sangsara.net

Category: Links

Link posts, mostly old and imported from my other sites over the years (e.g. Tumblr)

  • ➟ iPhone 4 Drop Test

    For a brief moment after the iPhone 4 was introduced, I thought I’d risk using it without a case. Now I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get one until I see a really nice solution from SwitchEasy, InCase, or Speck. Having a glass phone for most people is like having glass knuckles as a boxer.
    I used my black iPhone 3G for a year with nothing but some anti-glare screen film, and all it got were a few minor scratches on the back. I might have dropped it twice, but not on bare concrete. I’ve been especially careful with the 3GS, and it’s been in some sort of case from Day 1. Unfortunately, the Power Support Air Jacket* I’ve been using since December has caused some scuffing of the chrome bezel. If you’re getting a case for your iPhone 4, be sure that all surfaces coming into contact with the phone have some sort of soft buffering material, not hard plastic.

    * Power Support products are grossly overpriced outside of Japan. That USD$35 case is about SGD$60 locally, but I got mine in Tokyo for about half that price.

    Update [25/06]: Now Gizmodo’s dropped their own phone by accident, and the back is all cracked too.

    Link

  • ➟ Magician Michael Ammar on Letterman

    Back when magic tricks were something I did without irony, Michael Ammar was one of the best names to start learning with. His how-to videos were slightly dated, and his gentle, fatherly style of performance at a green felt table suggested that pejorative term “parlor trick”, although his illusions were neither cheesy nor dull. It’s been years since I’d heard his name, until he popped up on The Late Show with David Letterman last month. His presentation has been updated a little, and it ends on a great (and unexpected) note.

    Link

  • ➟ Star Trek: Tik Tok

    Hands down the best Tik Tok video I’ve ever seen, and one of the best Star Trek ones too.

    Link

  • ➟ Mark meets Kuato

    Just discovered this hilarious video by my friend Mark, from four years ago. Basically it’s the scene from Total Recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger meets the stomach mutant, with Mark inserting himself into it.

    Link [YouTube.com]

  • ➟ CNET Behind the Scenes feature on Windows Phone 7

    The company decided more than a year ago to start over yet again, with a new approach and a firm target–holiday 2010–to have the all-new Windows Phone on the market. “I think when we look back on the release five years from now, this was a foundational release, not the release that broke through,” Myerson said. “We’ve got some tough competition.

    Confirmed: Copy/paste functionality won’t be included in 1.0, and the producer doesn’t consider it one of his top 10 things to add in the future. I applaud their start-from-scratch approach, but they are starting way, way behind. Although many will demand multitasking, VoIP/video-calling, and a ready to go marketplace of apps in 2010, the combination of Zune/Xbox Live/Office features may be enough to attract some customers.
    Link [CNET.com]

  • ➟ Rumor: Microsoft may have sold just 500 Kin phones

    […] Microsoft has only sold about 500 Kin One and Two phones through Verizon since they went on sale in May.

    Unofficially, it’s speculated that the lack of a smartphone OS but the insistence on charging for smartphone-level plans may have muted interest and driven customers to the Motorola Droid and other phones with now-similar prices but more features.

    Poor KIN and Danger. It’s almost as if that stepchild division were given rope and ordered to hang themselves. Still, they must be feeling better than the JooJoo guys.

    Link [Electronista.com]

  • ➟ 56 Criterion Collection DVD covers

    Some of the best designed cover art you will ever see. Why aren’t movie posters made this way? Well, apart from the fact that Joe Popcorn isn’t going to see something without a collage of all the stars standing next to each other.

    Link [unstage.com]

  • ➟ Too Many Lenses, Too Few Eyes

    “Camera, Camera” captures one of the most disturbing examples I know of the way tourists can overwhelm their subjects. It is the scene of what once was a heart-stopping moment in the ancient town of Luang Prabang: the early morning procession of hundreds of barefoot monks in their bright orange robes, carrying begging bowls. As the film shows, this sacred ritual is now swarmed by scores of bustling tourists, some of whom lean in with cameras and flashes for closeups as the monks pad silently past. “Now we see the safari,” a local artist, Nithakhong Somsanith, told me bitterly. “They come in buses. They look at the monks the same as a monkey, a buffalo. It is theater.”

    The New York Times’ Lens blog on a new documentary about the increasingly intertwined acts of travel and photography, and the difficulties facing news photographers. One of the points I found interesting: how reframing experiences for the camera may be robbing us – travelers as a whole – of what joys come of immediacy and individual perspective. Certainly the opportunity to take new photos outside of my regular existence is one of the main reasons I get excited about travel; the surrounding unrecorded moments seem almost a scatter of sensual information in my memory, lacking narrative. It’s those that are probably worth more.

    Link