I don’t know what they’re selling at bodegas on the Upper East Side these days, but I’m a little hesitant to put it in my mouth.

Ok, thanks for everyone’s input on the caption contests. I’ve given it some thought, and here’s the deal.

Caption contests will now last seven days. After a caption has been posted for seven days, I’ll turn off the ability to add new captions and I’ll declare a winner and a loser based on the votes. (Since I can’t disable the voting feature on certain caption contests without disabling it across the entire site, you’ll still technically be able to vote for completed caption contests, even though a winner has already been declared and your votes will mean nothing. Nothing!)

As an example, I just closed an older caption contest and declared a winner and a loser. Check it out to see what I mean.

Winners will receive a link to their website (if they provided it when submitting their caption) and losers will receive nothing (although I don’t want to rule out the possibility of putting a piece of shit on them.)

I just installed this cool little image viewing thingy called FancyZoom throughout the site. It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot nicer than just seeing an empty JPG when you click to view an image. It works with thumbnails (as you can see on the left) or with text links too.

Technology. Ain’t that some shit.™

Quick informal survey: How many keys are on your keychain? And of those, how many have you used in the past seven days? Be honest – you don’t have to use your real name (as if anyone here does anyway…). If you’re reading this, you’re obliged to participate. I know where you sleep, Alexandr.

I’ll go first. To the comments!

UPDATE: Here’s some infoporn on the results so far. Last update 2/7, 5:30PM EST

Hopefully you’ll notice that the site is much faster now. It seems the problem was the Kimili Flash Embed WordPress Plugin, which for the record, blows. I just switched to the Flashifier Plugin, and everything seems much snappier now.

Here’s a pretty cool idea I wouldn’t mind seeing incorporated into the iPhone: the ability to see where your friends are on the Google Maps application. (By friends, I mean your friends with iPhones or other locatable devices.) For security, it would only allow you to look for and be found by people in your list of contacts. Here’s a mockup of how it would look if someone’s looking for you. Bitchin.

Hate your job as a graphic designer? Don’t forget to do this before you quit.

Exactly.

A cool feature I noticed about the iPhone is that I don’t need to eject it from iTunes before unplugging it from my computer. Why can’t Apple figure out how to do this with a friggin iPod???

The web’s newest and most smartest cartoon, Ugbun the Ugly Bunny.

While spending some time with my girlfriend and her grandfather this weekend, I spotted a self-portrait of him from the 80s that bore a striking resemblance to Thom Yorke from Radiohead. (Click to view large.) Creeeeeepy….

While the web is buzzing with reports about how much faster Photoshop CS3 is on Intel Macs, there’s nary an article on the impressive speed improvements in InDesign CS3. As of this writing, if you search for "indesign benchmarks" or "indesign cs3 benchmarks" you get an astonishing combined total of one result (compared to about 2,000 results for "photoshop benchmarks" and "photoshop cs3 benchmarks").

So I fired up InDesign CS2 and CS3, whipped out my stopwatch, and set out to do some InDesign CS3 benchmarks of my own. And you thought your Wednesday night was awesome!

Read entire post…

I discovered this morning that the iPhone is so hip, it’ll auto-suggest the proper spelling of TriBeCa. But interestingly (that is, if you find this stuff interesting, which is doubtful) it won’t auto-suggest “SoHo” when you type soho.

I noticed something funny in the window at St. Vincent’s hospital this evening. View it large…you’ll find it.

Some geek talk ahead. Non-technophiles beware…

Has anyone seen a high-end TV displaying 1080p? Last weekend I saw a couple of plasma and lcd TVs that were playing Blu-Ray movies at 1080p, and while the image quality was fantastic, the motion was so smooth it was creeping me out. While I’m certainly no video expert, I’m used to movies looking like movies and TV looking like TV (which in geek talk is 24 fps and 30 fps respectively).

To me, the overall effect of 1080p was a bizarre combination of beautiful movie-like imagery with live “TV News” quality motion. And I didnt like it.

I’m no purest by any step of the imagination, but I don’t need TV manufacturers trying to “improve” my movie watching experience by screwing with my beloved frame rates. It’s just distracting. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this (and/or make me look like a fool) in the comments section. End of rant.

Hey Everyone – thanks for taking such good care of the site while I was away. As promised, here’s the prize for the highest rated comment on the previous post. Happy holidays everyone.

Hey Everyone – I’m headed out for a week-long vacation. Upon my return, the highest-rated comment for this post will get a prize. What’s the prize, you ask? Well I can’t tell you now, but don’t worry – it’s sure to be something very disappointing.

See ya next week, Internet!

If you’ve ever wanted to hear me co-host a radio show, then this Wednesday is your chance. I’ll be co-hosting Amanda Nazario’s weekly radio program on Washington Heights Free Radio this Wednesday from 7-9PM EST. All comments to this post will be considered shout-outs and might even be read on the air if you’re lucky.

Listen to the streaming webcast on Wednesday, 7-9PM EST here.

Also, you may remember I’ve had some experience with radio in the past…

Many thanks to this month’s sponsor, Pantone. Check out their banner ad to the right.

Write a comment and see it on the webcam! Fun fun fun.

EDIT – 11/20/07: The webcam has moved on and comments are closed.