Pancake City

Says so much about our relationships to technology and people.

I found this link from kottke.org. He prefaced the link by saying it was “creepy.” I found it very cool, and didn’t understand why he thought it was creepy. Then, after a minute or so, I began feeling uncomfortable and had the same feeling. It’s too real.

If you just looked at HDTVs trend, one would conclude that people want bigger screens, sharper pictures, and more vivid colors, and are willing to pay a significant amount of money for them.

If you just looked at YouTube, one would conclude people don’t care a bit about any of it. They’re happy to watch blurry, low-resolution video in a small box. I don’t even hear people complaining about the video quality on You Tube, yet they probably would complain about a lackluster HDTV.

There are many reasons for this contrast in expectations, but I wonder if there is any one predominant reason. Is it lowered expectations for watching videos on a computer? The length of YouTube videos–i.e. we will put up with anything for five minutes? The price, free vs. a thousand dollars or more for an HDTV? Genetic wiring that only makes a small percent of the population really care about video quality? A generational difference (e.g. younger people have better eyes are are in the habit of watching online video)?

My guess is that the combination of cost (free) and convenience (instant viewing) is more than enough to compensate for low video quality for most people. Less important are the other issues, such as length. Length is an issue for me, but I know many people happy to watch 22-minute You Tube-quality TV shows one after another.

If I am overlooking something, chime in.

What’s the best way to share the interesting things you find on the Internet?

I’m looking for a cool stuff aggregater, something that would be integrated with Firefox, allow me to add bookmarks with one click (like del.icio.us), allow me to write a description when I want to (kind of like del.icio.us), offers a recently bookmark feature that I can add to my blog page (like del.icio.us?)…

Okay, I’m going to give del.icio.us another try and see if it has what I need. I remember trying it and not being keen on the interface, so if you have another option, let me know.

Update: Yeah, del.icio.us isn’t what I need. I think I found the perfect web app: Yoono. Just installed it, but it’s very promising so far.

We (Westerners) currently read left-to-right, snapping our eyes all the way back to the left after reaching the end of the line. This snapping back is a huge inefficiency. People, once they got comfortable with the method, would be able to read faster if text were printed so the next word after the end of the line was directly below, not across the page.

There are some obvious problems with changing to this system, and it would be impossible to do on a national scale. America can’t even change to the metric system, and that makes a lot more sense than this idea.

It is currently near impossible to do on a personal level too. The comfort of reading in one style for decades may be too difficult to overcome. Even if one had the desire, the number of books and newspapers printed in this wraparound format is either zero or close to it, and every publisher would find the thought of doing so ridiculous.

The Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle–two EBook readers that display text electronically on a handheld device–got me thinking of a time in the near future that would at least remove the technological roadblocks. It would be a trivial matter for an EBook reader to automatically display text in a wraparound format. The Kindle allows for one to read online newspapers and blogs too, so presumably wrapping text for these would be easy as well.

What if these EBook readers decided to offer an option to switch to this reading mode at the press of a button? It may end up a novelty, but perhaps it turns out that one can feel comfortable with this new reading style after a few hours, and the benefits make it worth it.

There’s no extra publishing cost, no large technical hurdles to overcome, and it’s optional. It’s also a feature not offered in print, and probably never will be. Shouldn’t these EBook readers do something better than their print counterparts?

I think if one were to switch to a different reading style, the majority of what we read–at home, at work, on the web–would need to be electronic plus convertible to this new style. We are many years from that becoming the everyday environment, but electronic publishing is at a point where, with the help of a few yet-to-be-developed computers programs, a motivated individual could experiment and get a good sense of the costs and benefits of learning a more efficient reading style.

And you can buy them online?

It’s a cell phone jammer that you can get for $50. Who knew spy technology was so cheap?

(They are illegal to use in some countries, including the U.S.)

Very funny.

One of the effects of HDTV is that it points out flaws that were hidden by the low resolution of the older format. Set designers for sitcoms are starting to make more intricate props because what looked like a real mahogany table now looks like spray-painted pine.

HDTV (may) also bring out blemishes and minor cosmetic flaws that actors used to be able to cover up with makeup and clever lighting. This is significant because the standard of beauty for television actors is near perfection, a standard that most people can’t help comparing themselves to and thus drives the fashion, makeup, and cosmetic surgery industries. When HDTV becomes more commonplace, one of things will happen. One, actors will meet this new standard through better makeup, more plastic surgery, etc. Or two, actors will find that makeup can’t cover everything and plastic surgery is either not worth it or impractical for everyone to get.

I personally think the first option is much more likely than the second. But whichever way it goes, something will change. Either people will be more obsessed about beauty and less tolerant of their imperfections, or the standard of beauty will lessen and people will think it is more acceptable to have small flaws.

How to make your own Segway.

Is there a word for always being worried that you’re on a hidden camera show? A more nuanced form of paranoia? I saw a four-year-old talking to his friend on a cell phone today, and my first instinct was to check the bushes for a camera.

I’m sure children have been using cell phones for years and I’m just out of touch, but to me, the scene was like seeing a little kid in a business suit and holding a briefcase. “Awwww. He’s trying to embezzle money from his grandma’s 401K. That’s so adorable.”