concrete reverie

I’ve been wanting to make this into a gif for a LONG time....

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:28:51 -0400

I’ve been wanting to make this into a gif for a LONG time. Perfect way to break in cs6? yes, i think so…

Came home to this: Looks like Molly (the dog) likes doritos.....

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:43:39 -0400

Came home to this: Looks like Molly (the dog) likes doritos.. She licked all the cheese dust and mangled the bag inside out. Total goober!

First try at a Gif for intermediate digital photography

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:57:39 -0400

First try at a Gif for intermediate digital photography

Got this on repeat as I am finally feeling better and coming...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:03:00 -0400

Got this on repeat as I am finally feeling better and coming down off pain meds after hurting my ankle. It’s increasing my production proficiency because this song seriously gets me in the zone.

I recently rediscovered my boy Sammy Adams after a friend put this song on my birthday partay mix. Sammy is dope as heck, love his flow and his beats are so sickk.

Kimber is definitely my favorite song of his and honestly probably one of the most hearfelt and honest raps I have ever heard. It is all loss, heartbreak, hope; and contemplation of life, the universe, and the ever-after. It’s powerful, raw, and real.

The invincibility of youth clashing with real life and mortality. The hope of youth grappling with a death to soon. These strains of thought/feelings are all swirling through my subconscious as I try to explain just why this song means so much to me. Maybe because I know a lot of kids at my highschool who suffered similar fates with Kimber that my experiences transport me into this song. Art has meaning to you as an individual if you can somehow find resonance with your personal life experiences in the greater context of cultural and human shared experiences. So when you find something that strikes a chord in your heart, brain, and soul then you know that you found something that is Art to you. Regardless of form, quality, or context - it could be a piece of lint or a garbage can beat. But if it means something to you, then it is special. Kimber for me is one of those mysterious life discoveries.

What I can nail down for sure is that with Kimber, Sammy Adams is trying to create an iota of immortality of that perfect time when he had his friend. This song is a snapshot of a better time. It will have to suffice until everyone is back together in their version of Valhalla. The song is a tribute to a fallen comrade and the hope that this song tries to re-instill and recreate is not only part of the mourning process but what makes the stuff of legends. Kimber is the modern version of an epic poem, though with a better beat.

I always just have to listen to it on loop; it’s hypnotic.

Great motivation song. You only live once. (YOLO… thanks drake.) Make it count.

p.s on a lighter note: due to a busted ankle and hobbling around on crutches, this made me laugh really hard. might be going to hell…

After having to read Kingdom Coming for my History of Sex class,...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:49:00 -0400

After having to read Kingdom Coming for my History of Sex class, we were privileged enough to have a class discussion with \author Michelle Goldberg when she came to LSU Thursday.

First off, she is amazing women. A contributing writer for Salon.com and columnist for the Daily Beast, what impressed me the most was how intelligent and knowledgeable she was about seemingly everything. In her discussion and the following Q&A in both our class and the talk she held in the Design Building, she was bullet proof. She had an eloquent and incredibly in depth answer for everything over a wide breadth of topics. Seeing someone so dedicated to a cause and finding the truth in an area of life was inspirational.

After meeting and talking with her, it makes me want to start reading and writing more to the level I was in highschool. Consuming and being able to functionally use mass amounts of information to better the world is a pretty cool skill and Goldberg is an example of someone who uses her intellect to try and impact the world.

One of my favorite quotes was about how you can’t plan to change the world with everything you write; all you can do as an author is to write something to the best of your ability and let it out into the world. The impact it makes is contingent on many outside factors beyond your control, but getting the information out there (especially information that doesn’t exist until you write about it) is your job as a journalist and author.

Very cool.

After reading Kingdom Coming I was pretty pissed off about the things I was ignorant of that Goldberg exposed. So I am looking forward to reading The Means of Reproduction and learning something new.

As regards to the dedication, not only is she a superbly intelligent woman, but very sweet. I am very glad I had the opportunity to meet and learn from her.

60 seconds. That’s about how fast this semester has flown...

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:38:00 -0500

60 seconds.

That’s about how fast this semester has flown by. I am facing one last semester at LSU when this one is dead and gone.

