unexpected nut

In an important move this week, the FCC has opened up certain broadcast frequencies for auction that would allow more options for broadband wireless providers. Bands like the 700mhz channel, currently used by analog television broadcasts, would be up for auction to bidders, allowing cellular phone companies or independent broadband providers to stream data on these frequencies, essentially creating wireless broadband access anywhere you get TV reception currently.

At SXSW this year, Bruce Sterling remarked on the same idea, saying that since nobody watches terrestrial network television anyway (iTunes and Netflix are making sure of that) that the most progressive use of those channels would be universally accessible Internet for the country. This isn’t quite the Utopian ideal Sterling’s concept promises, but it’s one step closer to putting the resources of the Web in the hands of anyone with a computer and a good set of rabbit ears.

I think that Hummer should cross-market with this new bottled water and offer a jewel-encrusted cup holder. I highly recommend a case of the limited edition cobalt blue bottles for a mere $552. Certainly money well spent.

Your daily dose of WTF; prison inmates in the Philippines practices their moves to the tune of “Thriller”. Alcatraz’s reenactment of “Mama Mia” will have a run for it’s money.

Don’t call it a media player - Songbird is much more than that. A browser and player for the media web, Songbird combines traditional browsing features with automatic scanning and playback of audio and video files. Think of all the times you’ve visited a music blog and clicked an mp3 and got the terrible QuickTime plugin, on a blank screen, as your interface. No more. If you do decide to keep it, Songbird supports batch downloading of media files and full integration with your iTunes library. Best of all, it’s built on Mozilla, so it’s extensible and the browser actually renders content the way you’d expect it to.

Probably blogging somewhere on the interwebs, as evidenced by the 9 zillion copywriter-generated sites out there. Here’s a few fun ones for the next time you’re bored:

adhunt

American Copywriter

Chimp Media Monitoring

Advertising for Peanuts

Adrants

OMG, here they are, everybody’s favorite socks, 4.5 HOURS worth!

I poached this Hillman Curtis quote directly from SvN:

I once gave a talk called “Putting Your Heart into Design” at a design school in Connecticut, and one of the students asked me what advice I had for people who, just starting out, will no doubt be doing the same things all the time, just churning out banner ads — or like me, when I started at Macromedia years ago, building executive presentations over and over. “How do you put your heart into that?” he asked.

I told him about my first year at Macromedia, about the corporate presentations that consisted mainly of bullet points, pie graphs, and dull charts. I told him that I decided to focus on the exactitude of each design, and made each pixel as perfect as I could. I got deep into exploring the Swiss designer Josef Muller-Brockmann and grids. I focused on typography and consistency in design. And through all of the repetition I became aware of the power of restraint and simplicity. On the few occasions that I incorporated motion, I was always very conservative and moved elements in ways that reflected the theme of the presentation. They were not simply gratuitous.

I came to believe that even though a viewer might not be able to point to the screen and indicate exactly where an element had move two pixels from page to page in a presentation or Web site, he or she could sense it, and too many of those mistakes could leave the viewer with a feeling of imbalance. I explained all of this to the student. When I was finished he replied, “So, rather than just taking on jobs you can put your heart into, you should find a way to put your heart into everything you do.” Which was a wonderful way to put it.

From Curtis’ book Creating Short Films for the Web.