You really can't steal this song

Radiohead's new song, "Harry Patch," pays tribute to last survivor of World War I who passed away recently on July 25, 2009. All proceeds from the song to the Royal British Legion.

Looks like you should think twice before your conscience allows you to run over to MediaFire or Hype Machine, huh?

via Boing Boing

Teaching Young Dogs New Tricks: The past, present and future of collective experiences

It's becoming more and more difficult to say what it means when someone actually "tweets." There are so many different kinds of Twitter users that a single tweet could fall under one of many, many, many categories. Waaaay back in the day—like, a few months ago—it was pretty common to just broadcast stuff about yourself, things along the line of "just got back from a great jog!" or announce to everyone what kind of mustard you just used on your sandwich that day for lunch. Now we've expanded to business promotion, sharing ideas and links, posting photos, broadcasting news and gossip, and telling stories. The best part is that digital resources are now reaching more and more people, and interesting articles, videos, pictures and everything else that people are finding worth talking about are reaching a wider audience. After all, the internet is about connecting users as a single community, not simply connecting each of us to these resources independently of each other.

At one point, sharing links and saving links used to be two different things, but the line is starting to blur. Sharing links entails emailing, IMing and talking about cool or interesting stuff that you find. Saving links is about bookmarking and keeping stuff for later so you can go back to it when you need it. "Social bookmarking" was the first step in blurring this share-save divide. Services like Delicious (www.delicious.com) emerged as way to keep track of how many people bookmark certain links, and the more people that bookmark it, the more popular it becomes, making it easier to find for more people: sharing and saving. It's now totally integrated with Firefox, so saving a bookmark to Delicious is just as easy as saving one to Firefox (and more powerful, since you can get to your links anywhere from the Delicious website).

Then Twitter came along. I knew lots of people who scoffed at the idea of sharing every small, minute detail of their lives with the world. But that was Twitter 1.0, and so much has changed since then. Twitter 1.0 was about what was happening now, in the present. With their redesigned homepage, Twitter has established itself not only as a way to talk about the present, but also what happened in the past and the future. The search feature encourages people to see what others are saying about [insert topic here], but it shows you what's other have already said about [insert topic here].

Fundamentally, Twitter is about the present, and Delicious is about saving stuff for future use. But change is afoot. Delicious—used for saving and discovering links that were bookmarked in the past—just recently rolled out some big changes to their site that use Twitter as a way to show what's popular and being discussed in the present. Since popular links might take a while to bubble to the surface before Delicious users get a chance to bookmark them, Delicious is using tweets to find out "what's hot," hoping that its users will see those popular links and then bookmark them.

That was the beginning of Twitter 2.0. It was a decisive moment because it established Twitter not just as something to keep track of the "right now," but also as a way to find out what we might want to look a later. The fact that Delicious is now using Twitter as way to track "save-worthy" links readjusts the responsibilities of Twitter users and what they're tweeting about: instead of just using Twitter as way to broadast what's happening in the moment, Twitter is becoming a way to save and search moments passed.

So maybe you've finally gotten into the habit of tweeting, you have followers and you're sending updates—whatever they might be—reguarly throughout your day. Good for you, but now's time for that dog to learn some new tricks. You've got to start thinking about what you're saying not just as a way to share what's going on now, but to save what happened for later. There are many services popping up—most notably OneRiot (http://www.oneriot.com/)—that keep track of what's being said on Twitter, and your tweets are providing others with valuable information about where to look for x, y and z, as well as the who-said-what when and the why-this-happened-there.

But why Twitter? Because everyone's doing it?

Yes, but there's more to it. It's always good to have a go-to service, something everyone understands and relies on. Somehow, Twitter has emerged as an accessible tool that lots of people love to use. The beauty of the 140-character limit is that, arguably, it makes sure that you only say what's necessary. The power isn't in the individual tweets themselves, but in the message of them as a single united voice of opinion. By readjusting our perspective on what a single tweet really means, we are helping to build a foundation of information knowledge about culture and experience, about news and people, and lives and lifestyles.

Fine, you can go ahead and protect your updates so no one can see them. But then who really cares what you have to say if you're not contributing to the conversation?

This video needs to be shared

I missed this whenever it was on TV, and wanted to make sure no one else has to go on living without it. It is nuts, and it is also about nuts.

It's an inverse relationship

The number of interesting things I do in the RW (or "are-dubs", as in "real world", duh) seem to be directly proportional to the number of interesting things I do in the blogosphere. It's been a busy few days, and the biggest piece of news was the move. Our lease at our house was up after two months, and it was time for me to move across the street. We're all going to miss that house, it really grew on us, and it's even more sad to not have that place to go back to everyday. Now I get to see another family in the front yard when I'm walking by on my way home, not us straight chillin', playing music and cookin' up a good time.

