@andrewphelps: Buy my iPad 1 at a really good price (sold)
I am selling my gently loved iPad 1 (64 GB + Wi-Fi) for $350.
That’s a really good deal. (If you don’t believe me, search eBay.) It’s the highest-end (non-3G) model Apple sells at almost half the cost of buying one new, at $600. My iPad is 11 months old and in very good condition. I’ll throw in the official Apple case, which would otherwise cost $40.
I paid $700 in April 2010.
Why am I selling? Because iPad 2 is coming out next week, and I want it. That should be a pretty good indication of how amazing this device is. For me, the cost is negligible because iPad has become my primary computer.
Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
FBI Headquarters in Washington , D.C.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington , D.C. 20535-0001
We, office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) hereby write to inform you that we caught a diplomatic lady called Mrs. Vernon Wallace at ( John F Kennedy International Airport ) here in New York with consignment box filed with united state dollars.
Meanwhile, base on our interview to the diplomat she said that the consignment box belongs to you, that she was sent to deliver the consignment box to your doorstep not knowing that the content of the box is money. The diplomat also said that her first transit in the state was at Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport Ohio .
Now, the diplomat is under detention in our office(FBI) security, and we cannot release her until we carry out our proper investigation on how this huge amount of money managed to be yours before we will release her with the box. So, in this regards you are to reassure and prove to us that the money you are about to receive is legal by sending us the Award Ownership Certificate showing that the money is not illegal.
Note, that the Award Ownership Certificate must to be secured from the office of the senate president in Nigeria, because that is the only office that will issue you the original Award Ownership Certificate of this funds since it has been confirmed that the fund was originated from Nigeria..
You are advised to forward immediately the Award Ownership Certificate if you have it with you, but if you did not have it we will urge you to contact our representative in Nigeria bellow this message to help you secure the Award Ownership Certificate if at all you did not have it.
Furthermore, we are giving you only but 3 working business days to forward the requested Award Ownership Certificate. Please note that we shall get back to you after the 3 working business days, that if you didn’t come up with the certificate we shall confiscate the funds into World Bank account then charge you for money laundry, but if you forward the Award Ownership Certificate then we will release diplomat with your consignment box also gives you every back up on the money.
Thanks for your understanding, co-operation and continued patronage.
Every time there’s a snowstorm, WBUR asks ours readers/listeners to submit photos on Flickr — and then we grumble when hardly anyone participates. I think I finally figured out what we’ve been doing wrong.
Flickr is the wrong place for this kind of engagement. Most people don’t carry around cameras while going about their daily lives. And even those who do might not take the time to download, edit, and then upload to Flickr till several hours later.
But most people do carry phones with cameras. So this morning I looked out my window, snapped a photo on my iPhone, shared it on Twitter, and created the hash tag #ViewFromMyWindow. Then I asked people to do the same, using the hash tag. Dead simple. Just point, shoot, tweet. Early on, I retweeted anyone who participated to create a sense of momentum.
It exploded. By noon, #ViewFromMyWindow had become a trending topic (in Boston), and it was Twitter’s top trending topic for photo tweets (worldwide). I used CoverItLive to create a live stream (actually, a “ticker”) that automatically pulled in all these tweets and photos. The software automatically converts ugly image URLs (http://twitpic.com/BlahBlah) into photos. This created a sense of immediacy and scale, a fun and easy way to get a look at backyards across the state.
While most photos were ordinary, some were simply beautiful, others touching. Some carried little stories with them. We were able to relay these stories on Radio Boston. And we were able to use some of the best photos on the WBUR website. (That “payoff” is hugely rewarding for fans.)
So we finally figured out how to engage people in a snowstorm. It’s all about mobile.
We of the newsroom have concluded that the Boston “wicked” can be used as an adverb, but not an adjective.
When I moved here from California in 2008, I needed a place for Sept. 1 on short notice. A mutual friend hooked us up. I was reluctant to commit to your exorbitant rent but was charmed by your tree-lined streets. You promised me a quiet refuge from the the city.
