Jul 13, 20070
Jul 9, 20076
I’m on Pownce - Twitter on steriods
I just signed up for Pownce which is rather like twitter, except instead of just 140 characters of text you can send links, files, and events to all your friends. They’ve also developed a nice little Facebook application. For a really good overview of pownce you can watch this great screencast from Molly at demogirl.com
If you’d like to add me as a friend on pownce or facebook please go ahead. I also have six invites for pownce to send out, first come first served.
Jeramiya Jeremiah at the web-strategist has been collecting all the pownce reviews here, certainly worth checking out if you want to get ahead of the curve on the next twitter. Also Mashable have a review here.
Cheers,
Karl
Jul 7, 20072
Telsa Coil Plays Techno, including Mario Theme
This is a solid-state Tesla coil. The primary runs at its resonant frequency in the 41 KHz range, and is modulated from the control unit in order to generate the tones you hear.
So just to explain a little further, yes, it is the actual high voltage sparks that are making the noise. Every cycle of the music is a burst of sparks at 41 KHz, triggered by digital circuitry at the end of a “long” piece of fiber optics.
What’s not immediately obvious in this video is how loud this is. Many people were covering their ears, dogs were barking. In the sections where the crowd is cheering and the coils is starting and stopping, you can hear the the crowd is drowned out by the coil when it’s firing.
This Tesla coil was built and is owned by Steve Ward. Steve is a EE student at U of I Urbana-Champaign. He and Jeff have been going to Teslathons, which is where they met.
It’s been suggested that a good name for this coil would be the “Zeusaphone”. “Thoremin” has also been mentioned, though personally I think we need Theramin type inputs for that.
To answer a few questions I’ve received, YES, someone did yell “Play Freebird!” after the first round of music.
Jul 3, 20073
Brilliant Flight of the Conchords Redux By Grant McCracken
If you only read one thing today you should read Grant’s post on the Flight Of The Conchords, it is a wonderful piece of criticism in the classic sense of the word. Grant deconstructs at least 9 comedic threads and then goes on to describe how FOTC also splices those threads in very novel ways.
dissonance, as when Clement takes on child labor in one of his “message songs,” only to spin off into a reflection on why sneakers aren’t cheaper, the suspicion that we pay too much for sneakers, before being thrown free of the song with a plaintive cry: “what’s your overhead?” This is anthropological trickery of another kind. Normally, the folk song and business analysis are things kept secret. Clement binds them up.
Here’s the song about issues, I could listen to this over and over:
May 16, 20078
Brilliant Video, Consumer Breaking Up With Advertising
This is a brilliant commercial/parody produced by a marketing manager at microsoft to help communicate the current state of the relationship between advertisers and consumers. The projects blog is called bringbackthelove.com. This is an inspired production and an excellent communication tool. It was inspired somewhat by David Armano’s bit in Business Week titled It’s The Conversation Economy Stupid.
Apr 17, 20076
Error Message Of The Day - Hall Of Fame Nominee
It’s almost poetry or some kind of koan to be pondered.
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