Perchè Kenneth Branagh ha diretto Thor

Abbiamo visto Tim Burton dirigere due film su Batman, Ang Lee alla regia di un film su Hulk (nonchè fare in prima persona il motion capture del personaggio principale) e Michel Gondry portare al cinema Green Hornet. Non ci si dovrebbe più stupire alla notizia di un autore intellettuale che dirige un film commerciale su un supereroe, eppure l’accoppiata Kenneth Branagh/Thor ha del clamoroso per unione di accademico e commerciale.

Branagh è uno dei maggiori interpreti e registi contemporanei delle opere shakespeariane, Thor il personaggio protagonista di una serie di fumetti Marvel, un dio nordico che opera tra i mortali come un eroe tanto da essersi guadagnato un film a lui dedicato in uscita al cinema questa settimana.

Prima d’ora Branagh aveva lavorato per il cinema in maniera parsimoniosa e più che altro concentrandosi su trasposizioni d’eccezione (Enrico V, Molto rumore per nulla e Amleto), più altre opere tra il teatrale e il letterario (Frankenstein di Mary Shelley o Il Flauto Magico), come dice lui: “Copioni con molti thou e thee”.

Thor invece al cinema non era ancora mai approdato e ci arriva ora come parte di un progetto più grande orchestrato dai Marvel Studios: realizzare diversi film su diversi supereroi (Iron Man, Capitan America, Hulk...) per poi lanciare un filmone che li riunisca tutti (I Vendicatori in uscita nel 2012).

Dunque il più teatrale dei registi cinematografici contemporanei per uno dei progetti più commerciali dell’annata. Peraltro in 3D!

E per quanto affidare a Branagh un film come Thor, la cui trama gira intorno alla storia epica di una famiglia di dei, possa avere una sua logica, lo stesso il regista e attore è il primo ad ammettere la stranezza del tutto quando gli si domanda senza mezzi termini.

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Post-tornado mapping in Google Maps and Earth

This past week, several devastating tornadoes struck across a wide swathe of the southern United States. Our Crisis Response team is activating to provide data and imagery we hope will be useful to first responders and the general public.

In cooperation with our satellite partner GeoEye, we have imagery of the aftermath of several tornadoes, including in Tuscaloosa, Alabama as shown below. We have created several before-and-after comparisons in a Picasa album.

Left: Google imagery from late 2010. Right: GeoEye imagery from Thursday, April 28.

Top: Charleston Square Apartments, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Bottom: Towns of Pleasant Grove, Concord, and Hueytown, Jefferson County, Alabama. Click to see enlarged.

This imagery, as well as data sets such as Red Cross shelter locations and tornado touchdown reports, are available in this collection on Google Maps. We will continue to add imagery and data as it comes available.

Our heart goes out to everyone affected by this tragic event.

Update: You can now access the satellite imagery directly in Google Earth. Make sure the Places layer is enabled, then go to Alabama. Click the image of a tornado to find links to load the images.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Google Crisis Response team

Adhouse Books' Stuart Immonen volume

Fear Itself's IMMONEN Shows Private Work in CENTIFOLIA 2
By Chris Arrant, Newsarama  28 April 2011
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/immonen-centerfolia-2-110428.html

Fridaygram

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

The final launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour is now scheduled for early next week. This will be the next-to-last mission planned for the US Space Shuttle program. As a young nerd, I loved to watch the progress of the space program. Almost as amazing as the missions themselves was the fact that I could see it all live on television, even from hundreds of thousands of miles away.

Endeavour is going to do much better than that. You can go to www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour and submit video questions for the crew of Endeavour. The crew will select some of the questions and answer them live on YouTube. For more details, see the Official Google Blog.

Much closer to home, and completely unrelated, Google Chrome got a pretty slick new feature in the stable release this week. You can now use voice input with Google Translate in Chrome. In many languages, you can even click Listen to hear the translation. This feature uses the HTML speech input API. Now I can practice those languages I never quite mastered on my last vacation.



For more on what you can develop with HTML5 and other open web technologies, see the Chrome Experiments site.

Finally, if you want to know why this Space Shuttle mission includes squids, read this page.

Celebrating Arbor Day with Save the Redwoods League and Google Earth

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

From time to time we invite guests to post about topics of interest and we’re pleased to have Emily Limm join us for U.S. Arbor Day. Emily is the science director for the non-profit Save the Redwoods League and is studying the impact of climate change on the redwood forests of northern California. To raise awareness about the League’s research, she worked with Google Earth Outreach to model old-growth redwoods on Google Earth. In this post, Emily shares her ideas on how technology and citizen science can help scientific research. -Ed.

Today is U.S. Arbor Day, a holiday established 120 years ago to celebrate our often under-appreciated forests, which provide us with necessities like clean air and drinking water as well as small pleasures like shade for a summer’s day picnic or a beautiful place to hike with crunchy leaves underfoot. Arbor Day holds special meaning for me because I spend most of my time in the coastal redwood forests of California, working to protect the world’s tallest tree species.

Over the past few months, Save the Redwoods League and the Google Earth Outreach team have collaborated to create 3D models of the old-growth redwood forest in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in northern California, so you can now take a virtual hike among the ancient trees and cruise over towering treetops. Explore the park by activating the 3D trees layer in Earth (under 3D Buildings) and searching for [jedediah smith redwoods state park, ca]. Tilt your view angle toward the horizon to make the trees appear. You can download the KML file for the narrated tour about redwoods to view in Google Earth, or watch the video version below:



In order to protect redwoods in Jedediah Smith and elsewhere, my colleagues and I are working to collect data on geographic regions where the trees are currently thriving to determine how future forests will fare in our changing climate. A critical piece of our work is collecting and comparing field observations of redwoods across different climates, but we need more data to draw strong conclusions—and that’s where you come in.

