DefinitiveInk

Gooooaaaaal

A link to the full  schedule of World Cup Games for US audiences. (via NYT World Cup soccer blog as is the link to the clip of Zidane’s goal for Real Madrid in its 2-1 victory over Bayer Leverkusen in the 2002 Champions League final. )

       

Lyrics to Mr. Softee song

One of the founders of Mr. Softee died over the weekend and the obituary in the NYT had the history and lyrics to the song that is now playing constantly by the playground on my block.

"Written in E-flat major in jaunty 6/8 time, the jingle was created
by an advertising agency in 1960 for the company's early radio
campaigns. Though the trucks play only an instrumental version, the
tune does have words:

The CREAM-i-est DREAM-i-est SOFT ice CREAM

you GET from MIS-ter SOF-tee.

FOR a re-FRESH-ing de-LIGHT su-PREME

LOOK for MIS-ter SOF-tee...."

The New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest

A friend turned me on to Daniel Radosh's site where among other very readable things he hosts a weekly anti-caption contest for the selected cartoon in The New Yorker's contest. Often the captions are far better than the official entries.

Action Forums - MoveOn's forum tech

So  since they asked I just voted on my three most important goals for MoveOn and next to the choices I noticed the option to "see what other members have to say" clicking this took me to ActionForum which is a very interesting board technology that seems to have been developed by MoveOn , at least the whois info for actionforum.com points to them.  It uses posts and ratings to convert a thread to a tool for decision making and activism.

" The forum serves as a public meeting place where people can share their thoughts and ideas with MoveOn and others.  The forum consists of two lists: a top comments list ordered by how important people feel the comment is, and a recent comments list ordered by time with the most recent at the beginning.  The front page shows the top five top comments with links to view more top comments.  After this is the five most recent comments followed with links to more recent comments.  If you register, you can indicate if you agree--or not--with the comments and how important you feel the comments are.  You can also submit your own comment.  The forum is open to all, so the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of MoveOn or its members.

The actionforum page reads like a product page so perhaps they will roll this out to other organizations.

Chicken or Egg?

CNN is reporting a story that the debate over which came first the chicken or the egg has been decided in favor of the egg. This large and pressing question was finally put to bed by Disney  University to help celebrate the release of the Chicken Little DVD. But Disney is not alone in helping to spur major advances in human thought, Sony College is responsible for  theological discussions as a result of work to help drive people to their cross-disciplinary course on Da Vinci and semiotics. Taking a look at the current movies it seems that so much more could be done by these studio owned institutions; the Marvel Medical College staff could have used X-men The Last Stand as a great beginning for a discussion of stem-cell research; UC Paramount's School of Urban Planning could have made better use of Over the Hedge as starting point for fighting urban sprawl;  Poseidon which was put out by Warner Brother's  Oceanic Research Center as a fund-raising device could have done more with their exploration of the cruise industries waste disposal techniques. One course that is also causing much discussion is An Inconvenient Truth but sadly not all of the students are listening,  content as they are to get their gentleman's C's.

Next week: The US Postal Service goes into the distance learning game as it works with corporations to deliver education. HP has already designed the curriculum for a course on the history of technology. I for one can't wait to sign up.

Links for 5/24/06

TheSheepMarket - 10,000 drawings of sheep created through Amazon's Mechanical Turk Market for a total price of $200. (via Kottke.org)

Yahoo Analyst Day Presentation

Four downloadable audiobooks created by BMW and RandomHouse. Each short story has a BMW in it. More RandomHouse audio book stuff as they announce a partnership with Starbucks for the Velveteen Rabbit.

Martha Stewart to launch social network

What I find interesting about the announcement is how dismissive Rafat and others' attitudes are about it. I realize that the CEO brought up the MySpace comparison but I think that the reality is that it makes a lot of sense for them to revamp the site with user generated content as a focus.  Martha has rabid fans, they stand in line for her cookbooks, and name their dogs after hers, her magazine is filled with projects and recipes(some of which I’ll even admit to doing), so the idea of her readers being able to share their results and help each other make them perfect will probably have great appeal. They have great editors who can also contribute, and most importantly (according to NPR) the whole thing ties into their site which has a large commerce component. So getting people to the site and then near the store makes sense. I think they are using the term social network because it is hot when what they are really doing is simply re-launching their site to take advantage of the user driven content and that isn’t as sexy. When HomeDepot launches something similar I bet they say the same thing.

iTunes + Nike - new concept

Nike and Apple are teaming up to make a sensor enabled shoe that interacts with the Nano. Between the music, training data, training logs on the website it looks very interesting. I was looking at some geo tag ideas on the wireless link below and this is a whole other dimension. (via Coolhunting)

Links for 5/23/06

Business 2.0 article "Your Wireless Future" has a nice photo gallery about some geo oriented sites.

