Wow.

This blows my mind.

From spurgeonblog:

There's an astonishing art installation right now in London, called Bridge. Michael Cross took a former church and flooded it with water. Sunk beneath the water, a series of stepping stones. Stand at the water's edge and the first stone rises up out of the depths. Step on that first stone, and the next stone slowly surfaces, one step ahead. Step forward again, and another stone rises up in front of you, while the stone behind sinks away again. It takes 30 steps to make it out to the middle of the lake within the church, another 30 steps to go back the way you came.

Visitors to Bridge (which is part of the London Design Festival) say that participants have widely varying reactions. Some think it's a wonderful experience, others find the whole thing terrifying. Personally, I don't know if I'd try it. But I sure would love to see it.

I'd do it in a heartbeat. Damn.

The Nirvana of AdSense

Browsing through Google’s newly redesigned Google Reader (which is awesome), I was intrigued by this story. Although I saw it existed yesterday on Digg, I wasn’t compelled, but Google Reader’s preview of the story gave me just enough reason to check it out this morning. And you ought to, as well.

Basically, what this guy has done is incorporate Google AdSense ads into Kurt Cobain’s suicide note. Everyone should, by now, know these two things: (1)AdSense ads change based on the surrounding content. (2)Kurt Cobain is dead. I can understand not believing the second, but the first is such a major major part of what the internet is about today that I’d still be surprised even if you’d been living inside a rock the last five years.

The ads are strangely unsettling set inbetween Kurt’s words, and mostly offer help for depression. There are also, however, ads for a “Fun Personality Test” to “See how happy you really are!” and one titled, “Oprah Has Spoken,” which is beautiful somehow.

One wonders—if Kurt Cobain had blogged his suicide note on a similar page, with contextual AdSense ads—would he have clicked his own links to earn a fraction of a cent per click (violating AdSense terms-of-service) and maybe, just maybe, called Oprah for help?

Watch Cartoons Online - LOTS!

UPDATE 24/08/2007: The cartoon list at Prez Who? has been taken down. May I suggest YouTube?

Prez Who? has a massive list of full-length cartoons viewable online at YouTube. This is HUGE, and must be checked out. Seriously HUGE. Make sure you get your fill before some copyright police knock them off. Awesome. Animaniacs, Thundercats, X-men, Southpark, TMNT—literally everything you could hope for.

Also, check these out. They’re in Russian, but are so hilariously funny even if you don’t understand the language (which I don’t). The action, look, and voices are just awesome.

P.S. Adult Swim advertisements suck.

Happy Birthday Google!

Google is celebrating its eighth birthday today, and to honor it, Dennis Hwang has created another birthday logo that is displayed on the home page. Here's a look back at past birthdays of a site that is now so much more than a site, but truly a major catalyst to the power of the internet. What would we do without you, Google? Here’s to another eighty years. We need your help to tear down Microsoft from its corrupt throne.

Oh yeah, and happy birthday everyone born today!












Check out all the (over 150!) logos Google has displayed for various holidays since 1999 here.

True?

From Typhoon Alwoon:

Two More Facebook Things

First: Facebook is now open to all users.

Carolyn Abram, speaking on the Facebook Blog, has the following to say about the expansion:

Mark would have written this post himself, but is busy helping out with everything going on right now, so I’ve been asked to explain why we’re launching this expansion.

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again; here at Facebook, we want to help people understand their world. We started at one school, and realized over and over again that this site was useful to everyone—not just to Harvard students, not just to college students, not just to students, not just to former students. We’ve kept growing to accommodate this fact.

This includes your friends who graduated pre-Facebook (yes, there was such a time), your friends who don’t have school or work email addresses, and your friends whose schools don’t give out email addresses. Now you can all connect.

This doesn’t mean that anyone can see your profile, however. Your profile is just as closed off as it ever was. Our network structure is not going away. College and work networks still require an authenticated email address to join. Only people in your networks and confirmed friends can see your profile.

We listened to what you guys had to say and built extra privacy controls that we launched last week. If you’re uncomfortable with regional users being able to see you on Facebook, you can always change your privacy settings to prevent people from finding you in searches and communicating with you. Also, we’ve built out a bunch of tools that will help verify new users and prevent spammers from bothering you. You can read about these tools here.

Facebook is still yours, for you and your friends (all of your friends) to connect with each other and share information.

I think that about sums up my position on the thing, too. It’s pointless and hypocritical to draw imaginary lines around user access based on education when there are so many variables that could keep “legitimately educated” college students from registering. And why is a college-educated old man sketch-ball any less frightening than a non-educated one? Since Facebook still doesn't allow HTML/JavaScript in their profiles, there should be no fear that it will turn into the next MySpace by day’s end. If it does, somehow, I’ll eat something gross. I swear.

