MetaFilter posts tagged with digital

Disruption: The new Crescent City newspaper war

raysmj — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:50:52 -0800

Just under a year ago the company that owns the Times-Picayune (Advance Publications, a Newhouse family operation) newspaper of New Orleans, stunned the city and journalists nationwide with the announcement that it would be cutting its print edition to three days a week, while focusing more intensely on its online operations. But now more print (and digital, for that matter) options are available in the Crescent City than last June. Recently, in the face of increased competition from a post-TP-cutbacks, localized version of the Baton Rouge-based Advocate, the Times-Pic announced that it would unveiling a new tabloid print edition, called TP Street, on other days and releasing early Sunday editions on Saturday and .... something something. This followed the Advocate's being bought out by billionaire businessman and perennial self-funded higher office (governor, mayor) candidate John Georges of New Orleans, and the Advocate's hiring of former stop staff at the New Orleans standby. (The Advocate notes in an article on the hiring that the staff are "Pulitzer-winning.") It should be noted in all of this that the Times-Pic's website, NOLA.com, has continued to be the source of constant reader complaints for design and placement of stories. Meanwhile, online or micro-news operations have expanded in the city over the past few years, at least somewhat, via other sources. And the Advocate has yet to develop a strong online or social media presence, locally, although it presumably just getting cranked up. Weighing in on the developments: The New York Times and The Columbia Journalism Review.

Persistence of Vision: Reading the Language of Cinema

kliuless — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:32:53 -0800

2013 Jefferson Lecture with Martin Scorsese (text) more on Scorsese from the NEH: -Scorsese blurs the line between entertainment and art. -The Art of Martin Scorsese -A Selective Filmography -An essay on Martin Scorsese -Martin Scorsese Biography also mentioned... -The Film Foundation -The Red Shoes -Martin Scorsese on Restoring The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Still far from that digital democracy any utopian could hope for.

iamkimiam — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:01:52 -0800

7 (well, technically 6) myths of the digital divide.

The PAPAC-00

popcassady — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:50:30 -0800

In less than an hour you can build the simplified digital computer shown in figure 1, using only a pair of scissors, three dozen common pins, and the parts shown in figures 1 and 2.

So is this, Goodbye steadicam?

lawrencium — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 05:15:53 -0800

The "MōVI" demonstrates why most film vs digital debates are missing the point. An issue explored in recent documentary "Side By Side", that we are past the point of pixel peeping and can pursue fresh paradigms. Previously ish

Compare and contrast, bits vs dead trees

Brandon Blatcher — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 06:32:35 -0800

As lexicographers revel in the capabilities of online dictionaries, one person notes the death of print encyclopedias.

Yang Yongliang

homunculus — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:44:08 -0800

Digitally Assembled Futuristic Megalopolises and other works by Yang Yongliang.

Wuthering Bytes

Wordshore — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 03:32:12 -0800

Kate Bush album covers, reimagined as ZX Spectrum artwork. The original album covers and her most recent work. The ZX Spectrum on Wikipedia, plus the limitations, and some trickery, of its graphical capabilities. More Spectrum artwork, and pixelart being created. Not to be confused with the Latvian death metal band.

"You're no longer in the film business—you're in the Fabergé egg business."

fearfulsymmetry — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:31:06 -0800

With 35mm Film Dead, Will Classic Movies Ever Look the Same Again?

The Typewriter at the Gates of Dawn

Wordshore — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:25:16 -0800

The BBC reports that the last typewriter to be built in the UK (according to its manufacturers) has been donated to London's Science Museum. "Brother said it had stopped making typewriters because demand had fallen to 30 a day, with most of those being sold in the US." From less than five years ago, another BBC news story: "The Japanese multinational Brother sold 12,000 electronic typewriters last year in the UK..." The first typewriter was patented (but not commercially manufactured) in 1714. Though many other mechanical typing devices were invented thereafter, the Sholes and Glidden typewriter (developed between 1866 and 1874) was the first commercially successful model, and the one which gave us the world 'typewriter'. Though in decline, the typewriter industry is not - contrary to recent reports - completely over. As recently as last year, one manufacturer was producing machines for the US prison system. New Brother typewriters are still for sale on Amazon. And Mom and Pop and independent stores, from Oregon to Massachusetts, are still around. The Flickr Writing Machines group contains many pictures of typewriters.

