Author: Steve A Furman
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Calculating Your Carbon Footprint
More and more people are becoming aware of climate change and the potential problems it is causing for life on our planet. As with most complex issues, there is usually no obvious silver bullet solution. And even though it’s not a problem that governments can solve on their own, they…
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Hulu Raises the Bar on Social and Television
I have been having a lot of fun playing around with hulu.com for the past few weeks. It’s a joint venture between NBC and News Corp. It’s in private beta right now, so you have to make a request to gain access. Here is how Hulu describes what they are…
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Academy Splits Oscar into 13 Pieces
Photo Credit: The New York Times The 80th annual Academy Awards ceremony aired last night, hosted for the second time by Jon Stewart. It was more informal and well down on the energy scale than in years past. Mr. Stewart did a great job at bringing his signature lines and…
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My Oscar Picks on My 50th Post
This my 50th post! I started this blog last October as an experiment in social computing. Since I work in the Internet space, I thought it would be good research as we look at launching community for our brand. I’m really into it now. It’s very early Sunday morning February…
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Michael Clayton – Film Review
What struck me most about Michael Clayton is how all the players on this project came together as an ensemble, and took this film to a much higher level than might otherwise have been achieved. This is an extreme example of the whole being greater than the sum of its…
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NASA Beams The Beatles into Deep Space
From the “wow that was cool department,” NASA transmitted The Beatles song Across the Universe into deep space earlier this month. It was aimed at the North Star, Polaris–located over 430 light years from Earth–and will travel at 186,000 miles per second through the cosmos. It was transmitted on February…
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Jazz Great Herbie Hancock Gets Grammy
There is no question the music world was rocked by Herbie Hancock taking Album of the Year at this past Sunday’s 50th Grammy awards ceremony. His album River: The Joni Letters, is a unique interpretation of Joni Mitchell classics. Jazz has typically been overlooked when it comes to the major…
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Atonement – Film Review
Atonement is a classic British period film based on the critically acclaimed novel by the Booker Prize winning author Ian McEwain, and adapted for the screen by Christopher Hampton. Set just as WWII is about to begin for Britain, the story pivots around two would-be lovers, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy),…
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TMBG – They Might Be Geniuses
As a parent of a 3 year old I am in constant need of having a wide array of exciting media experiences on hand to entertain him. The trick is to find things that will captivate him, be educational, can hold up over time, and perhaps most important, not drive…
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Super Tuesday, Good Experience
We’re so spoiled. Anyone who grew up a U.S. citizen and is reading this has always had the right to vote under the rules of our democratic process. No dictators ruling with an iron fist, no military coups forcing regime change. We get to have our say. But so many…
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Buildings I Have Known
I have a keen interest in architecture. Sometimes I think I missed my calling by not becoming an architect. My father built every house he ever lived in as an adult, and it was such a benefit for me to be a small part of those projects. In his younger…
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The Many Looks of Google
Like so many of us, I’ve been watching Google’s amazing meteoric rise through the online space over the years. Frequently known as the beta company, the idea machine seems to never slow down. If the Microsoft hostile bid for Yahoo goes through, it will be interesting to see how Google…
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One Laptop Per Child Update
In an earlier post I wrote about the One Laptop Per Child Foundation and their Give One Get One donation program. Simply support the cause by purchasing a laptop for a needy child in a developing country, and get an XO laptop for yourself. Apparently they have had tremendous response,…
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Pandora – Radio From Music’s DNA
For the last four months or so I have been exploring the Pandora music service from my computer (via the Internet) as well as my Sonos music system. Pandora uses the phenomenal work done by the Music Genome Project to serve up individual songs in a radio station format. In…
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Kindle Makes Electronic Books A Reality, Without the Web
A colleague of mine who is an avid reader of books (the analog paper kind) is very excited about her new Kindle from Amazon. She was kind enough to bring it in for me to play with over lunch last week; here are my observations. The Kindle is Amazon’s first…
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Oscars Go Bleak – Love It
The best picture category nominations are as follows. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood (eight each). Michael Clayton, Atonement (each with seven), and Juno (four). This list of serious and dark films is a reflection of what we have been living this past year. With the wars…
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There Will Be Blood – Film Review
Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest offering, There Will Be Blood, is a departure from his large ensemble works Boogie Nights and Magnolia. This muscular, tragic film was penned for the screen by Mr. Anderson, based on Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil. Pic opens at the very end of the 1800’s when America…
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Chess Incarnate Bobby Fischer on the Spectrum
So much has been written in the wake of Bobby Fischer’s death. It’s all covered, the chess brilliance as well as the strangeness of his life. Mr. Fischer was the essence of chess in human form. When someone operates at the genius level, particularly as a child, we are naturally…
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Netgear Fails to Connect on First Impression
In a previous post I wrote about a great out-of-the box customer experience I had with an Olympus E-510 SLR digital camera. Of course for every great experience there is likely to be one not so great. I think you know what’s coming. Very recently I opened up a new…
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Directors Settle on New Media, Sets Script for Writers
I’m a little nervous. The Writers Guild of America has been on strike for over two months. If it goes much longer the studios will be shooting their version of Fear Factor for the big screen, and I won’t get my fall film fix. By the way, Television has become…