Pylon Sounds

photos by Dana (distortion) Yavin

YYYs @ GoogaMooga 2013

We've already posted photos from the first two bands (The Darkness and The Flaming Lips) to play the Great GoogaMooga kickoff concert on Friday (5/17). Here are a set from headliners Yeah Yeah Yeahs who were the only band to actually get to play after sunset. A few shots of Chairlift, who played two different DJ sets that day and who will perform in the same location of the park this summer, are also in this post.

Did you go on Friday? How was your GoogaMooga experience?

Right after playing GoogaMooga, YYYs hopped down to Gulf Shores, Alabama to play the 2013 Hangout Fest on Sunday (5/19)."About halfway through the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Hangout Music Festival set, frontwoman Karen O took a moment to make a special announcement before playing the band's 2004 breakout single "Maps." "This is dedicated to Stevie Wonder," she called out to the thousands of fans who showed up to catch the Yeah's set. The iconic R&B star was slated to follow the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the Hangout Stage as the weekend's headliner." [MTV]---

Despite not having the most successful event either this year (rain) or last year (lines), a Channel 12 report claims GoogaMooga will be back in 2014. Meanwhile, BV Chicago reports that GoogaMooga might be coming to Chicago in August.

More Yeah Yeah Yeahs photos are below.

Continue reading "Yeah Yeah Yeahs played Hangout Fest & GoogaMooga (pics); GoogaMooga coming to Chicago next?" at brooklynvegan

Sure, I’m at the age where I need to take a pill or two, and I hate it. I’m also not that great at remembering, luckily missing a dose here and there probably wont kill me, but my dad takes some meds that he simply cant miss. I worry, because he forgets too… and even if I could remember everything for him, I don’t have time to be pestering him everyday. How can we all remember to take our medications on time?

Check out a new wireless pill bottle by Adhere Tech, designed specifically to help improve your medication adherence. This cool container can actually measure the exact number of pills in the bottle, and then, via cellular radio technology, send that info to the cloud. Imagine it… no more “did I take my pill today?” you’ll know for sure. The Wireless Pill Bottle will also call you, or send a text reminding you to take your medication.

Working with both pills and liquids, these new devices can also send adherence data, so there will be no question in your doctors mind as to whether or not you are complying with his wishes. This increased adherence could lead to reductions in extra procedures and treatments as well as hospital re-admissions.

In the next few months, AdhereTech will be beginning a trial with The Walter Reed Army Medical Center to test out these new wireless bottles in type 2 diabetes patients.  Other than the folks in the trial, we can’t have the bottles yet, but the company has secured funding, and is actively seeking additional investors. If you had a chance to use a wireless pill bottle, would you? To find out more, or to watch for availability, please visit adheretech.com

 
[ Adhere Tech – Message in a Pill Bottle! copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

If you are a fan of Nike SB kicks, you might want to pay attention to Premier (www.thepremierstore.com) and their Twitter feed (@premierskate), as their “15 Days of Restocks” has already kicked off, starting last Monday, 5/13 . The random restocks have already given SB heads the opportunity to cop the Nike SB Dunk Mid “Patagonia”, originally released in November of 2011, the Nike SB Dunk Low “Aqua” (aka “Skeletor”), from May of 2011, the “Chrome Ball” SB Dunk Low (perhaps best known for the “Supreme”/Elephant Print Customs, made with the “Chrome Ball” Lows as a base, by n-sb.org user CemeteryDrive), from June of 2010, and lastly, the “Reece Forbes” SB Dunk High, better known as the “Un-Papa Bear”, released in December of 2010, as well as the SB Dunk High “Denim”, a February 2011 release, which was restocked today.

For those that expected these restocks to be stuff from 2013 or maybe a few pairs from 2012, Premier has knocked that sentiment straight out of the skate park within the first week of restocks. And guess what? We still have 9 more days of re-releases to go!

What are you hoping to see restocked in the coming days? Planning on copping everything you can, or saving up for “Restock Saturday” (May 25th)? Let us know in the comments below!

Via Premier

Happy to hear that long-time advocate for social, and true expert, Ekaterina Walter is moving to Branderati as their CMO and partner.  Walter has longed been one of the leading voices for understanding social media marketing not as a question of platform or even tech alone, but as a way of creating a converation with real people, and allowing technology to take it further. How perfect that she is joining an influencer marketing firm.  They are most fortunate. 

It’s easy to forget that Yahoo has had a long on-again-off-again love affair with online video. Remember Broadcast.com, which kicked off the Mark Cuban Era? But you might not remember that, because other online video platforms long ago left Yahoo in the proverbial dust. Today, as Yahoo streamed its Flickr product and Tumblr acquisition announcements, we were given a demonstration of why Yahoo has been left in the dust — and why it’s had to turn to acquisitions for help in, well, nearly every department.

