And if you’re ever looking for lots and lots of Flickr thumbnails dished up all at once, try Comp Fight. It “uses Flickr's API to search the database of photos (including the option to do full-text search on titles and descriptions, and to limit searches to Creative Commons licensed works only) and then feeds back the results as live clickable thumbnails,” according to BoingBoing. “[T]he large quantities of search-result thumbnails per page makes this the ideal choice for playing photo-editor.”
The Jim Henson-created characters may be on their way back thanks to a new Disney Film. In the movie, written by...Jason Segel, the Muppets reunite to save their studio with one last variety show. Should the film go well, it opens up the possibility of a television programme, also written by 28-year-old Segel.Variety elaborates on how the writer/actor lined up the gig.
In “[Forgetting] Sarah Marshall” Segel’s character writes a “Dracula” musical performed by puppets. Those cloth creatures were custom-made by the Henson puppeteers, and the experience emboldened Segel to pitch his concept for a Muppets movie when he was invited in for a general meeting with exec Kristin Burr. Segel got a deal in the room and enlisted [Nick] Stoller to co-write and direct the project.
Fingers are crossed this project gets done and done right. No word on when production might get underway or when the movie could hit theaters. In the meantime, watch Statler and Waldorf as they bring their balcony curmudgeonliness to the Internet: below, here and here.
NBC is getting into the holiday spirit with “Letters to Santa -- A Muppets Christmas.” Whoopi Goldberg, “The Sopranos” alums Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa, “Harry Potter” regular Richard Griffiths and Madison Pettis are set to star in the special alongside Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, Miss Piggy and the rest of the muppets gang. “Letters” is set on Christmas Eve when Kermit and company mistakenly avert three letters en route to Santa Claus, which triggers a race against time to bring a happy Christmas to the kids whose wishes were lost in the mail.
But why would Disney, which owns both ABC and the Muppets, sell this to NBC? Why, Bob Iger, why?
MUPPDATE: The New York Times on the planned comeback: “[T]his time the Muppets are getting the “Hannah Montana” treatment, being blasted into every pop-culture nook and cranny that the company owns or can dream up.” The Hannah Montana treatment? Uh-oh. Well, at least Statler & Waldorf are weighing in on the Presidential debates. Harrumph.
Introducing a new, periodic featurette entitled: “They're related?” It’s a quick connect-the-dots to show how two or more public figures are related. For the inaugural posting, meet Alan Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell, husband and wife. She’s the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC News (and survivor of a RNC balloon avalanche). He’s the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. The two were married in 1997 by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Read their wedding announcement in The New York Times here. Buried at the end of the article are some interesting details about the usually taciturn Greenspan: He studied at the Juilliard School and plays the clarinet and saxophone.
Sarah Schmelling recently wrote a terribly clever and funny piece for McSweeney’s, condensing Shakespeare’s tragic story about the Prince of Denmark into a series of status updates, apps and group memberships.
How does “to be or not to be” fare? The existential question is reduced to: “Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.” Here’s how the whole thing opens:
Read the rest here. For more literal, and funny, takes on Facebook utilities, check out this video from The Idiots of Ants on BBC. For more rottenness in Denmark, there’s Hamlet 2.
So Sesame Street is gearing up for its 39th season, which starts on August 11. (Who knew the show even had a season, right?) And from the looks of this trailer – who knew it had trailers? – it’s going to be a very clever, entertaining and fresh season. (This blogger’s optimism might just be a side effect of the detritus passing as “original” and margin-managed programming this summer.) Accordin
g to its press kit – who knew it had a press kit? – this season will feature: Will Arnett, Feist, Jessica Alba, David Beckham, Heidi Klum, Brian Williams, Neil Patrick Harris, Sandra Oh, Jack Black and Jenny McCarthy.
Also lined up is a parody of NBC sitcom 30 Rock entitled: 30 Rocks. Its leading lady? A lemon named Liz Lemon. There’s a game-show spoof called: Are You Smarter Than an Egg Layer? (Its host looks a lot like this guy.) And beating the Disney Channel at its own game, there’s – wait for it, wait for it – Pre-School Musical. Rounding out the offering, the Children’s Television Workshop is debuting a redesigned sesamestreet.org on August 11 as well.
