@jenrobinson did you do sunrise on Cadillac Mountain? Absolutely stunning.
Broadtrip
Posting will be minimal through Sunday as I am in the midst of a 4-day “Broadtrip” with my son. Just dudes. Traveling. Eating lots of ice cream.
Eat Your Yoggrt
I’m excited to announce today that Static Made is officially part of the Yoggrt creative ad network. Moving forward, you will notice one rotating, tastefully displayed advertisement in the right sidebar. The good folks over at Yoggrt are extremely selective with their ad acceptance and design requirements, so you can be sure there will be no tacky or irrelevant messages populating the site.
Just one quick note about advertising: I’ve been outspoken in the past about advertising, specifically poorly-done advertising. Advertising done well, however, has the potential to benefit all parties — readers, publishers and advertisers. I would not have entered into the agreement with Yoggrt if I didn’t think the readers of StaticMade.com could benefit from the messages. Ads running through Yoggrt are relevant to the subject matter published on the site and they are elegantly designed. Please let me know if you feel otherwise.
It’s my hope that these ads not only help me keep the lights on around here, but also provide you, the reader, with value as well.
It’s Alive: Artist Hacks Circut of Life-Support Machines
Designer Revital Cohen has hacked a circuit of life-support machines to keep, not a human, but each other alive. She calls the piece The Immortal.
From the artist’s website:
“The Immortal investigates human dependence on electronics, the desire to make machines replicate organisms and our perception of anatomy as reflected by biomedical engineering.”
What’s that they say about art imitating life? [ via ]
The Troubling Nature of Pop Culture
Joshua Fields Millburn writing about our collective need to reset our inputs:
“Suffice it to say, the American Dream is broken. It has been for decades. And attempting to go back to ‘the way things were’ will not fix it. ‘Fixing it’ would only perpetuate the inevitable, making it worse in the long-run. The longer we put off our troubles, the harder they are to deal with.”
Always late to the party, I only recently discovered The Minimalists, a site run by Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Their essays are wonderful and this one is no different. I’ve long been a proponent of being stingy with the information I let into my life and Millburn’s take on pop culture here is right on the mark.
The $144,146,165 Button
Joshua Gross on the remarkable windfall of tips garnered by NYC taxi drivers after digital touch screens were implemented in the cabs:
“During payment, the user is presented with three default buttons for tipping: 20%, 25%, and 30%. When cabs were cash only, the average tip was roughly 10%. After the introduction of this system, the tip percentage jumped to 22%.”
Amazing.
Brett Kelly on Quitting the RSS
Brett Kelly on why he recently stopped reading RSS feeds in favor of books and hand-picked articles:
“There was too much noise. Even with the relatively small number of feeds to which I was subscribed, almost none of it was interesting to me. I realized that, for some reason I couldn’t quite recall, I felt obligated to stay abreast of new developments in technology and such.”
An interesting piece here from Brett. I’ve had a completely different experience with RSS. Granted, I’m selective with my subscriptions and don’t include any of the tech blogs that update a bunch of times per day.
Most of the sites in my reading list are updated once or twice a day, or every other day. The majority are written by people I consider to be friends or those whose opinions and writing I consider to be remarkable. Currently, there are 27 sites in my subscription queue. I greatly look forward to checking my feeds in the evening to relax with some compelling writing.
Compared with the few other places I hang out online, I get the most value and useful information from my RSS reader. By the way, if you haven’t given up on RSS, you can subscribe to this site’s feed HERE.
Crowdsourcing Baby Names
My wife and I are eagerly expecting our second child, a daughter, to arrive later this summer. We have a few good names picked out, but we’re always open to hearing about new and interesting options. That’s why I’m turning to the fine readers of this site to help with our name selection.
Old People Icons
A humorous and eye-opening look at popular iconography as it relates to contemporary culture from Scott Hanselman. The fact that we’re still using this imagery to convey messages points to the strength that can be established through cognitive associations.
Fully Off
“Perhaps one of the biggest advancements technology can make in our lives comes when we realize the power of simply turning it off for a while. Perhaps one it’s greatest potentials is the expansive, whole, endless space it gives us when we unplug. Perhaps what it does when it is off is equally as miraculous as at it does when it is on. The power that the smartphone gives us to connect to everything is matched only by its power to let us disconnect from everything…whenever we choose.”
The writing of James Shelley is quickly becoming some of my favorite.
Considering the Creative Use of Evernote
There’s been quite a bit of attention thrown the way of Evernote during the past few days. In the wake of the company’s acquisition of the stalwart iPad application Penultimate, bloggers and power users are debating Evernote’s strategic trajectory. If a large-scale acquisition wasn’t enough, Evernote simultaneously released major updates to their Mac and iOS applications.
I use Evernote for all sorts of things. I store everything from expense receipts and official business documents to restaurant menus and meeting notes. I even archive my activity from several social media services utilizing the IFTTT service. All this content is organized and searchable through Evernote’s awesome OCR processing of images and PDFs. There’s a lot of value there for me and I’ve been a happily paying customer for a while.
Hello & Welcome
Static Made is written and produced with love in the City of Champions by Jeffrey Inscho.
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