All of the articles on this (e.g. at TechCrunch and O’Reilly) seem to have giant, static screenshots that don’t convey the essence of Google Wave. This is something you have to see in action to appreciate. Not everyone will want to watch the 80 minute demo, but keep it in mind for a rainy day. The nut of the idea is [...]
{ 7 comments }
This occurred to me last night when I was looking at some of the new Friend Connect gadgets. I wanted to try them but they don’t go along with what I do at brianfrank.ca very well. The ldnbeta.ca site evolved from that. I started thinking we need someplace to just try stuff. If it works, [...]
{ 3 comments }
Richard Florida responds to my last post by referencing a 1948 essay by Anatole Broyard, “A Portrait of the Hipster,” via this article: Broyard was less enthusiastic about these supposed new rebels, and saw the attempts to escape from the restraints of society through narcotics, jazz, and general disaffiliation, as merely ways to a new conformity. [...]
{ 0 comments }
I’m glad I got more to keep the hipster topic going because it’s way more fun than anything else I blog about. Richard Florida points to a familiar article about “blipsters” — “black hipsters.” Which is funny, now that I think of it, because the original hipsters were known as [correction: I meant, later known as] “white [...]
{ 7 comments }
Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness (which everyone doesn’t have to read but you definitely do need to know) blogs for nytimes.com: Money matters and today most of us have less of it, so no one will be surprised by new survey results from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index showing that Americans are smiling less and worrying [...]
{ 0 comments }
I’m astounded that this subculture keeps building momentum — not just in size but in flamboyance. In case you’re new here: By now, the traits of hipsterism are easily recognizable to culture vultures: Hipsters are white, urban, occasionally privileged, attitudinally earnest and functionally alternative. They live life at the intersection of Pabst Blue Ribbon and [...]
{ 5 comments }
Whenever I do a ‘humour’ post like my last one I worry for a moment about whether people will continue to take me seriously. Usually I overcome those reservations with the thought that anyone who would dismiss me for being funny (I mean, for trying to be funny) aren’t the people I’d appeal to anyways. [...]
{ 2 comments }
We got this on Saturday: To the entire staff of brianfrank.ca, Folks, you’re doing a great job. We aren’t quite where we need to be yet but we’re getting there. You deserve a weekend off — not this one, and not the next either — maybe some time in August — definitely at least by [...]
{ 4 comments }
Above all the claims about the need to save journalism, about it being essential to our society, etc, this fact seems to be missed: the more essential journalism is supposed to be, the more continuously prevalent it should appear throughout history. How much historical continuity is there? Where did journalism really come from? What is [...]
{ 1 comment }
I’m in the habit now of picking something from the ‘Discovery Zone’ every time I goto the Central Library — which is every Saturday. Last week I picked up Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson. I probably won’t finish it. I usually don’t finish what I grab. I was bored when [...]
{ 0 comments }
