Disqus - Latest Comments for UnderdogOverdog

Re: codykniffen.com

UnderdogOverdog — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:39:59 -0000

Here's the actual video: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1488717/celtics_p...

It was, I must say, HILARIOUS.

Re: New, Big OpenSocial Announcements Coming Tonight?

UnderdogOverdog — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:56:36 -0000

Hmmm, I think this Campfire will be all about Google Docs Offline -- it's a pretty major step for Google, essentially their first unabashed face-off with Microsoft on Microsoft's own turf (desktop apps). They've been making Docs offline available in increments of Docs' user base since last Thursday, it should be available to all users by Friday this week. And I'm guessing they'll be Campfiring about this and its future extensions. (Gmail offline client?)

Re: 2008/04/19/send-text-messages/

UnderdogOverdog — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:49:53 -0000

Awesome stuff. I used a service like this when I was in Europe, it was actually provided by the mobile operator, on their website, even though they didn't monetize it. (It costs nothing over there to receive texts, just to send -- so they were actually losing money.) Makes me wonder why cell phone providers don't do this here when they can actually make money off of it because receiving texts does cost (or count towards a monthly plan) over here. But I guess that would entail actually satisfying their customers, which is something they generally try to stay away from...

Another great mobile service I love: GotVoice. Lets you check your voicemail for free online, super handy if you're traveling abroad without your cell.

Re: 2007/10/15/jott-the-vote/

UnderdogOverdog — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:07:23 -0000

Yeah, Jott is awesome. Particularly delightful: their new BlackBerry feature. Talk about saving time AND not making people think you're a curt jackass.

Re: 2008/04/19/send-text-messages/

UnderdogOverdog — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:44:43 -0000

Yeah, Mosh, I'm in the US now. Thing is, if you get a monthly text plan, you pay $X to be able to send and receive Y number of messages. But if you don't get a plan (I didn't because I'm online all the time and use web services for pretty much every form of communication), you pay per text â€“ 5 or 10 cents each, depending on the carrier.

Same with calls â€“ calls you receive also count towards your monthly minutes and/or extra charges if you're over your minutes. Sucks, I know. Viva the Interwebs is what I say...

Re: 2008/10/21/national-cto/

UnderdogOverdog — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:16:53 -0000

Excellent point, Mark. I agreed with you when you first questioned the need for a CTO, but it's interesting to see the debate rage in BusinessWeek now. Looking at the history of technological evolution and progress, centralized regulatory systems and bodies have only hindered it. The government is hardly an early adopter of anything, so a CTO would be anything from moot to detrimental for the nation's rate of new technolology adoption. The government would be better served to just play TED talks in every White House conference room and Senate public space that has a TV, ha.

Besides, let's face it: Google IS the national (even global) CTO, has been for years and will always informally (or, if the FCC airwaves ordeal pans out right, formally) shape the way the nation relates to and uses technology.

Re: 2008/10/21/national-cto/

UnderdogOverdog — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:17:17 -0000

Excellent point, Mark. I agreed with you when you first questioned the need for a CTO, but it's interesting to see the debate rage in BusinessWeek now. Looking at the history of technological evolution and progress, centralized regulatory systems and bodies have only hindered it. The government is hardly an early adopter of anything, so a CTO would be anything from moot to detrimental for the nation's rate of new technololgy adoption. The government would be better served to just play TED talks in every White House conference room and Senate public space that has a TV, ha.

Besides, let's face it: Google IS the national (even global) CTO, has been for years and will always informally (or, if the FCC airwaves ordeal pans out right, formally) shape the way the nation relates to and uses technology.

Re: 2008/10/21/national-cto/

UnderdogOverdog — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:08:03 -0000

Excellent point again. Without getting too much into politics and societal infrastructure, let's just say this country is far (FAR!) too big to be governed by a single centralized entity seeking "the best for everyone." It's simply irrational, since this huge population has naturally segmented and sub-segmented and sub-sub-segmented (and so forth) itself that "the best" is no longer universal. (Dunbar number, anyone?) No wonder Vermont and others want to secede. And with regard to technology, particularly in the area of sustainability where I think it's most critical in this day and age, no wonder early adoption of anything from hybrid cars to wind farms to hydrogen cells is such a predominantly coastal phenomenon. And yet these early adopter states are still accountable -- economically, politically, legally -- to an overarching government which inevitably hinders their progress because it has to -- economically, politically, legally -- compensate for all the technological laggard states. On such a huge yet incredibly fragmented scale, a national CTO simply doesn't make sense. What's s/he going to tackle first -- regulating R&D for the next generation of buckypaper in Silicon Valley, or educating the Mid-West about something as basic as CFL's?