Today, Save the Redwoods League is launching our citizen science project Redwood Watch, powered by iNaturalist.org, a platform for recording, organizing and mapping nature observations. By sharing a simple digital photograph of a redwood tree and the time and location where the picture was taken, you can help the League track and monitor the species. If you know of a redwood tree—perhaps in your own backyard or in a nearby park—you can use the free Redwood Watch iPhone application or your own camera to take a photo, add a comment and submit it online. iNaturalist stores your observation and, if geographical coordinates weren’t captured automatically, uses the Google Maps APIs to assign them to your photo. With your geolocated observation, we can zoom out and analyze your observation in the context of global environmental and climatic patterns.

An observation of a coast redwood submitted to the Redwood Watch on iNaturalist.org.

The more field observations Save the Redwoods League collects, the better we’ll understand what climate makes a healthy redwood today, and predict where the redwood forests of tomorrow will thrive. We hope to see you on the Redwood Watch.

Happy Arbor Day from Save the Redwoods League and Google Earth!

Note: There are plenty of parallel projects going on around the world, so if you don’t live near redwoods, consider participating in one of the other iNaturalist.org citizen science projects.

Posted by Emily Limm, Ph.D., Director of Science and Planning, Save the Redwoods League

Post reviews Hoodwinked Too!

The Trouble with Truffles: 'Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil'

By Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post April 29, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/hoodwinked-too-hood-vs.-evil-3d,1180696/critic-review.html

Chime in on #io2011 and check out After Hours

Merci

Monica

By Merci Niebres and Monica Tran, Google I/O Team

A few weeks ago, we announced I/O Live and invited you to display our HTML5 badge on your blog or website. Starting today, your I/O Live badge links to our new Google Earth mashup that lets you see what developers from all over the world are saying on the #io2011 hashtag.


In other news, the theme for this year’s Google I/O After Hours party is “Infinite Playground.” Starting at 6:30 P.M. on May 10, join us for a celebration of technical and artistic innovation with futuristic robots, transforming vehicles, and games from the visionaries at Gadgetoff, Maker Faire, MIT, Georgia Tech Center, iRobot, Madagascar Institute and others.

What's a party without killer tunes? This year, we are pleased to present a live performance from Jane’s Addiction. The legendary band, including Perry Farrell, Stephen Perkins, and Dave Navarro, will be headlining the party with a 45-minute set of their classics and a sneak peek at their upcoming album, The Great Escape Artist, which will be released in August. The line-up will be completed with San Francisco’s very own DJs Mark Farina and Miguel Migs with music visuals brought to you by Sexyvisuals.

In yesterday's post we revealed I/O schedule details that include which sessions will be livestreamed along with the keynotes. We will also be livestreaming the concert on I/O Live from 7:30 - 9:30 P.M. PDT on May 10. Bookmark www.google.com/io -- and check back on May 10. You won’t want to miss the finale to our countdown.




Merci Niebres is a Marketing Events Manager in Google's San Francisco office, focusing on developer outreach programs and consumer product launches. In her spare time, she obsesses over her collection of cameras and forces her friends and dog to model for her.

In the past four years, Monica Tran has been around the world, working as a Product Marketing Manager in Mountain View, London, and Tokyo. Monica is entirely too busy working on Google I/O to spend time writing her bio right now.

Post Japan Earthquake panoramas in Google Earth

In an effort to continue to help keep people informed about the extent of the tragedy that has recently struck Japan, Google Earth has added panorama photos of post-earthquake zones. These photos come from our partner 360cities and can be found in the “Photos” layer in Google Earth, along with other 360cities and Panoramio photos. These dramatic panorama photos are part of the work of photographer, Akila Ninomiya.

In March 2011, Mr. Ninomiya took his camera and bravely ventured into the heart of post-earthquake zones in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. He documented earthquake and tsunami damages in cities including Rikuzen-Takada, Kamaishi, Osawa, Miyako, Settai, and Omoto.

Mr Ninomiya didn’t just take pictures. He took 360 degree panoramas, which give unique perspectives to the extent and severity of this unprecedented natural disaster.

To see his collection in Google Earth, make sure you have the “Photos” layer turned on. Then fly to any of the cities mentioned above, eg. Ofunato, Japan. You will see a number of orange colored photo placemarks. Click on one of them and you will see a picture like the one below:

To see the 360 degree view, click on the center picture in the balloon and it will take you into the panoramas. If you wish to view the post earthquake panoramas only, download this KML collection and open it in Google Earth.

These panoramas were taken as part of a non-profit Japan Pano Journalism Project, which aimed to document the 2011 Japan Earthquake damage and recovery with 360º panoramic photography.

Posted by Wei Luo, Technical Lead/Manager, Google Earth

Post slideshow on comic book movies and Thor article

This article doesn't seem to be in the paper -

'Thor,' director Branagh finds common thread from comic book to Shakespeare.
By David Mermelstein,
Washington Post.com April 26 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/shakespearean-kenneth-branagh-talks-about-the-challenge-of-directing-thor/2011/04/26/AFDr4n6E_story.html

Comic book heroes on the big screen is the slideshow.

Spurred by the success of "Batman Begins," "Spider-Man," "Iron Man," "X-Men" and their sequels, superhero blockbusters have become a cinema staple in the last decade. "Thor," based on the Marvel comic book inspired by Norse myth, arrives in theaters May 6, and "Green Lantern," "Captain America: The First Avenger" and "X-Men: First Class" follow later this summer.

Stephen Hess on Obama caricatures

Martin, Michel.  2011.
Political Caricatures Of Obama, 'Birther Movement' Hint Of Racism.
National Public Radio's Tell Me More April 27, 2011http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/27/135770521/politcal-caricatures-of-obama-birther-movement-hint-of-racism
http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/tmm/2011/04/20110427_tmm_01.mp3

Tom Spurgeon has some commentary on the piece, which also included political cartoonist Mike Luckovich.

