Entries from August 2009 ↓

How did an interview recorded 40 years ago win a 2009 Emmy? We have a long gestation time, YouTube, and peace to thank, reports the Observer.

In 1969, then 14-year-old Jerry Levitan made his way to John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto, elbowed a long line of press out of the way and somehow convinced the famous Beatle to give him a 40-minute interview. The conversation made its way from reel-to-reel tape to an animated short almost 4 decades later and was posted to YouTube in 2007.

Created with director and animator Josh Raskin and illustrator James Braithwaite, the 5-minute animation was originally developed to be included on DVD with Mr. Levitan’s book, I Met the Walrus: How One Day With John Lennon Changed My Life Forever. Since being posted to YouTube the short won Best Animation at the Manhattan Short Film Festival and was nominated for a 2008 Academy Award.

This year, I Met the Walrus went up against an “All My Children” video podcast, the New York Times Style Magazine screen tests and other notable nominations to win the “New Approaches – Daytime” award at the 36th Annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

The animated short features audio footage from the interview as its soundtrack, with Lennon imparting messages about peace being in the hands of the people even in a time of war. Its visual style is wonderfully playful, intelligently cartoonish and stylistically appropriate to the subject, being almost reminiscent of some of Lennon’s own illustrative work from his published works.

Check out the video below and let us know what you think. Is the film and its attendant story about an unlikely meeting between a teenager and the then biggest star in the world worth its accolades? Do you think I Met the Walrus succeeds, as Jerry Levitan hoped, “something that I thought John would love”?

I Met the Walrus

Image courtesy of Roy Kerwood

Tags: animation, Emmys, john lennon, the beatles, youtube

We went over this, but here’s the reminder now that the cat is literally out of the bag. If you bought a Mac after June 9, you can get Snow Leopard for $10 by logging in the [Mac OS X Update program page]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — but in the age of both wisdom and foolishness, somehow it always seems like the latter is what gets caught on video.

It may not be as highbrow as the works of Shakespeare are perceived now, but surely even the Bard could not resist a chuckle at some of the finest fails YouTube has to offer. And if laughter is truly the best medicine, we hope you enjoy this dose.

10. Skateboard Fail

9. Ski Jump Fail

8. Border Patrol Fail

7. Driving Test Fail

6. Law Enforcement Fail

5. Slingshot Fail

4. Catapult Fail

3. Carwash Fail

2. Parking Fail

1. Summertime Fails

Why is human failure so fascinating? And do you have any other great examples of it? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: fail, funny, video, youtube

In their own words

“WorldIP – free geolocation database, service and tools”

Why it might be a killer

Because it offers a number of interesting and effective solutions that will be attractive to many users.

Some questions

Are any other tools being added to the sites’ service?

What it does

This is quite an interesting site if you are looking for a good place where you can find a solution that is useful to find any geographic point on the planet. However, this solution was developed thinking in a much more complex service that is potentially beneficial for many professionals. In fact, Wipmania.com gives you the chance to find any IP address on any part of the globe, as well as it allows you to apply a number of tools specially created to be used in any kind off specific project where it is necessary to find internet connections.

The site is very simple to use and you just need to navigate through it to learn how to search for what you are looking for. In case you want to read about this service and other similar solutions, Wipmania.com offers a blog where you can find this kind of information.

Among the many services and benefits offered by the company you will be able to use a highly effective plug-in for Firefox as well as an API and specific information about how to find different IPs’ locations. In case you are attracted by this solution, it will be a good idea for you to give it a visit at Wipmania.com

Link: http://www.wipmania.com
Our Review: http://www.killerstartups.com/Web20/wipmania-com-find-an-ip-anywhere

Christina Warren over at TUAW has put together a nice guide about setting up the ultimate Mac mini home theater.

More of our posts on robots here and here.

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Bowloftoast sez, “This is a short animation that takes the viewer through a progressive description of all (and all possible) dimensions, up to and including the 10th. It is an elegant introduction to the fundamentals of string theory and a mind-blowing toe-dip into the pool of the metaphysical.”

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

(Thanks, Bowloftoast!)

There’s some excitement around the web today among a certain group of high profile techies. What are they so excited about? Something called WebFinger, and the fact that Google is apparently getting serious about supporting it. So what is it?

It’s an extension of something called the “finger protocol” that was used in the earlier days of the web to identify people by their email addresses. As the web expanded, the finger protocol faded out, but the idea of needing a unified way to identify yourself has not. That’s why you keep hearing about OpenID and the like all the time.

But those standards, while open, have failed to latch on in a meaningful way with the public at large. One of the holdups is that you have to set up a website or service you use to be your OpenID. It’s relatively easy to do, and you may already have one ready to go, but just not realize it. But it’s still kind of tricky to explain to a regular web user — wait, you login with your website?