The event was nearly impossible to watch. Because, well, you know, Yahoo! As you’ve heard by now, Yahoo has been on an impressive buying spree over the last month — including, by the way, a scuppered deal to boost its video tech and buy the “YouTube of France,” Dailymotion — snatching up a new company seemingly every week.

But today, the company raised the bar even higher with the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, hoping to turn back the clock and gain access to Tumblr’s millions of young users.

The company held a media event in New York City this afternoon to formally announce the acquisition — along with sharing the news that it will be moving into new digs in Times Square — but something was stealing the spotlight from Mayor Bloomberg and Marissa Mayer. And that would be Yahoo’s questionable video tech. Those who watched the event from home spent most of that time enjoying a hiccupy stream. Or none at all.

You can see the error message above. The video-streaming technology is Yahoo’s own, running through Yahoo! Screen, first launched back in 2006, renamed Screen from Yahoo Video. With all the acquisitions Yahoo has been making of late, it makes one think that, for its next acquisition, Yahoo should go for some new video technology. Of course, after Tumblr, it may be broke.

But, come on, Yahoo has somehow become the Rudy story of the tech industry. At the very least, someone should launch a Kickstarter page so that it can continue to make acquisitions.

It’s a Yahoo news bonanza today. Just after the company this morning announced its $1.1 billion dollar acquisition of Tumblr, it showed off a completely redesigned version of Flickr. Here’s what’s up: Flickr’s web interface is totally different — clean and simple with big, beautiful, full-resolution photos. The Flickr homepage? No more small thumbnails and [...]

Like this Small Cool 2013 contest entry? Favorite it below!

Name:

Ellen

Location:

Seattle, WA

Square Feet:

655

Division:

Little

What I Love About My Small Home:

We've been wanting to live in a space like this for years. We appreciate the building's history as a significant design from the 1930's with hints of the Art Deco era. Some of our favorite elements are the triangular bay window that lets in a ton of western light, the view of the city and mountains, the warehouse style windows, the unique archway/alcove by the front door, the hardwoods, the list goes on! This is the first place we've had together, and have enjoyed curating the furnishings to express our style. We've started to dabble in DIY projects, including the dining room table and credenza, with plans for more.

More    

Yahoo’s Flickr photo-sharing service is now offering one full terabyte for users, enough storage space to hold whole swathes of the world’s photos. The service is offering this benefit in addition to its full resolution photo storage service.

While the average user will probably not touch the outer limits of this storage space in a lifetime, this alone is probably enough to draw dedicated photographers to the service and, more important, bring lapsed users back to the Yahoo fold.

This move is important. Given the odd nature of most photo sharing services, you are either limited to a few dozen gigabytes or, in the case of Instagram and other mobile services, an unstated upper limit that is not part of the marketing collateral. While I don’t doubt that Google or Facebook could make the terabyte claim in the near future, being first to market with this particular feature is an important milestone.

This move is quite clearly a play by Yahoo to make its wares relevant. The long-beleaguered Flickr has at once enthralled and frustrated pro users with claims of abandonment by the web giant.

As Marissa Mayer noted in her presentation, this is about “bringing lifetimes of beauty into Flickr.” It’s also about convincing casual photographers to trust Flickr as a universal shoebox for their old snaps – a lucrative and surprisingly important thing to be.

Like this Small Cool 2013 contest entry? Favorite it below!

Name:

Diane

Location:

Queensbury, NY

Square Feet:

960

Division:

Small

What I Love About My Small Home:

Everything! It is the perfect home: old, charming, cozy, and small. It is our sanctuary. We live, cook great meals, make music, read, write, and rest here. Many new homes being built around us are well over 2,000 sq. ft. and some are double that size. I would feel funny in a space that large.

When I first saw the ad for our home in the paper eleven years ago, it was everything we told the realtor we didn't want. But, after seeing it during an open house I fell in love, and my husband soon followed suit.

Soon after moving in, we installed a beautiful wood stove which increases the cozy factor during long fall/winter seasons. The previous owners also installed giant windows in the kitchen addition at the back of the house. I've seen deer, fox, turkeys, and all kinds of other wildlife in the back yard over the years.

More    

The man behind those iconic keys on The Doors classic records, Ray Manzarek, has passed away. From The Doors twitter:...After a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. At the time of his passing, he was surrounded by his wife Dorothy Manzarek, and his brothers Rick and James Manczarek. The man laid his keyboard and bass sounds (usually at the same time) to all of the band's LPs, as well as being a producer and writer for projects as wide-ranging as jazz LPs to Wierd Al Yankovic.

RIP Ray Manzarek, though your unique sound with The Doors will always signify some of the most important records of the era. Check out some classic songs by The Doors below.

