As Calatrava projects go, this one is unusually subdued at night. His buildings and bridges in Spain, many of which I saw on a Calatrava-related odyssey in 2001, are beautifully lighted, sometimes theatrically so. His City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, for example, becomes a charismatic town square at night, with an eyeball-shaped planetarium that gives off a lantern-like glow and a museum whose white ribcage looks even more dramatic than in the daytime. Calatrava himself designed the dramatic lighting for his cabled Alamillo Bridge in Seville (1992), its leaning-harp profile a forerunner of our own (well-lighted) 6th St. Viaduct, designed by Kahler Slater Architects.
What Price Trusted PC Security?
Because the trusted computing base is also used to make digital rights management systems more secure, this will give content providers a lot more control over what we can do with music, movies and books that we have bought from them.
Literary Collaboration: The King James Bible
A Palm Sunday Link: Dan Gillmor notes that David Bollier draws a parallel between today’s internet collaboration & the King James Bible.
We high-tech moderns like to think we have little connection to the past, but as I pondered the new online collaborations, I couldn’t help thinking that we could benefit from considering one of the greatest literary collaborations in history, the King James Bible.
Organize your Brain
James Fallows discusses several software tools that help organize thoughts, ideas and projects. Well worth reading. I use a couple of these tools: Aquamind’s NoteTaker as well as Omni Group’s Graffle & Outliner. ConceptDraw’s Project is another similar product.
The Singles Scene at Home Depot
Scott Simon takes a fascinating look at the singles scene at Home Depot. Evidently, some of these stores have hosted weddings…
Government Video News Releases
I find the conversation about Government video news releases much ado about nothing. How is this different than a media organization reprinting a press release – which happens all the time? The problem is not completely with the government, rather, it’s publishers who don’t bother to look into these releases and determine if there is another angle, or even a story worth spending time on, rather than just hitting the “print” button, as it were.
GM Adds Line-in Jack to their Auto Music Systems
Wisely, GM has decided to support audio line-ins from any portable music device, starting this fall in a handfull of models.
Paying for Phone Service You Never Use
“I have to pay for a service I’m never using,” he said.
He has no choice. His telephone company, SBC Communications, will not sell him high-speed Internet access unless he buys the phone service, too. That puts him in the same bind as many people around the country who want high-speed, or broadband, Internet access but no longer need a conventional telephone. Right now, their phone companies tend to have a “take it or leave it” attitude.
Local telco provider TDS Metro has the same policy: you must purchase legacy phone service with dsl internet access.
Fabien Cousteau: Swimming with the Sharks
To get inside the mind of the Great White shark, Fabien Cousteau is getting inside its body. Not such a strange endeavor, perhaps, for a third-generation oceanographer who was practically born with fins. ?I did my first dive on my fourth birthday,? says Cousteau. ?My father found me on the bottom of the pool buddy-breathing ? a pretty advanced technique for sharing an oxygen tank ? with a family friend.?
Since then, Cousteau has hardly surfaced for air. Following in the wake of his famous grandfather Jacques and father Jean-Michel, Fabien has made the oceans his second home. ?I went along on their expeditions during every school break,? he says. ?I?d scrub the hulls, paint the rails, do whatever needed to be done ? and dive. For me, that was vacation. I loved it.?
Microsoft’s New Internet Ad Product: Selling Your Information
The new tool will allow advertisers to buy not just keywords but also the demographics of the person searching on those keywords.
MSN can do that most effectively when the search is conducted by a registered user who has already provided some personal details to the site. MSN attracts more than 380 million unique users worldwide per month.
This means that MSN, Hotmail and other Microsoft property users search & click data is aggregated, then sold to advertisers.