Three assistive technology projects, “Camera for K,” “Adaptive Phography,” and “In-Bags,” from the Spring 2007 show at ITP, the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU Tisch.

Hello! And welcome to what’s about to be the longest teendrama recap ever. As you may have read this is the summer of 1000 weddings (or 6). Mike.d + Jos a month ago, Sara + Stephen two weekends ago…

Ted Nelson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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MediaShift . Your Take Roundup::Front Porch Forum Fans Adore Hyper-Local Email Reports | PBS
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Towards the Attention Economy: Will Attention Silos Ever Open Up?
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What is a Search Engine - Now and Future
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How to Fix Yahoo!: Building a Yahoo! Platform
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Dust feel that the city is lonely.
So he asked you but you said something he can’t understand.
You just mumbled, I guess.

“People here are busy for success.
Go with the flow, you won’t get lonely.
You get lonely when you are stranger and outsider.”

Can you understand what you are saying?
Shit, I don’t.

Wouldn’t be too hard to do a Google Maps driving directions with Street View sequences for mobile.Lower end cell phones would page through images of major landmarks or intersections.Higher end phones (3G & GPS) would have an animated gif (sequence …

If only it really went that fast….

Google wants to built an open wireless network that would accept any device, cell phone or service.AT&T and Verizon try to protect their interests by lobbying against Google’s proposals.But I think it is a logical step based on the internet model…..

So… I couldn’t resist and got an iPhone - well, got it for a friend of mine in Brazil but obviously I’m testing it already before I take it to him :)The interface itself, as everyone knows, is just the slickest phone interface out there… and it is …

As most of you know, I write/own/manage/edit a little publication with two of my bestest friends over at Resonator Magazine.
Not once but TWICE this summer, VH1’s Best Week Ever has linked back to me. (I write on Resonator as “trixie”… It’s a long story.)

The first time was for my profile of the White [...]

My friend, Erin, pointed me to this idea that the FoodNetwork is just like Soft Core porn. I never really thought of Food as Porn, but this interview makes the case.

The interviewer Barbara Gladston says:
What accounts for The Food Network’s success is not necessarily the quality of the food or the service. What keeps [...]

A few days ago, I finally finished Against the Day. Since June, everywhere I went I’d been toting the enormous hardcover I’d come to affectionately refer to as “the toaster” (this comes from an early New York Times review which I can’t find– the reviewer had yet to finish the book, but was comparing the [...]

Last night I made my may up to Mobile Mondays NYC. The topic of last nights discussion was ‘Beyond Scores. Sports Brands & Their Mobile Game Plan’. Overall the discussion was thought provoking and focused less on sports and more on general industry tre…

I photographed the numbered street signs from 1st to 86th street, and made a simple video loop. I used it at the FUKT VJ gig at Club Asia on June 30th, 2007. I had a lot of fun bouncing the playback direction back and forth, and changing the playback rate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pvN0ZHXrg4

So here’s the thing, I grew up in a family of people who give.

We are huge gift givers.

When I was little and my parents were starting out we got all homemade gifts, my mother would sew us toys (I still have most of them) or we would get homemade paints and play doughs. When my dad started to make more money sometimes he would bring my mom and I flowers- even just a rose or two- and sometimes just because. For birthdays I sometimes got more then I ever hoped for, my parents would go out of their way during holidays- even if it was just one object.

Eventually things progressed to more gifts, we always have given gifts in my family as an expression of love. I grew up never being told I love you- rarely, i think I could count it on one hand until recently, it was almost suggested in material things.

love = what you give a person, how often you give it and the thought you put into it.

I know this sounds twisted and honestly I never realized how objects were replacing affection and love for the majority of my life until I started to earn my own money in the last 10 years and saw the underlying financial objectives.

And I’ve only just recently realized the way I was raised and how its affected me as an adult. I think there is actually a definition of a ‘type’ of love from some self help book and they call us ‘givers’. Embarrassing as this is to admit. Ive only recently started to believe the value of a gift or the time that it took to make it has little weight in the emotional bond or love you have or someone has for you. Even my grandparents who literally were in poverty spent every last dime on their grandchildren at holidays. We were flat out spoiled (and really still are in some cases).

Never has this been more evident for me but on a birthday once.

The guy I was dating and I had been together about three months when my birthday hit- not only did he not give me a gift like I hoped for, he didn’t give me a card or even really acknowledge it was my birthday- he didn’t do or give anything.

I was hurt, really very hurt actually.. maybe even crushed.

I assumed this was his way of somehow stating something obvious in a passive manner; that ‘he is not that into you’ moment in a relationship when you realize hes trying to tell you in a nice way its over. It wasn’t until later that summer when we visited his parents and his birthday roiled around I understood why there was such a lack of … action.

