No, I haven’t lost my mind. If you are visiting this site wondering, “What the font???!!!!”, well, yeah… This is in Comic Sans. October 1st has been declared National Comic Sans Day!
Read about it on John Wilker’s blog.
Oh, and if you want to learn about the origin of the world’s most hated typeface, read up on it here.
I mean, wtf is wrong with Microsoft’s marketing group? Even CNBC is bashing this. I watch this and want to punch myself. And everyone else. And a cat.
The jump cuts, rack focus shaky cam and ham handed writing just don’t work. They don’t work at all. How is it that Apple seems to be doing everything right in this realm and MS is just fail after fail.
It really is an epic turn of events. It’s long been thought that MS won the OS war through marketing. Now, they are losing it there. Windows 7 is a pretty decent revision in the OS and here we have quite possibly the worst pseudo viral video I have ever seen.
Watch this video and recognize that almost all of this has come true. 16 years later and virtually everything narrated by Tom Selleck is available in a middle class family’s home or their immediate community.
What will we see in another 16 years? I’d love to see an updated version of this campaign now. What communications innovations will be a reality in 2025?
OMG. This looks awesome! Me wanty! Fun controller and you can play as Daft Punk. Wowzers.
This past weekend, I spent a little time getting my own URL shortening services up and running. I launched http://fnla.me and http://fnaweso.me on Saturday, August 15th, 2009. Crazy, huh? With so many services out there already, why would anyone waste their time on such a project? Does the world really need more shorteners? What do these two shorteners provide that wasn’t already available in the myriad other services out there like TinyURL, Bit.Ly and the rest? Good questions.
At last estimate there are something like 90+ publicly known URL shorteners out there. There is most likely a lot more than those in the wild, though. With this many out there, it’s difficult to know which one to use. With the high profile blowout of Tr.im, and the subsequent rebirth as an Open Source toolkit it’s even muddier. How do you know you links will be safe? How can you protect your self against Social Media Link Rot? This will assist me in making sure my shared links are indeed safe!
There are a lot of opinions on URL shorteners out there, ranging from condemnation, to simple quiet acceptance. I was vehemently against them until relatively recently, as I saw them as yet another creaky layer of redirection and pointers in the web ready to break down at any moment due to another server going down or a service running out of $.
For now, the services are pretty spartan, they simply take a URL and shorten it using a base 36 algorithm. Custom URLs are also possible. I do indeed have a number of features planned like stats, import/export and others, but it all takes time. I do hope that the service will prove to be useful to others, but making money on it or getting millions of shortened URLs isn’t my main goal. I’m building this because it seemed like a fun project to take on over a weekend.
One thing I really like about the domains I have chosen for my shorteners is that the URLs allow for some personality to come through. Is the link lame content? Politically devisive? Something you can’t believe? Than you can use http://fnla.me. On the other hand, if the content is something you can get behind and highly recommend, use http://fnaweso.me
Both sites are powered by the open source URLShortProject currently.
So what do you think? Do you have a URL shortener you have created? Care to share it?
So, I’ve been fairly inactive here. Sure I’ve had time to tweet a bit, but by and large, I’ve been head down on a couple major projects. One, we just launched (I’ll provide much more info on that project coming soon. The other project is just starting to get fully underway, with wireframes and most of the definition docs created. Now, time for prototyping. We’re pulling out all the stops for that one… using robotics, arcade controllers, integrating augmented reality and leveraging some kick butt APIs like Google Earth! That doesn’t launch until March of next year, at a major Chicago area museum.
Beyond that, I am scheduled to participate in an upcoming exhibit featuring work by the poet laureate of Illinois, Kevin Stein. That should be a great time and allow for some real creativity!
I hope you are all enjoying a brief respite in your work right now for the dog days of summer and relaxing with a nice beer or iced coffee. I know I am. I just brewed an Imperial IPA, currently carbonating in the dark of my cool basement… first tasting, this week! Don’t know Imperial IPA as a style of beer… take a look at these beauties. My garden is coming in nicely, too, despite the Japanese beetles best attempts to eat it all!
How are you staying busy? What are you doing to blow off some steam this summer?
Think you’ve got what it takes? Write a Flash ActioScript sketch/application in 140 characters or less. It’s harder than you think. Check out Grant Skinner’s overview and then read the rules. After you are thoroughly confused, check out the entry page for a little clarity and some great work. Prepare to be amazed at what a very creative community has put together. I have a couple I tossed together in the mix, but the real beauties belong to Quasimondo. His mastery of ActionScript has made 140 characters seem effortless.
With talk of more rounds to come and murmurs of various permutations of the gimmee code included to help you along in your quest, this should be fun to follow. Think of it as a communal geek Actionscript tennis carried on for all the world to be confused at. 
I’d love to see a TweetCoding that offers Flex as a option, or perhaps allows for a couple external packages as some of the gimee code. URLRequests (for e4x madness), maybe extra audio stuff, a little 3D, maybe some filters. I feel tired thinking about the late nights already. 
Have you created something cool in TweetCoding? Post a link here.
I like me some video games.
I got my first game system when I was something like 5 or 6. It was an Atari 2600… since then I have pretty much always had a console of one sort or another. I still play them when I can, but most of the games these days just kind of leave me cold. I don’t like first person shooters, and can find playing online fun when it’s not in a round filled with 13 year olds. I do like RPGs (can’t wait for Diablo III), space shooters, RTS and a few other genres including sports games. However, mostly I play casual games on my iPhone these days or other similar format quick games. I really dig the play control possibilities on the phone, with Frenzic being a lot of fun to play recently. I also recently found 99 bricks online, that is a really fun twisted take on Tetris and absolutely worth checking out.
I have a Wii. Yeah, I know, not very hard core… but you know what, a lot of the games on the system are just fun! I just picked up the WiiWare title “World of Goo“. Pure awesomeness. Have you tried it out? If you don’t have a Wii, you can get it on your Mac, PC and I think even Linux… too cool.
Anyway, I have designed and built a few games over the years. Mostly Flash games, and little things like that, but I do appreciate fine game design. It is partially for this reason that World of Goo and I connected. There is just so much attention to detail in this game that it’s tough to overlook. The are, animation, sound, physics, everything. Amazing!
I was really happy to come across this video today about the same thing. This clip is a thorough dissection of the design and thought that went into the World of Goo. Watch and then be prepared to lose a few hours playing this addictive little puzzler.
Design Tour – World of Goo from David Rosen on Vimeo.
Seriously, just too much fun!
Awesome! Check this video out…
Can’t wait until this show travels through Chicago! Via Phillip Kerman.
Admittedly fishing here… but man is the new Flip Mino HD cool… you can even customize it… I made one with my CoolerKreator images on it. Hot! Check it out.
My del.icio.us