Arlington's DARPA looking for a good comic proposal

Bam! Healing war wounds through comic books
Defense Department says online versions may help soldiers suffering PTSD
By Stuart Fox
4/28/2011
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42801779/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/

Google I/O session schedule revealed

By Amy Walgenbach of the Google I/O Team

The complete schedule for I/O is now available, so if you’re attending Google I/O on May 10-11, you can now start planning two days packed with sessions and events. The schedule for I/O BootCamp is also up for your convenience.

The in-depth descriptions of I/O sessions, complete with speakers for each, are available on the Sessions page of the I/O site. With so many great sessions to choose from, we wanted to highlight two special sessions that will take place at the close of Day 1.

Ignite. Fast-paced, fun, and thought-provoking, Ignite captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations. It's a high-energy session of short talks by people who have an idea—and the guts to get onstage and share it. This year we will learn about the Brain API, the similarities of Disneyland and Burning Man, and a dissection of the Tiger Mom myth.

Google Ventures Meetup. Google Ventures will be holding an experiment in controlled chaos. This event will bring attendees together with members of the Google Ventures core team (investors and experienced startup veterans), and select portfolio companies ranging from small, new teams to later-stage, successful companies. The room will be arranged to enable attendees to speak to panels of "experts" in bite-sized, three-minute 1:1 conversations, otherwise known as VC speed dating. Our goal is to connect both practicing and soon-to-be entrepreneurs with experts who can impart advice, lessons learned, and quick tips.

We’ve also posted our Office Hours schedule. Google engineers will be on hand to answer any questions you have about the products and technologies featured at I/O. We’ll be holding office hours for Accessibility, Android, Apps, App Engine, Chrome, Commerce, Developer Tools/GWT, Geo, Google APIs, Google TV, Google Mobile Ads/AdMob, and YouTube.

Be sure to check @googleio for the latest updates.


Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Dreamworks's characters to move to National Harbor

Gaylord-DreamWorks deal will bring Shrek, Kung Fu Panda to National Harbor
By Ovetta Wiggins,
Washington Post April 28 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/gaylord-dreamworks-deal-will-bring-shrek-kung-fu-panda-to-national-harbor/2011/04/22/AF3hXrzE_story.html

ShortForm: mix and share the world's videos

By Jereme Monteau, Lead Developer at ShortForm

This post is part of Who's at Google I/O, a series of guest blog posts written by developers who are appearing in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O.


ShortForm is a new entertainment medium where you find continuous channels of the best videos, curated by a growing community of VJs. At ShortForm you can be a viewer, a VJ, or both. Viewers subscribe to channels of interest, lean back, and enjoy a continuous stream of videos.

The developers at ShortForm worked with various YouTube Data APIs in order to deliver both the Viewer and VJ experience.

Standard feeds and user playlists. ShortForm makes it easy and fun for anyone to VJ a channel. We also auto-curate a select set of channels to surface mainstream content that would appeal to most audiences. For example, our YouTube Hits channel includes content from the standard YouTube video feeds such as Top Rated, Most Viewed and Most Popular. ShortForm developed a system for retrieving video entries and their associated metadata, and then ordering them in playlists based on a ranking algorithm.

Favorites and uploads. ShortForm allows VJs to import their YouTube favorites and uploads into their channels quickly and easily by authenticating via YouTube’s OAuth provider. Once a user has connected their ShortForm account to their YouTube account, we are able to allow them to import their favorites and uploads through an authenticated call to the YouTube Data API. In the future we will streamline the process of uploading videos to YouTube by allowing VJs to upload videos to YouTube directly from ShortForm while adding those videos to their ShortForm channel in the same flow.

Player API. Providing a seamless channel viewing experience on ShortForm requires that we integrate tightly with YouTube’s JavaScript API to the ActionScript 3 player. This allows us to properly handle video events to ensure continuous playback. Users have full control over their viewing experience using the next and previous video buttons, which load videos into the YouTube player. We have also begun integrating with the new iframe embed style that is currently in beta and have seen promising results in our initial tests across desktop and mobile platforms.

Android tablet. Tablet computing represents an exciting opportunity for ShortForm to provide a first-class viewing experience in a new package. We have begun testing and looking for places to optimize the viewing experience on tablet devices.

ShortForm widget. Our embeddable widget syntax was inspired by YouTube’s new iframe embed syntax. We believe this is the simplest, most flexible and most powerful way to allow our users to embed their channels anywhere on the web.

We are thrilled to be a part of Google I/O and in order to demonstrate the power of ShortForm, we are putting together a Google I/O Sandbox channel, a continuous channel of product pitches and demos from companies represented in the I/O Developer Sandbox. We invite all Sandbox companies to submit a video of their product pitch or demo. Details can be found at the ShortForm at Google I/O page. We'll use the channel to preview cool companies in the Sandbox before the conference. The channel will also provide media members with a summary of all the technology from all Sandbox companies.

Lastly, we are going to have a little fun and invite all attendees to vote on their favorite pitches and demos. Submit your video on the ShortForm at Google I/O page. We’ll surface a leaderboard showing videos with the top votes, and the winning entry will be highlighted in a press release and will get prime placement on ShortForm’s homepage for one week, reaching hundreds of thousands of people.


Come see ShortForm in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O on May 10-11.

As a founding member of ShortForm, Jereme has been hacking around with the YouTube APIs for over a year now and has been building software for 15 years. When he’s not coding he’s probably trail running or roasting his own coffee while eagerly anticipating the arrival of his first child in June.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Simperium’s use of Google App Engine for Simplenote

Mike

Fred

By Mike Johnston and Fred Cheng, co-founders, Simperium

This post is part of Who's at Google I/O, a series of guest blog posts written by developers who are appearing in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O.


We originally created Simplenote both as a learning exercise and to address what we thought were shortcomings in the original Notes app for the iPhone (Marker Felt font, no ability to search, etc.) The very first version of Simplenote didn't even have syncing!