See, its taking me 27 fucking years to realize that we are raised with every.single.word.and.every.single.action. having a different definitions and meanings. As a result it creates chaos often personally for us out of sheer lack of a miss-definiton. For his family holidays and birthdays mean almost nothing- they have little weight. They don’t get each other anything- not even a card. He told me from the time he was in his teens on his parents never celebrated and he was taught holidays and birthdays were only for small children.

I don’t know what the point of any of this really is, except I’ve finally started to get something about other people and myself. Maybe I can’t quite put my finger on it but I know its there, even if only in an abstract manner.

I’m starting to learn not to take things so personally; in most cases what happens isn’t as much about you as you think it is in the moment, we all just have sometime very different definitions for the same words.

The abandoned ducklings raised in a teacup | the Daily Mail

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition show did a little piece on Botanicalls today. They made a genuine effort to be charming so give Steve Inskeep’s piece a nice listen. Thanks again to Josh for lending his voice to the Fiddle Leaf Fig.

The Discovery Channel is running 15 second spots to promote Sharkrunners (the game we built for SharkWeek). I manage to sneak some teendrama regulars into one of the screenshots. (btw - I think this spot airs like 2x per…

I’ve been in beautiful Sunnyvale California this past week at the Yahoo! Design Expo showing Experimental Devices for Performance. The first day of the Expo groups from all over the world showed in the Tent on the Yahoo Sunnyvale Campus. Most of the projects got a nice little write up in Tech Crunch.

Although I didn’t get to present (keynote styles) on the second day along with most of the other participants, the speakers and workshops during the rest of the week more than made up for it.
Among the speakers were Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, Tom Kelly of IDEO, Anthony Dunne of Dunne and Raby, and Bob Brunner of Pentagram.

The most exciting thing I saw at the 4,000 + employeed company, was not on the Sunnyvale Campus, but in the small warehouse in downtown San Francisco. A small handful of people my age proposing “fringier”projects and executing them on Yahoo’s dime.

Artist in residence? Sounds tempting.

Was looking through some stuff left from the trip and found this very interesting list of teas and their effects that I got while I was in Beijing (had to “translate” a little from the strange English)1. Litchi Tea (Black Tea) - stimulates the appetite…

Collected all of my favorite pictures of the trip into one collection

So… back in NY for almost a week now… it is hot and humid here and all very familiar. I think what strikes me the most, comparing the US to Asia (Japan mostly) is that everything is big here - the streets, the sidewalks, the cars, the food portions…

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Smaller Carlos — “Gay” Carlos — passed away this afternoon. Very unexpectedly.

I woke this morning (or, well, early afternoon) and picked him out to play a bit. He looked horrible. Neck very swollen, left eye swollen shut, low face bloated and disfigured. At first I thought Bigger Carlos may have hurt him during another one of their fights or something. I looked the little guy over — very, very bad. Barely moving. Sometimes wheezing loudly. When he walked, he kind of drug himself in circles. He definitely couldn’t eat or drink. Very bad.

Christin called animal clinics until she found an open one. We put him in some bedding in my Treo phone box and cabbed up there (around 5pm). I tried to keep him comfortable, and as damaged as he was, he walked around and spent much of the ride trying to get out of the box. At least he had some energy… So. We were seen almost immediately. One doctor came and probed him a bit — including taking a human-sized stethoscope and using it to listen to his tiny heart. She told us she didn’t know what had caused the swelling and that it looked pretty bad. Another doctor then came to do a closer inspection. She looked him over and looked at the swelling (which seemed, actually, to be going down) and we noted how he seemed to drag two of his legs when he walked and how he kind of limped in circles. Very sad. She said that they didn’t have any exotics specialists on site (hamsters are “exotic?”), but that she would go take a closer look at him while we waited.

The prognosis was not good. She said she thought the swelling had basically sealed off his windpipe and that he had been slowly suffocating. His tongue had already turned blue and I imagine the lack of oxygen had already begun to cause brain damage, hence the locomotive problems. A surgeon could perform a tracheotomy(!) and do more tests to see exactly what was the matter, but that would cost over $1500. I really don’t have $1500 to spare. (Such a weird situation having to balance the life of a creature with mundane fiscal concerns.) Even with this surgery, though, there was no telling the outcome. The doctor suggested putting him to sleep to reduce the suffering, which we agreed with. So I filled out the paperwork and Christin and I said our goodbyes. He seemed calm at that point, curled into a ball.

And that was that.