I’m glad to see they went proactive with the privacy settings, and I think that should do well to soothe the savage mob. We'll see. What are your thoughts on the issue?

I said there was another Facebook thing, and here it is:

Bob Trahan, a Facebook engineer, and one of the first users back when it was Harvard-only, has created the Facebook Friend Game. It’s a timed quiz game based on your friends’ profile information that has you guessing “Which friend is interested in this?” and so forth. I just started playing it, and it’s worth a try if you have an account. And hey, since this is such a big day for Facebook, even if you don’t have an account, why not sign up?!

Clinton On Fox

I was going to embed this earlier today, but didn't have a chance to watch it myself until a few hours ago. If you haven’t seen this bit from Chris Wallace’s interview of Bill Clinton for Fox News (it aired Sunday, Sept. 24), you absolutely must check it out. Clinton gets a little frantic, but otherwise, we see him as articulate and persuasive as ever. Go get ’em Bill!

Your National Anthem

Chris Andersson (who I know from the Trinity/LaMaMa experimental theatre program) , whose blog (for a Trinity College class on blogging and memes) I’ve just started reading, recently wrote about a project he worked on in May 2006 in response to uproar about a Spanish-language version of the Star-Spangled Banner. Quoting Chris, quoting his producer’s mission statement:

We created this multi-lingual version of the Star-Spangled Banner to raise awareness of Senate Resolution 458 and House Resolution 793, which state that English is the only language in which our National Anthem should be sung or recited. This resolution was unanimously passed by the Senate and is currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

He and a group of others recorded a multi-lingual version of the National Anthem and have posted it on this site for download.

As far as I know, the frightening and, frankly, sickening legislation (which you can also read on their site) hasn’t passed through the House yet, but I think that their project is worth spreading, if only to keep the public aware that the immigration issue which was so hotly debated at the beginning of the summer is still unresolved. For this reason, I’m going to semi-permanently include the banner (no, not the animated GIF version, don’t worry) for YourNationalAnthem.com in the sidebar of this blog, with hopes that you’ll all pass the tune around, and let people know that you don't think restricting the singing of a song to the English language has anything at all to do with what America is about. And maybe you’ll write your Congress-people. And maybe you’ll remember this as the election season draws nearer.

Pancakes and Cruelty

In my morning Digg-ing, I stumbled upon this pretty awesome exercise in visual communication. It appears to be a work-in-progress for a final project in some class. Aside from the beauty of the artwork, and the craving for pancakes the picture has evoked, I think it poses an interesting set of questions for design and accessibility. How much can be taken away without rendering the message unintelligible? Could these instructions be understood by anyone? A child? Someone from another country? An illiterate person? Someone who’s never cooked before? Someone who has never had or seen a pancake? I think this aptly illustrates the concept of knowing your audience and designing for them, while acknowledging the possibility that someone outside your intended audience might see your work.

In the theatre, particularly the academic brand of experimental performance I have been schooled in, it's easy to forget that not everyone in your audience has the same knowledge of Futurism, Dada, Artaud, Cage, Cunningham, the NEA Four, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. While it is important not to dumb-down your message and aesthetic for the sake of “entertaining the masses,” one must consider how an alternative audience would receive the work. Is it worth it to completely alienate a group of people for the sake of not compromising your vision? Or is it possible to maintain your values and a legitimacy to the theatre crowd while managing to communicate something compelling and moving to those not “in the know?” How can we, as artists, do this? Does anyone have any examples of compromises you've made? Or do you see them not as compromises, but merely part of the process and considerations for making work?

Let me know, folks! Let’s get a discussion happening!

Here's the pancake recipe. Click to enlarge.

Art 2.0

25 Awesomely Bad Websites

Okay, maybe not 25, but a bunch.

Thanks to 37 Signals/svn and the folks who commented on their recent post, Screens Around Town: Ugly On Purpose (as well as a few I found poking around the web).

Borat
Soulwax
TJ Miller
Crumpler Bags
Zach Braff
Rubber Burner
webtekrocks
Paul Gilbert
Some Polish Movie
IKEA Fans
Eugene Mirman
Association of International Glaucoma Societies
Videopowertalk
Lydia of Purple
WATCH (World Against Toys Causing Harm)
Magnetic North
The Chapel Family Webpage
Zen Virus
Hello My Future Girlfriend
Peter Pan's Homepage
City Wrestling Foundation

World's Worst Website (a resource for designers)

Got some more for me? Send them along!

Celebrity Charity

As reported by amNewYork this morning, Paris Hilton is one generous celebrity.

She was walking somewhere (I don't remember, and can't be bothered to check), and a homeless man on the street called out, "Hey, you're Paris Hilton, right? Can I get a hundred bucks?" He quickly lowered his request to one dollar, but not before she handed him a Ben Franklin.

Aww, Paris. You're so awesome.

I mean seriously, this is real charity.

Not Brangelina pledging $2 million to global causes like Doctors Without Borders and AIDS/HIV. I mean, that translates to less than a penny per person. Paris is making a real difference.

And who knows how many lives were changed by listening to her new album.

The Camera Always Takes Off A Few Pounds

And 125,000 movies in one week?!

Courtesy of Techcrunch

Disney chief executive Robert Iger announced that the iTunes Store has sold 125,000 movies in their first week since release, generating a cool $1,000,000. I know I'm surprised. Who knew that many iPod-toting Apple fanboys and girls hadn't seen Brother Bear?



In other, more disturbingly beautiful news,

37Signals wrote of a new feature offered in HP digital cameras that enables you to slim down the subject of your photos provided they are centered in the frame (pictures below). There’s a demo on the HP site so you can see just how well this feature works on an already damn-attractive woman. Just imagine what it can do for overweight friends and family members. Say goodbye to baby fat forever! Maybe we’ll start seeing some awesome emo-rexia self-portraits on MySpace, too. This is the cure to America’s obesity woes!

Seriously, though, women are not going to like this. Or maybe they’ll love it. I'm not sure, but either way, this is an unnecessary feature. Why not focus on making your cameras better rather than filling them with hundred of special shooting modes and effects filters? Your customers want to make “artsy” pics? Give them a free copy of Photoshop Elements.

What do you guys think? Everything you’ve always dreamed of? Evil incarnate?


As promised, here are the pics:






Pretty sweet, no?

Cookie Mountain and A Pretty Little Black Thing

The new iPod Nano is in my hands, and it is sexier than I could have imagined. On the subway this morning, I listened to the entirety of TV on the Radio’s new album, Return to Cookie Mountain (Thanks, iTunes!), and it was one of the more poetic experiences in recent memory. The sound and feel of the iPod approaches sublimity - especially compared to my second-hand, second generation “iPod Ghetto” - and the album is nothing short of amazing. Falsetto harmonies that channel Brian Wilson, driving fuzziness, funky sheets of noise, bluesy grooves and dozens of other disparate elements combine to create a beautiful tapestry of sounds evoking a sense of calmness, timelessness, and never-ceasing energy.

This is a great album from what has been called Brooklyn's best band. TVOTR is even better than that title, I think.

I am impressed. Definitely check it out.

I Just Beat Antiriddle

Apparently, there will be one more phase (the beginning of the end), and I’m on the mailing list to find out when it gets released.

This gives you guys some time to catch up so we can all make the final journey together.

Sweet.

(In case you missed it, this is what I'm talking about).

Antiriddle - The New Hardest Riddle On The Net!

Antiriddle is a super-super-awesome internet riddle challenge that really stretches your thinking and forces you to use all sorts of resources to find out the answers, including: viewing page source for clues, using Google searches, image and sound editors, and basically just racking your brain (and the brains of others) for any possible help. They encourage you to find forums and blogs posting about the antiriddle, to help turn it into a community affair. This blog provides clues to all the riddles (along with hidden spoilers if you get completely stuck).

It's definitely worth some time to work through. I'm on 29 (of 30), so you can totally write me a comment if you need some guidance on a particular clue. I didn’t go through it alone (my friend, roommate, and girlfriend all helped a bunch), and I definitely recommend putting heads together. It's a ton of fun that way.

Let me know how you do!

Another Top 25

The 25 Worst Websites

This courtesy of PC World, who, admittedly, have a pretty bad site themselves, forcing users to go page by page through ads to see the entire list. Oh well, they are coming from the magazine world, at any rate - perhaps it’s to be expected.

Many of the sites aren’t up any longer, or aren’t what they used to be, but it’s fun to remember with a touch of nostalgia and a touch of horror the internet days of yore.