Also making the rounds is a musical number from the upcoming season. Leslie Feist reworks “1-2-3-4,” for the pre-school crowd. The Sesame Street version even pays homage to the choreography and the one, long camera take of the original video, directed by Patrick Daughters. (No sequined jumpsuit, though.) The lyrics might even be better than the original. “It’s one less than five and one more than three. Whoa-oa-oa. Counting to four. Whoa-oa-oa. Let’s cou-ount some more.”
Seeing all these chipper muppets twisting pop culture into something fun and useful, makes this blogger wonder if it’s time to bring back The Muppet Show in some shape or form. Probably not a full 22-episode season. Maybe just a 30-minute episode once or twice a month – to keep the content sharp and the concept special. The property is owned by Disney, which has plenty of broadcast and rebroadcast outlets – its namesake channel, ABC or even ABC Family. Think about it, Bob Iger. Just think about it.
Artist Joshua Allen Harris turns plastic bags and subway ventilation into delightfully animated street art. New York magazine tracks down Harris in the well-executed video piece below. A cursory Internet search doesn't yield any gallery affiliation for Harris. (Are you paying attention, Marianne Boesky?) But work like this deserves a much bigger, er, platform.
And last month, Conan O'Brien got into the inflatable act, albeit for more commercial – and comedic – purposes. Supposedly, the owners of 30 Rockefeller Center won't put his name on the marquee. So he borrows a tactic from car dealers around the country.
And somewhere in France inflatable tentacles are emerging from a building, courtesy of Filthy Luker and Pedro Estrellas.
So Weezer packed their latest video with some of the Internet’s biggest memes. Making the greatest hits list are: Diet Coke & Mentos, the Numa Numa kid, Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker, Dramatic Chipmunk, Will It Blend?, Chocolate Rain, the Evolution of Dance shoe-obsessed Kelly and even “All your bases are belong to us.” Matthew Cullen of Motion Theory directed this video equivalent of a stuffed burrito. And Weezer has posted some super-casual behind-the-scenes clips on its YouTube page.
UPDATE: In an oddly unsportsmanlike move, Weezer's official YouTube channel disabled the embed function for this video. Talk about a meta buzzkiller.
Today Starbucks launched free wireless at its coffeehouses. Like most things that are free, there’s a catch. Actually, there are several catches. First, you need to buy a Starbucks card with at least $5 on it and then register the card at this AT&T site. You need to use the card to buy something at least once a month. And your free wireless is capped at two consecutive hours per day. Get the full FAQ here.
This is a major change from the exceedingly annoying service operated by T-Mobile, which required $9.99 day passes, monthly plans or pre-paid cards (which never seemed to be available).
Surprisingly there hasn’t been any noticeable marketing behind this gesture of goodwill. Certainly, technical rollouts are prone to glitches. Perhaps SBUX is running the system in a nationwide beta before it goes public, not wanting to risk any ill will if there are any IT issues. But the coffee roaster did make a big deal back in March about its new Web site slash suggestion box: My Starbucks Idea. And free wireless had to be the most frequently suggested idea.
So why now? USA Today explains: “[T]he move is an attempt to entice its shrinking customer base — cutting back on pricey treats during the economic downturn — to return. Traffic and sales have been shrinking for months as founder Howard Schultz searches for a way to revive the brand.” Sure, the hoops (buying a pre-loaded card, registering online, using once a month) are a bit of a hassle, but the new wireless set-up is an improvement. Hopefully, in the near future Schultz & Co. can figure out how to make free, unlimited wireless pay for itself.
Let’s say you don’t have the latest smart phone and the data plan to go with it. And let’s say you don’t like calling 411 for phone numbers or locations. Just text a name and a ZIP code to Google at G-O-O-G-L (46645). In seconds, text messages will start hitting your phone with the phone number and address.
