if i was still in san francisco, the 48 hour film project would be a fun way to no sleep a weekend.

maybe can make it to the Saving the Image: Art After Film Book Launch at the New Museum on thursday (april 22, 2004, 6 - 8pm)

also- http://www.freeafterrebate.info/

via MacMinute

Ben & Jerry's to give away 50,000 iTunes downloads
As part of its annual "Free Cone Day" promotion, Ben & Jerry's is giving away 50,000 free iTunes Music Store downloads. Visitors to Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops across the country and around the world can enjoy a free cup or cone of their favorite flavor on Tuesday, April 27, from noon to 8:00 p.m. Through a partnership with Rock the Vote, adults can register to vote while they are there. The first 50,000 entrants to take an online "Oath to Vote" will receive a special code entitling them to a free song download from the iTunes Music Store. Entrants can also register for a chance to win a sweepstakes with the Grand Prize of an iPod, iMac and a trip to Vermont to spend a day as an honorary Ben & Jerry's Flavor Guru to create a batch of their own personal flavor

- idle time's holding pattern screen saver, cycles though images from an airplane window (osx/pc, via wired mag's the cult of the mac blog
- sadly, refresh: the art of the screen saver is no longer online. however, paul pfieffer's EXCELLENT john 3:16 screen saver is still available through the race in digital space conference web site. (os9/pc)
- lindkvist's pong screen saver (osx)

also-
the best icons ever, pixelgirlpresents.com

Just bought a Canon G5. It should get here sometime next week I think, after which, I will stop motion animation the summer away.
I sold my Nikon 4500 to a friend. He's doing a research project titled “Reconstructing Readers through a Comparative Analysis of Euclid's 1482 Elements of Geometry”. So far he's taken classes in intensive Latin and the history of the book. This summer he'll take a course in 15th century handwriting and learn how to determine the nationality/social ranking/etc. of note writers... then travel to England to analyze (and take images of) marginal notations in copies of the first printed edition of Euclid's Elements of Geometry. Crazy.

• Text Me Home Dome - A tent with a built-in phone receiver and phone number. A light glows and the tent flashes orange when you send a special text message. I think not so much inspired by losing your camp site in the woods, as losing your tent in a sea of tents at music festivals or Burningman type events. (via Gizmodo)
• Lolita - D. Swarovski & Co. commissioned this chandelier for Milan Design Week. It consists of strings of LEDs hanging inside crystals cylinders. The LEDs display text messages as a sort of decadent ticker tape message board. (Reuters article, via Cool Hunting)

Also-
There's SMS fun at the bottom of this old post.

• SubEthaEdit 2.0 - collaborative text editing, you haven't really worked on a webpage with someone until you've subethaedited a doc with them over a network. with color coding.
• iStopMotion - time lapse and stop motion animation, offers onion skinning, speech recognition (go! next! take picture!), edit in external app... $ 39.95, 7 day free demo
• FrameThief - more stop frame animation software w/ audio-sync, lightbox (onion skinning), sketch tool... $35 educational, 30 day shareware

I'm all moved in! The new apartment is lovely. am not unpacked though.

Leah and Beth might come down to NYC for Cabinet Magazine's Issue 13 release party. (June 4, 7-10PM @ White Box, 525 West 26th St.)
Also looking forward to the opening reception of Convergence: The Collision of Physical and Virtual Space in Digital Art (June 3, 6-9PM @ 556 West 22nd Street)

.....

a couple links via the excellent textually.org

• BugMeNot.com compiles user and password names (donated, not stolen) "to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times)."
• Dodgeball.com is location-based social networking software for mobile phones. You text message dodgeball your location (e.g. a bar), and the site tells all your friends where you are, as well as any friends-of-friends within a ten block radius. You'll get a text message back containing a roster of potential buddies (located within the aforementioned ten blocks) to meet up with and their pictures if your camera supports it.
• Wave Messaging - it was only a matter of time before this happened. their blog did a better job than i could have compiling lots o links on it

fyi: the best place to find constant information devoted to cell phones and mobile content
textually.org focuses on text messaging applications
ringtonia.com is all about the buzz and the business of ringtones
picturephoning.com takes a look at a new world where picture and video phones become ubiquitious

