Category: Technology

It has shiny buttons.

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Will Blog For Food

I love it when people blog and use the photography I post up on flickr. This has got to be one of the best uses of flickr around, and as long as people aren’t posting my silly mug up on posterboards or commercials without my consent I have practically no concern on the matter. Some of my photos have even been on pages supporting political groups that I don’t, but it was clear from the article that the photo was used to set a visual tone rather than to say that the photographer promoted the material.

The latest blog to use one of my photos is Alan Morantz’s Leading Thoughts. In this article he discusses how art can be used to develop leadership skills! Cool! That’s actually one of the reasons for the many photographs up on flickr and blogposts lately. I’m trying hard to learn a certain level of diligence that will hopefully lead to better leadership and organizational skills. I’m also trying to put something creative out there that can be used to enrich the world and bring happiness to others. I’m not good enough to make blogging or photography a full-time business, but someday I might learn some great hidden nugget of wisdom and become a world-renown motivational speaker to twelve-year-olds that will allow me to indulge in supplimenting the task with photography and blogs. Then again, reality tells me I should get back to work – lunch break is over!

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Web 2.0 Culture and the Curse of the Turing Machine

Back at the beginning of 1995 I created a website named “Romantic Gestures”. The purpose was to draw people into a virtual community who wanted to share experiences and ideas with others about all things romantic. In that time I noticed that people are more open about giving personal details on the internet than they were in real life.

People who were only five years old around that time are now 18, and the internet isn’t the primarily-academic-coddle-baby it was back then. It stemmed beyond being a tool into being a full-blown culture. The Web 2.0 craze that took off about four years ago and introduced a level of creativity, open structure and more importantly, virtualized community-style culture. It’s this culture that changed the upcoming generation into something almost unnatural. People began to do everything online. It lacked physical, personal interaction.

Babies require a good deal of coddling. That touch builds a naturally emotional bond to others and forms as a sort of grafting into the world. Without touch, a baby’s will to live wanes and (s)he becomes failure to thrive.

Although online communities and groups are amazing and wonderful, I think they’ve become the backwash of their physical counterparts. People need physical interaction as much as the emotional and intellectual stimulus provided by the internet’s vast array of discussion groups and communities.

The future is in merging the two. Use Flickr to identify people in your area to meet with. Use Blogger to locate others nearby that you can karaoke with. There’s already a somewhat successful meetup.com model that allows people to interact with one another – but their interface and navigation feels stale and cumbersome.

At least the frequent emails from meetup keep me abreast that there is a world out there where people meet – they have faces and feelings and can do amazing things without the internet. There is a sort of sick comfort in doing things alone, though. It’s selfish in a way. But having a spouse and children provides a life-giving feedback that my life is bigger than me and even bigger than the internet.

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The iPhone Crowd

For the technophiles who understand the grunting undertones of the UK’s hit television series “The IT Crowd” and who also happen to understand the grunting undertones of the Tim Allenisms when it comes to modern technology (and who happen to be fortunate enough to own an iPhone) we have a special treat for you today!

The IT Crowd Ringtone.
It’s the free remix track offered by Painting By Numbers trimmed down to fit and converted to be read as an iPhone ringtone. Certainly it would have been nice to keep the full 47 second hum-dinger, but Apple forces some limits on this no matter what the file size.

Originally, I wanted to make a ringtone that would loop nicely – and did, but it didn’t start off where I wanted it to. Besides, who lets their phone ring for more than 30 seconds?

So I opted to just trim out the middle – you get the start and the finish. It’s like a bologna sandwich without the bologna!

The IT Crowd (remix for ringtones).m4r

For those who can play regular mp3s as ringtones, we’ve got you covered:
The IT Crowd remix ringtone.mp3