So, without further ado, the 25 Worst Websites are, in descending order (with links and logos for whatever I could get - shiny table courtesy of me!):


Rentmychest.com

---

IKissYou.org

---

InmatesForYou.com

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Digital Entertainment Network (den.com)

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Golden Palace Casino

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Hotmail.com

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WebVan

---

Beenz.com and Flooz.com (tie)

---

Boo.com

---

Microsoft Windows Update

---

Neuticles.com

---

BidForSurgery.com

---

Whitehouse.com

---

The Dancing Baby

---

Rabies for Kids

---

MyLackey.com

---

Hamsterdance.com

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BonziBuddy

---

Pets.com

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Pixelon.com

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AllAdvantage

---

CD Universe

---

Cartoonnetwok.com

No that's not a typo; it's "typosquatting," where a site owner deliberately registers a misspelling of a popular domain in the hopes of attracting the actual site's traffic. Cartoonnetwok was one of some 5500 deceptive domains owned by John Zuccarini, d/b/a/ "Cupcake Confidential." But that wasn't Zuccarini's only nasty bit of business. FTC investigators visiting one of his sites found their screens filled with 29 new browser windows for instant credit, online psychics, gambling, and porn sites. When they hit the Back button, another 7 windows opened--a technique known as "mousetrapping." Worse, many of Zuccarani's typosquatting sites were aimed at children. In 2003 Zuccarini pleaded guilty to violating the Truth in Domain Names Act and was sentenced to 2.5 years in the federal pen.

---

CyberRebate

---

And, of course, number 1:




MySpace.com




Brilliance. Thoughts?

Color for the Web

This site is one in a large pool of color references for web designers, but far and above the most elegant and useful I’ve seen. They provide information on web-safe and named colors, as well as what they call “web-smart” colors.

What are web-smart colors?

With advances in technology and the prevalence of monitors displaying High colour (65,000 colours) and True colour (16 million colours), the limitations of the Web-safe palette (216 colours) became evident.

The Web-smart palette was therefore developed. It provides 4096 colours and is composed of pairs of identical hexadecimal digits from 0 to F (e.g. #5522EE).

I say, it’s about time. Now, if only web designers could have some more fonts to work with.

I Couldn’t Resist

It’s on the way.

25 Most Controversial Movies

posted a list of the “25 Most Controversial Movies Ever.”

They are, in order:

1. The Passion of the Christ
2. A Clockwork Orange
3. Fahrenheit 9/11
4. Deep Throat
5. JFK
6. The Last Temptation of Christ
7. The Birth of a Nation
8. Natural Born Killers
9. Last Tango In Paris
10. Baby Doll
11. The Message
12. The Deer Hunter
13. The DaVinci Code
14. The Warriors
15. Triumph of the Will
16. United 93
17. Freaks
18. I Am Curious (Yellow)
19. Basic Instinct
20. Cannibal Holocaust
21. Bonnie And Clyde
22. Do The Right Thing
23. Kids
24. Caligula
25. Aladdin

What do you guys think? Anything missing? Anything you think shouldn't be on the list? Make sure to check out i-am-bored’s reasons for the controversy on the films you don’t know.

I’ve seen a few more than half of these, so I think I'll try to con my roommate into Netflixing a couple so I can see what all the hype was/is about. United 93 is at the top of his queue right now, so we’ll be getting it soon, and once I see it, I think I’ll post a review here.

New iPod Stuff

After a bit of investigation into the specs of the new iPods, I will say that Apple has done beautifully with its recent upgrades. They look great, have awesome storage capacity, and the pricing is better than any previous release to my knowledge.

The iPod Shuffle is somehow smaller than ever before by an impressive margin, and the new color really will go with everything, as they say in their copy. Making it into a clip was also an inspired idea. And at $79 for 1GB, the Shuffle is definitely an awesome, awesome stocking stuffer.

The iPod Nano is also completely redesigned, now implementing a UI consistent with the main line of iPods, and eschewing the glossy plastic of the previous model, for a case that brings back pleasant memories of the iPod Mini - with a full line of colors, to boot! It's up to 8 GB now, which is pretty sweet. Also, a 24-hour battery life?! Seriously? Amazing.

Of all the new releases, this is the one I'm most considering to replace my 10GB Gen-2 iPod (affectionately referred to as "ghettoPod"). I've been pretty happy with the amount of space I have on it, even though my iTunes collection is approaching 60 GB, so I'm not sure I need to upgrade to the full sizer, even though the video addition would be kinda cool. I'm just not convinced that I'm gonna want to/have time to watch movies on my iPod. Without movies, I can listen to my iPod while reading (or pretending to read), which seems a tad more productive for the morning and evening commutes.

The new full-size iPod has changed the least of the three. Aside from a larger storage capacity and some cool new search features (Spotlight!) and games, it's pretty much the same. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess. But the lack of major changes for this makes me wonder if there's not something much, much bigger in the works.

