August « 2008 « the martini shaker*

Archive for August, 2008

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Apparently the Lego Miniman is turning 30 years old, and Lego has started a campaign celebrating the little guy’s existence.

They’ve started a blog called Go Miniman Go that has lots of videos and articles about the history of the Lego Miniman and what lies ahead in his future.

One of the coolest features of the site is their call for people to create videos celebrating this anniversary. People have been making videos using Legos and the Minimen for a long time now, but they’re asking some of the video making community to pull out all the stops.

Lego created a video as inspiration for others to follow suit. It details some of the historic highlights of the last 30 years as seen in a Lego world. It’s certainly a cool video, but it was made using 3D animation, so of course it’s going to be slick.

However, the video below was created by Nathan Wells and he has chronicled the history of the world using Lego. You tell me which video is more impressive.

Posted in Creativity, Social Media, Videos | Comments

Is it time for IM to go?

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Last month I asked this question about blogs and today it hits me that maybe it’s time that instant messaging faded into the background.

IM used to be a huge part of my communications toolbox. When I was a PC user, I had Trillian loaded up so I could use MSN, AIM, Yahoo! and IRC. As time went by, I trimmed a little fat and went with MSN and AIM, since most of my Yahoo friends had accounts on these platforms as well. I got rid of IRC because I just didn’t use it anymore.

When I switched to Mac I loaded up Adium so I could have MSN and AIM once again, but I noticed that I was keeping MSN support for only one person. Everyone else had moved to AIM. Adding to the fact that Adium did not support voice or video chat, I wanted to ditch it in favor of iChat.

But that one friend remained. I began bugging him to dump MSN in favor of AIM, telling him that all the cool kids were doing it. Eventually he caved and I was able to dump Adium (and MSN) altogether.

Now, almost all my IM friends are on Twitter. We do all our sharing and direct communications there. I’d consider leaving iChat turned off if it weren’t for the three people on AIM who don’t have Twitter profiles.

Do I start harassing them to move on to newer technologies, or again am I being too hasty? For one thing, I certainly can’t get video chat directly in Twitter. I’d have to use U-Stream.TV or Qik, but those technologies are one-sided. Direct messaging on Twitter isn’t near as quick and easy as IM, and lately it’s been a little flaky anyway.

So, no. I don’t think it’s time for IM to go just yet. In fact, I think IM probably has a few good years left in it before it gets completely replaced.

Posted in Interweb, Social Media, Technology | Comments

Best electronics unboxing video EVER.

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

I’m a gadget junkie. I admit it openly. I also admit that I have looked at tons of unboxing photos and videos online when some new shiny plaything hits the shelves.

This one, however, tops them all. The folks at Samsung have hired themselves some supernatural packaging designers. I do suspect, however, that the box would smell slightly like miniature horse manure and would taint the overall experience just a little.