WOW. (thanks victor)

I shot the above image on my iPhone on Broadway and Liberty.
Some Amish or Quakers just chillin’ outside the Helmsley Buiding.
Yeah, I know. WTF?
I thought the same thing.
It’s just a itty bit of the craziness that was downtown Manhattan yesterday. Along with the loitering colonial folk (I’m sure they’re good people), were a ton of other oogling tourists and wanderers wasting time and space and making my life a pain in the ass as someone trying to earn a living.
I was there on 9-11-01 people, so I’m allowed to say this: Stay home. Be productive. Contribute in other ways than trying to capture photos and ‘be part of something’.
Us New Yorkers just want to keep moving on. We’re all paying our respects on this anniversary in our own ways.
Being idle observers causing the cops to corral the streets like they were ranchers herding cattle doesn’t help anyone.
M’kay?
Cool. Now beat it.

Probably one of my Top 5 Favorite Classical Pieces – The Goldberg Variations as performed by Glenn Gould.
It starts out slow, but hold out for the 2:55 minute mark for it to kick in.
And don’t be a pussy and jump right to it, play it through and earn it.

Dr. Egon Spengler: There’s something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad”?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

I agree with Jory over Analogue, this is still one of the best commercials of all time:

Apple updated their homepage to reflect the new iPods they just released.
It looks beautiful as usual.
As an interactive designer, there is one (of many) detail that I love:

As if the page wasn’t sexy enough, some hotshot decided to throw in extra PNG-24 alpha sauce.
I love it.

Retro Gaming on real backgrounds (via ffffound)

So there’s been a lot of talk about the new Microsoft ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. The responses have been positive, negative and confused.
I loath Microsoft software, but I still think the ad is funny. Only time will tell what Microsoft’s ad agency, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, have planned for the remainder of the $300 million campaign.
…and whether that campaign will make any dent in altering the public perception of Microsoft.
One detail I found interesting is when the latino family is looking into the store and the mother asks, “Is that the Conquistador?”. We know from the context of the commercial that she’s referring to the shoe Bill is trying on.
Or is she referring to the other Conqueror?

I’m human, so I’m built to notice patterns.
Here’s one I’ve noticed on some products/technologies that either I or people I’m close to use and respect.
MySQL founder quits Sun (Sep 4 2008)
Stewart Butterfield’s bizarre resignation letter to Yahoo (Jun 17 2008)
Delicious founder leaves Yahoo (June 19, 2008)
Microsoft ‘Halo’ creators to be separate company (Oct 5, 2007)
It doesn’t necessarily mean these things are dead or have no future, but it doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy either.

Valleywag: NBC dumps Microsoft Silverlight after Olympics
Of course they did.
It sounds like like they they had some technical difficulties with the video feed through the Flash player, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have had the same problem with the Silverlight player.
Give it up Microsoft, with your Zunes, Vista, Silverlight and Windows Mobile.
You have DERAILED.

Today’s exhaust? All these multi-touch demos we’ve been seeing for the last few years that are comprised mainly of two things:
– Someone enlarging and shrinking images (iPhone styley)
– Someone using both hands to use what seems to be the version of PC Paint I used back in the early 90’s on my Windows 3.x machine
Can we please evolve these demos into something that comes closer to matching the sophistication and processing power we have in computers today? Last I checked this was the year 2008.
We’ve got massive multi-player video games, web applications, Flash, Flex, Air, AJAX, multi-core processing and an iPhone application that simulates beer being poured out of a glass.
Let’s step it up people.

There are a few websites and blogs I enjoy in their entirety because of their fine design and craftsmanship. I type in their URL, and I absorb the site – from the words to the typography to the grid system.

Besides those few exceptions, I get most of my online fixes through Google Reader. I subscribe to RSS feeds of all my favorite sites and periodically check my Reader throughout the day (my wife is always amazed when I come home in the evening and I know about all the news they’re broadcasting). Text & image. No frills. Hey, that’s why it stands for Real Simple Syndication. 🙂

Whenever I come to a story that is intriguing, I’ll star it for later. There are 2 reasons that might star an article. First – it looks interesting, but I don’t have that time at that moment to read the entire entry (if it looks long). Second – the entry is more than just a witty post. It’s important and says some profound things that I might want to read and reread over, and perhaps write about on this site.

Now my Google Reader (who will be playing the part of the Batman in this movie) has a new sidekick – Instapaper (read: Robin).

Instapaper works in two steps. First, when I come to a story I want to read later, I click on the Instapaper ‘Read Later’ link in my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar (think del.icio.us 1.0). Second – I launch the Instapaper application on my iPhone and click ‘Update’ and it caches my pages so that I can read them later. Especially when I don’t have an Internet connection in the subway.

So what Instapaper has done is provide a nice compliment to Google Reader. It won’t replace Reader, it’s just offloaded some of the work of starring items. These stars weren’t even accessible underground anyway without Internet anyway.

If your online consumptions follow a similar pattern as mine, I suggest you look into Instapaper (and an iPhone/iPod Touch if you don’t have one yet). Instapaper Google Reader

Google is forging ahead more and more every day with new innovations. These innovations within the fields of search, parallel computing, information storage, and cloud computing bring with them closer scrutiny by outsiders. Many people today are referring to Google as ‘The New Microsoft”. The new monopoly.

While many of these concerns are well-founded and MS and Google share some similar traits, there’s a key difference between Microsoft and Google that shouldn’t be overlooked. Google has a sense of humor.

Put another way – Google’s founders have a sense of humor, and they put this humor into their technology.

This might seem trivial, but this point becomes extremely important when you get involved with sophisticated technology and technology services for people and companies.

It’s easy to dismiss Google’s products as looking simple, naive and lacking sophistication. Google has been criticized repeatedly about not capitalizing on their minimalist homepage (ironic that they’re the kings of online advertising), but if you’ve ever used any of their products, you find that they’re simple and easy to use.

The most recent example of their sense of humor is the online comic that was ‘accidentally leaked’ (sorry, this was no accident), announcing yet another move into Microsoft territory with their Chrome web browser. I can’t think of any other large corporations who would have the balls to do this.

Fun with pagination:

Fun with deleting spam:

Fun with their logo:

Fun with taking down Microsoft: