According to IBM, people are so swayed by color, they’re buy more stuff if their ads share a shade with your shirt.
Chatroulette Endmost Piano Ode
I’ve turned on Chatroulette once. I’ve never been punked by it, but I’ve also never discovered anything particularly interesting about it. It’s the video evolution of IRC 20 years ago. Whatever.
Ben Folds is far cleverer than I, and does a series of live Chatroulettes from on stage at his shows. This video is really funny if you can put yourself in the shoes of someone you just stumbles upon a feed of Ben Folds on stage with 800 screaming fans behind him.
The iPad: Where Creativity Goes to Die
There’s much ado about what the iPad won’t do. Frustrating to see with just three days on the market. For wild hand-wringing and sky-is-falling paranoia, check out Jarvis’s post.
Is iPad a game-changer? (Scripting News)
Dave Winer isn’t keen on the iPad, and points out a number of short-comings in the platform that I agree with, though his overall bent is negative compared to mine. This last point, however, pretty much nails the upside: the importance of the iPad, and the iPad platform, comes as a function of how savvy developers will implement their game-changing ideas on iPad and the iPhone.
It’s fun to play with new toys, I do lots of that and it’s important to me. No sarcasm. But reading a book that changes my perspective, or meeting someone who opens a door for me, that really does change the game — much more than using a new device. If you’re looking for game-changers look into yourself, that’s where change comes from.
YouTube – Keith Olbermann Reads James Thurber’s “A Box to Hide In”
Keith Olberman begins his so-called “grand experiment reading James Thurber short stories to close out the week on Countdown. He kicks it off with perhaps Thurber’s best. It’s a tribute to the author, and to real class, that Olberman would tell stories — real stories — on the show. It’s different, and remarkably calming, absolutely worth seven minutes.
“4. What? Ricky Martin’s gay?”
At a certain point, you have to admit you aren’t good enough to do something better than an expert could do it even if the technical option exists for you to give it a shot anyway.
There’s been a lot of hubbub about the iPad and hackery. I think there are plenty of talented experts in the open source field. I think the pundits that complain the loudest are usually not those experts.
iPad Not Charging? Not Really.
Yeah, I didn’t get bit by this myself, but it’s a big deal. It amounts to a smack on the wrists for Apple UX people who didn’t button this issue up tight pre-launch, but it’s something that we should all remember. From RWW:
Generally speaking, RTFM is not enough. Thinking through user experience, including testing by people outside the team, is mandatory.
Headfirst Insanity: 6 Gnarly Helmetcam Videos
Numbers 2 and 4 are particularly stunning. Check out the racing — falling — through the Rio slums on a mountain bike. Videos like these are why I blog.
I don’t have my iPad yet so I’m doing my very best to reserve judgement on just how it’s going to change things. But based on iFixit’s teardown, I think I can safely say that there is an equal amount of engineering inside this thing as there is pure art.
Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA) » iPad and Multitasking
So it disappoints me to see commentators on TV today dinging the iPad for a lack of multitasking. A tech expert whose mission is to communicate tricky technology to civilian audiences can’t let that pitch go by with a flat “no.” You also shouldn’t offer a flat “yes” but at least the statement “the iPad OS multitasks” is technically correct. You’re there to educate. Which means that you don’t want people to come away thinking that (for example) iPod playback stops when you try to get your mail or fire off a Tweet.
End User: Get more latitude out of iPhone 3Gs photos
Ryan Brenizer shares his thoughts on HDR apps for the iPhone (3Gs). Results are pretty damned good. Check out his post for examples and links to Pro HDR and TruHDR in the iTunes store.
HDR is just a tool to fix the inherent problem most digital cameras have of being able to capture a much smaller range of lights and darks than the human eye, and few cameras need fixing as badly as a tiny cell phone camera. With all of those pixels crammed in to a space so small, each pixel isn't receiving very much light, and that tends to mean noisy images with blown out highlights. The noise problem is hard to fix, but tonal range is relatively simple: Just take a picture exposed for the shadows, another for the highlights, and slap them together. And that, simply and easily, is what both of these applications do.
MediaPost Publications How Topeka Capitalized On Google’s April Fools’ Joke
The tourism board did have one major challenge: it didn't have a way to determine the return on investment for its paid search campaign. Sheley hopes to change that by initiating a call to action to account for conversions. The plan is to drive people to the tourism Web page and prompt them to download a visitor's guide or book a vacation on or through the site.