We've certainly come a long way since then. The Simplenote backend now synchronizes data across devices, the web, and third-party apps while also handling in-app purchases, sharing, and basic metrics. About a year ago, we were accepted to the Y Combinator startup accelerator with something like 20,000 users. Today, with hundreds of thousands of users, we're currently serving 15 million requests daily and providing access to over 500 gigabytes (!) worth of text notes.

Google App Engine is at the heart of it. We made a decision early on to use App Engine so we wouldn't have to worry about scaling, or deploying more servers, or systems administration of any kind. Being able to instantly deploy new versions of code has allowed us to iterate quickly based on feedback we get from our users, and easily test new features in our web app, like the newly added Markdown support.

We consider our syncing capabilities to be core features of Simplenote. They are, in and of themselves, largely responsible for attracting and retaining many of our users. Our goal is to give other developers access to great syncing, too. The next version of our backend is named after our company, Simperium. As a general-purpose, realtime syncing platform intended for third-party use, Simperium's architecture is much more expansive than the Simplenote backend. Yet App Engine still plays a key role. It powers the Simplenote API that is used by dozens of great third-party apps like Notational Velocity. And it continues to power auxiliary systems, like processing payments with Stripe, while bridging effectively with externally hosted systems, like our solution for storing notes as files in the wonderful Dropbox.

We suspected we might outgrow App Engine, but we haven't. Instead, our use of it has evolved along with our needs. Code we wrote for App Engine a year ago continues to hum along today, providing important functionality even as new systems spring up around it.

In fact, we still come up with entirely new ways to use App Engine as well. Just last week we launched an internal system that uses APIs from Twitter, Amazon Web Services, Assistly, and HipChat to pump important business data into our private chat rooms. This was a breeze to write and deploy using App Engine. Such is the mark of a versatile and trustworthy tool: it's the first thing you reach for in your tool belt.


Come see Simperium in the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O on May 10-11.

Mike Johnston was a senior designer and programmer at Irrational Games where he worked on numerous games and prototypes for PC and Xbox 360. Before that he built security software at Entrust.

Fred Cheng hails from Cantaloupe Systems, a venture-backed startup, where he built their infrastructure for wirelessly tracking tens of thousands of vending machines.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Freaks!

L'annata 2010/2011 si sta rivelando foriera di novità finalmente interessanti per il panorama del video in rete italiano. Dopo qualche anno in cui abbiamo visto esperimenti non sempre riusciti e più che altro ricalcati su modelli televisivi, ecco arrivare nell'ordine Il corso di Cazzotti del dr. Johnson, Travel Companions e L'Altra - Martina Dego a spianare una via italiana al linguaggio audiovisuale per la rete e dare respiro ad un panorama che sembrava schiacciato da sole produzioni anglofone.

Adesso a culmine di questo percorso sembra giungere Freaks!, webserie tutta romana che riunisce i tenutari di alcuni dei canali con il maggior numero di iscrizioni di YouTube in un'impresa dalle dimensioni impensabili, dai costi ridicoli e dalla riuscita sorprendente.

Matteo Bruno, Claudio di Biagio, Guglielmo Scilla e Giampaolo Speziale, rispettivamente Canesecco, NonApriteQuestoTubo, Willwoosh e il cantante degli About Wayne sono gli ideatori e animatori di un progetto che vede Matteo Bruno alla regia e montaggio e gli altri nel ruolo di attori (assieme a Ilaria Giachi e Claudia CicciaSan Genolini). Il tutto scritto da Guglielmo Scilla con Claudio di Biagio e musicato dagli About Wayne. Credits intrecciati che non danno conto di come poi tutti quanti prendano parte creativamente al progetto, in una logica collaborativa che ha poco a che vedere con le produzioni più professionali ed è molto più simile ai progetti nati in rete.

Il risultato è a dir poco fenomenale.

continua su Punto Informatico

E' la prima volta in vita mia che non sento piangere

Arriva ora questo comunicato con dichiarazione ufficiale di Riccardo Tozzi, non solo numero uno di Cattleya ma anche presidente dell'Anica, l'associazione di settore principale

Si è chiuso un ciclo durato tutto il primo decennio del 2000, che è stato quello di rifondazione del cinema italiano. Siamo partiti da zero, con un cinema sparito dal mercato, e abbiamo fatto tutti un gran lavoro, tradottosi in una crescita costante in termini di quantità di pubblico, e di qualità di film. Arriviamo a Cannes con una quota di mercato intorno al 50%, caso praticamente unico al mondo, e con un festival che è all’insegna dell’Italia, con due film in concorso e la Palma alla carriera a Bertolucci. Inoltre, ci arriviamo avendo portato a casa la stabilizzazione degli incentivi fiscali e del Fus. Possiamo, dunque, dire che con questo Festival segniamo il punto d’arrivo della fase di rifondazione del cinema italiano e dobbiamo essere tutti molto soddisfatti del lavoro fatto in questo decennio. Finalmente abbiamo altri problemi, non più di sopravvivenza ma di crescita

La quota cui si fa riferimento è la percentuale che hanno negli incassi i film italiani. A Dicembre era del 30% e già era un risultato pazzesco che ci metteva al secondo posto dietro solo ai francesi.

Fast Five (id., 2011)di Justin Lin

La stranissima saga di Fast & Furious ha visto un cambio di marcia dal terzo capitolo in poi, quello che con la deviazione giapponese priva di star doveva sancirne il definitivo salto dello squalo e quindi la morte. Invece che terminare con un buco nero di incassi la serie ha ripreso fiato e trovato un regista, Justin Lin, capace di infondere interesse e adrenalina anche in una storia che davvero non aveva motivi di averne.

A lui dunque anche il capitolo successivo, quello del ritorno di Vin Diesel e ora questo quinto. Entrambi in grado di rimettere a posto la saga come uno dei franchise più solidi e onesti del panorama contemporaneo. Azione vera, diretta alla grande, senza velleità e con grande coscienza della storia di questo genere.