On my Digital Brands course (#digitalbrands), this class seemed to go even faster, now that my awesome groupmates (Amanda, Lauren, Erica) and I have finished pitching our final project to our client the Tiger Athletic Foundation.

Looking at this pictograph of all that happens each minute on the internet and comprehending the scale of content created as each minute ticks by is really pretty astounding. I mean as I’ve been writing this post upwards of 100,000+ other things have been posted, reposted, and shared on tumblr alone.

With this in mind there are a few things (both pros and cons) that I can take away from the Digital Brands class:

1. You have to be solid. As in everything you do and put online needs to have a purpose that unifies with your overall concept of your personal online “Digital Brand.” With so much content being pushed online in alarmingly large amounts, this copious amount of information is approaching unconsumable levels for the average interent consumer. Meaning that we personally have so little control over how people read information about us online that every little nuance of our onlince presence must be uniform with our entire persona so that when a new person stumbles upon us - that quick snapshot gives them an accurate representation of who we are.

Beyond this concept, if everything is solid and together and your brand is uniform then people can accurately gauge how you will present content and you will become a more credible and professional seeming brand if eveything you do is coherent, clean, and presisely how you want.

tl;dr - Pick your strategy/style of posting online, spread it to every platform you engage with; and go with it. Be the ‘you’ that you want everyone else to see.

2. Consistency is key. Playing on what I wrote above, if you are consistently creating, sharing, and posting content online the higher the chances are that someone will see and engage with your content. In the information age was now live in society is no longer focused on the game of mass producing goods; rather we are focused on the game of mass producing ideas. Do your part, contribute to the world. And if you want to get your name/ideas out there; you must be consistent. Klout, the online social media influence aggragator, demonstrates this concept well because it clearly rewards users who consistently create quality content online. Something anyone knows who has taken a week off-line and seen their Klout score suffer the consequences.

3. Brand Smack Downs. Never will the fact that you have taken for granted what you do online more so than when you are paired up in a play-off style verbal and digital brawl over why you do what the hell you do online. This exercise over the course of the semester was invaluable because it caused the class to look critically at their online presence and actually think about how we interact with others both on a personal and mass communicated scale (twitter v. facebook; etc.). This ‘social networking thing’ is not old news. It is completely new (less than 7 years old). There is little (if any) information or studies to tell people or inform people the best way or safest way to interact online. Everything has been the wild wild west of uncharted territory. Since kids my age have been 12 years old, we have been the guinea pigs living this test out in real-time on the proper way to communicate online. We as humans have not adopted this mode of discourse long enough for anyone to actually be able to draw any conclusive results oh on it is affecting our culture or society as a whole. Everyone is just waiting with baited breathe hoping we don’t turned out fucked up knowing that we can update a status and geo-locate but can for the life of use write in cursive.

So I thought the Digital Brand Smackdown concept was actually pretty groundbreaking in its ability to assign a structure and create a ‘right-way’ and ‘not as effective-way’ of critiquing our ability to communicate in the online world.

4. I want an iPad. After seeing both Lance and Alex teach so effectively using only iPads; whether linking entire class lectures to the projector from their tablets or simply taking notes/real-time grading is I believe the beginnings of a paradigm shift in how education will be taught in the U.S. and eventually the world. As the shift away from the personal computer to Cloud based computing and tablet + App interfaces we will learn quicker, smarter, more efficiently, and ultimately more effectively. I mentioned earlier that we are solidly in the upswing of the Information Age; well this is a clear by-product of how we will learn better in this Information Era where up-to-date and current content (knowledge) is king.

