Author: Jeff Milner

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Jason Scott on Wikipedia Editor Essjay

Jason Scott has written a great article on Wikipedia’s latest controversy.

A popular editor of Wikipedia was hired by the Wikia company and in doing so revealed that he wasn’t a guy with some college degrees but in fact was a 24-year old kid from Kentucky. This made a lot of people unhappy, and in the ensuing discussions, Jimbo Wales and strongly alleganced Wikipedians have tried to downplay it, mostly because that position’s always worked before. It’s not working as well this time.

As an aside, I should mention that Jason’s site, ascii.textfiles.com has become a favorite of mine lately and I enjoy pretty much everything about it.

Update: Jimbo Wales has asked Essjay to step down. Jason Scott has a great follow-up.

Link rot. Here is the post from the Wayback Machine.

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Richard Dawkins’ Nice Guys Finish First

When I was enrolled in University, one of the classes I wanted to take was Philosophy of Game Theory. Unfortunately, disillusioned by my lack of interest after taking the introductory class (a prerequisite) I decided that Philosophy wasn’t for me after all.

Game Theory (Wikipedia) however, is still a very fascinating topic. Couple that with an interest in biology, sociology, and economics and the short documentary, “Nice Guys Finish First“, by Richard Dawkins becomes a tremendously interesting look at how selfish and altruistic behavior can be the greatest benefit or harm to the individual—and consequently also to the group.

Hit Play or Watch at Google Video.

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Oscar Moments On YouTube

For those of you that missed the Oscars, you can catch some of the great moments on YouTube (at least for the time-being). Here is one that I liked, Will Ferrel, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly singing about the pros and cons of being a comedian in an industry focused on drama.

Hit play or Watch at YouTube.

Well, the embedded video is gone, but you can still find clips for the time being at Oscar.com. Apparently, even those clips will be removed soon—talk about a backward marketing strategy.

I guess they don’t realize, the Oscars want to be free.

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Missing Link and Pictaps

clip from toy1.swf

Check out The Missing Link flash creation by interactive media artist Masayuki Kido. This is really cool. I don’t really have the words to summarize other than to say, it’s a series of silhouettes that appear and with the click of the mouse you can interact with them to see a near narrative unfold itself dynamically. I found it extremely compelling.

You might also want to check out Pictaps, another flash based diversion, on the same site, that allows you to draw a character, and then watch him dance to a silly song.

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The Merchants of Cool

A couple of years ago my Seminar for New Media professor showed our class a video about the symbiotic relationship between the media and today’s youth, cool Hunting, and how the network between the five media giants operates. The following embedded video is the same show.

The Merchants of Cool: They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the “next big thing” that will snare the attention of their prey—a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year.

Malcolm Gladwell makes a short interviewee appearance in The Merchants of Cool and reiterates some of his thoughts from his best selling book, “The Tipping Point”.

Hit play or Watch Fullscreen at Google Video.

Find the video on PBS.org.

(via)

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Say What Again

I’m a typographic artwork fan, a Quintin Tarrentino movie fan, and I really like motion graphic compositing projects, so, when I saw Jarratt Moody’s time-based typography assignment (at SCAD) based on Samual L. Jackson’s “Say What Again” dialogue from Pulp Fiction, I figured I couldn’t pass up the chance to share this:

The basic idea of the project is to take a piece of audio from wherever (movie, song, poetry reading, answering machine) and then represent that audio on screen using only typography.

Jarratt chose a famous bit of dialogue from Pulp Fiction as his subject matter. (Okay, what dialogue from Pulp Fiction isn’t famous?) The resulting piece is full of whimsy and style. Jarratt does some great things with scale and simple but effective camera movements. Get those headphones on and prepare yourself for several lashings of Samuel L. Jackson’s naughty tongue.

Say What Again by Jarratt Moody

Watch the piece | Visit Jarratt’s Site