Re: 2008/11/03/myspace-mtv-auditude-video/

UnderdogOverdog — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:25:01 -0000

I'm curious how this will pan out in the post-writers-strike era of intense royalties debates. It's all fine and good for MTV et al, but it would be interesting to see what revenue-sharing model -- if any, which I highly doubt -- they've forged with the artists, producers and other creators behind the content they're so freely monetizing.

Re: 2008/12/04/nytimes-news-aggregator/

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:32:37 -0000

Very cool. About time traditional media embraced a more social approach. I still remember the time not too long ago when I did some freelance writing for Brandweek and they wouldn't even let me use hotlinks to relevant content in my articles...which were about social media. Imagine the irony.

CNN has actually been doing a similar thing for a while now, pulling relevant content from the blogosphere below articles -- even more social than the NYT approach, which seems to mostly pull from other big traditional news publishers.

Now, let's see something like Zoetrope (http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2008/12/...) getting integrated with something like the NYT. Talk about upping the ball game.

Re: 2008/12/20/google-desktop/

UnderdogOverdog — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:34:12 -0000

I'm a huge Google addict, I've been drinking the Goolaid for years and use or have at some point used almost every Big G product out there. But I must admit I was over Desktop fairly quickly when I first tried it out a while ago. And reading this, I was at first ready to go on one of my enough-with-the-Windows-only rants about some of those GDS extras. But then I realized that, between Spotlight and Time Machine, OS Leopard has all that stuff covered implicitly. Which, come to think of it, is probably why Desktop never really grew on me.

Re: 2009/01/11/facebook-like/

UnderdogOverdog — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:26:36 -0000

Why is everyone forgetting that when Facebook first launched newsfeed, there used to be a Digg-like thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting system? They took that away a few months later, but it was there in the first place â€“ so Facebook seems to simply be resurrecting it in a new incarnation. Sure, a marginally ripped off one, but still an iteration of an old feature they used to have.

Either way, it's clearly a need-driven addition. As people start to use the status update feature more and more, some even as a substitute for Twitter, there's "friend data overload" â€“ it'll be neat to have a way for controlling the kind of information you're shown in the future, almost like choosing whom to follow on Twitter. Not everyone who's a "friend" or even an interesting person makes for interesting updates.

Re: 2009/01/15/youtube-video-muting/

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:32:34 -0000

Absurdity all around. Reminds me of that stupid case of the brilliant, critically-acclaimed animated film that got banned because it uses 80-year-old copyrighted music.

When will copyright holders, especially those in the creative sphere, realize that inclusion in content is a word-of-mouth powerhouse on their side, not an offense? Ridiculous.

Re: 2009/01/16/download-obamas-weekly-address/

UnderdogOverdog — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:35:48 -0000

Not surprising â€“ this has actually been a feature of the Better YouTube Firefox extension for a long while, a rather popular one with the Firefox crowd. It's only natural that YouTube would look to the most popular open-source improvements of their service and, um, "close-source" them and make their own version to use straight on YouTube.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, since it's clearly informed by a user need. So good for them, I guess. In fact, it shouldn't have taken them that long to come up with in the first place.

Re: Gmail Down, Panic Mode On (Update: It’s Back Up Again)

UnderdogOverdog — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:12:07 -0000

Really puts communication monopoly in perspective. Even when not ill-willed (I freely admit I'm from the Google-can-do-no-wrong camp), technology fails. Here's to 70% of the emailing world putting all our eggs in one imperfect basket...

Re: 26 Charities and Non-Profits That Tweet

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:36:50 -0000

Excellent list. Let's also not forget:

- Architecture for Humanity (http://twitter.com/archforhumanity)
- Acumen Fund (http://twitter.com/acumenfund)
- the mother of most philanthropic organizations: TED (@TED_Tweets, @ted2009, @TEDChris)

Re: B-Sides and Breakaways

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 12:59:05 -0000

Ha, that Penguin thing is awesome. It's amazing how creatively "dinosaur" categories like paper books are using new media -- good for them. Kinda reminds me of that Dr. Jay website you had a couple of months ago. Good stuff.

Re: Artist Spotlight: Alan Macdonald

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:38:36 -0000

What an interesting point about design, I never thought of it this way. I guess it's even more true of fashion photography, which – just like the religious paintings of the past – depicts social and gender roles in their most typified extremes, perpetuating the culture of hegemony in a way analogous to how the Medieval church did.

