December 2009
61 posts
The latest to leverage Augmented Reality: Adidas
OK, so we’ve talked a bunch on this blog about augmented reality technology, and how alot of brands are starting to embrace it. Well check this out… Adidas is starting to embed chips into the shoe tongue, which when you hold it up to the webcam it becomes apparent that there is a whole city living in your shoe. Time to buy some shares in odor eaters…
All Business is Local Vol.2
A few posts ago we talked a bit about the significance of Google’s bid for Yelp, and the huge opportunity that local advertising represents on the web and for the mobile platform… yeah that’s right $27 Billion bones it’s estimated. Well today more noise on the local advertising front: iPromote has announced a new ad platform for mobile for local businesses. For $5 a...
Avatar: I See a Bladerunner Rip-Off
It’s the holidays, so what is a geek to do but go check out some new movies. So Avatar it was the other night, and must say that (in addition to feeling like I was at a rave club or something with all the neon colors and crazy visuals) I was struck by how overtly it rips off the whole eye/seeing theme of one of the most important sci-fi flicks of all time: Bladerunner. Even...
Apple Tablet's rumored name: "iSlate"
From Fast Company…
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/more-apple-tablet-rumors-names-sizes-and-speculation
Web 3.0: GoogleWave and the Age of Aggregration
Just playing around with my beta version of GoogleWave and 2 thoughts occurred.
1) I have no clue what the heck I am doing
2) This application is taking aggregation to a whole new level, not only is it aggregrating my content i.e. like a google reader would do with my sites and blogs, but also all my contacts, messaging, social networking, etc. and creating new connections between all of...
The Original Dark Hero? No @#$% Sherlock
Saw the new Sherlock Holmes flick today starring Robert Downey Jr. and it struck me that, despite the recent dark reincarnations of such huge cultural heroes as Batman, Bourne, and Bond, that actually Holmes was the original dark hero. This guy was a drug addict (absinthe), an intellectual, and liked to kick peoples’ butts, in Victorian London in the 1880s, long before any of these others...
Ladies & Gentlemen we are entering the new world...
An interesting editorial in NYT yesterday talks about how Avatar has taken the art of 3-D into a whole new realm. Where 3-D used to be more gimmick and wow factor, in Avatar it actually underscores the central theme which is all about really seeing people for who they are. Ladies and gents, this isn’t yer daddy’s 3-D, this is immersive video.
This is not all that surprising if...
Wishlist 2009: The Tunes That Made a Year a Year
One of the things that you have to live with as a retired DJ is the compulsive need to make music compilations. And not just throw together a couple of songs, but arrange in such a way where that there’s a story there, an arc from beginning to middle to end.
Well if you know this geek, around this time of year I put one together that seemed to defined the year in music (according to this...
Blackberryists are crackheads, and iPhoners have...
Blackberryists have long been branded as crackheads. And now iPhoners have their own brand of demon. According to some recent research, they have shown to have attributes akin to people with “Stockholm Syndrome”… you know like people who are kidnapped and then defend their captors. Like super-defensive. I guess they are tired of defending against people who are always...
NEW MUSIC TUESAY ALERT: CFCF
More chillwaveness for y’all. Or “glow-fi” which is another name apparently circling to describ this new sound. Artist name is CFCF, and he gives Vangelis a run for his money. Check out the tracks “invitation to love” or “reigning patterns” on his myspace page. Big up to B Lars who seems to have become my source for all things chillwave… or...
Blippy: Twitter for your credit card
Man give me a break. Here’s a quick rundown on CNET on what the heck the vision is…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10415308-250.html
Evolution of the Hipster
While we are on the subject of all this end of the decade stuff, in case you missed it: a great timeline overview of how the hipster has evolved from 2000 to today from Paste Magazine. Work colleague passed it on and too good not to post, although some of these seem debatable. Click on link below to enlarge.
http://digital.pastemagazine.com/publication/?i=26727&p=29
NEW MUSIC TUESDAY ALERT: Mouse & Mercer's Broken...
You know that song “Does that make you crazy” by Gnarls Barkley that was friggin unavoidable a couple of years back? (Oh yeah and something called the Grey Album which combined the Beatles White Album and Jay Z’s Black Abum and gave public birth to mash-up music) And what about that crazy catchy band The Shins that was pretty much the soundtrack to...
2010 - 2020: The Decade of Less is More?
Man this Culture Geek absolutely loves this time of year because its when everyone and their mum tries to wrap up the year in culture, and as a result when cool new buzz words get born and tossed around.
This year is even more special because it’s the end of a decade, and thereby the beginning of a new one.
In a past post I submitted my argument for calling 2000 - 2010 the decade of...
All Business is Local
You know how they say all politics are local? How in order to save the planet and our guts we need start eating local? And it’s important to support local rock bands?
Well, the same is true for advertising now, as exemplified with last week’s buzz about Google potentially gobbling up another company (will they ever...
Hipster Sports Bar and Breaking Stereotypes
Last night was a cold and snowy one in NYC, and this Geek took the opportunity to warm up with a few slugs at Warren 77, the world’s first “hipster sports bar”. Must say I was a bit disappointed in the overall experience (two of the friggin tv’s were busted… as the dudes on espn say “c’mon man!”) but that’s not the point. Point is that...
A new rebel in the subscription music revolution:...
Well how about that.
10 minutes after the last post about an impending subscription music “revolution” (man this geek loves that word) in 2010 brought on by wireless, what pops in the old email inbox but my daily dose of Digital Music News… and in it an announcement of a new subscription music app called Rdio that is launching (for beta testers only as of now) in the app store...
Will wireless change how we think about music in...
