By Kim Velsey 4/04 4:42pm

The more you know

Even the DOB has one now.

Who Knew the Department of Buildings Had a Podcast?

Have you ever wished that there was a better way to keep up-to-date with all the developments and trends over at the Department of Buildings?

There might not be a whole lot of us, but fortunately, the Department of Buildings is always anticipating the needs and desires of its heavy-users (well, some of our needs and desires—we’re awaiting the day when we can see actually see PDFs of building plans online). They’ve started producing a monthly podcast! It’s called State of Construction. Read More

By Drew Grant 12/08/11 3:04pm

Editors

Who is this lady??

Jane Pratt Finds Way to Circumvent Name-Dropping While Still Name-Dropping

It’s quite impressive, really. In a post titled “Too Tired to Name-Drop,”  XOJane editor in chief Jane Pratt liveblogged on her iPhone yesterday during a conversation she was having in a tea shop.

Which seems kind of…rude? Liveblogging during a conversation? Especially since Ms. Pratt could have used the phone to look up the name of the very famous actress she was talking to. Instead, she just gave readers clues and asked them to solve the mystery for her. Read More

By Will Heinrich 9/06/11 9:46pm

Art

Everything is Important and Nothing Really Matters at All (2009), by Mariele Neudecker.

'Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities' are Little Worlds Made Cunningly

The curators of “Otherworldly”—which consists largely of meticulous models and dioramas, some of them artworks themselves, others constructed by artists only to be photographed—trace the diorama back to Louis Daguerre and posit as its animating question, “What is real?” But that’s not really the question anymore, except insofar as Renaissance perspective, like Newtonian physics or the Ten Commandments, continues to dominate the popular imagination. If there is a question, it might be “What is the difference between art and design?” But there’s no particular urgency to that one either, since art and design, like spectacle and pathos, can so happily be concurrent. In fact, you could say that “Otherworldly” consists of two separate, concurrent shows: one for children and other devotees of technology, and one for devotees of art. Read More

By Azi Paybarah 4/05/11 7:02pm

telecommunication

Skype the State Senate

Senate Republicans are now available for “face-to-face, from anywhere in the state, or indeed, the world” because, their press office says they are now using Skype.

I just tested it, and it seems to work. So, who should I Skype with and what should I ask?

By Hunter Walker 11/10/10 3:44pm

Technology

The NYT’s Blog Blackout [Updated]

The blogs on the web site of The New York Times experienced an outage from sometime Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday. According to the anonymous band of Times critics over at Nytpicker, all of the paper’s blogs were down:

“For the last 12 hours at least, the NYT’s entire blog system has gone suddenly, quietly Read More