Text the name of a movie and a ZIP code, and showtimes as well as locations appear. Got a hankering for nearby sushi or pizza? 
Just type the kind of food and the ZIP. Of course, you have to pay for the text message. But it’s definitely less than the cost of directory assistance.
But that’s not all, people. Get weather reports by keying in the word “weather” and your city. Check flight arrivals and departures by typing in the word “flight” and the two-letter airline code and flight number. Type “stock” and the ticker symbol to get market quotes. Additional mobile functions include: currency conversions, sports scores, simple translations, calculators and even a dictionary. Now why is Google providing this nice app, for free? Are they collecting data? Are they still figuring out how to monetize SMS? Who knows? In the meantime, start answering questions with your phone.
UPDATE: David Pogue just wrote about a few more freebies that’ll make any cell phone smarter. Call ChaCha (800-2CHACHA), ask a question and you’ll get the answer in a text message. Dial 800-GOOG-411 and you get free directory assistance, connecting automatically. Jott is a 21st century dictaphone. After pre-registering, call 866-JOTT123 and leave a message. A transcription of your message lands in your phone’s inbox moments later. Reqall (888-9REQALL) works in a similar fashion.
There’s a new way for folks in New York City and London to communicate with each other, at least through June 15. “Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York.” Well, that’s what the official Web site says. And the whole set-up has a definite 19th century, Jules Verne, retrotech look to it.
In reality, the installation is the work of artist Paul St. George with able assists from fiber-optic cable and the übercreative production company Artichoke. The official Telectroscope site describes St. George’s m.o.: “His practice as an artist has always been concerned with questioning the relationship between the viewer and what is being viewed. His work is also often associated with different realities, spectacle and viewer participation.”
The New York Times elaborates further: “Mr. St. George hopes that people will use his device in surprising ways — to hold dance-offs, say, or propose marriage via placards. (The Telectroscope has no audio component ‘because I thought then people would just stand still and use it like a telephone,’ he said.)” His production partner Artichoke is the supertalented bunch of people who produced the Sultan’s Elephant spectacular on the streets of London two summers ago. Grants from the British government and private-sector sponsorships are footing most of the bill, which is running about $787,000. Viewings are free in Brooklyn. But in London, where everything is always more expensive, it costs £1.
Just an evening? Well, seven performances actually. The Metropolitan Opera is currently staging Glass’s opera Satyagraha, which depicts Mahatma Gandhi’s life in South Africa from 1893 to 1914. The title means “truth force” and describes Gandhi’s early efforts at non-violent resistance and civil disobedience that he would later use in India. Audio clips are a little tricky to track down, but a piano version of the finale plays here. And the Met has posted “Evening Song” here.
Like Glass’s other bio-opera, Einstein at the Beach, the narrative is incidental. And in this case, it’s actually passages from the Bhagavad Ghita – sung in Sanskrit. The productio
n is a beautiful and surprising piece of theater filled with unexpected elements. A jail created in real time from packing tape, for example. Or a human assembly line functioning as a newspaper’s printing press.
The production is an import from the English National Opera and is directed Phelim McDermott with a big assist from designer Julian Crouch. Key to the whole production is talented troupe of performers from a group aptly called Improbable. On stage, they turned baskets into monsters and newspaper effigies into an out-of-touch elite. The New York Times provides a good look behind the scenes below.
The creative team explains their choice of media for props and scenery: “We decided we wanted to use very humble material in the making of the opera...Mostly what you'll see is baskets and newspaper and corrugated iron...We wanted to take the materials associated with poverty and turn them into something beautiful.”
Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times gives the production a generally favorable review. “Ultimately, despite its formulaic elements, “Satyagraha” emerges here as a work of nobility, seriousness, even purity.” The Guardian was more generous when reviewing the original production at the ENO last year. Phelim McDermott's staging, undertaken in collaboration with the theatre company Improbable, is also a thing of wonder. The gods of the Hindu pantheon rub shoulders with ordinary humanity. Hope is born from deprivation as sheets of corrugated iron and vast quantities of newsprint are transformed into the symbols of a new order...[T]he whole thing serves as a monumental affirmation of human dignity at a time when many have begun to question its very existence - and for that, we must be infinitely grateful.