As for this past weekend, it was a whirlwind tour of 4 different music concerts: Bad Boy Bill @Pacha, Soulive and John Scofield@Prospect Park, Bad Plus minus their drummer plus Paul Motian@Village Vanguard and Dan Deacon/Deerhunter/No Age@Brooklyn Bowl. It was both seriously awesome and seriously exhausting. Key photographs to come, as well as key moments that can't, shouldn't and won't be forgotten.

Also, I'm considering moving this blog over to Tumblr...thoughts, anyone?

Then it came to me...

So I've heard this track at a few clubs now, and this past weekend I asked the DJ what the name and artist were. The guy told me it was "Get Out Of Here" by Gramophone. Wrong.

Inspired by a sudden memory surge, I remembered a few more of the lyrics:

Get out of here
Get me some money too

So I plugged it into Google and found out that the original artist is Peggy Lee, and the sampled track was recorded in 1942. Turns out the artist is Gramophonedzie (the DJ was close).

I immediately IM'ed a friend the lyrics, and within minutes we had the song and were rocking out. Check it out (listen at least until 2:18):

Gramophonedzie – Why Don't You

Breadth vs. Depth: What is the internet DOING to us?

During a recent conversation about online news with my roommate, he commented that he "didn't like what the internet had done to him." In his eyes, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter as more and more information becomes readily available for our consumption. I agree. With so much going on, you can't necessarily afford to read everything thoroughly to cultivate informed opinions and reasoning. It becomes a slippery slope to developing habits of skimming headlines, or using things like the "Quick Read" feature offered by the Huffington Post.

My roommate's comment struck me because it made it sound as if he had been victimized, as if the internet had some ubiquitous influence over his habits that he couldn't escape. And suddenly, I was forced to consider my own information-gathering habits. I have a long list of blogs and news feeds plugged into my Google Reader account, and am constantly adding new interesting or relevant sites. I only check out a few on a daily basis, but I figure I'd rather have these resources available for future reference than to lose them forever.

Despite my attempts to check all of these sites regularly, I have yet to find a healthy balance of breadth and depth. With so many topics (illustration, advertisting, news, gadgetry, photography, humor, friend's blogs), it becomes difficult to decide what to read and when. A quick solution might be to just go through all of it really quickly. Sure, you'll get an idea of what's happening, but you won't really learn anything; ranted, I assume this is how most people digest newspapers and magazines, both in print and online. If your intention is too just get an overview of what's happening, then skimming gets the job done. But then aren't we just growing accustomed to shallow reporting? And if you've got the ability to have hundreds of feeds in your feed-reader, isn't that just getting you to learn less about more?

I see two possible solutions:

[1] Make a short list of sites that you intend to thoroughly read and investigate. Spend time researching lots of different ones and choose based on what seems to be source, rather than a regurgitator/commentator. Come to terms with the fact that you can only spot check others.

[2] Make a schedule. Sounds super OCD, but it could work beautifully. Imagine structuring your week by category so that you don't need to worry about covering everything in a single sitting. Make a list for each day of the week and stick to it. This requires a commitment to regular reading, but would keep you über-informed. In conjunction with [1], you'd learn a hell of a lot.

There's an obvious caveat to this reasoning: the problem is self-inflicted. I've got a broad range of interests that I want to cover, and want to keep up with current trends and news on lots of fronts. It's just something I personally feel compelled to do. Others might not care about breadth, and are satisfied with depth in a select few topics. That's fine..

But with SO MUCH STUFF out there, with SO MANY OPINIONS discussing different angles on SO MANY ISSUES, decisions have to be made. There are so many hours in a day, and only so much time you should be able to sit in front of your computer. As our breadth of knowledge increases, it becomes a challenging—but not impossible—task to see it all with the kind of depth that will help us learn. It's like that epic quote from Spiderman, am I right?!

Choice MagClouds that I would love to get

MagCloud is a pretty cool service. For a flat-rate of $0.20 a page, you can upload a PDF up to 60 pages 100 pages long [they just upgraded their service!]. The company will print out as many copies as you need on glossy, magazine quality paper with sadle-stitch binding and send it back to you. Other people can subscribe and order as many copies as they want, and MagCloud will ship it wherever it has to go (you can mark-up the price and the author keeps the difference after shipping and printing costs). It's another step in the wave of self-publishing, a perfect solution to get a photo-memoir of your vacation or local publication printed and delivered for cheap.

I spent some time browsing through some of the showcased 'zines and found a few gems. I recommend perusing the site yourself, and maybe even take advantage of the idea but getting some stuff printed.

PROCESS

Fotoblur

mf magazine

Drink the Ring

Underground Art School

Wally's Dog Tale

New Twitter homepage

Twitter's got a new homepage today. It's been talked about for a while, but nice to see some change to the site. See Mashable and their related links:

http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/twitter-homepage/

Interesting side note: I came across the blog of one of the ex-lead designers at Google who made this post about leaving Google:

http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

and then this post about starting at Twitter:

http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/31/hello-twitter.html.

Fascinating to hear the inside scoop on what happens behinds the scenes. The decision over the color blue that he mentions in the Google post is slightly disturbing.

