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photoshop album unlockJune 28, 2006
reviews are in
Who Killed the Electric Car is currently getting better reviews than Superman. So listen, Supes is going to be around for a few weeks - why not check out a good eco-documentary instead this weekend?
Posted by tshey at 09:48 PM
ze's plaque
here's what happens when ze frank gets offered a plaque of his recent nytimes article.
Posted by tshey at 12:43 PM
June 27, 2006
hot doggery
This weekend, I happened to pull into the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the New Jersey turnpike just as the New Jersey Regional Qualifiers for the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest got underway. Here's a link to a few photos I took before hopping back on the road to D.C.
Posted by tshey at 11:58 AM
Helio targeting Korean Americans
In the Washington Post today, first detailed article I've seen about how Helio has been actively targeting Korean Americans with its mobile service, including a Korean-language sub-brand called Helio powered by SK Telecom (SK is a leading South Korean mobile operator and backer, along with Earthlink, of Helio). This was discussed a bit a month ago, as T-Mobile (which reportedly has 35% of Korean American customers) was alleged to be fighting to keep Helio out of some big box retailers, but it's also a logical step for a company that's emphasized mobile social networking, messaging, and mobile video -- all of which are big business in South Korea. There are estimated to be at least 1.3 million people of Korean ancestry in the United States right now (of which we can assume T-Mobile counts a few hundred thousand customers), although Helio presumably is targeting the younger segment that would go for a $100 a month unlimited messaging and data plan.
Posted by tshey at 11:04 AM
harry shearer's new orleans diary
Here's a really nice post from Harry Shearer about life in New Orleans. While we occasionally hear about crime on the rebound in the city, or see the devastation that continues in the lower ninth, it's good to hear that the city has some semblance of normal life starting to come back as well.
Posted by tshey at 08:51 AM
June 13, 2006
nike & apple slashdotjammed
Showing how contagious media can stick around pretty much forever, slashdot user Whiney Mac Fanboy posted a modified version of Jonah's nike emails in the comments of a slashdot story on nike and apple's announcement last month. A lot of people must have read it, because apparently this site got a lot of traffic (for me, at least) that day. Here's the link.
Unfortunately, it's no joke. Check out the BoingBoing story below, posted earlier today, on China's iPod sweatshops.
Posted by tshey at 11:59 PM
Inside China's iPod sweat-shops
Cory Doctorow: A British paper sent a reporter to "iPod City," the plant in Longhua, China, where iPods are assembled by women who earn $50/month for working 15 hour days.My guess is that this is no worse than the conditions in which Powerbooks, Thinkpads, Zens, Linksys routers, etc are manufactured, but Christ, this is depressing.
The Mail visited some of these factories and spoke with staff there. It reports that Foxconn's Longhua plant houses 200,000 workers, remarking: "This iPod City has a population bigger than Newcastle's."Tony!)The report claims Longhua's workers live in dormitories that house 100 people, and that visitors from the outside world are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player, the report claims. They earn 27 per month. The report reveals that the iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory (E3) that is secured by police officers.
Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn 54 per month - but they must pay for their accommodation and food, "which takes up half their salaries", the report observes.
Update: A former Nokia employee adds, "Add Nokia phones to your list. The type label may say 'Made in Finland' (top-notch models) or 'Made in Hungary' (mid-range ones), but Nokia cellphone engines (ie. the actual hardware) are manufactured by Foxconn in Longhua, China... unless they've found a cheaper supplier. Yes, I actually worked at the plant for a few months between real jobs."
Posted by tshey at 11:55 PM
Exoskeleton For Fighting and Fashion
Posted by tshey at 11:35 PM
Okay, THIS Is The Only Thing I'll Write About Star Wars
After the other post which shall not be named as it does not exist no really, several people from Hollyweird emailed me with variations on the following story. As one of them said to me, it may well be apocryphal, but it s too good a story not to tell:
In the weeks after STAR WARS ate the box office alive and made George Lucas instantly richer than God, the man himself could be found in his shiny new offices, stroking the high-tech goods on his beautiful wooden desk. His top-of-the-range intercom system burped, his secretary announcing that she d received a visitor without an appointment. A Mr Kurosawa.
Lucas leapt up and gushingly welcomed Akira Kurosawa, his cinematic hero, who, as the story has it, was in town to sort out some foreign-rights business.
