JasoNunes

Logline of the week - Breaking the Commandments

2009-07-08T13:00:00.004-04:00

Breaking The Commandments
Weldon James has never done anything wrong in his life. He's the perfect employee, boyfriend, son, and Christian. But when his wild and crazy, womanizing, hard drinking best friend Ethan commits suicide, the cracks in Weldon's life begin to show, and the existential angst sets in. What has Weldon done with his life? Where is he going? Why is he here? Hedonism? Happiness? Piety? Purity? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?! Weldon decides that to honor Ethan he must systematically break the 10 Commandments, even if it means losing everything that he thinks is important to him.

Logline of the week - Scattered, Smothered, and Covered

2009-07-01T13:00:00.004-04:00

Found on Flickr - Image by Mason Poe

Scattered, Covered, & Smothered
A disaffected young woman who feels like she's never had the chance to grow up, about to hit a milestone in her life--her 30th birthday--decides to take her destiny in her hands, and go for all the things she's missing--a husband, a family, a traditional life--by kidnapping her high school crush, an aging football player/ladies man who has recently decided to chuck in the towel, get married, and settle down.

Check out Challenge Post

2009-06-29T14:57:00.002-04:00

Jane Dowling and I did some UX strategy/design work for them a few months ago. Challenge Post is such a great idea--"a public marketplace for companies, non-profits and individuals to create contests and award prize money for solving problems." Challenge Post founder Brandon Kessler is one smart and savvy dude. There's a great article about him and Challenge Post in The Industry Standard. Check it out.

Oh how the world has changed - 13 year old kid reviews a walkman

2009-06-29T13:34:00.003-04:00

An awesome article on the BBC

Some highlights:

He had told me it was big, but I hadn't realised he meant THAT big. It was the size of a small book.

From a practical point of view, the Walkman is rather cumbersome, and it is certainly not pocket-sized, unless you have large pockets. It comes with a handy belt clip screwed on to the back, yet the weight of the unit is enough to haul down a low-slung pair of combats.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle", where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly - effective, if a little laboured.

Personally, I'm relieved I live in the digital age, with bigger choice, more functions and smaller devices. I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can't imagine having to use such basic equipment every day.

Wow. The pace of change in technology is such a constant that I sometimes lose track of how much things have changed. This really drives it home for me. Anyone else remember having one of these boat anchors clipped to your belt, that mechanical whir reverberating through your hip bone (maybe I just had junky ones) as you listened to "Message in a Bottle" on your bus ride to school? Or am I dating myself?

Logline of the week - I Was a Teenage Superhero

2009-06-24T13:00:00.001-04:00

I was a Teenage Superhero
When 15 year old tomboy Miranda comes home from school to find her parents abducted, and her house trashed, she and her nerdy little brother Jeremy are in for the shock of their lives--back in the day their boring, dorky parents weren't boring or dorky at all--mom was DynaGirl, Amazonian super heroine and fighter for truth, justice, and the American way, and dad was Dr. Braincapacity, evil genius, mad scientist, on the FBIs most wanted super villain list. Now it's Miranda and Jeremy's turn to take up the family mantel and save the day (not to mention their parents). But when they learn who has abducted them--Captain Eternal, masked, caped, square jawed paragon of justice, (and mom's old flame)--becoming super may be a little bit harder than they thought...

Towards a grand unified theory of cutlery...

2009-06-23T08:12:00.001-04:00

Found this on FFFFOUND.

Tickles my inner physicist, and my inner cutlery addict...

The animated operating system

2009-06-22T16:23:00.003-04:00

Motionagrapher reminded me of these 2 classics that use the operating system to create beautiful animations.

A beautiful music video...

And the history of text on the web...

Inspiring stuff.

Multi-Touch infects the Real world...

2009-06-21T14:23:00.002-04:00

Lilly Allen's latest Video for her song "Fuck You" is really fun.

Something else we can thank the iPhone for perhaps?

John Hodgman is BRILLIANT: Is Obama the first Nerd President?

2009-06-20T08:49:00.004-04:00

I think he's on to something... no wonder I'm such a fan of the POTUS

Are we seeing the first step towards healing that age old schism? The nerds vs. the jocks?

Beautiful Portraits of Horrible Monsters

2009-06-18T08:21:00.002-04:00

I love the work of Travis Louie, a painter who specializes in Edwardian and Victorian style portraits of monsters and oddities. ...and he went to Pratt, which is just blocks away from where I'm typing. Cool.

