The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit my website here. or email me at: jonathan.jarvis@gmail.com

Nice stuff. Simple, effective. Congratulations to Jonathan!

• Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines
• Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback
• Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots
• Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
• Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images
• Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
• More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
• Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
• Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you
• Large Selection: Over 230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available
• Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

Ubercool features. What a pity I can’t get one with the 3g access here in Italy. Damn it! Seems like I’m born in the wrong place…

Take a look at it, it’s full of informative and cool stuff about wordpress. I love the website interface as well.

Enjoy.

…and by the way they made the Wordpress Video SolutionFramework completely open source (coding skills required! that’s not a plugin!)

And by the way they’re still working on it. Not to get the agenda online but to attract more tourists and to reinforce the “Italy” brand. How useful for the citizens! Ain’t this country great?!

Time for something serious: go read the WhiteHouse Blog.

To me it’s a good start: you can’t lead USA without being “connected”… I mean with the people, using everyday technology.

The Internet medium gives way more opportunities to interact with people than ordinary TV, Radio or Newspapers. You get comments, reviews, suggestions. Anytime, from anywhere. Government is participation, participation is government.

You can read more here: Change Has Come to the WhiteHouse.gov.

Communication — Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency — President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Participation — President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

Also go and see The Agenda. It’s really nice.

People should be able to interact with the agenda as well: to discuss specific topics. I know it’s kind of utopic, but, as I said before, the new WhiteHouse.gov is a really nice start.

By thw way: how long did it take to build that website? I am a developer and I can tell you that to build a website like that you don’t need years nor a dozen milions of euros. Go tell it to our government (should you ever get a chance to communicate with them…)

Great tool by the way.
If you like the genre, feel free to leave comments on the SoundCloud website or click on the Share button and spread it.

Wikipedia is built differently from almost every other top 50 website. We have a small number of paid staff, just twenty-three. Wikipedia content is free to use by anyone for any purpose. Our annual expenses are less than six million dollars. Wikipedia is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which I founded in 2003.

At its core, Wikipedia is driven by a global community of more than 150,000 volunteers – all dedicated to sharing knowledge freely. Over almost eight years, these volunteers have contributed more than 11 million articles in 265 languages. More than 275 million people come to our website every month to access information, free of charge and free of advertising.

[...]

It’s the largest encyclopedia in history, written by volunteers.

The following is taken directly from the official statement.

[...] Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version.
[...] new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.
[...] now WordPress includes a built-in upgrade that will automatically notify you of new releases, and when you’re ready it will download them, install them, and upgrade your blog with a single click.

I found out there is also a Google Gears support so you can use your blog offline or just speed the things up while surfing the backend without always sending requests to the server (if I got it right).

This is a really stunning release and all my plugins seems to work just fine. Oh btw, I’ll take time during this Christmas to finish my Wordpress Theme. Never had the will to complete it, damn me!

You are an individual, but you are also a member of a global community. Most important of all, you are a consumer. As a member of this community, it is your duty to consume. Why? Because the system would collapse if you stopped spending.

Funny is that many people won’t even recognize this as a provocation (sad but true). It’s not the fault of the system anyway. It’s our own fault. We feel the urge to compete in everything we do, so we want better cars, better watches, better TV sets and better notebooks. We need better photo cameras. We don’t want to look outdated. We are what we own. What we own becomes what we are and this will increase our social attractiveness. We have to feel desired by others and to do so we have to compete with those who have better mp3 players or better gaming consoles. Or maybe we are just trying to fill a black, deep hole inside our soul.

It’s just a sad carousel. You start looking at things in a very different way when you’re out of this amusement ride.

I am clearly not against brands.
I own a Canon camera, I own Levi’s and I own Nike stuff. I own an Apple iPod player (and I own many things that I don’t really need). I think that the key is to find balance. There should be balance in our life: I won’t change my 350D until I really need to, I won’t change my old pair of jeans until they completely tear apart (and I’ve repaired them thrice!), I won’t buy another pair of shoes until these melt! But why going on buying things from these brands? Because (someone will not agree on this, I know) these brands always left me more than satisfied: their products last for years.

I trust in big brands because they let you buy their products and run with them for decades! And that’s called saving anyway!

I don’t need a brand new cellular phone since my monochromatic-monophonic-cameraless Nokia is still up and running (since 2001). I don’t need a GPS (I know where I am and where I have to go, thanks!). I don’t need to replace my 2 years old notebook just because my touchpad buttons died (both of them, right and left… but I use a usb corded less-than-5-dollars mouse so I don’t care). I don’t need to drink a little can of coke when I can drink 2 litres of pure oligomineral water for the same price. What’s the point?

The point is to find balance: get what you need and choose what gives you the best ROI (return on investment) just like my old Nokia phone or my Levi’s jeans. Maximize its use and lifespan. Be happy with your assets and save whenever you can. If your friends start making fun of you because you’re not wearing the latest metropolitan chic watch, then start investing (time that is, not money) into friends with higher IQ. ROI with real, sincere friends will be greater, believe me. Also try to kill envy, for it is stressful and it can result in a distorted perception of reality.

Find sense in this nonsense consumerism. Balance. Do not hate brands. Do not support them just because they’re cool or trendy. Be as objective as you can be without falling into fanaticism.

Fill your soul with true friends, a job you love, healthy routines. Material goods will give you only illusions and a false sense of self acceptance, at least until the new, improved model comes out. Question advertisements. Question trends and models.

You’re not a sheep and there is no flock.

Jessica Dimmok – The Ninth Floor

In 2004, anywhere from 20 to 30 young addicts lived on the ninth floor of an elegant narrow building overlooking Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The squatters had turned the sprawling apartment into a dark, desperate and chaotic place.

People hustled, scored, shot and smoked wherever they could. Friends conned each other for their next hit. They slept on piles of clothes on the floor. The power was shut off; the bathroom unusable; the kitchen filled with garbage. Anything of value was sold off.

For nearly three years, Jessica Dimmock followed this crew documenting what happened to them after eviction, how they fought to get clean, sank deeper into addiction, went to jail, started families and struggled to survive.

The story of Dionn and Rachel was so… romantically deranged… and beautiful. You’ve gotta see it through the end of the movie.

Matt and Melissa Eich – Love in first person

One year ago Matt Eich, 20, and Melissa Turk, 19, were typical college students. Then, everything started changing. Matt won the prestigious College Photographer of the Year contest, Melissa found out she was pregnant, they got married and moved from Ohio to Portland, OR, for Matt’s summer internship.

In Love in the First Person, Matt and Melissa, with help from their friends, document their life together as they share their thoughts and fears on the sudden changes in their future. They come to realize that, as Matt says, “Nothing good comes without some sort of struggle,” and that beginning a life together is as much about faith as it is about commitment.

“Nothing good comes without some sort of struggle.” and remember that “true love only comes along once in your life”.

Via mediastorm, one of those URLs you keep in your bookmarks.

Quality is really good and you can write stuff on the back of them too. Now I’ve seen that MOO.com offer businesscards too. I’m really really tempted to try them… but I think I’m gonna wait till I have at least a dozen of good pics to print on them.

I took these shots as soon as I opened the package. As useless as they may seem, you can’t really explain their charm and appeal until you hold two or three in your hands.