The Olympics start in three days, and if you don’t have a plane to catch and tickets in order, chances are you’re not going to be there to experience the events live. But a new feature from Banjo – an app that aggregates photos, statuses and tweets tagged with locations – might be able to help. It’s called “trending places,” and it allows users to navigate to any place in the world where Banjo is tracking a lot of updates, providing all of the pictures and updates people are posting from that location.
That approach alleviates a problem that many similar apps tend to have: Most people don’t seem to like tagging their location constantly, which means their networks often don’t have much to look at. But by consolidating all content in a given area with those tags, and letting anyone see it, Banjo can provide a more significant amount of content. It lets people unlucky enough to not have tickets to the Opening Ceremony get closer to the action through the eyes of people who don’t mind sharing where they are.
In 1991, John Cleese was asked by Video Arts – a corporate training production company – to present an outline for how a person can be more creative. He started the lecture with a poignant statement, “telling people how to be creative is easy – it’s being creative that’s difficult,” and then spent about 36 minutes outlining creativity as a process, rather than a talent.
The full video is available here, but if there’s a single section to watch, it’s the part where Cleese sums his speech up with five simple factors:
Here’s a video Wired posted this morning, covering the first annual Love Competition held at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging. Contestants were placed inside of an MRI machine, and told to love as hard as they could while the scan was being conducted. Those who exhibited the highest levels of activity in their nucleus accumbens, and throughout their serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin/vasopressin pathways (I know what all of that means) were declared the winners. So we’ve turned love into a contest now too. Happy Valentine’s Day.
“What kind of music do you like?” is a pretty standard first date question. In fact, it’s a pretty standard ‘getting to know someone’ question in general. What we listen to is a reflection on our attitudes, outlooks, and even upbringings. So it can get awkward when you sit across a table from someone for the first time, and can’t at least find some shared excitement in the new Guided By Voices album.
Tastebuds.fm eliminates at least a piece of that first date awkwardness by matching your musical Likes on Facebook and/or Last.fm to other registered single guys and gals on their site. Or, you can just start typing your favorites and see what comes up. No more accidentally scrambling to make it through two hours with the cute girl in the sundress who listens exclusively to Blowfly. Or the guy who looked just like Kurt Cobain in his profile pic, but jams only to a combination of didgeridoo and tabla mixes.
From everyone here in Milwaukee, we wish you all a very Happy Holiday (whatever that may be!) this weekend, and into next. Thanks for a wonderful year, and an even better 2012!
Very Sincerely,
Bill, Greg, Billy, Jason, Kevin, D, Jon, Nick, Jose, Jim, Kelly, Donna, Carmen, Kristin, Viquie, Matt, Jen, Mike & Steve
Radio Paradise is a real trip, with no loss of frequent flyer miles (or brain cells). It’s a streaming internet radio station, with the best eclectic mix I’ve heard from one source. Mostly tasty, interesting rock, but all genres are represented. Everything is DJ mixed, so there is a logic and flow – unlike random computer mixes. And it’s totally commercial-free. Not that I don’t fancy a good radio spot, but I’d rather wait for the Mercury Awards reel. Radio Paradise is financially supported through donations on their site – hopefully for many moons and tunes to come. A husband/wife team out of Paradise, California runs the station, which has been around for about a decade. Their site has playlist details and the ability for interactivity – through welcomed comments, forums, journals and contests. Welcome to paradise.
In short, Airbnb let’s guests and hosts choose the experience they want to have. Want to get away for a weekend, week or even a month without breaking the bank? Airbnb allows people to list their homes so that people who are looking for lodging can rent a room, use of the entire home or even have the place all to themselves. There is a feedback feature on the site that allows you to read the experiences others have had with any home. You can check it out here.
Ping-pong popularity is on the rise. Thanks to hip clubs like Spin (Milwaukee, New York, St. Pete and Toronto), all levels of table tennis players are coming out of the woodwork (most likely musty, knotty pine woodwork) – me included. Competitive exercise, rewarded with a well-crafted brew in a state-of-the-art space with good tunes and good people is a good thing. The US is still no match for China (or Germany, or Japan, or India, or Korea, etc.) when it comes to ping-pong proficiency and popularity. In fact, we pretty much bring up the rear in the world table tennis standings. But when you consider our ability to have fun, the US kicks @#%! Get your pong on, people!
If you like capturing every event with your digital camera and you use Picasa, then Web Album is for you. Web Album brings your Picasa Photos right to your iPad, faster and easier than ever. This app has saved me time, plus space on my iPad for more movies, apps and music.
