Some things I\'ve encountered recently that you may want to check out:

• AV Club with Michael Caine - great interview regarding the mans career as a whole and, in particular, his recent film Harry Brown.
• AV Club with Apples in Stereo - bit of insight into their new record Travellers in Space and Time which is, without a doubt, riding the line between \"inspired by\" and \"ripped from\" ELO. Right? Right.
• Quasi at La Blogotheque - be sure to catch the bonus \"Nothing From Nothing\" at the end of the second video.
• Ex-Adobe Engineers Weight In on Jobs\' Flash Attack - and they pretty much agree with him entirely.

I\'ve been enjoying a browse through the photography work of Jay Schaul. The Chicago set has some real doozies in there but every set has something you\'ll enjoy.

Via the (slightly updated) Public School and their Show and Tell Flickr Group.

I\'ve seen the work of Jude Buffum before but it hadn\'t struck me how often I\'ve encountered it since then, until now! 8-Bit Keyboard Cat, Doctor Octoroc packaging and the pixelated Big Lebowski are all great works but it never clicked with me that they were all from the same individual. Spend some time on the official site and keep on eye on this photoset for more.

Thanks to Miguelito for the epiphany.

Madrid gave me the heads up on Gritter - a notification system for jQuery fueled sites that mimicks the behavior of Growl. This is a great way to give your user status updates about their usage of your site while staying within a familiar format.. in other words, it\'s a great idea and will be implemented in the future for sure. Check out the demo if you\'ve got a moment.

Today I am proud to present a new collection of music from Slowmotions. After the release of Quick Potions it became apparent that there were a plethora of songs that didn\'t make the final cut that were absolutely worthy of being heard. After a tiny bit of convincing, Square Piggy / Round Holly was compiled and is now ready for the world to hear. It is a collection of b-sides and various song oddities; not a proper conceptual album from top to bottom but it is damn good if I do say so myself.

It\'s available exclusively as a free digital download and you can grab it here. If you don\'t have Quick Potions already, grab that here - they go very well together.

[ Download Square Piggy / Round Holly ] · [ Download Quick Potions ]

The JoyPad app turns your iPhone into a wireless game controller for various game emulators. The concept is pretty stellar but I\'ve not actually gotten Nestopia to recognize it as a valid controller.. so there\'s a bit of a hump still with getting it to be a seamless / easy user experience but the idea is dead on.

Thanks to Madrid I\'ve been poring over the works of Siggi Eggertsson. Most of it seems to be very pixel-y inspired and/or focused on using simple shapes to achieve his goals but the pieces still manage to feel detailed and engaging. It even works well as video. There is a ton of work to partake in.. so get to it.

This Vinyl Playlist Player seems to be more conceptual than a widely available product you can pick up at your local music store but the concept is pretty great. You make a playlist, drop it on a USB stick and then drop the files into the player - a special record will light up and show the progress of the playlist as it plays back. The idea being that music is too easily consumable these days in its digital form and having something like this would force the listener to spend time with the music, while still providing them with the diversity they expect from their iTunes.

At the heart of it, it\'s a fancy stereo with a neat playback progress display. I commend the mindset to spend more time with music and the design itself is quite appealing. Do I think it will take off among iTunes fiends or pure vinyl enthusiasts? Probably not but that shouldn\'t stop you from considering it.

Via Paige and ISO50.

Either it was a slow week or I missed something.. regardless, a solid playlist but far from the craziest. I think you\'ll enjoy.

• Theodore Rex - a movie starring Whoopi Goldberg as a cop, in the future, with a Dinosaur for a partner. It\'s hard to believe this is real but there it is.. staring you in the face. Via Paul.
• Digital Scream - I know awkward 80\'s videos are a dime-a-dozen but there\'s something about this one that seemed particularly noteworthy...
• Obama Sings National Anthem - no, the coal mine disaster is not funny, at all. But Obama accidentally pulling an Andy Kaufman and singing along with the National Anthem is hilarious.
• Kids Ghillie Suits - this is not a joke. This is not intended as humor. The delivery of narration is honest and straightforward. For this, I award it Favorite Video of the Month.
• Robot Mouth Tralala - nightmarish.
• Best Cry Ever: Auto-Tune Remix - yea, it\'s an easy joke but it\'s still good.

Bonus

• Lots-o-Huggin Bear - not a particularly weird commercial until it hits you that this is a Toy Story 3 viral video.. very clever.
• Aziz Ansari Movie Awards Promo - the first of many I am sure. Not the funniest thing he\'s done but good to see.
• Drunk History: Nikola Tesla - so good. Even the part with the puking is awesome. John C Reilly and Crispin Glover nail the lip syncing to his drunken rantings.

That\'s it! Have a great weekend! Moustache May begins tomorrow at Noon Eastern!

The Big Picture has a great photo essay up about the forthcoming Shanghai World Expo. If you\'ve not seen any of the creations of this event please take a moment to check out the Seed Cathedral, the illuminated interstates, Farm Wu Yulu doing this thing or the most terrifying thing you\'ll see all day. Seriously, that isn\'t right.

Tube Tape takes a YouTube playlist and converts it into an audio mixtape. Simple stuff. All you have to do is tag the playlist ID on to the end of their URL and it does the rest of the work. Here is an example using last weeks Friday Videos but, obviously, if you had a playlist comprised of music / music videos - you\'d be working in the best direction.

Via Madrid.

