Buckethead

Buckethead and Claypool tear it up so much in this clip that I didn’t notice all the nasty hippies:

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Advertising, Art

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Burn Your Bras

Ferrari Enzo, originally uploaded by finlayedridge.

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There’s a reason you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Ferrari with a nose cover or bra, as they’re commonly called.
As useful as a bra is to protect a car’s front end from oncoming debris, it also does something inversely damaging – It masks the beautiful craft and design of the car.
The same goes for all this crap people use to protect their iPhones.
Take it off people! Unless you’re going rock climbing, your iPhone doesn’t need all that protection. It’s not the delicate flower you think it is. It can handle everyday use. I know mine can.
Putting a bra on an iPhone is the equivalent of when I was a kid and my mom made me put on a friggin’ winter coat on top of my awesome Chewbacca costume.
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Technology

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il magnifico

A few weekends ago, I was wandering around my old neighborhood in the East Village, shooting photos. When I got to Thompkins Square Park, I was curious to see if there was still a free wifi hotspot in it.
I’m not sure I found the park’s hotspot, but I did find a bunch of others.
I love the personalization people give their networks these days. It’s like another family member.
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Technology

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Keep it Like A Secret

Jory has a funny post over at Analogue about how Microsoft is going to share some of its secrets.
So, what secrets …exactly …is Microsoft going to share with us?
Maybe the secret of how to release an operating system patch for Vista that actually causes more problems than fixes old ones?
Also on that note, I need to know the secret of getting vendors to offer downgrade programs from Vista to XP.
Or maybe Gates can explain to us the art of a botched hostile takeover of Yahoo. At this point, I think he should be more focused on stepping down this July than helping Ballmer botch Microsoft anymore.
I’d also like to hear all the secrets of the wonderful Zune.
Microsoft loves to announce things that aren’t done yet. They did this last year when they announced their enormous Surface table. I got an idea! In an age of increasingly portable electronics and mobile applications, let’s launch a big touchscreen table. Yeah! Now they’re announcing that they’re going to share secrets. Just do it.
Notice how this behavior contrasts with that of Apple. Apple has no problem letting us know that they have a lot of secrets and they have no intention of sharing them until they take the shape of a finished product. Hell, they kept teams separated within the iPhone project to ensure secrecy.
Microsoft, please keep it like a secret. I don’t want to know.

*entry title taken from one of my favorite albums by Built to Spill.

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Technology

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Links for Today 02.21.2008

Tip: Prevent iPhoto from opening when you plug in your iPhone – Wow. Thank you 37Signals, this has been driving me crazy as well. I haven’t tried this yet, but I hope it works. Unlike my Canon Rebel, I actually like to keep my photos on my iPhone to share and show people (I also liked keeping photos on my Treo before it too).

Blogs can kill brands – I’m not sure blogs can kill brands, but the the good ones most certainly have a lot of influence. I understand why Eric Karjaluoto gave it that title, it’s much more effective than Blogs Have A Lot of Influence Over Brands.

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Links

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WTF, InDesign?

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Hey InDesign! I need you to take your CMYK ass and go over and talk to your RGB step-cousin Flash, and get some of his tools.
Specifically, the ones that space evenly vertically and horizontally.

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Technology

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R.I.P. Palm Treo, 2005-2008

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Last month marked the retirement of my Palm Treo 650. This phone, combined with my Treo 600 before it, lasted me for over 3 years – and it did it’s job very well. Its top selling point for me was the Hot Sync ability. The fact that if I ever lost or broke my phone, I could just sync my new phone with my computer and all my contacts would be back. In fact, the information on my Treo(s) was actually legacy information from my Samsung SPH-300 (Palm OS) and my Palm Vx before it. So you can see, syncing is very important for me. The idea of having to re-enter info into a phone annoys me to no end.

In January of 2007, I was almost ready to renew my contract with Cingular and get a new Treo 680 – but then Apple dropped the iPhone and that changed the whole game. Suddenly the Treo looked dated. Ok, fine, most mobile phones still look dated, but before the iPhone, the Treo had no foil, nothing innovative and modern to contrast its dated operating system. Looking at the Palm Treo now next to the iPhone is like looking at the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System next to a Playstation 3.

…and like the NES, I still love my Treo, but it’s day has passed. I might occasionally pick it up to look nostalgically at the antiquated OS.

…or to play Dope Wars.

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Art, Technology

Links for Today 02.15.2008

I started out the day thinking I didn’t have anything I wanted to post. Now its just the opposite.
Keepin’ it Tween
Flash is Not a Stepping Stone! (thanks Len) – I’m one of these people who has started to feel like I wasn’t keeping up enough with the technical side of flash (even though I’m not a developer). Hearing this from one of the top guys in Flash (and who was hired by Adobe last year) is reassuring.
I think the bottom line is, does your Flash site work? Is it bug free? Does it run quickly?
Happily Never After?
Flash on iPhone Political Calculus – Gruber brings up some great points on why we might not see Flash on the IPhone. I have some friends who disagree.
There’s a lot of grey lines in technology these days. Not every company is strictly software or strictly hardware. Apple is a great example. Technically they are a hardware company – since that is where their money comes from, but if you take away their amazing software – you’ve just got a pretty shell.
Quicktime is an integral part of Apple, especially with online video becoming increasingly popular and as Gruber notes, I don’t see Apple ceding control of video to Flash.
For me, it comes down to the fact that if Flash never got implemented on my iPhone – I don’t think it would phase me in the least. I’m saying this as someone who has made a career from Flash. I’ve been asking myself what would Flash look like on the iPhone? What would sites look like?
With Apple releasing the SDK for iPhone development later this month, there won’t be any need for Flex applications as developers will have access to core aspects of the operating system (pardon my lack of a correct technical lexicon).

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Technology

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A Lot

I can’t think of much to say right now.
I can say there’s a lot of great things happening where I work, go check out the Schematic blog – InsideTheBox.

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Technology

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Be Careful What You Say

Apple haters love to screw themselves with outrageous predictions and claims.
This clip makes me smile, I believe it was shot in ’07, right around the time Apple either announced the iPhone or launched it, I’m not quite sure:

Most expensive phone ever in the marketplace? Ha! I know people who paid more for their Razr’s when they first came out. Hell, I paid over $300 for my Nokia 8290 back in the day when it was a “hot” phone.

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Uncategorized

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Bush League Flowers

I don’t like talking shit about companies, but when they mess up too many times, I have to say something.
For the second year in a row, ProFlowers has dropped the ball and has not delivered my order on time. In this case, when I got the email telling me my order had shipped, I noticed that it had been delivered to FT Worth, TX instead of Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Not good ProFlowers. You just lost a customer.
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Technology

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The Sacred Space of the Logo

Mashable.com has an article on the various websites that have changed their logos to a Valentine’s day theme.
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At first, I was inclined to credit (or blame) Google for establishing the precedent of changing your company logo for different occasions and events.
…but I thought about it again I realized this wasn’t true. Does anyone remember Paul Rand’s playful freestyle-mixup of the IBM logo?
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Not every designer is Paul Rand, so if you decide to start experimenting with your logo, be careful. You can up with something beautifully unexpected or you can end up with a train wreck.

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Uncategorized

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