The interactive timeline of Mars missions is pretty nifty.
Congratulations to Wired for making it exciting to read a magazine again. The page design is beautiful and the interactives are thrilling. This is not a mere port of the print edition but a fully optimized iPad experience.
I hope Chris Anderson means it when he writes that the magazine is willing to experiment, especially when it comes to pricing. I find it funny that so many people are criticizing Wired for the price — “I’m not going to spend $5 an issue!” — even though the magazine has not said how much future issues will cost. I would gladly pay $5, hell, even $10, for an INITIAL download of the magazine. Then I would like the option to buy issues a la carte ($1.99?) or by subscription ($25/year?). This is no different from the newsstand vs. home delivery model. Of course Wired would upcharge for one-off purchases. And by the way, I think it’s OK to pay (a bit) more for the digital edition because I get so much more content than in the print edition.
Regardless of the pricing model, I would suggest Wired sell the app as a “container” app rather than a per-issue download. In other words, deliver a small app akin to Apple’s iBookstore that I can download quickly on a 3G connection (seriously, guys, that half-gigabyte download upfront is ridiculous) and then let me browse and download (and schedule downloads) of individual issues.
Pricing aside, the magazine is gorgeous on iPad. The UI is mostly intuitive, although for awhile I did not realize you could swipe DOWN to read more of an article — I thought I could only swipe left and right, page to page. In some places the copy suggests it; in other places the graphics design does. The UI should make this functionality clear in all cases without putting the burden on writers and designers to say “scroll down!”
Also, and this is a big one, please allow copy and paste. And no gimmicky restrictive stuff. Real copy and paste. Stop working against the user. If I want to excerpt a Wired article on my blog, I’ll find a way. I’m not going to steal your whole magazine. Seriously.
Also, there’s gotta be a Back button. Hyperlinking among articles is a wonderful feature that the print edition obviously can’t deliver. But if I can’t go back to where I just was, it’s disconcerting.
Finally, a bug: I’m not able to play any videos in ads. The video appears to be loaded, but hitting Play does nothing. Seems like a pretty important one to fix.
@andrewphelps: Geek artists reveal the robots within
'Unit 01 Self Portrait' by Adam Szymczak
We humans love robots. We fear them. We fantasize about them.
At least I do.
Some 70 artists around Boston set out to reveal their “inner robots” for a new show opening Friday in the South End. Recently I went to check out their illustrations, paintings and sculptures, the beautiful and bizarre. That’s where I met Skunk.
Skunk deals in junk. He shows me his trio of adorable, scrap-metal creations — three-foot machines called “Astrobots.” They’re made of used bicycle parts and all kinds of rusty old gears and sprockets.
'Benno' by Skunk
“I try to look at myself as a modern-day prospector living off the land,” Skunk says. “You know, in my urban environment, there’s ton of steel being chucked and oscillating fan parts and just all kinds of really charismatic and sexy, oily bits.”
Boot me up, baby.
Ami Bennitt is the curator of this show, called “I… You… We… ROBOT.” After calling on artists at large for submissions, she received hundreds.
Artist Derrek Coss doesn’t build robots, he paints them — in people-esque settings, with people-esque needs.
“I try to look at some concerns that we as humans are already concerned with. Health care and insurance, workers unions and things of that sort,” Coss says.
(I wonder if robots are more likely than Congress to pass health care reform.)
Coss tells me the same thing I hear from a lot of the artists here: It’s fun to play God.
“I think there’s something neat about things that can be humanlike that aren’t human at all. And we can put any kind of human aspect onto these robots, and they’re still robots,” he says.
His images reveal powers and abilities we might wish we had. Like the ability to scale a skyscraper with suction-cup feet.
See, that’s the perennial trap for us dumb humans. The robots we create wind up surpassing us. To be honest, most of the creations in this show are way cooler than their creators.
WBUR Live