Re: Famous Logos Revised: Fortune 500 Sans Fortune

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:20:13 -0000

James,

2M was the one that got me to laugh out loud, for sure. I also thought the Xerox one was pretty hilarious.

Re: Photography Spotlight: The Obama Phenomenon

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:30:31 -0000

Crap. Thanks so much for pointing it out, how embarrassing. It's been fixed. And our sincere apologies to Scout.

Re: The Year in Ideas: 8 Best of 2008

UnderdogOverdog — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:22:35 -0000

Hmmm. I saw that Wired ranked the App Store at #1, which actually greatly annoyed me and I left them a long rant of a response.

Basically, it's like saying a bookstore is being innovative by deciding to sell cookbooks on top of their other offerings. The App Store is no different from the music and video stores, it just happens to sell apps. So in terms of IDEA innovation, there isn't any whatsoever. It may be a great VEHICLE for Apple's offerings, but it's not a great NEW idea.

Re: The Year in Ideas: 8 Best of 2008

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 04:46:40 -0000

Aaron,

I must admit I hadn't heard of memristors until now, so I just Wikipediaed it. Very geeky-technical, but also very neat. And even though, not unlike buckypaper, in and of itself a memristor isn't really a "product," it could yield some truly world-changing ones.

Good call.

Re: The Art of the Doodle

UnderdogOverdog — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:10:01 -0000

RaShell,

Thank you (and your traffic analytics service) for stopping by. :)

You're most welcome -- I'm always happy to feature truly unique ideas born simply out of someone's passion for something. Rock on.

Re: Objectified: Dissecting Design

UnderdogOverdog — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:06:54 -0000

See, I'm all for P2P filesharing (as you can see), but I do draw the line at indie productions. Because I think studios and major labels are fundamentally broken and unfair business models, but independent work by artists of all types is well worth the modest financial support of "fans" -- so I always pay for indie stuff, be it music or film.

Re: Uncovered Gem of the Week: The Fall

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 14:50:41 -0000

While I agree that the "why" factor is questionable (I personally, as you know, didn't really "like" the movie), I disagree that all art has to answer the "why" question literally. It's like looking at a Jackson Pollock and asking why the blue specks are exactly where they are, or listening to Bjork and asking why she's sings the off-kilter way she does.

I think a lot of art isn't "about" a concrete thing that answers a "why" question. It's "about" a mood. Creating a moment, a different reality -- or un-reality -- for you to contemplate, and from that contemplation itself comes your takeaway. It can be an abstract feeling that you got, or a fleeting thought, but regardless -- regardless of its not being a linear "message" -- it has somehow enriched you... but only as much as you're willing to let it.

Re: Uncovered Gem of the Week: The Fall

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:32:08 -0000

Mostly valid points that I personally agree with. (Except for Pan's Labyrinth, which I haven't seen and thus can't really say.) I do, however, disagree with your fundamental assumption that emotion is all there is, the only holy grail of artistic impact. There's a lot to be said for powerful visceral stimuli and even just a good head-scratcher. So EVEN if The Fall falls flat on emotion for you (which I don't entirely agree with, but that's a different discussion), denying its total artistic footprint because it fails to deliver on the emotional front is a bit narrow.

As far as "this type of movie" goes, I don't really think this film can be typified. And while, subjectively speaking, it reminds me of a weird lovechild of German Expressionism and early avant-garde cinema, it stands on its own two feet well enough to warrant some recognition. Saying how this film "should" be done is, frankly, a bit arrogant -- as much as I respect your cinematic insight and knowledge -- especially given the director's incredible journey of bringing his vision to life. I don't believe that just because we may not like or even get it, we should feel entitled to question its artistic merit.

Re: LED The Way

UnderdogOverdog — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 06:33:08 -0000

Evelyn,

Thanks for the heads-up. And while I suspect you work for the company, that's quite alright -- I just looked them up and I love that they plant a tree for every product you buy from them. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. Right on.

Re: The Story of Stuff

UnderdogOverdog — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:43:44 -0000

I hear you on the whole planned/perceived obsolescence thing – Apple has truly mastered that game, where they use technology to plan the obsolescence and marketing strategy to make sure it is perceived so.

However, you're actually wrong about Apple's claim to green fame. (And I say this as a devoted Maccie as well as a realistic eco-evangelist.) They're actually among the LOWEST-rated companies on Greenpeace's infamous Green Ranking chart. Any emphasis on green in the last two Keynotes has been the result of precisely that pressure by more and more environmental organizations pointing the blame finger at Apple's sub-par sustainability policies. So, in that respect, you're right it's all PR – what I call reactive rather than proactive. Mostly, I'm just surprised where you got your idea that Apple was eco-conscious in the first place.

