[I just don't understand... I really, really don't...]

I suppose it’s some sort of ‘experiment’ to see how well emoticons function in every day life, but this is a work of classic literature.  Couldn’t he do this with a Palahniuk book, which has much more modern and colloquial language?  On top of all this, the book is an astounding 6,432 sentences that will need to be translated.  It’s not like there’s some program that does all this.  Benenson is planning on farming out all the work to folks who want to do it for almost no money.  Everybody wins! …  I can’t imagine anyone thinking this is a good idea.  But, so far, Benenson got 83 damned fools to support his project and it is currently under way.  I hope that when this ‘translation’ comes out those 83 scurvy naves purchase it and there the list will end.  That’s my dream, anyway.  If you want to read an amazing novel that will change your life, read the original and adore it.  It’s not easy, but it’s far and away one of my most favorite novels of all time.  Who knows, it could be for you, too.

It’s a web-based program that turns rough, hand drawn sketches into photoshop style image composites like those shown here:

Hat tip to gizmodo.

Apple seems to have missed the memo that there is a recession on:

“The New York Times’ Brad Stone reports that Apple announced boffo earnings for the just-concluded third quarter: Net income was up to $1.67 billion, a 47 percent increase over the comparable quarter last year. The company sold more computers — 3.05 million — and more iPhones — 7.4 million — than in any quarter previously. And you can hardly sneeze at an additional 10.2 million more iPods, to boot.”

Read the full story here.

Summit Global and the aptly named Impossible Project are slated to bring back a film-based instant camera for release in mid-2010.

Who’s gonna buy this thing? Ya got me. The wistful and nostalgic? Casting agencies? People who want to take dirty pictures of themselves and others without worrying about them ending up on facebook?

More interesting still is the Polaroid TWO, also coming out next year, which will bring the instant-print technology to a digital camera. If you’re like me, you’re scratching your head wondering why the hell nobody thought of this already.

Hat-tip to engadget.

Photosketch makes everything extremely easy by using a number of very complicated algorithms.  What you do, however, is pretty simple.  You choose what you want your background to be, then what you want in the foreground.  You sketch out the objects you want and where you would like them to be placed.  You label them, and then the program takes over.  Going through all possible image matches, Photosketch (using an algorithm) sorts through all the appropriate choices and how they relate to one another.  It takes lighting, shape, size, and a whole bunch of other things into account before giving you your choices.  Once it’s done doing all that fancy stuff, you the user gets to choose which one best fits your needs.  It’s pretty much the future.  If you have Photocentric, you may want to give this a run around.  I wasn’t able to use the program myself, but it sure does sound like it would be pretty fun to fool around with.  And, if you’re still confused about what this nonsense is all about, take a look at this quick video that explains it all:

Back in 2007, Merlin Mann (real name) gave a talk on an application called Inbox Zero.  What this does is a goal to get your inbox to have nothing in it; hence, Inbox (0).  In order to attain that, many people have to constantly scroll up and down to see what they want.  Sure, spam filters will do this kind of stuff for you, but Google’s application does it so that you keep the stuff you want and not lose important e-mails.  It’s an excellent system and, if you have an hour to kill, check out the video that explains it all.  Here’s the video:

I’m a bit skeptical, yet.  I mean, how good can these foods actually taste?  Are we looking at stuff like ‘astronaut ice cream?’  Have you ever had that junk?  It’s gross.  It’s questionable at best, but if they can perfect it and make it really taste like a nice porterhouse, I’ll be on board.  Keep your eyes and ears open for this one, though.  It’ll be quite the innovation if it ever gets off the ground.

This has been going ’round the internets recently. It probably comes as no surprise that PETA has a blog. What would a modern activist group be if it didn’t have a platform where it could gloat about their last antics and wave a fist at the establishment?

But something seems to have gone amiss, at least in PETA’s blog planning team. You see, the name of PETA’s blog is “PETA Files.”

Go on, say it. PETA Files. That doesn’t sound like another word to you, does it?

Doesn’t it remind you of another social problem, but a problem that is clearly not related to animal cruelty?

CNET writer Elinor Mills has been having trouble with using her iPhone in the AT&T network recently, and decided to do something about it. It seems to be happening especially in cities, where AT&T’s systems are overtaxed and can’t handle the call and data volume.

She writes in “AT&T takes the phone out of the iPhone“: This is not a new problem. AT&T was criticized when traffic from attendees at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, overwhelmed the network earlier this year. And there were widespread complaints about dropped calls and spotty service after the launch of the iPhone 3G a year ago.
I wondered why, a year later, the service still seemed unreliable. I called AT&T (on my reliable landline at work) to find out. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel blamed the problem on the increasing amount of data traffic iPhone users are creating, which CNET News and others wrote about earlier this month.

Interestingly enough, the spokesman repeatedly insisted during the interview that it was not story-worthy. Excuse me? EVERYBODY is complaining about how crappy AT&T is everywhere around the US, from San Francisco to Chicago to New York.

The public consensus seems to be pretty clear, but there has not been a formal study yet: AT&T sucks, and if Apple were to change carriers or drop the exclusivity arrangement with AT&T, millions of subscribers would instantly jump ship.

The most amusing thing to this story is AT&T’s reaction to the article, where Mills had conducted an informal survey among her friends about whether their AT&T service sucked and if they would move to a different service.

Wrote Siegel in an email: “So you are actively asking folks to submit their experiences? Sorry, but you and I have a basic disagreement about why you are doing this story. What is the news here beyond what others have covered?”

Read the full story at CNET.

via Apartment Therapy Unplugged