Might I suggest you check out “Made You Look” at Suite 100 Gallery (2222 2nd Ave)?

Shawn Wolfe is amazing, and I’m sure you’ll have a blast. Besides, Suite 100 is right next door to my OSNAP.net office.

I was reading an article (showcase) at Adobe.com today for the A.C. Mosley High School and how they’re using Adobe video products to teach high school students basic editing.

While the article focused on student achievement and editing skills they’re learning by a valuable teacher, the post did show a few stills from student projects. I’m all for student expression, and not censoring their work, but did Adobe really need to promote their products by showing a still frame of a high school student drinking alcohol?

There was no caption to this image, no explanation of the students work (could it be that the beer was ‘near-beer?’), and therefore leaves me to believe that what the students are learning is a lot more than A/B editing and color correction. That’s a shame to me as the film could be a powerful voice into teenage drinking, the problems associated with, or even something more. How am I to decide other than just a personal rationalization?
Come on, Adobe. Is this really necessary to promote your products, or are you just lazy in not providing captions to your images?

Cryptic title, I guess so. It makes sense to me, being a tech-nerd, about how The NY Times has recently added linking buttons to their stories, namely to Digg.com and Newsvine.com (as well as other functions.

My employer brought the Newsvine.com button to my attention today during a meeting about extending opportunities to a domain - something I’m interested in whether it be how Newsvine.com is succeeding, what many things you can do with Flickr, or where OSNAP.net is headed.
For some time I’ve seen technorati and digg links appearing on Web sites, mostly in the technology realm (cnet, engadget), but the NY Times is different: in my opinion, the NY Times Web site is a valuable and credentialized news source and their adoption of social bookmarking tools like Digg and Newsvine are a sign that there is value in those services.

I recently read an article about repurposing content for the Internet - in my case, show flyers and upcoming events. The article was written to make the point that ‘cramming’ (forcing content intended for one type of delivery into another) was a poor way to present information online. I slightly agree, but also feel that sometimes ‘cramming’ is your best option - keep the format as similar as possible in order to keep the experience (what the end user ‘gets’ out of viewing yours or someone elses content) consistent. For instance, if you see a show flyer on a lamppost, you’re seeing a carefully decided (depending on the design) upon layout; a flyer is printed in a large size in order to display the event information as well as invoke some kind of emotion or reaction (the hopes being “I like what I see; I’ll go to the show because I want to a) experience what’s on the flyer or b) find out what the heck I just saw is all about”). In displaying show flyers online, I’ve attempted to keep the flyers as close to their printed versions as possible (in some cases allowing the download and printing of those flyers). It’s important to me that the flyer not become just an addition to a listing because we’re supposed to display the flyer - instead, I want the flyer to become more important than the text itself. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that (hopefully) well designed artistic content.

So, how does  ‘cramming’ fit into the fact that The NY Times has embraced sites like Digg.com and Newsvine.com? Well, for me it finally credentializes those organizations by saying ‘no longer are the links solely for technical people [tech-nerds], they’re for everyone.’ Or, it could mean ‘The NY Times feels that Newsvine.com is a powerful (and free) marketing resource for extending The NY Times brand that we’ve made the decision to embrace their posting features and assist as best we can our own audience in extending our brand.’

It is my hopes that my projects will embrace the ‘extend our brand’ thoughtstyle. I know OSNAP.net is built upon the very same idea, and therefore it’s a mission of mine to extend any brand I have involvement.

From The Great Dictator, starring Charles Chaplin:

What was true then, is true now.

Trivia: did you know this speech was broadcast over the airwaves near the end of WWII by British radio? Amazing.