Author: quriosity

Al Bredenberg is a writer, researcher, and consultant living in Raleigh, NC.

Infographic: Google by the Numbers

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, Creativity, Innovation, TechnologyLeave a comment

Pingdom has put together a fascinating (and useful for innovation researchers) infographic on Google, providing details on Google’s organization, technologies, usage, finances, and more.

For example, the graphic shows us that Google allows employees to spend 20 percent of their time working on “blue-sky” projects and that 50 percent of Google’s products have resulted from that blue-sky time. 37.5 percent of the company’s employees work in R&D and 37 percent in sales and marketing. 97 percent of revenue comes from advertising.

Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing me to the infographic, which is linked here (click on the image to see it full-size):

AB — 25 February 2010

An Emerging ‘Open Source World’

On By quriosityIn Business and Marketing, Innovation, Science, TechnologyLeave a comment

The editors of Focus have created an interesting Infographic exploring the growing influence of open-source development, not just in software development, but in healthcare, science, content — even beverages (first time I’ve heard of OpenCola and Brewtopia Blowfly).

Focus is an open-source online resource for business data and research operated by media company Tippit Inc.

Here’s a link to the graphic — click through to see it full-size:

AB — 16 February 2010

‘Classic in Concert’ TV show digs up Blind Faith and Brian Wilson videos

On By quriosityIn art, Creativity, music, Society and Popular CultureLeave a comment

Since I started using TiVo a few years ago, I’ve been impressed time and again by the extent to which the digital video recorder (DVR) changes the experience of television — it can open up the “long tail” of TV in amazing ways (see Chris Anderson’s 2006 Wired article, “The Long Tail,” for an explanation of what that means).

For me, the latest example is VH1’s occasional show, “Classic in Concert,” which I never would have learned about had it not been for my practice every so often of reviewing all upcoming shows in TiVo’s alphabetical list.

“Classic in Concert” televises videos of live concerts, some recent, some quite old. Many of them have no interest to me (KISS, ZZ Top) and can go right in the trash. But recently I did enjoy watching concerts by Blind Faith and Brian Wilson, which were well worth the viewing time.

Following are some notes on those concert videos. Unfortunately, “Classic in Concert” appears to have no web home, so there’s nothing great I can find to link to, other than some YouTube videos of doubtful provenance.

Blind Faith’s 1969 Hyde Park Concert

This was a fascinating archaeological treasure, a movie of what might have been the world’s first glimpse of the collaboration between Eric Clapton post-Cream and Steve Winwood post-Traffic (Winwood later returned to Traffic).

Blind Faith also included percussionist Ginger Baker and bassist Ric Grech. I was surprised to learn that Ginger Baker is still alive — guess he got away with it. Grech died in 1990, according to his Wikipedia bio.

I’ve never paid a lot of attention to Steve Winwood, but the video has helped me put a face to the haunting voice in the recordings of Blind Faith and Traffic. I never realized what an enormous mouth he has, but he does well with it.

In the Hyde Park video, Clapton seems subdued and keeps to the background. That fits with what his Wikipedia bio says — apparently Clapton felt that the concert was premature and that Blind Faith hadn’t practiced enough:

[Clapton] thought that the band’s playing was sub-par and that the adulation was undeserved and reminiscent of his Cream days when the crowds would applaud for nearly everything. Clapton, knowing the band had not rehearsed enough and was unprepared, was reluctant to tour and feared that the band would develop into a Cream repeat.

The music is indeed pretty rough — you can tell the group was relatively unpracticed — and Winwood is often off-key. Even so, it’s fun to see.

Clapton has some great videos on his official web site, but nothing of Blind-Faith vintage. Here’s a YouTube video of “Can’t Find My Way Home” as performed at the Hyde Park concert.

Brian Wilson’s Live Redo of Pet Sounds

The other video I watched recently on “Classic in Concert” was a live performance (2003 in London, I believe) of music from the Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds.

Now in his 60s, I think Wilson can be forgiven for being a little off-key and no longer able to hit the high notes. Heck, Stevie Winwood was even more off-key at Hyde Park when he was 21. It’s inherent in the live-concert venue — you’re never going to get the perfection of a studio recording.

The band Wilson uses in the concert does a good job of reproducing the classic Beach-Boys sound, although some of its members might have had great-grandparents in the audience.

In some brief interview comments at the end of the video, Wilson reflects on the Beach Boys’ competition with the Beatles during the late 1960s. He compares Pet Sounds to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — a dubious comparison, in my opinion. While it might be true that the two groups were in competition for raw popularity at the time, I would be hard-pressed to rank Wilson’s output with the innovative genius of the Lennon-McCartney collaboration.

Much as I enjoyed the video, I’m not wild about the Pet Sounds music. However, the concert does include beautiful versions of Wilson’s arrangement of the traditional “Sloop John B.” and his song “Good Vibrations” (which was from Smile rather than Pet Sounds). At the time it came out, I thought of “Good Vibrations” as just another me-too psychedelic release. But over the years, I’ve come to appreciate it much more, and I now regard it as a masterwork and a great composition.

Brian Wilson has some fine recent concert videos on his official web site. From NPR’s article “Brian Wilson in Concert,” you can listen to a 2008 live recording.