But something everyone on the web knows is their email address. And they’re conditioned by services like Google and Facebook to use it as their identifier. The problem with it has been that it’s just a string of text, nothing more. You cannot attach information to it to let others know a bit more about you — something vital for true identification. Then idea behind WebFinger is that you should be able to attach any information you choose to your email address.

The excitement today is that a group of Googlers have apparently finally not only gotten Google’s support to pursue the project, but that they have started working the technical details. As Googler Brad Fitpatrick writes today:

In other words, we’ve eliminated both technical & political hurdles. We can now work on this spec, implement, push, try, rinse, repeat…. until we’re all reasonable happy.

Googler Brett Slatkin (incidentally, Fitzpatrick’s partner in making PubSubHubbub) explains to us that while it hasn’t been turned on yet, and that there’s still a lot of work to do on the spec, the idea is to go into testing mode soon. Fitzpatrick notes that there will be a small experiment going on internally with some Googlers’ Gmail accounts.

Without knowing much about the technical details behind it, the core idea behind WebFinger immediately strikes me as a good one. It’s taking something everyone knows on the web (your email address) and making it immensely more valuable as a way to identify yourself and information about you. Exactly what kind of information? Here are some of the ideas from the WebFinger Google Code page:

• public profile data
• pointer to identity provider (e.g. OpenID server)
• a public key
• other services used by that email address (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Smugmug, Twitter, Facebook, and usernames for each)
• a URL to an avatar
• profile data (nickname, full name, etc)
• whether the email address is also a JID, or explicitly declare that it’s NOT an email, and ONLY a JID, or any combination to disambiguate all the addresses that look like something@somewhere.com
• or even a public declaration that the email address doesn’t have public metadata, but has a pointer to an endpoint that, provided authentication, will tell you some protected metadata, depending on who you authenticate as.

This is definitely something to watch for in the coming months.

[photo: flickr/chris owens]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

The Logitech Harmony 900 is the updated Logitech Harmony One, which marries a traditional button remote with a capacitive touchscreen for expanded functionality. What makes this better are the charging dock and the RF to IR control adapters.

The Price: $400

The Verdict: This form factor, plus the included charging dock and the RF to IR blasters make this the best remote package Logitech has right now. We’ve been fans of their standard remotes for a while, but combining the keep-your-eyes-on-your-tv ability of those with the extendability of their full touchscreen units makes for a winner.

If you've played with the Harmony One you should know what this remote feels like. The number keys are on the bottom, the navigation keys are in the middle and the activity keys are near the top. The touchscreen is responsive enough, and can scroll through pages of various commands for different media console items—just like their previous remotes.

The charging dock is contoured exactly like the back of the remote, taking it in lovingly into its electric arms. Imagine getting into bathtub shaped exactly like your body—this is that, except without the water or the urge to pee.

Syncing with your computer works the same way as before, but Logitech STILL hasn’t managed to enable consolidating profiles so that you can have more than one remote on an account, and hasn’t come up with a way to export remote profiles to other accounts. That’s a huge pain in the ass if you have multiple Logitechs, and is probably our biggest gripe with their setup.

There is one included central RF to IR blaster, with two other IR blasters that can hook up to it for a total of three IR blasters. They're meant to be used in cabinets where the door is closed, or somehow out of IR line of sight, so you can literally point your remote at nothing (it's using RF) and it'll still propagate the command through to the IR blaster. This is pretty easy to set up—there's a wizard right on the remote—and you should be up and running in a few minutes. And there's very little RF delay, so you won't have to worry about that.

The upside is that this is probably our favorite universal remote package that Logitech has made, figuring in the charging dock and the RF to IR blasters. The downside is that the whole setup costs $400. If you’re shopping for your first universal remote, this will probably be your last. if you already own a cheaper Logitech in the sub $100 range, find a way to sell it and pick this up. [Logitech]

Best universal remote by Logitech yet

Allows extendability with touchscreen without sacrificing the usability of buttons

Price is a little high, but less than full touchscreen remotes

When Jay Leno replaced car parts, he could only print plastic molds in 3D. Life’s easier now, because mold’s are unnecessary in the creation of custom desk kitsch and car parts as 3D printing got a stainless steel upgrade.

21 days and $10 per cubic centimeter is all you need after you send a CAD design to Shapeways, a company who began offering 3D resin and plastic printing quite some time ago. There are specific size and detail guidelines to keep in mind due to models being printed in layers, but based on the moebius strip complete with moving parts, those guidelines can’t be all that limiting. What’s going to be your first 3D steel print? [Shapeways via PopSci via CrunchGear]