SHANE ADAMS

A truly fantastic use for Chatroulette has been found: Improv piano playing.

Biz Stone, Twitter’s Creative Director:

We’ve developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com. Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we’ve created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript. This new set of frameworks is called @anywhere.

“My, must it always be cold in here? And would it kill you to hurry up the process a tad?”

An elderly man sat in a large, blank lobby, diagonal to a door. On his face sat two blue eyes, both containing an old soul, and a long, grey beard. He wore what appeared, at first glance, to be a light blue bathrobe; however, upon further inspection, one would find it was a light blue cloak, worn as a garment. Next to his seat was a sizable oak desk, behind which sat a woman of about middle age. The woman’s hair was a dark red, and she wore eyeliner so thick one would think she was some sort of prostitute, not a secretary. She, too, wore a robe, but hers was light red.

“You’re always in a rush, Mister — Pardon me, sir, but I don’t think I’ve ever learned your name.”

“Ryland,” the man replied, placing his small satchel off from the ground and onto his lap. “You think, with me coming and going so often, you’d remember my goddamn name.”

“I apologize,” said the secretary, speaking with no sign of remorse. “Many people walk into this room on a daily basis, not just you, sir. Now, please, be patient.”

Ryland grunted, and looked across the room to a small window, seated next to the door. The view out of it was nothing but a blinding white light, which the elderly man seemed to manage to gaze into with no problem.

“I’ve been waiting, though, for quite some time. And it’s always been like this; whenever I’m ready for the Exit, you always take your time processing paperwork, and sending the messages, and whatever the hell else you do. I never understand why I can’t just leave.”

The woman looked up from her desk for the first time since Ryland had entered, and stared at him. “Preparing someone for the Exit is extremely challenging. You don’t just say you want to Exit, and we let you pass through all willy-nilly. It takes time, and you, you’re the worst to prepare. You come in, unannounced, and say you’re ready, and bring all of your bags in and whatnot, and then proceed to complain about how it’s taking so long, or how the room is always cold, or how—”

“The room’s always cold, though!”

“Silence! You proceed to complain about all of this, yet you never understand how it sets me back! I have people who call months in advance, saying they’re ready for the Exit, and you’re Exits always force me to push back everyone else! You never seem to think of anyone else but yourself, and what you’re going to do next.”

Ryland remained silent.

“So, Mister Ryland, if you’d please keep quiet, I’ll go back to my work, and you’ll be out in no time.”

The elderly man turned his direction off of the woman’s words and on to the door. It was, like the desk, extremely big, with a refined, maple front. It had one large, golden knocker in the dead center of its woodwork. However, it wasn’t the door that intrigued the man’s interest, but rather what was outside of the door. When his Exit was cleared, and he was permitted to leave, he would open the door, and walk out into… Well, Ryland didn’t know exactly what he would walk into. You never knew, when you were Exiting. All you knew was just that: you were Exiting this world into a new one.

“So,” the man said, “can you tell me where I’ll be going? What I’l be doing?”

The secretary remained mute to Ryland’s question, glued to her typing. She pressed the keys on her outdated typewriter, an Olivetti Linea 98, as if her life depended on it.

“Ma’am?”

“I heard you, sir. I’m not allowed to disclose that information. You’ve Exited forty-five times, you should know policy better than anyone.”

“But not even a hint? Just a small hint, ma’am? I’m begging you!”

“I’m sorry, Mister Ryland. You’ll know your fate in about five minutes.”

That last sentence sparked the man’s interest, and he realized he could wait five more minutes. It was getting late; men and women walked out of the backdoors, and made their way to their homes, to their families. Ryland realized that these people, this room, would be the last memories he had before his Exit. He realized that his fate was dawning on him sooner and sooner, with every second slipping out of his hands. He started to contemplate on his Exiting. Maybe he shouldn’t Exit. Yes, maybe this Exit would be worse than the rest. Maybe he should stay here for once, and not be so anxious to leave. Maybe this whole—

“Mister Ryland, we’re ready for your Exit.”

