Sunday, July 22, 2012

Digg to get a complete redesign, relaunch in August

Well, that was fast. Not two weeks after Digg was bought out by Betaworks (parent company to Bit.ly, among other startups), we're learning the crowd-sourced news aggregator is poised to relaunch as soon as August 1. In a blog post, the 10-person engineering team promises an overhaul of the site, once a litmus test for what was popular on the internet. Most interesting, perhaps, is the revelation that while Digg will not be a rebadged version of News.me, the aggregation app already owned by Betaworks, the two services will eventually be folded into one product. And while the team isn't revealing how, exactly, the new Digg will differ from the old, they did promise it would eventually receive personalization features similar to what News.me already offers. Other than that, Betaworks didn't share any specifics, but luckily, you'll only have to wait two weeks to find out what's in store.

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Digg to get a complete redesign, relaunch in August originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Best How To Advice In Home Improvement | michael kors

Posted on | July 21, 2012 | Comments Off

TV entertainment stands cost quite a bit of money. A great viable alternative to those expensive stands is buying a nice dresser. You can put your TV on top and use the dresser drawers to store your DVDs and CD?s. Your remote controls and electronic manuals can also be stored in a drawer preventing it from being an eyesore.

A creative way to improve your home is to put paintings up in each room. You can choose several smaller paintings or one or two large ones for each room. This will give each room its own unique feel and provide a feeling of comfort. Paintings, being relatively cheap, also will not hurt your wallet too much.

When caulking the area where your bathtub meets the wall, fill your bathtub with water before you begin. This applies plenty of weight to the tub and ensures that the gap is at its widest point. Without the added weight, your caulking job could crack and fail the first time someone stands in the tub.

When thinking about replacing your driveway and you are considering brick there are some pros and cons. The look of a brick driveway is very appealing and you can certainly design the driveway in the way you would like. The cost is a very big disadvantage, brick driveways can be a very costly expenditure.

Do not skip scraping off old flaking paint before beginning your painting project. Painting over old flaking paint will never yield good results. Go buy a paint scraper and scrape off the old paint before starting. Then take a sander and sand down any rough areas so that your new paint coat will look good.

If you heat with a wood stove, smoke will cause your walls to become dingy and you will need to repaint more often than if you heat with a furnace. When you do repaint, it is worthwhile to wipe the walls and ceiling down with a damp sponge to remove as much soot as possible before putting on a new coat of paint.

Pay attention to your location. If you live in an area where most homes have pools, then it is definitely a sound investment for your home. However, if you live in an area where having a pool really is not feasible, such as North Dakota or Alaska, ask yourself if it is really worth it to have something you will not be using that often.

Adding window blinds to your windows is a great way to accomplish a sense of privacy. Many people don?t use curtains or blinds because they want to let in natural lighting. However, don?t forget that you can see outside, but whoever is outside, can also see inside. Window blinds can add to your privacy and come in different styles to choose from. You don?t have to go with the cheap plastic factory blinds. You can find some really nice wooden or bamboo shades, that do the job, just as well.

How to paint an indoor room quickly and easily. If possible, try to do all your painting in daylight hours, as artificial light can cause you to miss small areas. Tackle the ceiling first, painting around the edges in bands, and working your way into the center. The walls should be painted starting at the top, and working downwards in sections.

If you are working on your own home improvement project involving laying brick, make sure you use brick ties in sufficient quantity. Brick ties are metal clips used to anchor bricks to the wall structure (wood studs or what have you) behind them. Many do-it-yourself types are seduced by the apparent sturdiness of bricks and fail to realize that they must be secured to the wall via brick ties.

If you need to do a project around your house, but don?t have the tools to do it, consider how often you will use the tools before buying. It may be more cost-effective to rent or borrow what you need instead of spending the money to purchase items that will be seldom used.

If you need fencing that is both affordable and versatile, opt for a wooden fence. You can choose from a variety of wood types to find the most appropriate material for your particular climate and moisture levels. Wooden fencing is very diverse and can easily be stained to one of many natural-looking colors.

As stated before, people try home improvement every day. While some succeed, other give up or fail. The right information can make any home improvement job possible. If you remember the information from the article above, you will be more successful in your home improvement endeavors and less likely to fail or give up.

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Source: http://how-guide.com/2012/07/the-best-how-to-advice-in-home-improvement/

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Idea Soup: Jerry Takigawa: Accelerating Time - Takigawa Design

by Richard Pitnick, Black & White Magazine, Fall Issue 2012 (#93)
(Release date July 24, 2012) Copyright 2012 by Ross Periodicals, Inc. All rights reserved.