The new iTunes app and Store are also looking great. CoverFlow was an awesome program before, and now that it's been purchased by Apple and integrated into iTunes, it is pure candy. CoverFlow is a great mode for parties, where folks can browse through the discs jukebox-style, and it solves the dilemma of post-digital cover art withdrawal. Apple's offering full-length movies, too (currently only by Disney, but I'm sure more will get on board, soon), and CoverFlow is implemented in the iTunes Store browsing, just like walking through Blockbuster. Only about 300 times cooler.

All in all, nothing life changing, but some pretty cool updates. Keep up the good work, guys.

A couple pictures:




The iPod Nano - "Completely Remastered"


The iPod Shuffle - "Put Some Music On"

And Apple Says,

New iPods.

Sleeker, more colorful, tinier, bigger capacity.

And movies.

All around, awesome.

And coming soon, "iTV" (working title) - wireless, broadband, box-like, beauty.

Facebook, Part: 2 many

It's hardly news, and I hope this is my last Facebook post for awhile, but this morning it was announced that Facebook will be opening up to allow individuals to join as part of a "network" or region, rather than a college, high school, or company, effectively allowing everyone to join. I couldn't find any word on a possible age limit, though it seems like this move will find Facebook attempting to ride the heels of News Corp's MySpace phenomenon and compete for its users - especially if they open it up to a younger base. There might be no way for Facebook to ever come close to the 100 million-plus (v. 8 million) registered accounts MySpace has, but they'll certainly benefit from the momentum. MySpace has many more features than Facebook at the moment, but has been consistently plagued by bad design, slow load times, and individual user profiles seemingly from the tiling-background-css-death-circle-of-hell.

My guess is that, for the foreseeable future, Facebook will be the place for an older, slightly-more-mature demographic concerned with networking and stalking, and MySpace for the preteen base (who of course, lie about their age. Really, I'm 72! lolrofl:D), who are going through lots of "changes" in life, and need control over their profiles to reflect their feelings and personality.

Facebook = Classmates.com without the spam
MySpace = Therapy for Puberty

Tomorrow is Showtime for Apple

Check out Tech Crunch for a "roundup" of some of the rumored products to be announced at tomorrow's (Sept. 12) special press event for Apple in San Francisco. I'm pretty exicited to see what gets the go-ahead. And really, I would just die if it were an iPhone, even though my current contract is good until January, and I'm hoping my mobile (piece of junk Nokia something-or-other) will make it until then. I kinda doubt the iPhone's coming tomorrow, sadly, but we'll surely see some cool video enhancements for the iPod and iTunes Store. What else? We'll find out very, very soon.

It's exciting times to be an Apple fan, and here's hoping tomorrow's announcements will win more than a few converts.

Also, in case you haven't heard, Apple's iTunes Music Store is offering a free 25-song sampler every week on Facebook. Just find the "Apple Students" group, and you can have them send you a message with a redemption code. I don't think there are too many weeks left in the promotion, so act quickly.

If you don't have iTunes (why the heck not?!!), you can get it here.

Still/Here

There's been lots of really crappy stuff happening the last five years, but we're still around. The country is still working. People are still creating and loving and believe in good. There have been abuses of power of such magnitude that threatened to tear down everything for which our forebears worked so long and so hard. Even the most optimistic of us has, at times, been prone to cynicism, regret, anger, and lost hope. But somehow, it seems, life has gone on. Friends still mean everything to us, and we party like we have no cares in the world.

In New York, especially, probably, we still hold our bags a little closer, and look around with suspicious eyes, "just in case," but for the most part, it's business-and-life-as-usual. Are we safer, or more in danger than we were then? Who can truly know? All we can do is hope, and continue to voice our concerns.

Last week's Facebook furor (see previous posts) has, at least, proven that our generation does care, and that, if enough of us speak as one, the voices will be heard. There's a mound of hope in that. So many people have written us off. We're "dropping the ball." We're lazy. We're apathetic. I think, in its own little way, this past week has proven otherwise. Was the backfire misguided? Sure. But every generation, every civil movement, has had its missteps. I know I am, in a way, giving this "protest" a little more credit than it is due, but I see it as a piece of something larger. Who would believe that such a storm would erupt about a simple website? It seems clear to me, at least, that Facebook changing the way they distribute information is not the real issue for all those who became so upset. It might be simply a scapegoat for some hidden, unspeakable fear. About technology, about humanity, privacy, terrorism, or who knows what. Something very real is making people question their place, question their safety, and I surely don't think it is the News Feed, or even al-Qaeda, for that matter. It's something deeper than all that, and I can't pretend to know what it might be. But it is exciting to sense a growing energy and motivation in my peers.