The elderly man looked at the secretary, and got up out of his seat. Trying to remove the thoughts out of his mind, he gathered his things, and opened the large maple door. Like the window, the room flooded with a blinding, white light. Ryland gulped, and, not looking back, walked into the unknown. The light swallowed him whole, and, in seconds, Ryland had left the world.

The woman behind the desk smiled, and got up to close the door. She then returned to her work.

Years later, a young boy ran into his mother’s bedroom. It was very late at night, and the mother had just dazed off into a dream when her son awoke her.

“What is it?” she asked, slightly irritated.

“It’s extremely cold in my room,” said the young boy. “Could you raise the temperature a tad?”

Congratulations | MGMT

This may be my favorite (or, at least, most anticipated) album of 2010, and it’s not even out yet. This track is some of the best new music I’ve heard in a long time.

Bill Carter for NYTimes.com’s Media Decoder blog:

The fans of Conan O’Brien will not have to wait much longer — though they may have to wait in long lines — to see their favorite late-night comedian perform again: Starting April 12 in Eugene, Oregon, O’Brien’s 30-city tour — with national and international stops — is on.

And if the title is any indication, the tour will also be sending a message about how O’Brien and his Team Coco feels about his abrupt departure from NBC’s “Tonight Show” in January. The title? “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour”.

We get ripped off a lot. I often spot a button image that’s been repurposed, or a layout that’s just a little bit too inspired by a previous design we’ve done. Generally, we find it really flattering and have a good laugh - if nothing else, it makes us feel that we’re probably doing something right if people are so eager to plagiarize. But earlier today a friend linked me to Mozilla’s new JetPack design and my jaw dropped.

Absolute insanity, especially from such a large corporation like Mozilla.

State of the Internet, a motion type presentation by the Jess3 agency of mostly mind-blowing statistics from the big social networks during 2009. (via Matthew Buchanan)

Missed The Boat | Modest Mouse

Their entire album, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, is an oldie but a goodie. Exactly what I need to finish this pile of crap called “work”.

We view our world in black and white.

We’re blind to the outside world around us. We only see our lives; we don’t live others lives, nor do we understand how every individual lives.

Outside of out simple, black and white life is a wide array of color: shades of red, and blue, and green, that we will never experience. Unless, of course, we take a risk.

We can expand our horizons by expanding our world. We can explore, we can leave our safe zones, we can run free. There’s nothing stopping us. All we have to do is want to see the color of others’ worlds.

Photo credit: “Portland [Black & White]” by Andre Peniche

Twitter: The Criterion Collection

What if Twitter… came to life?

We asked some of our friends to film their favorite tweets. We didn’t care how they did it. They could read it. They could act it. They could do it with puppets. Whatever they wanted. The only rules were it had to be a tweet written by someone else and it had to contain the entire tweet and nothing but the tweet.

This is what they gave us.

We hope you enjoy it.

@poeks & @sween

Fantastic. In fact, pure genius.

OK Go’s music video for “This Too Shall Pass”, off of their new album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, has gone viral. And with good reason: the elaborate Rube Goldberg machine shown off is yet another example of the band’s breathtaking creative video format.

@conanobrien:

This is how many people it took to write today’s tweet: “Jumbo” shrimp? WTF!!

Layered. (via shaneblog)

I found some photos from the last blizzard that have been wasting around on my hard drive, so I threw them up on Flickr.

Joan Miró.

My Name is Jonas | Weezer

Oh, classic Weezer. How I wish I could just listen to you on repeat forever.

I looked out the window of our minivan for the first time in two hours, since we were going on vacation. We were heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge on a rainy, cold afternoon, when, for the first time in my life, I gasped out of absolute shock. I know, I know. Why gasp at a bridge? I mean, it’s only a bridge; it’s not like it was the first time in my life I’d seen a bridge. And it wasn’t. Instead, it was what was happening on the bridge that shocked me.

