entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity

• Occam’s razor, by William of Ockham

So I downloaded my first DRM-free album from iTunes – The Beastie Boys, The Mix-Up. The album is entirely instrumental jams – the kind of tracks you’d be familiar with if you have Ill Communication, The In Sound From Way Out!, or Hello Nasty. The album is great and it shows that The Beastie Boys are talented musicians off the mic.
Once I got the album, I decided to check out their website. On their website I discovered that they have a Flickr album:

I’m been using Dreamhost for my site hosting, as well as my clients, for over 5 years now. The problem is, in the last year or so, our relationship has been getting strained. Dreamhost doesn’t give me the kind of attention and uptime I need. My sites are down or slow all the time.
In the afternoon today, if you went to this site, you would get a message saying “bad_httpd_conf”.
So I Googled bad_httpd_conf.
The first 4 entries were from Dreamhost.
That’s not a good sign.
I know I need a dedicated box for my sites. Now I just need to get the budget to afford one. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know at michael [at] thecombustionchamber [dot] com

Microformats: Social Network Portability (via Zeldman)

Why does every single social network community site make you:

• re-enter all your personal profile info (name, email, birthday, URL etc.)?
• re-add all your friends?

In addition, why do you have to:

• re-turn off notifications?
• re-specify privacy preferences?
• re-block people you don’t want to interact with?

These are great questions. It makes me this of this great parody site, Useless Account.

Bubble 2.0 Coming Soon, By John C. Dvorak (I kinda think of him like the Bill O’Reilly of tech) (via Slashdot.org)

The current bubble, already called Bubble 2.0 to mock the Web 2.0 moniker, is harder to pin down insofar as a primary destructive theme is concerned. A number of unique initiatives, however, are in play here. Let’s look at a few of the top ideas floating the new bubble.

Even kookie people you can learn from, and Dvorak is no exception. What he talks about has some bits of truth to it. Ever since around September of 2006, I’ve been thinking, “Damn, there’s a hell of a lot of start-ups launching.” This could be result of reading sites like TechCrunch and Mashable, but I still had this sense, and I still do. There’s been a lot of venture capital money floating around this last few years, and when I say a lot I mean billions.
I’m not sure that there’s a Bubble 2.0 so much as there’s a lot a lot of little farts in the bathtub we call the Internet. I’ve seen a lot of services that all piggy-back on YouTube. If they go under, no one will give a shit because they don’t employ many people. API’s have effectly made it easy for anyone to provide a service without too much heavy lifting. Yelp.com is a perfect example of a great mashup service that I love, but relies on the Google Maps API to make their site effective.
I think what we are seeing already isn’t so much a Bubble popping as much as we’re seeing air being redistributing from bubble to bubble. Social networking won’t be going away anytime soon, but users are fickle, and if they find out that their friends think MySpace is no good, and that Facebook is the place to be, then they will not hesitate to move.
If something happens to Google, that will be a Hydrogen-filled Zeppelin the size of California crashing to the ground. Other than that happening, there’s no bubbles that will be popping.
The old video and music industries are dying which is one of the reasons why we’re seeing so many efforts to reinvent these media online. A lot of these video start-ups HAVE to fail. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, everyone wants to make an online music store, everyone wants a video sharing site. They can’t all survive.
The key thing to understand is old music and tv media are going to keep plugging away at New Media until they get something that makes them money (read: That people like to use).

BumpTop
I’m on the fence on this product. There’s a certain usefulness you get when you take real world office supplies and tools and you abstract them into a Graphical User Interface.
Great GUI’s take the best aspects of these objects and throws away the rest. Manila folders on your desk become simple icons with an arrow next to them, letting you ‘open’ the folder and see a nice clean list of files in that folder.
BumpTop seems to be moving back towards a real desktop, complete with messiness. I know what you’re going to say – people who have messy desks will inevitably have messy computer desktops. True – but BumpTop doesn’t seem to be helping the situation (They even refer to some things in the demo below as “piles”).
Does anyone else feel me on this?
Check the video below. Remember to ask yourself, Do I think this is just cool, or do I really seeing this as something useful?

