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September 14, 2005
Killer Buzz Flocks to New Browser [Wired News]
[Wired News, September 14, 2005]
Perhaps the world does not need another web browser -- but it may want Bart Decrem's.
Decrem and a small cadre of programmers in Palo Alto, California, have spent this summer quietly readying Flock, an open-source browser, for an early October beta launch. Several members of the team, including Decrem, hail from the Mozilla Foundation, which produced the Firefox browser upon which Flock is built.
Flock advertises itself as a "social browser," meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It's a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user.
It's no coincidence that the buzz has built rapidly to a rolling boil. Blogger and tech pundit Robert Scoble simply calls it "awesome." Given the recent swell of anticipation surrounding Flock, the preceding stealth period seems quaint by contrast. Since an August demo at Bar Camp, enthusiastic blog posts have amounted to love letters in their enthusiasm.
But why?
"The browser has not evolved all that much," Decrem says. "The basic concept or vision has not changed." He says the web was until recently conceptually conceived as a big library, a collection of documents to search and consume. Browsers were all about navigation. Now, he notes, "Web 2.0 is a stream of events, people and connections." A better browser is one that will understand this new user environment.
Recently, Firefox has become, for many, the multi-platform browser of choice. Popular extensions like Greasemonkey have given users unprecedented control over their browsing experience. But combining separately developed, often-updated extensions can make Firefox unstable.
Boris Mann, a Flock tester and admirer, claims that it "takes the best-of approach. It takes Greasemonkey and other power-browsing tools and it makes them work. And their genius is sticking with Firefox at the rendering level."
Decrem notes that Flock will not attempt to compete with Firefox, which he helped launch last year. "Open source is an important part of our DNA," he adds. Yet, browsers are still "too inert" for Decrem's tastes. The Flock team speaks of moving back to the original vision of Tim Berners-Lee, that the web should be a two-way experience. "There are lots of opportunities to innovate the browser client. We are receiving a lot of interest as we plant those seeds."
The clamor suggests that there is considerable interest in a beefier browser. And while Flock's initial audience is clearly power users, Kris Krug of Bryght sees it as "a Web 2.0 on-ramp" that will draw more people to social software, blogging and photo sharing.
"We are not trying to do Firefox with five more features. We are trying to solve a very specific problem -- yet it's a problem commonly experienced by many users," says Decrem.
Rumor has it that Flock will soon announce key partnerships around its search, bookmarking and blogging tools. While the Flocksters experimented with their own hosted bookmark service, "we concluded we're not an online services company," says Decrem.
Scoble thinks Flock is just the beginning of integrated web applications. In a weighty compliment, he draws a comparison to Microsoft Office, which in the 1990s succeeded in migrating users of separate spreadsheet, word-processing, database and presentation programs to a single, bundled product.
"Today we're using too many different services to share our stuff on the internet," says Scoble. "Blogging, photo sharing, wikis, maps, podcasting (and) video blogging are all separate services. They probably will be joined in one system with common user interfaces."
Flock may or may not become the Office of the web. But, for now, it's one of a kind, at least as far as buzz goes.
Posted by Jeff at 11:01 AM | TrackBack
September 11, 2005
September update
Hey friends and folks. I am just back from assignment in LA and will be busy filing and doing follow-up work. Looks like NYC is a possibility for mid-October. There is really far too much going on to consider blogging or site improvements at the time, but I am happy with the level it's back up to at this point. The most glaring omission is of writing samples, particularly before 2005. I hope to address this slowly and will very soon have new ones for this summer and fall.
Thanks for all your encouragement and understanding. I know I've been difficult to reach. Feel free to drop me a line here, by phone or email.
Posted by Jeff at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 5, 2005
LA Story [Metropolis]
[Metropolis, September 9, 2005]
LA STORY
A provocative exhibit at the Southern California Institute of Architecture extols the legacy of the LA School. But the LA School, true to form, begs to differ.
By Jeff MacIntyre
For a city undergoing a cultural renaissance, Los Angeles has a lot to answer for. Or as native Angelenos Jeffrey Inaba and Peter Zellner put it, “L.A. is on schedule to become a great city without great distinction.” Why has the city failed to embrace the previous generation of maverick architectural talents and their bold, sometimes daffy visions? During an evening symposium held September 7 at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the best answer offered was that, for the L.A. School of architects, there remains no L.A. School. It is precisely this sense of individualism, however, that Inaba and Zellner claim to be the unifying mark of the previous generation of locally-based architects.
At the event, a panel of local architectural luminaries including Julie Eizenberg, Eric Owen Moss, Craig Hodgetts, Ming Fung, and Ray Kappe wrangled with the premise that the unruly LA School, long overlooked by the critical establishment, was in fact an innovative incubator of ideas and thinking about urbanism. These unconventional, largely residential projects, Inaba and Zellner argue, would later be exported widely to the world via figures such as L.A.-based Pritzker laureates Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne, the evening’s only noticeable absentees. The symposium was organized in conjunction with the exhibit "Whatever Happened to L.A.?: Architectural and Urban Experiments, 1970-1990,” which ran at SCI-Arc through September 11.
