“On the second disc, mastered from the original half-inch analogue tapes, we can hear for the first time that the record’s intricate feedback layers and inimitable swirls of tremolo-gliding guitar were digital mastering errors and My Bloody Valentine was actually a workmanlike third-wave ska band.”
Via.
Flickr (Again)
May 16, 2012 • apps & geek, photography
Maybe I complain about Flickr so much because I’m personally disappointed. I was an early adopter (pre-Yahoo), and for years it was one of the sites I visited numerous times a day. It was an archive, a sharing tool, a hosting platform and a social network (that last part is huge, considering it was 2004), and over the years it’s been hard to watch it shrivel.
Perhaps most disappointing is that it still has potential. Yes, we use Facebook and Instagram more frequently, and they’re both better at real time and social sharing, but Flickr’s community still has value for photography (and could, on some other planet, compete with the more on the go platforms) proper. The groups still have value. The user influenced tagging system still has value. The people who curate their own streams have value. Just recently I found an old high school friend’s account full of photos from my youth that I had no idea existed. I couldn’t find that on Instagram. Privacy variants on Facebook make it less than ideal when it comes to search and universal sharing. Additionally, Flickr offers tools for gathering stock images, desktop backgrounds, free-to-use photos of bands and events, etc. and could continue to be a sort of social database for American culture if anyone really gave a damn about the users, but no one really seems to anymore.
Regardless, the bottom line is still true: Flickr is mostly dead. The Gizmodo article “How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet” is a great historical read, explaining the history of the company’s relationship with Yahoo and what went wrong (and more). I highly recommend reading it and am glad to see that its loss is something the web community sympathizes with and mourns.
“There’s a difference between a missed opportunity and a complete fuck-up. When Yahoo failed to capitalize on Flickr’s social potential, that was a missed opportunity. But if you want to see where it completely fucked up, where it just butchered Flickr with dull knives and duller wit, turn on your phone and launch the Flickr app. Oh, what’s that, you don’t have one? Exactly.”
There’s a lot of real talk in there, and it’s all completely on point. I’m sure that Fake and Butterfield and Champ all feel a twinge of angst when they see articles like this one, but they made a choice. The bigger question in all of this is around startups selling out to big companies with Corporate Dev divisions and bosses who might not always truly understand the potential in a platform or app. That’s ok, it’s not always crystal clear. But leaving something as promising as Flickr by the side of the road is maybe one of the saddest things that’s ever happened to the historically social Internet user base. The only way it could become viable again is if it was purchased by Facebook – and then we’d have a whole different beast and set of problems.
RIP, Flickr.
Love, Sam: On the Letters of Samuel Beckett
May 15, 2012 • books
One can hardly overstate the importance of Beckett’s decision to begin writing in French, but it’s interesting that he wrote his first French poems at almost exactly the same moment that he identified critical flaws in his character—the moment he decided he should try to be a nicer guy. The importance of all that soul-searching cannot be discounted, and a striking illustration of what it meant for his art can be found in a series of letters written early in 1938, after he was stabbed by a pimp named Prudent. The wound was serious, but from the first Beckett was determined to avoid any thought of vengeance. The worst he said of Prudent was that he seemed “more cretinous than malicious.” Later he reported that the two of them had “exchanged amiabilities.” Prudent apologized and Beckett said, “Not at all.” Later still he wrote, “Prudent got off with 2 months, to my relief. He was ably defended, the plea of blind drunkenness skillfully advanced, and I represented as the aggressor.”
Via.
Can beer save America?
May 9, 2012 • culture
In the fevered battle between the macrobrew behemoths and the craftbrew insurgents, both sides are digging in for an epic confrontation.
Via.
After I fell out of love with movies (new movies, that is—classic Hollywood I still adulate), I realized during my rare visits to the multiplex that what I missed wasn’t the big screen, that Mount Rushmore larger-than-lifeness, but the short vacation in the receptive dark, the comfort and calm of the blinds being lowered on the city outside. But even that respite is too often tattered by the cell-phone compulsives texting and checking their messages, whatever spell the filmmakers attempted to cast spoiled by these mousy little screens flashing their gray pallor. As movie theaters switch from film to digital projection, home flat-screens take up a wall, Blu-Ray discs exhume masterpiece-painting volumes of color and intricate detail from popular releases, and the unholy moviegoing experience cries out for human-pest control, cinema has lost its sanctuary allure and aesthetic edge over television, which as a medium has the evolutionary advantage. Movies will never die, not as long as a director like Terrence Malick can make every green blade of grass sway like the first dance of creation, but TV is where the action is, the addictions forged, the dream machine operating on all cylinders. As I write this, the Academy Awards are a few days away, with The Artist the odds-on best-picture winner. Does anyone think The Artist is better than Mad Men?
The Creative Monopoly
April 30, 2012 • advertising, internet
“Competition has trumped value-creation. In this and other ways, the competitive arena undermines innovation.”
Via.
Why you can’t trust tech press to teach you about the tech industry – Anil Dash
April 30, 2012 • internet, technology
“We need a tech industry that values history, perspective, and a long-term view. Today, we don’t have that.”
Via.
Everything We Think We Know About People Is Wrong
April 23, 2012 • culture, socialmedia
But it turns out that people — and marketers — don’t really understand influence very well, despite being embedded in social networks their entire lives: we really don’t understand the way that we are influenced by other people. For example, if someone touches you when you first meet, you are ten times more likely to remember that person. But we are unaware, later, that the touch was the reason for our recollection. We underestimate the impact of a kind word, or the chilling effects of workplace fear. There are dozens of examples of this sort coming out of cognitive science that demonstrate that we are being strongly influenced below the conscious level, physiologically, all the time. The actions of others can make us fearful, or confident, or curious, or suspicious — and it can happen invisibly. People just don’t have a great insight into the social interactions of people, despite being involved in them.
Via.
Kayla Mattes has painted some websites. This amazing idea begins with a Geocities memorial (to a dog, to Princess Di, etc.) and allows it to live forever as an artist’s rendition of the original webpage. Brilliant. Also check out her AOL Chatz Jacquard.
It got me feeling sad for however many people are out there, missing their loved ones and not having access to their old Geocities page. 
Luckily, there’s a pretty awesome archive project. Oocities is also totally amazing. Check out Ammar’s Room.