Time and the arc of memory are the central themes of Jerry Takigawa?s elegantly conceived and executed ?Landscapes of Presence? portfolio. Working with a range of elemental natural objects and forms photographed against a variety of backdrops that include Asian textiles, calligraphic writing and blurred photographic images, Takigawa explores the nature and meaning of time as it relates to the mind?s fluctuating relationship between past, present and the eternal.

?We live in an information-rich yet time-poor culture,? observes Takigawa, who, in addition to his work as a fine art photographer runs a successful graphic design agency on the Monterey Peninsula, ?and I see a society that is becoming more and more disconnected from nature and its rhythms, cycles, and seasons.

?Fascinated with the concept of time, I have been seeking to understand the feeling that time is speeding up, by exploring the concept of ?no time? which means ?no mind?, and which reflects the belief in Eastern philosophies that the present moment is the only ?reality? and that past and future are an illusion.?

The concept of time as an illusion becomes especially heightened in those images in which Takigawa uses blurred photographs ? often old family photographs that he prints as blurred images ? to be used as a background. All of the final images are made in-camera shot with black and white, chromogenic, C-41 film. Through a clever visual sleight-of-hand in which depth-of-field and scale are both compressed and expanded, Takigawa distorts spatial awareness that parallels the ways in which the conscious mind uses memory to travel back and forth through time.

?All of my images are very emotionally based rather than intellectually based,? notes the artist. ?When they look at these images, I want people to have the same experience I had when I made the images, a feeling of calmness and being in a moment that transcends time.?

There is something comforting yet also disturbing about these pictures. The welcoming expressions on the faces in the background photos ? sensed more than seen ? are offset by the shadow of mortality suggested by the blurring. We can identify with them even if we don?t share Takigawa?s ethnicity, as we all tend to interact with our memories through a kind of out-of-focus mental filter.

They seduce us by evoking our own family albums, and thus open the floodgates to myriad familial associations and emotions. They seem to reach out to us as we attempt to embrace them. Yet the distancing effect of the sharply focused objects and writing prevents us from succumbing to sentimentality, and forces us to consider social, cultural and even environmental issues that reside well beyond our personal parameters.

Takigawa first took up photography in the early 1970s studying the medium under noted landscape and botanical photographer Don Worth while also earning a BA in Art with an emphasis in painting from San Francisco State. During this period, he concentrated on photo-realist paintings and drawings.

Over the decades, Takigawa?s photography has drawn deeply from a range of influences and has been defined by a peripatetic creativity that has found the artist exploring documentary photography, color landscape, figurative work, and experiments with fill-flash, blurred imagery, reflected imagery, and long exposure techniques.

?My background in painting has informed my photography compositionally,? says Takigawa, who compares his collection of natural objects to tubes of paint with which he constructs his images. ?I do compose as if I were making a drawing or painting. Additionally, my background and upbringing as a Japanese-American has also given me a foundation in terms of my aesthetics.

?Western art is about the subject, the individual and Newtonian fragmented reality, while Eastern art is all about context, the group and the universal,? Takigawa elaborates. ?I recently realized my life as an artist has been about seeking to create work that is original and individual, but that also brings the universal together.

?For me in making these images there is a feeling of wanting to be more connected to my family and history, to bring old memories into the present moment and make them new today, to give them new expression and new life in the present.?

Despite the seeming formality and compositional care that goes into his imagery, Takigawa insists that his photographs are all about process. Working from both an instinctive and intuitive perspective, Takigawa strives in his work to balance the personal with broader aesthetic meaning.

?When I make photographs, I don?t want there to be too much formality or have my images look like they were overdone in any way,? he says. The simplicity of the compositions contributes to the spontaneity he seeks. Like his complementary ?The Kimono? and ?False Food? series, which share certain formal and thematic imperatives, the images in ?Landscapes of Presence? are both random and not random, ordered and not ordered.

?In my work there is always content in the image that I can see and feel that reflects my life, but I?m not always sure it communicates to other people. The only thing I can do is hope my images have some longevity beyond their personal content, and my goal is to create something that has a timeless aesthetic to it.?

?My work has always embodied a spiritual approach that has to do with my beliefs about reality and life,? adds Takigawa, ?and I hope that somebody who lives with one of my pictures will get a sense of presence, calm and peacefulness.

?Presence is what is needed to become aware of beauty and sacredness in nature. Photography is one way to experience the moment, suspend time and re-connect with being. With this work, it?s my hope to create an intimate conversation that takes the viewer to a place of quiet contemplation.?

Fact File
Jerry Takigawa?s prints are in the permanent collections of San Francisco MoMA, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress, among many others. Pigment prints on rag paper are available through his website: www.takigawaphoto.com. Visit Black & White Magazine.

Source: http://ideasoup.takigawadesign.com/2012/07/jerry-takigawa-accelerating-time.html

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