Continue reading "Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, RIP" at brooklynvegan

The new Flickr is live.

Smack-dab in the middle of Yahoo-Tumblr aqcuisition day, Yahoo is holding a major press event here in NYC. But announcements coming out of this event aren’t related to Tumblr as much as Flickr, the photo-sharing database and social network acquired by Yahoo in March of 2005 for $35 million.

Today, Flickr gets a huge revamp including a totally new look and feel, focused on three different things. First, there are no more bits of text or blue links, but rather a grid layout of huge pictures in full resolution.

Second, stemming from the updated iOS app recently, which yielded 25 percent more uploads, the company is also announcing a brand new Android experience, catching the Google version of the Flickr app up to the iOS version.

Finally, Flickr looks to get even “biggr.” The company is expanding storage for your photos, by quite a bit. Flickr is offering 1 terabyte of free storage for every Flickr user. Yahoo made it clear that no other Internet company in the world offers a free terabyte of storage. That’s the equivalent of 537,731 photos.

In terms of the UI redesign, the new photostream has a justified format grid layout, complete with a header photo and a Timeline-style profile for users. On the top left, next to the photostream button, you can also click into Favorites and Sets.

But what are photos without sharing? Users have an easy share button to send photos out on any of their favorite social networks, including Tumblr.

Most importantly, Flickr has fiddled with the picture page to give a black background and a fullscreen image for every single photo page. The site has been revamped to give easy-click access to the next photo in the set or photostream, even in full-screen mode.

Adam Cahan, SVP of Mobile and Emerging products at Yahoo, announced that Flickr currently has 89 million users who have shared over 8 billion photos. That’s a lot of pictures.

Mayer explained that most of the changes happening at Yahoo concerns users’ daily habits, which explains why the company has put so much focus on the Yahoo Home Page, Yahoo mail, and the Yahoo weather app. In a number of ways, these products are energized and enhanced by photos.

Yahoo’s, and particularly Marissa Mayer’s, tweaks to its overall service and the Flickr experience has helped build out both platforms, but there are still questions over Flickr’s ability to generate revenue and, perhaps more importantly, compete with photo-sharing behemoth Instagram.

It’s worth noting the timing here: Yahoo just bought out one of the biggest and most popular blogging platforms around, and Flickr is a huge resource for blogs in general. But how will Yahoo integrate the two to build out use of both and make both experiences more seamless?

“We have a nice set of the creator brands,” said Mayer. “Photographers and writers. With that, there is natural set of opportunities that arise between Flickr and Tumblr and we’ll deal with that as it comes.”

Alongside Flickr’s product announcement news, Mayer revealed that the company would be setting up shop at a new NY office in Times Square, in the New York Times building, which will hold all 500 employees based in NY, along with room for expansion to 200 more employees.

Now in its third year, Wanted Design has risen to become one of our favorite annual events during New York Design Week. Whereas ICFF confounds the senses with thousands of booths, Wanted Design presented an expertly curated collection of groundbreaking designers – and we were thrilled to find an abundance of sustainable designs on the show floor. Read on for some of our favorites – from David Trubridge‘s sparkling LED Light Rain installation to Joe Doucet‘s electroluminescent Hadron Light, Fabrica‘s fun and funky recycled furnishings and beyond.

Read the rest of The Best Green Designs From Wanted Design 2013!

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: "green furniture", eco products, energy efficient lights, green design, green interiors, new york design week, New York Design Week 2013, nydw, sustainable design, wanted design, Wanted Design 2013, wanteddesign

    

Dell has decided not to build out its public cloud and will instead rely on partners such as Joyent to provide infrastructure services. A source close to the matter said layoff notices at the company went out on Friday. The group had more than 300 people in it. It is not known who was laid off or offered other jobs in the company. A spokesperson said Dell would not comment about personnel issues.

In a press release today, Dell said its current public cloud service would be discontinued in favor of offerings from other partners. The original intent had been to use OpenStack, the open cloud infrastructure, to build out a public cloud that would compete with Amazon Web Services (AWS), HP and Google. A spokesperson said Dell will work with OpenStack partners to help customers develop the right solution. Joyent is not an OpenStack company but fits with Dell’s partner focus.

The internal forces at Dell and the pressures of the company going private have caused company executives to rethink the public cloud route. Dell will still develop a private cloud story based on its own technology, which makes sense for the company as it is focusing more deeply on enterprise solutions. It’s in this that the Enstratius acquisition has value. The startup provides cloud-management capabilities that Dell can also use when working with customers that want to use a public cloud service. Dell customers can leverage their own data center investments in some form of infrastructure that allows a degree of scaling beyond what they can do now with what they have.

