Trying out my new tripod with an N82. Prepping for doing some time-lapse photography around work.
What’s it with movie super-heroes sulking on building ledges?
Heh. I’ve noticed recurring imagery of super-heroes crouched on a building rooftop, on the ledge, usually in the rain, usually moping. It is also usually followed by the hero jumping off to do their thing.
So far I’ve seen it in:
- Daredevil – It’s raining. he does a great dive, parkoursing in Daredevil’s signature way (BTW, he’s my favourite super-hero*)
- Underworld – I only saw the trailers (shame). But Kate Beckingsale is on the movie poster for both movies, looking over a roof-top ledge. I think in Evolution, she does the Leap thing.
- Spiderman – Spidey usually hangs from buildings, but there’s at least one scene in the last one of him in his new (evil) suit, on a spire of a building.
-
Batman – There is always a scene of the Dark Night looking over the city and then jumping off.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – These boys are the original traceurs.
- Dark Angel the TV series – Didn’t most episodes end up with her on the Seattle Space Needle? And if I recall she was on the Needle in the opening credits, too.
And some non-super-heroes that are almost super-heroes to me that jump off buildings:
- Bourne Ultimatum – Jason Bourne falls off a building and into a river, in a sort of phoenix progression.
- The Saint – Simon Templar (darker in the movie than I remember the TV series) has a sort of phoenix moment where he falls into a frozen river and is (lucky dude) revived by Dr Russell (a hot physicist, played by Elisabeth Shue).
I think part of this is the super-hero looking over the city, as an unwanted, un-thanked protector. The standing at the ledge is a symbol of fearlessness, a standing on the precipice, yet ready to confront what is at the bottom. And the Leap is a suicide, through which the hero comes out like a pheonix reborn, once again to do their Thing.
Have any of you seen this too? Any other movies or comics or books where this metaphor is used? Indeed, in some of my own stories, I have the hero jumping off the building, mostly due to the dramatic nature of plummeting from a building but surviving.
*Huh. Just realized that most of these super-heroes are unloved, tragic heroes. I also like heroes who really are not content with their marginalized existence, who get the krap beaten out of them all the time, and who despite it all still get up in the evening to do their derring-do (in a Philip Dick sort of way). Anti-hero anyone?
Images from IMDB (Underworld), IMDB (Daredevil), IMDB (Spiderman 3)
Awesome Clay Shirky interview (with a side-comment that cuts too close)
Glenn Fleishman did a great interview (back in March) of Clay Shirky on the topics in Clay’s new book ‘Here Comes Everybody’.
Clay, as always, has some great stories to tell. Glenn is pretty good too. Yeah, you should go and download the interview from Glenn’s pages (link below).
The whole interview is great, but it was the very end that made me reel. Glenn asked Clay what business could do to take advantage of the participative nature of the Web. I overly simplify, but Clay, among other comments, mentioned that instead of proclaiming the next great thing in a press release and putting all the money into one pot, that companies spread the money across many endeavors and see what sticks (and do it without fanfare). Basically, have many experiments, put it out there, and see if folks like it rather than gab about it (Show vs Tell?). He uses the example of Wikitorial.
Gosh. I have lots to add to that and a few more examples. (My tongue is bleeding, I am biting it so hard. Though a beer can loosen it, in case you are interesting in a tale of enlightenment, abandonment, discovery, creativity, stealing, cluelessness, and dissapointment.)
While I hope that some companies hear what he has to say and take the learning to heart, I fear that most, as Clay points out, will end up focusing on the wrong thing. Or, as Glenn says, miss the elephant parade passing in front of them.
Sigh.
Hey, I’m just road-kill on the info superhighway. Go listen to some smart people (the link is below, in case you forgot).
Link: TidBITS Blog Post: The Internet Organizes Itself: Here Comes Everybody
I sat down with Clay on 14-Mar-08 to talk about the book for a short article that appeared in the Seattle Times, focused on the business side of his book. However, the Seattle Times allowed me to publish a podcast of our roughly 40-minute conversation.
As an aside: Clay does validate some thoughts I’ve been having. It’s always nice to inadvertently come to the same conclusions as others smarter than me.
Image from Joi Ito
More Earth presence on Mars
Call me an optimist, but I think it’s inevitable that Earth-folk will eventually be wandering over Mars. Eh, not sure if it will happen in my lifetime or in my children’s. I’m taking a long term view on this.
But last night, one more entry has been made in the time line: NASA set down a lander in the Mars arctic region.
I had comletely forgotten about it until I noticed an article in the Boston Globe. When I went to the mission site I found out that landing was immanent (but on the middle of my night). Of course, being the geek that I am, when I woke up the next morning I flipped open the computer to see what images were to be seen.