I wondered to Christin while we got a bite to eat afterwards whether animals like hamsters were aware of their own mortality. We know that there’s some kind of endpoint to life (though what comes after is somewhat open for debate). But does a hamster know it will die? Or does it just instinctually struggle against things it thinks will hurt and towards things that will feel good? Christin didn’t know, but thought that there was a line an animal could cross, a line past which it became clear that struggle no longer had a point. Whether while being eating or being sick or whatever. Past that line, an animal would know that, yes, it was mortal and, yes, it would die.

Hamsters don’t live too long. A couple of years, usually. Small Carlos was born around August 2006, so he had about a year. We enjoyed him. He seemed to be okay with us. His hobbies included running in his wheel, running around on the bed, and fighting sporadically with Big Carlos (and usually losing). He liked his strawberry yogurt treats.

When it comes to reality, it is hard to ignore the real things - money, family, social values – because there are things you need to respect in order to sustain the basic needs in life; to secure a roof over your head, you need a job that pays off your rent. Because no man [...]

This letter I recently received caught me by complete surprise. It basically states that since I’ve been away for so many years, my services will not be needed by the IDF reserves anymore. The army thanks me for my “contribution” and wishes me good luck in my continuing path…
So much closure in this trip to [...]

The iTeddy is a media-playing teddy-bear for kiddies, funded by Dragon’s Den. The bear comes in two options; either as a standard MP3 player, or offering image and movie playback. The entry-level £35 MP3 player offers 128MB of storage and a USB2 connection to drag and drop files on to the player. The [...]

Rumors say Microsoft may consider to bid $6 billion. Interesting articles point to a buyout or ipo.

Former YouTube Chief Financial is now going to be CFO of Facebook (link).

“The company is headed for either a multibillion-dollar buyout or an initial public offering” (link).

Microsoft planning to sell web apps, (link).

Not to mention the rave of third-party apps, (link).

Btw, off the topic, I’m loving Google Reader and hating Google Analytics new interface. The old one was much better. The newer one makes the user click more to get the info that was already there in the older interface. Also, I like LinkedIn’s feature that tells you who has viewed your profile in the past two weeks or so.

… doesn’t mean that there’s nothing going on.

Just saw this notice on an ex-cellphone business. Apparently they duct taped the summons/complaint on the door, so I read some of it. These people were hosting a game of Mahjong and charged the players a fee. Judging by the store’s location and signage, most of the players seemed to be Chinese, except for the undercover officer, who seem to be of Latin descent. Just thought it was strange they would be caught, but then again New York isn’t Vegas.

Great Shanghai restaurant across from this spot if you like spicy hot soup. Sit by the window so you can watch all the people on the tour and Fung Wah buses.

Yesterday I revisited my youth, in some sense anyway, at the Rock The Bells concert at Randall’s Island. I was specifically there to see Wu Tang, but there were many other acts, most notably Mos Def and Talib Kweli, Public…

Here’s a piece of Berlin Wall in Battery Park…

Glimpse of Statue of Liberty…

Sharkrunners is the new game we’ve just launched at area/code for the 20th anniversary of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, after three all-nighters and weeks of plotting.
You play as a shark researcher attempting to observe and document sharks off the California coast. But here’s the twist: in true a/c style, the locations of the [...]

Sharkrunners is the new game we’ve just launched at area/code for the 20th anniversary of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, after three all-nighters and weeks of plotting.

You play as a shark researcher attempting to observe and document sharks off the California coast. But here’s the twist: in true a/c style, the locations of the sharks are based on telemetry data from real sharks in the real world, swimming around with GPS tags on their fins, plotted on the map!

The real world element extends to time - since we’re tracking real sharks, everything has to move in real time, which means it takes days to get places, and your crew can only complete so many dives before they get tired. You set your waypoints on the web site, log off, and get email or text message alerts when your crew has spotted a shark. Then you’ve only got a few hours to log back on and send your crew out to collect some data. But be careful sending them out if they’re over-worked, or they might accidentally provoke the sharks into attacking…

Plus there’s accomplishments to unlock (like collecting all types of data on one shark, or leveling your crew), ports to visit (for fuel and equipment upgrades), and rival players you can compete against. It’s addictive, especially if you’re a data geek.

I’m really proud to be a part of the team that put this game together. There’s so many unique things happening in this game: real-time real-world gameplay, a Flash game that isn’t twitchy, most of your game-time is spent away from the game…it’s quite a lot that’s been done in such a short amount of time. Not to mention the great art direction and the super-human programming prowess that makes the whole thing run.

Play it!

(Yes, my boat is named "Accio Sharks!" These sharks have been the only thing standing between me and finishing Harry Potter, so you’ll excuse me if I try a bit of magic on my sharks.)

(My ID is adamac, if you want to be my rival…)

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Tarball

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i was crusing through the blogumentary of Chuck Olsen and found this awesome post
i was never into christian rock, but this video has changed my ways - for now.
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