http://www.newfangled.com/eric_holters_newfangled_blog Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:43:33 -0500 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:43:33 -0500
Some of my favorite moments have been the stories I've heard, like when Starbucks announced its plans to create the first coffee pipeline to deliver beans directly to stores, not realizing that it was the first of April.

But now that's all ruined. With all my RSS feeds, I've been inundated with stories of the best past April Fools Day pranks (my favorite was Disney's 1998 announcement that thy had purchased MIT and would rename the School of Engineering to the School of Imagineering). And on top of these stories come all the blog posts which are themselves April Fools pranks. Like Virgin and Google teaming up to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Gmail has also added a special new feature today--the ability to send email to the past, very handy.

The problem is April Fools Day really only has one shot to catch you. Once you remember what day it is, all the other attempts will fall flat. And when you start your day reading RSS feeds there's really no possibility of ever getting fooled. Too bad, I enjoyed the occasional gotcha. Like when Mark O'Brien called me as his alter ego Michael Ryan and convinced me he needed a website for his class action suit against Ruth's Chris steak house for passing off dyed antelope meat for their steaks. I bought that one for twenty minutes. He had me give a full Newfangled capabilities presentation to him. (Of course I did manage to convince him that Pakistan had Nuked India, but that wasn't on April Fools day so I won't share the details now.)

Then again, maybe it hasn't ruined April Fools. Maybe it's just raised the bar. Maybe we now need to take pranking to the next level. We have to assume everyone is aware of what day it is and go so far that we can prank even the suspecting victim. Hmmmm, I better starting planning for next year now.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/how_rss_has_ruined_april_fools_day Tue, 01 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400 "The new principle involved is that instead of the power being generated by the relative motion of capacitors and fluxes, its produced by the modial interaction of magnito reluctance and capacitive deractance. The original machine had a baseplate of prefamulated amualite surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two sperving barings run a direct line with the panametric fam."

I'm so glad they figured out how to use the six hydrocoptic marsilveins to effectively avoid side fumbling. Phew.

]]> http://www.newfangled.com/the_new_rockwell_retro_encabulator Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0400 feeling nostalgic I might as well post the back story of Edmund Pixellini. This story was a part of our website way back when (in fact, I retrieved the text and images off of the Way Back Machine). Believe it or not, we received many comments and emails about this story, some people even believed it!

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1882 Deep within the Belgian Congo.

In 1895, Newfangled Web Factory opened the first pixel foundry in the United States. Its creation heralded a world wide technological boom that began in the most unlikely of places...

In the summer of 1882, a small band of fortune seekers, led by Edmund Pixellini, set off to the African continent in search of diamonds and adventure. Although they found no diamonds, what they found instead led to an incredible technological breakthrough. Edmund Pixellini, a life long treasure-hunter and adventurer, had heard of the fabled diamond deposits to be found in the African interior. By early 1882, he had chartered a ship, hired a crew, and set sail for Point Noirre, Africa. Trekking deep into the jungle, he and his cohorts searched for months for the diamonds but to no avail. Within days of giving up the search, they unearthed the first find of raw pixels. These rare stones were so bright and colorful that they seemed to radiate light. The "pixel," as it was named by its discoverer, weighed so little that the lightest breeze could hold small particles suspended in air for several minutes. Driven by an entrepreneurial vision equal to adventuresome spirit, Pixellini soon grasped the scientific and technological significance of his discovery. Upon his return, he immediately began to experiment with the unique properties of the pixel and soon the first computer system was born. His success came quickly and easily and, within a decade, a new form of communication was born.

With the discovery of the pixel, a new form of communication was born. By taking advantage of the pixel's natural luminosity and low density, inventors were able to find ways of moving pixels to and from one OSU (opti-screen unit, an early predecessor to the computer) to another. By serving pixels across networks of tubing, an OSU could communicate visual information over considerable distance. Of course, the earliest prototypes where limited in range and very slow, but the potential was clear to all. The key to controlling the flow of pixels was in air pressure. Too much air current and pixels would get jumbled and misdirected, too little current and they would not reach the intended OSU. Air compressors began with simple bellows fitted with filters and air resistors. Soon "virtual lung" systems would provide much more control and power. The demand for pixels and matrixes which displayed them soared. Newfangled Graphics foresaw this demand and the first industrial pixel foundry went online in 1892.

