Only aired twice and rarely seen today, The Twilight Zone episode “La Rivière du Hibou” may be one of the best, most beautifully crafted 24 minutes in that anthology’s entire spooky run. The episode – produced in France and directed by Robert Enrico – won best short subject at Cannes in 1962 and the Academy Awards in 1963 before being brought to the States by Twilight Zone producer William Froug.
Though it is an adaptation of the Ambrose Bierce story, “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge,” the episode has almost no spoken dialogue and a minimal soundtrack. Judging by the comments, it’s only on YouTube as required viewing for a college course.
I’m with you guys – Garry’s Marxism lecture was pretty straight forward.
The moral of this Public Service Announcement is clear: everyone on the Internet is a pedophile, especially the local ticket-taker. (Great casting.) Also, teens today are apparently especially stoic, or that girl isn’t much of an actress.
In reality, this ad is much more about fame than about privacy. Assuming this girl has become some sort of Internet sensation, then these scenes represent the dark side of being a modest celebrity unprepared for fame. In what should have been a cut-and-dry exercise in telling kids not to post their addresses online, does this PSA really worry that children will become too famous too quickly?
Also, this ad is inaccurate: I’ve been running this blog for almost a year, and no vaguely cute boys ever glanced at me because of it. No winsome girls, no Asian men, nothing. I did get more playing time though.
Well, another month, another release of the PodTech Media Player – this time, we’ve refreshed the whole “sharing” UI and polished the graphics a bit, while at the same time adding a much-asked for feature… resizability! That’s right, it can now be not only embedded on clients’ sites at any size or ratio, but also popped up in its own window, where you can resize it dynamically to your heart’s content.
A big shout out to the whole team who worked on this, from initial mockups to deploy: you know who you are!
Of course we’ll be rolling out minor bugfixes this coming week, and more improvements are on the way. We’d also love to hear any feedback.
Vestal’s own Mike Lin is featured today on Worldchanging with a very thoughtful and forceful argument for designers to change their ways before it’s too late. In short: sustainability is dead, so it’s time for a totally new way to look at the way we live.
Heavy stuff. Remember, design is a method of action. Keep on thinking, Mr. Lin
In these times of trouble and woe, all we need sometimes is a hug, or at least a nice letter from a friend. Well, imagine how upset I was this morning to see that Gmail had callously dumped this message into my spam folder:
Hello, gentleman
I miss you in the morning, I long for your sweet tender touch. If I denied it, I’d be so remiss. I miss you in the afternoon, I long for your smile. Darling, I am waiting for you so much. I miss you in the evening, when the blueblack curtain falls; I stare in your eyes and wish that you would kiss me. I miss you in the night time; I long to hold your arms. Please write to me, my only one, and fill my heart with love.
I wrote this to you, These words come from my heart! I am looking for a soulmate! Have a nice day,
Olga
But since most people don’t write me love letters without, you know, ever meeting me or actually existing, I did a little checking up on my quasi-Slavic pen-pal. A quick search turns up this page from McAfee. Phishing? Identity theft? The Russian mob? What have you gotten yourself into, Olga?
Our office here in Peru tried composting for several months, dutifully giving a large red bin table scraps and sawdust and the occasional stir. Though we had such hope in those days, our compost would not cooperate. Something in the humid salty smoggy air of Lima led the bin down a terrible, unspeakable path that is – without question – definitely not towards compost. In fact, I once saw a green tendril reach out of the bin and grab an unsuspecting pigeon. True story.
So I feel a bit better knowing that even well-meaning professionals are having a hard time with composting. Mariposa, California, a popular stop on the way to Yosemite, can’t seem to get its massive compost pile under control, leading to dozens of complaints from nauseous neighbors. The $8 million project hoped to turn the stream of waste left by Yosemite’s millions of visitors into something useful – instead, for the time being, it’s a giant smelly white elephant.