I, personally, have a lot of hope for the next five years. I can't even begin to imagine all of the amazing things that might happen - that we will be responsible for. Us. We have been given the world, and it is time to do shit with it. We can't be afraid to say what we feel is right and push for things to change. They'll hear us. I believe that.

Five years from now, there may still be no memorial in Lower Manhattan. But that's okay, kind of. Because all along, we've managed to find a place to mourn and remember and love that isn't tied to a physical site. Something called spirit, or love. We find it in ourselves. We find it in the eyes and embraces of friends and family.

To me, this is what we've learned in the last five years: In a world of uncertainty, we do have things we can count on. They're a room away, down the hall, a subway or car ride or plane flight away, a phone call or even an email/instant message away. And no matter how we connect to them - be it physically, or digitally, or purely in our thoughts - the important thing is that we remember the connection.

This is where hope for a better world is cultivated and may grow.

This is why I'm not afraid, really, that much.

Love,
Kevin

DoubleTiming

Mark Zuckerberg Open Letter

So, Facebook Responds.

In case you don't have an account, here's what Mark Zuckerberg posted this morning above the News Feed on the Facebook home page:

An Open Letter From Mark Zuckerberg:

We really messed this one up. When we launched News Feed and Mini-Feed we were trying to provide you with a stream of information about your social world. Instead, we did a bad job of explaining what the new features were and an even worse job of giving you control of them. I'd like to try to correct those errors now.

When I made Facebook two years ago my goal was to help people understand what was going on in their world a little better. I wanted to create an environment where people could share whatever information they wanted, but also have control over whom they shared that information with. I think a lot of the success we've seen is because of these basic principles.

We made the site so that all of our members are a part of smaller networks like schools, companies or regions, so you can only see the profiles of people who are in your networks and your friends. We did this to make sure you could share information with the people you care about. This is the same reason we have built extensive privacy settings – to give you even more control over who you share your information with.

Somehow we missed this point with Feed and we didn't build in the proper privacy controls right away. This was a big mistake on our part, and I'm sorry for it. But apologizing isn't enough. I wanted to make sure we did something about it, and quickly. So we have been coding nonstop for two days to get you better privacy controls. This new privacy page will allow you to choose which types of stories go into your Mini-Feed and your friends' News Feeds, and it also lists the type of actions Facebook will never let any other person know about. If you have more comments, please send them over.

This may sound silly, but I want to thank all of you who have written in and created groups and protested. Even though I wish I hadn't made so many of you angry, I am glad we got to hear you. And I am also glad that News Feed highlighted all these groups so people could find them and share their opinions with each other as well.

About a week ago I created a group called Free Flow of Information on the Internet, because that's what I believe in – helping people share information with the people they want to share it with. I'd encourage you to check it out to learn more about what guides those of us who make Facebook. Tomorrow at 4pm est, I will be in that group with a bunch of people from Facebook, and we would love to discuss all of this with you. It would be great to see you there.

Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Mark

I appreciate this response, and I think it highlights just how surprised they were with the insane backlash. Checking out the privacy settings, I must say that they're pretty thorough and easy-to-understand. There even an option to block individual users entirely, or show limited profile information to certain people. I'm not sure if they had that before or not, but it's a good idea. And everything else is completely configurable. The only thing I'd still like to see is an option to not see the activity of certain people. Sure, in most cases I should probably not be friends with them, I guess. However, what about a "real" friend who is an excessive facebook user - constantly updating his/her profile, writing notes, joining groups, making friends...I don't necessarily want that cluttering up my News Feed 24/7. I want to be able to say, "Never show me so-and-so's updates" or "Only show me when so-and-so does the following:" for example. Maybe I'll suggest something of the sort. Otherwise, I think Facebook is on the right track, and I hope this'll placate the angry mob.

On a sidenote, it is awesome that Mark appreciates the irony of the much-loathed News Feed letting people know about the existence of the News Feed-hating Groups that their friends were joining. "The News Feed Sucks," everyone seemed to be saying, while at the same time actually using it and finding it informative and convenient. It is clear that the News Feed allowed everyone to mobilize and combine their efforts to make an impact on the Facebook management. I hope the users realize that the News Feed introduces the possibility of a much stronger, more united voice than ever before. The multitude of ways this might be useful in the future, I can't even imagine, but here are a couple possibilities:

• Mass-information distribution.
• A user-moderated aggregate of daily news, where the most important stories can be "dugg up" by creating a simple group. Or there might be a way to implement a feature allowing users to flag certain Notes as particularly interesting. "Thirteen of your friends are reading this note about the War in Iraq," for example. Facebook as a mini-digg? Hmm.
• Politics. The News Feed, along with Facebooks new Election feature might be a way to create a collective message to political candidates and let them know what our generation is thinking.
• Finding out about the cool parties you weren't invited to, and going anyway.
• A way to share new and exciting things you find on the Web without making your friends check messages, or view your profile. Post a note about it, and BAM, everybody can see the coolest new thing.
• Advertising. Hmm. Does any company want to pay me to write notes about their product? If I blog it, it shows up on the News Feed. That means all my 271 friends will see it and check it out and buy it!!
• Anything else??? Leave a comment with some ideas.

