Twenty-five years ago, it was easy. We weren't rock stars because we didn't have the recording equipment. You couldn't say it was for lack of trying, either. Pretty much everybody out with whom I hung would have emphatically jumped through unthinkable flaming hoops to have access to a 24-track recording device and a microphone or two -- it would have...

FWIW My observation is that ARG's can undermine our (the general public's) ability to discern Truth and Sincere Intent from playful deception. Or malevolent deception for that matter. Here's an example-- Fwd: Sarah Palin and the Africa comment...

I've recently watched two films that really ought to be seen by anyone with an interest in creativity.

NaNoWriMo challenges participants to write a complete 50,000-word novel from scratch in 30 days. Now why on Earth would you want to put yourself through such an ordeal? There's really only one reason.

Will Wright's Spore features an unusually rich content-creation and content-sharing component that encourages players to design game creatures, vehicles, and buildings, and then share those art assets around the Spore-o-sphere — unleashing their beasties into other player's games. I was curious what the people behind the game's Creature Editor had learned about how you get people to make stuff, and Senior Software Engineer Dan Moskowitz was nice enough to take a little time to chat about, among other things, the importance of file size, keeping things simple, and the first few clicks.

Just back from teaching for my 4th time at the Maine Media Workshops. What blast! My students learned: painting with light, low light photography, shooting with reflectors and diffusers, Photoshop... and the big hit HDR. We used Photomatix Pro to craft our indoor and outdoor pictures - my HDR image of the Pemaquib is attached. More of my HDR images on the HDR page of my site.

Drum machine inventor Roger Linn once told me, "A creative mind is a LOUD mind. It has lots of thoughts popping up in different directions." For creative people, focusing can be difficult. That's why I was intrigued by Michael W. Dean's recent essay, called simply "Professionalism."

So I got to thinking that in this day and age, there ought to be a way to create your own virtual art gallery, and avoid all the tiresome traipsing around to various world capitals.

Want to know what's in store for the next version of Photoshop (or your other Creative Suite favorites)? Without a having a public beta this go around, we've been having to glean clues about what might be in store for Photoshop "Next" from a variety of sources. Next week on Tuesday (September 23), we'll be able to see Creative Suite...

Twenty-seven-year-old Jesse Thorn is a radio show host, a podcast producer, and one of the leading proponents of The New Sincerity. Next summer, he'll be leaping into all-new terrain by launching MaximumFunCon, a unique weekend event that's sort of a vacation, entertainment, education smoothie...