Have you been keeping up with the details of this Gulf Oil Spill? Eleven people died, 210,000 gallons of oil are being spilled a day and it could take up to three months to plug the leak. Not three months to clean it up, three months to stop it from leaking. These NASA images give you an idea of the scale of what we\'re talking about and that\'s just the beginning. Obviously there are huge implications for the aquatic life but it goes beyond that to affect huge chunks of industry - fishing, tourism, etc.

The worst part of all this is that the oil rig was not equipped with the remote shut off capabilities that other oil producing companies require their offshore stations to have. Check this WSJ blurb:

The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department\'s Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn\'t needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.

Not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything but what do you think the likelihood is that Oil Lobbyists did their best to sway politicians into deciding that the cost of installing such a switch just wasn\'t worth it?

Anyway, the whole thing is awful and I hope everyone keeps their eye on the progress of what\'s going on; it\'s sort of a BFD.

Ever since Apple acquired LaLa I\'ve been curious what exactly they planned to do with it. Obviously there has been loads of speculation that a more web-based \"iTunes Cloud\" could be in the works but nothing concrete has ever shown itself. Now, with the announcement that LaLa shuts down on May 31st the rumor mill can start working at double speed. There\'s really nothing to do but wait to see what really comes of it but I\'m a bit shocked that they\'re shutting down the service rather than just relaunching it as something new and different.

Via Hartley.

These Birdhouse Bars by Luke Bartels and Jeff Canham are a clever take on the traditional style. I particularly love the Foreclosed version but all of them have something worthy of note. Too bad they are $675 - absurd.

Via Invisible Creature.

It\'s that time again! Another new mix comprised of songs that I\'ve been keeping in rotation as of late. There\'s nothing thematically holding these together but there\'s certainly a somewhat underlying sound that, accidentally, binds them. I guess I\'ve just been drawn to a more particular sound as of late. However, it\'s got a nice diversity and there\'s even a surprise saxophone solo thanks to the new Plants and Animals record. How could you not enjoy that?

[ Download For Reference Only ]

1. Sensual Harassment - Daddy Long Legs
2. Kavinsky - Nightcall (Dustin N\'Guyen Remix)
3. Rafter - No Fucking Around
4. Here We Go Magic - Casual
5. HEALTH - In Violet
6. Random Patterns - Psychic Luau
7. Colourmusic - Yes!
8. Plants and Animals - American Idol
9. Slowmotions - One Day I\'m Gonna...
10. Twin Sister - All Around and Away We Go
11. Hands Off Cuba - Crassus
12. Neil Young - Sample And Hold
13. The Apples in Stereo - Dance Floor
14. The Books - Beautiful People
15. Baths - Lovely Bloodflow
16. Majestico - Head & Feet

Blake gave me the heads up to The Johnny Cash Project and I suggest you check it out. Basically, a music video was made for the final Johnny Cash recordings; comprised of images / video from throughout his life but instead of just putting that out as the final product they\'ve digitized every frame and created an illustration platform for people to come and render their own take on a single frame. You are given a random frame and use their tools to recreate it how you see fit. Once you\'re done, your image is added into the rotation of everyone else\'s drawings and it makes for a crowdsourced, animated stop-motion video. Conceptually, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen but once you watch the actual video - you see that it really works.

I am in no way an expert when it comes to microformats but I must admit that when Jed pointed out this article on hCards I was completely unfamiliar with the subject matter. I hadn\'t even heard of the format! Regardless, I think the motivation behind it is a solid one; provide markup around your data so search engines can properly index the types of data. That being said, the markup itself is pretty ugly. Check out the examples to see the onslaught of span tags and attributes that have to wrap around all your text to give it context:

​<span itemprop=\"location\" itemscope itemtype=\"http://data-vocabulary.org/​Organization\">
   ​<span itemprop=\"name\">Warfield Theatre</span>
   ​<span itemprop=\"address\" itemscope itemtype=\"http://data-vocabulary.org/Address\">
       <span itemprop=\"street-address\">982 Market St</span>, 
       <span itemprop=\"locality\">San Francisco</span>, 
       <span itemprop=\"region\">CA</span>
   </span>
   <span itemprop=\"geo\" itemscope itemtype=\"http://data-vocabulary.org/​Geo\">
      <meta itemprop=\"latitude\" content=\"37.774929\"></meta>
      <meta itemprop=\"longitude\" content=\"-122.419416\"></meta>
   </span>
</span>

Even if you\'re not a developer you can agree that\'s not easy on the eyes. I\'m not really clear why this data can\'t be provided in meta tags and must be marked up in the page (yes there is redundancy there but it would keep things cleaner, which I think we\'d all appreciate).

Long story short, I think I will roll this out for the Mercy Lounge and We Own This Town sites to see if it has any sort of impact on search results. It can\'t hurt, right?

Steve Jobs throws down the gauntlet regarding Apple\'s stance on Adobe Flash. You can read his take on the topic here. He doesn\'t really seem to be holding back any punches:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

...

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

It\'s not too scathing but he does basically put his foot down on the subject. I wonder if Adobe will officially respond?

I have mentioned the work of Dusdin Condren before but please take a moment to allow me to mention it again. He has relaunched his official site and it is chock-full of new and intriguing imagery. I would still recommend keeping up with the photostream as it is likely to be updated more often but the categorical breakdown of subject matter is a nice way to view the work.

I am, apparently, not the only nerd that wondered what Super Mario Bros would be like if you got to play it as characters from other popular titles. Such is the thinking behind Super Mario Crossover - an extremely well done take on the original game but with the option to play as Simon Belmont, Samus Aran, Mega Man, Link, Bill R from Contra and, of course, Mario. Overall it makes me wish I had a USB gamepad of some sort so I could waste a large chunk of the day playing through it in its entirety.

Via Will.