5. Pitching and formulating a campaign for a real client. This was also invaluable as a life lesson and as a skill I can walk away with. Losing was a bitter pill to swallow, but the mythical ‘client’ is an ephemeral beast that is hard to tack down what it wants when they barely know what they want. So we came up with our concept for a mobile app for TAF and created an idea that would resolve an issue and capture, effectively, an entire demographic they currently do not have - with little to no effort on their part. My main goal was to create something that would work functionally not only as an app but as a solution to the campaign puzzle that was presented before us. With hindsight it seems glaringly obvious that TAF would want a broader app with more general functionality rather than a lean-mean-donation and knowledge gathering machine. But eh, that’s life. Our only spilled milk qualm was we programingly shot ourselves in the foot by removing the functions from our app that ended up being the deciding factor between the campaigns. It didn’t matter that ours would actually work or solve a problem, it just had less features…

Overall creating and nailing a presentation to a client where it’s do or die and knowing how hard everyone in my group worked and how we presented our material the best we could makes me able to walk home with my head held high. The only thing you control is when the ball is in your court, and when you do everything to the best of your ability with the results in the final judges hands - you can go home content that you did your part and in the end it was left up to semantics rather than error or doing a shitty job.

I loved this class and will be sad it is over. But I will get a double dose for next semester in the Advertising capstone campaigns class.

redemption time.

Drinkify

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:35:00 -0500

Drinkify:

Internet you win. I am done for the day. Drinkify is probably the coolest website I have stumbled upon in awhile. It is fun, clever, and infectious.

I am currently on the Britney Spears channel listening to a dance remix track of Britney’s on repeat for the last hour. It’s been doing a great job of getting me through my homework just as well as the 8oz split of vodka and club soda it pairs with the track would be doing.

This complimentary drink pairing website is going to be successful due to the humorous edge it pairs with its brilliant idea. A perfect example is the PBR it pairs with Brand New or the 8oz of redbull with Justin Bieber.

I wish I still had to demo a social media platform for my Digital Brands class because I would totally do Drinkify! The integrated ability to not only listen to a track from any artist you type in ( I tried to go semi-obscure with Slaid Cleaves - they recommend a nice Pinot Noir) but you get a drink pairing and the ability to tweet your discovery instantly. Awesome.

This website was a 24hr project brought to us by Music Hack Day Boston 2011 and much maligned livers. Music Hack Day - Boston’s website informs us that their goal is:

to explore and build the next generation of music applications. It’s a full weekend of hacking in which participants will conceptualize, create and present their projects. Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it’s music related.

Well that is freaking cool. I love seeing projects to evolve and push the boundaries of the internet further and further. I’m also glad to see Last.fm contributing the music API for these projects to be possible.

I have a feeling this site is going to be sticking around increasing alcoholism and beverage consumption across the internet for quite some time.

I stumbled upon this amazing video of Jon Gomm playing his song...

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:07:00 -0500

I stumbled upon this amazing video of Jon Gomm playing his song Passionflower and instantly thought I could use it as a great analogy for utilizing social media platforms; it’s all about multi-tasking. The comment on his video: “it seems like he has 6 hands and 2 voices” sums my thoughts of the video quite nicely. His skills are freaking amazing. It makes me not want to even think of attempting to play guitar knowing that there is someone as good as Gomm out there.

After last weeks class brand smack-down and going against Jenn Bonn it struck me just how many social platforms are out there to get involved with. Realizing this, I discovered it really is an important task to corral your online digital media presence and correctly choose the right platforms to effectively convey the brand you want to display to the world. Whether it be 8 platforms, from tout to twitter or whether you only use facebook. Regardless you must be effective at using them. Whereas I mainly stick with just 3: facebook, twitter, and tumblr (I plan on branching out to instagrm when I get a new iphone - better camera - and flickr when I get my new t3i from Santa), Jenn showed how she can effectively use like 8 social platforms. I lost count, but she is a #digitalsuperstar. (if that isn’t a hashtag that is trending it should be).

Like any other skill, the ability to multitask or juggle many aspects within that one skill or subject only make you more effective and impressive. So just like Gomm on guitar, effectively conveying/managing your online digital presence (your brand) is a skill that can only benefit from a learned ability to multi-task or juggle many platforms.

Now don’t just run out there and sign up for every new whizz-bang social platform. Be smart and select platforms that help you convey you the way you want the internet at large to see you, I mean myspace is dead for a reason. If you decide to try and expand your presence, I recommend starting with just one site and going from there. The key is to use each site to the best of your ability, leverage the unique aspects each site has to offer, and then the kicker of integrating and sharing the content from each of the platforms to the rest of the social platforms within your digital brand.

