12.28.2005

Hao Wu's "Beijing or Bust"


Beijing or Bust documentary

Finals days of Excite@Home
KQED, the San Francisco PBS station, just finished broadcasting "Beijing or Bust", a documentary on the experiences of American expatriates of Chinese descent living in present-day Beijing. It's an intriguing vignette by first-time film-maker and former Excite@Home colleague Hao Wu. His interview subjects are intelligent and articulate observers of what is currently happening in China and of what is happening within themselves as they embrace it. I admire each of them for their ability to navigate this fascinating place and time.

Congratulations to Hao for a truly impressive maiden effort, and many thanks for insightfully conveying the adventure of present-day China to the American audience.

12.16.2005

PhotoBlox pop-up windows

Using rich media while keeping page weight light

I stumbled across some old tests of ways to incorporate the Laszlo PhotoBlox and realized I could make any in-line image spawn the PhotoBlox in a pop-up window. The small thumbnail to the left works in precisely this manner. This seems like an ideal way to incorporate that rich media widget while keeping page weight to a minimum. Now, if only this were made easier for the general user, the popularity of the PhotoBlox could increase 1000 fold.


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12.07.2005

Living the Analog and Digital Life

Basis of the New Generation Gap?


MTT performs Copland
The Music


Laura at Davies Sept 16, 2005
The Crowd


MTT and the SF Symphony
The Band



Business Week's recent article on the MySpace Generation underscores the newest generation gap. In contrast to most of my peers, younger Americans in or recently out of school appear to have embraced the 'digital life' enabled by Web communications and publishing tools. They blog their thoughts openly instead of, or in addition to, keeping private diaries. They embrace new technologies freely in part thanks to their fluency with markup languages such as HTML. Activities confined in older circles to software developers and the digerati, seem second nature to a much broader cross-section of our youngest adults.

Well, just to prove I'm no dinosaur (yet), I offer my own MySpace style blog entry complete with Amazon Music link. While Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony may not top the pop charts, their performances of the music of Aaron Copland are the cat's rear end. Short of checking them out live, I suggest you buy the CD!