c8lins

The Russians Used a Pencil: Idea to Market in 5 Months: Making the Glif

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:11:49 -0500

The Russians Used a Pencil: Idea to Market in 5 Months: Making the Glif:

On July 11th, 2010, Tom Gerhardt and I had an idea for an iPhone accessory: a tripod mount that doubled as a stand. Five months later, customers began to receive our product, the Glif, in the mail. This turnaround, from idea to market in five months by two guys with no retail or manufacturing…

nprfreshair: spinsterfarm: Mondrian cake by Caitlin...

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:41:24 -0500

nprfreshair:

spinsterfarm:

Mondrian cake by Caitlin Freeman.

yum.

"I think the media story of the year, in 2010, was the New York Times’ discovery of Brooklyn. Once a..."

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:00:15 -0500

“I think the media story of the year, in 2010, was the New York Times’ discovery of Brooklyn. Once a day there’s a story about all the riches offered in that borough. There are young men and women wearing ironic glass frames on the streets. There are open air markets, like trading posts in the early Chippewa tribe, where you can make beads at home and then trade them for someone to come over and start a small fire in your apartment that you share with nine others. Artisanal cheeses. For sale, on the streets of an entire American borough. It’s been fascinating to watch the paper venture over the bridge. Venture through the tunnel. Go out to the outer reaches. The outer boroughs of the city. All different sections of the paper. They are making grilled cheese sandwiches in the streets… Yes, it’s just fantastic, it’s like Marrakesh over there… I’m leaving here to get to an artisanal market that just opened up today. It’s a flash artisanal market. The newest thing.”

- NBC’s Brian Williams on “Morning Joe,” via The Atlantic Wire. (via langer)

I’ve already posted the video, but these words bear repeating.

(via kateoplis)

nic-rad: I found this and some other gems here after the user...

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 13:21:06 -0500

nic-rad:

I found this and some other gems here after the user liked a post— which has me in a contemplative mood.

Tumblr is designed for daydreamers. One of the more enjoyable aspects of the tumblr platform is that after a short time the backend is completely intuitive and transparent. You can use it with the immediacy needed to express internetty thoughts. But of course those thoughts are much harder to transcribe into real life. Anyone who has found themselves explaining their tumblr off line knows this aggravation.

It’s a semi public dream.

You were there, and you were there, but you had a different face and your hands were the size of watermelons!

Which gets me to the tumblr paradox. It is a public space where people talk mostly to themselves.

Constant daydreamers feel at home here. That dictates the demographics a bit: users that are young enough to have time for constant daydreaming, or the castoffs, eccentrics, artists, thinkers, weirdos, self obsessed, over sensitive, lonely, hungry, diluted, under employed, self conscious, and strange, who have found some way to carve a high functioning inner life from the demands of a more ‘linear’ world.

It results in Beauty, Sadness, and Banality glomming together in freeform—it’s very different from identity based platforms. Those are much heavier on Banality.

There is also a corporatized component of tumblr which understands that value lives in the lucidity of earnest expression. They watch and join in, and try to generate similar dreamstates based around the even more abstract concept of a brand identity. This is fine too. It’s easy enough to avoid if you want to, but also the actual users on the corporate side are the more strident dreamers in their particular fields. For some that’s a joke. But if the permalancer, MFA state has taught us one thing—it’s that occupation is a surprisingly weak indicator of personality.

In the land of tumblr you can (and are encouraged) to live as an avatar, and project what inspires you as much as ‘who you are.’

If you find me in the real world and ask me to justify my thoughts on my tumblr, I feel dismissive, or even invaded… How can I explain myself? What I’m showing was the explanation.

There is a looming paranoia that day dreamers are constantly tasked with justifying—if you have a vibrant and consuming inner life, those around you will often think you are hiding something.

But of course this is the social tick that costs daydreamers so much anxiety, frustration, and enduring relationships…. we forget how effectively most people can separate their inner life from their identity.

mdfsmash: moth: iTunes Version - Bed Intruder Song Forgot to...

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:12:45 -0400

mdfsmash:

moth:

iTunes Version - Bed Intruder Song

Forgot to blog this earlier in the week: if you buy the Bed Intruder Song on iTunes, The Gregory Bros are splitting the proceeds with the Dodson family, just like they did with Yosemitebear for the Double Rainbow Song.

The Gregory Bros: Making people money. Better living through meme-istry!

@Kanyewest narrates Bill Dance fishing bloopers on @BlipSnips

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:01:50 -0400

@Kanyewest narrates Bill Dance fishing bloopers on @BlipSnips

soupsoup: Who Gets Funded? (Click for larger) via Alexander...

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:10:26 -0400

soupsoup:

Who Gets Funded? (Click for larger) via Alexander Hotz at Mashable

When many of us think of an Internet company we might think of a Michael Cera type character holed away in his parents’ basement but the stats from the report show some interesting trends. Entrepreneurs in 2010 are a relatively homogeneous lot: Most are older than you think and yet only a fraction are black (1%) or female (8%). Still there is some hope that good-old smarts wins the day; 98% have an undergrad degree or higher.

Lifetime of Loneliness

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:53:04 -0400

Lifetime of Loneliness:

fairest:

I saw this here. Can’t tell if it’s real or not. I also don’t know the difference between hairless and freshly-shaven or how a bicep can be perky.

“Deep in the our female friend’s heart is a terrible contradiction. Many of these women secretly believe that a close relationship with a homosexual will blossom into a gender-bending experience. They hunger for the lean gym bodies that so many gay men spend hours pumping into glistening perfection. They crave the boy’s progressive fashion sense, how his tight shirts show off perky biceps and a hairless or freshly-shaven chest.”

somethingchanged: Amazing.

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:36:36 -0400

somethingchanged:

Amazing.