collecting

Sometimes a very special occasion that has been paired with a very special wine calls for a particular form of memento: the saving of the cork. Even if you do not participate in the occasional saving of the cork, you should at least be indirectly aware of the custom. I know I've seen trivets made from wine corks, bulletin boards and a handful of other odd, unexpected uses for that little plug of cork. I even used to live near a storefront that created a two-inch thick moat around their display window, filling it with hundreds (thousands?) of corks.… Read more

A quick followup to my post yesterday on the top ten vinyl sellers of 2008: I just called my local record (I do mean record) store, Sonic Boom, to reserve a copy of the new Animal Collective record, Merriweather Post Pavilion, on vinyl. It came out on Tuesday, January 6. The clerk laughed and said he'd never seen such a hot-selling LP. Not only were Sonic Boom's copies one by the end of the 6th, they can't order more because their distributor's out, and they can't find another distributor because the label's out. They'… Read more

Today's title is an example from Natali's mind of some tags you might put on a video with Yahoo's new video tagging game. I would like to see that video. We also touch on the myth of Cyber Monday and keep you up to date on Linux on the iPhone.

Cyber Monday supposed to be big this year http://www.pcworld.com/article/154458/a_cyber_monday_tech_shopping_primer.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10110111-58.html

Joost for iPhone http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10109753-2.html

Yahoo Video Tag game http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoos_new_videotaggame_lets_you_tag_within_videos.php… Read more

The world is full of feed readers. This one's claim to fame is its portability, but there's more to like than just that aspect.

Portable FeedReader offers a nice interface with three vertical panes--one listing the feeds, the second listing the titles of the selected feeds stories, and the third serving as a viewer. Although the panes width can be changed by clicking and dragging, the viewer pane is a bit narrow to comfortably read a typical Web page story. Our testers preferred the Open in Browser option to actually read a story. Unfortunately, doing so opened a … Read more

Highbrow film company The Criterion Collection has launched Criterion.com, an "online cinematheque" for people who want to watch movies, delve into some editorial content, and socialize with other fans.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of the new site is the fact that you can rent many Criterion films (a melange of old and newish, domestic and foreign) for $5 per stream, and that $5 will be deducted if you then choose to purchase the flick on DVD. Kind of a cool model that nobody seems to be using yet.

Criterion has also teamed up with a new … Read more

We Feel Fine is “an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.” The site, created by Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Harris and Stanford computational math professor and former Google employee Sep Kamvar, looks like exactly the result of these two minds combined: emotional data mining with a human touch and an artistic interface -- a particularly beautiful application of moodgraphics.

The site is driven by a huge database that browses the web for emotional expressions around the globe and maps them graphically: “Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases ‘… Read more

I've always been a fan of thrift stores. I suppose it's a direct correlation to the fact that I absolutely hate shopping. That is, I hate shopping for specific things I need. It doesn't matter if it's clothes, electronics, furniture--or even kitchenware; shopping is a chore. I find that thrifting is a treasure hunt without that impending feeling of need hovering over my head. I could do just as well with or without that macram? owl, but when something I already own breaks, I know I have to go shop for a new one. Thrifting is … Read more

It goes without saying that the folks who work at Criterion Collection are film buffs. And anyone who has watched one of the company's lovingly remastered DVDs can attest to the fact the company really cares about making films look as good as they can. That's why we took notice when a poster at AVS Forum pointed out an interesting tidbit in Sound & Vision's recent profile of Criterion Collection's new high-def home theater--Criterion's reference Blu-ray player is a PS3.

We're not exactly surprised. We've been using the PS3 as our reference Blu-ray player at CNET since it was released, and you'll notice that it tops our best Blu-ray players list by quite a margin. Furthermore, it's worth noting that video quality expert Joe Kane help set up Criterion's new home theater room. When we checked out Joe Kane's demo of the truly awesome SP-A800B at CES, we specifically asked what Blu-ray player he thought had the best image quality, he immediately said the PS3. So if you're worried about the image quality of a "game console" versus a high-end standalone Blu-ray player, it's worth rechecking your assumptions when CNET, Criterion and Joe Kane all vouch for the PS3's excellent performance.

Another interesting piece of gear we noted from the S&V article is… Read more

Spotted on Shopper: the Creative Zen Vision:M in the 30GB black variety. No, I am not playing a cruel joke on Zen lovers. You really can still buy the player. Of course, you'll be shelling out more than $500 for one, but that's worth it for a piece of tech history, right? Or...no? You tell me. I can't be the only one that mourned the retirement of this chunky-yet-fabulous portable media device, but I won't be shelling half a grand for one anytime soon. Of course, I still have a functioning one (in green, … Read more