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Powerful people make their own rules. Self-styled moguls, especially in the visionary end of the internet, tend to do the same.
So when a co-founder of Google shows up at a keynote wearing Vibram Five Fingers instead of regular, god-fearing shoes, it’s tempting to write it off as creative eccentricity.
But at the risk of having our Gmail account vaporized, we’re going to call this as the disaster it is.
The World’s Greatest: For the benefit of mankind, Will Oldham interviews R. Kelly. [Interview Magazine]
Romancing the Knit Tie: A gentleman’s guide to dressing like Michael Douglas. [Details]
An Indian City Has Been Painted Blue: The title kind of says it all. [Kuriositas]
Today’s Grand Addition to the Internet…: …is the Google Art Project, which offers virtual tours of the great museums of the world. [Google Art Project]
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Postcards From the Edge: Christopher Hitchens stares down death with characteristic wit. We’re pulling for you, sir. [Vanity Fair]
Too Many, By Any Standard: Google Books has determined that there are 128,864,880 books in the world, which makes Twilight seem like maybe not such a big deal. [TechCrunch]
Take That, Anthony Bourdain: If you are ever moved to sample exotic cuisine, steer clear of these ten items. [Uncornered Market]
Wisdom of the Ages: Glenn O’Brien weighs in on marital fashion choices. The key line: “Before you tell your wife that what she’s wearing is preposterous, decide if you really want to suffer horribly for the next few days.” [GQ]
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A Roll in the Grass: The Danes put together a pretty good editorial when they want to. [Fashion Gone Rogue]
Frozen Yogurt: A Google pro promises Android will “blow your mind” in the next six months. Presumably with a vocoder solo. [Gizmodo]
Taggers: A rundown on some of Americana’s more interesting garment tags. [Archival Clothing]
Brooklyn’s the Borough: For its 127th birthday, all the pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge you will ever desire. [Secret Forts]
We won’t bore you with the details of the ongoing rumble between Apple, Google, Microsoft, and everyone else in northern California—although we are looking forward to the lucha libre reenactment—but today it resulted in some very good news for anyone who spends more time on their computer than their TV. It’s called Google TV, and right now thousands of techies are going wild over it.
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Italian Vogue Bats 1000: We believe she’s wearing a chandelier of some kind. [Fashion Copious]
So Many Cardigans: New York Magazine takes on the global dominance of Uniqlo. The money line: “They have chosen fabric, rather than fashion, as the area where they want to excel.” Sounds like a solid plan to us. [NYMag]
Hopefully It Won’t be Called the G-Pad: Google tablet. Act like you know. [TechCrunch]
The Egg Did it Last Season: A chicken fashion show, brought gloriously to life. [Whim Quarterly]
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The Throwback: Luciana Val & Franco Musso channel their inner Guccione for this faux-vintage snap. [Fashion Gone Rogue]
Operation Infinite Accessory: Here’s your chance to own the watch Saddam gave to his air force pilots. It’s the weirdest style pitch we’ve come across in quite some time. [Hodinkee]
A Little Lost: A full account of a mortifying evening with our favorite person in the world, Bill Murray. [Vulture]
Royal Rumble: Apple, HTC, Google and Microsoft are entering into the copyright equivalent of a cage match. This one will get ugly. [TechCrunch]
Lounging: No matter what’s happening, Eastern Europe always seems to come through. [Fashion Copious]
A Field Guide to the Menswear Blogger: The newly arrived Stylite takes a survey of the differing species of men’s style bloggers. Nice work, but they forgot “credenza-loving gentleman of leisure.” [Stylite]
Here’s Johnny: An ode to the increasingly missed Johnny Carson. The man could wear a suit. [Vanity Fair]
Clash of the Titans: Things are getting ugly (and surprisingly Shakespearean) between Apple and Google. [NYTimes]
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You probably heard about the newly minted Google Buzz—basically a fusing of Twitter and Gmail—but we want to offer a word of caution before you dive in. It’s got a frightening potential for accidental oversharing, and our online etiquette’s going to make a few changes if we’re going to survive with dignity intact.
For starters, it’s time we all got a little better at saying no.