Newfangled Web Factory uses the latest in web fabrication machinery. Our fabrication process begins with Franklin Trucking and Post teamsters delivering the raw pixels to our pixel foundry. The raw pixels are sorted, then prepared for use by one of our three industrial strength web forges. Our foundry is capable of processing ten truck loads of raw pixels per day! We use only the finest imported pixels, excavated from quarries in Pointe Noire, Congo. From the foundry, it's off to the pixel engraving studio, where our talented young designers and engravers prepare each graphic before it is sent to the HTML assembly line. The factory assembly line is where our web sites finally come to life. Here you see an average day on our factory floor where experienced HTML craftsmen oversee workmen setting web pages, pixel by pixel, to be assembled into complete web sites. Of course, before leaving the factory, our inspectors check each page and link for defects to make sure every page meets our high standards for quality and craftsmanship. Defective pages are returned to the foundry where they are melted down for their raw materials. All our employees enjoy a light 84 hour work week with two generous fifteen minute breaks each day! In addition, they are offered factory housing and convenient shopping at the factory store. We are one big web building community.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/the_story_of_edmund_pixellinili Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500 fictitious history, which we dropped from the site some time ago. But I can't resist the nostalgia so here it is again.

]]> http://www.newfangled.com/the_ballad_of_edmund_pixellinili Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500 The Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies. Proportion Wheel, Presto rub on type, Rubylithe--ahh the good old days. ]]> http://www.newfangled.com/the_museum_of_forgotten_art_supplies Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400 Web Smart Blog to the Web Smart newsletters section of the site. Information concerning the development and use of the web is moving so fast that a monthly newsletter is too slow to stay relevant and up-to-date. Now readers can subscribe to the Web Smart Blog and all the nuggets of information that relate to our past newsletter can be accessed and associated through blog postings.

I will probably update this blog less since I'll be adding things to the Web Smart Blog regularly. ]]> http://www.newfangled.com/the_new_web_smart_blog Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us is a fantastic piece that illustrates the web 2.0 movement toward information collaboration, organization and magnification. For a longer explanation of web 2.0 and all the attention being given to collaborative tagging and community sites like del.icio.us, Flickr, and MySpace read my Web Smart newsletter Wikis, Swikis and Blogs, Oh My! (part one | part two)
]]> http://www.newfangled.com/web2_video_illustration Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500 #macro:content,1591#About a year ago I wrote a Web Smart newsletter called Number One in Google... Not for Long. about how personalized search would one day change Google search results based on individual search history. Depending on the searches and clicks you make, future results would be tilted based on the fingerprint Google develops of you based on that information. As a result the number one spot in Google for my search results might be different than the number one spot in Google for your.

We'll that day was last Friday February 2nd, 2007. Google rolled out their new personalized search results algorithm.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/google_personalized_search_begins Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500 documentation for the NewfangledCMS. A few years ago I created a video demonstration of our process and system for our site. That process was rather painful, and took much longer than I thought it would. This time I'm using Camtasia Studio (www.camtasiastudio.com). I've been seriously impressed with its ease of use and the final quality of the video. It only took me about twenty minutes to get comfortable with its inner workings. ]]> http://www.newfangled.com/video_documentation_software Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0500 While killin' time between meetings at a local Barnes and Noble I encountered a new children's book called Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich by Adam Rex. It had me at the cover. The illustration was compelling enough but then I read the sub title "And other stories you're sure to like, because they're all about monsters, and some of them are also about food. You like food, don't you? Well, all right then." How could I not buy it? After all I do like food.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/frankenstein_makes_a_sandwich_by_adam_rex Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.newfangled.com/my_new_newfangled_website_is_live Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.newfangled.com/tivo_is_better_than_directv_dvr Wed, 04 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0400 Wikis and Swikis and Blogs, part 2) in short it's a music subscription service that allows me to listen to just about anything I want. The best part though is how it helps me discover really great music with its recommendations, similar artists, influences, etc. But until I got my Sansa I could only listen to all this music while at my computer.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/rhapsody_and_sandisk_sansa_review Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400