jake olsen

Maybe it was a premonition that this was going to happen, but we got rid of our Tivo two weeks ago.

Marc @ O’Reilly has some good words:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/09/oh_come_on_tivo.html

–jake

Congratulations Adrian!

You’ve done a great job and created a very useful tool. I wonder if Google will steal you?

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The Web site chicagocrime.org, an innovative overlay of the city’s reported crimes with Google’s online mapping technology, today won the $10,000 Grand Prize in the Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

The site, created as a free public service by online journalist Adrian Holovaty with design input by Wilson Miner, was credited with “setting a new standard for interactive journalism.” Chicagocrime.org allows users to search by the type of crime, the street and neighborhood, or the date and pinpoint the location on a satellite map. One can even track crimes that occur en route to work.

“It is one journalist’s ability to see all the pieces and put them together,” the Batten judges said, “but every city should provide this as a public service.”

Full press release

–jake

I don’t get it, I still don’t get it.

Active Desktop was a huge failure. Introducing the reincarnate: Gadgets!

Everybody wants to be on the desktop so badly, that they create a development environment for any new jack to create some “useful” tools. What this assumes of users is they want to install a 3rd party application just to run some novelty applications (widgets), which could open them up to new security holes, for minimal benefit. Downloads are the new pageviews?

Far from a killer app, these “things” remind me of the walking through the checkout line at the grocery store, and seeing all the crap they think I will buy impulsively. Junk.

Is the browser now going to be a command line for these “things”? Really, you could just download Bonzi Buddy, Weatherbug, Webshots, and call it good. That’s a joke.

Om Malik calls it correctly:

“A million new ways to get hacked.”

–jake

You don’t even need to put your hands on your turntables anymore with the midi interface.

The Vestax Controller One turntable instrument. Previously know as the Melody, this is the next level musical turntable designed by D-Styles and Ricci Rucker. Now appearing in gleaming piano black, the Controller1 is an interesting deck for sure. Aside from being a cracking scratch deck, it’s also revolutionary in that it can play notes. The 8 buttons around the platter correspond to notes in a scale and can be played in major or minor key. It can be controlled by a footpedal or on the deck itself. But this is the most interesting and impressive - it can also be controlled by Midi. Check out this movie to get a better idea of how it works. A little note about the movie - in the foreground you can hear some regular Ahhh scratching - it’s the beepy tone stuff behind that you need to listen to. It shows the little Yamaha box knocking out a beat and sending midi signals to the Controller1 to change the pitch. Availability should be “soon” with an estimated price tag of £1000.

Watch the video here.

Microsoft opens APIs. Good for them, not as late to the game as their entrance into the INTERNET, but still on the heels of some very important development.

They must improve their goodwill with Web developers. Do they still market Frontpage?

Full text

In the geosphere:

Also next week, the company will announce a free commercial license to use a JavaScript “control” to display data from its Virtual Earth mapping service.

–jake