Now we're talking about a set of knuckle dusters that'll do a number on your face and your liver. Of course we want them. For the bar, naturally. More about the Bourgeois Brass Knuckles designed by Chromoly at Lovely Package. (lovelypackage.com, thanks, Eve!)
I've been gazing at this Dazed & Confused June 2009 "Ultimate Robot" couture shoot of Georgina Stojiljkovic by Mark Pillai long enough to wish The Fifth Element would magically come true so I could get dressed properly already. See the rest here. (thefashiontime.com)
Circlet press is inaugurating a series of author-hosted chats on our LiveJournal community. First up is long-time Circlet contributor Thomas Roche. He is well-known for erotica that is hot, intellectual, and fall-over-laughing funny, often all at the same time. His story, "The Night the New Hog Croaked," won third place in Best Fantastic Erotica, and the rest of his publications, with Circlet and other publishers, are too numerous to list here. Thomas will talk about current and upcoming projects, post excerpts from his fiction, and answer any questions you might have. We also expect to raffle off some free smut. To participate, check out our LJ Sunday, June 7 through Tuesday, June 9. You will not need to have your own LJ account to participate.
Watch the Circlet Livejournal Community for more author chats in the weeks to come!
Yeah, it's only $10,000. But it's, like, totally worth it. Maybe not, but it's gorgeous and maybe you or I could build something similar but it likely won't be as drool-worthy as the Gearbox Table (racechairs.com), with its complete 7-speed gearbox from Scuderia Ferrari’s F2000 F1 race car. It's to be a one-of-a-kind collectors' item, and according to Race Chairs isn't finished yet, but the gearbox will be signed by Michael Schumacher, Jean Todt (Former CEO, Ferrari) and Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo (Former CEO, Ferrari).
Vroom vroom. The ultimate cat hair collector. I want it.
In keeping with the Ballard "Crash" theme and my love for racing and things that go fast and go boom, I just came across these BBC images of the Talladega race crash, which was out of control. I'm not a "sports" person, but I do think it's pretty awesome that the driver got out and *walked* out of his flaming car very pissed off to physically cross the finish line -- to a standing ovation. I found the HD version of the crash video (below) and while the announcers are annoying as hell, they play the multi versions of the multiple car wreck that sent a car flipping up into the stands, and it's just riveting. And it's only 3:30 minutes long. Check it out:
It sounds like a gag gift instead of serious science, but a new electrical farting machine could improve fuel cell technology by turning CO2 in the atmosphere into methane.
The technique won't combat global warming directly, since both CO2 and methane are potent greenhouse gases, but it could help store alternative energies such as wind and solar more efficiently.
It works like this: giving small jolts of electricity to single-celled microorganisms known as archea prompts them to remove C02 from the air and turn it into methane, released as tiny "farts." The methane, in turn, can be used to power fuel cells or to store the electrical energy chemically until its needed.
"We found that we can directly convert electrical current into methane using a very specific microorganism," said Bruce Logan, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, who details his discovery in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.
We started thinking that moving a cursor on a screen is a good scientific exercise. But when we talk to people who have locked-in syndrome or a spinal-cord injury, their No. 1 concern is communication.
All the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually. And what your brain does is, if you're looking at the 'R' on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the 'R' flashes, your brain says, "Hey, wait a minute. Something's different about what I was just paying attention to." And you see a momentary change in brain activity.
About a year ago I went to see the Thrillpeddlers 2008 Grand Guignol program; as we entered, RE:Search Books publisher V. Vale, who has published many books about and by Ballard, was playing the piano. Before the program started, host Russell Blackwood held a contest, asking "What song was Vale playing when the lights went down?" The Hypnodrome fell silent: you could hear a pin drop.
I am an inveterate music geek. I waited politely to see if anyone else, particularly any of the weird precocious teens in attendance, was enough of a band nerd to have recognized it. Finally, I cried out: "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams!"
