Month: May 2004

The coolest Honda commercial of all time

I’ve posted about this great Rube Goldberg commercial before, but didn’t have this backstory to go with it. Besides, it’s well worth looking at again.

The coolest Honda commercial of all time.

I got a link to this from a good buddy. I wish we got commercials like this here in the US. It’s truly amazing to watch the cleverness of this “Rube Goldberg machine” idea — especially when you know the back story. (requires Flash)

Honda Commercial in the U.K that’s very cool!

http://www.daboyz.org/honda

Supposedly there are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn’t work. Each time the crew would have to set the whole thing up again. They supposedly spent weeks shooting it.

There are six and only six handmade Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film. Everything you see in the film are parts from those two cars. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real and that two of their handmade cars had been disassembled.

Oh! And about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet. It does look a bit weird in the commercial. Just one second of computer generation is used to link the two halves when an exhaust pipe rolls across the floor. At one point, three tires roll uphill because inside they are weighted with bolts and screws.

Thanks Michael!

[Marc’s Outlook on Productivity]

ActiveWords Code Grabber

Marjolein continues to do Awesome things on her ActiveWords weblog. Here, she provides an ActiveWords script that lets you easily add new scripts posted by someone else. Eliminating friction is one the things that ActiveWords does best and Marjolein shows us how.

ActiveWords Code Grabber. Would you like to be able to grab an ActiveWords script off the screen and add it to your own ActiveWords collection? I started building an active word to this end as a reaction to a wish list item posted… [AWesome]

Opera 7.5 knows RSS

Interesting. Opera 7.5 knows RSS. Pretty cool.

Opera Wins the RSS Browser Battle.

Go ahead. Download the 7.50 demo. Then, click on an RSS feed. Watch what happens. Looks like I ve got a new tool to recommend for all syndication n00bz. Yes, Robin just posted about it in this very channel, but you ve gotta see it to believe it. Mozilla and Microsoft need to pick up on this MAJOR clue.

By chris@pirillo.com (Chris Pirillo). [Lockergnome s RSS & Atom Tips]

Seb adding to my reading load

This, of course, is the essential danger of blogging and aggregators. You learn over time to trust someone’s judgment by following their blog. Then they add to your already overfull reading list with these kinds of recommendations. On the other hand, isn’t it better to fill whatever reading time you have with material that domes so highly recommended?

A few of my favorite visionaries. Some are diamonds in the rough, their signal often mistaken for noise; others are so unassuming that people hardly notice them. Others yet are just beginning to gather momentum on issues whose importance will probably have become blindingly obvious a few years from now. All of them envision big changes, and the glimpses I’ve had into their unusual minds have convinced me that they are onto something important, so I keep an eye out.

[Seb’s Open Research]

Bill O’Reilly trying to bury his Fresh Air interview

Sounds like a plan to me. The 21st century is not going to be kind to control freaks or their lawyers.

Bill O’Reilly trying to bury his Fresh Air interview. Terry Gross conducted an extraordinary interview with notorious demagogue Bill O’Reilly on her Fresh Air last October (listen here). Now, O’Reilly is withholding permission for NPR to relicence portions of the program. Please tell all your friends about this interview and get them to listen to it, so that O’Reilly’s plan to bury the interview backfires and this becomes the definitive O’Reilly interview of all time. Link [Boing Boing]

Dave Pollard on Blog Functionality

Dave Pollard has put together his cut at what blogging tools ought to be able to do from an average user perspective. While Dave is anything but an average blogger, this is an interesting line of thought.

Everyone has their own specifications for what they’d like blogs to do. Advanced users, comfortable with the technology and able to tweak their blogs to do some amazing (and some silly) things, are quickly leaving the rest of us behind, and there are millions of others who took a quick try at blogging, threw up their hands, and gave up.

This article is an attempt to create a scorecard of what blogs can and cannot presently do, and what they should be able to do. The objective is to spec out a blogging tool that is better (more useful), faster and simpler, at next to no cost. [How to Save the World]

Guide to buying a high-definition TV

My 15-year old has started some heavy lobbying for HDTV to enhance his sports viewing habits. It isn’t likely to happen anytime soon, even though I did offer to match him dollar for dollar for anything he managed to earn. I’m still inclined to think that we’re still a bit early in the technology adoption cycle, but now I have some initial reference material to add to the pile.

Guide to buying a high-definition TV.

ExtremeTech has a handy guide to buying a high-definition TV that makes at least little bit of sense out of the increasingly byzantine world of HDTV, digital TV, and flat-panel displays.

[Engadget]