Off the Beach: Apparently Sports Illustrated has put out an issue that’s just girls in bikinis. How long has this been going on? [Sports Illustrated]
Snow Job: Anders Johnson might be the brokest MOTH we’ve ever had. Can someone get this guy a Kickstarter account? [Associated Press]
Bucking the Trend: The Cut sits down with Mark McNairy, the loveable curmudgeon of menswear, to discuss his New Amsterdam line and the subtle appeal of the double monkstrap. [The Cut]
Building Buzz: Google Buzz just launched. Basically it’s Twitter with pictures and Foursquare-style location tagging—best if you’ve got an Android phone. But if you’d rather ready a couple thousand words of windy speculation, we’ve got that too. [TechCrunch]
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Sometimes a Cigarette is just a Cigarette: Ms. Allen puffs away in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar Russia. [Fashionising]
Ups and Downs: A list of when to find the best deals on just about anything. Apparently it’s currently sale season for sporting goods, bed sheets and carpeting. Now you know. [Lifehacker]
Ladies…: Mothers, lock up your daughters; Kempt editor Randy Goldberg is on the town. Glamour shots are available on request. [Guest of a Guest]
User’s Guide: An impressively thorough look at the joys and frustrations of Google’s latest iPhone challenger. [Gizmodo]
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Little Black Book: We’re still waiting for someone to use the phrase “sephardic stunner.” [BlackBook]
Can’t Beat It: Our tech overlords recap the top trends of the year that was. Apparently some guy named “Jackson” got famous in a hurry. [Google Zeitgeist]
I Don’t Mind Choppin’ Wood: The L.A. Times convinces us we were a little hasty with the whole “designer ax” craze. Extra points for coining the phrase “axficianado.” [All the Rage]
The Punk and the Godfather: Mod style gets another glossy tome, in case you weren’t sure what to get Pete Townshend for Christmas. [GQ Eye]
We warned you before, and now it’s happening. Google is taking over your voicemail, and even though resistance isn’t exactly futile, we’re not sure why you’d bother.
As of Monday, you can import Google Voice to your current phone number, which means that, among other things, you’ll never have to listen through your voicemails again. Once you’re plugged into the Google Voice network, you can convert all your voicemails to text and sort through them like emails, which means you won’t have to skip through Aunt Gladys’s dictation of her travel arrangements before you hear from your Thursday night date. It’s simple, easy, and it’s the first step in a long road that most likely leads to the end of the phone bill.
But for now, let’s take it one step at a time.
In the wake of our earlier etiquette lesson, you may still be wondering what in the world Google Wave actually does. Luckily, the internet’s tendency towards one-note regurgitated jokes has produced what may be the ultimate user’s guide to the ornate messaging tool. Instead of a dry tech demonstration, this video walks you through one of the most memorable scenes in Pulp Fiction via Google Wave, offering an effortless, Rosetta Stone-style explanation of embedded image searching and conversation replay and various other previously confusing gadgets. It’s everything you need to know…and it’s hilarious.
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The first Google Wave invites went out late last week, which means the next couple weeks should see the ground breaking email/instant message/document sharing hybrid spreading through the public at a buzzworthy rate. On the off-chance you’ve missed the hype, we’ll sum it up for you: Wave reinvents email as a long string of chatroom-style reply-all messages, viewable all at once to everyone involved. TechCrunch is calling it the dawn of passive-aggressive communication (they seem to think that’s a good thing), but it doesn’t have to be that way.
In the interest of progress, we to suggest updates to email etiquette. It’s an incomplete list, but it should keep you safe for long enough to figure out what’s kosher in the new medium.
