March 2008 Archives

 

In an era where Sony, Apple and Microsoft are pushing forward their latest toys, consumers have become beta-tester.  We taste, eat, digest all their crap, then we burp a review online in our blogs.  Consumers generate tons of free auditing material for the corporations.  And we do it pro-bono, for free!  They use our generous contributions to get the pulse on the effectiveness of a newly release or to generate a wish-list for their upcoming releases.

so so good.

-Hack

Photograph by Jonathan Goldsbie for Torontoist

As best I can tell, this is a sticker bombing of a cosmetics ad in the Toronto subway. Whatever it is, its extremely off.

*UPDATE* The Shiseido product really DOES say "white power" (!?!)... so I guess its just a Photoshop sticker. Very nice!

The text reads:

Adobe Photoshop

The uncompromised clarity of skin.
The ultimate in luxury.


A truly flawless complexion. Ultra-refined texture. Perfect clarity. Cutting-edge skincare backed by 90 years of unrivaled research by Shiseido, a worldwide leader in the development of skin-brightening products.

Shiseido
White Lucent™ Skincare
White skin.
White power.

--Link via [Torontoist]

To use an iPhone, you need to sign a 2-year contract with AT&T. Well that's not exactly true. You can use their prepaid service if you (intentionally) fail a credit check. If you don't like the deals offered by AT&T, but you still want an iPhone, its as simple as running some software to unlock the phone.

Oops, you just voided your warranty.

Want to install third-party applications on your new mobile device? No problem.

Shit, you just did it again.

Truth is, you can't even really put files on the thing without losing any support from Apple for their hardware, or even having Apple's future software updates lock your device.

While Apple should be free to cut deals with wireless carriers that use their hardware, their usage terms are becoming increasingly unreasonable.

Once an iPhone VOIP app and WiMax internet service are available, cell carriers will be irrelevant and everyone will use their iPod to make phone calls. Everyone hates their wireless provider, and Apple has the opportunity to come in and lay the ground work for more open computing and communication. Perhaps they are doing just that, but conforming to the status quo for now to make future offerings seem that much more revolutionary.

But for now? Screw you, Apple, We'll just jailbreak the devices right in your store if we want.




And if its no longer supported, we'll just sue.

Here's the video that started it all:

 

Then, this one:

 

Montel lost his job at Fox.  Lee Camp will never be invited again on any Fox network...Montel and Lee Camp DON'T CARE!  Hopefully, these interventions will educate people on how FOX don't CARE about the news and all they want is entertain and sale spots...Thanks Montel and Lee Camp for bringing down the hammer and nailed what stick up.

 

--Leroy

Following up an earlier post regarding Canadian credit card buying for canuck expats, here is how to send a tiger to Canada. *hint* its hard to find them because they're camoflaged!

Link [instructable] --via [neatorama]

Oh and you can fake billing addresses (for Canada) on the Apple Store too!



see!?!

Some favorite picks from Burl Veneer, and Michael's necktie blogs.

yes... necktie blogs. Both have archives going back to 2005, but the prize goes to Burl, since each post is accompanied by a photo of the tie being worn.

Michael's Knot a Blog (great name)

Burl Veneer's Tie Blog (even better name!!!)

Kassel: Germany July 2007

Linz, Austria: September 2007

Ars Electronica. Linz, Austria: September 2007

Translation: "I can't believe she blogged that."

yeah, I did that.

A friend was complaining about how he couldn't use Bittorrent at the New School, where he is a student. Enter Hackworth Klaxon to save the day. By piggybacking on a network from across the street using Linux-based router firmware, DD-WRT, students, faculty and other leechers now have an on-ramp to file sharing. A second open Hackworth node has also been installed in an undisclosed location in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Recently, I decided to give a chance to FireFox because I am really done with Internet Explorer.  What Microsoft always forget when releasing a product, is that users are not all dumb.  Smart browsing is something very new but very real.  With the arriving of high speed internet, the overall experience is a lot more enhance to the users that are smart about their time past online.  It's not the days anymore where all you'll be thinking of using the web for was searching for hardcore porn hidden in the alt.binaries.erotica newsgroup. 

FireFox is a tool that targets the www smartest users, the people that spend quality time on the web, not just beating the stick in front of youporn.  IE is the youporn of browsing: what you see is what you get.

Here's my list of FireFox essentials add-ons, a must for the www smartest users out there:

• PicLens a fantastic new way to experience images viewing on the web
• Google Browser Sync Syncronizes your browser's history, cookies, passwords and favorites accros all your computers
• IE Tab Best viewable with IE, this add-on will let you open embedded IE tab in FireFox
• Google Notebook Let you create and clip notes to site then share and save on the google server.

--Leroy

 

yeah that was me.

video after the jump

--via [Laughing Squid]

Is Bass spinning in his grave? He has said that he was disappointed in his Man with the Golden Arm title sequence after it was so imitated.

What is so interesting about Bass is how he established a way of working in a new media (motion graphics) by using his formal training as a commercial artist (today's graphic designer). The work shown above is part of not just an identifiable school of work, but as a larger culture of remixing. The democratic nature of the creation, access and distribution fundamentally changes how previous disciplines can be compared to the new media of YouTube.

Following an interesting article on Wired.com last week, I've been considering how the internet allows people of various levels of ability to communicate by traditional means to reach out.



Computer programming, and general geekery have long been associated with social awkwardness. Author Todd Oppernheimer's 1997 Article, The Computer Delusion hasn't aged perfectly, but does illustrate the freak-out factor of human-computer interaction in the psychology community that existed in the days before blogging.

Perhaps Web 2.0, and the variety of user-generated content distribution it affords has allowed computers to become communication tools for a larger range of individuals on the spectrum of social disorders.

I feel the Wired article may have overstated the scientific relevance of Bagg's work by citing YouTube viewership. However, I have hope that this trend will open doors of communication for the 450 Million people worldwide, considering the WHO states that most of them lack even basic access to treatment.


I'd also like to showcase some of the work of beebee890, who has nearly 1,500 subscribers (including yours truly) on YouTube.