made in costa rica

stories and notes by josue salazar

Jim Coudal on RFPs

A few days ago I read a compelling argument for bailing on the RFP game by Max from Big Bang Technology that got me thinking about this stuff.

Interestingly enough, today I was watching this talk Jim Coudal did at GDC and he presents the idea he pitched to his agency regarding RFP’s.

I thought it would be interesting to cut the clip and upload it, in case Max hasn’t seen it or any of you find it interesting.

I stand somewhere between Max’s and Jim’s take on this.

(This is not my video. It’s publicly available as a 1hr+ presentation on the Coudal video wall. If you have time to spare, I recommend you see the entire thing.)

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whitehouse.org drupal move

If you haven’t heard, the whitehouse.org team has announced that their entire platform is running on drupal and a few other open source projects powering their servers.

This is big news for the open source movement but more than that it really goes to show that there is no need to reinvent the wheel, specially at this scale.

Here’s a link to an interesting article (by Tim O’Reilly) in which he makes some good points about the value of tapping into on going open source initiatives and how that enables the government (in this case) to cut costs, get access to countless modules and plugins to achieve functionality they otherwise would have had to develop on their own, have an incredible community of people working on the software making it secure, fast and pretty much the best in can be.. etc, etc.

It’s a good read if you have a few minutes to spare.

Wordpress and drupal are very similar in that they both have gained massive attention both from developers creating things for it and organizations adopting them.. they also do very similar things.

Posted in Asides | Tagged social web, Technology | No responses »

Magic Mouse and Middle Clicks

As any Mighty Mouse user probably does, I hate it’s little fucking nipple for all the times it forgot it could scroll.

The problems caused by that thing over the years have been simply maddening.

Yet I still use it. Call me an masochist, but I like the stupid mouse otherwise. I love clicking the nipple for a middle click (commonly used to open links in background tabs while browsing).

So the mouse is almost 4 years old and Apple finally updated it with a multi touch scrollball-less thing of beauty. Except that it can’t do a middle click.

God damn.

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Tim Moxam playing at Late Night in the Bedroom

Tim is a good friend of some good friends, so we know each other. He’s in a band called ‘Hey Bear, Whoa Bear’ –which as far as I’m concerned is one of the best band names ever– and they’ve released one amazing album already. They have music on MySpace. Last night he was doing a solo performance for a fantastic online show produced by friends here in Toronto called Late Night In The Bedroom, and the setting for the show last night was Manifesto’s Chapter 3 Art Exhibit (which is one of the projects I’ve been putting a lot of time into, have you seen the new website we did?).

In any case.. and to make a long story somewhat short, Tim’s set took place in the middle of an art installation by the amazing Joshua Barndt, Adrian Dilena & Piotr Adas that I had to photograph:

Update: The Late Night In The Bedroom crew released Tim’s full set on video, so here it is, enjoy it:

Full Set – Tim Moxam from Late Night in the Bedroom on Vimeo.

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The Rebel Way

As much as I have loved photography over the years, I’ve never owned a professional camera. The portability and capabilities of small point and shoots have always appealed to me, yet every “photographer” reaches a point where it is no longer possible to remain content and satisfied with the results achieved with one of these cameras and DSLR’s enter the picture.

I won’t go into much detail, but suffice to say I have had my eye on the Canon DSLR line up for a while, so, when the opportunity to own a Digital Rebel XT came up, I jumped on it.

Helped by the fact that I’m reading books on Canon DSLR’s and Apple’s Aperture, my need to shoot is growing exponentially. Luckily I’ve done a bit of traveling in the past month and have been pressed to shoot as much as I probably needed to learn a good amount about the entire process (playing with apertures and shutter speeds, etc).

In any case, and to wrap this up, here is a slideshow of my best pictures so far taken with my new Rebel:

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Pride weekend / MJ tribute

Pride weekend has started, as you can see in the second picture attached, however due to the obvious circumstances given Michael Jackson’s untimely death it wouldn’t have been right not to pay some respects. Attached is a picture of a flashmob moonwalking in the middle of one of Toronto’s major intersections (Yonge/Dundas).

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Flickr Pro argument

I’ve been on Flickr for a few years now as a Pro user, paying each year (except for that year when Danny got me a gift membership) to host my photos and support the service. I’ve never doubted that it’s a great value for my money and I’ll continue to pay for it for as long as it continues to provide value to me.

However, there are others who feel differently about it, like Colin who wonders if it’s worth supporting the service now seeing as how Yahoo! is tanking. It’s an interesting argument for sure, and he’s asking for feedback via a video:

What do you think?

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Incredible music video

via teamforty.com

There are no words to describe the awesomeness of this music video. With over 3000 pictures taken to make it work, it really is a damn well-executed concept.

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