Birth Certificates, Death Certificates, Restaurant Inspections, Order Condoms - the right nav of the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene's website. (via Gawker)

The war between South Brooklyn and North Brooklyn a funny article in the NY Observer

“In Williamsburg, everyone’s kind of illiterate. Relatively,” said Christian, a 29-year-old Williamsburg transplant who moved there from Park Slope and regrets it. “One time I was on the L train, and the girl sitting next to me was reading Women in Love, and I said, ‘That’s good—have you read The Rainbow?’ And she said, ‘No, this is my first Lawrence—is it all so deep and philosophical?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah … it’s literature.’”

Susan Mernit - "Over and over, proof comes in that one of the key acquisition--and retention--tools for users today are widgets that create distributed access to information--is it any surprise that the same functionality would appeal to the web folks at a weekly magazine?" From a post on Time's use of a related links widget from Sphere. A really interesting post.

The Wikipedia entry on Cliques - "

A clique (klɪk, klik) is an informal and restricted social group formed by a number of people who share common interests - formal social groups are referred to as societies or organizations. Cliques are most notably found amongst groups of teenagers, primarily in high schools and colleges, often thought more prominent amongst females, but also in other similar environments not to mention politics.

Cliques at times have complex structures, and characteristics tend to differ between one another. However, one characteristic which is common to all cliques is the existence of a defined power structure, generally comprised of a leader (or a few leaders), followers (refer to the article on leadership) and pariahs. Thus, it is inaccurate to describe all social groups of teenagers as cliques, as often said groups do not have any particular power structure

.... it also has a nice photo from Heathers.

Links for 5/22/06

"Harvey put me on the list +2" - Asmallworld.net "an exclusive"  social network site gets funding. The lucky few get a chance to exchange restaurant tips with Quentin Tarantino, Ivanka Trump and Naomi Campbell. I suppose from a luxury advertising standpoint this probably makes sense but, boy oh boy,  it is a club I am happy not to join (not that I'll be asked).

Treehugger post about how to use and navigate to their archives. More sites should have this in a _how to use our site FAQ. One could assume that Treehugger has a pretty web-savvy audience. After all they are reading an environmental blog so the fact that they are trying to help their audience fine their archives means that more mainstream sites should do the same.

Leonard Lopate on WNYC this morning on newspapers in a digital age. Editors from the Wash Post and the NYT talking about their sites, users, and resource allocations.

Wired on AT&T documents under court seal that outline their involvement in helping the Govt's warrantless domestic surveillance program.

TIVO doing some deals with magazines - editors seem to be making pages of favorites. I would think they would link to schedules so people could program their devices.

I find myself to be among the legions of people who are upset about the injury to Barbaro. I find it odd, since I don't know the horse and don't really follow horse racing. So it's nice to see a NYT article that tries to explain it.

Two young people I admire are Jean Rohe, who at the New School graduation was far more eloquent that I was (and am) at that age. She has a post about it on The Huffington Post. Another is LeBron James, who in addition to his awesome talent, seems to possess a humility, a sense of history, and presence far beyond his years. I'm sort of glad he lost to the Pistons in the seventh game as he will take it as a growth experience.

hanging garden

hanging garden
Originally uploaded by niznoz.

A very nice way to celebrate the return of the sun.

Links for 5/19/06

At Museums: Invasion of the Podcasts - Article in the NYT about museums embracing podcast tours. I have to listen to the Artcasts from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that are more like a radio show than a tour.

Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell about his article on Cesar Millan, the "Dog Whisperer". After reading the article on subway this morning I tried standing and moving differently and playing with my "presence". I'm not sure if it had any effect on the people around me and since there were no dogs I couldn't really tell but the article is really interesting.