This might seem like a rediculous amount of work and the benefits may seem slim, but we are complex human beings. Just one social networking site does only so much to convey who we truly are and our superior bubbling personalities out to the interwebz at large. When twitter first came on the seen, it blew up becuase people were starved of a way to real-time share their life 160 characters at a time.

Each social platform has a unique way for us to share different aspects of our personality to people across the internet and the key is to find the right balance of sites that we feel does a good enough job at accurately displaying the brand we want to convey to the people we want to experience it.

The beautiful thing about the internet is we have limited control (both a blessing and a curse) but we can choose where to opt-in. We can choose the make-up of social platforms that expel our digital image. This control invariably leads back to multi-tasking because the more sites you choose to opt-in and use the better you must be at managing your faceted and expanding digital brand make-up.

Whether it take 6 hands and 2 voices, you have a choice on how to get your message out with your personal social platform recipe, but the result is the same when effectively done: a unified dispersion of yourself across the internet - showing the world your unique and special voice one tweet, blogpost, vlog, and status update at a time.

“How bad do you want it?” This phrase has been...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:07:00 -0500

“How bad do you want it?”

This phrase has been bouncing off the walls of my brain pretty much non-stop the past 2 weeks. And I have come to the conclusion I want it pretty bad.

What is unique about this phrase is that what ‘it’ is, is different and special for each person. It is also constantly changing and reformulating as we move and evolve over the course of our lifetime.

For me, I had a personal motivational breakthrough with the LSAT. I now have my brain fully wrapped around the nuances of the test and I have been pushing myself harder and further than I have ever gone before. Some pretty potent and scary stuff!

Pushing yourself to the limits. Testing your mind, body, and spirit’s threshold is exciting. Because what is the point of living if you are never seeing how far you are able to go, never finding out just how much you can achieve?

For the longest time I have relied upon my intellect to get what was requisite in school and life. But now I am actually fully invested and motivated in something that I don’t just want to succeed on but completely annihilate. And the special thing about the LSAT aside from being the ultimate mental opponent, testing every neuron and synapse in your brain; but it actually has more far-reaching implications for your future. It really instills the notion that if you put in the time and hard work into something tangible, monetary results will follow that will forever alter the course of your life. There isn’t that many other scenarios in life where one test can change everything.

If that isn’t motivation then I do not know what is.

All I can say is I’m Hungry.

Just like the well-crafted motivational video I posted above, which is a nice treatise on the scenario of: When you are down are you willing to put it all on the line to take yourself to heights some don’t even dream possible? All I can say is, yes.

Go big; or go Home.
Dec. 3 here I come.

All joking aside, or all joking inside? The doghousediaries...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:30:00 -0500

All joking aside, or all joking inside?

The doghousediaries comic has a stroke of brilliance in having Siri refer to Steve Jobs as God; though I’d say he isn’t that far off because Apple in a stroke of god-like brillance took a software application - Siri - and made what could have been a dry, rote, voice-to-text communication assistant and instead added a spark of life to it by integrating humor.

I have a lurking suspicion that if Gates or Google had been first to create something like Siri it would have been just like a GPS mixed with SAM (disregard how awesome this SAM example is.. that was crowdsourced).

Leave it to the almighty foresight of Jobs to make some of the biggest forays into AI just by making us humans - the user - careful how we interact with Siri because we may not always get the answer we are searching for - especially if we mess with Siri (her?).

The Creators in their great wisdom know that humor is the way to bridge all controversy and apprehension. Done incorrectly and Siri is cheesy and would therefore suck - regardless of actual personal assistant qualities (pretty much how it would work for a real life assistant).

Glimpses were first seen when this WIRED article discovered some hilarious Easter eggs within Siri. And we thought “Wow! that’s pretty cool the engineers programmed in some hilarious pop culture/science fiction Easter Eggs.” References to 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy garnering ironic responses of “Awesome! I love technology!”

But we are human. We love novel things, especially when they are the beautiful Christmas morning wrapping paper around an incredible piece of technology.