Applause! I had won. My reward? A copy of Vale's RE:Search book Conversations, an amazing collection of interviews and dicussions with J.G. Ballard, handed to me by Vale himself and signed by the V-Man. What the HELL could be more appropriate than winning a J.G. Ballard book from V. Vale at a Grand Guignol performance for recognizing that particular song? It was eerie, I tell you. Eerie.
Upon reading it I said to myself, aloud, "I forgot what a freak this guy is." Which is my way of calling him a genius.
A year later, I change that "is" to "was," and the world seems that much smaller. That's the thing about getting older: the world gets small, not big. We soldier on toward the apocalypse, a doomsday vastly more mundane than any ever dreamed by J.G. Ballard. And without him, it just won't seem the same.
Next thing you know the guy's in pieces -- maybe eight, ten of them -- and your daughter's all "Dad! That's no zombie! This guy's from Vogue!"
WTF, how were you supposed to know? Sure, the guy tried to say something, probably "don't cut me in half, I'm not a zombie," but chainsaws are loud, and with the screaming and all... and hey, it's not like the world is short on photographers, right? Am I right?
Well, thank God actor Woody Harrelson is more of a fisticuffs kind of guy, rather than the pragmatic chainsaw type you or I would doubtless prove to be under the circumstances. Otherwise, the TSA might start restricting gas-powered chainsaws in carry-on luggage. Harrelson is being sued by a photographer from TMZ.com for shoving him in the face at LaGuardia. Explains Harrelson:
I wrapped a movie called 'Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character... With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.
So there you have it: It makes perfect sense to me. Care to lay odds that the photographer actually was a zombie -- and the government-media alliance is covering up the details? TSA-TMZ -- coincidence?
You can check out the footage here. TMZ is claiming this means there's no shame in Hollywood, since clearly Harrelson's comment is intended as a promotion for the film -- and if you believe there's no shame in Hollywood, I've got a website for you to read. Another TMZ photographer also filed suit against Harrelson in 2006 for another grab-and-push incident. No word on whether he mistook that one for Javier Bardem.
Forty-six years ago today on April 10, 1963, the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Thresher, while conducting dive tests, sank around 200 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It imploded at crush depth, killing all 129 officers, crew and civilian contractors on board.
For submarine nerds -- yes, there are some of us -- the sinking of the Thresher provides fascinating and somewhat ghoulish reading on naval procedures and nuclear reactors. The board of inquiry into the Thresher disaster concluded that salt water pipes on the vessel probably leaked, leading to a shorting-out of control panels and an automatic "scram" (emergency shutdown) of the nuclear reactor; once the reactor had been shut down, the steam tubes providing power to the turbines were vacated and the reactor could not be quickly restarted. The Thresher was already almost at its maximum depth, so it didn't have far to go before the vessel imploded, killing everyone on board in a second or two. The sinking of the Thresher led the U.S. Navy to completely revise its submarine safety procedures, following much criticism of sub fleet commander Hyman G. Rickover.
Interestingly, one of the vessels searching for the Thresher after it sank was the famous bathyscaphe Trieste, which broke the deep-sea diving record in the Marianas Trench in the Pacific.
The Wikipedia article on the Thresher, from which some of this info is taken, has a fascinating GIF animating the events in the sinking as reconstructed by the board of inquiry. This image is a screencap from that astonishingly geeky animation.
"Bright Green" eco-blog Treehugger has a great article on 7 Concept Gadgets We Want to See Brought to Market, in which they cover some of the gadget ideas they think could improve sustainability and eco-friendliness if they made it to consumers. Several of these were finalists in the Greener Gadgets 2009 Design Competition.
My very favorite device is the bizarre "green printer" (shown here) that uses coffee grounds or old tea leaves for ink -- and requires you to pump the cartridge back and forth as you print. It requires no electric power, and makes your documents smell like coffee or tea.