Submedia Asia is placing zoetrope subway ads in Tokyo. (via Cult of Mac) Subway cars provide motion (at a predictable speed) past series of still images - turning subway tunnels into spatial distributions of animated ads, one frame placed after another. The tag on their web site says "Put your brand in front of millions of captive passengers." haha. Reminds me of paying money to go to the movie theater and sit though donation solicitations, commercials, and trailers.

Another article available here on NY-based Submedia and Canada-based Sidetrack Technologies.

I recall Rachel mentioning another (New York) artist working with a similar subject. Must... find... link.

P.S.
Wet Hot American Summer debuts on Comedy Central tonight, June 7, at 7:30pm. The Stella newsletter says "Watch it for clever TV editing and new music accompanying Coop's big speech!"

Encore showings: Tuesday, June 8 at 3pm; Saturday, June 12 at 11pm and Sunday, June 13 at 8pm.

• Statistical data of the colloquial use of Pop vs. Soda. mmm....interactive maps.
• A detailed map of the Simpson's Springfield, USA can be found here. Its even been incorprated into the Harvard Map Collection of the Harvard College Library. Favorite text from web site: "Initially the content was derived from the City Profile and Springfield Vacation pages at The Simpsons Archive, but it has since been augmented by numerous viewings of most episodes of The Simpsons by the authors."

(via GeekPress)

DIY Underwater Camera Housing. Quite inexpensive and soon to be as popular as build your own steadycam, no doubt. Watch out for leaks though, Spike Jonze ruined a camera that way. But I think he just tried using a regular plastic bag. No gasket or fancy stuff. There's more projects at Geek DIY, such as build your own 3D scanner. (via Gizmodo)

Wrist Fashion features great timepiece designs. Timetable and Dali Clock by Normal are my two favorites.

I finally got to see the infamous Bunny Sutra watch in person on a visit to Times Square. It's old news, but still a great watch. Too bad it's $55.

I love with my new Gmail account. The invite only technique was a savvy move on Google's part (as with Orkut).
One of the more interesting "win a Gmail account" contests is running at The Design Weblog - guess what font they've posted, get an account. Geeky and wonderful. If you're not into fonts, there's always Gmail swap.

The Canon XL2 has been released!! Arg!~ More prosumer equipment I can't quite afford yet. Maybe now I can get a discounted XL1S. Delicious details? 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios, variable (60i/30p/24p) frame rates (gotta love the progressive, non-interlaced capability), interchangeable lens (w/ new 20x optical zoom lens), and the same old 3CCD hot image quality.

In other news, the new line of Apple G5s are finally shipping. Which means, someday soon I will have a dual 2.5ghz machine to rescue my trusty powerbook from thirty-six hour after effects renders and such. AND the new 20" and 23" aluminum monitors are shipping as well. $1,299 vs. sleek new display. This shouldn't be a hard decision, but the Cinema line somehow justifies spending over a grand on a monitor...arg.

Upgrade time!

Cycling '74 has released a major upgrade to Max/MSP. Most intriguing - integration of Java and Javascript into Max/MSP. Also-

• A complete multi-leveled preset management system for multi-layered patches.
• MSP objects implementing the award-winning OctiMax compression and limiting technology.
• Several new objects providing spectral display, alteration and pitch-shifting.
• ReWire support as both Client and Host (including MIDI I/O).

$100 to upgrade, less if you're a student.

Two delights via new blog-to-visit-very-often sensoryimpact.com

• An IDEA Award (Industrial Design Excellence Awards) winning design for a circular printer by Samsung. Brilliant!! Shove your vertical scanner aside in favor of this sexy portable printer, which uses rotational motion instead of the usual linear movement. Also check out the IDEA winning UnBathroom.
• Ivan Markovic creates "Lighting Couture". My favorite is Light Rain, an installation at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel.