Subscription music is a really interesting way to check out music. It’s like music rental… Instead of buying songs “a la carte” and downloading to your PC, you instead pay a few bucks a month and can stream as much as you want from the web, which is awesome because you can just go nuts and don’t have to deal with worries like oh say deciding you hate that song you...
It's a Byte Sized World After All
Interesting article in yesterday’s NY Times about how Paramount Pictures is creating an online video clip service that will allow users to search hundreds of feature films on a frame-by-frame basis, and buy snippets and clips of these movies for use in other media, with editing software that will let you edit, slice, and dice the content and the movie how you want.
Whether or...
NEW MUSIC TUESDAY ALERT: Neon Indian & "Chillwave"...
As long as I am on the subject of new music genres, figured I would follow up with a post on another emerging new music genre called “Chillwave”, that this geek has been getting very excited about over the past few months. Chillwave is represented by artists like Washed Out (you may have seen his chillwave anthem “Feel It All Around” posted on fanphile a...
Ever heard of "Chipmusic"?
It’s music that is made out of old Nintendo Gameboy and Commodore 64 sounds. And apparently there is a whole scene around it complete with its own festival and documentary (called “Reformat the Planet”, was at SxSW last year). The festival is called Blipfest and is happening this weekend in NYC at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY. As big as the Air Guitar scene has become, the...
The Phone Box Experiment
Ok, this geek meant to do a post on this earlier today as today was the last live day of THE PHONE BOX EXPERIMENT… Skype’s latest marketing “campaign”. To communicate and get the word out that their int’l rates are cheap, they took a young dude who apparently can speak like 20 languages, blindfolded him, put him on a plane to Spain, then drove him into the middle...
NPR "All Song Considered" Listeners pick top 25...
Man this is depressing… this geek thought he was an independent music fan and he’s heard less than 10 of the top 25 of 2009 according to listeners of awesome indie music source All Songs Considered. So, chances are there are a bunch for you to check out here too. If it were up to this geek, the animal collective (pic above) record would be #1. (Link to NPR stream below)
...
Oh Tablet, My Tablet
News today about a new ASUS tablet in 2010. According to Digitimes, ASUS is putting the final touches on the Eee Pad, a device that will be blur the traditional lines between PC and MID and feature a touchscreen display between 4 and 7″. This is after the big news yesterday - or I should say fresh rumor sparked yesterday - about a new Apple tablet as early as March 2010 based on...
We are all becoming walking hard drives... turn me...
A new report from the University of California at San Diego indicates that as of the year 2008 the average American was consuming 34 gigabytes of data every single data across all forms of media: TV, newspaper, Web sites, radio, etc. (diagram of how they say it works above). This geek gets tired just writing that number.
...
The top words and phrases of 2009
See below. 9 out of the top 15 words are negative, covering disease, bloodsucking undead, bad finances, outrage, income inequality, getting fired, losing your house, and drug dealers. Yikes, bring on 2010 quickly please!!!
Austin, TX November 29, 2009 – The Global Language Monitor has announced that Twitter is the Top Word of 2009 in its annual global survey of the English language. Twittered...
IKEA uses augmented reality to launch new...
Man augmented reality is really starting to take off… you know where you can hold up your phone and it’ll tell you information about what you’re looking at through the phone’s camera. Well, AR has also become the latest sales tool for IKEA. For a recent furniture collection launch in Germany this past November, IKEA recently developed an AR app that lets customers see...
NEW MUSIC ALERT: The Mixtape Club
This geek was just reading about how sales of old school vinyl are up significantly, and then stumbled upon this totally awesomely cool site for new music call THE MIXTAPE CLUB, and it got me to thinking about how there is no subsititute for analog. (Of course, the mixes on the themixtapeclub.org are mp3 files, but hey, its the idea that counts). Oh yes, let me explain what the heck it is: The...
NEW MUSIC TUESDAY ALERT: You Look Smashing, Billy
Here’s another 90s musical overlord that is releasing new music… Smashing Pumpkins. New tune called “A Song for a Son”, will be the first of 44 that the Pumpkins will be releasing for free on their website down the road. This geek met Billy once when he was dj’ing and the dude is taaaaall.
...
Google going real time now
So this Geek has spent several posts ruminating about real time web search engines, and how - as more and more people get smartphones - the real time web will have a fundamental impact on how we live. Well in case you have not read yet, now this movement took a huge step forward with yesterday’s news that Google will start posting search results against conversations and posts...
NEW MUSIC TUESDAY ALERT: Malakai "The Ugly Side of...
OK, never mind these guys are named after one of Stephen King’s Children of the Corn. But they aren’t a Child of the Corn, Malakai is a British duo with a singer often referred to as a “B-Boy Syd Barrett”… hmm, well the music is definately a little spooky, with clear trip-hop breaks, loops, vinyl samples and scratching. Produced by Geoff Barrow,...
2000-2009: The Decade of Irony?
This geek loves this time of year because every member of the media, pundit, and people who think they are one (this geek included) always tries to ruminate on the year past and what it meant or symbolised culturally. But this year is especially special because of the end of the aughts (i.e. the decade… i didn’t know that reference either). Read a bunch of interesting...
Hopenhagen Promotion: Future Apologies From World...
New Greenpeace commissioned ads in and around the Copenhagen airport in advance of this week’s global summit on climate change, intended to put pressure on global leaders as they arrive for the discussion.
“The brief from Greenpeace International was simple,” says Toby Cotton of Arc Communications, who created the ads, “to put pressure on world leaders to create a fair...
Hello iCloudTunes
Big news on Friday (reported yesterday in NYT) about Apple buying the streaming music service Lala (if you have listened to tracks on Pitchfork.com then you’ve used it before). Basically what Lala does is scan your music library on your hard drive and creates a mirror image on their server that you can access, stream, and play from the web (like when you listen to music on Pandora). The...