From Paid Content's job blog come this gem - World Wrestling Entertainment, Director Wireless Content. Run don't walk or body slam at this opportunity to create weird new SMS alerts.

Scoble on big changes at Microsoft in terms of the company and how it pays employees. What is really interesting is the debt the changes have to the unknown miniMSFT blogger.

Is there any possibility of my carnivorous plants being harmed by anything leaching out of an old cast iron tub?  - A post on the Bog forum of GardenWeb. Be careful where you bathe.

Today is Bike to Work day but I failed to participate.

Links 5/18/06

Fresh off waiting in line at Trader Joe's someone settles in awaiting the opening of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. The fact that this person is from Texas makes me feel slightly better. Wow, are they going to sell stuff there they don't sell in Soho, let alone J&R? (via Curbed)

Cork'd a new shared wine review site. I like the idea of tasting tags. (via Kottke)

Yesterday Random House announced that they were going to move towards having 30% of their books printed on recycled paper by 2010. Excellent.

My Washington Square - nice project collecting personal stories in the aforementioned square. (via Nick)

Anish Kapor's Cloud Gate

Anish Kapor's Cloud Gate
Originally uploaded by bromptonman.

One of the things we did when we were in Chicago over the weekend was visit Millennium Park. It was my first time there and I noticed how clean and green it was. Coincidentally the NYT ran an article about this in yesterday's paper.

Links 5/16/06

Guerilla Gardening and seed bombing - In London under cover of night teams are planting public spaces. Times UK story, NPR story. (via Martina one the hipsters at Gurl.com)

State Senator in S. Carolina has diverted 100 million in state funds to help preserve the Hunley, a confederate submarine. Nice photo of the guy in a reenactors uniform. (via Huffpost)

Enthusiast Group gets funded and launches a mountain-biking site. Looks like a good platform and set of templates to roll out in to running etc. Will this give a run to Rodale? I like this model. Should I be referring to GardenWeb as a citizen media site too?

ESPN has an Ombusman. Who knew?

Stock quote widget coming from Yahoo. Looks like another Yahoo owned element to add to JoshuaMack.com

Really interesting issue about ownership of baseball stats. In an odd way this, or perhaps the experience of sitting in on the NBC upfronts made me think of the issue of copyright and how our copyright laws inhibit the creation of new works and therefore our culture. Kevin Kelly wrote about this in the Scan This Book article I  mentioned yesterday.

The desire of all creators is for their works to find their way into all minds. A text, a melody, a picture or a story succeeds best if it is connected to as many ideas and other works as possible. Ideally, over time a work becomes so entangled in a culture that it appears to be inseparable from it, in the way that the Bible, Shakespeare's plays, "Cinderella" and the Mona Lisa are inseparable from ours. This tendency for creative ideas to infiltrate other works is great news for culture. In fact, this commingling of creations is culture...Almost everything created today will not return to the commons until the next century. Thus the stream of shared material that anyone can improve (think "A Thousand and One Nights" or "Amazing Grace" or "Beauty and the Beast") will largely dry up.

Not that rotisserie baseball is that cultural but if all of the stats and players names are the property of the Major League's internet company then mighty Casey will have struck out. More importantly it might not be written,  if he had been real,  you get the point.

Links 5/15/06

"Everyone in this goddamned store is wearing a blue shirt and nobody knows a thing!" -improv everywhere pulls and then documents a very funny prank at Best Buy.

Writing about documents Kevin Kelly's NYT article about digitizing books is a must read and contains such nuggets as this; "From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages."

We were in Chicago over the weekend and one of the things we did was take a walking tour of the Columbian Expostion of 1893. Other than the Museum of Science & Industry there is nothing left of The White City. At the fair Otis elevator was demonstrating the elevator, the kinetoscope was introduced, people were discovering the phone, and electricity was shown off as the city was brighly lit, and a century later the first of 100 billion web pages were created.

