The Nobel Prize in chemistry was announced today, going to three scientists who brought Green Fluorescence Protein (GFP) to the world. I have a little history with GFP...and thanks to the interwebs I can prove it.

Ever watch a movie and say, "hey I recognize that intersection?" Or wonder where a scene was done? Here is a totally cool mix of the famous chase scene from Bullitt combined with Google maps to show you where they are.

Nokia debuted its 5800 touch screen phone - but don't call it an iPhone killer. Or wanna be. Or whatever. They can say what they want, but it sure looks like an iPhone rip off to me. What is interesting is the fact that seminal devices and interfaces often spawn imitators...and most think, "oh, that's the only way to do it, of course it looks like that." Well then how does the *first* one get made? Oh yeah...someone has some creativity.

LG has a more interesting entry. Renoir is more camera than phone and it has some very cool tricks wrt focusing, etc. The collision of camera and phone needs a few kicks in the rear, this might be one of them.

Well, in the technology world, what happens when software (or more to the point these days, an online service) doesn't work? Why you shuffle the org chart, of course. Following on the morass that has been "mobileMe", Apple has reshuffled the deck and taken the could computer service away from one group and dealt it to the iTunes team. Ahh, the joys of having stuff not work. One reason that I am happy to be more on the academic side of things - our stuff often doesn't work. That's why they call it research. Then again, my production projects have no excuses like that. Hmm...

Today I set up my first group on Facebook, and did a little searching around. Though I am somewhat of a pundit/expert on social software, I admit that I use the major sites very little. Part of this is due to my "old school" habits of running my own servers. Since I have my own domains, can do ftp, setup and admin a cms, why would I want to use something else?

Of course the answer is that "everyone else is doing it." And there is something to be said for the access to others, and the ability to get message out and share content effectively. I certainly have utilized youtube quite a bit, but Facebook and LinkedIn have been somewhat on the back-burner for me personally.

Today's foray into Facebook was business related. We have a summer intern program and the idea is to provide a space for them to keep in-touch with the institute. I immediately defaulted to, "we can set up a site..." but why not leverage existing networks? That then leads to some searches on Facebook, and who can't resist looking up old friends and/or ex, um, friends.

I have to admit that I renewed my subscription to .mac (now mobileme) largely due to the concept of "exchange for the rest of us." I have multiple machines and synchronicity is an issue. Of course like all technologies, the promise is greater than the delivery. And in this case, mobileme had some serious issues. As in stuff not working. So now Apple has issued a public mea culpa and is giving people a free month of service. Well that's all fine and dandy, but I have to admit that there are workarounds (kludges, hacks, etc) that obviate mobileme at least for my purposes. Tools are supposed to obviate hacks, but sometimes necessity is the mother of invention.

Maybe some day a tech company will get it right. But I wouldn't hold my breath. Apple gets closer than the rest, but they still have a ways to go, especially in managing our "digital world." Of course I could just throw things away...

A win for eBay and a loss of Tiffanys over the use of Tiffany's mark on the auction site. I've always been a fan of "fair use" wherever possible...that is the only way that the edu sector can remix media. In this case we're talking about a trademark, but all the lines are fuzzy. The courts seem to be holding a party line of putting the onus on the owner of the mark and leaving the middleman (in this case, eBay) free of responsibility. What is interesting is that eBay has 200 people involved with dealing with "legal" issues (auction complaints, counterfeits, etc) while Tiffanys has a paralegal who surfs some of the site. Of course there is a numbers issue at hand (# of auctions vs. # of Tiffany-related stuff) but still, if you want to protect your mark then you need to...protect your mark.

The old quote says, "a picture is worth a thousand words." Well, that was before photoshop. And with FCP and AfterEffects, the value of video is a little suspect as well. While there was a somewhat related piece about Fox News doing their own photoshop work, today everyone is talking about the Iranian governments creative endeavors. "Today we shot three, no four, no three missles..."

"real" photo showing three launches and one dud

the first photo that showed up with the magical 4th missle

The sad/funny things is that this sort of thing has been going on for ages...but no one usually stops to question it. While the digital world has enabled questionable content to be subject to wide scrutiny (eg snopes.com), the tools have made it orders of magnitude easier for people to perform media magic. And the subtle stuff will never get a second thought. At least not a second conscious thought. Subliminal advertising, anyone?

The new iPhone goes on sale at 8am. I won't be in line...rather spend my money on another camera.

It is no secret that metadata is the key to happiness. Well, maybe that is going a tad over the top. Let's just say that if you can't find something, it essentially doesn't exist. Hence the need for metadata, and the ability for search engines to deal with it. Rich media has long-standing issues with metadata. In fact, I'm working on a project right now that is struggling with the metadata morass. How does one sort through a half million or so graphics, 3D files, etc, and find something of interest so it can be re-used?

Adobe took some (baby) steps in the right direction by announcing that Flash files will be searchable now. Well, sort of. Text and links in Flash files will be indexed, but of course the real meat won't. It is a start, as there has long been a tension between designers who wanted "flash" (using Flash) and information types who want to actually find something. Now they can at least sit in the same room without screaming at each other.