Leonardo Interactivo

Marauding Ennui — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:16:45 -0800

The Royal Spanish Library has put online today an interactive version of Leonardo da Vinci's Madrid Codices I & II. There are transcriptions of the text (in Spanish and Italian, click "T" on the bottom menu), animations of many of the mechanical contraptions (click play button "ver animacion") and the "Indice" in the bottom menu organizes the folios by theme.

4K digital restoration of "Lawrence of Arabia" in theaters October 4

Egg Shen — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:10:14 -0800

On October 4 you will have the cinematic opportunity of a lifetime to see David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen in a new 4K digital restoration.

We come in peace for all mankind.

zarq — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 13:09:15 -0800

Google brings its Street View cameras into the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is their largest special Street View collection to date: 6000 panoramic images, including the Apollo 14 module, the Vehicle Assembly Building, Launch Firing Room #4 and Space Shuttle Orbiters Atlantis and Endeavour. Intro Video. (Via) Other special Street View Collections. Don't miss Art Project.

Photographer Stefano Bonazzi's nude series, Smoke

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 07:20:15 -0800

Photographer Stefano Bonazzi's series Smoke, where nude subjects vanish into the air.

EYYyyyWWWww

netbros — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:12:43 -0800

Sound-Word Index — Emotions and their sound can invade our digital messages. Our words become flexible and vibrate according to the volume of our voices, transforming their written form into an expressive and resonating language. Without the help of body language, words can sometimes fall short in our digital conversations. However, sound, volume and rhythm can influence the spelling of our words, helping to translate our emotions hidden behind our screens.

The Library of Utopia

davidjmcgee — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:42:14 -0800

"Despite the challenges it faces, the Digital Public Library of America has an enthusiastic corps of volunteers and some generous contributors. It seems likely that by this time next year, it will have reached its first milestone and begun operating a metadata exchange of some sort. But what happens after that? Will the library be able to extend the scope of its collection beyond the early years of the last century? Will it be able to offer services that spark the interest of the public? If the DPLA is nothing more than plumbing, the project will have failed to live up to its grand name and its even grander promise."

Nuts for Digital Photography

netbros — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:33:10 -0800

Every weekday Tipsquirrel.com produces a new tutorial, article, quiz or product review with a connection to the Photoshop family including Lightroom. Canon Blogger shares insights and experience from a photographer, blogger, and IT Professional, and is home of The Podcast about Learning Digital Photography. At Photofocus.com they're informing, entertaining and educating people who are interested in photography. Advanced Photoshop Blog — this is the blog for the UK magazine. Dave Cross Online — helping photographers and creative professionals get the most out of their software. Dave has taught Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign to thousands of users around the world. dekeOnline — Electronic publishing pioneer Deke McClelland is a popular lecturer on Adobe Photoshop and the larger realm of computer graphics and design. Digital Photo Experience — created by Rick Sammon and Juan Pons to bring to you photography tips, advice, news and information. John Nack on Adobe — is Principal Product Manager at Adobe, and his gig involves building next-gen creative imaging apps for mobile devices. Lightroom Secrets — Tips, tutorials, news about Adobe Lightroom. Scott Kelby Photoshop Insider — Scott teaches Photoshop & Photography at KelbyTraining.com. He is Editor-in-Chief for Photoshop User magazine.

/bin/rm -r -f *

zarq — Sun, 20 May 2012 20:49:51 -0800

Mythbusters' Tested Blog recently posted a special feature from the Toy Story 2 DVD, in which Pixar's Oren Jacob and Galyn Susman recounted how the files for the movie (just 10gb of data!) were almost lost due to both an erroneous Linux command and a bad backup. The folks at The Next Web: Media followed up with Mr. Jacob, and learned that the movie was actually tossed out and reworked from scratch again nine months prior to a release date that was set in stone, not by the computers, but by the filmmakers themselves: How Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was deleted twice, once by technology and again for its own good.

