Life & Research Notes

Inspired by the flurry of 13×13 icon creation, Luis and I have been at work the past day on a new, super low resolution icon creation system called Tiny. I’ve written a javascript version with a Rails backend that uses RMagick to produce the PNGs. Meanwhile Luis has thrown together a nice little applet, which I have to admit is a tad more sophisticated than my version. We’ll integrate them in the next few days. It’ll be pretty easy, since creating a new icon is as easy as sending an HTTP POST with a data parameter of 169 0’s or 1’s. Title and parent parameters are taken optionally.

Forever alpha at http://tiny.media.mit.edu/

The excitement will really never end. There are 2^169 possible images! Thanks to Amber for the original inspiration with her Mini app for OS.

This morning Luis and I are having a nice talk about whether an OS-like market should trade in media (drawings, audio, video, animation) at all, or whether we should be thinking about markets for social information: gossip, secrets, tips, howtos, critiques, even opinions. What would you rather buy: a drawing, or an answer?