The recent iPod updates/price drops have convinced me to sell my trusty first generation 5gb iPod on eBay. It's still working (battery life is pretty good on a full charge) but it sometimes fails to mount as an external drive. definite warning sign. The fourth generation pod's long battery life and $100 drop is the push i needed to go for a 40gig upgrade....whoohooo.

Also-
This fall, 1,800 iPods will be given to incoming Duke University freshman pre-loaded with Duke-related content and setup for students to download supplementary university material in addition to being able to play music. Take home laptops I've heard of, though only in a elementary/middle/high school setting, but IPODS??? ... IPODS???
(via Mac Rumors)

Declare Yourself has a designer run of t-shirts encouraging people to vote. My favorite is the Isaac Mizrahi v-neck, which uses the collar as the 'V' in VOTE. (via TimeOut NY)

DIY Bottle Cap Tripod

Also from Cool Hunting,

Bay Area Free WiFi has an iPod ready guide called wiPod that lists free hot spots all around the SF Bay Area. Can't wait for the NYC equivalent. nycwireless, please?

Apple announced the new iMac G5 at the Apple Expo Paris. Ranging from 1.6 to 1.8 ghz, i can't believe they fit the speed of the old PowerMac G5s into something the size of a LCD screen. My only concern is the side loading slot drives. Haven't there been problems with those?

In other news, Tekserve fixed my computer!! Hooray! The logic board needed replacing, and the whole things was covered by AppleCare. An utter contradiction to what the Apple Store "Genius" told me two weeks ago. Mmm.... Apple Store story will come later. Wounds still too raw.

I'm going through all my old notes that were marked as "drafts" and just... posting them.

07/01/04 - Dartmouth News - Investigating digital images
Farid and his students have built a statistical model that captures the mathematical regularities inherent in natural images. Because these statistics fundamentally change when images are altered, the model can be used to detect digital tampering. "there are underlying statistics and regularities in naturally occurring images."

The article is a bit dumbed down, wish there was more meaty techy dorky goodness. but fascinating nonetheless. wouldn't mind if that had been my senior thesis.... though will be interesting to see how reliable the algorithm is.

These are a bit old. Links sent to/from Leah.

Online:
Transmaterial is a catalog of materials, products and processes that are "redefining our physical environment." The whole thing is available as a free 187 page PDF. Makes you wish you had a laserjet printer. Material types include multidimensional, repurposed, recombinant, and intelligent. Among them is Superblack, the blackest black in the world (also seen at Cabinet Magazine's Chromophlia event).

Offline:
Materials Monthly is a subscription-based publication that sends you innovative material samples and fetishy product sheets with graphics, material descriptions, technical/performance specifications, manufacturing processes, etc. It's $179 for ten issues, but you can get a free sample of Reversacol, a plastic that changes color when exposed to light, by filling out a form on their website.

Free goodie: geocoder.us will give you the latitude/longitude for any location in the US.

Also-

Nice retro-future images up at City of Tomorrow. Too bad about those porn banners at the bottom. (via overmorgen.com) Similar sources for sample repository up at Tick Tock Toys

Have seen things like this before. But Tom's Harware gives you a step by step breakdown and a video of the whole process. If you're feeling adventurous and have $300 to spare, build your own XGA projector. (via Jesse)

Ideation Tak Pushpins. Dual-prong design gives better stability. Hot. Six for $4.98.

Muji cardoard speakers. 3.25h x 3.5w x 3.25"l. Easy to assiemble and pack flat for shipping (in sexy clear plastic pouch). Available at momastore.org for $42.

