“There is a design revolution going on. And it’s not about the winner of round 5 of the console wars. This is about moving our devices out into free space, no longer constrained by their own form factor. This is about how we start using our bodies for communication, commerce and play in a digital world.”
– frogdesign’s David Merkoski, on Gizmodo
My story about Palm Inc. for the November issue of Mobile (on newsstands next week) turns out to be right on the money. My analysis: Palm better switch from Palm OS to Windows Mobile soon, or face oblivion. Today, confirmation: Engadget shows the Windows-based Treo 700w.
Well, I should have lots more time for blogging now that my days won’t be taken up with the agonizing work of producing the world’s most entertaining, authoritative magazine on mobile technology. Yes, it’s true: Mobile magazine has folded. Despite having far better-written, more accurate, and better edited copy than the competition, despite having a respectably large monthly circulation, and despite selling nearly 40 pages of quite expensive ads every month, we somehow never managed to crawl out of the money pit we dug for ourselves in the early days. Or so they told me. I just wrangled words; somebody else blew all the money. Honest.
Look for our last issue (November’s) on newsstands in early October, god willing. As for me, I will be dusting off my work gloves and laying in to the plumbing, the walls, and the windows for awhile. Or maybe I’ll just go surfing. Meanwhile, look for my latest writings here. There’s some good stuff in there.
For me, Disney’s Electrical Parade was the highlight of our visit there this past spring. It’s a long, trippy parade of illuminated vehicles and floats, some of which are covered with thousands of lights, which starts just about sundown and goes on for maybe 20 minutes. As it rolls slowly by in the dark, this bizarre, baroque, electronic music plays over and over again on the loudspeakers that surround you. The music is cheerful, repetitive, bizarre, and totally overtakes your brain, leaving you feeling spacey, stoned, and a bit out of your head. I loved it.
Today, thanks to BoingBoing, I discovered that the Electrical Parade’s music is a composition by Jean Jacques Perrey called Baroque Hoedown, who has posted an MP3 online. Outstanding!
Perry is having a record release party in SF on Thursday, co-sponsored by RE/Search. I’m sure that will be a strange event.
Sept. 17 is Coastal Cleanup Day. Go catch a spork crab!
A lot: see Don’t dumb me down, the latest installment of the Guardian’s weekly “Bad Science” column.
A guy named Alvaro has posted an amazing series of 197 photos showing New Orleans before, during, and after the hurricane.
A computer scientist looks at the brain:
“You” are just a subroutine, and a recently-added one at that. You’re like a user-mode driver that gets access to certain kernel data, but you only see and control what the kernel lets you. You have no direct access to the kernel’s process space, but you can make calls into it, and you get notifications from it. The bulk of your nature as a human lies entirely outside your process space, outside your ability to directly perceive or control.
Unbelievable stories of indifference and brutality on the part of so-called rescuers and emergency personnel:
Hurricane Katrina — Our Experiences (EMS Network, also cited in Daily Kos)
Photojournalists Covering Katrina Fall Victim to Growing Violence, Chaos (National Press Photographers’ Ass’n)
Plus one story of how well things could go when people organize themselves and there’s a sympathetic authority in place: EMS at Hilton New Orleans Riverside (EMS Network)
