Tag Archives: business

Bookmarks for January 13th

By Ed Fladung | January 13, 2010
  • Official Google Blog: A new approach to China
    must read press release from SVP at Google, about China's censoring authorities' organized and highly sophisticated hack attacks on Google's infrastructure as well as 20 other large companies, in various sectors as part of a plan to uncover information on human rights activists in China. This is no joke.

    I repeat, this is a google press release, not conjecture. [via DF]

  • THERES SPACE FOR OL DAT I SEE by @_m_i_a_ – TwitVid
    how crunk is MIA? chick can do no wrong. prepare to have your mind blown. best to watch this with large headphones on.
  • A Torturous Interview: John Yoo Does The Daily Show (VIDEO) | TPM LiveWire
    John Yoo is the legal scholar behind the total crap that Bush/Cheney used to justify torture. this guy is insane. must not miss episode of the Daily Show. In part two Yoo admits that he never met Bush, the guy who he essentially gave Imperial powers too, simply because Cheney asked him to.
  • Robert Hodgin | Portfolio
    generative computational art, you may know him as Flight404. awesome. [via surfstation]
  • Retro Music Posters by Paul Gardner
    absolutely sick design work. i love this style. you will too. something for everyone.
  • Bodhi Oser's new portfolio site
    run. don't walk. to check out Oser's new portfolio site. one word: fuckingimpressive. Oser (working under Tom Adler's Art-Direction), is responsible for almost single-handedly changing the face of how surf culture is marketed. The singular design aesthetic and definitive photo editing used for Quicksilver/Roxy and mostly all of your favorite surf books, Oser's influence in surf culture can not be underestimated or oversold.
  • Surfstation – Joe Klein
    "Over the past 30 years, Republicans fed the delusions that you can have low taxes and world-class public services, and Democrats acquiesced in it. It would be nice if we had an honest national conversation about revenues–and the sun-setting of many of the Bush tax cuts this year provides the perfect arena for it–but don't count on that taking place."

    - Joe Klein

  • James Cameron's Avatar Movie Performance Capture Featurette
    amazing behind the scenes featurette on the wholly new capture tech behind the movie. James Cameron is a genius. He really does get across the "uncanny valley". I loved Avatar.
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for October 23rd

By Ed Fladung | October 23, 2009
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for July 31st

By Ed Fladung | July 31, 2009
  • Nick Drake – River Man
    your inspiration for today. beautiful video by Tim Pope.
  • Apple: Secrecy Does Not Scale – Anil Dash
    is Apple slowly self-immolating when it screws over iphone developers with all this secrecy garbage? maven indie iphone devs are fleeing the platform in packs. is the iphone's golden years over?
  • Custom Letter — LetterCult
    holy crapola. so much juicy good typography here. loving it. inspiration for days. [via @Nybe]
  • Scientists Are Concerned About Cancer in Animals
    new nasty, virulent forms of cancer are being discovered in wild animals, that are the result of heavy carcinogenic environmental contamination. are human beings really the top of the evolutionary chain? How did cheap crap from Wal Mart become the thing we collectively care about most? [via @jimmoriarty]
  • Isolator
    my new favorite app. when you need to concentrate on something your doing in a particular application (like writing a blog post in Safari or designing something out in photoshop) just hit the command keys for this app and it hides all your other app windows and the dock and presents your current working window on a black background. hit it again to return the windows. should be built into Mac OS X.
  • Minimal Mac
    one my new favorite blogs. tons of tips on reducing the visual clutter on your desktop (both the virtual and analog ones). less is more.
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for July 28th

By Ed Fladung | July 28, 2009
  • David Byrne: I Have Seen the Future and It Is Broken
    Byrne talks about one of my favorite design subjects that no one seems to talk about, that form and function are interdependent. and when they don't follow each other it's not design, it's something else.
  • Claim Chowder
    this made me laugh just a wee bit, when I read it today: Lewis Samuels from 6 days ago: "Do you believe in South Swells? I don't. In norcal we spot bigfoot cookin meth more often than a South that lives up to the hype."
  • Steven Frank / Internet Garage Sale
    Steven Frank (co-founder of Panic) has created a minimal trust-based online auction system for your no-longer-needed tech gadgets. awesome idea. i'm gonna sell my current mac book pro on this thing in a few weeks' time.
  • Comic Con footage of Tron Legacy
    turn the geek meter up to 11. Can't wait to see this in 3D. and Daft Punk are doing the soundtrack. instant cool points.
  • Daring Fireball: Pay Walls
    "The primary problem with newspaper companies isn’t their revenue. It’s the size and scope of their operations. Again I say: mammals and dinosaurs. Simon, along with everyone else who thinks online subscription fees can save the newspaper industry, is effectively arguing that the world will change to support newspapers. The truth is that newspapers must change to adapt to the world. Just because the extinction of newspapers would be a tragic loss doesn’t mean it won’t happen."
  • swissmiss | Step-By-Step Guide To Getting Shot By The Sartorialist
    Hilarious! I love the Sartorialist. this is spot on. great graphic design as well.
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for June 8th

