aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Vegas
Speaks to the times we’re living in I’d say:
[A]s mayor, he wants to take a National Historic Landmark, the old federal courthouse where he tried his first case, and turn it into a mob museum - and there’s no alleged about it.
Many of Goodman’s constituents and some former FBI agents are appalled by the idea, but Goodman insists he’s just recognizing Vegas’ founding fathers. Or godfathers.
“The mob founded us, and I never apologized for them because I represented them, and they made me a rich man,” he said.
Such an odd place. I went semi-regularly through the 90s for conventions. More recently, Thomas Hawk spent a weekend at the Bellagio. He shares his thoughts and his stupendous photos.
Unfortunately, you will not see photos of his visit to the Neon Museum. He asked. They answered:
Although many people have taken it upon themselves to post photos of the Boneyard on Flickr and other photo-sharing websites, we ask that no one do so. We are an educational facility first and foremost - and therefore do not allow stock photography. Photos that are uploaded to sites such as Flickr are not copy protected, and therefore are able to be lifted and used by unscrupulous people. As a result, we are trying to limit the number of images from our collection that are hosted on the web.
Hawk is right, “This is wrong and backward thinking.” Cory Doctorow agrees, “For curators to block the dissemination of their collection is antithetical to curatorship.”
I’ll pass on both the mob museum and the neon museum, and take in Liberace’s Fabulous Footwear at the Liberace Museum instead.
Tomorrow’s television today
All of the major networks are doing at least some experiments making content available via mobile devices, including deals by ABC (with Verizon), Fox (with Sprint and Verizon), and NBC (with Verizon).
CBS is making content available via both Yahoo.com and Google Video; Fox via MySpace and CinemaNow; NBC via YouTube.
All of this points towards a world where consumers can watch the content they want when they want it and where they want it and they can do so with a range of different options from paying to watch advertising free content to watching advertising-supported content for free. Not every show is available in all formats yet. Most of the networks are testing a few platforms at a time. They are still offering only selected series. But there’s no question at this point that these various platforms are going to be increasingly central to the ways we watch television.
I’m one:
Some see these trends as representing the next step towards the disagregation of television content—that is to say, consumers will follow individual series with little regard to their time slots or network placements. For some of us, that moment is already here.
Smart speed sign
The M42 is a major British motorway that has a reputation for being a testbed for new roadside technology, with a current traffic management scheme including sensors for tracking traffic built into the road and variable speed limit signs every 500 meters. The latest piece of kit to be tested out during roadworks is a radar-assisted speeding sign that not only flashes when it detects a speeding car, but also displays the license plate number of said car. Yeah, scary.
Sirius Internet Radio
The soon-to-be-available Sirius Stiletto 100 is a $350 portable satellite receiver/MP3 player that, among other things, connects via Wi-Fi to the internet so you can listen to Sirius stations without using Sirius’s satellites (it went http://www.tss-radio.com/sirius-stiletto-live-portable-receiver-sl100pk1-p-3909.html">on sale three days ago).
In addition, Sirius recently announced an “online only” subscription that completely ignores its satellite infrastructure. The company has already trademarked this satellite-free service as SIR, or Sirius Internet Radio. [...]
The groundbreaking Stiletto 100 was created for Sirius by a company called Zing, possibly so-named for the way it allows users to “zing” content around wirelessly.
Aside from Wi-Fi and a satellite reciever, the slim Stiletto 100 packs Bluetooth, meaning that might let users link to other Stiletto users without draining much power—unlike the MusicGremlin and (apparently) the Microsoft Zune, which use power-hungry ad-hoc Wi-Fi connections. The Stiletto 100 also works with another Zing partner, Yahoo Music Engine, apparently so that users can select a “Buy This Song” option to purchase whatever they’re hearing on a Sirius channel (or download it as part of a subscription).
About Zing:
Zing CEO Tim Bucher founded the company in 2005. Aside from being the man who coined the term “automagically,” Bucher was a founding member of WebTV, which was acquired by Microsoft. There, he eventually became a member of the Xbox team—oddly enough, the same team which spawned Microsoft’s upcoming Zune player.
Bucher also spent a couple years as an Apple executive, overseeing development of the Mac Mini and the iPod’s core technology. Those years ended in bitter acrimony in late 2004, when Jobs fired Bucher.
RELATED: Apparently we don’t want it on our phones.
