January 2010
28 posts
“The colourful indictment against Henry Nicholas [co-founder of Broadcom], issued...”
– The Register. Whoa, what?! As of yesterday, Nicholas has been cleared of all charges.
Old World vs. New World Computing →
This is great, and I guess it also encapsulates my opinions on criticism of the iPad very nicely. An excerpt:
Old World computers can do pretty much anything, but carry the burden of 30 years of rapid, unplanned change. Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X based computers all fall into this category.
In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game,...
“Imagine an artist with a canvas this large.”
– Scott Forstall, after the Brushes iPad app presentation. It is so difficult for me to imagine an artist with a canvas larger than 9.7 inches!
“Next up: the New York Times. The New York Times has been publishing a newspaper...”
– Scott Forstall, SVP iPhone Software. Watching the iPad event video, all the Apple employees are giving hilariously (and uncharacteristically) wooden delivery. As I noted below, this feels very much like an iterative product release with hype that spun insanely out of control. No one on the stage is...
WatchCondominance Episodes 3 and 4 on Kickstarter
I decided that the only way we could possibly be able to do the final two episodes of Condominance and come out the other end alive is if we had a small budget, so we have a Kickstarter page in order to fundraise. If you liked the first two episodes at all, I really hope you can pledge a few dollars - we won’t be able to make more without your...
Floating Vibes - Surfer Blood
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CES2K10
So it’s been a few weeks since it ended and I wrote a few recap
articles of the event that I wasn’t entirely happy with for the quasi-job, but seriously, the barrage of announcements left me feeling like a bitter and exhuasted old man, incapable of dealing with how technological innovation is outpacing the development of the vessel of blood and intestines I refer to as “my...
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B-Roll [January 8-24, 2010]
“Republican congressional leaders say they did not know that Michael Steele was publishing a book until it was released this week, and they had no input in drafting what Steele is promoting as the blueprint Republicans should follow to win back power.” This amazing Nokia keynote from this year’s CES details the company’s work in emerging markets - like how they provide...
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WatchEpisode 6 - Derek Fellat, IO
(I just spent in the neighborhood of 200 hours cutting the last half of this series together, so please indulge me for a bit here.)
Okay. So in March of 2007, armed with an awful DV camera, I set out with my friend from high school to make a Channel 101 pilot. It, uh, didn’t go very well, so we resolved to try again in the summer - and to turn our little idea...
“I want to take you to the real world. It’s the place where most of the...”
– Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia CEO
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B-Roll [Cleanup Edition, December 11, 2009-January...
Hoping to replicate the success of tiny indie features like Paranormal Activity, Paramount is set to launch a new “micro-budget” movie division - spending as much as $2 million a year on movies with sub-$100K budgets. BetaNet, LLC sues basically Every Software Company (including Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Adobe, Rosetta Stone and McAfee) over their patent on a secure remote software...
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WatchThe Colbert Report HD Open - Mr. Wonderful
Priceless. Here are some behind-the-scenes photos.
Ask me anything! →
So, yes, I’ve enabled this thing. Maybe there’s a technology-related topic you would like me to address? I’ve been a bit lax on coverage lately.
Also, Who Knew? is now located at jrubenoff.com. With a new decade comes new hopes and the abandonment of embarrassing names coined in high school.
WatchThe final episode of Derek Fellat premieres on Sunday. You can watch the first five installments here- it was all shot a few years ago and it’s been a nightmare to cut together ever since, but despite the haphazard camera work I’d like to think that it’s halfway decent.
At the very least, you might be interested in the beginning of Episode 2 where I walk around the woods...
I’d like to draw your attention to Sunday’s NYTimes Arts & Leisure decade-in-review section, which was surprisingly not horrible - Dargis on the death of film! Pareles on the rise of MP3s! Dave Kehr on the viability of Blu-ray! Carmanica on Kanye! All great pieces.
Even though Dargis uses the number of Google search results for the phrase “death of cinema” as a way to...
Quadruple Feature
Watched all of these for the first time: District B13: Ultimatum, then Shaun of the Dead, then Hot Fuzz, then Chickenhawk at 4AM. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to have some incredibly disturbing nightmares.
“I shared some ketamine with a lesbian who proceeded to get up from my bed, vomit...”
– Joel Johnson. Happy 2010!