Il quinto episodio è una sorta di Expendables, anzi sarebbe più corretto dire "I Mercenari prendono la patente B". Dominic Toretto infatti, scappato con il suo sodale in Brasile, chiama a raccolta per un ultimo grande colpo (ma chi ce crede??) amici e colleghi dai precedenti 4 film. Da Tyrese Gibson (2 Fast 2 Furious) a Sung Kang (Tokyo Drift) da Gal Gadot a Ludacris e Matt Schulze. Mancano solo Eva Mendes e Michelle Rodriguez ma dopo i titoli di coda anche questo è spiegato.

La sorpresa è che Justin Lin mescola e amalgama tutti questi protagonisti in un vortice d'azione trovando un equilibrio tra le parti migliore e più scorrevole di quello di Stallone (che però poi ha un cuore che sta ad altri livelli proprio). Fast Five è un film esagerato, fracassone e soddisfacente come non è mai facile riuscire a fare. Contrappone alla fisicità al limite del bolso di Vin Diesel (che si rimbocca la canotta sotto i pettorali), quella molto più monoespressiva (e quindi più in parte) di The Rock, creando un momento di confronto all'altezza delle alte aspettative.

Justin Lin è davvero uno dei pochi registi d'azione pura contemporanei che sa cosa fare in ogni momento, ha un controllo "muscolare" del ritmo della pellicola che gli consente di abbinare la forza distruttiva degli eventi dipinti con un montaggio rapido e sempre lucido. Ha l'arroganza di saltare a piedi pari molti momenti, riuscendo poi a suggerire cosa non si sia visto con l'attacco di montaggio successivo. I film di Lin sono come valanghe che distruggono tutto ma rimanendo all'interno della loro pista.

Harvey Pekar 2010 interview

This one is new to me - squish it into your Harvey Pekar: Conversations book somehow.

S1.EP17 - Harvey Pekar with music from Northcoast Jazz Collective.
Milk of Minutia podcast June 17 2010
http://www.blubrry.com/minutia/1021025/s1ep17-harvey-pekar-with-music-from-northcoast-jazz-collective/
http://traffic.libsyn.com/milkofminutia/17_Harvey_Pekar_with_music_from_Northcoast_Jazz_Collective.mp3

Weldon on the death of Bill Blackbeard

A Hoarder for History: Comic-Strip Archivist Bill Blackbeard, 1926-2011
by Glen Weldon
April 27, 2011
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/27/135741186/a-hoarder-for-history-comic-strip-archivist-bill-blackbeard-1926-2011

A royal view of the wedding procession, right in your browser

As we approach Friday and the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, many locations in central London are in the spotlight. Last month we expanded our 3D imagery of central London’s buildings and trees in Google Earth to help you explore the royal wedding procession route.

As we get closer to the wedding day, we’ve also featured a few highlights along the procession route for you to explore in 3D using Google Maps with Earth View. If you have the Google Earth plug-in installed, you can get started viewing these spots though an immersive tour right away, or you can download the Google Earth plug-in to explore Google Maps in 3D.

With one click, you can travel to Buckingham Palace, fly to an aerial perspective of Westminster Abbey, or get a clock-level view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Get started seeing these and other highlights at maps.google.com/royalwedding.

Houses of Parliament & Big Ben, London

Whatever way you're celebrating on Friday, we hope this rich data of London in Google Earth and Google Maps brings you that little bit closer to this historic event.

Posted by Phil Verney, Program Manager, Google Earth & Maps

Team Cul de Sac fanzine announced

Craig Fischer is compiling a Team Cul de Sac fanzine for those who'd rather read than view. Click the link to see who's contributing and how to get a copy.

Live from space: You talk to Commander Mark Kelly and the Endeavour Crew

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

UPDATE 4/29: NASA has scrubbed the launch attempt today due to a technical problem. We'll provide an update here on the live streamed launch and live interview, and you can follow NASA updates here.

We’ve always jumped at the chance to bring the wonders of space a little closer to home. We’ve announced a Moon office, a Moon race and an expedition to Mars and brought many nooks and crannies of the universe to Google Earth—Sky, Moon, Mars, NASA images and a Hubble tour, to name a few.

On Friday, April 29, the crew of STS-134 will launch into space for the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour and we want to give you the chance to connect with them. On May 2, NASA Commander Mark Kelly and his crew will take your questions live from space on YouTube. PBS NewsHour will live stream the interview from its YouTube channel with veteran space reporter Miles O’Brien curating and asking your questions to the crew.

Starting today, you can visit www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour to submit a video or written question for the crew of STS-134 to be used in the live interview and vote for your favorite questions. You can also submit questions on Twitter with the hashtag #utalk2nasa. Don’t be shy—if you’re most curious about how to prepare for a spacewalk or wondering if the astronauts have a speech prepared for an extra-terrestrial encounter, this is your chance to find out. Here’s a video from PBS and Miles O’Brien to inspire you:



A few suggestions before submitting your questions:

• Video questions are preferred, and should be a max of 20 seconds long
• Speak clearly and film in a place with minimal background noise. Keep the camera as still as possible and ask the question directly to the camera
• Look through NASA videos on YouTube about STS-134 to learn more about the mission and crew

You have until Saturday April 30 at midnight ET to submit your questions. The top ranked questions will be used in the live interview on Monday, May 2 at 2:15pm ET / 11:15am PT.

To get the full experience of STS-134, you can also watch a live stream of the shuttle launch on Friday April 29 starting at 3:47pm ET at www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour. Both the launch and the interview will be available for archived viewing.

Houston, we’re ready for lift-off.

Posted by Ginny Hunt, Public Sector Program Manager

Students announced for 2011 Google Summer of Code

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs Office

(Cross-posted from the Google Open Source Blog.)

We have announced the 1,116 students who will be participating in this year’s Google Summer of Code program. Students will now start the community bonding period where they will get to know their mentors and prepare for the program by reading documentation, hanging out in the IRC channel and familiarizing themselves with their new community before beginning their actual coding at the end of May.

