September 2010 Archives

"A reason to live, isn't it?" I remember her saying it as I sat staring across the street. This is such a moment to live. I have so much to tell you. I am sitting outside a cafe. It's 8:45 pm and my phone is a brick. On the table are an empty box of matches from Clyde Common, two empty glasses of wine, a single ticket to a 9:45 pm show at the film festival for VENGEANCE. 

The old men who frequent the cafe sat at the table next. French in origin I can tell with a friendly parrot named (something) which climbed on my finger and made the appropriate bird sounds. The cold evening slowly descended. "I lost the other ticket" she said as she got up to fetch a jacket from my office next door. I ordered just another glass of wine for us to share but the bartender who runs the night shift happens to be her new roommate and poured us a full carafe instead. "If you don't finish it someone else will."

Dusk is when you can see inside from the outside just as clearly and vice-versa. This is what I love about it. And that I can sit here and smoke your cigarettes while people heading home from work pass us by. "I couldn't get you a seat this time but next time. Go check out the film instead" she said as she ran across the street and jumped into a friends car headed for dinner at Chez Panisse. We had been discussing our project until then, something I pitched to her last fall which she instantly tuned into. We had our first fundraiser last week and this was our first chance to do a follow up talk. Our conversation consisted only of suicide, commitment, and fools. Still through this I'm reminded of the reasons to keep on with the project. When the reasons are unreasonable it isn't good to try and put them into words. The stories around them are sufficient. Many people will never get that. I hope to always get that.

As I lay here on my head, feeling awake but uncertain about it, I allowed my thoughts to travel back many years and slowly creep up to some realizations. That in my detachment I have along the way with careless disregard caused a number of people a great deal of pain. I deeply understood and feared that I am absolutely incapable of emotion beyond the duration of a moment. And that a moment is approximately 19 seconds long.

Here's an idea that any budding writer can kickstart easily. The goal would be to provide real-time awareness for people interested in pop culture. I imagine this as a lightweight app or SMS service.

Trending topics on Twitter provides an interesting insight into what's going on in the world in real-time. The scope can be adjusted to as wide as 'Worldwide' and narrowed down to your specific locale, like 'San Francisco'.

The way this is presented is as a simple list of keywords. Clicking on them simply shows a stream of all twitter updates that contain the that keyword. This isn't a very compelling experience. Often the keywords are meaningless to begin with. I took a peek now saw: 

Your mission is to take these keywords and in real-time construct meaningful headlines out of each. I keep saying real-time cause this has to be a 24/7 job. You can't ever close shop or else the service is broke. You'll need to find cohorts.

Your headlines should be informative enough for someone to gather a general sense of what pop culture is on about at that time. You could make it entertaining as well. It shouldn't be repetitive - summarize each one in one packet and send it out, done. This should not be about making more media to consume. This should be about making it meaningful. There is a craft to this.

By "headlines" I really just like the idea of visualizing it as newspaper headlines. I imagine the text presented against a newsprint background using newspaper typography. Of course this can't happen through SMS but as a screensaver type app for mobile or desktop (something that allows users to bring it to the foreground), it could be pretty neat.

Try not to do a scrolling ticker.

Use this as an engine to start with (be sure to click the rows).

So hop to it.

What if through Horizons a real person can take on your virtual presence and continue it on for you? An actor slash playwright personifying you and keeping your bits warm. All that history and content shouldn't have to go to waste. What if your kids can get paid for selling it to someone in desperate need for a new reputation? See another great product concept I call Reputation Farmer.