Again, thanks Mark. And thanks to everybody who reads this in their News Feed. I hope your life changes because of it.

I'll probably post again today, as I have a busy weekend ahead, and no work to do at work. Until then, buy this.

The Butter Trough

Eat. Drink. Free. Come on down and see the worlds First 100% Advertisement Supported Restaurant.

This is The Butter Trough, located in Atlanta, GA, whose offerings include a multitude of bread products, freshly made sweet tea, and, of course, butter - hot, melty butter. The best part - it's all free, thanks to the support of advertisers in the Atlanta area, whose pitches surround your dining experience in the form of speakers, television sets and multimedia displays scattered throughout the restaurant.

Sounds great, but is it real?

My first instincts tell me it's not, before any Googling at all. (Wait, sorry Google. I mean searching on Google.) Why? Well, there're some Ads by Google for starters. That's not normal for a business. It almost makes sense, though, as they claim to be advertisement-supported. Wait, I mean Advertisement Supported, sans hyphen. A mistake already? In the second line of text on the site? Hmm. Fishy. And "worlds"? And inconsistent capitalization in what seems to be their call-line? Not looking good, folks. We might not ever get that sumptuous, free butter after all.

The image on the main page (as well as the ones on subsequent pages) looks like a stock photo - and pretty low quality, as though the designer just downloaded the comp image without paying. Sure, lots of people do this, and maybe the company is so small they don't know any better - but...seriously? They can't afford a disposable camera to take a picture of the restaurant? They're located in Atlanta and can't find a friend or relative or advertiser even who would take a picture? Wouldn't their sponsors want to be on the website, too?

This is all to ignore the fact that The Butter Trough's site looks nothing like a restaurant website. Everybody knows the First Rule of Restaurant Web Presence, which is:

Thou shalt design your website in Flash.

But wait! You can buy merchandise for The Butter Trough on Cafe Press! That's legit, ain't it? Curious.

So with all this in mind, I did a simple Google Search (happy, guys?). First on the list is, happily, The Butter Trough's own website. That's pretty sweet for them. That is, it's sweet if anyone ever searches for "butter trough." I wonder how often that happens. Perhaps I should check my list of AOL Searches to see when I have some spare time.

Next, however, things turn bad for our prospects of free bread and butter and tea. The second result is a link to a page from the Museum of Hoaxes website. The author there feels the same way about the site, and has done some added research. She (or He) has done a Google Maps Search for the address (6346 Lynch Avenue), and it doesn't exist. This is backed up by a couple people who left comments.

And in what is arguably the most interesting development in this sequence of events, the author of the Museum of Hoaxes article says:

I'm guessing that the Butter Trough site was created by Joseph Donaldson, because a) Joseph Donaldson's homepage is hosted on the same server as The Butter Trough site and b) he links to the Butter Trough. A few other sites (all of which link to the Butter Trough as well) hosted on that server include: Circus of the Damned, and the Just Ducky Guild. (Thanks to Doug Nelson for the link)

Seriously, guys, you absolutely must check out those links. Starting with the first one. No fair skipping to the second or third. You've gotta do it in order. You'll regret it if you didn't.

The Butter Trough, sadly fictional, I can safely say, has somehow managed to become listed in several directories (including a list of restaurants near the Global Learning and Conference Center at Georgia Tech). Nice work, TBT. Now, if maybe you applied all your work designing and promoting a fake business to actually securing advertising support and turning your dream (and my dream, and many others' too) into a reality, we'd be getting somewhere.

Until then, I'll be working to figure out why the hell the New York Times pretended to publish an article about butter (but actually about trans fats) this week. Note: You must register with the NYT to view this, and do so soon, before it becomes archived. It's free until that happens.