If you are interested in learning more about the 175 organizations that the students will be working with during the 2011 Google Summer of Code or important dates, please visit the program website.

Congratulations to our accepted students! We look forward to an exciting and productive summer of coding.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Tom Toles to get Herblock Award tonight

Here's Politico's story -

 

Toles: Chip off the Herblock
By: Keach Hagey
Politico April 26, 2011
 http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1104/toles_a_chip_off_the_herblock.html

Imagery Update - Week of April 25th

The Google Earth and Google Maps Imagery Team has just published it’s latest batch of satellite and aerial imagery and as always, there’s all kinds of fascinating sites and features to see.

This release will be our last for April and this month, in particular is always associated in the northern hemisphere with spring and new beginnings. We can trace the meaning of the word April to the latin word aperire, "to open," and what better way to describe “open” than the start of another Major League Baseball season! Below you can see in high-resolution glory, the 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants warming up at their Scottsdale, Arizona spring training park for opening day and defense of their title. In this image, they were hosting the Milwaukee Brewers. As the Giants’ home field is only an hour away from Google’s HQ in Mountain View, they are often the talk of choice in our offices!

Scottsdale Stadium, Scottsdale, Arizona

Below is another example of new beginnings. In this high-res aerial example, we can see Plymouth Rock (lower left), landing site of English Separatists and Anglicans looking for a new life, and the Mayflower 2 (upper right), a replica of their ship the Mayflower, both of which are located in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Plymouth Rock, Plymouth, Massachusetts

Finally, here’s an aerial image of the Sendai Airport in Sendai, Japan as they’re preparing to re-open. To see how the clean-up and rebuilding has progressed at the airport and adjoining neighborhoods, use Google Earth’s Historical Imagery slider to see earlier post-quake imagery of the area. It’s impressive to see.

Sendai Airport, Sendai, Japan

Do you have a place you love that you’d want to receive notification from us when the Earth and Maps Imagery team updates your beloved site? We’ve got just the tool: the Follow Your World application!

As always, these are but a few examples of the types of features that can be seen and discovered in our latest batch of published imagery. Happy exploring!

High Resolution Aerial Updates:
USA: Phoenix, Tuscon, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Wichita, Austin, Cape Cod
Japan: Sendai

Countries/Regions receiving High Resolution Satellite Updates:
Antarctica, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chad, China, Croatia, Egypt, England, France, Georgia, Germany, Haiti, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, Western Sahara, Yemen, Zambia

These updates are now available in both Google Maps and Google Earth. To get a complete picture of where we updated imagery, download this KML for viewing in Google Earth.

Posted by Eric Kolb, Geo Data Strategist

Angèle e Tony (id., 2011)di Alix Delaporte

Esiste un genere che non è genere nel cinema francese, quello dei film d'ambito derelitto. Vite ai margini della città, ai margini del benessere e ai margini della legalità. Storie solitamente tragiche, filmate con macchina a mano e messa in scena sobria. Ma soprattutto film che, dietro un apparente realismo, mettono insieme personaggi totalmente irreali senza che questo infici la godibilità del film.

Angele e Tony sono due disperati, a modo proprio. La prima si è fatta un passaggio in galera e per questo non ha l'affidamento del figlio (momentaneamente parcheggiato dai nonni), il secondo gestisce una compravendita ittica ed è drammaticamente solo. La loro unione, prima di convenienza, può diventare la risposta ad entrambi i malesseri.

Con il chiaro ed evidente obiettivo di raccontare il paesaggio e la società prima che la storia (molto esile) dei due protagonisti, Angèle e Tony, risponde in pieno ai canoni del film d'ambito derelitto. Sebbene contaminato da una poco usuale speranza, lo stesso mette in scena famiglie e personaggi indigenti ed ignoranti con la consueta espressività poetica. In questo come in altri film del genere i pescatori non urlano e non sbraitano davanti a polemiche o difficoltà, non hanno atteggiamenti ignoranti nè sono particolarmente veraci. Anzi. Dal primo all'ultimo sono caratterizzati da una calma compassata e da una tendenza alla riflessione silenziosa più appropriati alle classi snob che a quelle spontanee.

La forza del film è però di fare di quest'irrealismo una caratteristica e non un difetto. I personaggi totalmente di fantasia funzionano più di loro eventuali controparti reali, suggeriscono invece che mostrare apertamente e pur non rispecchiando le cose come stanno riescono lo stesso, per allusione, a parlare di stati d'animo.

Non è un modo di raccontare diretto, che mostra un microuniverso per quel che è, ma un modo di filtrare un'idea di quel microuniverso per renderla in grado di parlare a molti altri.

USA Today on Hugh MacLeod

Getting laid off was a good thing for 'Evil Plans' author Hugh MacLeod
By Kerry Hannon, Special for USA TODAY April 25 2011
http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2011-04-10-evil-plans-book-review.htm

Cellulite e Celluloide - Il cinema su Radio Rock

Il consueto podcast settimanale della trasmissione in onda su RadioRock (106.600 FM) ogni venerdì alle 19.45, che vede ai microfoni oltre a Prince Faster anche il sottoscritto sotto lo pseudonimo di Gabriele Vasquez.

Dopo due puntate di buco per ristrutturazione tecnologica nelle sedi della radio il podcast torna con una settimana difficile, un po' per la mancanza di film in uscita, un po' per le mie difficoltà a seguire i pochi che sono usciti.

Dopo un inizio in omaggio a Le Mani Sulle Città, si comincia con il racconto della visita sul set di Freaks!, la webserie, evento che mi ha tenuto lontano da proiezioni stampa. Passando invece alle uscite settimanali si comincia con la fantascienza irachena di World Invasion e si prosegue con il racconto di Thor e dell'intervista a Kenneth Branagh.

LA PUNTATA DEL 22/04/2011

Pur non essendo di Roma o dintorni potete godere anche voi di queste perle radiofoniche sottoscrivendo i podcast come più vi aggrada. O consultare l'archivio.

