the clever and the not so clever

Wild adventures in the English Language

Posted in art by Chris Moisan on January 13, 2009

For someone that actually failed my mock English ‘o’ level (yet managed an A in English Lit which has always puzzled me) I’ve never been an enthusiastic linguist- instead preferring to bury my head in machine code  frantically copying pages and pages of the latest Commodore 64 computer mag only to find ’syntax error at line 163′ the typical result – but that’s a whole other chapter. In recent years I have become  more aware and interested in words and language and stumbled across Stephen’s Fry recent post on Language which made me laugh out loud/bow in humble respect/excite me and on a quite a few occasions turn to my dictionary. I feel lacking in alternative words to describe this piece further. Just read it. It’s brilliant.

“Glass and concrete sentences right next to half-timbered Elizabethan phrases, a Starbucks of an utterance dwelling in an expression that once belonged to a Victorian banker, an Apple Store of an accent in a converted Georgian merchant’s lingo”

“They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss?”

And his observation about ‘One Nation Under CCTV’ is very interesting.

Oh, and he used the word ‘Twazzock’  i haven’t heard anyone use this since secondary school. Brilliant.

I Just love Yr Wall

Posted in art, cool by Chris Moisan on December 17, 2008

First spotted at Mutate Britain – and now I think I’m in love with it.  Such a simple idea so well executed by Tom Hogan - a super bright designer-flash progammer-come-artist. This video shows Erin Wilson in full flow
and a beautiful folk-sound-track from Laura Veirs.
<Click the image below>
yr-wall1

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Martial Art – Nokia N96 Nunchakus

Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Moisan on December 2, 2008

If ever there was an ad targeted at 30 something males then this is perhaps it. Or was it just me that spent far too much time making home made martial art weapons?
Released in China in October 2008, arguments in the blogosphere if it’s a body double or telly trickery…but who cares. I love the authenticity stamp with the guy walking in front of the camera at the start

Xmas Card from the Cat Defence League

Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Moisan on November 18, 2008

(Joking).
So many photos and ideas for things to post following my recent trip to NYC – including this photo from a media  exhibition at MOMA, NYC. No hate mail please, when I get a mo I’ll write up the artists’ rationale behind this piece and then you can take it up with him.

cat-defense-league

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And another from NYC. Sarah Who?

Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Moisan on November 18, 2008

votesarah

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Come on baby light my file

Posted in art by Chris Moisan on October 21, 2008

This was one of the more amusing exhibits at Frieze Art Fair today.
Art meets Geek meets the Doors. Unfortunately, i took the video on my phone and there’s no simple way of rotating the movie (I’m sure there is if i buy QT Pro or another video editing software)

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LBS Service – Quick Review

Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Moisan on October 7, 2008

Quick Refresher course on where LBS services are as of Oct 2008

Rummble
http://www.rummble.com
‘Mobile Local Discovery’  (Andrew Scott, Co-Founder, ex Playtext)
Award winning Mobile 2.0, MEX
User selected location – Feeds, photos, Google maps, basic listings, UGC reviews.
Friend invite via 50 Free texts or email.
Early stage development

Moximity
‘It’s all around you’ Austin based new start up (launched Sept 28, 2008)
Looks like a GPS Social Net – claiming to integrate your other social nets which beats having to find new friends or invite old ones. Find friends nearby, location based offers. Seems to be rolling out city by city and I love their use of Google maps for on their sign up page. Sounds pretty cool, and think it’s smart move rolling out city by city.

Plazes (now owned by Nokia)
http://plazes.com

‘Right place, right time’ (Felix Petersen, Co-Founder now head of social activities at Nokia)
Web based and appears to have SMS (but didn’t try this out)

Share your location (neat suggestions provided), updates, see who else is in the area. RSS, update to Facebook, WP, Blogger, good mapping and more – feature rich.

Tech crunch describes it ‘as Twitter with geotagging, points of interest, and social networking
features’ which is pretty fair IMO.

Buzz’d
http://buzzd.com/
‘What’s going on around me right now’
US Based new start-up, with local event UGC reviews, mapping and social nets.
MOMO award winner, just closed series A.

BrightKite
http://brightkite.com/ Currently invite only
Geo Social net with feed for status updates, photos etc..

The other major players have recently been extensively reviewed by Techcrunch. Covered in this review

  • Loopt.com – mobile social mapping
  • Whrrl (Pelago, funded by Jeff Bezos and T-Mobile))  – social net, google maps, mash up on the mobile
  • Where/ Buddy Finder (uLocate) find locatin specific friends, shops, cafes, Zipcars, places listed on Yelp, petrol station and of course Starbucks (yawn)
  • Limbo.com categorise users in to frieds, contacts (pulled in from native address phone book), members. Desk site is very weird with a games section. Hmmm?
  • Zintin – Standford grads start-up, iPhone only. Seems to have started with the infamous scribble and shake app, which can then be shared on a FB like Wall but now morphing in to something else? Looks quite interesting.

Further reading:

LBS Primer by Tech Crunch is excellent http://tinyurl.com/4rsorr

Anatomy of a failure : lessons learned from failed start-up Meetro, excellent too. http://tinyurl.com/59ouwk

Andrew Finkle http://www.afpr.com/ – Social media blogger also has some great posts on this subject. http://www.afpr.com/

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Nokia announces ‘Comes with Music’

Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Moisan on October 5, 2008

So Nokia makes it’s big music play. Key facts:

  • Pay-as-you-go + £130 handset
  • Catalogue from the Big 4 Majors
  • DRM – won’t work on an iPod
  • Tracks playable on mobile and PC (2 device)
  • After 1 year you can ‘keep the tracks’ if they remain on the same handset or you transfer to a new Nokia handset.

I do support new business models and anything which shakes up the industry and challenges Apple’s dominance but I’m not sure this a good deal for artists or consumers. For the artist, I’m doubt very much they’ll see much of the cake from this deal and it feels like it’s another step towards commoditisation of their output. For the consumer, you’ve now got another proprietary segment of your music- I believe consumers want total interoperability across all devices (a la MP3) – but the real whince for me is that I don’t belive 80% of consumers understand DRM and what they’re actually buying into. It’s only when your PC crashes or you try and swap operating systems that it then dawns on you that you don’t own that music after all – it’s licensed to you by a technology company. But on the plus side, it feels almost free so why wouldn’t the average teenager go for it…look forward to seeing the ads for this service

Full details at Nokia site

Links du jour + Seesmic

Posted in Uncategorized by Chris Moisan on September 29, 2008

Love this Diesel XXX campaign. Bit saucy but it’s very well done

Texting Your way to Love. US is really embracing texting these days. This is quite funny, came from a Stanford blog :-)

Seesmic – i really want to like them, want to use it but just can’t see why I would. Of course, I may not be the target audience but I just don’t get why i’d want a non-real time video conversation that has so much friction (time to make it, send it, watch someone else’s commets etc…). I think Loic Le Meur is v cool, has bags of energy but I just don’t get it currently….if I want real time then video/phone/IM works, if real time not an issue then I use email, text but video? Help me someone?

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Muxtape -a cautionary tale from the digital music world

Posted in music by Chris Moisan on September 29, 2008

well, everyone thought the RIAA or majors took them down. Not exactly, but sort of.
Full story here

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