Re: The Story of Stuff

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:57:00 -0000

True, although the surprising thing is that Chuck is actually extremely environmentally-conscious, far above average (one of the few people I know who went out of their way to find an alternative energy provider for their house) AND a programmer more than superficially familiar with Apple. Yet even so, he did make that assumption.

As far as "fooling" customers goes, I don't believe it was Apple's intention. (Certainly no evidence of any proactive communication on their behalf to allude to greenness prior to the ranking.) It's just a matter of what I call "goodness by association," or the halo effect of coolness. Customers who see Apple as "cool" (which, these days, is pretty much everyone, including PC-users, as much as they hate to admit it) assume that this "coolness" extends to all the company's touchpoints, thereby assuming what is true of Apple's design and software is also true of its environmental policy.

In Apple's defense, they have made significant strides towards a more sustainable production and distribution process over the past year, from packaging to the plastics used in computer casing. BUT, the disappointing part to me is that it's clearly reactive and not a genuine principle that should've been embedded in the company's DNA.

Re: Famous Designers on Design: Top 5 Book Covers

UnderdogOverdog — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:54:05 -0000

Yeah, Sagmeister's book is a must-have. I actually just gave it to my friend Eric for New Year's, he's a top-notch designer and really dug it.

Sure, I'll get it for you. Maybe same time you get me that music?

Re: Best of Bike Culture: Innovation Top 5

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:00:09 -0000

urbayj02,

This article is mostly about innovation in design. (Not to mention it's rather tongue-in-cheek altogether.)

No doubt the initiatives you mention are all brilliant examples of social innovation – we're actually big proponents of bike-share programs and similar smart social initiatives we've featured before. This piece just has a lighter, more design-oriented focus.

Thanks for the feedback though.

Re: Duper Bowl: Alternative Super Bowl Logos

UnderdogOverdog — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:22:08 -0000

Or, you know, it's simply the best one of them all, ha.

Re: TED 2009 Highlights: Day 2

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:31:45 -0000

You know, I kinda got that impression as well, especially because he was laying the aphorisms one after another, in an endless and rapidly spoken string of fluff-lined phrases. Aw well, I do respect (some of) his work though.

Re: Art of The Cover

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:01:57 -0000

James, these are fantastic. I love it when big, rigid companies partner with indie talent. Although I must give it to Penguin for being anything but rigid, especially in light of their brilliant social media storytelling initiative. Glad to see they're really pushing the innovation thing across all platforms.

Re: Monday Music Muse: First Aid Kit

UnderdogOverdog — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:44:04 -0000

Ah, a very very dear friend of mine (with impeccable music taste, I should add, and by "impeccable" I mean similar to mine, ha) has the time to sift through MySpace and the graciousness to share the gems she finds with me.

Glad you dig.

Re: Similarities: Because It’s All Been Done

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:45:20 -0000

Danae:

Well, think of it this way -- everything is a memory, including your own skills. Creativity is simply the ability to pull the right resources from memory at the right time (be they your own skills or the inspiration for your work), that's all there is. So don't be too hard on yourself.

Re: Similarities: Because It’s All Been Done

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:27:28 -0000

Allen:

I suppose, to the extend that "memory" is a literal interpretation of events past. But I was referring to a broader concept that encompasses everything -- experiential memory, sure, but also emotional memory, the pool of fleeting thoughts that once crossed your mind too quick to congeal into ideas and now come back to fully evolve and ripen.

It's semantics, really, but yes, I do agree that the novelty of thought does exist.

Re: Similarities: Because It’s All Been Done

UnderdogOverdog — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:18:15 -0000

Spoken like a true creator. Right on.

Re: Product Design Spotlight: The Little Bottle That Could

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 05:18:20 -0000

Kimmo, thank you so much. No wonder I couldn't even find a website for him – I did think it strange for a designer. Damn AdAge, I should never trust them to do their research right, ha.

I'm fixing it immediately, thank you again.

Re: Earth Hour 2009

UnderdogOverdog — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:41:01 -0000

Stephen:

It's on DesignFloat because Shepard Fairey, the most iconic graphic designer of our time, designed all the posters and other propaganda materials for the effort. If you had read the article, you would've noticed that. And a big part of design is looking to those doing the best, most inspiring, most culturally significant work in the field for inspiration – this is certainly among them.

Re: Sound Meets Image: Visual Tributes to Music

UnderdogOverdog — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:09:27 -0000

Wow, Laura, these are fantastic. Really. I'll tweet this up tomorrow, what a wonderfully curated showcase.