April 27: Hess and Northrop talking about Political Cartoons at Library of Congress

 

Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop will be speaking at the Library of Congress on Wednesday, April 27 at noon in the Montpelier Room on the 6th floor of the James Madison Building on their latest book American Political Cartoons: the evolution of a national identity, 1754-2010. The discussion will include a visual presentation of traditional and animated editorial cartoons. It is free and the public is encouraged to attend. For more information call 202-707-3630 or email sduk@loc.gov.

 

Intervention Con interview on Webcomics Beacon podcast

Episode #182 – Newscast for April 24, 2011
http://webcomicbeacon.com/episode-182/

Onezumi and Harknell (Intervention Con) rejoins Rosscott and Eric Kimble for this edition of the Webcomic Beacon Newscast!

New Flugennock cartoon online

I read on the AP wire earlier this week that the recent McDonald's "Hiring Day" resulted in the hiring of 50,000 new burger-flippers, news that was of course deliriously cheered by the Beltway Insider crowd as part of its collective pants-pissing over the creation of 230,000 new jobs last month ....

Read the rest online at http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=831

Dave Nuttycombe gets MAD about the Post

A name not to worry about
Dave Nuttycombe
Washington Post April 23 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-name-not-to-worry-about/2011/04/18/AFwCPaRE_story.html

Post reviews Walker's The Comics

Nostalgic look at comic strips
By Dan Kois,
Washington Post April 23, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/nostalgic-look-at-comic-strips/2011/04/06/AFdZ9QPE_story.html

Truitt on '27'

'27' benefits from musical heart and Soule
By Brian Truitt, USA TODAY April 21 2011
http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2011-04-21-27comic_N.htm

El mitjà és el missatge

Encara que sóc més seguidor de Woody Harrelson que de Woody Allen, a qui li vaig perdre les petjades fa temps i de qui només trobe utilitat en les seues claus, he vist al You Tube este trosset de la pel·lícula Annie Hall que vull compartir amb vosaltres, fidels d'este mitjà que és El Penjoll:

Gary Varvel wins Robert F Kennedy Journalism award

WINNERS OF THE 43RD ANNUAL ROBERT F. KENNEDY JOURNALISM AWARDS ANNOUNCED

I was one of the judges for this award. There were a lot of good talented cartoonists who submitted again this year.

Comic Riffs on political cartoons

THE WEEK IN POLITICAL CARTOONS: From the Pulitzer to Post.com
By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Comic Riffs April 22 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/the-week-in-political-cartoons-from-the-pulitzer-to-postcom/2011/04/22/AFMaGgPE_blog.html#pagebreak

Fridaygram

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

Clarke's Third Law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". That's exactly how I felt the first time I saw various bits of advanced software: for example, watching a word processor automatically wrap words at the end of a line without having to press Return, seeing the Mac's graphical user interface and learning that I could program it into my apps using ordinary-looking function calls, and watching a search engine take a couple of words and almost instantly find exactly the right web page from among millions.

The Prediction API described in yesterday's post on this blog is a modern piece of software that feels like magic. Using machine learning, the Prediction API examines existing data, determines patterns, and makes educated guesses at answers to questions. For example, if you train a program with phrases in various languages, you can then feed it new phrases and have it determine the language of the new phrases. That's certainly something humans can learn to do; having computers do it sounds remarkable to me, but it's real.

You can use the Prediction API to tell whether user comments are positive or negative, decide which emails are most and least relevant, and identify suspicious activity. If you'd like to add features like these to your apps, please check out yesterday's post.

Turning to a completely different topic, if you're interested at all in making your HTML5 and CSS3 faster, spend half an hour or so watching this talk by Paul Irish from the Google Developer Relations Team. There's a lot in there, including a nifty section about hardware accelerated CSS.



Finally, for nerdy nature fun, please check out this video that shows what happens when a wasp and an ant fight over the same food.

Montgomery County mom's list of comics for autistic kids

A Montgomery County mom's list of comics for autistic kids is online here.

The Graphic Novel Reporter found the link originally and is one of my regular reads.

Watterson does Team Cul de Sac art, says Comic Riffs

THIS JUST IN: First new art from 'Calvin and Hobbes' creator in 16 years, syndicate says

By Michael Cavna
Washington Post Comic Riffs blog April 22 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/this-just-in-first-new-art-from-calvin-and-hobbes-creator-in-16-years-syndicate-says/2011/04/22/AF7l7NQE_blog.html

Celebrating top Geo contributors in the Asia Pacific region

In countries like India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Kazakhstan, a community of passionate users is helping to bring geographic content online—in many cases for the first time. Using products like Google Map Maker, Google SketchUp & Building Maker, and Panoramio, these users are adding geographic information for millions of users to explore in Google Maps and Google Earth.

Recently some of the most active Map Maker mappers, 3D modelers and Panoramio photo contributors from around the region gathered in Singapore to attend the first ever Asia Pacific regional Geo Community Summit.

Map Maker Software Engineer Robin Anil answers questions during a Q & A session.

The summit celebrated top mappers, modelers and photo contributors by asking individuals to tell their stories, brainstorm potential new product features directly with Google engineers during the unconference sessions, as well as make plans for events in the forthcoming year. We learned that India mapper CNR wakes up at 4:30am every morning to map. Pakistan mappers Faraz, Jabran and Omer worked together over the course of two years to map the roads of their country. They even turned Google Calendar into a way to track who was mapping what, and when! Thanks to the efforts of Map Maker contributors throughout the Asia Pacific region, more than a quarter of a billion people now have detailed online maps of the places they live.

Unconference session discussions

To learn more about this recent summit, you check out photos and videos or see detailed session notes and presentations on the event website page. If you’re interested in attending future events, please see the Map Maker Events Calendar, 3D Events Calendar, and Panoramio Events Calendar for upcoming activities. We look forward to celebrating more great achievements from our community of mappers, modelers, and photo contributors in the region.