Flickr photo set: Commute 7.31.07

The New Web War – “Inside Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun’s fight to power the next wave of rich Internet applications.”
I acknowledge the Robert Scoble is a prominent (albeit annoying), technology blogger. He seems enthusiastic about his field and he writes consistently and thoroughly on his site, Scobleizer.
But what the hell is he talking about in his new article for Fast Company?
He says there is a Web War between the rich internet applications of Adobe, Microsoft and IBM. That’s like saying there’s an digital music player “war” between the iPod (100 million sold, April 2007), the Zune (1 million sold, July 2007) and the Samsung YH-925GS (the what?).
Let’s get this straight. There is no RIA war right now. Let’s please drop the the hyperbole. Of three technologies mentioned in the article, there is one leading RIA contender right now and that is Adobe Flash. I’m not going to even acknowledge Microsoft Silverlight or IBM JavaFX because, number one – there’s no usage/penetration statistics on either Silverlight or JavaFX. Number two – once Silverlight and JavaFX start getting implemented and picked up by users, then we can call it a competition, not a war.

The Real Issue

What people should really be thinking about is how companies like Google and Adobe are changing the paradigm of software deployment and usage by making them web-based RIA’s and how entrenched leaders like Microsoft are going to respond when it won’t matter whether you’re on a Mac, PC or Linux computer.

Most of the time on Daily Exhaust, I like to post meaningful information, links and design I find inspiring. Other times I feel the need to clarify bullshit I hear in the news. I also love photography, so I’ll link to photographs I took or photos taken by other talented photographers.
This post is none of the above. This has to do with one of the cute t-shirt models for Snorg Tees. Doing a quick Google search on her revealed I’m a little late to this crush on Alice (that’s her name). It looks like shelflifegraphics.com has made Alice Miss Snorg Universe. I’m not going to argue.
If she would stop popping up all over the Internet in banner ads I wouldn’t have this crush.
Sue me, I’m a guy.

Windows Vista has ruined Alt-Tab (via Design Feed)- Well, look at that. They sure have!
What the hell is that? It looks like Microsoft smashed together the ALT-TAB function and Exposé from OS X. It’s like breeding a Doberman Pinscher with a Dachshund. Ooof!

Flickr Related Tag Browser – this is sort of an oldie, but I just rediscovered it and realized how awesome it is. It’s an example of using Flash to make an action easier and quicker.
…by the way, I recommend exploring ALL of Felix Turner’s Airtight Interactive, he’s a great example of someone who has a great balance of coding and design skills.
slower.net (via Airtight News) – Wonderful photography.

The New York Times has a great article in this Sunday’s paper about urban exploration, Children of Darkness. Seeing photos of decaying historic artifacts and hidden landmarks reminds you of the layered history of New York. We don’t have any Stone Henge’s, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a fascinating, layered story beneath the surface of the five boroughs.

JACOB RIIS, Photo of Bandit’s Roost in Manhattan’s Five Points, 1888

I was never interested in history, of any type, until a few years ago, after seeing Martin Scorcese’s film, Gangs of New York. My interest stemmed from the fact that my father is from Queens, NY and his father’s family came to the United States from Ireland at the turn of the 19th century. I remember walking out of the movie theatre on 11th Street and 3rd Avenue, realized all that had taken place on this very ground over 100 years ago. I literally got chills.
Since then, I’ve come to thoroughly enjoy history. Though learning about New York’s past, I’ve obviously learned more about the history of all sorts of other countries, filling in the Big Picture better in my brain. It’s all connected.
I recently picked up The Five Points, by Tyler Anbinder, which is great as well as New York, Then and Now, by Edward B. Watson.

I dropped my car off at my parents house in New Jersey yesterday, and took the train back in. Most of the photos I shot lomo-style, from the hip, guesstimating good shots and hoping for the best. Unexpecting shots are always the best.
The complete set: In Transit 7.27.2007

Pretty Afro, Herald Square, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

man in transit, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

no downtime, originally uploaded by combustionchamber.

These lamps are from another world. You want to talk about design? Suck on these works of genius by Campbell Levy Designs. Seeing car parts in this context is both beautiful and alien at the same time. It makes me think of Picasso’s Tete de Toro (Bull’s Head), or Baboon & Young.

I think Campbell Levy should send me a sample of one of these lamps.

Hell, I AM The Combustion Chamber.

Campbell Levy Designs

PICASSO, Tete de Toro (Bull’s Head), 1943

PICASSO, Baboon & Young, 1951