Whoa. And here I thought the facial animation work the folks at Pendulum are doing is interesting. The team at Image Metrics--which produced the animation for Grand Theft Auto--analyzes facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video (as opposed to putting dots on a face and recording the way the dots move). The result? "Emily." She's so real, it's unreal.

Meet Joe Francis. (As if you haven't already, you cheeky late night TV monkey!) Joe's totally sticking up for YOUR first amendment rights!!!  OMG! So rad! He even has a flag draped behind him, so you know he's for reals.

Anyway, he's certainly NOT sticking up for his his right to not go back to jail for alleged tax fraud. Allegedly. No. That would be something a less classy guy would do.

Hey, it's Friday! At the end of August. You don't want to work, do you? Here. Let me help you. It's my job to track down excellent diversions, get diverted, and then pass the word along to you. Don't be jealous. Join me!

Play some Bubble Shooter -- this game will eat up the rest of your day. And your brain. And probably your soul. Enjoy!

T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google's Android software, according to people briefed on the company’s plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October. ...

The HTC phone, which many gadget sites are calling the “dream,” will have a touch screen, like the iPhone. But the screen also slides out to expose a full five-row keyboard.

And here's a little peek of what it'll look like:

Yesterday I posted this story about streaming live video online directly from your mobile phone. I didn't want to focus on one service over the others, but I did end up giving more time to Qik only because they've been in the news recently -- with Rep. Culberson Qikking (ugh, verb 2.0) from Congress and the Vatican Qikking the Pope's travels (still can't get over that one). Plus, Qik appears to be the current market leader. But I think in terms of relative merits of Qik over Flixwagon and Kyte, the jury is still out. These services are still so new that I didn't want to write the story as a product review. Ubergeek Robert Scoble, who uses Qik for work, wrote a strong and surprising post arguing that Kyte will emerge victoriant. He's knows the technology better than I do -- and I am not one to predict the future in print or online. But I suspect the services will leapfrog each other several times in terms of quality, speed and everything else that matters.

I'd also like to point out that I wasn't able to quote everyone I spoke with -- Dan Patterson, an independent journalist (with the excellent job title Chief United Nations Correspondent and Social Media Evangelist for the Talk Radio News Service) has shot Qik video of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. He says he has set Qik up to ping his Twitter account -- "I'll say I'm speaking with the secretary general right now, come watch," he told me. He has his account configured to then send the video to his accounts at Mobulus and Justin.tv. "That falls under category of pretty cool."

I also spoke with Jim Long, a cameraman for NBC who is a frequent Qik shooter. The ability to broadcast live from his Nokia isn't necessarily the coolest thing for him. "The game-changer in my mind with technology like this is not that you can go live. The game-changer is that people can come in and look and interact and ask questions," he says. "I see tremendous application potential for news from this." In other words, not only is his cell phone a video camera, it's a teleprompter, a director (viewers can text in commands, asking Long to pan left or right) and producer (viewers can feed him questions). His phone, he says has become "in many respects a satellite truck." 

On a recent trip through Africa, as part of the press pool covering the president's visit, he happened to cross paths with the singer-activist Bob Geldof -- so he shot a live interview with him on the fly. "It was a quick little thing, but people hunger for a more interactive experience. They want their questions answered; they don't want to just shout at the television set any more. This is one means to provide am opportunity for that." Long is hardly arguing that this technology will replace television news as we know it because "we do it better" than citizen journalists. (Plus, he points out that NBC just bought a couple gorgeous Sony high-def cameras). But, he says, "it will be interesting to see how legacy media integrates these tecnologies." Indeed.   

There are plenty of people playing music on YouTube -- there's excellent archival live footage of your favorite musicians; there are kids shredding through the theme to Super Mario Bros. on two guitars at once; there are people giving helpful tips to beginner clawhammer banjo players. But here's an excellent use of YouTube that I haven't seen before -- a note-for-note rendering, on paper, of John Coltrane's groundbreaking "Giant Steps" in real time. If that doesn't make sense, just watch this video -- and be prepared to be blown away all over again by Trane's towering mastery of his instrument. (And this was, arguably, still a few years before he reached his full potential as a soloist). You'll be exhausted by the end.



Now. Watch it again and pay special attention to pianist Tommy Flanagan's solo. No slouch himself, the dude can't even come close to keeping up with Coltrane's crazy chord changes. He gets completely lost in the weeds. Wow.

Ready for a trip down memory lane? Check out this amazing internet meme timeline. Pretty much everything is there , from the dancing baby to "I Kiss You" to "All your base" to Numa Numa to lolcats. Be sure to click through to see things that may not pop out at your first. And then prepare to feel verrrrrry old. (Numa Numa was from 2004? FTW!?) Time flies when you're in the intertubes.

 What do you think? Any missing memes?

OK, maybe not, but this Lifehacker post is pretty perfect: 10 Skills You Need to Succeed at Almost Anything.

No complaints from my end. Really nice stuff. Although, they did forget Levitation and Mind Reading. Also, Breakdancing.

Supercollider hip hop! This is, like, nerdcore times a squillion.

"Antimatter is sort of like matter's evil twin,
because except for charge and handedness of spin,
they're the same for the particle and its anti-self.
But you can't store an anti-particle on any shelf,
'cuz when it meets its normal twin they both annihilate:
matter turns to energy and then it dissipates."

Thanks, CERN peoples, that explains everything. Literally.

Now. Must ... own ... MP3 ...

(props to BoingBoing -- and a million other people)

ZDNet launched a new blog today -- so now I'm going to blog about it, even though, technically, this blog hasn't launched yet, meaning you're reading this post somewhere in the FUTURE!!!! Awesome. How's it going there, anyway? Are you sitting in a hoverchair? I sure hope so!

Anyway, the metaphysical implications of blogging about something when your blog isn't even technically live yet is simply mind-bending. (For the record, my editors are making sure I'm not going to blog about anything that's going to get them arrested or blackmailed before they give me the keys to the Internet. I am pretty sure that last sentence isn't going to get my blog to go live any sooner, but it will explain to you, gentle reader, why I don't have many/any comments yet, but that will change once you start commenting. Right?).

 Where was I? OH YES. ZDNet. Here's their new blog: The Web Life. Today (which, by the time you read this, will be a distant tomorrow -- sorry to harp, but but that totally spooks me out. I might even be dead!) Andrew Mager posted this hi-larious video -- the iPhone arm! Welcome to the blog-o-tubes, Andrew. We'll be joining you shortly.