There was a man, about in his mid-thirties, being held back by two older gentlemen. He was only wearing a white tank-top and jeans, with crazy hair and bloodshot eyes. He was screaming ridiculously, trying to get out of the men’s arms.

“Let me do it,” he kept yelling at the guards. “Let me jump, you bastards!”

We had been learning in class about California’s history, and the fact that the Golden Gate Bridge was the most popular place to commit suicide in the world had came up. The teacher handled it with ease, except when one girl who sat in the back row asked a simple question:

“Why?”

The teacher stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t have an honest answer for the girl.

“Well,” she finally began, trying to state of an understandable explanation. “We have structure to our lives. We’re built on the foundation of our family, friends, and others we depend on, much like the bridge itself is. With time, we grow, and develop ourselves, and our “bridge” grows in size, until we hit a monumental moment, until we reach the sky.

“Some people, however, aren’t built on a good foundation, or some have something else they come across that weakens their foundation. They can’t handle the pressure being put upon them, on their bridge, and the bridge comes crashing down, comes to an end. We can try prevent the crashes, of course, but sometimes they’ll happen, and they’ll just come crashing down anyway.”

I sat there, in the minivan, staring at the man. He was now on his knees, sobbing into his tank-top, with one guard still holding on to him. The other was on the phone, talking to someone. He then put the man on the phone, which caused him to be even more hysterical. The man finally calmed down, hugged the guards, and was escorted back to his car.

I thought about what my teacher said about the bridges, and the structure they needed. She had said that the foundation was the problem, and that, sometimes, you couldn’t stop the bridge from coming down. And, though that may be true, you can always rebuild.

Photo credit: “Golden Gate Warning” by noesym

Ole Miss has been the subject of plenty of weird college football stuffs over the past year or so, but nothing is as bizarre — or as awesome — as the current student movement to have Admiral Ackbar, the Star Wars character famous for stating “It’s a trap!”, become the school’s new mascot.

The Daily What:

Masashi Kawamura’s “Rainbow In Your Hand” flip book does as advertised.

Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc. Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as “IE6,” is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.

Genius.

Bill Amend.

Poster art based off of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds, made by a fantastic creative team, were auctioned off on February 18th to benefit the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. See all of the posters over at Upper Playground.

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’s new logo. I may not be behind a Leno Tonight Show, but I know a damn nice typeface when I see one. Read more at idsgn.

Chris uploading a photo of Marco taking a photo of CNN taking video of David.

Happy President’s Day.

Any Colour You Like | Pink Floyd

There’s nothing better than listening to Pink Floyd on a Saturday night. Well, maybe having a social life, or some friends. But I wouldn’t know about that.

Looks like I’m in good company. Really, really good company.

Hank Green, with the help of Potter know-it-all Melissa Anelli, made a Google search story, closely resembling the Google Super Bowl ad, based on the Harry Potter series.

Oh, wow. ReadWriteWeb’s article on Facebook’s login with AOL has caused a mass uproar, with people who search “facebook login” on Google thinking RWW was actually Facebook, and complaining in comments about the “redesign”:

Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services. You can however click here and become a Fan of ReadWriteWeb on Facebook, to receive our updates and learn more about the Internet. To access Facebook right now, click here. For future reference, type “facebook.com” into your browser address bar or enter “facebook” into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser.

Sigh. Be sure to read the comments, considering 90% of them consist of “redesign” complaints.

Let’s face it, Google is turning into Facebook: a company that will make anything popular, disregarding what their users want. Google does video. And photos. And email. And music. And blogging. And health records. And browsers. And operating systems. And social networking. And, now, broadband.

Google shouldn’t give a damn about being a social network, or any third party device for that matter. What they should care about is being the best damn search engine around. It was what the site started as, why it got discovered, and why people come back to it. It’s the best damn search engine around, and, quite frankly, all this other bullshit they’re making to “stay in the game” is useless.

