Although I like Guitar Hero quite a bit, sometimes it leaves me wanting less. By less I mean a game more pure and simple in its musical mockery. What I came up with was “Cowbell Hero”.
As you can see from the above product mock-up, it consists of a simple Wii accessory in the form of a white plastic cowbell. The nunchuck plugs into the bell allowing you to swing it to and fro with a realistic cowbell playing motion.
A variety of classic 80s rock songs will provide hours of cowbell playing fun. If anyone at Nintendo is reading this, please, please make my dream come true.
In anticipation of Firefox 3’s release on a day TBD, Mozilla’s marketing team has created Download Day- Firefox 3’s 1,440-minute quest to make the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most downloaded software ever in one day. Download Day has a website, http://www.spreadfirefox.com/, created to spread the word and entice Firefox luverz across the globe to literally pledge their allegiance to Download Day. By clicking the “Pledge Now!” button, you increase your country’s number of pledges on a Google-Maps-esque world map. The cool part of the Download Day site is if you hold your mouse over a country on the map, you can view the aggregate number of pledges from that country.
Close to 175,000 of us Americans have given their pledges, while our friendly neighbors to the North have 30,000 on board (Good work Canada! You’re super!). How many people in Myanmar have pledged, you ask? Go see for yourself.
With already over a million pledges worldwide, Mozilla seems to be on track to grab the record, with potential to earn legendary status like Guinness Record Holders Jackie Bibby (most rattlesnakes held in mouth by their tails, 10, as well as three other rattlesnake-related records) and Niek Vermeulen (largest airplane barf bag collection- over 3,700). If you haven’t already, go make your pledge and become a part of history.
UPDATE: Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday next week (June 17).
With gas prices soaring and no end in sight, many drivers are adopting new habits to help ease the pain. Lifehacker, The Consumerist and many other sites offer great millage stretching tips, but some of my favorites are not usually mentioned.
#1 - Order At The Counter
If you frequent fast-food joints, or anything with a drive through window, don’t idle in a long line of cars. Instead, park and order inside. It will probably take about the same amount of time, and you won’t be sitting in your car getting 0 MPG.
One of the key speakers this year at Flashbelt is Processing superstar Robert Hodgin. Processing is an open source programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) that aims to serve as a ‘digital sketchbook’ - used by artists and programmers to create complex visuals, animations and image manipulations.
Former Flashbelt speaker and colleague Nick Longtin recently suggested I give Processing a try. That it was ‘right up my alley’.
I think he was right. Very similar to ActionScript, but with a simplified syntax. Check it out:
ActionScript var blur:BlurFilter = new BlurFilter(10, 10, 2);
myLogo.filters = [blur];
Processing filter(BLUR, 1);
image(myLogo);
…. although, you could simplify the ActionScript to myLogo.filters = [new BlurFilter()];
Here are some of the results from my first Processing experiment (more examples in the rest of the article):
In my ongoing series on on-line advertising faux pas, anomalies, and general weirdness, I have come across quite a few examples of what I call “competeverts”. Competeverts are ads placed in a page where the content of the page expunges about a company in direct competition with the advertiser.
One of, if not the finest, example of this was on Gizmodo today. As you can see from the screen capture above, Blackberry took advantage of some prime advertising real-estate on a iPhone article to advertise its competing device.
With opportunities like this, it’s no wonder ad dollars are transitioning from print to the web.
What do you get when you splice Mary Poppins with some creep-tastic music? One impressively sinister movie plot:
Videos like this are the natural offspring of popular video and social networking sites; you can see mash-up spawn all over the web on YouTube and beyond. You don’t have to be a genius to make one yourself. Here are some examples and websites to whet your appetite:
1. The Trailer Mash: Users create new twists to movie spots by remixing and changing up the soundtrack. Scary Mary, above, is just one example.
2. Terminator vs. Robocop is a mash-up with some of that video annotation that Nick mentioned a few posts ago. It was created by the people at AMDS Films, but I’m guessing most of y’all don’t speak French.
3. Vader Sessions includes Star Wars clips with quotes from James Earl Jones’ various roles spliced in. It gets really good when he starts talking about being a breadwinner (3 minutes in or so).
4. Total Recut has it all — source clips, video editing tools, and contests, with categories from political to education to advertising to trailers.
5. Check out The Recycled Cinema for a history of found video footage and a more academic approach to mash-ups.
6. For the politically bent, Political Remix is a blog-style video mash-up site with some very moving and politically charged messages.
7. Jumpcut is Yahoo’s answer to the video and social networking equation. You can use it to upload source material, edit your clips, and share your remixes. Still in beta (what isn’t these days), but the is design slick, unobtrusive, and very user-friendly.
I have noticed a trend emerging in my decidedly urban Minneapolis surroundings: places that have Wi-Fi that should not. For instance, Arby’s. Although I love a hot-from-the-fryer potato cake as much as the next person, grease slicked fingers and laptop keyboards don’t mix.
Another inappropriate place for Wi-Fi, I feel, is busy intersections. With the Minneapolis municipal Wi-Fi network it is possible to check your email in traffic and surf the web while waiting for the light to change. I have actually seen people do this.
Since I express myself best in Haiku, here it is:
Wi-Fi signal finds
All who seek a connection
So please drive safely
YouTube has just added a great new feature: video annotations. Video annotations are little text boxes, word bubbles, and spotlights you can add to your videos.
These little information nuggets have some serious potential to make the now common place web video experience a little more engaging. Regrettably, the first wave of annotated videos will likely be comprised of wise-guy comments overlaying groin injury videos.
To see this cool new feature in action click here.
And in case you don’t know what a favicon is, it’s that small image next to the URL of the page that you’re on.
In Google’s case, the voluptuous small “g” (Google) has replaced the big “G” (Google). Are they rebranding? Is it an attempt to appear less corporate and more humble as it increasingly dominates the search market?