Kurosawa is ushered into Lucas office, placed in a seat opposite him, they sit, and silence.
And the silence stretches for a minute.
At which point, so the story goes, George Lucas nods once, slowly. Opens the drawer on his beautiful new desk. Extracts his personal chequebook. And, the tale alleges, he drafts an extraordinarily large cheque to the name of A. Kurosawa.
Kurosawa takes the cheque from Lucas fingers. They stand, they bow, and Kurosawa leaves, never having said a word the entire time.
Now leave me alone, Internet Ewoks.
Posted by tshey at 04:56 PM
Beware of the spime cars
In October 2004, i had to prepare a presentation for Art Futura in Barcelona. It was about "Things that think." Of course i quoted extensively the talk that Bruce Sterling had made at Siggraph that year. A series of stories i read in UK newspaper recently made me think of his talk. This part in particular, where he imagines our daily life with spimes.
We'll have to wrangle with:
(...)
* brooms that bellow ads, mops that demand money
* subtle software faults that make even a simple shovel unusable
* unstable software
* security flaws, hacking, theft, fraud, malware, vandalism and pranking
* identity theft
* Industrial hazards: spime kitchens that fry the unwary, spime cars that follow outdated software maps and drive right off broken bridges
etc.
Now the stories. In April, The Times reported about a new sport in the village of Luckington: fishing stranded motorists out of a ford at 25 a time.
Since a road closure, dozens of drivers were blithely following directions from their satellite navigation systems, not realising that the recommended route goes through the ford. Every day since the main B4040 was closed after a wall collapsed on April 8 one or two motorists have been towed out, having either failed to notice or ignored warning signs. Some farmers have been charging 25 to give a tow with tractors. Lesley Bennett, a Luckington parish councillor, said: When the car conks out the driver looks stunned. When you ask what happened, they say, My sat-nav told me it was this way .
That same month and for similar sat-nav bummers, motorists were sent to the edge of a 100ft drop on an unclassified road at Crackpot (!) in North Yorkshire.
And yesterday, BBC News wrote that satellite navigation systems are being blamed for caravanners getting stuck in a narrow lane in a Welsh village. "It's easy to say they should have more common sense, but really if they don't know the area they have no reason to doubt what the computer is telling them," explained Gwilym Jones, who lives at the entrance to the lane.
Technically these cars are not spime'd yet, but we're nearly there, right? I'll let you know when my mop asks for a salary raise.
Posted by tshey at 04:55 PM
links for 2006-06-13
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Feb 06 we-make-money-not-art long piece
Posted by tshey at 02:22 AM
June 12, 2006
she's a square
the other day we bumped into a building size nine year old girl at Trafalgar Square. she was made of wood and screws and ropes and was operated by a bunch of French people wearing Victorian Jackets. it was all very Jules Verne meets Steam Boy on your way to lunch — the whole city was running after this girl. she was just going through the day taking a shower at the park, taking a leak at a random corner and riding her bike. and, you guessed right, she was followed by a giant mechanical elephant.
Posted by tshey at 08:54 AM
links for 2006-06-12
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Weekly, serialized story about a videoblogger in near-future Iraq.
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"Crows make tools, play tricks on each other, and caw among kin in a dialect all their own. These are just some of the signs presented in a recent book that point to an unexpected similarity between the wise birds and humans."
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Polishing off MoCCA-related links, this is sort of a MySpace for cartoonists that just launched -- although I thought that's what LiveJournal already is.
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hard to stop watching - especially when landmasses peel off like skin, the atmosphere apparently ignites and the seas boil. some of the youtube users' comments are even more depressing. via kottke's remainders...
Posted by tshey at 02:25 AM
June 11, 2006
burns + tomine, in conversation
At the MoCCA Art Festival today in NY, legendary cartoonist Charles Burns will be featured in a talk with next-gen legend in the making Adrian Tomine (Sunday, 2:10pm). We caught both Tomine's talk on The Push Man and the conversation between Dan Clowes and Jonathan Lethem at last year's show, and this year's looks again not to be missed. Talks are free with day's admission ($8) to the fest, which also includes three huge exhibition rooms where you can meet and check out the work of tons of talented cartoonists, including new and perennial faves like Hope Larson, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Mike Cavallero, Richard Hahn, Fay Ryu, Becky Cloonan, Farel Dalrymple & the Meathaus crew, and many more.
