Friday, March 26, 2010

Junkyard wizard creates a DIY book scanner (via Wired)

For nearly two years, Daniel Reetz dreamed of a book scanner that could crunch textbooks and spit out digital files he could then read on his PC.

Book scanners, like the ones Google is using in its Google Books project, run into thousands of dollars, putting them out of the reach of a graduate student like Reetz. But in January, when textbook prices for the semester were listed, Reetz decided he would make a book scanner that would cost a fraction of commercially available products.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Piano Chat Improvisation

hay all,

just wanted to share with this interesting phenomena I came across:

a guy finding random people on video chat and than communicates with them using an improvised song he plays on his piano.

i think it's interesting that he uses the internet chat medium to create the video and later he uses youtube (the internet) also to publish it.

also i think it's interesting to think about issues of privacy, intimacy and interpersonal communication in today's world with regards to this video.

this video also reminds me of another video - a compilation of unrelated youtube user generated videos compiled into one musical/video piece. the compilation was done by a musician named kutiman.


enjoy,
-Asaf