Another cool gadget is a blooming-flower energy monitor that provides a visual reference of how much energy your house is using. It's designed to plug into an eco-house's energy-consumption "dashboard." When energy consumption is low, the flower blooms; if you're leaving the lights on, the flower starts to wither. There's also a clip-on Urban Air Quality Monitor, and a "solar tree" that holds solar panels and points them toward the sun throughout the day to get maximum energy exposure.
Check out the whole list here, and don't bother saving those coffee grounds yet -- none of these products are anywhere near market... we just wish they were.
Image from Core 77.
Maybe the Cloth-Cat Towel Holder isn't as much of a brain rinse as I intended it to be after the zombies-in-real-life post. Because at first you think wow, that's kind of yucky but funny and cute, and then it sinks in what the repetitive act of putting your towel away looks like. I wonder, is this a good gift for veterinarians? (perpetualkid.com, via Lisanti Quarterly)
My main concern with this news story is -- after the nausea -- whether or not Patient Zero is being watched closely. Because we all know how this story goes... Snip from Metairie man says stranger chewed, swallowed after taking bite out of his arm:
A Metairie resident is recovering after a stranger bit a chunk of flesh out of his arm and swallowed it Saturday afternoon.Joseph Lancellotti, 67, told authorities he did not know the suspect, later identified as Mario Vargas, 48, or why he was attacked in his front yard.
Lancellotti was gardening at his home in the 4400 block of Kawanee Avenue about 2 p.m. when he noticed a man walking toward his house, shouting angrily, the report said. Lancellotti said he couldn't understand the man because he was yelling in Spanish. But when the man got within two feet, he slugged Lancellotti in the head, the report said.
Lancellotti said he tried to defend himself with a garden rake. As the men struggled over the rake, the stranger bent over and bit Lancellotti on his right forearm, the report said. Lancellotti's flesh ripped away as he fell to the ground. The man then got on top of Lancellotti and began choking him, the report said.
It was then that neighbor Chantal Lorio, a podiatrist and director of the Wound Center at East Jefferson General Hospital, came out to check on Lancellotti. Lorio said Monday that she first thought Lancellotti was having a heart attack and the other man was trying to help him.
The stranger was still gripping Lancellotti as Lorio noticed her neighbor was lying in a pool of blood. She didn't learn what happened until she began dressing the wound -- with the stranger still clutching her neighbor's shirt.
"He said, 'He bit my arm, chewed the flesh and swallowed it in front of me, ' " Lorio recalled. She said the bite measured almost 3 by 1 1/2 inches, and was less than 1/4-inch deep. (...read more, nola.com, thanks Jonno!)
Check the date, and enjoy this Guardian UK piece -- I love the details and the Twitterised news archive:
• Newspaper to be available only on messaging service • Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters(...) As a Twitter-only publication, the Guardian will be able to harness the unprecedented newsgathering power of the service, demonstrated recently when a passenger on a plane that crashed outside Denver was able to send real-time updates on the story as it developed, as did those witnessing an emergency landing on New York's Hudson River. It has also radically democratised news publishing, enabling anyone with an internet connection to tell the world when they are feeling sad, or thinking about having a cup of tea.
"[Celebrated Guardian editor] CP Scott would have warmly endorsed this - his well-known observation 'Comment is free but facts are sacred' is only 36 characters long," a spokesman said in a tweet that was itself only 135 characters long.
A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"(...read more, guardian.co.uk)
It's really simple when you think about it. But now we have a graph to refer to.