The show closes at four with a conversation with Jessica Abel, whose book La Perdida was just published as one volume, and is worth checking out.
Posted by tshey at 12:07 PM
links for 2006-06-11
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great portfolio site, including a regularly updated blog. via Drawn!
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Now in beta (seen at MoCCA), upcoming features include saving, sharing and viewing others' strips. Brilliant, fun idea. Great design, too.
Posted by tshey at 02:23 AM
June 10, 2006
Nemo Gould's Giant Squid
San Francisco Bay Area artist Nemo Gould has created a fantastic giant squid kinetic sculpture. Here s a video of the giant squid in action.
You can see this wonderful sculpture in person at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco. Nemo is part of a group show Re: Assembled which opens tomorrow, Thursday, June 8th and runs through July 15th. The show also features the work of Barry Kite and Dan Romo.
A ten tentacle salute to Amy Miller for the tip!
[taking a moment to mention: really, really love the squid blog. --shey.net]
Posted by tshey at 10:10 PM
yo gabba gabba!
Posted by tshey at 09:52 PM
Amnesty's Amazing Ads
Amnesty International launched a new ad campaign that is incredibly creative and powerful. The tagline is “It’s not happening here but it’s happening now” which is hammered home with these transparent ads. The ads “transport” issues in countries like Iraq, China, and Sudan to your local landscape. This is one of the best awareness campaigns I’ve ever seen. [Thanks jk]
Posted by tshey at 09:50 PM
Kurt Cobain's Suicide Letter vs. Google AdSense
Cory Arcangel: Recently I made a webpage which pairs the text from Kurt Cobain's suicide letter up with Google Ads. Here is the result...ps - google ads are genereated from the text of the page they appear on...
Posted by tshey at 10:05 AM
links for 2006-06-10
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OS X-styled theme for the Blackberry.
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Need to chalk some of this up to novelty, as the experience doesn't deliver on the promise yet. But the stats are impressive. Can't help but also note that this is Yahoo's best-designed app.
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ZDNet's report on vloggercon.
Posted by tshey at 02:24 AM
June 09, 2006
stare at your mobile screen all day
A new breed of screens for cell phones, now in development, is getting back to nature. News.com reports.
"Qualcomm and others are promoting new screen technology for handhelds and mobile devices that can stay on all day without sapping battery life, thanks to the sun or liquids. As a result, a cell phone equipped with such a screen could continually broadcast stock quotes, news stories or show a music video to go along with a built-in MP3 player. Currently, phone screens stay dark--mostly by necessity.
The difference is that the new screens don't need to be backlit, as do current screens. Instead, they are primarily illuminated by light from the sun or the movement by liquids inside the screen."
Posted by tshey at 03:54 PM
who killed the electric car?
We've blogged here before about "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (then called "EV Confidential"), a movie produced by some friends of shey.net. Nate points out that the trailer is now up on YouTube, and getting a lot of good ratings and views. Check it out....
Posted by tshey at 12:37 PM
Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites
Sites such as MySpace and Friendster could be the latest target of the US National Security Agency as it gathers personal data for counter-terrorism.New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
Posted by tshey at 11:58 AM
June 08, 2006
links for 2006-06-08
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Created for international mobile TV markets, based on a comic called Wulffmorgenthaler -- the few posted here don't seem very funny or original, but no accounting for taste, I guess.
Posted by tshey at 02:22 AM
June 06, 2006
links for 2006-06-06
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Monitors someone's MySpace profile and lets you know when they become single. Part of the Super Happy money printing machine competition - via waxy links
Posted by tshey at 02:23 AM
June 05, 2006
links for June 5th
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(spits up drink)
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"Joachim Frank has built a career making detailed pictures of the engines inside cells that make proteins. Really, really, really detailed pictures."
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Signing at Forbidden Planet, 12 to 3pm.
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via Kottke.org...
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Filmed before the 2000 election, mini-doc was finally shown at a May '05 "Dave Eggers and friends" event (Wikipedia)
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Guernica interviews the New Yorker contributor and author of 'Field Notes from a Catastrophe' - extensive new book on climate change
Posted by tshey at 02:24 AM