Back here in Lima, we’re all too afraid of what waits for us in the red bin to deal with the problem. See no evil…
Google just released a route-mapping feature for Google Maps (when did they give up on the name “Google Local”? I prefer Maps, anyways). This has a terrific interface for creating simple maps with points, lines, and even areas, and seems to allow publishing said maps to the Google Maps search function. When you search a map, you can scroll to the bottom of the search results and click on “User-created Content”. I haven’t been able to bring up any routes but that’s most likely where they’ll show up.
This function mirrors many of the innovations in Google Maps Pedometer, released many months ago – but (and maybe this is why it took so long) they’ve really nailed the interface. Still, a couple oversights, contributed by Dave Pitman, Vestal’s director of interface design:
Latitude/Longitude input for points (for those with GPS devices)
Distance measurements for the route/legs of the route. (Unless we’ve missed something.)
And when will Google (or someone) finally offer a free, unlimited (::cough:: Yahoo ::cough::) geolocation service? For that matter, I’ll pay for good geolocation based on address strings. That is to say: “1503 Spruce St., Unit B, Boulder‎ CO‎ 80302” => Longitude: -105.27625, Latitude: 40.019878”.
Note: We used geocoding technology in the recently launched Campus Vortex project, to calculate the distance between a campus and various restaurants.
73. Which of the following best describes the proposed new version of the Graduate Record Examination, the necessary standardized test for graduate school?
a) Twice as long, 50% more expensive, just as inane.
b) Already delayed a year despite four years of development.
c) Accused of being a”flawed product designed to increase test-maker income…”
d) A massive failure that has been shelved indefinitely.
Of course the answer is that all of these are true!
Educational Testing Services, the company that designs the exam and dozens of others, has thrown out its new GRE, claiming a lack of testing centers able to handle the redesigned test. Nearly 600,000 people take the GRE every year, paying $130 each for something that is a glorified SAT – a test, I should mention, nearly everyone already took to get into college.
The standardized testing industry is big business not because it delivers a fair and just service but because the SAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and GMAT have hammerlocks on their respective admissions processes. Millions of students, without any other option, spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours for what? A poorly printed number on a sheet of paper?
Though Jon Saints now commutes to our Boulder, Colorado office, Vestal’s newest designer once spent his days under African skies in the small nation of Malawi, working on technological solutions to combat the continued spread of HIV. His tool: open-source faves Linux and the Opera browser.
In order to track patients and their treatments, a vast amount of information needs to be collected, sorted, and stored accurately – a tall task in the States, let alone the developing world. In Malawi, the NGOBaobab Health Partnership – with Jon’s help – adapted Linux to $100 touchscreen Internet appliances, then wrote a program for Opera to run in full-screen kiosk mode. The resulting terminal can easily manage the nation’s health data and is scalable wherever a web connection can be made.
Obviously, no amount of technology can replace medicine in fighting disease. But in working against any sort of global problem, be it AIDS or poverty or famine or whatever, there is a tremendous amount of organization necessary to ensure resources are delivered where and when they can do the most good. Simple systems – like the one Jon designed – can mean a world of difference to those in need.
Yesterday I talked about how train tickets miserably fail their passengers. To that end, we’ve come up with how we think train tickets should be done. Partly as a design excercise, partly as a demonstration that even some of the most basic things we use in everyday life can be improved, but mainly as a lot of fun to challenge ourselves with a difficult task, here’s our vision.
Some of the things that loomed large in our minds as we designed these:
Language Free- anyone should be able to understand the tickets
Clarity of Critical Information – what number train? what platform? is this my ticket to milan or florence? Can I easily see everything I need to know just by glancing at the ticket?
Clear Instructions on Validating – frantically hunting for a ticket machine when your ticket should be stamped by the conductor wastes valuable minutes before your train departs
The life of a ticket – taking into account use by both the passenger and the conductor
Approximately 30 iterations, several real-life limitations and considering over 20 different factors brought the mockup above. If you want to read in more depth about our how we conceived and designed of this, follow the link below to the in-depth description.