This article at Inventor Spot made me do a double-take on several levels: Animals As Life Support Machines: Is That Technomimicry? It covers the recent presentation of female designer Revital Cohen about replacing certain kinds of human life support machines with animals genetically designed for the task. It opens up a lot of ethical questions, for sure, but overall as an idea it sparks some pretty wild ideas. What if instead of a seeing eye dog, your "guide dog" provided not vision and guidance, but say, performed the function of existing as a battery for your pacemaker? That's just the first place my mind went, but here's a snip:
One example Ms. Cohen discussed was the use of greyhounds as a possible respiratory assistance dogs. As a greyhound bred to race is trained to chases a lure, spends up to five years chasing that lure, and is then generally euthanized, why not train the dog as a respiratory assistant instead of killing the dog? Citing that a greyhound with his large chest and need for exercise is well suited to this job, the dog would also not succumb to separation anxiety because he would be a constant companion to the person depending on him for his life.Another possibility Ms. Cohen proposed is to use a sheep as a "dialysis machine," first designing a sheep for that purpose , and then connecting the sheep to a patient suffering from kidney failure via "blood lines" to the patient. The sheep's kidney would cleanse the blood, urinating its toxins, and return the cleansed blood to the patient.
Ms. Cohen's primary goal seems to be to keep both the patient and animal alive in the case of the greyhound, but mostly to provide the patient with companionship in the case of the sheep, as the sheep would have to be transgened specifically for the job of "dialysis machine." (...read more, inventorspot.com)
More detail about her proposals are here (dezeen.com) Here's a video from Cohen's project:
In this video, Slate gives a mini-history of the bacon meme, explaining what most of us knew by 2005 that "once something hits the NYT, it's long since jumped the shark." The video is a quick, fun examination of baconmemitry. However, Slate may have also "Grey Ladied" themselves in the process. They cite the bacon meme as a 2008 phenom -- which makes sense if you only use big mutant-corporate media blogs for your data sampling. But, for example, it was 2007 when us proletariat bloggers got our peepers on the infamous, it's-over-now bacon bra.
Not that bacon will ever be over. Or that I don't like the people I've met from Slate. It's just a matter of knowing how to source your memes.
"Are you a puppy!? Are you a cutest little puppernaut?! Are you a special one? Why are you so little? How did you get so cute and small? Why are you so cute? Why are you so cute!No, seriously -- why?"
* The Science of YouTube: Cuuute! (popsci.com, thanks, Angela!)
Thanks to a brand new new imaging technique -- new planets have been discovered, for reals, from New Scientist:
THE first direct image of three extrasolar planets orbiting their host star was hailed as a milestone when it was unveiled late last yearMovie Camera. Now it turns out that the Hubble Space Telescope had captured an image of one of them 10 years ago, but astronomers failed to spot it. This raises hope that more planets lie buried in Hubble's vast archive.In 1998, Hubble studied the star HR 8799 in the infrared, as part of a search for planets around young and relatively nearby stars. The search came up empty.
Last year, Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues looked at the same star using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. They discovered three planets, each about 10 times as massive as Jupiter. They succeeded where the Hubble team failed mainly because of new strategies developed to carefully subtract the star's glare, leaving only the faint infrared glow from its planets.
Marois and David Lafrenière, of the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, decided to apply their new mathematical tools to the decade-old Hubble image. This involved digitally combining Hubble's views of 23 similar stars that do not have planets to create a reference image nearly identical to that of HR 8799. When they subtracted the reference image from HR 8799's, the outermost of its three planets popped into view. (...read more, newscientist.com)
"Think of the children" rhetoric? Costly. Watching it go down in flames in a live debate? Priceless. From Mind Hacks:
The BBC's flagship news analysis programme Newsnight featured a hefty segment on the 'Facebook causes cancer / the end of the world as we know it' nonsense that recently hit the headlines. The Beeb invited alarmist psychologist Aric Sigman on the show but, God bless 'em, they also invited Bad Science author Ben Goldacre who did a great job of countering the drivel. And due to wonders of the internet you can see the whole interview on YouTube.The segment also features neuroscientist Susan Greenfield who has recently taken to warning everybody (including in the House of Lords believe it or not) about the 'neurological dangers' of children using the internet - based entirely on her own prejudices and in the absence of any good evidence.
She is featured in the TV report where, rather bizarrely, she admits there is no evidence but then goes on to warn of the dangers.