Regarding the productivity of friendship

I cranked out a post a little while back that discussed the importance of "Carpe Evening," or seizing the immense chunk of time that most of us have after we get back from work. I mentioned how it is easy to get over-involved in college, but once you leave, it's much more difficult to find new activities with fun people.

My brain is wired in a way— like most people, I'm assuming—that requires there's always something to be to work on, little side projects to keep occupied. At the beginning of the summer, I assumed I would keep myself busy with lots of these side projects, looking into some vague ideas that had been percolating over the past few months before graduation.

Bottom line: it hasn't been productive two months, since since I hadn't anticipated how lucky I would be with my housemates and living situation. The story of me getting into this internship and getting into this house with these people involves mostly uninteresting details, but it has turned out to be better than expected, even if I got nothing done outside of work.

Essentially, the past two months have presented me with a very real struggle that I'm sure many others have also dealt with: Does spending time with friends and family qualify as a "productive" or "justifiable" use of your time when you're not getting anything done? Or another way of putting it: is it okay to just enjoy yourself when there's so much else to do?

Yes.

Realistically, there's nothing I need to do when I leave the office, no responsibilities to anyone but myself. There are jobs to search for, portfolio's to bolster, books to read, workouts that need working out, and chores to be done. And yet when you have the chance to go grocery shopping, return two hours later, and then spend another 2.5 hours cooking and eating, it feels okay. It's relaxing, good for the mind (it also tastes delicious).

Again, like many of my other friends, my "summer vacation" was 4 days at home after graduation to, pretty much to unpack and then repack for moving down to Princeton again. Luckily, this summer has actually felt like a summer, even though it includes a five-day work week. Change is afoot as we're about to move out of our house, my roommates have been signing off to other adventures, and I'll be moving across the street for the month of August. Undoubtedly, August will be 354% more productive since I won't have anyone to distract me with all of this "hanging out" and "just chilling" and "listening to our favorite music together while we eat a delicious home-cooked meal."

So to my roommates, thanks for getting in the way of my dreams. Don't think this whole "friendship" thing will make me forget about how much I didn't get done when we were enjoying the sunshine on our patio furniture set or cooking spicy food or hanging out in the parking lot of T.I. (what?). I think I'd rather go live by myself without all of the "excitement," thanks very much.

By the way...will you guys be around for the month of August?

A Weekend of NYC Urbanism

I visited the Highline with a fellow architecture friend, Julia, a few weekends back. After talking the walk, we checked out the exhibit "The Future Beneath Us" at the Public Library and Grand Central Terminal.

For those of you that aren't familiar, The Highline is a new urban park in NYC built on the elevated train tracks on the west side of the city. There was intense debate over its construction, and New York Magazine ran a great article spelling out the story. This is the first completed section, but two more sections are to come.

As an architecture major, I've found that people expect me to have insightful critiques prepared merits, successes and failures of the Highline project as it stands now. While I can't offer anything earth-shattering that hasn't been already said, I will say this: right now, the Highline is novelty. You have to wait in line to see it because everyone is making it their weekend activity, and you're going to hear a myriad of different complaints, compliments, and reactions from all of those people. When asked what I think, I just say "Come back in 10 years, see what has happened then." This is a public park, not a thrill ride, and eventually, I'm assuming that the glimmer will wear off and the Highline will melt into the fabric of NYC, a familiar constant rather than an unfamiliar outlier. When that has happened, we can take another look and see how the Highline is being used, and try to better understand what credentials we can use to best judge it.

Here's what we saw.



First building you encounter is the Standard Hotel. (see this article here about this place!)






Benches.



Nope, don't know these guys, but the seats are very cool.



10th Avenue Square: The street becomes the stage.




View looking out the windows of the 10th Avenue Square.



Back at the audience.



Architecture renderings of the 10th Avenue Square. (via thehighline.org)



Check out the clever drainage on these water fountains!



Looking back at the end.



Two more sections to come in this direction.

Then we moved onto the "The Future Beneath Us":





Drilling samples.



If you've taken a train ride into NYC with me recently, you probably sat there, rolling your eyes as I told you about "how insane this is." When the tunnel under the Hudson River was first constructed in the early 19th century, it had two tracks: one going into the city, and one going out. Guess what? There is STILL only a single track in either direction. The new rail project is going to fix this problem buy constructing new track and tunnels, but until that's built, every person that leaves or enters New York on a commuter train has to go through this tunnel (where your ears pop). How insane is that?




This drilling machine is awesome. 'Nuff said.

I didn't take as many photos of the exhibit as I should have, but it was very interesting to check out. It's always amazing to see what goes on underground and behind the scenes to keep the city going. The history and future of this kind of infrastructure is incredible.

More info and links:

-There is a also great post over at sub-studio design blog that I would recommend reading as well. Their photos have that "I know what I'm doing quality" that mine still tend to lack: The Highline@sub-studio.
-New York Magazine article: read here
-Offical Highline site: thehighline.org.
-Website for The Future Beneath Us exhibit