THE GREAT WALL OF OAKLAND

On the first Friday night of each month, a large wall of an Oakland office complex morphs into an outdoor theater. A projector on a nearby rooftop shows videos a hundred feet tall on the exterior of a building at the corner of West Grand and Valley Street. The spectators — most of whom also attend the monthly event called Art Murmur in nearby galleries — stand or perch on the curb to watch the show.

via The Great Wall – NYTimes.com.

SORA AND THE CLOUD

SHOW DATE
January 19, 2012 (Thurs) 7-9pm

VENUE
Apple SF Store
1 Stockton St., San Francisco (map)

WHAT I’M DOING
I’ll be giving a 20min artists talk (slideshow) of my Interface series—this is an encore presentation of what I presented last year at Stanford.

WHAT IS OPEN SHOW
Rapidly growing into a worldwide movement, OPEN SHOW is a series of free monthly curated artist-talks that feature 5 or 6 photographers who have 10-15 minutes each to show a 20 image story (or 4‐7 minute video/multimedia project). Beyond offering a stage to get great work seen, shows are also incubators for emerging photographers and works in progress. This evening is a “best of 2011″ encore so it should be an especially compelling show. More info at openshow.org.

OTHER PRESENTERS
Jeremy Rourke – Out to See
Brandon Tauszik – Pray For Mercy
Michael Mullady – In Memory of Fabienne Geichmar
Yoni Klein & Alka Joshi – Blink
Cera Hensley – Here Nor There

Come experience this unique live show featuring the six best projects from 2011 curated from hundreds of submissions. Work includes a photo collage music video, powerful images from Haiti, surreal landscape dioramas and more. (I am the more, I suppose).

>>RSVP AT FACEBOOK (optional)

Some images from my Interface series…

RELATED: video of my presentation of this work at Stanford last year
ALSO: Read the post about me over at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery blog

Paper or plastic? When it came to cups the answer was always “both” since you didn’t have a choice.

Now we do.

So the main goal here is to make plastic, carry-out lids obsolete.The design has flaps similar to takeout cartons that fold over to seal in cold or hot beverages, while creating a sipping spout. See their site for a quick animation.

This is the kind of brilliant rethinking of everyday objects that makes me think we might evolve out of this chemical swamp we call home.

via: The Compleat Cup | One Piece Paper Cup.

An interesting account of one persons experience with Godaddy and WordPress Hosting.

Continual frustrations, annoyances and poor value for my money

I switched from my old hosting provider (Godaddy), to WordPress.com because Godaddy was giving me issues every other week, or had caching issues, and did not support gzip (fully) etc. Plus the $5/month I was paying was not worth it.

via Why I switched from Godaddy (WordPress.org) to WordPress.com « one cool site.

Also: a related discussion about SEO and WordPress.com. Interesting opinions on pros and cons of keeping a simple site at wordpress.com in order to improve SEO.

> Read my other Godaddy related posts
> Read about myWordPress Hosting service

goPano

I see complains about fuzzy videos and an explanation that teaches alot about how it works.

But my main issue with this is that it wont shoot stills – that might be more fun for me to play with actually. I think it’s got a wider angle of view than the Kogeto. It’s also slightly bulky – at least compared with the competition…

kogeto

Kogeto

I  was at first surprised to find a competitor. Very similar but physically smaller and i think that’s a big plus.

• their kickstarter comments
• they say “The 4s is going to vastly improve the quality of Dot videos due to the 1080p resolution so we’re really excited”
• The Dot let’s you view the full 360 in their player – i like that better than dragging around a video to see the whole thing. But you can’t see the screen while sooting and you can’t see as much vertically (gopano sees 90 degrees)

other comparisons:

• http://www.johnmason.me
• http://www.iphoneproguide.com
• http://answers.yahoo.com

BubbleScope

wait, there is a 3rd option: BubbleScope
360x120degrees in a package that looks smaller than goPano. But you can’t buy it yet.

Web-based tools

Google AdWords Keyword Tool
This tool helps you evaluate the usefulness of keywords and helps you find related terms for your WordPress based site.  Just input a series of search terms and the Keyword tool tells you how many people searched for those terms, and  related terms, (globally and locally).  Sort by keyword, number of searches or competition. searches measures Competition measures how many people are actively marketing on that term through Google Adwords. It gives you an idea of how difficult it might be to rank for that particular term. Try out the  exact match and phrase match features also, as it can increase / decrease the search volume dramatically.

Google Insights for Search
Rank keywords against one another and lets you see their performance over time: Some search terms are more useful to your business than others, and search term values can change over time.  In terms of SEO marketing,  it can be a great strategy to rank for a keyword which is starting a meteoric rise – but only if it’s relevant to your content of course.

For example, if you are the only cell phone accessory store with content about the iPhone the week the iPhone is announced, and your site is equipped to close sales, you’ll likely draw a lot of traffic and sell a lot of product.

read about more Tools To Improve Your Online Marketing Campaign by Yoast

WordPress SEO Plugins

• WordPress SEO Plugin: this revolutionary plugin has a variety of tools to help you analyse your pages and posts as you build them. The powerful SEO tools are right there in the editor and they include many educational tips as well.
• Redirection: This one lets you add redirections manually – from an old url to a new one. Avoiding broken links and properly setting up 301 redirects is important to keeping your SEO rank when changing your site’s link structure.
• Permalink Finder: This clenver plugin automatically redirects your old urls to your new ones based on keywords in the url. For the right situations this could save you many hours of rebuilding links manually.

Intersection for the Arts

Chronicle Building
925 Mission Street (@ 5th), Suite 109

Friday, December 9, 2011
6:30 – 9:30 p.m.

Silent Auction Ends at 9:00pm

via You’re Invited to (c)elebrate! A ME’DI.ATE Holiday Party & Fundraiser 

Update: read the eastbayexpress Review

I’m in a holiday show/sale that is in conjunction with this Timescapes exhibition.

I will also be in the auction at SF Camerawork’s annual Benefit Auction of Photographic Prints
Saturday, 12/3/11: Auction, bidding starts at 1pm…

Collaborate presents Timescapes, a look at time and memory through the lens of the camera, featuring the work of seven members of the Bay Area Photographers Collective. Layering memories through a wide variety of cameras and photographic techniques, images become amorphous, undefined. A single moment is stretched through the blur of movement to include infinite others.

We believe in the creative power of collaboration, participation, and engagement – where artists from varied backgrounds and disciplines come together to create, and where the community is a part of that experience.

Collaborate Studio & Art Gallery
431 13th Street
Oakland, CA 94612
Located in City Center Oakland, at 13th and Broadway, steps from the 12th Street BART Station.

Lytro lets you take pictures like never before. Unlike a conventional camera that captures a single plane of light, the Lytro camera captures the entire light field, which is all the light traveling in every direction in every point in space.

This comment on their blog gave some idea of how this technology can really be different.

I see potential for this technology in the detection of wavefront aberrations of the cornea. Currently, Fourier based wavefront algorithms are used for wavefront guided ablation of the cornea for LASIK. This technology has potential to give us new insights into corneal aberrations as well as intraocular lens technology.

The images on their site could be done with a wide depth of field and then selective blurring. So in that sense it’s not so impressive and kinda just a little flash-viewer gimmick. But there is something new here and even if this camera doesn’t bring out its full potential I am very curious about it’s eventual uses.

via Lytro.