Google’s Earth by William Gibson

William Gibsons OP-ED contribution in the NYT’s is great — a must read.

“Google’s Earth — By WILLIAM GIBSON

… We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01gibson.html?_r=1&hp

The end of tv / tivo

It’s been a great 3 years with TIVO. Easily one of the best media consumption services ever. They couldn’t make enough inroads in Canada/HD/Online services for us — plus our lack of watching “traditional TV”.

I even tweeted them a couple times pleading !! http://twitter.com/stevey/status/20346197703

We’ve now cancelled our Videotron Illico TV service and will be gracefully retiring our TIVO 2 series. Maybe it’ll go live up in the country at a nice home where it can run around and get fresh air.

Tivo is dead / Long live Tivo.

(Bring on a new giant NAS drive and a Boxee in 2011)

BPGlobalPR is genius

Great update: Words from the man behind @BPGlobalPR himself — http://streetgiant.com/2010/06/02/leroy-stick-the-man-behind-bpglobalpr/

One of my favourite current pieces of satire/commentary is from @BPGlobalPR discussing the recent oil spill. It’s so good they now have almost 60,000 followers and BP is trying to have it shut down.

“After oil started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil rig explosion almost a month ago, a Twitter account launched purporting to be BP’s public relations group, @BPGlobalPR. The account, which offers dark, satirical commentary about the spill and cleanup efforts, is run by an anonymous person” — Mashable article

https://twitter.com/BPGlobalPR

iPad

Checking out my site on Plank’s iPad. Looks pretty nice. But then again almost every site does look nice on this thing!!

SXSW day 3 report

Another post from Austin, TX — SXSW 2010.

During a panel today, a new buzzword (to me at least) popped up…

"Data Exhaust"

This is the by-product of you interacting with the internet. When you search Google, when you create content, when you tweet, when you update your favourite app, you leave behind a trail of bits that slowly dissipate. These include logs & caches, content that references your content, metrics and date time/stamps and other sorts of tailings.

That "exhaust" from your interaction is valuable, it can be mined for info even if that data has been anonymized. It can make other people quite a bit of money. Some people disagree that this should be the de facto way everything works.

I’m no expert in any of this, but when the term came up my first immediate reaction was, how does this relate to driving a gas guzzling car that creates the fumes the buzzword references?

Should we be concerned about reducing this emission? Is there such a thing as ZERO emissions interaction with the net? Should it be your right to have that? Or would a complete anonymization remove all useful functionality? Will we see a movement towards a "clean" internet, where you at least have control of that emission or can choose how much is spewing out behind you, without slowing you down?

http://www.plankdesign.com/en/blog/posts/sxsw_day_3_2010

SXSW 2010

Leaving tomorrow AM for Austin/SXSWi 2010. This will be 3rd time attending and the excitement is still just the same. Looking forward to some inspiration, conversation, beer and great tex-mex food !!

Should be amazing — if you’re there find me via:

twitter/stevey | sitby.us/stevey | or leave me a msg here.

Michael Bierut on Clients

Michael Bierut is one of the partners @ Pentagram in NYC. If you work in the creative client services industry — this is worth your time to watch.

“Our speaker at the January 2010 CreativeMornings ( creativemornings.com ) was Michael Bierut of Pentagram hosted at the fabulous Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. It was our biggest CreativeMornings audience yet with 300 (!) NYC creatives attending.”