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Walk Hard: Thank heaven for lingerie shows. [WBE]
Fighting Words: A branding guru takes on the fashion industry. Clearly, he’s never met Tom Ford. [PSFK]
It Was Worth a Shot: What if Google implanted an elaborate code into their site and nobody noticed or cared? [The Google Blog]
Name That Model: Identify a call sheet of models and win a classic of 19th Century literature. No, we’re not kidding. [Fashion Copious]
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Home Again, Home Again: Terry Richardson takes Sean Lennon into seriously Freudian territory. [Refinery29]
Grilled: Google starts tracking the value of luxury goods like jewels, precious metals, and unusually good coffee. [GoogleBlog]
Under the Mattress: You asked for a wallet made from a mattress…and the internet delivered. [JoshSpear]
Out of Your League: Talking to attractive women may render you temporarily less intelligent. In other news, talking to unintelligent women may render you temporarily more well-read. [Neatorama]
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Unless you’re an unusually big fan of the radio, traffic information can be remarkably hard to come by. Luckily, anyone with a smartphone is about to get a new secret weapon.
More than Microsoft or even Apple, Google has always been interested in blowing minds. So when they get into the OS racket, they do it with a web browser—apparently just to mess with us.
Late last night, Google announced their new Chrome OS, a stripped-down operating system based on Linux and promising to get the average computer booted up and onto the internet in a matter of seconds. Compared to Microsoft’s increasingly glacial startup times, it should be quite a jolt, and perfect for a new generation of web-based apps. Looks like their heads are still in the cloud.
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Over the past decade, the internet has left a long trail of upended industries in its wake—most notably music, publishing and feline photography—but so far the phone companies have skated by more or less untouched.
There have been a few attempts at startup telephony, most notably Skype and the recently revived Ooma but one of the heavy-hitters is about to give it a shot too. We’ll give you a hint; it starts with a G…
Navigating a major sporting event can be pretty bewildering if you don’t have the right equipment. But it’s nothing a Smartphone can’t solve.
This Android app from IBM gives you a guide to every taxi stand, restaurant, and bathroom, along with live feeds from every court giving a blow-by-blow for each match. And, in case you want something a bit more direct than Google Maps, it gives you all the info in a heads-up display through the phone’s camera. Think of it as the difference between “north-northeast” and “that way.”
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In the Shadows: Katy Perry goes all expressionist for Complex. [Complex]
I, For One, Welcome Our New Overlords: On the heels of Google Wave, the Mountain View gang unveil something that looks suspiciously like virtual reality. Sadly, the swimsuit module will take a bit more time to perfect. [PSFK]
Only Getting Madder: Mad Men’s third season will have an extra commercial break and two fewer minutes per episode. And yes, we’re so Hamm-starved that this qualifies as news. [Vulture]
Pencil it In: The style world gets sketched. We hope Thom Browne’s nose is ok… [Men.Style]
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Google’s been showing a healthily geeky interest in astronomy ever since they turned Google Earth skyward, but we never thought of what they could do with a smartphone…
Consider us pleasantly surprised. Google just capped off its annual Searchology conference with a sneak peek at a new mobile app called SkyMap, a constellation-finder program that makes finding the big dipper as easy as holding up your phone.
The app gives you a mobile map to the stars that’s responsive to the location and direction of the phone, which means you should always know exactly what you’re looking at. And if you’ve got a particular constellation in mind (Capricorn is always a crowd favorite), the app will point you directly to it. Of course, it’s not the first electronic map to the stars, but it’s the first one that’s integrated so smoothly with the actual sky.
It’s still pretty far from mass production, but when it makes it through, it should be one of the more impressive mobile apps around…and a potential killer app for Android phones.
The aesthetes at Valet just debuted The Edit, a more web-integrated wing of their site. There’s a steady stream of obsession-worthy objects, a handy virtual newsstand and a digest of some of the best style blogs on the web (ahem), but what really caught our eye was a little applet called The Pulse.
Anyone who’s spent an afternoon scouring Google Trends can testify to its almost limitless appeal, but The Pulse is the first time we’ve seen it harnessed in editorial form. Above, you can see the Met Ball debacle broken down in handy graphical form, as news of Mr. Sutherland’s infamous headbutt gradually spreads through the blogosphere, and thousands of people simultaneously wonder who Jack McCollough is.
At this point, Google is less a tech company than an enormous mass of information, absorbing museums, libraries, laboratories, phone companies and whole species, until eventually it contains everything in the world. (Akira, anyone? Anyone?) At this point, its only competitors are Apple and religion. It’s going to be a brave new world…especially if you’ve got a smart phone.
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