How to reach people in the social media age

2009-06-17T14:18:00.004-04:00

Fantastic article by Thomas Baekdal about where we consume our media, and how to reach people in the emerging social media (and beyond) age... (and it's got pretty (though unscientific) info graphics too...)

Baekdal makes some great points about how we are shifting out of the traditional interruption model of message delivery because the media consumption mix is changing radically. (This relates to the Clay Shirky talk I blogged about earlier)... His info graphics make his points.

1900 - Read all about it!

1960 - We will be right back after these messages

1990 - Tune in Tomorrow

1998 - The dawn of the Internet

2004 - I decide what to do!

2007 - Me too

2009 - Everything is Social

and on into the future

2020 - Traditional is dead

Great summation of Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0

2009-06-17T13:59:00.002-04:00

From Amit Agarwal, a great summary of what the differences are between 1.0, 2.0, & 3.0.

This slide neatly sums up the main differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.

Web 1.0 - That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.

Web 2.0 - This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.

Web 3.0 - This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.

Amit has collected a bunch of different industry presentations that make these various points.

Logline of the week - Off World Blues

2009-06-17T13:00:00.003-04:00

Off-World Blues
Matchwood Smith is a blues man, a burn-out, and the unlikeliest interplanetary diplomat ever. Match has been knocking around the universe with his parasitic manager, and his on again, off again, BEM girlfriend, for what could be a millennium (thanks very much, general relativity). So long that he may be the last true genetic human being left alive. So long that Match is starting to consider chucking in the towel. But Match's plans for an early retirement suicide are foiled when he is 'rescued' by a group of Numen--the latest step in human evolution--who need his genetic material to guarantee the future of the numen race. But Match's willingness to save the numen race is tested when he discovers that a more nefarious plan is afoot...

Clay Shirky on the revolution of social media - Why Iran's attempts at censoring will ultimately fail...

2009-06-16T17:17:00.003-04:00

Amazing points in this TED talk by Clay Shirkey that are very applicable to what's going on in Iran right now.

To paraphrase (with my analysis in parentheses):

The Great Firewall of China failed (and Iran's attempts at media control will fail too) because it was designed to censor an old media model:

Media produced by professionals

From the outside world

Delivered in sparse chunks

Slowly

But the new social media world (including Twitter, and Facebook, and MySpace, and Bebo, and... too many social networks to count actually, with more emerging every day) the things to be censored are:

Locally produced

By amateurs

Quickly

In huge abundance

Clay talks about the earth quake in China, but he could just as easily be talking about the protests in Iran. He says that the only way a country like China can control the media message now is by attempting to block the services--Twitter, etc.--but this is doomed to fail, because new services crop up on a daily basis. So unless China (and Iran) are willing to turn off the internet spigot all together (like North Korea) the regimes will soon find it impossible to control the messages their citizens send and receive.

Interesting times, no?

Proposed Sociological Experiment: Red vs. Blue prejudice

2009-06-14T13:56:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about this a lot lately--the divisiveness and outright hostility that seems so pervasive in the current political dialogue. I'm growing increasingly worried about the two echo chambers of the left and right that seem to create this us vs. them environment where there seems to be no common ground, and where we routinely dismiss those who disagree with us in the most simplistic and dismissive terms--stupid, nut job, ignorant, fascist, etc. It seems to me that this is creating a national cultural environment where violence becomes an accepted viable means of forwarding a political viewpoint, because there appears to be no middle ground, no means or place where opposing viewpoints can be debated in a more rational, less histrionic way.

Now, I've also been attempting to confront my own left leaning biases, which, when whipped up by the current us vs. them frenzy on the blogosphere, and (more and more) the main stream media, lead me down the path of believing that there is more of this angry, violence-encouraging, rhetoric coming from the right than from the left. But living in New York City it can be hard to get the sense of what it's really like in the rest of the country. Which leads me to my proposed experiment...

Self professed liberals and conservatives would wear shirts like the ones pictured above, and then travel to areas that they consider unfriendly to them. Blue true believers traveling to traditionally red areas, and vice versa, red believers heading to blue states. They would keep online diaries of how they are received, the reactions they get, and the outcomes of any actual conversations they have with folks who are diametrically opposed to them.