Very interesting world maps that track themes. (via boingboing)

Links - 5/10/06

TechCrunch on Squidoo being a big purple bruise
Blogher post on ClubMom rolling up a mom blog network (via Susan Mernit)
Webby awards winners list
DIY's  new woodworking channel
AVC blogs posts a political video from youtube.com worth watching. Some irony in that youtube owned by Murdoch could become a  distributon point for political shorts. I hadn't thought of it as a political weapon before either. I hope moveon starts posting ads on it. That way we could put them into our blogs very quickly. 
Asme magazine award winners.

ESPN video on how the media treated Babe Ruth.

Perhaps it has been there for a while but I just noticed that kottke.org has an ad on it. Part of The DECK network. The site lays out the details: nine ads * $4,400 a month /7 sites = $5650 per month per site which I think is a 3.63 cpm on their 16 million plus pv per month. The DECK says that they aren't selling by cpm but by "cost per influence". It is a low rate but I guess I'm confused as to why their "cost of influence" is so low. Why this system versus blogads?

Article about Pearl Jam and their embrace of user generated content. (need to be a mediapost member to see it)

Links for 5/10/06

Here are some highlights from "Let's Have a Three-Way" Huffington's ASME talk.  - I like, employ the people who get the Internet regardless of whether or not they roll in at noon. I would add it would be great if they could tele-commute once in a while. I also like find out who on your staff blogs and get them involved

How deep is the online ad well? Article looking at size of online ad market.

Dolphins recognize each other by name. In other news from nature my sister's bees are acting up. Apparently they are too crowded after a long winter and unless she puts on a new super they might swarm. She is also back to posting about them though I'm confused by her last post. She refers to them as the girls but I thought other than the queen they were all boys.

Google map hack that shows what the NYC area will look like if the sea level rises. At 3 meters Red Hook begins to look like its 1800's  island self. (via Curbed via Kottke) As a side note, this would make the potential Gowanus Expressway tunnel obsolete shortly after it's completion. (via hello.typepad)

Links 5/08/06

" The gentrification of exhibitionism", the last line of a Slate article about the videos now appearing in the NYT weddings section. It's a fun article but I wonder if the author has spent any time on Veiled Conceit, a funny blog devoted to the examination of NYT wedding announcements.

Arianna Huffington is speaking to ASME today and in preparation  last Friday she wrote an interesting post about magazines and the Internet. I've been thinking about her post and also my post from May 4th. I love magazines and imagine I will read them as long as they are being printed, so  my comments as an observer of multiple media companies moves were more about the culture of some general interest magazines and whether they will be able to swallow their egos and expand their brands online. Arianna writes about niche magazines having a wonderful potential online and I agree. Large magazines could have a bright future online as well if they follow the advice in Folio. There are other ways to build businesses and have influence online than becoming a single large destination. I hope her comments go over well and that she posts them.

Article in the NYT about the fact that more people are watching rained out NASCAR events than the NBA playoff's. In other words NOTHING.

PaidContent post about Yahoo's advertising overhaul. Major!

And also reading about moves at my soon to be new employer in PaidContent and others.

It is so great that Central Park and Prospect Park are going to be closed to cars during the weekday. It is amazing that it took this long when you think but it is a small step to reclaiming a city overrun by cars.

Officials estimated that approximately 865 vehicles would be affected by the Central Park closures and about 357 by those in Prospect Park. By contrast, Mr. Bloomberg said, on weekdays an average of 70,000 people use Central Park and 15,000 use Prospect Park.

On the subject of car free(ness), I rode in the 5 boro ride this weekend and have to say that riding with 30,000 people on the BQE isn't that much different than driving on the BQE. Bad cyclists abounded riding SUV like bikes or too small racing bikes weaving  in and out of traffic with the same abandon as do drivers on these roads. When you add in the mile or so walked at bottlenecks it was not, at least for me, a recipe for fun. I'll take river road or even laps in a now carless park any time.

Links for 04.05.06

American Forests Historic Tree Nursery - site where you can but saplings from historic places.

Yahoo has a new format for their stock message boards in beta- for those moments when you can't resist following what the day traders are saying. More importantly new board beta!

101 Cookbooks - It's been a little while since I checked in on this site. Always a great blog it now has boards, journals from other food writers, a member area and some nice ads.A very good example of how to create a new community and perhaps a media play of some value. By the way the reason I wnet to it is that it appeared as a "web clip" in my g-mail. Nice!