John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Five-fact Friday

One of the most famous phrases in A Christmas Carol - "Tiny Tim, who did not die" - was not in Charles Dickens's original manuscript. Dickens added the phrase, among many other changes, in handwritten notes and revisions before the instant classic was published. [I was disappointed that Robert Zemeckis dropped the phrase from the otherwise applaudable animated version of A Christmas Carol that came out last month.]

The Airbus A400M, which had its inaugural flight today in Spain, has a range of as much as 6,400 kilometres, or about 4,000 miles. It has about double the cargo of older aircraft like the C-130 Hercules aircraft, not to mention significant budget overruns.

Greg Lake wrote Lucky Man, the best-selling song for Emerson Lake and Palmer, when he was only 12 years old. ELP recorded it only because they needed a short song to fill one side of their first record, and had a day to do it.

Amazon allows publishers to set their own prices for Kindle-ready digital editions of their books, but keeps 65 per cent of the revenue.

Bobby Vinton not only remains a symbol of pre-Beatle America, he holds the distinction of having held the No. 1 chart spot before the British Invasion. His rendition of the David Mann song There I've Said It Again was bumped from the top by I Want To Hold Your Hand in 1964.

The CSI secret: just keep zooming, indefinitely

One of the best-known films of all time is Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, about a London photographer who believes he may have inadvertently recorded a crime on film, but learns how meaning is lost the more intensely he looks at the details of a photograph. 

Not so, of course, on the various CSI shows, where investigators not only zoom in on any image - security video, phone video, etc. - but get increasingly clear and superior results. That's why I got such a laugh out of this bit.

How a New Yorker cover was done on an iPhone

Pretty remarkable, when you think about it.

An artist named Jorge Colombo uses an app called Brushes on his iPhone to produce art for the New Yorker magazine, which is collected on this blog, called Finger Painting. Click on the video below for a sense of how it was put together.

Take two tablets, and call the publishing industry

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2009. Click here to read more Surf's Up.]

There’s been a lot of chatter for the last few months about what Apple’s forthcoming tablet device will look like, and more importantly, what exactly it will or do. 

All this speculation – and remember, it’s all speculation – is kind of odd, because no one has publicly seen what’s expected to come down the pike in early 2010, if the rumour mill on the release date is in the ballpark. 

One common thread that seems to be emerging is that the tablet, which will be something more than an iPhone (or iTouch) and less than a Macbook), will be engineered to showcase newspapers and magazines, in no doubt stunning detail. I haven’t been at all surprised to read that Apple has, very quietly, been working with major publishers, including the New York Times. 

I'm sure the tablet, whatever it will be called, will have a big impact – and not just Apple's version. The technology blogs have had plenty of juice over the last few weeks about Microsoft’s competing product, which so far is known as Courier. Leaked images and details show it is not so much a tablet as a book-like device that closes on itself, featuring two work areas. As the ultra-influential blog Gizmodo put it, "maybe we've all been dreaming about the wrong device." 

Since the advent of Amazon’s Kindle, which is still restricted from sale in Canada for copyright and other reasons, there’s been a sense that e-books, tablets, or whatever you want to call them, may dramatically change how we read periodicals.

The timing could not come at a better time for the newspaper and magazine industry, which was slumping for years before last year’s economic meltdown, and has been in seeming freefall for at least a year. The possibilities of a new distribution are considerable, not the least of which is the ability to sell advertisers on a marketing capability that could be as interactive as the web.

Tablet technology – which is being touted as prominent titles like Gourmet magazine are folding – might be just what the doctor ordered.

Elsewhere this week 

(The Customer Is) Not Always Right
First things first: the folks at this blog do not believe in poor customer service. They do believe, though, in giving people who have toiled in the retail trenches the platform to vent about what they’ve seen and especially heard. Like Overheard in New York and many other variations, you’ll find one painful (but often funny) conversation after another. Hit the "popular" tab to see ones that have most resonated with other readers, and the "random" tab to see any old chestnut that’s been collected to date. 

The Raven
With Halloween around the corner, set the tone with one of the most wonderfully creepy bits of writing of all time: Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Get ready for your own once upon a midnight dreary with this version; if you don’t want to read it aloud, click on the link to have it read for you. (Turning off the lights might help!)

Balls
Want to play divide and conquer with a bunch of balls? Actually, it’s more of a game of just dividing, and it’s not so much a game at all … but you will likely be amused as you see how this Flash-based attraction works. Move your mouse over four circles, and watch them divide, and then divide again, at least as long as your cursor is in place. The circles, or balls, get progressively smaller; I counted them down to 1/128th of the original size, but I stand to be corrected. Look also for some other games on the left-hand side, including a photo-tag guessing game that is pretty challenging. 

John Gushue is a writer in St. John's, and is currently on leave from his job with CBC News in St. John's. John is on Facebook right here. John is on Twitter right here.

The New Yorker cover on Halloween, parents and phoning it in

The New Yorker's Halloween cover is brilliant. Although I saw nary a parent out there tonight (mind you, we weren't out long) with a smartphone, I think artist Chris Ware - more from him here - nails something about the obsession grown-ups have with their gadgets, perhaps at the expense of their kids.

A T-shirt that kicks it old school

I love this cartoon, found on this T-shirt website. Thanks to my friend Tim for the pointer.

Some T-shirts from the Mac & PC wars

Microsoft has been much more aggressive with its advertising to take on Apple (a recent tidbit published here), particularly to hold its share of the laptop market. But I had not seen a T-shirt until this weekend that attempted to put Apple in its place: 

If you can't make out the detail (get a better view here), it has a PC (modelled on John Hodgman) playing Solitaire while Justin Long's Mac has a beachball - the symbolic stall on an Apple computer when it's too busy to help you - next to a pop-up saying, "Loading witty retort." The beachball is what Apple serves up in lieu of crashes. 

"Macs never crash" may be true now, but that certainly was not always the case. Twenty years or so ago, when I toted a Mac 512 home from work (in a protective case about as large as airline luggage), the little symbol below was really familiar.

Don't mistake me for an anti-Mac kind of person; I use both, but still prefer my Mac. (In fact, I'm writing this post on one.) I'm inclined to think a lot of Mac users will just get the humour. 

For breakfast, it's bacon, eggs and Facebook

The New York Times reports on a trend that should surprise no one ... but which I don't think has been much reported, all the same. (Which may explain why the story is among the most-emailed for the day.)

Technology has shaken up plenty of life’s routines, but for many people it has completely altered the once predictable rituals at the start of the day.

This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities.

“It used to be you woke up, went to the bathroom, maybe brushed your teeth and picked up the newspaper,” said Naomi S. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, who has written about technology’s push into everyday life. “But what we do first now has changed dramatically. I’ll be the first to admit: the first thing I do is check my e-mail.”

This is pretty much the case in our house. When I had my BlackBerry charger in my bedroom, I naturally checked messages while my eyes could barely open. Nowadays, I turn on the coffee machine, and before it's ready to knock out the first espresso hit of the day, I've checked mail, Twitter and Facebook, and likely played a move in Lexulous. They're all just a part of the daily routine.

A thought on experts

"An expert is a man who made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field."
- Niels Bohr

From the telephone to the iPhone: Illustrated history of modern communications

Click on the above to get a detailed look at a clever illustration prepared for a poster, illustrating development of technologies from Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, up to the iPhone. (It includes the 1901 transatlantic transmission involving Guglielmo Marconi, received here in St. John's, which helped inspire the name of this blog.)

The design was created by Geo Panch for a poster. Details here.