Glass describes the impetus for writing the opera in 1980 here. Meanwhile, a new documentary profiling the composer – Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts – is playing in New York and preparing to hit theaters in San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis and Washington soon.
A thoroughly fun, new cartoon debuted on Nickelodeon this weekend – The Mighty B. Each episode follows the hyperactive adventures of Bessie Higginbottom, who is nine and three-quarters and an enthusiastic member of her Honeybee scout troop. Bessie’s m.o. is to earn every badge possible, thinking that’ll give her the power to become a superhero, the Mighty B. See video clips here.
If the show looks a little like SpongeBob Squarepants and Fairly Odd Parents, that’s because two of its three creators – Erik Wiese and Cynthia True, respectively – worked on those shows. The third co-creator is Amy Poehler, who also is the voice behind Bessie. Certainly, Bessie is reminiscent of Kaitlin, the reoccurring pre-teen character Poehler plays on Saturday Night Live. (“Rick! Rick! Rick! Watch this, Rick!”). But Poehler tells Entertainment Weekly, it goes back even further.I’ve been doing that kind of kid character for a long time. I did that character at Upright Citizens Brigade before I came to SNL, the Brownie kid named Cassie McMadison. [Bessie] was an amalgamation of a lot of different voices and things that I had done. I really liked the idea of playing that kind of optimistic, super-intense, go-get-’em spirit combined with being a little bit of an outsider. I am really drawn to girls of that age in general, who believe they can be a waitress, scientist, actress, a dentist, a zookeeper...and who really aren’t boy-crazy.
Visually, the show is incredibly engaging. Set in San Francisco, the cartoon makes ample use of the city’s acute angles and steep streets and, to a certain extent, evokes the beauti
ful and sharply drawn children’s books by Miroslav Sasek. Straight out of the Haight, there’s even a resident hippie who calls to mind Captain Caveman. And Bessie’s dog and cohort, Happy, looks like he could be a grandpuppy of Hanna-Barbera’s Huckleberry Hound.
The show doesn’t reinvent the format; each episode is still two 15-minute stories. But the episodes are relevant to kids without being preachy. In “Sweet Sixteenth,” Bessie gets all worked up to ride the grown-up roller coaster – even readying a bucket in case there’s a “vomiting incident” – only to learn that she’s too short for the ride. Welcome to disappointment, kids. Of course, being a cartoon, she finds a loophole. In “Bee Afraid,” Bessie realizes during an overnight camping trip that she’s more afraid of being afraid than anything that’s actually worth being afraid about. (Does FDR get a co-writing credit?) Not to mention she makes smoothies for woodland creatures. There must be a badge for that, right?
This is a post about a cartoon. It’s not an editorial. (Just want to make that clear for any readers who love to twitter.) The cartoon is from Hugh MacLeod and his blog Gaping Void. Last year, he stopped twittering to draw more cartoons – on the back of business cards – and write more. But the news hit the blogosphere, and he got hundreds of e-mails about going cold twitter. So he picked the habit up again. Read his tweets here. MacLeod used to live in Manhattan, working as a copywriter. Now he lives Texas and uses the Web as a marketing tool for his clients, including a Saville Row tailor and a South African wine seller. And when he’s not twittering, he continues to blog. One of his most popular posts: How to be creative.
People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.
The “notes on the fridge” analogy is spot-on. Not so sure about the party part. Right now, it’s more like the afterparty. It’s where the mementos of real life – photos, video and even anecdotes – set up house.
But sometimes social-media spaces are more like board games. Some days it’s checkers. Other times it’s chess. A new conversation is akin to the opening move of a new game. A reply is a respo
nse to someone else’s move. And for anyone who plays Scrabulous, Facebook literally is a board game.
The main piece of news in Stone’s article is a new 3D chat application called Vivaty. It looks curiously like Second Life, but it’s a platform-agnostic app. And it’s backed by some deep V.C. pockets. Whether or not it will bring some life to the aforementioned party, that’ll depend on its functionality and how users respond to it.
