I was lucky enough to stumble into a huge gallery installation of Jacques Villeglé‘s work a few years ago. Villeglé, who began making art in 1947, creates his collages by gluing layers of posters together, then ripping of sections to reveal what’s underneath.
A few weeks ago FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit responded to the public’s concern about where things are going with FriendFeed.
There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge :-D
I, for one, am interested in seeing where they are taking the service.
After the initial hype died down a lot of the talk has been around FF living in the shadow of Twitter and (now owner) Facebook in terms of the size of its user-base. I have to agree there. I’ve been on the service for almost two years now and only have about a dozen connections - most of which don’t use it.
When FF first came onto the scene it was praised for the bevy of features it brought that other services were lacking. One service frequently mentioned was threaded conversations. I agree that this feature is great, but at the end of the day it’s dependent on people wanting to house their conversations on the service. While in theory the idea of a single place to host and thread your conversations is a good one, you need the community to support it. And a service that is primarily a feed is really not a community. For example, when I post a link to one of my blog entries on my Facebook page I frequently get comments on Facebook rather than on my blog.
But the biggest problem for me with FriendFeed is the user experience. While I don’t have many friends my feed is totally overwhelming. If you think you have a hard enough time keeping up with your Twitter feed, imagine that plus one-to-many-more services that your connection has plugged in to their feed - anything from Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Netflix, Posterous, last.fm, Tumblr, Vimeo .... the list goes on. You absolutely need a simple, smart, intuitive UI to bring meaning to this open tap. Currently they just let you segment your feeds - and that’s far from enough.
There is however one great use that I’ve found for FriendFeed - Groups. At work we’ve created a few Groups to share links and have conversations on various topics. It’s a snap to add an article to a Group - and because the group is small and focused it’s the natural place to thread your discussions. It’s been very successful.
What do you think? Would I see the light if I had more users? Am I using it wrong?
Or maybe this is a moot discussion, as the newly transformed FacebookFriendFeed will live up to the early predictions of Silicon Valley pundits and “represent the next big thing in social media”?
These have to be some of the most meticulously created steampunk leather and metal creations I have ever seen. The influences of The Brothers Quay, Tim Burton, Edward Gory, and Jean-Pierre Jeunut are certainly present.
Visit his site and view dozens more.
via io9
A few weeks ago my wife had a bit of an accident in the kitchen with a cutting knife. As we quickly took action to slow the bleeding I scrambled to look online to see if the wound was serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room for stitches.
I landed on About.com’s First Aid site. And after reading some informative articles I clicked to watch this video on how to dress a wound. Would you believe that I first had to sit through an ad spot? The video is currently playing ad-free, but I’m not sure if that’s because they caught this monumental fail or if the campaign had wrapped.
My wife is OK, btw.
You’d have to be a seasoned comic art aficionado to recognize the name Alex Niño. Even when he was his most prolific you’d have had to be reading comics like Heavy Metal, Creepy, and The Savage Sword of Conan in the 70’s and early 80’s. Unfortunately all the innovative comic art at that time was pushed to the fringe titles. And Niño’s work was clearly before his time.
This November the Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn (of all places) is hosting a month long exhibit dedicated to his work. I’m hoping to trek out and catch some of this amazing work first-hand.
November 4th - 30th
Opening reception November 4th - 2-4pm (no mention if the artist will be present)
Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, CUNY
Art Gallery - Arts & Science Building
2001 Oriental Blvd, Brooklyn, NY