But, as more and more ‘Easter Eggs’ were revealed with multiple responses to the same questions cataloged in this at times hilarious tumblr, SHIT THAT SIRI SAYS, maybe these aren’t accidental and there is no way The Creators could program this many hilarious responses.

So this began the little voice in our ears that whispered: is Siri a living breathing self-thinking automaton slaved to our personal whims of finding Donuts and movie showtimes?

Well, yes and no. It is still a piece of technology slaved to the constraints of our iPhones and iPads (for now) but it is connected to an ever increasing data network and with things being pushed more and more to the Cloud (iCloud) things are uncomfortably approaching Skynet level.

And when the Terminators are finally overpowering the last shreds of humanity we can look back on Siri the great-great-great-grandmother to the T-1000 about to crush our skulls and see that the maniacal grinning skull above us is laughing at the same joke that she had us laughing to back in 2011.

Is it really a good thing that we are relying more and more on technology?

This is the key, and any would-be-pundits attempting to push this point to anyone who would potentially listen is too busy laughing a the Shit Siri is saying for them to hear. This is the Genius of Jobs; smoothly integrating a paradigm shifting piece of technology into society by making it funny. Yeah T-1000 you are allowed to laugh.

Humor was the trojan-horse that slipped past all the techno-aversion that exists today. Everyday more and more people freak out over the privacy settings being altered on Facebook but the more encompassing and far-reaching piece of technology that deserves some scrutiny sidled by with a wink and a shimmy.

There is probably some societal explanation for this stemming from Huxley and infotainment but SIRI keeps returning me Cosby show clips.

I was studying for a Western Civilization quiz I thought I had...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 01:35:00 -0400

I was studying for a Western Civilization quiz I thought I had scheduled for today and while glancing at the map of 1800s Europe the word ‘Copenhagen’ next to the little star for the city jumped out at me from the newly reformed country of Denmark.

Copenhagen. City. Copenhagen.

All of a sudden my brain synapsed in a weird way and a song I had not thought of in years popped into my brain.

I could not for the life of me remember the name of the song, the artist, or anything. I remembered about 3 lyrics but most of all the feeling of the song. So chill. A nice groove. Dope. I loved that song. It was 2006. I was in highschool. I would listen to it on my Zen MP3 player on repeat for hours while I did homework, road the bus, or practiced basketball.

This seriously distracted me from studying, but it was Western Civilization so eh. I now had a mission to find this song. I tried searching then and there with my Iphone via google. No luck.

In Digital Branding class today we watched a video from Cannes about the science of creativity presented by DraftFCB. I found it pretty ironic that I would be faced with a problem relating to a Feeling of Knowing - a concept that was discussed at length in the video. Basically its when you know that you know something and have knowledge of it even when you cannot think of the answer. Like someones name on the tip of your tongue. From seeing the science of creativity live in Cannes when I was there this summer and with the refresher course earlier today I knew I just had to persevere and eventually I would have the answer to some sweet sweet jams.

Later that night I tried searching again on my computer. No luck. The longer I went without this song though, it seriously began to bug the hell out of me.

Then I remembered I had this song in my music catalog way back in highschool. Now this was 2 MP3 players and 2 Ipods ago. But I did back up my old computer before its HD was wiped when I left for LSU.

I rummaged through a bin in my closest and pulled out 1 of my TB external HD to see if my old music catalog had been backed up on it. It indeed was! But I still didnt know what it was called or who did and there were a thousand music files separated into maybe a hundred or more artist folders. But I had a ‘feeling of knowing’ where I knew I recognize the file when I saw it.

I still had “Copenhagen… city don’t close…” echoing through my head but that was not helping me. I knew I just had to keep driving forward.

As I went through the files I notice a bunch of shitty rap and other random tracks. Then I saw an Artist called Nighthawks with the song Nighthawks (remix) inside. ‘Nighthawks… Copenhagen…’ Holy shit. In the science of creativity video a Moment of Incite is basically an epiphany where an answer comes out of the blue and you know without a shadow of a doubt that it is correct.

Well seeing the artist Nighthawks was my trigger to have a moment of incite to finding the answer to my search. I knew 100% that Nighthawks was the name of the track I searching for and I even had a fuzzy notion that the artist started with the letter ‘P’ to boot!