Pardon the noise. Just a little congratulatory horn tooting going on here. Friend of the blog, Supergeekery, said some very nice things about Chock-a-Blog in a recent post.
It’s only been three months, but it seems so much longer. Finally, an end to the writers’ strike appears imminent. (Even Cindy Adams has written about it, kids.) No word yet on what was the tipping point. Fatigue? The upcoming Oscars? The DGA settlement?
...and we get to live in it. Apple unveiled the ultra-thin MacBook Air at San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Tuesday. Watch the keynote address here. (Or read Engadget’s live play-by-play.) New York Times’ columnist and CNBC contributor David Pogue sums up the major announcements here.“If you have a picture...you can do what they call pinching. You do it on the touch pad, not on the screen...That in some ways may end up being the biggest legacy,” Mossberg adds. ”All thin notebooks have compromises...It only has one way to get on the Internet – wirelessly. It doesn’t have an ethernet jack...Now that may be okay. Sometimes Apple moves ahead of the industry dropping features.”
The slenderella laptop won’t hit the stores for another two weeks. And Mossberg h
asn’t taken the laptop for a test drive yet, so it’ll take a few weeks before he writes his first review. But the machine already has one grumbler. A hrrumph from Slate, natch. However, MacBook Air already has some third-party accessories, namely a vinyl laptop sleeve that looks just like an inter-office envelope.
Pogue further reports on the hypnotic charms of a Steve Jobs keynote here. (Sorry, the Grey Lady doesn’t do embedable video yet.) But somebody did catch Pogue’s, uh, cabaret act at Macworld, posted above. It’s one part Mark Russell, one part Roberta Flack and two parts Cupertino.
Meanwhile, Gizmodo wonders if design cues to future Apple products can be found in Braun electronics from the ’60s. In a side-by-side comparison of Apple and Braun products, Gizmodo proposes that past performance will predict future results. But one could also argue that Braun’s Dieter Rams and Apple’s Jonathan Ive just share a great eye for clean, simple design with a purpose, no matter the decade. However, everybody can get the signature Steve Jobs look here.
So much for staying together for the sake of the children. The unusual collaboration between non-profit One Laptop Per Child and for-profit Intel has fallen apart. The “frail partnership...was undone last month in part by an Intel saleswoman: She tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the organization’s laptops in favor of Intel PCs,” according to The New York Times.In Peru, where One Laptop has begun shipping the first 40,000 PCs of a 270,000 system order, Isabelle Lama, an Intel saleswoman, tried to persuade Peru’s vice minister of education...that the Intel Classmate PC was a better choice for his primary school students. Unfortunately for Intel, the vice minister is a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Negroponte...The education minister took notes on his contacts with the Intel saleswoman and sent them to One Laptop officials... Until Intel surprised him by quitting on Thursday, Mr. Negroponte said he had still held out some hope that the relationship could be saved. The Intel XO was supposed to be introduced next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in keynote speeches to be made by Mr. Negroponte and Mr. Otellini, but the prototype will now be set aside.
Intel told the Wall Street Journal it was breaking up with OLPC and pulling its representative from the OLPC board. “We've reached a philosophical impasse with OLPC,” said an Intel spokesman. Intel favors offering many solutions to developing countries, not just the OLPC laptop, according to the spokesman. Intel markets a competitive product called the Classmate.
Negroponte remains optimistic that OLPC can sell two to thre million PCs this year. In its recent holiday promotion, the foundation raised $35 million and sold 167,000 units. But for Negroponte sometimes geography outranks the numbers. “If I can sell 1.5 million computers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, I will feel a lot better than other sales we might make.”
Meanwhile over at CNET, Tom Krazit offers up a “teach a man to fish” approach. “Perhaps the best way to help developing countries get in on the technology revolution is to teach them how to design--not merely assemble--their own products, rather than coming to them from lofty perches in Cambridge and Santa Clara saying, ‘Don't worry, we know best.’”