The news follows several weeks of shifts in the market. After dropping its own public cloud pricing, Rackspace’s earnings came in lower than expected. The stock then dropped about 25 percent. Last week, Google made its own public cloud generally available. And then there is AWS, the big giant, which companies like Dell cannot currently compete with effectively due to the expense and resources required. It’s the kind of project only the larger vendors can afford.

The name of this game is scale and having plenty of resources to build out a cloud infrastructure. It’s a market that seems difficult for Dell to compete in considering its own financial issues.

It’s hard enough being tied to your cell phone without having to worry about getting the “Low Battery Icon of Death” right in the middle of an important task – and charging up via wall outlets takes forever. Eesha Khare of Saratoga, California has invented a device that could wipe away battery bothers with a supercapacitor that can charge your phone in 20 seconds. Her research won her a $50,000 prize in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Read the rest of Eighteen-Year-Old Invents Device That Can Charge Your Cell Phone in 20 Seconds

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: Arizona, battery, California, cell phone, charger, eesha khare, intel international science and engineering fair, led light, phoenix, saratoga, supercapacitor, tesla, young scientist award

    

Read the rest of The Best Green Designs from ICFF 2013!

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: "green furniture", design show, eco furniture, energy efficient lighting, green design, Green Design Events, green interiors, green lighting, green products, ICFF, icff 2013, International Contemporary Furniture Fair, new york design week, New York Design Week 2013, nydw, Recycled Materials, sustainable design, Sustainable Interiors

    

Read the rest of Fast-Growing Bamboo Clads Kengo Kuma’s Tranquil Garden Terrace Miyazaki Hotel

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: bamboo cladding, eco design, Garden Terrace Miyazaki Hotel, green design, green hotels in Japan, green materials, green wedding chapel in Japan, japanese architecture, Japanese design, Kengo Kuma, sustainable design, Sustainable Materials

    

Today has been quite a roller coaster ride for Yahoo — the company put days of reports and rumors to rest this morning when it confirmed that it would acquire the social blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion, and now CEO Marissa Mayer has confirmed that Yahoo’s New York employees will now be moving.

They’ll all soon be working right around the corner from Times Square in the same building that used to house the New York Times (229 West 43rd Street, to be more specific).

The move is meant to unite the nearly 500 Yahoo employees that are currently split among three existing locations in New York City, though Mayer made it very clear that the newly acquired Tumblr team wouldn’t be folks roped into working out of the central office — David Karp and the rest of the team will continue to work out of their 10th floor office near Gramercy Park. This whole thing is reminiscent of Mayer’s edict that saw the end of remote working for long-time Yahooligans. In a memo issued by Yahoo human resources head Jackie Reses back earlier this year, it was revealed the brass though that “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

While that’s unlikely to be the case here, Mayer has shown herself to be a vocal proponent of the sort of work that can be done by bringing employees together, and it seems the Yahoo New York team is only slated to grow from there. Just before New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the podium to deliver a few remarks, Mayer noted that the space the team will soon move into can hold an additional 200 or so people, and a post on the official Yahoo Tumblr account (that was fast) indicated that the company wants to pump up its New York staff “by up to 60 percent.”

Of course, this isn’t the only news that Mayer and company have in store for us this evening — some prominent Flickr signage means that there’s some product news in the pipeline as well.

UPDATE: Mayer just pulled back the curtain on the new and improved Flickr, and it is awesome.

Read the rest of David Trubridge’s Glittering ‘Light Rain’ LED Installation is Inspired by Earth Elements

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: david trubridge design, david trubridge light rain, david trubridge wanted design, eco lighting, green lighting, LED lighting, light rain, light rain installation, wanted design

    

Read the rest of Designtree’s Gorgeous Frankie Lamps are Made with 100% Recycled PET and FSC-Certified Beech

Permalink | Add to del.icio.us | digg
Post tags: designtree, FSC certified timber, FSC-certified wood designs, green designers from New Zealand, green interiors, green lighting, ICFF in New York, New Zealand designers, recyclable materials, Recycled Materials, recycled PET lamps

    

photos by Amanda Hatfield

Liars @ The Met's Temple of Dendur, 5/17/2013

As mentioned, Liars were in town over the weekend for two shows. We already posted pictures from their Le Poisson Rouge show, but the main event this weekend was their performance on Saturday at the Temple of Dendur exhibit in The Met. Having the band play amongst Egyptian ruins as the windows darkened into dusk with projections behind them was, in the words of our photographer Amanda Hatfield, "nearly an hour of weird creepy awesomeness." Some might claim that sound was not ideal, but getting to see them in such a genuinely epic setting is certainly a fine tradeoff. Pictures from their performance are in this post.

The next show happening at Temple of Dendur is on July 19 when Om will play their track "At Giza," which is now sold out. More pictures from the Met below...

Continue reading "Liars @ the Temple of Dendur at The Met (pics)" at brooklynvegan