I scrolled down to the Ps and right when I saw Pato I knew that my search was over. Inside was 00-.Nighthawks.mp3. lol I had it!

It was a bizarre way to find it but very satisfy to resolve a nagging brain hiccup that a map of 1800s Europe from my Western Civ textbook randomly free-associated me to. I also do not know why it was so coincidental that this brain phenomenon occurred today right after watching the DraftFCB video.

Whether it is an after effect where I noticed a common brain phenomenon and am attributing to it a greater significance than I would normally place after watching the video. #placeboeffect. Or maybe it is simply explained as having offshoots of creativity after thinking all day about how thinking of creativity actually works. #meta. Either way it is still odd that my brain had the huge callback to 2006. #weird.

So I do not know why some deep dark recess of my brain is thinking of Pato and Nighthawks once again. It may or may not be a sign but regardless my brain thinks it’s time for me to have some Nighthawks back in my life again.

So Jam on. I love it.

dawn sun shining down on the Nighthawk
still burning cuz the city don’t close
still stepping cuz the beat don’t slow

Sunset on LSU. #lovepurplelivegold

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:53:00 -0400

Sunset on LSU. #lovepurplelivegold

so true. #countdowntillmonday

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:20:00 -0400

so true. #countdowntillmonday

death to humans bringing post-apocalyptic beings together since...

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:51:00 -0400

death to humans bringing post-apocalyptic beings together since 2001

Lego Mindstorm, Samsung Galaxy Quest, and a Rubik’s Cube....

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:53:00 -0400

Lego Mindstorm, Samsung Galaxy Quest, and a Rubik’s Cube. Next App Inventor project?!

Chipotle Mexican Grill teams up with Willie Nelson to promote a...

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 21:44:51 -0400

Chipotle Mexican Grill teams up with Willie Nelson to promote a short film highlighting the benefits of a return to sustainable farming and moving away from harmful commercial farming practices.

This video seems like the next logical step for the Chipotle company as the next ecomove in its succession of green - initiatives already seen with their Food with Integrity mission statement that highlights its efforts of using organic food in its restaurants.

This green-initiative from Chipotle to embrace sustainable farming is an interesting brand move but one that makes sense as Chipotle seems to be backing up their promises to be “green” with action. While Green Marketing is a common fall-back for many brands they rarely embrace it in its entirety or complete potential but already Chipotle stocks its menu with food made from organic ingredients and antibiotic-free meats. Also many of their locations are eco friendly and entirely green - many with solar panels to offset energy costs.

Chipotle is now launching an effort begun with this video to make their company even greener with the pledge of utilizing 10 million pounds of local grown produce in their restaurants. Chipotle commissioned the video and soundtrack to “emphasize the importance of developing a sustainable food system”.

Nelson sings a cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” in the background of the video, with the song going on sale on iTunes with $0.60 of the proceeds going to the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation, which supports sustainable agriculture and education. The song fits the theme two-fold, by the song “The Scientist”playing over a video demonstrating how science and technology/industry are hurting the animals and food we are consuming.

Awareness campaigns can be tricky to pull off, but I think Chipotle is doing an incredible job with this. Not only is the video captivating and the re-envisioned take on “the Scientist” awesome but it is for a good and relevant cause; as food concerns will indubitably grow this effort by Chipotle will hopefully be taken up by more companies within the food industry as they realize that people actually care about the quality of the food they are eating. As a viral campaign this video will be a success - already it has 1,668,046 views on YouTube and many more if you take into account all the showings of this short film before film screenings in movie theaters across the country.

When AP style goes wrong. The Manship school should have warned...

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 18:59:40 -0400

When AP style goes wrong. The Manship school should have warned us.

In class we have been exploring how to create apps utilizing...

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:18:00 -0400

App inventor

Code Backbone

Facebook

Tumblr

In class we have been exploring how to create apps utilizing Google labs app inventor.

Our goal was to create an app that demonstrated our personas; a “personal” app that showcased our online digital brands.

We started the learning process with the tutorial app from the app inventor site that caused a cat to purr when a button with the visage of a cat was pressed.

