Big Spaceship is curating a site where agencies (or anyone) can submit Flash pre-loaders. It’s quite fun and hypnotizing to watch as each pre-loader loads the next. See if you can guess the brand or the client without looking in the bottom left. Pretty cool. http://www.prettyloaded.com/
Remember Blockbuster? With all the talk in the media about how Netflix has integrated their streaming service with yet another device, Apple and Amazon’s strong entry into the on-demand world, and services like Hulu and Boxee, Blockbuster seems like a distant memory.
After taking almost too long to play catch-up to Netflix’s mail service, the last I heard of them was when they were trying to buy Circuit City almost a year ago. All of this was sounding quite desperate to me, and I assumed their days were shortly numbered. During this year’s CES coverage, the hosts of one of CNET’s podcasts caught themselves doing the same. “Is Blockbuster even around anymore”, they half-joked.
Turns out they are, and they made their own big announcement at CES that they were getting ready to release their own streaming set-top device. Blockbuster clearly doesn’t have the media buzz that all of the other players have, but maybe their massive retail presence will allow them to stay in the game long enough to, well ... stay in the game.
At the tender age of ten, my first career aspirations were to become a comic book illustrator. It seemed like every comic I was attracted to and every character that I tried to copy was drawn by Jack Kirby.
Kirby’s influence on the medium is undeniable. He created the visual language that transformed the one-dimensional, drab, square panel style of comic strips into electric, action-charged pages where characters exploded from the frames. When Kirby’s characters punched, you could feel it in your jaw.
I recently treated myself to a beautiful hardcover book that celebrates his life in comics. The book contains many pieces of his work in raw form, and is the next best thing to seeing his art in person.
If you haven’t been lucky enough to catch one of the rare exhibits of his work, merchants of original art abound at your local comic convention.
Palm showed off the new Palm Pre today at CES - complete with their new platform webOS. The folks at CrunchGear caught a demo on video.
The Synergy feature looks very promising. It integrates calendar and contact info from your various email accounts and social networks into a single source.
You can certainly see the iPhone and the HTC TouchFlo influence on aspects of the UI, but Palm has definitely brought some fresh ideas to the table.
Sources are reporting that the Pre’s interface is faster and more responsive than the iPhone, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in the above video.
With the Blackberry and iPhone capturing so much market share in recent years, many believe that this is Palm’s last stand. While not revolutionary, with the early reviews pouring in, the Pre looks like it just might keep them in the game.
