October 2008
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
« Sep   Nov »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Month October 2008

Entries 6 Total

Music Television Music Dot Com

Oct 27, ’08 8:49 PM

It feels like it’s about five or six years late to the game – well after MTV crowbarred “music” from their offerings to the youth of the nation – but MTVMusic.com is pure awesome as a repository of legitimate, often ancient, music videos.

Welcome back to semi-relevance, MTV.

Comments (0)

Twistori

Oct 22, ’08 7:19 PM

Via Dr. Szukala, twistori: Loving, hating, thinking, believing, feeling, and wishing from Twitter, now as a single-serving site and a gorgeous screensaver for OS X.

Beautifully simplistic, simplistically beautiful.

Comments (0)

Out With The Dodgeball, In With The Brightkite

Oct 20, ’08 11:25 PM

While I have been a faithful Dodgeball user for over 4 years, it’s not been a service that has been taking strides to make me love it. The site exists now almost exactly as it did back then, save using Google Accounts after they were bought out in the spring of 2005. While it remains functional, it has been losing mindshare in the face of stiff competition. Yelp does reviews better; Twitter does messaging between friends better; Facebook handles connections between friends better. The only place Dodgeball still had a hold on me is for checking in; announcing to your friends where you were.

That was until I saw this demo of the Brightkite iPhone application:


Brightkite for the iPhone from Brightkite on Vimeo.

I’ve been tangentially aware of Brightkite through their Twitter integration, but between the app and the service, any use I had for Dodgeball is essentially gone:

  • While Dodgeball was limited to 22 cities, Brightkite is US-wide. Ironically, this is because Brightkite leverages the Google Maps API – something that Google has failed to do with their own service.
  • Dodgeball is all-or-nothing with location data, while Brightkite has tiered access so that not all of your friends – or the world – get your precise location data.
  • Brightkite integrates with Twitter and FireEagle; Dodgeball essentially silos your data.

Consider Dodgeball’s coffin nailed shut. Brightkite.app is the sort of app I’ve been waiting for since the iPhone SDK was first announced.

Brightkite.app is available now.

Comments (1)

The Weekend In 5 Pictures

Oct 12, ’08 11:41 PM

The Sewing Machine

Autumn

Pour

Pumpkin

Planks

We spent the weekend in the Finger Lakes.

Comments (0)

The Zen Of SkyMall

Oct 12, ’08 10:37 PM
Finding myself stuck in a non-JetBlue plane for a quick up-and-down flight, I attacked my gratis copy of SkyMall and discovered a wonderful world full of fact, wit, and astonishment. I have collected every useful nugget of “factual” information used to sell products, and extend them to you as a sort of bizarro-Coupland reading exercise. Alternately, you can just imagine them on fortune cookies. Enjoy.
Continue Reading… Comments (0)

In The Political Deep End

Oct 7, ’08 11:32 PM

Five minutes ago, I’m resting on the couch, nursing a pinched nerve in my neck; I have my laptop open for scanning Twitter, political blogs, and Metafilter to catch impressions on the debate.

I hear a female voice coming from the TV – Countdown with Keith Olbermann was on but I had zoned out. My brain identified it quickly as Andrea Mitchell, and I carried on.

And then I stopped to consider: I can identify political commentators without visuals.

Somebody, please, save me.

Comments (0)