By Ed Fladung | June 8, 2009
  • Ayalon on speech: The new "axis of pragmatic forces" | Israel Policy Forum
    amazing analysis of Obama's middel east speech by Isreal's Mahjor General Ami Ayalon. a great read. – Ayalon: We are witnessing the beginning of new American diplomacy in the Middle East whereby it will no longer appear to be very, very pro-Israel, but, as was obvious in the speech, it will be more balanced. Israel has to now understand that this president really believes that there is a common denominator of moderate Arabs, Americans and Israelis. It is a new phenomenon in Middle East diplomacy because we have long believed that the US and Israel represented one side of the conflict and the Arab world and Muslims the other side. But unlike previous administrations where the world was divided by an axis of evil, particularly that of President Bush, Mr. Obama divides the world by an axis of pragmatic forces. [ via TPM]
  • Castles In L.A. | SurfingMagazine.com
    oh snaps! new movie from Taylor Steele and Dustin Humphrey: "“This is my passion project,” said Taylor Steele who was sporting a solid gash in the head from stitches he picked up during a recent trip to India. “These trips and these movies [Sipping Jetstreams and Castles in the Sky] are the films that we get to see the world in a whole new way. We take risks in making them. Travel long distances on a whim. Say yes when strangers invite us over for tea. That’s what makes them so special."
  • YouTube – Bookcast: Author Don Thompson and his new book
    Author Don Thompson in an interview with National Post talks about his book "$12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art" – if you don't catch the shark reference, about Damien Hirst. [via @longdrivesouth]
  • View Master: Diorama Photography by Lori Nix, Jonah Samson and Grace Weston
    very cheeky sex-driven diorama photography from Jonah Samson. Love the top one, of the swimming pool.
  • Seth Godin's Blog
    Amazing reading on entrepenurship, marketing yourself and generally how to navigate the choppy waters of transitioning business to the internet. Godin's blog posts are prescient, witty and full of good advice. on publishing: "Mark this down as another job for the new economy: someone who can collate, amplify and leverage the work of writers and turn it into cash. I don't believe that there's one solution, not this time. But I'm confident that around the edges and deep into niches, there's money being made."
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for June 1st

By Ed Fladung | June 1, 2009
  • The New Yorker: Carlos Slim, the NY Times and Latin american Telco
    "What does Slim’s economic power—he owns the cell-phone lines, the top retailers, the restaurants, the utilities—mean for Mexican politics? Do you think he has negatively affected Mexico’s economic growth, as critics claim, or has he just taken advantage of a system?" – My answer? hell yes! If I was the mexican government, I'd nationalize all of Slim's assets in a heartbeat. Slim puts the "Mo" in monopoly. Mo Money, Mo Money.
  • YouTube – Sasquatch 2009 Dancing Man Party
    all it takes is one person. spend 3 minutess and 44 seconds watching this video. it is inspirational and conceptually applicable to so many other things in our daily lives. and this is not a "viral" video created by some dumb product company. this is the real shizness, the human spirit spontaneously coming together to bust a move. If you find stuff like this corny, unsubscribe from my blog now, you're dead to me. Ok, the music *is* kinda corny, I'll give you that. [via stevey, again again! Stevey is tweeting *so* hard]
  • xkcd – A Webcomic – Troll Slayer
    this is about the funniest comic I have seen in the last 10 years. hilarious. [warning: geek net humor] – [via stevey, again!]
  • Goodbye, GM …by Michael Moore
    "It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations…" – brilliant piece and very much in tune with the previous article on American Airlines. AA is the airline version of GM. [via stevey]
  • Dear American Airlines | Dustin Curtis
    Curtis gets so pissed off at American Airlines' website that he redesigns the homepage and blogs about it. A User Interface Architect from AA responds. The short of the story is that AA is such a behemoth zombie corporate structure that changes involve endless review and approval cycles across multiple different fiefdoms within the company and any approved changes take years to see the light of day. Curtis then follows up with some excellent ideas on how companies like AA are solely focused on the bottom line and customer experience isn't even an after-thought. My question: should the US government be giving free handouts to zombie corporations like American Airlines? If this is how you run your company and you run it into the ground, then you deserve to watch it burn.
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bookmarks for April 26th

By Ed Fladung | April 26, 2009
  • Look & Sea: A Little Experimentation Never Hurt Nobody
    and even more alaia-madness. these are some guys who are experimenting with various different forms of wooden finless shapes. some of the longest and thickest boards i've ever seen. beautiful rides in this video, it gets really good around the 10 minute mark, some beautiful alaia riding, some true bending of the plank.
  • Under the Sun Surf Film Blog: Alaia Sliding in Cardiff
    keeping on the alaia page, here's some recently past footage of Cyrus Sutton sliding on an alaia, from his blog, which for some reason hadn't made it into my rss folder. that's all changed now.
  • Look at this fucking hipster
    one of my current guilty pleasure websites. kinda takes what the cobra snake was doing and distills it even further. the captions are the clincher. down in mexico hipster fashion is 3 years behind (at least in my neck of el campo) and mostly limited to emo styles. so when i’m feeling a bit too far removed from the big city, I check on this blog. eggcelent.
  • Peter Funch – photographer
    great conceptual photography. Funch plays with the concept of time and the decisive moment in his work, among other themes. [via ncbeets's tweet]
  • How to Save Newspapers (Or, Why the NYT Should Acquire Twitter) – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org
    great article and he's dead on. The New York Times is in a precarious position, either charge ahead full steam or die swimming, like the rest of its peers. The good thing about the NYT is that they are the most forward looking news rag and buying twitter isn't a long shot by any stretch. Very interesting.
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for April 5th

By Ed Fladung | April 5, 2009
  • Mexico Law Blog | mexican law and news for business and investors
    one of my new favorite blogs. an excellant peek into the powers that run Mexico and their relation to the US. english language blog.
  • but does it float
    "an ongoing visual conversation curated by Folkert and Atley." – amazing collection of photography. mostly architectural and landscape.
  • Kanye West sneakers for Nike and Louis Vuitton
    i could totally rock some kanye west louis vuitton sneakers. look at those things. that tongue in the back. perfect. relatedly: i want some air yeezies these things are like Nike Frankenstein sneaker boots very Back to the Future inspired. The nikes are slightly more affordable.
  • OSK DESIGN
    going on the complete opposite side of some of the links I've posted lately, this guy OSK is one some other shit. I love his aesthetic. gorgeous, artful stuff, and intentionally lo-tech. I'm really feeling his design sense.
  • Matt Reeves bites into 'Right One' – Variety
    the director of 'cloverfield' is going to remake "Let the Right One In" (a movie I loved). why do american directors remake near perfect foreign films, why not go remake Apocalypse Now or Scarface or something more challenging?
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bookmarks for March 27th

By Ed Fladung | March 27, 2009
  • The Making of a Narco State: Rolling Stone
    powerful article: "As Mexico descends into brutality and lawlessness, the government itself has become a tool of the drug lords" – Short synopsis: frightengly underpaid police and politicians beg and steal money from narcos. And when the gov't steps up the drug war, things get wild. A lot of people have their hands in the drug pie. If Mexico weren't located next to a country filled with gun-crazy drug addicts, Mexico wouldn't be having this problem.
  • Global currency flies with push from Russia and slip from Timothy Geithner | Business | guardian.co.uk
    China (who is basically single-handedly propping up the dollar by buying our bonds) has signaled that since we are creating so much new currency – which causes inflation, which makes our dollars worth less and their investments worth less – has proposed that an IMF alternative be used as a new alternative to the dollar. This spells the literal end of any American empire that may have been and scares the hell out of me, personally, as a person who deeply believes that the IMF is a shadow world government – as described in Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
  • 43f Podcast: John Gruber & Merlin Mann's Blogging Panel at SxSW | 43 Folders
    if you're in to blogging, writing, or creating anything that deals with the internet, you should listen to this talk from SxSW. amazing and inspirational – "We talked about building a blog you can be proud of, trying to improve the quality of your work, reaching the people you admire, and maybe even making a buck (in a way that doesn’t blow your deal)"
  • The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone
    "The global economic crisis isn't about money – it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution" – great article.
  • PostSurf » Unfiltered Thoughts on Surf Culture:
    PostSurf is possibly one of thee most entertaining and well written surf blogs I've read in awhile. I usually go for the kinda blogs that post sentimental surfing schmata, out of focus trips to the beach photos and shots of newly minted retro kooky surfboards, but I have a soft spot for curmudgeons who like to air dirty laundry. Lewis Samuels can chew up some pixels and despite his irreverent, snarky tone his shit is interesting. Definitely not for everyone, though. He was just fired from Surfline for saying his employer "licks advertisers' balls" among other things. Interesting read. And dude gets like 75 comment per post. damn?!
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bookmarks for March 20th

