In 2005, the Emerson String Quartet released an album of Mendelssohn’s string quartets which also included a version of the octet. Instead of partnering with another string quartet, though, they recorded it by themselves, taking great care to make it … [read more]
These are fun, though (I think) unrelated. Both were shot in a single take (or at least made to look like it). OK Go, This Too Shall Pass (Rube Goldberg Machine Version) – sort of strange and amazing all at … [read more]
Nerds get a bad rap. We are being made fun of for our love of, and intimate ways with, our gear. When I say ‘gear,’ I mean computers, musical instruments, stereo equipment, cameras… anything that only reveals its depth … [read more]
Johanna Blakley‘s research concerns itself with the impact of intellectual property rights on cultural production (she also researches the entertainment industry and celebrity culture). In this really interesting TED talk, she looks at how the fashion industry has been affected … [read more]
A review of Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back (2010) It’s a tricky business, doing covers of well-known and well-loved songs. Perhaps not when you’re Keith Jarrett or Brad Mehldau and you can fall back on a long-established tradition of converting … [read more]
Barack Obama’s former BlackBerry, and the highly secure clunker it was allegedly replaced with, seem like an apt encapsulation of what enterprises are facing with the glut of new smartphones their users are connecting to corporate networks everywhere. As we … [read more]
Now that the kind folks from the Vancouver Olympic committee have once again forced them down our collective throats during the closing ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympics, I was reminded to share my theory about Nickelback. Does Nickelback warrant … [read more]
I like some of Don Norman‘s (now slightly older) theses about complexity and emotion in design. In an online essay entitled Emotional Design: People and Things he writes, Products differ in their appeal on the three design dimensions, but … [read more]