The latest issue of FreshMeat is up, featuring an interview with author James Twitchell
My interest here is in storytelling, because I don’t see any real change in product. Clearly, humans pay attention to stories. Essentially the post-modern world is a world where we’re filled more with stories than with objects. We know more about stories in a way than we know about objects. This storifying process is now going into every aspect of our life. It’s not just hard goods, it’s not just televisions, you will find the same phenomenon in churches or you will find it occurring in universities or you will find it occurring in museums.

I encountered one of those new spam-blocking services from earthlink. The sender’s email is not delivered, but instead placed in email-escrow, meanwhile, they are sent their own message with a link to a website where they can explicitly request that their email be delivered. The receipient gets some sort of request-for-permission from the sender, and if they grant it, the message (and all others) will be delivered.

Many spam messages can’t be properly replied to, so that takes care of a lot of the spam, and then others presumably won’t ask for permission, and of those that are left, well, presumably the recipient won’t grant them permission.

Anyway, this happened to me because I replied to someone. They sent me email. Shouldn’t Eartlink know that their customer made an explicit choice to correspond with me? When all I’m doing is replying, I certainly don’t expect to be challenged. But why should Eartlink care, right? They are protecting their own customers.

Weird.

Tags: anti-spam, context, earthlink, permission, spam

New York Times article about Polaroid, featuring my friend and colleague, Bernice Cramer.

Ms. Cramer agreed. “We are an instant-gratification society, and Polaroid has a quality of `instantness,’ ” she said. “It is different from digital `instantness.’ ” And because the images are “more tactile and real,” she continued, “you get that sense of authenticity.”

Can one drink Lowenbrau, but still be highbrow?

Today, the San Jose Camera Cinema Club screened Prey for Rock and Roll a film about a struggling all-women rock band in LA. It was a great movie, a great rock movie and also a great series of stories about women. Cheri Lovedog, the writer, and musician and etc. behind the play and then the movie was the guest. Great interview with her here.

AO Scott reviews “The Hulk”
It might be described, in any case, as incredible, but only in a negative sense: incredibly long, incredibly tedious, incredibly turgid. As for the grumpy green giant himself, I’m sorry to say that he is not very credible at all.
….
The problem is that they seem to be pushing it in about 10 different directions at once, and in the process they lose sight of the basic requirements of visual clarity, narrative momentum and emotional impact, without which this kind of thing quickly lapses into cultishness or mythomaniacal pretension. Like the raging Hulk himself, a computer-generated Gumby on steroids who comes into full daylight view only after what feels like a whole mini-series’ worth of earnest exposition, the movie is bulky and inarticulate, leaving behind a trail of wreckage and incoherence.

Despite living in the Bay Area, I somehow didn’t know about the new SF Design Musuem. Maybe you didn’t either, but, now you do!

I don’t necessarily know what to do with this Google Visual Browser, but it’s neat.

Sony emphasizes usability of Bluetooth products
Still, the harsh reality for Bluetooth proponents is, “Many units might have been shipped, but Bluetooth is not actually utilized by consumers,” said Per Forsberg, general manager of wireless systems at National Semiconductors. “I don’t think Bluetooth has won this race yet.”
In an ambitious attempt to address the usability issue, Masanobu Yoshida, president of the hand-held computer company at Sony Corp., unveiled a proprietary Bluetooth application technology called “Feel,” which is designed to provide instant connectivity among Sony’s own Bluetooth devices.
Yoshida bemoaned the negative “out-of-box” consumer Bluetooth experience, in which buyers typically spend several hours slogging through a menu, pairing Bluetooth devices and setting up rules before they can start connecting devices. Sony’s Feel technology, although still under development, can bring “instant connection-one step, one second” to Bluetooth devices, Yoshida said.

Rubberific! Mulch – Recycled Rubber Mulch for landscaping that is safe for the environment.

Rubberific Mulch is one of the hottest garden and landscaping products on the market. It is a long-lasting mulch made from recycled rubber truck tires. This cost-effective, versatile rubber mulch is non-toxic and completely safe for play. Realistically textured and available in a variety of colors, Rubberific Mulch will change the way you mulch for years to come.

Made from 100% recycled rubber truck tires, Rubberific Mulch’s most attractive feature is its longevity. It surpasses conventional mulches, which need annual replacement, by lasting ten years without showing its age. Good for the environment and long-lasting to boot.

I’ll be speaking at the Thought at Work conference…
Thought at Work.
An Industrial Design Student Conference.
November 21st & 22nd, 2003
Rochester Institute of Technology

Turns out my Foreign Groceries Museum was referenced here back in May. Now I know why I was getting all those media hits.

Name for an adult-themed retail environment: Bed, batteries, and beyond

RCN is staffed by rhesus monkeys

Today I was visited by a sales rep from RCN, the telco that has been sending me reams and reams of junk mail. I told them I wasn’t interested and then I contacted the company via their website to stop visiting me. I got the most incredibly buck-passing response:

When field agents are going door by door we have no control over whoms door they knock or don\’t knock on. What needs to be done is next time this happens and you end up talking to the field agent in question. You need to let them know in a polite manner that you are not interested and would like your name and address taken off the field list.

All the list are generated and setup by marketing which e-mail support has absolutly not control or contact with.

7 Years Later, Evan Dando Sings About Touching Bottom

The album, at that point, was mostly in the can, having been recorded in fits and starts, as Mr. Dando traveled the world to find friends and producers who would help him reconstruct his confidence. And so it is that most of the songs that Mr. Dando must now perform sober were recorded when he was so drunk he could barely stand up. He has an uncanny ability to recall the details of his binges and what songs were produced during them. “This one,” he said, pressing the play button for “All My Life,” an acoustic song drenched with regret about letting the years slide by, “that’s after half a bottle of white rum at a party.”

Read the excellent story here.