The debate between Goldacre and Sigman is pure TV gold, not least for watching Goldacre's facial expressions. (...read more, mindhacks.com)
Obsessed with artifacts of the macabre and creating exclusive clockwork "DNA" art pieces reminiscent of disaster, plus comprised of materials so rare and expensive few of us will even get nearer to them than a blo post -- what's not to love about Romaine Jerome's Skeleton Chronograph Tourbillon watch? Only nine will be made and they'll all be slightly different, though basics remain: the skeleton-arm dial is combines brass, black or, steel, pink gold 5N; they mix mat velvet finish, satin and shot-blasted finish for the Roman numeral XII. The Tourbillon carriage and the chronometry engine are illuminated by the use of pink gold 5N. Each will have 33 rubies, be comprised of steel and titanium, have hands "inspired by the anchor of Titanic", the crystal will be sapphire, and along with the rubber strap will be water resistant. Ha.
According to the press page's PDF:
"The rusted steel horological creations in the ‘Titanic DNA’ series features an oxidized steel bezel which is the result of an extraordinary blend of authentic steel from the wreck lying 3840 meters under the sea, and from the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, where the Titanic was constructed nearly a century ago. Official certificates of authenticity guarantee the origin of materials used."
Akihabara News has an extensive Flickr set and the above video of these new, totally adoarable, I-need-ten-of-these Takara Tomy Robo-Q's. "Just 3.4 cm tall (1.3"), this little robot is a tiny toy, the world's smallest remote controlled walking robot." With IR sensors and autonomous or human-controlled modes, they look like hours of fun to pursue when I should really be working. They're available at GeekStuff4U for about $48 each.
This may not be a popular art show proposal for Londoners right now; at least the artworks are on their way to the US for a nationwide tour (at select galleries). Found via Make blog, the gloomy and endlessly fascinating snow globe series "Travelers" by artists Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz.
Click through and take your time with all their pieces, or enjoy the fantastic post with several carefully selected photos by Alice on My Modern Metropolis. Alice eloquently tells us,
What you once thought was playful and innocent is actually a world of chaos; lone wanderers survey the frigid landscape, people and creatures exhibit unnatural tendencies and ill-defined crimes are committed. These imaginary worlds and events will shock you into believing that this world is more cold than we think; where every man is out for himself.Like fairy tales or dreams, the tiny tableaus work as psychological metaphors: specifically, a stage everyone is bound to enter when life has lost its warmth and promise, at which point finding a new way becomes desperately urgent. (...read more, mymodernmet.com)
Not only is the Mission One electric motorcycle going to race in the world's first clean emissions grand prix motorcycle race on the legendary Isle of Man, but the bike (unveiled at TED today) is from San Francisco, California and aims to be the fastest electric bike on the planet. Snip:
A Californian company has unveiled the world's fastest production electric motorbike, the Mission One.Manufactured by San Francisco-based Mission Motors, the bike is capable of 150mph - considerably quicker than the British-designed, pre-production TTX01 bike - and is on sale now to US customers, with deliveries due in 2010.
(...) North's bike is powered by lithium-ion batteries - the type found in laptops and mobile phones - and will reportedly run for 150 miles between recharging, which takes two hours.
The model demonstrated was a hand-built prototype. It is yet to be tested on the road at 150mph, but a Mission Motors' spokesman said they "have no doubt that this prototype will achieve its target speed".
Tesla and Mission Motors are targeting affluent green motorists, with the Tesla selling for £92,000 in the UK and the first 50 limited-edition Mission Ones likely to sell for $68,995 (£47,100). A cheaper version of the Mission One is due to be announced this summer. (...read more, guardian.co.uk)
Image by Veronica Belmont, spotted on her way to her morning carpool.
By February 2, London was covered in snow (the heaviest snowfall in 18 years), by the 3rd headlines still read that the city was immobilized and people were learning to cope despite the travel chaos, and today people are stranded and services are at a breaking point. More snow is expected. The photographs, of course, are stunning (gallery, 45 images). The reporting is extensive.