My gut tells me that the things that connect us as Americans are actually stronger than the ideas that divide us, but there's no way to know until we stop shouting at each other from our walled gardens and actually talk it out.

What do you think?

Logline of the week - Friendship, NY

2009-06-10T13:00:00.001-04:00

Friendship
When Alix, a soon to be 30 party girl, heads upstate determined to figure out once and for all what it means to grow up, her weekend of self-discovery is interrupted by a psychotic preacher, his cannibalistic followers, and a nasty little Lesch-Nyhan syndrome causing parasite. Alix must grow up, and fast, if she intends to survive...

Logline of the week - Fetish

2009-06-03T14:59:00.000-04:00

Fetish
A devoted but dissatisfied family man with a penchant for deviance falls prey to a sadistic killer with a twisted sense of humor who frames him for a series of psycho-sexual murders.

Cool Flash Interface - H&M Fashion Against Aids

2009-05-29T11:38:00.003-04:00

Music video creator/sequencer tool.

I think this interface is beautiful, and fun, and for a great cause. It's got a little bit of a learning curve, but once you've figured out what you're doing, and how to sequences the different sounds/video, the music video creator is 2 tons of fun. And I love the monochromatic, stylized 3D look.

What do ya'll think?

The Vendor Client Relationship in the Real World

2009-05-28T12:50:00.002-04:00

This is hilarious!

Logline of the week - Blood Junkies

2009-05-27T13:00:00.000-04:00

Blood Junkies
When PTSD sufferer Cali Brown returns home from Afghanistan, all she wants is to disappear into the wood, but then she learns that her brother is missing. Cali's quest to find him leads her to the dark underbelly of New York, and to Else, a centuries old vampiress who is at the center of an upcoming undead civil war. To find her brother Cali must learn to navigate the arcane world of the vampire tribes, and when the time comes Cali must choose the right side--her afterlife depends on it.

Logline of the week - Wing Women - Coming soon...

2009-05-20T13:00:00.000-04:00

Wing Women
Emma, Darcy, and Jane, three cash strapped 20-something roomies, become professional Wing Women to make ends meet. They help their socially-challenged male clients get the digits while teaching them to become men that women would actually want to date. But when Emma finds herself falling hard for Dick, their latest clueless (but cute) case, their business, their future, and their friendship is tested to the breaking point.

Extended Excentric Labeling

2009-05-15T11:07:00.003-04:00

This video from this paper by Enrico Bertini really makes me have a UX geek out.

Here's the abstract:

"The paper presents an extension to the Excentric Labeling, a labeling technique to dynamically show labels around a movable lens. Each labels refers to one object within the lens and is connected to it through a line. The original implementation has several known limitations and potential improvements that we address in this work, like: high density areas, uneven density distributions, and summary statistics. We describe the implemented extensions and present a think-aloud user study. The study shows that users can naturally understand and easily operate the majority of the implemented function but label scrolling, which requires additional research. From the study we also gained unanticipated requirements and interesting directions for further research."

And the video:

Logline of the week - Fiends With Benefits

2009-05-13T11:10:00.003-04:00

To keep my hand in, and the creative juices flowing, I've decided that every week I will write and post a logline of a feature, or series.

Here's the first:

Fiends With Benefits
Volod Dragomir is the lonely heart to end all lonely hearts--a 500 year old vampire whose need for sustenance always seems to get in the way of his quest for love. When Volod falls for Abigail Helsing, great great great granddaughter of the famous vampire hunter, he may finally have met his perfect match... or his deadliest adversary.   

Trek Nation

2009-05-06T16:53:00.003-04:00

Trek Nation - Director's trailer from Scott Colthorp on Vimeo.

Scott Colthorp, whose next documentary my wife Meghan is producing, just released the trailer for his documentary on Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

Looks to be a fantastic movie. Got my inner Trekkie (or is it Trekker?) all revved up.

Check it out. And if you like it, please favorite and/or comment.

http://www.vimeo.com/4401693
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRwqKzOqWLk

I just like it ... Here and There

2009-05-01T13:12:00.002-04:00

A project from Schulze & Webb to create a horizon-lineless Manhattan. Since my whole life seems to revolve around the 5 burrows (well, 2 of them) this map is very appealing. (Even if the POV should have been from Brooklyn--the most important burrow of all...)