The Credit Crisis, Explained Visually

Having a difficult time understanding why the economy is upside-down? Check out this video from Jonathan Jarvis which gives a wonderful visual overview of the credit crisis and explains how everything is connected. (Video is best viewed in HD and full-screen, of course.)

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis.

Crisisofcredit.com

The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jonathanjarvis.com.

Support the project and buy a T-Shirt! cafepress.com/crisisofcredit

© Copyright 2009 Jonathan Jarvis

Zune 30GB Frozen at Midnight, December 31, 2008

So, I go to work tonight and I get the hankerin’ to listen to “The Device Had Been Modified v2.”  I get out my trusty black 30GB Zune, and my little portable speakers,  fire up the Zune and….

Boot screen…
Bar charges across the screen… stops.
Stuck. Nothing. Frozen. Dead. Crap.

I perform the ol’ back button + up button reset trick and even the back button + down button (reportedly works when the other doesn’t) and it fails to thaw my Zune. I leave the Zune alone for a couple hours, and after returning to my office, I find the screen black and the battery drained.

But, apparently, I am not alone.

Owners of the original 30gb Zune from around the world are reporting that when they tried turning on their Zune after midnight on December 31, 2008, the device rebooted, then hung on reboot. The only workaround discovered thus far is detaching the battery, effectively resetting the internal clock which is being pointed to as the culprit.

Looks like MS is aware of the problem.

It would seem that if something like this was going to occur, it would occur at midnight of the new year. One astute reader at Engadget noted that 2008 was a leap year, with one day more than other years. Whatever the reason is for the strange behavior, this could be the reason why our Zunes didn’t die as the new year came to be. Or perhaps there’s a conflict of certain processes thinking it’s 2008, but the others, 2009 depending on if the process takes the leap year into account. Then again, Microsoft could just be telling us to go buy a new gen2 Zune.

Welcome to the Zunicide.

Update: I’d just like take a second and note all the whiny, bitchy, complaining people who’ve been without some media player for a few hours; those who are crying foul and whining all over the Internet as if their mother just died and Microsoft called in the hit. I know its just a minority, a vocal minority. But geez people, GET A GRIP.

microsoft zune 30gb midnight die dead broken frozen fix

Splogs Suck

This site has only been up for about a week and already a splog, or spam blog, had gotten a hold of it.

Splogs are “fake” blogs whose content is usually entirely stolen from legitimate blogs. In this case, I wrote a post last week that cited Wikipedia and contained a tag for Wikipedia. I believe this is how the splog in question ripped off my content. Splogs I’ve had experience with will re-post information from any blog that shows up in a Technorati or Google Blog Search feed with a particular tag or keyword.

The splog will attempt to get my content indexed in search engines to generate traffic to the splog’s site which is usually inundated with paid advertising links (read: pr0n).

Often, too, the splog will send a pingback to the original blog. Pingbacks (also known as trackbacks) are used to notify a blog that another blog has cited information from a particular post. The pingback will appear as a snippet of the new post in the comments section of the cited post. This a great feature because it allows easy link trading between bloggers with similar interests, and it gives credit to the original author.

The problem with splogs sending pingbacks are now the sucker gets a link in my comments to his/her rip-off of my post. Fortunately, Akismet is catching on to these and will file it as spam before it hits my blog.

There’s nothing I can do about the bastard stealing my content (except to change the content, or play the sucker), really, but the silver lining in spam blog is that I know my site is being searched and indexed!

Splog in question: http://wikipedia.doorwayblogging.info/ (NSFW)

The Origin of April Fool’s Day

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Sed ac libero. Fusce nec tellus nec metus egestas dictum. Sed et mauris. Vestibulum placerat lectus eu nisi. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nulla facilisi. Phasellus vitae arcu. Morbi faucibus imperdiet nisi. In porta nunc quis enim. Pellentesque dolor libero, suscipit ac, ultricies mattis, consectetuer et, sapien.

I Need to Test the Summary Feature for My Feed

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Sed ac libero. Fusce nec tellus nec metus egestas dictum. Sed et mauris. Vestibulum placerat lectus eu nisi. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nulla facilisi. Phasellus vitae arcu. Morbi faucibus imperdiet nisi. In porta nunc quis enim. Pellentesque dolor libero, suscipit ac, ultricies mattis, consectetuer et, sapien.

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