(via Metropolis)

The title is taken from one of the lectures that will be presented at the one-day symposium "Global Fantasies: Godzilla in World Cultures." The event will be held on December 4th, 2004, from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM, in Altschul Auditorium (Room 417, International Affairs Building, Amsterdam Avenue & 118th Street) on the campus of Columbia University. A wide range of speakers, representing diverse academic disciplines and institutions, will discuss the larger cultural and historical significance of the Godzilla phenomenon from the 1950s through the present day.

Admission Free
www.columbia.edu

Acclaim Entertainment Bankruptcy Auction
Tuesday, December 7, 2004 @ 10:30 a.m.

Tons of hot furniture, video equipment and electronics, all up for bid. If I can only get over to Long Island, maybe I can finally score a Herman Miller chair.

(via Jesse)

Two Valentine's Day quickies -

Print out your own "I Choo Choo Choose You" and "Let’s BEE Friends" cards of Simpson's fame. Courtesy of deconcept.com's Geoff Stearns

Saucy Valentine's Day Cards by Jason Sho Green of youyesyou.net Available on super sexy heavy kraft cardstock with matching envelope. $2.50 each, $20 for a set of 10, $35 for the entire set of 20.

LaCie's Clearance Corner has refurbished 19 inch Electron Blue IV monitors for $199 and the delicious (also refurbished) 22 inch Electron Blue IVs for $399. wow.

Colorization Using Optimization. wow. (via handshake)

I was pretty psyched when Gizmodo listed a Hello Kitty Fender (right below Playboy's new 'bodcasts'). BUT. EVEN BETTER. There's a Badtz Maru Bass!!!! EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

kitty specs - $199 from bananas.com
badtz maru specs - $199 from bananas.com

at nicole's house on the weekend, i was served blooming tea. these crazy teas are hand sewn (so vendors say) into compact balls of different shapes which 'bloom' in water. the leaves flavor your drink while turning into a sea anemone at the bottom of your glass/tea pot. one ball gives about 7 cups of tea. we tried jasmine and lily flavors. tasty and cool looking/creepy.

i tried to find more information - they show up under all kinds of names - display teas, artisian flower balls, flower burst tea, and 1000 day flower tea. ambrosia teas has the best selection i could find, though adagio and tenren are about a dollar each. best bet is probably chinatown though (always).

my guess is, it's the next bubble tea craze. it's not on wikipedia yet, but it's already on flickr (more). glass and acrylic tea pots will sell tons. asian people love stuff in their water.

I'm anxiously reading all the new details on Apple's iPhone via macrumors (as well as the overshadowed iTV).
Meanwhile, did anyone try calling this number?

Mechanical Music Box Set. Make your own music box melodies with this mechanical music box set. Comes with hand-cranked music box, one pre-punched music strip that plays the "Happy Birthday" song, 3 unpunched strips (48cm), a hole punch, and instruction manual to have you creating your own music box melody in minutes. 3" long x 1" wide.

Also available at Amazon.

So far, WiiSports has held up pretty strong against WiiGhostbusting (Elebits) and WiiSurgery (Trauma Center: Second Opinion). I think Rayman Raving Rabbits will be a strong contender for WiiFavorite, what with the flying plunger guns and dancing rabbits... but what I'm really waiting for is Cooking Mama: Cook Off for Nintendo Wii. It's a cooking themed (one or two player) video game, in which you use your wii-mote to chop, grate, slice, stir, and roll (i.e. hold wii-mote upright to mash potatoes, lengthwise to fry in a pan, etc.).

Check out the amazing video preview at Food for Design.

Create 55 real world dishes from 10 different nations: Japan, America, France, India, Mexico, England, China, Spain, Germany and Italy. You can even make desserts like cream puffs and pudding too! From hot dogs to pan fried crab to bouillabaisse, Cook Off challenges you to make it all!

Pre-order for $49.99 at Amazon.

via Serious Eats (Congrats Lia on the new blogjob!)

P.S. Unfortunately, the Bob Ross 'Joy of Painting' Wii game is on hold indefinetely. Sad.