Grey Album:

I have never heard of the Grey Album before. Being someone who listens to a lot of hip hop and rap I feel ashamed that I haven’t come across this before. The mash up of the two artists is excellent. I have heard a few mash ups before that I have really enjoyed and some that have failed miserably. This album is one that is thoroughly enjoyable. The amount of work that goes into making songs like this is tremendous. I had no idea that so much deconstruction had to go into making a successful mash up. Everything seamlessly fits into place. The fact that Danger Mouse did this even though he knew that lot of people thought this was sacrilege is something I admire even more. The fact that he made it because he would like it is really cool and something I look to do with my work. On a side note I think the album that Jay Z and Linkin Park made together was a very successful mash up of two completely different styles of music.

Mashups: The new breed of Web app:

This was a very technical article that even with my knowledge of creating web pages I am not sure I understand all of it. It did an extremely good job of talking about the various different mashups like mapping and search mashups. I thought I had no idea what a web based mashup was. However, once I read about RSS feeds my grasp on the topic strengthened. I was and still am a little bit lost on the technical side of things. With my general understanding of what a mashup is though, I feel that there are already a ton of websites that do this. The point that the author brings up about how providers will handle their content when mashups become sophisticated applications is an interesting one especially if it is is private content.

Why Things Matter:

This article talks about blogjects. To put it as simply as the article, a blogject is an object that blogs . There are three peculiarities of blogjects and to summarize them they are tracking and tracing, having self-contained histories and having some form of agency. The thing that excites me the most about blogjects is how they can be used in a social/environmental context to help us overcome problems. Having automobiles telling us about their fuel consumption habits seems to me an extremely useful thing. It can help us reduce the consumption of fuel and maybe even in our efforts for finding a new fuel source.

Calm Technologies 2.0: Visualising Social Data as an Experience in Physical Space:

I find the idea of calm technologies fantastic. It might be introduced as as sensual experience in a physical space and the example the led light might illustrate this. However, the bell that rings and the jackhammer that damages the building are far from sensual. To me personally, they open up this new world of social advertising. Making social posters is something I love to do and one of the things I really want to do is make some kind of interactive social poster. I can see this idea of calm technology as a way for me to do this. Making someone interact on a website to make something react in the physical world is what I see as an answer to making interactive posters. I am 100% there yet though.