This is an update to an earlier post I submitted about how to set up a web dev environment on Leopard. A few things have changed from Leopard to Snow Leopard (namely switching to 64 bit code) so it makes sense to refresh this guide. (more…)
Oh Microsoft. You have so much money. Why is it all of your ad campaigns make you look like a grumpy old dinosaur, a complete dick or a bad politician?
THE RECAP:
Of course this all started with the ill-fated Seinfeld campaign which made the mistake of putting Bill Gates in front of a camera for comedic effect. The commercials made me wonder, “Why would I trust these guys’ opinions about computers? They seem really out of touch.”
Then there was the “I’m a PC” campaign which banked on the underwhelming selling point of “Look! Macs might be cool but some people also use PCs.”
Then there was the mildly misleading “Laptop Hunters” campaign to show that PCs are cheaper than Macs. And that, given $1000 and a script, a paid actor would choose an inferior PC over a Mac. You can read about it here and here and (my personal favorite) here, where a filmmaker chooses to edit video on a PC. Interesting choice. And as always, all of these ads were made on Macs.
But you were just getting warmed up!
Check this out:
Conan’s New Stage Looks Like Super Mario
It’s pretty amazing that someone took the time to put together that collage over at Serious Lunch. And even more amazing that, yes, Conan’s set does look a lot like a SMB background.
Thanks Vulture & Serious Lunch
UPDATE: I’ve now written a modified guide for Snow Leopard!
I apologize — this is a little nerdier than this blog typically gets, but I wanted to put this up online somewhere and didn’t have anywhere else to put it.
I’ve been frustrated with the web server that comes with Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and I’ve worked to set up my own server for web development projects. I’d tried this a number of ways, but this time I was really happy with the process and the end result — so I typed up a little document on how to set up a nice web dev environment (partly so I can repeat it, but partly to share). Enjoy!
How awesome is this Puma ad:
Not that this is uncharted territory (it’s building off of Michel Gondry’s work, and most likely countless others before him), but it’s definitely pushing the boundaries further than I’ve ever seen them pushed before.
What’s amazing about this, and the kind of work that Gondry does in ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground‘ is that the spectacle itself is theatrical in nature. It’s not something that could only be done on video and edited together in post. It’s something you could experience live — but which you happen to be watching on film.
This ad takes the theatrical paradigm a step further — it’s a very post-modern interaction with video, complete with Noh theater style invisible stage hands (Kohken) moving the projection surfaces on and off the stage.
This is the kind of work I want to do in terms of using projections and video in theater. It seems like a pretty limitless frontier.
Now I just need a little bit of money… and I should be all set. :)
Thanks DesignNotes for pointing this one out.
UPDATE: I just changed out the video embed code. For full effect, switch to HD and watch it in full screen. It’ll blow your mind.
Because it’s awesome!!!
I’ve gotta admit — I’m such a sucker for things like this. I just came across 24 Unforgettable Advertisements yesterday and loved it (well… not so much the PETA one — keep scrolling down to Woodland Shoes and the McDonalds bus stop). I really love it when people take familiar objects and make you look at them in a totally different way — even if it’s for the sake of an advertisement.
Thanks again, FFFFound.
Dear Apple,
Regarding your recent behavior towards your iPhone Developer Network: please stop being such fascists.
It’s one thing to hold your developers to high standards and reject apps that do not meet those standards (I’m looking at you, AIM). It’s quite another to reject applications because they are like yours and (heaven forbid) possibly even perform better than your own.
Be nice.
Sit back, relax, and remember just how much you rely on the developers of the open source community — how much of their code you’ve rolled into your own.
What’s wrong with a little competition? What do you have to be scared of? People should be challenging you to improve your own applications. Let us, the users, make the choice. If we want to have 3 mail applications, 12 versions of Sudoku and 85 different ways to upload our photos to Flickr, we can agree that’s stupid, but that should be our choice to make. And really, we both know your apps are going to be better in the end anyway. But let us figure that out for ourselves.
We’re smart. We bought your iPhone in the first place, didn’t we? Trust us to put what we want on it.
I don’t want to hear any more crap like this from you. Really? A statement of confidentiality to gag your developers, preventing them from venting that they just blew months of dev time on an application you rejected for no reason? Come on. You’re better than this. Or at least you used to be.
Shape up!
Until you do, I will scream from the hilltops that Jailbreak is the only way to iPhone.
Sincerely,
Jeff
Lord Geek Supreme
Geek Chic