To close, because this is becoming an epic "review" of a fake restaurant, I'll briefly touch on the concept of a 100% ad-supported restaurant. Is this even possible? Sure, and maybe it's actually the future. Spiral Frog sure hopes so.

a quickie post at the end of the day

This is just to say, "I love Flickr." I am still new to it, though I've browsed it many times over the last year or so. I always thought it was pretty decent. I recently created an account and I can tell you, that is where Flickr really excels. From downloadable drag-and-drop uploading that's as easy as pie, to super-simple-elegant image batching, naming, tagging, (now also Geo-tagging!), resizing, rotating, Flickr makes it all easy, fun, and functional. You get 20MB of uploads per month in the free account, which is a pretty good size - even for the large photos I take.

Flickr is a beautiful piece of work that offers some of the best features on the web, and its interface could hardly be more intuitive and user-friendly. Nice work, guys.

Facebook Plastic Surgery Nightmare

Yesterday, I wrote about Facebook's newly-released News Feed and Mini Feed, and how I thought it was a good idea that could use some more customization to be a great new feature. I definitely didn't expect the overwhelmingly negative response that this would end up receiving. According to Michael Arrington, a group called "Students Against Facebook News Feed" has over 100,000 members and climbing. And there are plans for a boycott of Facebook on September 12. Comments on Digg range from apocalyptic predictions about the loss of privacy and employer/dean/government spying to lambasting the site based solely on its more cluttered look.

Mark Zuckerberg replied to this outrage, saying, "“Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.” and “We didn’t take away any privacy options.”

According to Facebook, a friend of mine (yes, a real one) added "changing my profile in minute and non-important ways to always appear at the top of your news feed p" to her favorite interests. Beautiful.

And a psedo-friend of mine, who, yeah, I should probably un-friend since I don't care what she's doing, but now somehow everyone is becoming strangely more interesting, wrote a "note" saying, "facebook is creepy.creepy creepy creepy. gross. mark zuckerburg is gross," to which her friend replied something brilliant about a new feature that posts on your wall while you're using the bathroom. Oh, the things I never would have learned (but could have! but wouldn't have cared to!) without this feature.

I remain a supporter, and I agree with Michael Arrington's assertion that the break from reliance on page views is a great step for Facebook as it becomes more and more about providing content to its users and facilitating communication. This is the future, people. Get with it now, and learn how to protect yourself from the start. Believe me, this is just the beginning. Even if Facebook's News Feed doesn't take off (I expect people will soon warm to it), it's only a matter of time before someone else does it. And someone else. And someone else.

At least it isn't like what AOL just did.


In closing, a question:

Is it just me, or did everyone on Facebook break up yesterday?]

EDIT: It's exciting that my generation is so up in arms about privacy. But seriously, guys...ever hear of the U.S. Government? The Patriot Act? Wiretapping? Why can't 150,000 of us write to Washington instead of bitching about information that we chose to make available in the first place? Seriously.

Facebook Facelift

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch wrote today about Facebook's newest changes to their so-called "Encyclopedic Interface." Basically, they added a news feed on the home page that shows all of the recent activity by your "friends." He talks about it like it is a major development, but is it really?

Yes, it's cool. Yes, it adds to the potential for delicious pseudo-friend-stalking (though it can be argued that these changes might make users less apt to update and post new things - hopefully not). Yes, it's a little scary from a privacy point of view. But is this so groundbreaking, is it the only place on the web to find anything like this? I don't think so.

Friendster has had similar features for some time now, though the site is struggling and less simply designed. And what about Ajax-enabled real-time updates? And, seriously, though, shouldn't I be able to customize my feed? I don't really need to know what every last one of my pseudo-friends are doing.

Just the hot ones, clearly.

It's got a little ways to go, but is a great step in the right direction, and definitely a cool new feature that'll prolong anyone's session. It's not perfect, but hey - at least it's not MySpace.

What is Frivolous Motion?

Frivolous Motion is an offshoot of the inter-state interdisciplinary performance and design group, Deliberate Motion.

Frivolous Motion is Kevin M. Keating's (that's me) new blog which will discuss current news and world events, with a focus on design, tech, and general aesthetic wonderment. From time to time, some politics/world affairs/etc. may be thrown in, but for the most part, you can count on this blog to discuss the newest, coolest, and super-awesome-prettiest stuff that I can find.

Frivolous Motion is the act of moving for movement's sake. Appreciating the beauty and uniqueness of a thing because it is beautiful and unique, and asking no questions to its intent. Why does it exist? Who cares, if it's cool?

It is my extreme hope to regularly post in this blog, unlike my several failed blogs of years past.

If you're at all intrigued, please see the following - just don't hold it against me:
• Livejournal
• Xanga
• and even Blogger

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you'll come back regularly to see what I've got to say. Please feel free to comment on any post and let me know what you're thinking!

Best,

Kevin