Josh McHugh

video iPod - wow

Mags gave me a 5G iPod for Christmas. It's phenomenal. I downloaded a few episodes of Lost before we left and watched one on the plane. The first thing I was struck by - it really didn't matter much that the screen is only yay big. Hold it a little closer to your mug, and voila - it takes up about the same portion of your field of vision as a big old TV across a living room.

This compels me to temper the scornful remark I made in [inside] magazine way back when I was ragging on the term (and concept behind) "m-commerce." Although mobile-device commerce remains a fantasy in the US, a small screen can work wonders, imbued with sufficient resolution and color.

street skating without the skate

Wow. Rodes Fishburne just hipped me to this parkour thing. This is some extremely hip-hop stuff. David Belle is apparently the master of the game.

Link: Parkour.NET - man running up walls and jumping over and off all manner of things.

Universal Searchability - A Good Thing?

Just reading George Dyson's essay, The Universal Library (scroll down to find it) over at Edge.org.

He makes a wonderful point. Imagine some time well into the future, when all possible books have been written and every one of them is online (though by then the online/not online distinction may seem quaint), findable, and searchable. Now what?

It's a bit of a trick question (not to mention a rigorous extension of the million-monkeys-typing scenario (warning: link to intelligent design proponent)). Because not only are the great books of the future written at this point, but all the mediocre ones, the bad ones, and the totally false ones (which brings to mind John Hodgman). The question of Now What begins to look very, very thorny.

Dyson's conclusion:

Even in the Age of Search, we still need authors to find the meaningful books!

Whew.

No Job Is Safe

Not sure if this is a case of offshoring or off-worlding, but I am sure that Your Personal Writer is the funniest website I've seen in a while. It's almost as though the writing on the site has been run through a software-based translator and back.

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It happens sometimes that we have to accomplish assignments we do not understand. Who would be happy to write about literary heritage of Charles Dickens, for instance? Who is this Charles Dickens anyway?!

Link: Custom Research Papers, Essays & Term Papers Writing Assistance.