Friday, August 15, 2008

I AM IKEA




















"Bryan" translated into an IKEA piece

Shameless viral plug for IKEA...who cares?! Become the furniture you're meant to be.

Swedish Furniture Name Generator

Via: Brandflakes

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

When VJ Means Turntablist


Addictive TV: One Minute Showreel

Call me oldschool, but whenever I saw/heard the phrase video jockey (VJ) I thought of the classic cast on MTV.

Uh, seems I've been living under false pretenses for a good 4 years now. Since 2004, Pioneer has been making DVD turntables (DVJ-1000 released in 2006), and, since 1992, Addictive TV has been making art.

Anyway, Addictive TV is now turning their artistic attention to the '08 Olympics.

Edit, Remix, Rebroadcast
.

Is
there value for libraries to track/collect/catalog digital
derivatives? Certainly the cultural anthropologist would be interested
in a broader narrative. If we do, where does it stop? Of course,
there's also the thorny problem of digital archiving.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Levi Van Beluw



Levi van Veluw, Landscape video (2008)

Levi's "works constitute elemental transfers; modifying the face as object; combining it with other stylistic elements to create a third visual object of great visual impact. The work you see therefore is not a portrait, but an information-rich image of colour, form, texture, and content."

Levi's work is incredible, and it reminds me sometimes of Gottfried Helnwein.

www.levivanveluw.com

Levi's Tape (2006) is currently featured on the July/August issue of Domus (no. 916)

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Adaptive Path/Mozilla's Aurora Browser


Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Here's a nice video about some of the proposed capabilities of the Aurora concept.

The way the user is able to drag a data object from within one Web page to another in order to analyze weather conditions intrigues me. First, the Web page structure, I assume, could not be handled with html. Second, the analysis, I assume, would be handled by a third part app. Finally, it all happens within the browser which made me ponder, "What if all/most of our production software was accessed and used in our browser?"

Spotted by: Ben Kunz

Faber and Faber Meet the Long Tail

Faber and Faber is using Print on Demand (PoD) to resurrect out of print titles. I imagine that, in the future, there will no such thing as out of print.

It will be interesting to see if the publishing houses capitalize on their assets, or, because of the cost to digitize, third parties like Google take up the cause (and part of the profit).

Via: Springwise

Sunday, August 03, 2008

NASA & Web 2.0



NASA is partnering with the Internet Archive to bring photographs, film, and video to the public.  Just as important as bringing all this media to the open Web is making easily adaptable to share.  NASA Images provides options to embed their media into other sites, and they've even created a tool to make presentations using the media (users need to register to access the tool).*

NASA understands that it is no longer acceptable to just throw your information up in a big data dump.  Instead, it must be easy to use, share, and adapt.

*Note: the placement of these options are not quite intuitive.  Instead of creating an overlay over the video--like YouTube, Vimeo, etc., NASA Images uses a toolbar/navigation bar.

Via: Vnunet.com

More Bookmobiles!



This would make such an awesome t-shirt. For more stamp images and the history of the bookmobile, go to The Library History Buff.

Speed Rivals Quality...Somtimes

An interesting article reveals the race for a standard library classification system. Dewey, a protégé of Cutter, worked along side Cutter for several years. After a falling out due to Dewey's fraudulent management of funds, Dewey went on to supply Andrew Carnegie's libraries with his students. Although Cutter's system was more robust, Dewey was able to implant a "good enough" system before Cutter finished.

Dewey was able to capitalize on his speed to production and networking. The scenario is akin to businesses and organizations adopting an "always beta" strategy.

Via: The Republican

Back in the Saddle Again















Time to get back to blogging.