The Paris based fashion house Louis Vuitton has filed charges against a 26 year old student artist for selling posters and t-shirts of a Darfur victim, holding a designer bag inspired by a Louis Vuitton design. All of the profits had been going to charity but Louis Vuitton is still demanding massive damages.
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Interested in low sperm count, prostate cancer, hyperactivity, early-onset diabetes, breast cancer, undescended testicles, and sex reversal? Then hey: the future sounds great for you. The North Pacific Gyre, a garbage isle the size of Texas, is swirling about, injecting nasties into the food chain that we'll find in our happy meals in no time.
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Between the guy getting saved by Twitter, and a good showing at SXSW this year, Twitter's been getting some very positive attention lately. In the background there are two services that I don't usually compare to Twitter: Vox and LiveJournal. I think they are interesting services to compare to Twitter, largely because they are both community-based consumer services aiming to build a broad market.
There are some very interesting things to learn about LiveJournal on its Wikipedia entry ... but I had visited that entry because I wanted to take note of the year LJ was introduced: 1999. This is the same year Blogger was introduced and is critical because I posit that LJ's unique visitor numbers (3,534,045 last month) are largely legacy users who have made significant investments in the LJ community.
Vox, like Twitter, launched in 2006 (actually I was a bit surprised to notice that Twitter pre-dated Vox by 3 months!) December 2008 was a turning point. Prior to December, Vox had enjoyed a consistent lead over Twitter in unique website visitors1. In December, there was an user-equilibrium between Vox and Twitter. Since then, Twitter has been steadily outpacing Vox's user numbers.
A number Compete uses to track the deltas in user engagement over time.
Velocity is an effective way to measure the impact of planned (or unplanned) events, such as new advertising campaigns, product/service launches or general site growth. Simply choose an event date as the starting point to see how it has affected a site's Attention over time.
Something really interesting happened on March 26, 2008. Twitter suddenly had net-positive Velocity. If you know what it was, let me know. CC Chapman suggested it might have been SXSW, but I'm not sure. Whatever the reason, since then Twitter has been using
A velocity turning point
1 - Twitter's API and integration with SMS and Jabber make it a real challenge to get true usage metrics on. For this reason I qualify that Compete is measuring only website visitors.
Recently found out that the di Rosa Preserve is going to be having First Friday events starting this week!
| Friday, May 2, 2008 7 - 10 PM | First Friday The 2008 First Friday season kicks-off! Enjoy contemporary art and supreme people watching from sunset to starlight in the Gatehouse Gallery overlooking Winery Lake. Bring friends to the Bay Area Ceramic Sculptureexhibition, signature cocktails, and danceable music by favorite DJs.Monthly art part through October. $10, first drink is included. Admission free to members. |
Originally posted on tastybit.vox.com
I have been a big fan of J Otto for a long time. I know it was some time before his drawings of the meerkats were all over BART; it must have been while I was still in Davis. Anyway, I've bought a few books, watched his awesome pictures show up in Flickr ... it's all good. That said, I've always wanted a print. In the past few years, I haven't been in the art purchasing space. Lots of reasons why, but it's been one of those things I just haven't been able to allow to get myself into ... until last week.
Last week I was introduced to 20x200, a really fabulous model for artists and people who like good work but can't afford to be serious collectors. It got me off my duff about getting some nice prints for around the house. I bought this picture by a friend of mine Aili Schmeltz, I can't wait till it is here and framed! Then I was taken by another great piece.
Back to J Otto: he did a series of Folk Art pieces last week that I kept wishing I could get a piece or two ... they're really rockin'. Today I noticed he has a show coming up with Grass Hut Corp May 2 thru May 30. Should be awesome (and hopefully will result in pieces up for sale on teh interwebs.) ULTIMATELY, through a series of circuitous clickpaths, I came upon Thumbtack Press.
It turns out that J Otto has three prints up on Thumbtack for ridiculously cheap prices. It resulted in me getting a new set of pieces for Bryan's, Haley's and ZZ's rooms. I got this one for ZZ:
Michael Parekh just tweeted about his recent Compete chart:
FriendFeed just overtook Pownce. Twitter is rockin' hard. Pownce has remained more or less flat since the beginning of the year. Interesting stuff.
Notice above I instinctively linked to Michael's FriendFeed stream. I think this is a really important thing to note because linking to the specific tweet is essentially linking to a dead document. There's not action on a single status. Linking to Michael's FF stream gives a vital account of all the stuff he's been up to lately, and provides additional context to the initial comment.
I wish Facebook would by FriendFeed and turn it into their News/Mini Feeds.
I especially like slide 11. Nice work, Ben.
In a world of increasingly fashionable... well, everything, really... Mimoco has provided a USB flash drive that can easily double as part of your style ensemble. Their newest series is designed by tokidoki, the LA-based fashion/lifestyle company responsible for those awesome LeSportsac bags you see hanging from trendsetters' shoulders.
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PSFK pointed me to an article today that I wish I had found on my own. First off: Gary Gygax died March 4, 2008. Second, I have to admit that I was never the uber D&D stud I wished I was. That said, my time crafting characters & dungeons, studying the strengths and weakness of so many bizarre creatures, and rolling dice profoundly shaped my way of living.
What Dungeons and Dragons did for me was reinforce the notion that you could create your own reality. This was something that I absolutely needed to be true, growing up the oldest of 5 in the Napa countryside where the closest neighbors were turkey farmers: you could only spend so much time down in the donkey field dreaming about gnomes before you started to feel a little isolated and dorky. D&D didn't make me feel that I wasn't dorky, rather, D&D made me feel that dorky was hecka cool, yo!
I distinctly remember drawing a map out on graph paper, looking to my friend and saying, "I don't understand why adults don't play D&D. It's so awesome!" Isn't that classic geekness? Of course, within two years I was re-assimilated into horrendously normal teen angst, vaccilating between my inner geek and the other worlds I have dabbled in.
This great diagram is from Geek Love, an editorial in the NYT.
As an adult, I've spent my career trying to get "adults" to work with and love the things us geeks just get. I can totally thank Gary for buttressing my initial courage in making my own world. I think I need to go back and buy me some manuals.
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