Posted by Jessica Pfund, Program Manager, Google Map Maker

Celebrating Earth Day

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

Today, we’re celebrating Earth Day with an animated, interactive doodle on our homepage and events at Google offices around the world. At our headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., we’re holding an environmental fair for Googlers, complete with speakers and contests to strengthen Googlers’ green acumen, and a cookout using—what else—parabolic solar cookers (don’t worry, we’ll compost the leftovers).

Our campus garden in Mountain View

We’ve been carbon neutral since 2007 and—Earth Day or not—we’re always asking ourselves what we can do to make the world greener today than it was yesterday. This week, we launched a new website with many of the questions we’ve been asking over the years that have inspired our environmental initiatives. What can we do to make renewable energy cheaper than coal? How can we run a data center using 50 percent less energy? And what does it take to green our energy supply?

It’s questions like these that led us to install solar panels on our Mountain View campus in 2007—at the time, the largest corporate solar installation in the U.S. They’re also what made us decide to donate to Googlers’ favorite charities based on how often they self-power their commute, whether by bike or by pogo stick. We hope the new website helps you start asking bold questions that lead to innovative solutions to make the world a greener place.

In addition to our new site, we’ve had a busy few weeks continuing our green streak. We doubled down on greening our energy supply with our second power purchase agreement (PPA) in less than a year and made several new investments: at a solar photovoltaic plant in Germany (our first in Europe), and others in the largest wind farm and solar project in the world, bringing our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million. While the investments won’t supply our operations with energy, we believe they make business sense and will spur development and deployment of compelling clean energy technologies.

This Earth Day, we’ll continue to ask ourselves what else we can do to bring us closer to true sustainability. We hope that you, and companies across the world, will be doing the same.

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Enegy Czar

Special 'Teaser' online now at Team Cul de Sac

There's a special 'Teaser' of Petey online now at Team Cul de Sac.

Post on Mia and the Migoo cartoon

Empty heads save ecosystem
By Rachel Saslow
Washington Post Friday, April 22, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/mia-and-the-migoo,1159167/critic-review.html

Truitt on Thor and Matt Fraction

Matt Fraction embraces 'Mighty' side of Thor
By Brian Truitt, USA TODAY April 20 2011
http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2011-04-20-MightyThor_N.htm

Team Cul de Sac updates

Alex Hallat's Arctic Circle and Crow's Not Just Nicky.

Keeping watching the site for big news.

USA Today on animation studios

Studios keep in 'toon with the times
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY April 22 2011
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2011-04-22-animation22_st_N.htm

April 23: Heroclix Tournament & Demo at Beyond Comics

Beyond Comics Heroclix Tournament... Saturday April 23rd 1:00pm to 2:00pm Free Demonstration. Learn to play Heroclix                 2:00pm to 5:00pm Giant Size X-men Tournament $2 Entry Fee Prizes include $25 Gift Card, Limited Edition GSX Figures  At Beyond Comics 5632 Buckeystown Pike Frederick, MD 21704             (301) 668-8202

Beyond Comics | Gaithersburg Square | 536 North Frederick Avenue | Gaithersburg | MD | 20878

June 9: Nick Galifianakis in Falls Church

Thurs, June 9, 7 pm: A very fun evening with Nick Galifianakis, author of If You Loved Me, You'd Think This Was Cute: Uncomfortably True Cartoons About You

One More Page | 2200 N. Westmoreland Street | #101 | Arlington | VA | 22213

John Geddes on Round Table Press

Motivational all-stars use graphic novels to inspire
By John Geddes, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/2011-04-20-roundtable19-ST_N.htm

Weldon on Mister Wonderful by Clowes

'Mister Wonderful' Pictures An Imperfect Romance
by Glen Weldon
Books We Like April 20, 2011
http://www.npr.org/2011/04/20/135539779/mister-wonderful-pictures-an-imperfect-romance

Monkey Sees the Sandman

Book Club: Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman: Dream Country,' Part One

by Linda Holmes and Glen Weldon

April 21, 2011

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/21/135598864/book-club-neil-gaimans-the-sandman-dream-country-part-one?

 

Prediction API: Every app a smart app

By Travis Green of the Google Prediction API Team.

If you’re looking to make your app smarter and you think machine learning is more complicated than making three API calls, then you’re reading the right blog post.

Today, we are releasing v1.2 of the Google Prediction API, which makes it even easier for preview users to build smarter apps by accessing Google’s advanced machine learning algorithms through a RESTful web service.

Some technical details of the Prediction API:

• Chooses best technique from several available machine learning algorithms.
• Supported inputs: numeric data and unstructured text.
• Outputs hundreds of discrete categories, or continuous values.
• Integrates with many platforms: Google App Engine, web and desktop apps, and command line.
• v1.2 improvements:
• Simpler interface: automatic data type detection, and score normalization.
• Paid usage tier.
• Improved usage monitoring and faster signup through the APIs Console.

Ideas to make the most of the Prediction API:

• Recommendation: What products might a user be interested in? (example)
• Filter RSS feeds, user comments, or feedback: Which posts are most relevant? Should a user comment be featured? Which feedback should we look at first? (example)
• Customize homepages: Predict what content a user would like to see and populate the page with the user’s anticipated interests.
• Sentiment analysis: Is this comment positive or negative? Does a commenter support Group A or Group B?
• Message routing: Route emails to the appropriate person based on analysis of the email contents.
• See the Prediction API website for many more!

To join the preview group, go to the APIs Console and click the Prediction API slider to “ON,” and then sign up for a Google Storage account.

We would also like to continue to thank our supportive preview users for their help making the API the service it is today. We look forward to seeing many more of you join us in making the web just a little bit smarter, and hearing your thoughts and feedback through our discussion group.

Travis Green's favorite part about his job is designing smart applications. In his spare time, he is in the great outdoors (looking for trouble).

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor