Category: Web/Tech

This is called the Reactable. The developers describe it like this:

The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music
instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous
performers share complete control over
the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and
constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular
synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

I know I am a geek for this kind of thing, but while this isn’t really ready for consumers yet, I can see some potentially interesting applications. Kind of like a group turn table type of jam session. Mix it with the keytar… and we’re talking the next big wave of music! I mean, all good music comes from Barcelona, right?

In case anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas… I don’t need to create a list since one already exists just for people like me.

Here’s the list.

Maybe this is just my perception. And maybe I am totally and completely wrong here. But I think the phenomenon is fading quickly. I don’t hear nearly the buzz about MySpace that I did a year ago, and definitely not the fever pitch of 6 months ago.

I have a theory about the end of this site. (Not that it will die… I’m sure it will be profitable for years to come. I’m just talking about this perception that youth culture is abandoning the site.) As more adults became aware of the site, and as more companies began to invest in this "emerging market" the people they were reaching fled to somewhere less known.

See, the thing that students liked is that it was "MySpace" and not "YourSpace." It was a place that adolescents could hide and share their emotions free from parents, teachers, and prying youth pastors like me.

As soon as that false sense of "my space" was gone… the site started to be adult space and not adolescent space. So, they are leaving… The quickest way to make something "uncool" to students is to fill it with old people trying to be cool and one more place where companies are making money off of them, they check out.

Experts say that this generation of students is looking for something that is authentic. When myspace was an underground thing, it was real. Now that it’s loaded full of major companies and oodles of adults, it’s not authentic to them anymore.

I could also be wrong. Been wrong before. But the new student site… it’s not facebook… it’s… well, I can’t tell anyone.

This is a guy named Jeff Han. I need this thing that he’s developing. I don’t know what I’d use it for, but this is one of the most incredible bits of technology I’ve seen in a long time.

Learn more about this here.

As site worth playing with if you’ve got time. Wise Words by Cool Men (an archive of famous movie lines in audio format)

Perhaps it is because the iPod just turned 5, but I’m as happy as can be that my favorite radio in the world is now padcasted. Anyone on the planet can now listen to This American Life with Ira Glass for free.

Yes, I’m a geek. But at least I’m a happy geek. Why am I so excited about this?

I’m a dork, so this is a big deal to me. In the past 2 weeks I’ve downloaded both Internet Explorer 7.0 and Firefox 2.0. So far, Firefox 2.0 is fantastic and IE 7.0 is a joke. One little thing that I like about Firefox is that it’s got a built in spell checker. So it turns what I’m typing basically looks and acts like it was in MS Word. This is a big step forward.

Ray Pritchard, our pastor in the Chicago years, has a great post about churches, church leaders, and church members who decide to duke it out via their blogs.

I really like this point…

14) Having said all of this, I don’t think the Internet caused the
problems in any of these churches, but putting the fight online
definitely made things worse. The Internet only revealed what was
already there, bubbling under the surface.

One thing that I have often heard as a "negative" to churches is that people don’t like politics. While I agree that the politics of the local church is never fun the simple fact remains: Politics reveals the passion of the people. And politics reveals that you’ve got more than 1 person. In fact, since most politics have to do with answering the question, "How do we do ____ best?" it’s not abnormal to see two or three political opinions on an issue in a single person. So… there is no such thing as the apolitical church. It’s just not out there so stop looking.

The point is that Ray gives a great insight into what blogs are and aren’t. Here’s a quick summary of my "rules for blogging."

Rule #1 Don’t ever write something you wouldn’t want your mother to read.
Rule #2 Opinions are like…. bellybuttons… everyone has one.
Rule #3 Don’t throw gasoline on a fire.
Rule #4 Beware of Trolls, learn to love Lurkers.

And the spoof is even better…