This natural disaster of sorts comes not long after an impressive article and yet more astounding photos about the three-person British Arctic team, The Catlin Arctic Survey who are preparing for a very perilous journey to take hands-on measurements on how fast the Arctic is melting.
From the Guardian UK exclusive, the team's leader Pen Hadlow had some curious comments;
Hadow puts it more chivalrously: "I see the Arctic as a maiden newly discovered on the social scene, and we're melting away her petticoats, and there are some avaricious types peering underneath, and someone needs to defend her honour."
Indeed. The gallery of their prep for the trek only makes me think they're doing just fine in London's current circumstances, however much icy wind may be blowing under the great city's bloomers. Seriously; the gallery is awesome, but what a very weird thing to say.
The above image must be the best screencap of what may be Google's biggest mistake to date, or the most significant instance of Google breaking the web yet: a search for "Google" at 9:43 am EST returning the top result being Google itself considered harmful. Is it becoming self-aware, as pt suggests? According to the Official Google Blog, the result coming up for every single website on the Internet was "simply human error" and in the post, speaking for Google Marissa Mayer states that "Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes."
But it also looks like it's making things hard for webmasters to get their sites out of Google's malware bucket, as seen in this post in Google's Webmaster help, Question: PLEASE READ: Your site might not have malware where webmasters are being instructed on how they need to go in and try to get their sites un-malware labeled manually. No fun; I only discovered this neat fact via Twitter.
Ars Technia also has more coverage in Google broke the Internet: Malware detector went haywire.
This really raises some serious questions about the ownership of information distribution, doesn't it?
Update 01.31.09 6:40PST:
In my inbox, Gmail has tagged Google emails as potentially malicious and untrustworthy. The conversation thread (a Google "vanity" alert) did not have that red warning banner on it this morning; when I got a new email from the sender an hour ago, the warning appeared.
To make a bad day for Google seem to get worse, I poked around the Official Google Blogs to see if there was any information about this and discovered that they had another, entirely different serious issue with Gmail today. The spam filters broke as well, sending some Gmail users' legitimate mail into the spam folder. So do go check your spam folders, dear Gmail users... Something's up with some sort of system-wide malware implementation -- the Gmail spam folder issue happened at pretty much the same time as the search snafu -- and perhaps it's affecting more services than their search engine. This is not a fun day for Google.
This image is apparently from last year's Bacon Man; I've never been but I've heard it's really fun until the grease storms blow through. And chicks totally walk around Bacon Man naked. I know because my friend takes pictures of dudes talking pictures of chicks' boobs before the Bacon Man burn.
* Bacon Man, a photoset on Flickr.
* See also: BaconCamp, A Celebration of Bacon In San Francisco
Google's Street View van accidentally hit a baby deer -- and the whole incident went instantly to Street View. Guardian UK has the details:
(...) In upstate New York, a street view car hit a baby deer on Five Points Road - and then recorded the whole thing on Google Maps. Nobody noticed until, well, someone noticed, prompting a Daily What blog post, floods of traffic, and then a sequence of five street-level pictures being removed from the site.Google replied: "The driver was understandably upset, and promptly stopped to alert the local police and the Street View team at Google. The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived. The police explained to our driver that, sadly, this was not an uncommon occurrence in the region - the New York State Department of Transportation estimates that 60,000-70,000 deer collisions happen per year in New York alone -- and no police report needed to be filed." (...read more, guardian.co.uk)
On a lighter note, this story is also seen at Gawker, where commenters have revealed something Google's Street View caught that may in fact be more tragi-comic than any "Google Killed Bambi" reference. Do not LARP in public, my friends. Just don't do it.
Almost a year ago, Qik made me one of their sponsored livestream videobloggers, but between the phone and working out the bugs, it made live videoblogging from the phone spotty. Now, Qik has tightened up their (free) service and it's seriously versatile and easy to use -- and I got my hands on a brand new Nokia N95-4. It's a hell of a gadget, and now that it's out of the box I can't stop playing with it and it's never, ever far from reach. And I know I'm not even maximizing it.
