 123@http://www.davidmichel.com/ 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.
  
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