SOME RANDOM DUDE

I have unique post coming up next week, so make sure to come back Monday morning. It will definitely be something different than the normal content on this blog - I hope it does not disappoint.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)a2, actionscript 3, air tree, alapan, anti consumerism, ap, architecture, art, art school, artificial intelligence, as3, aviation, awi, bears, benefits, blogging, bush, bush administration, c, chris harrison, cnn, comics, commentluv, decapitator, delicious, design, drunk driving, election 2008, everyblock, face detection, false statements, flash, flex, Fox News, future, futuristic sky cities, gender, good, green roof, heath ledger, humor, i beg to differ, Iran, javascript, john gibson, jquery, justice, kent rogowski, kite powered ship, last fm, law, lesbian cuisine, lies, links, linux, local news, mach 5, madrid, media, military, minnesota, music, network, New York, news, operating systems, peer to peer, Photography, physics engine, police, race, racism, reporters, riaa, san francisco, scrollto, singapore, smoking, socialize me, storm drain, street photography, stuffed bears, suicide, taser, textbook revolution, textbooks, twitter, us, war, website loads, weekly, wind power, Windows, wordpress, wordpress plugin, wow engine, yahoo yahoo search

The week is definitely heavy on the politics/current events and low on the tech/design. I try to even the areas out, but this feature tends to have a life of its own. Funny enough, there were no iPhone links this week - I have no doubt they will be scattered in great quantity throughout next week’s collection.

Enjoy the links.

(more…)aethism, AIDS, ann coulter, barak obama, blogging, blogs, bomb, cable news, cans only, censorship, christianity, cnn, corruption, cure, current events, daily show, delicious, design web, dick, dick cheney, discrimination, dpd, explosion, faith, focus cloud, Fox News, free speech, GOP, hate, health, hillary clinton, hiv, hypocracy, ia, information architecture, irony, john edwards, jon stewart, jpeg enhancer, jpg, last ripper, links, matchstick, media, medicine, michael moore, microsoft, mp3 ripping, msnbc, nancy grace, neocons, new kids on the block, news, newscaster, nyse, payola, phd, Photography, pirated software, police, politics, poor, religion, rich, secrets, sicko, sony, stop, tagging, tags, taxes, threespeech, ux, video, warren buffet weekly

I read a very interesting article, Why the Semantic Web Will Fail, about one person’s thoughts on why the web will never reach its full potential due to the greed and short-sidedness of big business. The author makes some very good points in the article and it is quite compelling to read.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Semantic Web will never work because it depends on businesses working together, on them cooperating.

We are talking about the most conservative bunch of people in the world, people who believe in greed and cut-throat business ethics. People who would steal one another’s property if it weren’t nailed down. People like, well, Conrad Black and Rupert Murdoch.

And they’re all going to play nice and create one seamless Semantic Web that will work between companies - competing entities choreographing their responses so they can work together to grant you a seamless experience?

I think the author is right about one thing - big business is not a big fan of an open, sharing web and will fight it tooth and nail in the name of profit. My feeling however is that business really does not have a choice in the matter. The web is built on a very open, uncontrollable model - opening up infinite possibilities for individuals, competitors and or startups to ruin them in a heartbeat. The web is moving towards a more open model, like it or not. We do not rely on big business, big business relies on us. If corporations do not want to work in that model, all it takes is $15 for a domain name, $100 a month for hosting and word of mouth for some David to take down Goliath.
(more…)content, corporations, delicious, digg, fair play, flickr, information, open data, open web, semantic web, sharing, web 2dot0 youtube

I have been quite vocal on my lack of regard for online advertising and have even spent some time writing about how I think it could be improved. While it may not be in the online world, it is good to see some companies trying to improve the advertising we are exposed to. Our good friends at Google are interested in making TV advertising “useful” for its viewers. I assume this model will be loosely based on their highly successful Adsense program. After spending my youth watching TV and subsequently ridding my life of TV after living on my own, I can understand how some people think TV advertising could get a little smarter…

According to this article, Google is planning on making $11 billion in ad sales - not too shabby. It is not a secret that Adsense is a success from many different standpoints. I would definitely like to see online advertising go even further in its usefulness and site-by-site basis, but I recognize how large of a leap Adsense made to online advertising. Old media advertising could definitely use a shot in the arm at this point - and who better to go it than one of the best success-stories in new media. Still, it will be interesting if new media ideas still work in a different medium. Old media definitely will be eventually making the slow transition to new media - perhaps that evolution will take care of the problem on its own.

del.icio.us linkad revenue, adsense, advertising, daily, delicious, google, link, marketing, new media, npr, old media, smart advertising, television tv

If you have not been to the Big Spaceship Blog yet, you should. They have all sorts of great tips and thoughts ripe for the taking. Their most recent article is the second post in a series of Flash performance tips. I was aware of a few, but others were completely new to me. Performance optimization may seem like a nerdy thing to some, but the process allow things to be done in Flash that otherwise would be too costly to the average processor or be a memory hog.

One of the pieces I especially enjoyed were links to resources on advanced collision detection. There has been some really good work in this area and I found is really helpful as my experience in that subject is extremely low. Really though, all the tips are very helpful and any Actionscripter should take a few minutes out of the day to read this article.

del.icio.us linkactionscript, best practices, big spaceship, collision detection, daily, delicious, flash, flash performance, link, memory usage, optimization programming