Vintage Print Ads

A flickr set of fantastic Print (newspaper and magazine) Ads:

Reanimated Dead Poets

This is fantastic. Some of my favorites are:

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!"

This was quoted in one of my all time favorite books Once A Runner by John L. Parker Jr. incidentally this is being republished by my friend Byrd.

Wow I don't know much about Sylvia Plath other than that she killed herself at the age of 31 but this poem is pretty powerful. There is more of her there.

There is a lot more have fun exploring.

Jeff "Staple" Ng talks Design

Jeff Staple started Staple Design, The Reed Space, redesigned Fader Magazine, and has done a lot of interesting design work. In the video below @ the PSFK Conference Asia 2008 talks about his principles of design and how he got started.

Netflix, LG, and Broadband TV

LG is putting out a new series of TVs with a direct broadband hookup and with this they are entering into a partnership with Netflix. Netflix has been partnering with everyone and their mother to extend their reach and make it as easy as possible for their customers to be able to download movies. I think more TV manufacturers will come out with broadband enabled TVs and the movie industry should embrace this as much as possible as well as these Netflix partnerships. It would be great to be able to pay to watch new release movies via this type of service. 

While I was at Verizon I would let anyone who would listen know that I thought the best thing for Verizon to do was buy Netflix and really push the broadband portion of the business. I also though they should have bought TiVo and use their software as the FiOS platform. 

Below is a good interview with Reed Hastings the CEO of Netflix who talks about their broadband strategy. All in all I think Netflix has done a great job at creating a broadband strategy and pushing it through as much as possible, now I just home the studios and content providers follow along.

Change Part 2

Anohter great video by Lawrence Lessig outlineing the problem with our political system.


Change-Congress.org

2009 Predictions

Inhabitat, a pretty interesting design blog, compiled several predictions for 2009 that are well worth reading. The major focus of the blog and the predictions are around green/sustainable design. I have seen lots of discussion that the focus of 2009 will be on disruptive start-ups and I think that the green economy will be the disruptive technology that will start to explode this year. 

Another prediction for 2009 will be the impact of the iPhone on the business market as well as the beginning phases of cloud computing.  Apps like Soonr are going to revolutionize how people interact with their work environment.

The last major trend I see for 2009 may be a bit of a chicken or egg thing and that revolves around netbooks (light-weight, low-cost, energy efficient computers with the minimum requirements to run web based applications) and cloud computing.  There has been a ton of chatter about the netbook market (see here, here, and several mentions on the GDGT podcast). While some (Sony and Apple because they put such a premium on their brands) think it is a race to the bottom consumers will have much more to say. As this market grows the reliance on the cloud will also grow. I really think with the economy in its current state consumers and business are going to be looking for low cost ways to upgrade/maintain their technology and what better way then push everything to the cloud and cheap no frills computers. 2009 will be an interesting year as green/sustainable and economic forces come together and start to change the way we use and look at technology. 

Lastly, 2009 is also going to be huge for my friends Jeff and Jenny. Jeff is hitting the live poker tournament circuit hard and his level of play is at an all time high and so I can see him winning/cashing on several of his trips. Best of luck Gamblero!! And Mrs. Gamblero is putting the finishing touches on her first record and preparing for tune up gigs here in NYC for the next month and then off to London get her album out in front of the industry executives. And as I stated before I am sure she will be fantastic* but I just don't understand why she keeps drawing me so brown (I mean I know I am but I feel like OJ on the cover of Time see second pic here**and third pic here**).

*even though she still has not let me hear any of her music...hint fucking hint

**Comment if you want to hear the stories behind each of those pictures or feel free to make up your own

Some Time Off

I took some time off from blogging for several reason. The first and foremost I wanted my Sir Issac Newton post to prominent for a some time.  I know a lot of atheists but almost all of them still celebrate Christmas mostly because that's what they have done since they were children and I was hoping that they would think twice about the meaning of that day. I know it is seriously pompous and overbearing of me to think my meager words would change anyone ideas/opinions but where religion is concerned I will keep trying because I really think smart people who don't believe in religion should change their childhood habits.

The other reason I took a bit of a hiatus was that there wasn't much to talk about in the new media/tech world. The one beacon of light has been GDGT, for now a weekly podcast by Ryan Block and Peter Rojas both former editors at engadget. Since the site has not officially launched they are focusing their efforts on the weekly podcasts (some of the recent topics ranged from Apple Year in review, MS Year in review, Android round table, Netbooks wrap up, and much more). It will be really interesting to see what direction they take GDGT because they say it will not be a gadget review or technology blog. 

Peter, not too long ago, launched rcrdlbl a project designed to change the record label model. The basic thought process was to distribute the music free but use advertising as a revenue generator.

I will keep this post short as I am coming down with a fever and need something to eat.