Bloom's Day

This is pretty brilliant stuff from Neil: What to do when life gives you lemons. Repeat after me: Make Good Art.

Two key bits of wisdom here:

1. Everyone indeed hates every redesign ever. It’s even required. We get over it (unless we’re talking about Digg), get used to it, then go on to like it much more than the next redesign. Happened at every newspaper I ever worked at. Happens with every digital media property I’ve ever worked with. It’s how we’re wired against changes in our tools and interfaces with the universe, especially when we’re not the direct agent of change in those tools and interfaces.
2. Noticed the Bit.ly change earlier this week and hadn’t played very hard with it because I was just buzzing through to get a few odds and ends taken care of before heading on to use my usual URL shortener, the Owly service contained in my Hootsuite account. But Bryce’s piece encourages me to take a deeper dive and look at some of the things that, during my brief passage through, had murmured gently for my more sustained attention. Interesting, interesting, interesting.

brycedotvc:

Long before I was investor and board member at Bitly I was a user of the product. I loved it for it’s simplicity, but I invested because of a sea change in behavior that’s reshaping the web. A change from a robot’s view of the web as a series of linked static pages to a realtime networked web that…

MacArthur Park is “The Bridge” Chili Pepper AKiedis was under, shooting up in 1992 song. Well, at least it’s a lovely place to wrestle your personal demons, but I’m so glad the park’s a lot nicer than it was back then.

Of course, I go to the same area to wrestle MY personal demon, which, technically, is the exquisite, award-winning #19 pastrami and swiss sandwich at Langer’s Deli, a block or so away. You have  your burdens. I have mine. 

As one of its more endearing public services, Flavorpill pulls together links each week to five albums that are being streamed for free on various music services. This week’s offerings include the latest Neil Young & Crazy Horse project, the throwback sound “Americana;” Scissor Sisters; Marissa Nadler; Liars; and Japandroids. 

Me, I’m all about Neil and the Horse, but also looking forward to checking out Nadler’s stripped-down acoustic piano work. And the chance to sample the Sisters’ disco revival against the frat-rock of Japandroids and reputedly excellent Liars sixth disc does promise a very nice week indeed for my ears.

Fascinating idea: Amazon may begin wrapping targeted ads around the ebooks it sells, while continuing to cut the “cover” price for the books themselves.

It’s an interesting idea, one that Google and Apple and possibly even Barnes & Noble would quickly want to copy. What do you think, though? If you’ve only recently come to accept ebooks on your iPad or Kindle, could you now handle contextual ads worked into them as you read? 

A new model for magazine publishing: associate with a well-liked TV brand. Scripps and Hearst look to replicate success with Food Network magazine with HGTV magazine.

Cool and potentially powerful next step in using gestures to control and manipulate data on cell phones, tablets and computers. Love this stuff, the next step beyond the wildly popular and fascinating Microsoft Kinect technology. 

Nice rundown of some interesting programs, especially (for me) some interesting image-/video-editing apps that can do lots of more exotic stuff than just drop a Lomo filter in and ship it to Instagram.

If you’re an iPhone geek, there’s probably something in this list you’ll love, and several apps are free!

Love this piece on Data Journalism from the Guardian, and how new tools and access to really big chunks of data on all kinds of public matters is increasingly opening up meaningful analysis and investigation to journalists (and would-be journalist sorts).

I would have KILLED to have these tools 20 years ago when I was doing projects like this with some help from my newspaper’s marketing department (the only ones with the Census data and other big data sets, and a decent PC to run GIS software for some of my work).

I look forward to seeing how j-schools continue to arm students with these tools and send them forth. So much interesting stuff can start with smart analysis of Big Data (but it doesn’t end with the analysis; then you have to go find some humans affected by the stuff you’re uncovering). 

Cool to read about the artist behind this work. I’ve shared wheatpastes of this specific Gandhi image before, taken in my little photo safaris around the east side of downtown LA, in the Arts District. Love getting to know a little more about CRYPTIK. 

streetartsf:

Cryptik’s street art hopes to inspires higher levels of consciousness and awareness within the people who come into its prescence. The pieces are meant to provoke one to reflect upon and understand our place in the universe and the framework in which we view them.

“The most beautiful…

Cannes Film Festival jury taps Michael Haneke’s “Amour,” a challenging but brilliant tale of a man dealing with his wife’s debilitating strokes, for the top award, the Palme D’Or. “Reality” wins the Grand Prix. Check the rest of the story to get all the award winners from a busy, rainy 2012 Croisette. 

Nice interview with RegSpec, quirky and kinda brilliant as she is. NPR had a lengthy interview yesterday, I think, that’s also worth digging up.