I'll get this out of the way: I have a phone from Helio (an Ocean) and that's my trusty phone, with a qwerty keyboard and extremely reliable everything; I've had 3G for years, my friends. So the N95-4 isn't quite going to replace my Ocean -- but if the Nokia had a qwerty keyboard, it would in about .00006 seconds. On the Nokia I will read your email and enjoy the experience very much. But on the Ocean I'll respond. Yes, there are other Nokia phones with keyboards: but you say, the E71. Yes, it's lovely, but it only shoots 15fps video, and that just won't do.
After charging the N95, the first thing I did was turn off all sounds and get to work. In just a few minutes, I went to "Web", and downloaded and installed Gmail, Google Maps, and my Qik. I found it unfortunate that the phone's default search is Yahoo, but without qwerty I won't *exactly* be blogging from the phone, so I don't really care. Then I went into the menu>tools>settings>general>personalization>standby mode and changed the "shortcuts" and "active standby apps." In here, I changed the phone's desktop icons to Gmail, Google Maps, and other things I'll want with one click, and I changed the right and left softkey buttons to be Qik and "camera".
Next, I went into gallery>open online service and it already had Flickr installed; I just entered in my information and activated it. Now when I take a photo (it's got a 5mp camera, Carl Zeiss lens, with 8G storage and 5M photos size), I click once and it uploads the big, sharp photo to my photo stream -- quickly, with the 3G.
So I can press one button from the interface and open the Qik livestreaming app -- that's neat. I'm ready to shoot live video in a few seconds. Qik has integrated with a lot of other online services; when you get a Qik account, you can do what I did and link it to my Twitter, YouTube and 12seconds account (there's more, but that's what I'm using right now). So far everything works except the 12seconds integration; when I livestream to Qik, an automatic message (that I customized in my Qik account) is sent to my Twitter stream, and the video is simultaneously uploaded to my seldom used YouTube channel. Here's a Qik video with the Nokia:
A couple people have raved about the high quality of my phone-to-Qik videos (and they look great; in video 'settings' make it high quality and put steady shot 'on'). But I know that the phone is capable of better video than the 320x240 Qik default, and I really love 12seconds -- and the integration not working really isn't my problem. And I'm impatient.
So I set up the phone's mailbox, which with Gmail was actually an unbelievably complicated pain in the ass. Fortunately, this is not a road less traveled. Once that was set up, I noticed that when I took a photo or shot a video (not in Qik, just with the phone), when I hit "send" I now had an email option -- but no contacts. To keep it simple, I put in two contacts: my Flickr email posting address (find it in your Flickr account), and my 12seconds email posting address (it's in your 12seconds account). Now when I shoot a high quality video with the Nokia's nice camera, I can hit "send", pick Flickr or 12seconds, and it'll upload my video to either service. Three or four clicks. Here's a too-dark, dorky test video I shot and sent to Flickr:
So now if someone confiscates my phone for shooting video of say, a BART police shooting, the video will be in so many places already it won't matter. But mostly, I'm now frighteningly agile with live media and feel like having fun. I also made some physical modifications to the phone:
Instead of a kewt fob, I sacrificed my girly style for a practical camera strap.
I placed a thin strip over both the red 'record' light and the flash. There is unfortunately no way to set the phone's camera default to "flash off" and I do not shoot with a flash. Plus, the red light is something people find intimidating; if I simply tell people they're about to be on video, and then say okay, they're a lot more relaxed than the visible cringe I see when the red light goes on and everyone poses and doesn't know what to say anymore. Well, anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. So there.
I love it. I won't leave the house without it. And like I said, if it had qwerty, I'd use it as a phone. And probably also as a portable computer: add Google Docs and my blog via the web browser, and I'd be invincible.
For those of you with unboxing fetishes, the unboxing photos are after the jump. Here are a couple of photos from the Nokia:
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