AB — 3 February 2010

Wondermark: Rockin’ the Laundry

On By quriosityIn art, Creativity, Innovation, Society and Popular Culture1 Comment

Recently I discovered Wondermark, a comic strip remixed from old woodcuts and other art by artist David Malki. What makes Wondermark so entertaining is the juxtaposition of 19th-century artwork and 21st-century dialogue.

Wondermark comes out on Tuesday and Fridays. Today’s strip is a hilarious example (linked):

Malki describes his art sources:

Wondermark is created from 19th-Century woodcuts and engravings, scanned from my personal collection of old books and also from volumes in the Los Angeles Central Library. Most of the books are bound volumes of general-interest magazines such as Harper’s, Frank Leslie’s and Punch, but my collection also includes special-interest magazines such as Scientific American, Sears-Roebuck catalogs, storybooks, and primers.

AB — 26 January 2010

Favorite Places: Raleigh Little Theatre and Rose Garden

On By quriosityIn art, Life, Raleigh NCLeave a comment

John Morris’s article today on Goodnight, Raleigh highlighted one of my favorite places here in the beautiful city of Raleigh, NC, where I was born and grew up — see “The Splendor of Raleigh’s Little Theatre and Rose Garden.” This cultural treasure is only a short walk from NCSU and the Cameron Village shopping center. (See the Little Theatre’s web site for information about the organization and its productions.)

Morris includes some great photos of the Rose Garden and amphitheater. Most interesting to me are historical photos, such as the one linked here to the right, from the theater’s construction during the 1930s.

Thinking about the Rose Garden conjures up a wealth of memories for me. When I was a teenager during the 1960s, my church, the Raleigh Unitarian Fellowship, met at the Little Theatre for a time on Sundays. About 1969, when I was in high school, a group of us held an anti-war rally in the amphitheatre. We were most amused when a guy showed up and tried to be surreptitious while taking photos of us with a telescopic camera lens — a representative of the city the police department, as I later learned during a conversation with a police captain.

One night about 1971, some friends and I walked down at night and approached the amphitheater from the back through the rose garden. The place was crowded and lit up, and, in our altered state of mind at the time, we were amazed when a cowboy walked by us in the garden, leading a horse. My friend Ray turned to me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Must be gettin’ close to town.”

As it turned out, this was a dress rehearsal for an outdoor performance of Oklahoma — we sat down on the concrete bleachers and enjoyed the show for awhile.

My most memorable visit to the Rose Garden, though, was an outing several of us had there during a total eclipse, which I believe was in March 1970.

Here are some photos of the Rose Garden from a recent visit by me and Virginia and our friend Ellin from Vermont.

AB — 6 January 2010

Tonight’s Blue Moon in History and Song

On By quriosityIn art, Creativity, Language and Linguistics, music, Society and Popular CultureLeave a comment

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the expression “blue moon” usually has nothing to do with the moon’s color.

Tonight’s full moon is a “blue moon,” meaning it’s the second full moon of December 2009 — one of those things that doesn’t happen very often, as the moon is full every 28 days and the longest months are 31 days. We get a blue moon once every two or three years.

History of the Blue Moon

Historically, the phrase “blue moon” has been used mostly as a general term for a very unusual event, according to the Wikipedia entry. It’s only been used to refer to the second full moon in a month since 1946.

Wikipedia gives two alternative explanations for the origin of the term:

1. A 1528 pamphlet critical of the clergy, which ranted that “Yf they say the mone is belewe / We must believe that it is true.” So this indicates that the phrase was used to refer to “absurdities and impossibilities” in general.

2. The other explanation rests on an alternative meaning for “belewe” in Old English: betrayer. In this case, the moon could be called a betrayer if it led to a mistake in calculating when Easter should occur.

The Blue Moon in Song

The “Blue Moon” has been the subject of popular songs — following are some of the greatest (all these links take you to samples of the cuts mentioned):

“Blue Moon” — Maybe the best-known version is the doo-wop version recorded by the Marcels in 1961. The song was actually written in 1934 by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It’s been recorded by many artists, but my personal favorite is Bob Dylan’s version on his 1989 Self Portrait album.

“Blue Moon of Kentucky” — A bluegrass song written by Bill Monroe, but also recorded in a more rockin’ version by Elvis Presley. I think my favorite version, though, is the one by Patsy Cline.

“Blue Moon Nights” — Appears on John Fogerty’s excellent solo album Blue Moon Swamp.

“Once in a Very Blue Moon” — My favorite “blue moon” song of all is this exquisite number by Nancy Griffith, co-written with Pat Alger.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry does say that sometimes the moon actually can look blue because of smoke or dust in the atmosphere.

AB — 31 December 2009

Climate Change: A great side-by-side comparison of both sides’ views

On By quriosityIn Science, Society and Popular Culture, Thinking, World AffairsLeave a comment

One of the great challenges for an observer of public discourse these days is getting a clear, unbiased statement of both sides of an argument. People have powerful motivations to articulate only their opinion and trash the other side — see my previous entry, “Spin and Rhetorical Intimidation.”

So it was refreshing to come across the infographic linked below from Information Is Beautiful. The graphic provides a reasonable, neutral juxtaposition of both sides in the climate debate. (Click the image to see it full-size.)

AB — 8 December 2009