Slipr

Here’s an interview with the man behind Battlestar Galactica, in which he agrees with his interlocutor that making a “highly serialized” show like BSG, in which it’s easy to lose viewers who miss only an episode or two, and hard to gain new ones because the enormous back-story is daunting to viewers new to the series, is a problem TV can’t solve: it makes for better storytelling, but worse ratings.

But of course Netflix has already solved this problem. And the internet can really solve it: whatever you want, whenever you want it, on whatever device you like, means you can jump into any series at any time in your life. Shows like BSG won’t be judged on their ratings when the show first hits the ‘net — instead, in a trend reminiscent of the behavior patterns you see with downloadable media, peak viewership will be spread across a long period of time, with spikes corresponding with coverage of the series.

Shows will become properties that are continually generating income, spanning years. This happens now, but it’s contingent on releases of DVDs — and not everyone wants a boxed set.

This means that the penalty for creating “highly serialized” narratives will be reduced. Indeed, the whole equation might be flipped on its head — individual hit shows in properties that aren’t serialized will be nice, but for a network to have a steady stream of income, they’re going to need more serialized shows, not fewer.

Matthew Myers is a painter who puts funny, slightly cartoonish images on just about anything he can get his hands on–headboards, the tops of toilet tanks, a stretcher–even other paintings.

He also has a rare ability to give them thoughtful and amusing captions… at least one of his works constitutes one of the few pieces of social commentary I’ve ever encountered that actually made me laugh out loud (being somewhat epic, the captions are too small for viewing on the web on that one, alas).

Despite decades as an award-winning creative director for various advertising agencies, he’s relatively new to the fine art world, in terms of that being his main thing… I’ve little doubt that I’ll see his work on the cover of Juxtapoz in the near future, or his forthcoming children’s book on the shelves of B&N.

You can see more of Matthew Myers’ work at his online gallery.

I would totally do this if I was really hungry. Maybe I’d kill it before eating it though. On the other hand, it’s hard to kill something with a distributed nervous system without first turning it into an even less-appetizing scorpion mash.

(Click on the image to be redirected to the source video, which is one ep in Discovery’s iTunes feed, which is basically just snippets of their cable shows and is, frustratingly, solely focused on pushing you to watch their real cash cow–television–rather than creating a satisfying experience for fans who would prefer to consume the content through iTunes and on portable devices.)

http://fluidapp.com/

Here’s a demo of what one dude accomplished with Fluid and a muxtape. Looks pretty, but the real value of Fluid is in making those apps you have open all day (e.g., Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Googe Docs, Muxtape/Seekpod/Youtube) behave like actual applications (i.e., living in the applications dock and not in a browser window, and not all having to be closed at once when Firefox locks up on a single page).

from blip.tv posted with vodpod

Boo f*cking hoo. I’d like to sue God for giving me an abusive childhood which left me unequipped to function normally in school and then university and then adult life, but instead I just SUCK IT UP.

Ivy League Prof Sues Students For Being Mean to Her

Daily emails are awesome loyalty tools and traffic drivers. At least as good as RSS feeds. Yet, despite being the older technology, automated emails are not ubiquitous. (Probably because RSS feeds are automatically generated by every CMS on the face of the earth, while daily emails are still a pain in the ass to produce.)

Mediabistro believes in them so much they’ve put not one but two promotions for them on top of every single post on their blog (red arrows).

Read the rest of this entry »

MIMS
7 songs, 28:33 minutes

A plus D - Close To Konichiwa Bitches (Robyn vs. The Cure)

Santogold / xxxchange - L.E.S. Artistes (xxxchange remix)

Tokyo Police Club - Be Good (RAC Remix)

Dmitry Fyodorov - 1b-1

Trade Secrets - I Know You Got Soul (Acen Remix)

PJtheVIKING - Raining Blows (Original)

The Chemical Brothers - Where Do I Begin (A Copycat Remix)

Because really, what kind of computer skills are a bunch of square-jawed g.i. joes going to have?

In an interview with techie forum Slashdot in early March, he was asked if hackers with checkered pasts, and overweight geeks who couldn’t pass a physical training test, were candidates to join the growing ranks of cyber soldiers. “I believe even the most unlikely candidate, when working for a cause bigger than himself, turns out to be a most loyal ally,” the general wrote.
…
A visit to the embryonic Air Force Cyber Command at Barksdale by BusinessWeek reporters in March shows how the Air Force’s current ad campaign is more a Hollywood-version of Cyber Command. In an aging former recreation building on Barksdale’s leafy grounds, fatigue-clad airmen—some with the physiques of couch-potato hackers—use off-the-shelf PCs to monitor Air Force computer network traffic.

Recruiting for the Cyber Wars | BusinessWeek

Word of the day:

Zoonosis

Any infectious disease that is able to be transmitted (by a vector) from other animals, both wild and domestic, to humans or from humans to animals (the latter is sometimes called reverse zoonosis).

The word is derived from the Greek words zoon (animal) (IPA: zo’on) and nosos (disease). Many serious diseases fall under this category.