The symposium’s lively discussion, and the politely ruffled feathers of its participants, suggested an ironic confirmation: this still-scrappy group of L.A. architects maintain a pride in individual accomplishment, in a maverick intellectualism, and especially in resistance to traditional academic definitions. Or as Zellner, who, along with Inaba, is on the faculty of SCI-Arc: “They work very hard, it sometimes appears, to disassociate themselves from one another. It’s a very different model from the New York Five, for example, who wished to be seen as part of an organic whole.”
During the 1970s in Southern California, the lack of architectural schools and the embryonic state of museums and cultural institutions meant L.A.-born architects worked well outside the limelight. This allowed them the time and freedom to develop their own styles. “The architects who were from here could surf,” said Hodgetts.
“L.A. was not taken seriously by the New York intelligentsia,” said Inaba. For that reason, its architects "also weren’t waiting for anybody else’s approval.”
While most of the exhibit features residence-scale projects or unrealized civic schemes, they helped the members of the L.A. group assert a guerrilla practice. “What’s distinctive about their work in this period," said Zellner, "is the almost delirious investment in producing nearly unprofessional artifacts, such as lead-on-linen drawings, the bronze plates, and drawls”—referring to the curious half-model, half-drawing figures in the exhibit. These models and ephemera peacocked their makers’ antiestablishment leanings and only added to their appeal. Groups like Thom Mayne’s Morphosus even achieved a fan base, with collectors around the world clamoring for the firm’s drawings.
“They weren’t waiting on anybody,” Zellner emphasized, “or on invitations to the biennale.” Yet, “this is architecture as high art. and they clearly draw influence more from the art world, which is very notable,” he concluded, to their sense of individual effort.
Moss, who is also the director of SCI-Arc, similarly agreed that “control and freedom … were part of the psychology this place at the time,” but that Whatever Happened to LA? remains “an amorphous excavation,” a grasping at what was happening.
“This was a city without a discernible architecture until recently,” he said. “This is a great city for architects, but not necessarily for architecture.”
Posted by Jeff at 10:40 AM | TrackBack
September 1, 2005
Paul Starr's Beauty [ELLE]
[ELLE Books, September 2005]
ELLE Canada – Radar Books – September 2005
PAUL STARR
Text: Jeff MacIntyre
“Paul Starr On Beauty: Conversations with Thirty Celebrated Women” (Melcher Media; September)
If “beauty is a form of genius,” as Oscar Wilde observed, is Paul Starr Hollywood’s Einstein? Over the course of a twenty-year career in film, print and music video, Starr has stenciled, smoothed and appliquéd his way into the first rank of Hollywood celebrity makeup artists, boasting a clientele—Salma, Angelina, Madonna, Lindsay, Renee, Cameron, Pam, Scarlett, Britney, Meg, Jada, Ellen, Iman—that would warrant a dozen red carpet premieres.
In an age when celebrity image has become closely tied to bankability, Starr looks to be the heir apparent to the makeup guru of the ‘90s, the late Kevyn Aucoin.
Starr’s new book is a two-hundred page pedestal to his muses, a series of tributes in interview form to forty of his star clients. The volume is thickened out by a rich display of his work by photographers such as Leibovitz, Rolston, LaChapelle and Demarchelier.
ON HIS WOMEN…
There’s a great line in your book from Joni Mitchell: “Happiness is the best facelift.” “I like working with women of substance. They give as much to you as you give to them. It’s a wonderful exchange.”
Today, Joni and you are pals. “Meeting Joni was just one of those moments. She’s so honest and introspective, and I’d been such a fan. She touched my heart for years. But for five years, all I heard was ‘Joni does her own makeup’. Then we hit it off one day at a shoot, and we’ve been close ever since.”
Are there any stars you haven’t worked with? “I’d like to work with Gwynneth Paltrow. She’s such a classic American beauty.”
ON THE BEAUTY BIZ…
Is makeup an art? “In the early 80s, makeup was still considered an art form. I came out of art school with so many interests. Makeup is a marriage of sculpture and watercolour.”
You eschewed the fashion world for music video. “The beginnings of rock video were like the beginnings of Hollywood. It was a wonderful playing ground for a young artist. We did such fun and outrageous things.
“But the industry has radically changed. The catwalk has collided with the red carpet, and now the fashion and showbiz worlds are inseparable. There has been a real merger that didn’t exist when I was doing rock videos with David Bowie and Madonna.”
How has celebrity changed? “The packaged image becomes much more important when a star has arrived. Star image is more closely tuned today. It’s all about their career arc. Once the look is established, it's a formula for recognition. There is very little room for conceptual work.
“Interview Magazine came out when I was in school and it was a revelation artistically. You don't get a glimpse of the showbiz world like that anymore. Today's celebrity press is more about surface. You don't get insight into the people.”
ON MAKEUP TIPS…
“Once they find a look that works for them, many women believe that's it. Women can get stuck in a rut. So experiment! It's just makeup, it's not rocket science. That's why nature has seasons: for change. Women have a privilege to be colourful that men don't.
“I'm a big skin person. Make the investment: Get regular facials, drink a lot of water, watch diet and exercise. Makeup is an accessory but your face is a canvas.”
-end-