ben schwan

“The Tramway” is a visually stunning short by Philip...

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:51:00 +0100

“The Tramway” is a visually stunning short by Philip Bloom, filmed in New Mexico. This small embedded version doesn’t do it justice, though. You should watch it in HD on Vimeo.

Shows what you can do with modern digital equipment, DoF adapters and color grading. (Here’s more stuff from Philip.)

Wired 1.1: An Archaeology

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:25:00 +0100

Wired 1.1: An Archaeology:

Neat love/hate review of the first edition of Wired from 1993. The content of the issue can be found here.

It’s amazing what we didn’t have in that year technology-wise - and how polished the magazine already was. Also, look at the masthead and the contributors. People like John Battelle, Bruce Sterling, Michael Wolff or John Markoff still matter to this day.

If I remember correctly, I started reading Wired in 1994.

Fantastic wild life shot by aussiegall I just saw on the Flickr...

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:19:00 +0100

Fantastic wild life shot by aussiegall I just saw on the Flickr front page.

Windows Vista Help: Opening the box

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:11:00 +0100

Windows Vista Help: Opening the box:

Just another very physical reason why people hate this operating system.

The Windows XP package could at least be opened easily.

Instapaper

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:58:00 +0100

Instapaper:

Ultra easy-to-use “bookmark now, read later” Web app. I’m only missing some open-all-links-in-tabs magic and a smallish sharing feature.

(But I’m sure creator Marco Arment, who’s Tumblr’s tech wizard by day, will implement that at some point.)

“Hi, my name is Donnie, and you suck at...

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:26:26 +0100

“Hi, my name is Donnie, and you suck at Photoshop.”

(More here.)

Jake and Amir rock. (Vimeo)

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:21:38 +0100

Jake and Amir rock. (Vimeo)

PBS Frontline: Video Archive

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:49:00 +0100

PBS Frontline: Video Archive:

Entire episodes of the fantastic PBS public affairs show. The archive contains the years 2001 to 2008, with some older classics in the side bar.

The newer eps are encoded in Flash, older ones in Real and Windows Media format (hint for OS X newsbies: get yourself Flip4Mac WMV).

Update: There’s at least some Quicktime streams too.

The Comments means lots of interesting, “no known...

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:09:37 +0100

The Comments means lots of interesting, “no known restrictions on publication” photographs from the Library of Congress now on Flickr.

Not sure if the crowd-sourced tagging approach will work, though.

Aaron Swartz: Bubble City

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:02:00 +0100

Aaron Swartz: Bubble City:

Nifty little SF start-up novel with a “Scroogled” twist.

paidContent.org: National Lampoon Acquires CollegeHangover.com

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:04:00 +0100

paidContent.org: National Lampoon Acquires CollegeHangover.com:

From the “nifty headline, Sir!” department.

(There must be something in the air, today.)

Hey ho, let's go

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:06:00 +0100

Welcome to the tumblelog of Ben Schwan, technology, science & media writer.

Let’s see what we can do with this oh so new medium. One thing’s for sure: I’m going to keep it short, i.e. This Is Not a Blog™. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for stopping by! If you want/need to contact me, please send email to info a-t benschwan d-o-t com.