Da, da, da, da-da-da, da daaaaa....

Peter Jackson to remake The Dam Busters | The Register

The Dam Busters is apparently to get the Peter Jackson treatment. I loved this film growing up, fuelled by the many documentaries that were shown on british tv. Hopefully it will be able to match the story and character of the original. The King Kong remake was lost in effects and needed severe editing. We don't need a 3 hour dambusters. With Sir David Frost as Executive Producer this might just work.

The Commentary Track

USATODAY.com - Personal music players: An artwork in progress

Intriguing article on how some galleries are now offering audio tours as free downloads. Basically bring your own player.

What is more interesting is the idea of anybody being able to do exactly the same thing. The example in the article is Lee Siegel's downloadable tour of what he considers the most overrated and underrated paintings in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Professors could provide commentaries for their pupils, or take an art critic with you to your next museum trip.

And this is just galleries. What is effectively possible is commentaries on virtually anything in the physical world. Audio tours of cities are well established but folks are used to buying something like that from a relatively limited selection. Imagine communities of people providing commentaries on things that interest them.

The only limitation today is you have to download ahead of time. Add GPS and a connection and you could get a random commentary on request.

What is a Chumby?

Found this via a post on hack-a-day.

At a pure technical level the Chumby is an open flash player. By itself that would be cool enough. However build a decent developer community around it, release it in some cool designs and you have a very fun device. A comment on the O'Reilly coverage mentions that Simon Phipps has pointed out that this may not be as fully open as it sounds. That would be a real shame.

Read all about it on the Chumby Industries website and bunnie's blog.

Gadget envy

There are 2 big and expensive gadgets on my must have list and neither has been released yet, or even reviewed, and yet I want them both.

The first is the Series 3 TiVo and the second is the Sony PS3. Can I afford both? No. Will I probably buy both? Of course. Its going to be an expensive christmas and a happy new year.

What do futurists really know?

What do futurists really know? - The Practical Futurist - MSNBC.com

I have always seen myself as a futurist and this article has reminded me that I allow myself to get brought back to earth on a regular basis. Maybe too often. Going forward I intend to try and keep my blog anything but firmly grounded. If you see me coming down to earth give me a shout.

GeoTagging with Flickr

FlickrBlog

Better late than never. Nice implementation and if enough people start using it, the Flickr database becomes even more valuable than it already is.

Barefoot College

About Barefoot

Just saw this on KQED as part of the Pop Tech coverage. Incredible example of how we tend to throw money at problems rather than intelligence. Here you have men and women with no more then 5 years of primary school education, maintaining their own solar networks. Fast Company published an article back in May of this year also. A smart approach to the problem, not a financial one.

I Want My Content

O'Reilly Radar > Home Solar as User Generated Content

Great analogy. User generated content is clearly going to be key in both the physical and digital worlds, whether that distinction even makes sense anymore.

For me the most concrete example is media. Today we watch TV channels, read newspapers and consume other media that has been edited together into different and separate consolidations (Wall Street Journal, ESPN, etc).

Many of us also now get our content from family and friends (email, photos and videos), from individuals via blogs, youtube videos and podcasts.

DVRs such as Tivo and technologies such as on demand and iTunes have allowed us to break out of the edited streams of media we get from the TV broadcasters.

Community rating sites such as Digg have allowed us to find more relevant content for us. Amazon and Netflix have engines to help us find more content that we will be interested in.

Technologies such as RSS and readers and aggregates have allowed us to edit our own content together.

We will all want access to this personalized content via familiar mechanisms. It is unlikely that each of us will continue to do this discovery and aggregation ourselves. This will become a service that is provided to us just like our cable companies and news media do today.

What will it look like and who will own it? Good question. If I knew that I would be off doing it myself.

Virtualization

LinuxWorld, virtually speaking | The Register

Interesting article that highlights the growing interest in virtualization technologies and more specifically the concept of "virtual appliances".

Virtually There again

I wrote a long piece early this year on the virtualization of everything and the pace is picking up, mostly in Second Life. Here are a collection of recent related stories:

Amazon Web Services Blog: Improved Amazon Shopping in Second Life

Duran Duran and Suzanne Vega Give Concerts in Second Life

Education in Second Life

Viral Music Videos or I Wish They had YouTube when I was younger

fugufish frog � What would you do with Eight Treadmills?

Slef-promotion has gotten so much easier, assuming you have the talent in the first place. Great video and great music too.

How We Communicate

How About an E-mail On That? - Yahoo! News

Interesting article. If you don't get it then assume you are too old to use it.

Do not read if you cannot afford to waste time online

O'Reilly Radar > overplot: Overheard in New York on a Map

Download Squad

Download Squad

Nice site I happened upon via a recent digg. Must find time to get lost in it.