Digital Aeronautical Charts

Confess, Fletch — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:29:00 -0800

Digital Aeronautical Charts

Not After Eight

infini — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:59:38 -0800

A new initiative recently proposed by the Royal Canadian Mint proposes to create the MintChip, a digital currency that’s similar (to BitCoin), but is backed by the Canadian government. Aiming to become “the digital equivalent of the coins we use every day,” in the Canadian Mint’s own words, the MintChip will target micro- and nano-transactions conducted both online and offline, whether at the physical point of sale, on mobile devices, or among peers. Via

The death of 35mm?

Horace Rumpole — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:01:16 -0800

John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, drove the point home at the association's annual convention last year in Las Vegas. "Simply put," he said, "If you don't make the decision to get on the digital train soon, you will be making the decision to get out of the business."

As movie studios look to eliminate the expense of 35mm prints, what are the consequences of going digital? (printer-friendly link)

A psychopathology of unconscious gesture in search of a purpose

taz — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:50:27 -0800

"The Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices is cultural anthropology. It seeks to recover those moments of intuitive prehensile dexterity, when the famous and the ordinary alike felt the unconscious desire to occupy their hands for an as yet unknown purpose. Like Roy Neary's obsession with the image of Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), this gesture was vague, uncanny and compelling. It is the intimation in images of a gestural second nature to come." Some are more convincing than others. Some will be found in the background. Some require even more hunting. They're all sort of fun.

The Holga D

duien — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:18:06 -0800

The Holga D, a digital camera concept based on the popular Holga medium-format camera. It's a minimalist digital camera that maintains the mystery of film. There's no display, just a little e-ink shot counter on top. The controls are equally spare: shutter speed, ISO, and a completely manual lens.

In the old days of analog photography one had to wait, wait for finishing an entire roll of film, wait for development and so on. But now, in the age of digital photography many photographers agree that the anticipation and delayed gratification of analog photography made the overall experience of photography even sweeter! From the front it may look like just another digital camera, may be a bit minimal, but the backside is surprising, as it does not have a display! Even though Holga D is a digital camera, in order to achieve its simplicity, it reduces the feature set to absolute minimum. Even the display is not there! So your photographs remain mysterious until you download the images. This makes the experience quite similar to the good old film based cameras.

"The future for digital storage is constant migration."

mediareport — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:38:53 -0800

"Most of the filmmakers surveyed...were not aware of the perishable nature of digital content or how short its unmanaged lifespan is." After the Motion Picture Academy's release last month of "The Digital Dilemma 2," a warning aimed at independent filmmakers and nonprofit archives, cinematographer John Bailey talks with one of the report's authors about the perils of data migration ("It’s not unreasonable to say that the term "digital preservation" is an oxymoron") and the need to educate filmmakers who are so "enamored with the perceived benefits of digital image capture and workflow" that they fail to realize preservation concerns start to appear almost immediately after their work is completed. Film professor David Bordwell covers the report in a detailed post about preserving "born-digital" films, sixth in his "Pandora's Digital Box" series about the worldwide conversion to digital projection, with lots of good links at the bottom.

Digital Images are SomeThing to aspire to? (A reflection on Hito Steyerl's proposal)

0bvious — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:13:43 -0800

Artist and film-maker, Hito Steyerl, asks us to stand shoulder to shoulder with our digital equivalents. Digital images are Things (like you and me) - a plethora of compressed, corrupted representations pushed and pulled through increasingly policed and capitalised information networks. If 80% of all internet traffic^* is SPAM - a liberated excess withdrawn^** from accepted channels of communication - perhaps it is in The Poor Image we find our closest kin? * In her recent October Journal article (Digital Debris: Spam and Scam), Steyerl claims that "80% of today's email messages are spam" ** This piece by Finn Brunton, (Roar so wildly: Spam, technology and language), is referenced by Steyerl in the same October Journal article