Sure, a lot of it is useful; I couldn’t live without Gmail, Google Maps or YouTube, and both are major forces in the digital world. But Super Bowl ads? “Reinventing email”? Thanks, but pass. I could care less about Buzz. It’s no different than any other Twitter clone out there. Which is why it being a product of Google bothers me: If Google, the most popular search engine, and the most visited website in the world, is going to release a product, it should be revolutionary, interesting, or game-changing in some way, not just pointless.

So, when Google Buzz fails, don’t be surprised. And when you sit around, wondering what ever happened to the little search engine that could, don’t be surprised, either. You have to know when too much is too much, and, right now, it looks like Google doesn’t.

I haven’t taken measurement, but Pennsylvania has declared a state of emergency. It’s still snowing heavily, and, considering we got 15 inches on Saturday, I’d say we’ll end up with about two feet total.

Satire: The most potent form of truthiness.

CONGRATS, NEW ORLEANS!

This is the greatest thing I’ve seen this week.

Distant. (via shaneblog)

Took some photos of the snow last night, just as it began lightly falling. This is my favorite of the batch and, to be quite honest, I’m not sure why.

Wanda Kamarga.

Merlin Mann on 43 Folders:

Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you’re pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you’ve been unknowingly trying to “focus” on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don’t really care that much about. Just consider it. Because, in the absence of caring, nobody can focus on anything, apart from their own abject lack of focus. Think about it.

Right now.

I sat there, in that same seat in the back of the bus, listening to the raindrops slamming against the window. It was melodic, and mesmerized me. I had always been one to recognize patterns, whether they were worth noticing or not. It was a habit I had, for better or for worse, and it couldn’t be stopped. Some would find it obnoxious, to always hear music out of such trivial things, but I considered it a treat.

Outside the window was a scene of pure chaos; rain flew everywhere, with large winds blowing green grass all about. There were farm animals, too, dazed and confused while grazing in fields, wondering how they ended up in this storm, and wanting nothing more than to exit it.

I tried to take my mind off of the weather and began to look around the bus. It was nearly packed with people trying to weather the storm: a young mother with two boys was sitting in the very back, trying to deal with her crying offspring; an elderly man and his wife sat in the front row, holding hands as their wet, thin hair dried; a dog walker brought along his entire troop, including two poodles, a bulldog, and a Rottweiler, which scared a young girl sitting next to the dog walker, who was sobbing into her mother’s dress. There were skaters, and businessmen, and readers, and dreamers, and everyone under the Sun, all in this small bus.

At that very moment, a thought popped into my head: we were all here for the same reason. We all had different upbringings, different backgrounds, different wants, different needs, different professions, different family, different friends, and different lives. But, at that very moment in time, we all wanted to do the same thing: we all wanted to weather the storm. We all wanted to try and lessen our problems, one of our many, many problems, by hopping aboard a bus, and staying dry for a few minutes. We all wanted to make our lives just a bit easier, just a bit more manageable, in that moment.

I turned around and looked out the window one last time before exiting the bus, filled with strangers who I felt close to, and saw a rainbow coming from behind a large tree. I smiled, and walked out, silently wishing the other passengers good luck in life, and passing on the melody of the raindrops.

Photo credit: “Rainy bus ride.” by Michelle R.

Steven Frank:

shutup.css is a custom user stylesheet you can install in your web browser which will automatically hide the comments section of many popular web sites. My gift of a quieter, saner web to you.

Thank you Mario! But our multitasking is in another device!

Cyanide and Happiness.

Ze Frank’s newest venture takes a look at how misery can be turned into music. Giving out a phone number online, asking for people who were experiencing emotional pain to call in and describe how they felt, Frank collected a soundboard of words and discussion from the heartbroken callers. He then took those sounds, and sent them to musicians and DJ’s, asking for them to create songs out of the noises. The result? Pain Pack.