Glass Update

Thanks to reader Vikk for pointing out a broken link to the story about The Glass Engine. The story was just re-published.

The other thing I wanted to share was an advertisement I saw on the Metro North train today while returning from a board meeting in New York City. The advert was prominently displayed on a mini billboard in each car of the train. It read "Do you really need the laptop tonight?" Near the bottom of the ad it said "citi -- Live richly". At the very bottom it was labeled "citi.com". The ad suggests that you can't "live richly" unless you are physically out of your house and using your credit card. Perhaps Citibank didn't notice that retail sales on the web were up roughly 30% year over year. I have a story in the works about "The Future Of Advertising". I don't claim to be the expert on this but I have some views that I suspect readers will agree will find interesting. Stay tuned.

One last thing. While on the train from New York to Goldens Bridge, the train stopped at Mt. Kisco, New York. After a brief pause, the engineer announced that he was ordered by police to not open the doors. Then the police came aboard and searched every car. I overheard the police officers talking on their walkie-talkie. They were looking for a 23 year old woman in black. After about ten minutes they found her and escorted her off the train. No idea what the issue was.

Music January 13, 2004 10:54 PM

The Glass Engine

The Glass Engine represents a very interesting new approach to searching and interacting with information. (Note: unfortunately it requires Microsoft Internet Explorer). I suspect you will be as impressed as I was when you see this remarkable technology prototype. It was developed by Mark Podlaseck at IBM's Hawthorne, New York Research Laboratory. The project started when Philip Glass, the composer, asked what his catalog of music might look like online. Mark thought the music should be an integral part of the navigation experience, like it is when "surfing" the radio or television. He wanted to be immersed in the sound of it, making micro-decisions about whether he liked something or not as opposed to making arbitrary, uninformed decisions about whether he wanted to hear chamber music or film soundtracks, or Symphony #1, #2, #3, #4, or #5.  (read more)

Music January 13, 2004 10:16 PM