Like many four-eyed, Brooklyn-dwelling culture nerds, I was tickled when the Obama White House hosted an evening of music, poetry and the spoken word last May. Somehow I missed this clip of artist and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda performing "The Hamilton Mixtape" until I saw it on clusterflock last week.
Google knows that we don't like it that they know so much about us - because they're inside our heads. So, in the name of transparency and to give individual users more control over their privacy settings, Google launched it's Google Dashboard.
I opened up my own Google Dashboard expecting to find that the Mothership has stored my social security number, my credit rating, dress size, innermost fears and late-night snacking habits. In reality, I found a bunch of boring stuff like my number of RSS feed subscriptions, number of conversations in my Gmail Inbox, number of widgets I installed on iGoogle, and my age, gender and zip code. I'm pretty sure the staff of the Ketchum Mail Room knows more about me than Google does. The only thing that looks potentially interesting is my web search history, which also happens to be particularly boring at this moment. So, Google Dashboard - is this anything? Personally, I'm more excited about the new Google Music Search Feature.
This would have come in handy yesterday when a colleague and I were trying to remember who sings "Right Here, Right Now" (Ans: Jesus Jones). Of course, when I just ran a search for "Right Here, Right Now" in Google it pulled up the Fatboy Slim version. Nice start Google, if your aim is to collect enough embarrassing data to blackmail me into joining the robot uprising in 2040 you're going to have to try harder.
I don't understand anything about modern television culture and I don't know anything about Star Wars, so I certainly don't know what a pair of seemingly intoxicated Ewoks was doing on The TODAY Show this morning. I do know that those charming Halloween-themed crafts that the presenter is trying to exhibit were the handiwork of my super talented friends Alicia and Sarah, who crafted them specifically for this broadcast segment.
Um, good work girls! Sorry all of your hard work was upstaged by a moon-walking, amorous Teddy Ruxpin wannabe. This is why I stick to the Internet - a place where Ewoks never pop up out of context.
As a person who still gets Citigroup Center confused with the Bloomberg Tower, I am particularly fascinated by Stephen Wiltshire's current project at the Pratt Institute. Wiltshire, a British artist on the Autism spectrum who didn't learn to speak until he was nine years old, has a remarkable gift for drawing city skylines in great detail ... from memory. Wiltshire has been drawing the New York City Skyline from memory on-site at the Pratt Institute since Monday, October 26th. You can watch him, live on webcam, here. Designboom has close-up photos of the canvas and the work is stunning.
Here's a profile of Wilstshire that aired on BBC as part of the German-produced "Beautiful Minds" series (Expedition ins Gehrin).
Since the Balloon Boy fiasco, it's nice to have a new reason to look up.
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This is the personal blog of Nancy Martira. All opinions expressed here belong to the author and are not necessarily shared by Ketchum PR.
Nov 17, 2009 at 12:17 PM 