October 7th, 2009, 6 Comments »
About six months ago, I wrote about seeing the Google Street View camera car drive past. When Google’s street-level photo feature was implemented in Vancouver, I figured I might show up. Unfortunately, the patio tables out front at Subeez are empty (it’s clearly much earlier in the day), so I didn’t make the cut.
Of course, I immediately became interested in other familiar Vancouver spots:
- Here’s the viewpoint halfway up Cypress Mountain, where we tried to compromise our girlfriends good upbringing back in high school.
- The construction site where my childhood home used to stand.
- The parking lot at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary, one of my favourite, lesser-known spots in the city.
- Here’s the strange, charming little plane-spotting park near the Vancouver Airport.
- This seems to be the most remote point on the north-west part of the Street View coverage. It’s a banal stretch of road north of Whistler.
Though it seems a little gimmicky, Street View is actually a very useful tool. I often remember where a business or office is, but can’t remember the name. Or, alternatively, I think I might remember the name of the restaurant, but I want to see its exterior to confirm that’s it the right one. So, despite not featuring me anywhere in the Lower Mainland, it’s super handy.
What’s your favourite Vancouver spot on Street View?
6 Comments »
January 12th, 2008, 3 Comments »
I don’t often participate in Flickr memes, but it’s Saturday and this one was too fun to pass up. Via Neatorama, you compose faux CD covers for imaginary bands using these three sources:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
There doesn’t seem to be much respect for copyright in step #3 there. I regenerated the Explore page until I got an image that was Creative Commons-licensed. It didn’t take long.
Here are my submissions. They’re not nearly as good as most of the others in the photo pool, but they were fun to make none the less.
- My Wikipedia article was about presidents of good ol’ Walla Walla University.
- My quote was, in full, by James Thurber: “He knows all about art, but he doesn’t know what he likes”.
- My photo was of a great-looking old hotel in Austin, Texas.
The result:
- For my second attempt, my Wikipedia article was about a town in Finland.
- My quote was, in full, by Andy Rooney: “Don’t rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head.”
- My photo was apparently a self-portrait by this Flickr user.
I was kind of thinking of that famous John Coltrane album:
3 Comments »
November 27th, 2007, 4 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, I made some silly comics to promote a product review to some bloggers. I used Comic Life, an easy-to-use app that comes with OS X.
Rebecca and John just got their printer, and Rebecca made a fun comic of her own to, uh, celebrate its arrival.
That’s when I had this week’s free idea: a microblogging platform based around comic book frames. It works like Twitter, except that each time you want to post, you choose an image (probably of yourself) and a type of thought or speech balloon. Then you type your message.
Here’s my, er, prototype:
The app would integrate with Flickr and other photo-sharing services, enabling you to choose from any of your photos, or photos with a particular tag. You could also use your webcam to snap a photo.
There’s obviously the problem of ‘twittering’ from your mobile device, but you could set up one or more default comic frames for posting on the go, or for when you couldn’t be arsed to make a new comic frame.
Ironically, what I’m describing feels slightly like what Flickr briefly was when I first saw it. Kind of a real-time chat with photo-sharing on the fly.
I suppose the downside is that it’s slower-per-post than Twitter would be, and people are very attracted to the enforced brevity (a side effect is that Twitter seems to be an Ego Distillation Engine, but more on that another time).
What do you think of this week’s silly idea? Maybe it already exists?
4 Comments »
October 29th, 2007, No Comments »
Why start your Monday off with all that work bollocks? Via my favourite link blog, check out The Tall Stump, fun flash game and winner of the 4th Casual Gameplay Game Design award. Form Jay is Games:
It’s got action. It’s got puzzles. It’s got zany… everything. And most importantly (for the competition), it makes extensive use of ball physics.
It wasn’t instantly gratifying, so I didn’t play it for long. You, however, may have more patience.
No Comments »
September 3rd, 2007, 1 Comment »
Because nothing says “I’m committed to this company” like massacring virtual men made of jelly. Logitech recently launched a new, entertaining viral game called Jelly Battle. You have to play three quick levels of single-player mode before you can go head-to-head with three other humans online.
The trick to these games, I think, is to achieve a level of complexity that’s not simplistic, but not overly baroque either. It should be just complex enough to hint at further achievement.
Logitech’s done a nice job of not overly-branding the experience. It took me quite a while to notice that, in fact, they were promoting cordless devices among the jelly carnage.
1 Comment »
June 15th, 2007, 1 Comment »
If all goes well, I’m going to be in Vancouver for this year’s BarCamp on August 17 and 18. I was an organizer last year, but this year I’ll just be a lowly attendee.
In any case, I wanted to plug the event and encourage all of you local software companies to pony up the mere CAN $500 it takes to become a sponsor. That’s like, what, less than a copy of Windows Vista Premiumtastic? Plus, you can make some fun collateral like we did last year.
UPDATE: You can sign up for BarCamp Vancouver on the wiki, and there’s the inevitable Faceborg group and event.
1 Comment »