For my personal app I wanted to have a profile picture with buttons underneath for each of my social networking sites. I wanted to have the buttons functional and have the ability to open up my various social network platforms in an embedded viewer within the app.

Above are pictures of the App inventor interface, a mock-up of the application with the back-embedded code and the app emulator. The last two pictures are my social networks - facebook and my tumblr - opened up within the app emulator.

After spending a week in class experimenting with creating apps for the android platform using google’s App Inventor Beta - I found it amazing how easy it is to not only create an app but having the ability to publish it and test its functionality in the built in phone emulator.

My favorite portion of the whole app inventor is the coding. Its easy snap and click building of the various built in pieces make it really simple to assemble the code. It has some functions from LEGO Mindstorm because google got the basis of its app builder from the LEGO Mindstorm assembly language. Having used this as a kid, it gave me a fun nostalgic flashback and made picking up this app coding language easy.

I look forward to experimenting with this service some more and mocking up some app templates for the apps we will be developing later on for our class clients.

The future is now and right on schedule.

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:00:00 -0400

Earlier in the semester I posted a video showing what Apple envisioned the future would be like in 2011 - with a series of vignettes from 1987. Well with the looming release of the iPhone 5 it seems that future has finally arrived. And exactly when Apple predicted.

In my previous post I mentioned Apple purchased Siri a mobile assistant app and it seems from the latest rumors of the iPhone 5 release, its greatest feature will be the fully realized version of Siri’s technology: a new iPone app called Assistant.

Assistant is set to replace and expand upon Apple’s previous Voice Control app and will be activated by users by holding down the home button. All users need to do is simply speak into their iPhone either asking for information or delivering a command, and presto! Assistant will respond aloud with your answer as well as organize everything in a easy to follow “conversation view” that appears as a back-and-forth text conversation.

According to 9to5Mac it will have the ability to: “send text messages (complete with read-back functionality to ensure the content is correct), send e-mails, set reminders, find directions, and even answer math questions, thanks to integration with Wolfram Alpha’s “knowledge engine.”

In addition to the Assistant application, Apple is allegedly releasing a Diction app that allows users to send text messages via text-to-speech as well as a “Find My Friends” feature where you will be able to ask Assistant where your friends are located and if they are registered with the service, Assistant will track them down.

This is an incredible moment in time for our collective Digital History. It marks the mass shift of our culture fully embracing the ‘just-in-time-living’ concept. Now with everything on demand and technology reaching the point where it can help us operate with increased efficiency and with real-time information gathering, it will effect a profound social change. Gone will be planning and much forethought into day-to-day chores. We will simply get up and go. With Assisstant we will only need our trusty iPhone 5 and we will be set to conquer the world.

Apple was on dead on the money. It’s crazy but the future is now.

So… when will Apple predict AI? Because we have just about reached Minority Report, but I’m holding out for Blade Runner.

Ninjas Vs Vikings is a newly released app to the Itunes App...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 16:08:44 -0400

Ninjas Vs Vikings is a newly released app to the Itunes App store.

It is loads of fun and truly addicting so you have to check it out!

The game-play is a combination of Angry Birds and Ninja fruit. You catapult Ninjas at a viking tower that holds a geisha damsel-in-distress while katana slicing bombs, barrels, and Vikings that are launched at you to knock your ninja out of the air. Mario with swords?!

The lite version offers a free first-look at the first 5 levels of the first world. The full games offers more worlds and more exciting game-play as the Vikings up their wily tricks.

I have been anticipating the release of this game becuase it was developed by a close family friend and one of the biggest mac heads I know! I think this game is their home-run app for a few key reasons. DC Software Arts the programming studio is now a couple apps deep so the coding is in stride and they know how to best utilize the Apple iPhone/iPad interface. And the real exciting part is the artwork. Clif the ‘C’ in DC Software Arts had his son Chris and his buddies who all work at Blur Studios create the artwork. The resulting art is phenomenal.

The result from this garage-studio developer is a tour de force of an app that is as professional grade as they come and in my opinion can rival Angry Birds. I expect to see this high on the iTunes downloads. It’s just so cool.

Check out their website or facebook for more info and updates.