An American Colony Called Canada
May 9, 2011
Miami Beach Expresses Itself
January 24, 2011
1. Read the article in today’s New York Times. It’s about a remarkable new structure in Miami’s South Beach.
2. Go to the new building’s web site, and click on this graphic:
3. After the well-designed flash images flash by, take time to interact with every graphic you can click on. Unlike so many sites that feature strong design elements, each click returns a useful image, a useful piece of information, or takes you to your next destination on the site.
4. Now pause to ponder.
What have you just encountered?
What does this mean to you?
5. Now answer yeah or nay:
(i) Does this look like a great building?
By great I mean audacious and original, fun yet functional.
Does it reveal to you something about the character of Miami Beach, whether you feel positive or negative.
(I’m guessing that you don’t develop strong feelings about most new building in the city where you live.)
(ii) Is this a great web site?
By great I mean audacious and original, fun yet functional.
(iii) Can you imagine accomplishing what this site accomplishes in any other medium?
Direct mail would just cheapen the image, unless a lot of money was spent on developing the piece.
A magazine could capture some of the bright images, but would be challenged to convey the motion.
Would you sit still through “the movie”?
(iv) Finally: Do you feel like you want to celebrate your next big birthday/anniversary/rebirth at 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, FL?
If you can type, you can make movies…
December 5, 2010
Part of why the glass is more than half-full at The Future of Publishing: Xtranormal. If you can type, you can make movies…a very nifty site. I was going to make you a nice movie to prove it, but one runs into payment demands very quickly:
- The default actors and set for any Showpak (i.e. those that come with the starting scene) are free.
- You may use whatever actors, sets, and sounds you like and preview with them, for free.
- If you use premium (payable) actors or sets, you will see the points widget above the preview to indicate that they cost money.
- To publish and share your creations, you will need to pay for the premium actors & sets that you are using, or switch to free ones.
- You can buy actors and sets using Xtranormal Points, our new virtual currency, by clicking the blue ‘Buy more points’ button, or by publishing your movie.
- Points are available in value bundles of various sizes according to your needs.
- Buy a points bundle with a credit card, and then use the points to pay for your assets and publish your movie.
So instead I’ll show you someone else’s movie called, So You Want to Write a Novel (which I can’t find on Xtranormal, as there’s not a search feature. Google points of course to the YouTube version).
Voice of Reason: “You do realize it takes years of honing your craft before you’ll be ready to produce a publishable book? And that’s assuming you’ve spent the last twenty years reading hundreds of novels.”
Hopeful Writer: “I’ve been living my life. Not wasting my time reading. What do you think I am? Some kind of dork?”
The same Google search points also to a popular guidebook on this topic, by Lou Stanek, PhD.
UPDATE: January 10, 2011, A long-winded entry on eBooks, showing off another format, and the ability to ruin an animation through failure to edit:
1 of 60 Writers in 1 of 60 Places
November 22, 2010
Vivid words images from the film 60 WRITERS / 60 PLACES.
The writer is Giancarlo DiTrapano. He runs the New York Tyrant, “a tri-quarterly literary magazine based in Hell’s Kitchen, focusing on the immediacy of the short story. The pieces, coming from voices both new and seasoned, are concise, evocative, often humorous, and sometimes surreal. We believe in the power and urgency of the story and its ability to describe and illuminate the interior and exterior landscape. We believe in the power of narrative and its ability to make life more astonishingly alive.”
Martin Luther King: “I Have a Dream”
August 28, 2010
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
In Washington “Tens of thousands of people rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday at an event organized by the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck, who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.”
Here, via YouTube, is the full speech.
Courtesy of History and Politics Out Loud the audio and the transcript online.