The Unknown Studio

I’ve been reading many, many articles this past month which talk about the uncertainty over genetically engineered salmon in Prince Edward Island.

Now, I’m a strong advocate for feeding the world’s hungry people – so obviously I’m fairly pro-genetic engineering if it’s going to stop people from dying in Africa.

But in this case my rage is not directed at the knee-jerk environmentalism that’s opposed to feeding the world’s starving children over concerns of “what will happen if we let people actually eat those fish” (hint: they won’t die of starvation), and “what if they escape into the wild?” (answer: they’re sterile.) Rather it’s directed at a misuse of a reference.

I’m referring to the use of the term Frankensalmon. More specifically, the blatantly incorrect use of the term.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

A while back I wrote an article about foursquare talking about how it was a great tool for getting to know your city.

For those of you new to the party, I’ll explain. foursquare is an online game that takes place in your city. You get points every time you check in somewhere. Add a new place, you get bonus points. Go somewhere new, you get bonus points. If you check in at a place more frequently, there’s a chance you may be named the Mayor of the location.

Well, it turns out that it now has an additional usefulness: deals. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 11% [?]

As an avid Star Trek fan, my hope is that the show’s creator — Gene Roddenberry — will be proven a prescient mind and that humanity will divest itself of the shackles of money. That we will unite under a banner of unity and common progression. That our food will arrive out of thin air, and a drunk who resembles James Cromwell will invent faster than light travel…

Then I look around at the devastation exacted upon the planet and human beings by other human beings, and that future seems pretty far off. Except in the world of media. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 12% [?]

Since launching the Unknown Studio last June with Scott, we’ve both variously been trying to find ways to promote the show. Some of that has meant appearing on other podcasts… Or, one other podcast, anyhow. Our third episode featured a good friend, Ramin Ostad, and on that episode we discussed storytelling using video games as a medium. Since that episode, I’ve been trying to sync my schedule with Ramin’s, who also co-host a show called UserCreatedContent, a great little podcast dedicated to all things video-gaming in Edmonton. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 21% [?]

You would be surprised how many of our clients ask to have music with auto-play inserted into their websites. I always discourage this line of thinking, but it always seems to come up. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6% [?]

Awhile back, I’d tweeted about the image search on Microsoft’s Bing search engine and how it’s pretty awesome. Apparently, Google agrees with my assessment: Bing’s image search functionality is the tops. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5% [?]