Monday, July 16

I'm Not There

Here is a preview clip from the highly anticipated Bob Dylan biopic titled "I’m Not There." This is the first preview of the film that has been leaked, and wouldn't you know it was on YouTube.The black-and-white clip depicts the first meeting between a young Dylan (portrayed here by actress Cate Blanchett) and beat poet Allen Ginsberg (played by comedian David Cross). As many of you may or may not know, Blanchett is just one of six actors who will be playing the main role, calling forth their inner Bob Dylans to tell the singer/songwriter’s story from the different perspectives of his life. Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Marcus Carl Franklin and Ben Whishaw will also play the role. I can't wait til it hits theaters on September 21.

Tuesday, July 10

Apple Plans Cheaper iPhone

According to the Reuters news organization, Apple Inc. plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone near the end of this year that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player. The information, released via a JP Morgan report, cites a patent application document dated July 5 that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel.

Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan and author of the report, sees the addition to Apple's mobile lineup as a logical one. "We believe that iPod Nano will be converted into a phone because it's probably the only way for Apple to launch a lower end phone without severely cannibalizing iPod Nano," he said noting that the new phone could have "rather limited functionality."

For all of us (myself included) who didn't manage to scrape together the $600 to buy an iPhone when the product began selling late last month, there is still hope. We too may one day be able to join the smug throngs of Apple's loyal, electronics-addicted devotees.

You can read the original Reuters story here

Friday, July 6

How do you feel?


I came across this neat little web app today called "We Feel Fine," and I thought that you all might find it intriguing.

"We Feel Fine" is a data collection engine that automatically scours the Internet every ten minutes, harvesting human feelings from a large number of blogs. Blog data comes from a variety of online sources, including LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google.

More specifically, , the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling" every few minutes. When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.

This process is repeated automatically every ten minutes, generally identifying and saving between 15,000 and 20,000 feelings per day.

I thought this was great because it really helps to show that their is a connection we share with one another while blogging, surfing, etc. that is often overlooked because of a lack of physical connection.

You can visit the website and run the app by going here