The one below seemed most interesting. Note the scalloped pattern to the dirt. Alas, what I hate about this pics is the lack of scale. When the first rover pics came in, things looked big and daunting, only to find out that they were tiny rocks and such. Sigh.
Nonetheless, I find this all exciting.
Plaxo is acquired by Comcast, Zyb by Vodafone
Ok. This is last week’s news.
But, I am not seeing much discussion about this. Why?
Mashable picked it up right away. But not one person commented on Plaxo’s own site (link below).
Is this significant? Does it matter? Does this remind you of 1999 when Telcos bought Web-heads and did nothing with them?
FWIW, I just deleted my Plaxo account. Never really got anything out of it. BUT, with Pulse, they had an uncanny way of adding things I was thinking of. I think Pulse could have been like FriendFeed (and was about much earlier), but it happened to be attached to a company that made its name in corporate contact management. Eh. Brand dissonance.
Also FWIW, Zyb announced it was picked up by Voda two days later. Their post got a bunch of comments. Zyb was on a similar trajectory as Plaxo. Both were considered the leaders in this area, but we always felt Zyb a better mobile offering. (and I did not delete my Zyb account just yet)
We followed both closely since synch is a part of the (ever) upcoming Ovi.com that I was a part of (and Nokia also has the My Nokia Back Up service). Yeah, both companies had set out to mix PIM back up with social networks. And, yes, the company who can solve this issue will do well.
Do you think Zyb and Plaxo have done well with this fusion?
Joining forces with Comcast is a real win for our customers, our investors, and our employees. Comcast has an exciting vision to bring the social media experience to mainstream consumers. Together, we will be able to help users connect with all the people they care about, across all of the devices they use, with all the media they love to consume, create, and share. This is also great news for the Internet industry at large, where Plaxo has been – and will continue to be – a strong advocate for opening up the Social Web.
From my sideline seat, Thompson Reuters seems awfully archaic
Can someone please explain to me how and why Thompson Reuters Scientific has such a grip on scientific journal Impact Factors?
If you look at the list of various indexing services, you can see that they are all brushed aside for Thompson Reuters. It seems to me that unless a journal is indexed by Thompson Retuers, then it really is not considered to have any relevant impact on the scientific literature.
OK, so maybe these guys were anointed by the community to stand in as the über-authority index. I can deal with that. But, I think also there is an opportunity for an independent authority index, à la Technorati.
I think it just might be my natural inclination to suspect a single source of authority ranking. But I think it’s more likely because I see so many tools available to measure impact that could be more responsive and maybe more granular than what the current system seems like to me.
I’ve started looking into this. People are coming up with alternatives. It also seems like Thompson Reuters realizes that they might lose a hold on their position.
Yeah, my brain has been munging on this lately.
Link to article that set off this brainwave: BioMed Central Blog : Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases tracked by Thomson Reuters and set to receive first impact factor in June 2008
Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases was recently accepted for tracking by Thomson Reuters. It is included in the ISI Web of Knowledge database and will receive its first impact factor this summer. We are delighted with this achievement, which confirms the prominence and reputation which Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases has achieved in its field.
Link to recent journal article: Effectiveness of Journal Ranking Schemes as a Tool for Locating Information
As de Solla Price observed [3], the number of scientific journals and the number of papers published in those journals is increasing at an approximately exponential rate. The size and growth of the research literature places a tremendous burden on researchers—how are they to select what to browse, what to read, and what to cite from a large and quickly growing body of literature?
Mechstreams – when machines start lifestreaming with us
Ok, so lifestreaming is the rage of ’08, what with SocialThing! and Friendfeed and all similar services hogging all the attention.
But I also see something that’s been bubbling under the surface that I call ‘mechstreams’. I see machines edging in as equals in our lifestreaming services, sending out streams of data indicating what they are up to or thinking or what. And I don’t mean info alerts like weather or news, but info about what is going on.
This is not new, really, but I think the time is right for these things to mix with real lifestreams.
Examples:
- Tom Armitage hooked up the Tower Bridge to Twitter so that it can say ‘What am I doing?’ every time it goes up or down.
- I heard yesterday from Jan Chipchase of a teapot that says when it’s boiling water. In this case, it’s an unobtrusive tool to keep an eye on elderly folks – if the teapot is being used, then the old folks are doing fine.
I think this is fine and dandy in this day and age of the re-birth (again) of ubicomp and semweb (both of which I have been waiting to bloom for a very very long time).
So, where do you see this going? Tom Armitage gushed about this about a year ago. Have things really developed further?
[PS: In the course of actually slowing down to write this post, I keep finding more discussion of this topic. The inestimable Julian Bleecker used the term ‘blogject’ for objects that blog. He wrote up a minifesto 2 years ago. Krap, I need to get out more. Some days I feel like Rip van Winkle waking up and missing a huge chunk of the discussion.]
