Smokescreen is a Flash player written in Javascript
The Strongbad demo will make you a believer. This thing reads the actual SWF binary and creates native, browser based executions. Simon Willison has the details. If Adobe were smart, they’d throw a few engineers at this project.
Kaleidoscope looks like a nifty file comparison tool from Sofa
A better diff plus image comparison. And check out that website!
To date, attempts to categorize tech pundits have been met with resistance. I had a revelation skimming Paul Thurrott’s thoughts on the iPad, published a mere two months and 2 million sales late – Paul represents a new category of technology writer.
But first, a bit of background. Some find this thought uncomfortable, but things change. Used to be that there were just tech magazines who mostly wrote favorable reviews of the latest gadgets to ensure a steady stream of advertising revenue.
Then, the Internet came along and bloggers rose up, vowing to speak truth to power. While thoughtful writers like Gruber and Merlin would emerge and thrive with the core audiences they built, self-styled pundits like Paul Thurrott hoped to create an entirely new class of technology writer – the full time huckster as blogger.
Just look at his site, littered with text and banner ads. Paul and his ilk know that there’s always money in the massive ad budgets of clueless technology companies to buy off a handful of bloggers, how else to explain all the Microsoft banners amongst the sponsored links, featured links and adsense blocks? A sure sign of contempt for your audience is the now ubiquitous double green underline, which serves to highlight words in an article with high keyword value, not provide any actual utility to the reader.
It helps to think of writers like Paul as serving no actual purpose other than to fill some content on a page to put ads on. In that way, he’s consuming your attention rather than contributing anything, well, at all.
Flaws and all, Paul is indeed in a class all by himself. He’s a new kind of pundit.
– Contributed from my iPad
The queasy blend of friends and “friends” is central to the Facebook experience. People who might get some sane use out of Facebook are advertising something, a business or a service or something. Facebook might have originated as a means of personal connection, but now it seems like strictly business disguised as personal connection, and the rhetoric of it is just as horrible as that sounds. Everybody writes in ad-sized bits, everybody “likes” a million products and services, everybody affirms things and exclaims over things like TV pitchmen. It’s as if everyone you know is turning into those horrible shills who blog about things they pretend to like for company kickbacks.
The internet reacts to Shaved Bieber
Entire Facebook Staff Laughs As Man Tightens Privacy Settings
What I do is I stand up to power. I expose corruption in the back rooms.
—Serially unrepentant douchebag James O’Keefe after being sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine for tampering with Senator Mary Landrieu’s office phone. Since he’s so interested in being a “disinfectant” of corruption, and since he’s already in Louisiana, I’m sure he’ll be looking into the back room dealing that lead to the criminal mismanagement of, say, offshore drilling.
Outdoor growers are having a hard time unloading their fall harvest. And this is six months later and when some people do move it, they don’t get nearly the price they were hoping for.
—What cash crop is facing such hardship? Corn? Soybeans? Try weed.
The Web site not only “has cutting-edge technology but a winsome design that is easy for people to interact with.”
—Peter Roskam (R-IL) on the new GOP funded America Speaking Out website that launched this week. The site is an attempt by the Republican party to appear like they have some actual ideas, instead of just jargony sloganeering, headed into the elections. The results of crowdsourcing a new Contract With America are going about as well as you’d expect. Winsome!
Just in case you haven’t gotten enough fishstick or white men “dancing”. I love the hobo photobomber.
“Seattle Fresh Fishstick”
Jim and I were delighted to contribute to TJ’s “Fish Schtick,” celebrating You Look Nice Today’s Fishstick dance sweeping the nation (more details here).
The embedded video above is the one where Jim and I demonstrate our full interpretation of the classic on a lovely Seattle spring day, parts of which made it into TJ’s fantastic final project. We (including Sadie, our outstanding director of photography) had fun putting this together. Thanks to our YLNT friends (especially Adam for the video lesson), to TJ for the awesome project idea, and to the hobo who crashes on the grass and claps a little with his fingers.