By Ed Fladung | March 20, 2009
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for March 18th

By Ed Fladung | March 18, 2009
  • ad agency shop "Modernista" just launched their blog!
    i really dig Modernista's work. and their blog looks great and random and sprinkled with a cuss word or two. I have a soft spot for curmudgeonry.
  • Nathan Kensinger Photography: Coney Island – Under the Boardwalk
    gorgeous photos taken underneath the boardwalk at coney island. I especially dig the abandoned entrance and storefront ones.
  • Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable « Clay Shirky
    "The problem newspapers face isn’t that they didn’t see the internet coming. They not only saw it miles off, they figured out early on that they needed a plan to deal with it, and during the early 90s they came up with not just one plan but several."
  • doubleTwist
    "All your stuff, on all your devices, with
    all your friends — in seconds" – nice lifestream app. watch the demo.
  • TPM Photo Features | Talking Points Memo | Just Say No Yes to Earmarks
    "When the 2009 spending bill passed last week, Republicans on the Hill– and the stray Dem — were united in a chorus of earmark-bashing. In the words of Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY): "Cut 'em all out." But it turns out that while the senator from Kentucky voted against the bill, he had $10.6 million in earmarks — 13 separate earmarks, to be exact — in the bill. And he is by no means alone. Several members touted their opposition to the bill and then voted against it, even as they tucked in earmarks for their own districts (thanks to Taxpayers for Common Sense). Oh the shame." – I guess it's useless to question why we're getting stuff like this from TPM and not CNN or NBC?
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for March 2nd

By Ed Fladung | March 2, 2009
  • Tierney Gearon's "Exposure" exhibit
    i'm really digging on the in-camera double-exposure photographs of Tierney Gearon. Amazing stuff. Some of them combine to create images where it's hard to tell which photo is which. really nice. [via every photography blog]
  • Epic Adventures
    Josh and Jocelyn, two youngerish people (not sure how old you guys are?!). They've both just quit their jobs and are getting ready to come down to Mexico to scout around for a new place to live. And their documenting it all on their blog. very cool. definitely worth checking in on them. I really hope they document the highs and lows in their adventure. Interesting experiment.
  • Christopher Hewitt
    A portfolio site for a Director/Designer/Photographer. Site design by Suprb. I really like the super minimal sites these guys do. Lots of javascript going on in this site and lots of "scaffolding" content. Sometimes the text re-wrapping is a bit disorientating, but I really like the one-page feel.
  • ZumoDrive – Hybrid Cloud storage for all your documents and media
    pretty bad-ass personal cloud file storage. check out the demo. amazing piece of software. this is how google's G-drive should work once it finally arrives.
  • The Crisis of Credit Visualized
    "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." – incredible animated presentation to explain those big scary words we've all heard recently: sub-prime mortgage, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, etc….
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bookmarks for January 14th

By Ed Fladung | January 14, 2009
  • "Don't forget…" – a set on Flickr
    amazing street art project. Berlin crew takes photoshop user interface palettes and blows them up and wheat pastes them over advertisements that have been heavily airbrushed and retouched. freakin' awesome.
  • tiltshiftmaker.com – Transform your photos into tilt-shift style miniatures
    awesome piece of web app freeware!
  • Craigslisting tumblr log
    yeah i know, you're super busy all the time. you never waste time reading dumb shit. But… on the off chance that you find yourself wanting to waste some time, online reading dumb shit, time that you could be spending surfing, skating, snowboarding, walking the dog, etc… this is the link to help you waste that time: nothing but dumb craigslist postings.
  • tres chicos in bali 08
    Blog find of the day: "We live in a one room ruko in a shady part of Denpasar, on the outskirts of Kuta Beach, a total of eight people in one room…. We eat either mei goreng (noodles) or nasi goreng (rice) all day, everyday. But the good thing is . . . we surf at least twice a day, we are surrounded by European women, and when we're not too hungover from Arrak, we are honing our chi through yoga. We hail from America and the EU, and our western ways are constantly suprised and challenged by the local customs and mores. We are strangers in paradise."
  • Derek Powazek – Things I Learned the Hard Way: What’s Your Suggestion?
    or alternatively titled: "How graphic designers need to empathize with non-designer team members and figure out how to provide alternative solutions without pissing off your co-workers"
Posted in bookmarks | Also tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment