Miscellaneous and Useless Information
James Lin’s infrequently updated blog
I finally read an essay that Daniel e-mailed me over a year ago. Professor Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT, has written about fan fiction as a medium through which ordinary people change their relationship to popular culture from being passive consumers to active participants in its creation. He uses …
Continue reading “Fan films: creating, not just consuming, popular culture”
There would be more innovation in mobile phones and services if they were as open as personal computers and the Internet are today. A grassroots movement of Silicon Valley tinkerers are pushing such an agenda, the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club, whose name pays homage to the famous Homebrew Computer Club (where the Apple I was …
Another sign of technological change: grainy amateur viral videos posted on the web, and then broadcast on TV for your viewing pleasure.
Google and iFilm are hosting a video that answers: “How would Microsoft package the iPod?” It is absolutely hilarious, because it’s true. Who would make such a scathing video? Microsoft.
I just came back from two intriguing talks from this month’s BayCHI meeting. The first talk was about Chandler, the open source PIM that seems to have been under development forever. Mimi Yin talked about Chandler’s design philosophy and how it’s different from typical e-mail/calendar programs (her slides are online). For example: There is a …
Continue reading “BayCHI talks on personal information management”
I just found out that the School of Information Management and Systems at Berkeley is changing its name to simply the School of Information, or “iSchool.” It’s a better name — I don’t think anyone had a good grasp of what “information management and systems” meant, while its new name implies a more expansive charter, …
Here are a few safety warnings in the manual of my new cell phone, the LG VX6100: “Do not use your phone in high explosive areas as the phone may generate sparks.” (I personally never want to be in a high explosive area.) “Never place your phone in a microwave oven as it will cause …
Yesterday IBM Research celebrated its 60th anniversary, quite a remarkable achievement when you think about the fate of other fabled labs such as Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. At Almaden, we had watched video from the main celebration at Yorktown. Fred Brooks was one of the speakers at Yorktown, and he’s a very good speaker. …
I finally saw an iPod Nano in person for the first time today. Holy moly, it’s even smaller in real life! The Nano is the first iPod to really wow me — undoubtedly it’s the MP3 player to beat (although the new Sony Walkmans look intriguing). So what if the Nano might be a little …
I was glad to see Microsoft announce a new ergonomic keyboard, the Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, for a couple of reasons. For a while, it looked like they were deemphasizing their standalone ergonomic keyboards. Microsoft introduced a lot of wireless ergonomic keyboard/mouse sets in the past few years, but I’m only interested in wired keyboards. …