Found – Page 15 – Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog

We live in an accelerated world. Culture, as it stands today, values immediacy and repetition over things like finesse or nuance. Stories are quickly beaten dead by our media; memes can run through the internet within a mere day.

I realize that even with a significant amount of time left, people around me are already fatigued with the 2008 US Election. I cannot fault them; I, too, tire of the incessant punditry and echo chamber madness that constitutes political dialog anymore. My rallying cry at this point is “Is it December yet?”.

But I think we all realize how important this election is – possibly the most important in the last 20 years. A country as damaged as ours will be shaped significantly by the next administration.

I like to think that my readers are reasonable people, who can debate the issues without resorting to partisan mudslinging. So in the spirit of trying to have a sane dialog – friends, who are you voting for on October 21st: kitten, or newborn?

A kitten president? That’s change *I* can believe in.

(You can watch more Kitten vs. Newborn 08 coverage on Superdeluxe. Tip of the hat to Steven Cento.)

> “Loopt is a location-based social network for douchebags who wear two ill-fitting polo shirts at the same time.” – John Gruber

(I’m breaking up my thoughts about the WWDC keynote into multiple posts this year.)

More than any other segment of the keynote, the demonstrations of the applications excited me the most.

* Sega, Super Monkey Ball – One of the sources I was following during the event said the graphics were “as good as the DS”. To me, it looks a lot better than many of the games on the DS. The price point is lower than most of the Super Monkey Ball games, but this one isn’t really grabbing me, probably because I’ve played SMB so many times over the years. (Also: if you’re giggling about the name, you probably still think “Wii” is hilarious.)
* eBay, Auctions – Auctions isn’t much more than a native front end into eBay’s API, but the experience is so well done, I can only hope that other companies can follow eBay’s lead in developing
* Loopt – I fully expect there to be lots of location-aware social networks forming around the iPhone, but I expect Loopt to get a big boost for being featured in the keynote. Hey Dodgeball? You’re on notice.
* Six Apart, Typepad – the TypePad client looks like a simple, clean blogging client. But I’m not a TypePad user; I use MovableType (and Tumblr). I asked Anil Dash if there was any reason the app won’t work with their other products, and I was greeted with a no comment.
* Associated Press, Mobile News Network – it’s truly a thing of beauty to watch the Associated Press innovate within the news space. The citizen journalism things are a thing of beauty. NowPublic? You’re on notice.
* Pangea – I have no great love for Brian Greenstone, although I admire his tenacity for sticking in the Mac software industry for so long. Enigmo looks promising, but Cro-Mag Rally was generally regarded as a poor cart game when it was originally released. Still, to hear that porting apps from OS X was largely painless is good news.
* Cow Music, Band – very interesting music making app, and I look forward to seeing where the iPhone drives music creation tools.
* MLB.com, At Bat – I’m not much for baseball, but kudos to MLB for so quickly integrating nearly real-time video into their box scores. This is a killer app for many of the guys in my office.
* Modality – when Scott said the medical community has been flocking to the iPhone, they aren’t kidding. Modality is not an obscure app – I’ve been told we use it in our curriculum at the medical college. The iPhone is going to be a great platform for building rich educational apps for all curriculums.
* MIMvista – again, seeing these apps make me smile because I know there’s lots of latent interest in the medical community for clinical applications.
* Digital Legends Entertainment, Kroll – the animation style reminds me a bit of *Dragon’s Lair*, although it looks to have slightly more gameplay. I guess we’ll see how it ends up in September.