Just recently found out about this short film done by Dove (hat tip: Tim O’Reilly). First word out of my mouth: “Wow”. The application of massive amounts of makeup for a photo shoot and post photo-retouching are things we all know about and they certainly should come as no surprise, but how interesting that Dove should choose to tackle it head-on. Because really, how complicit have they been in its practice over the years - never mind still are (you still need to apply massive amounts of makeup for whatever kind of ad your doing).

I applaud Dove’s attempts to try to set things right with The Dove Self-Esteem Fund, but it’s a fine line they walk because they’re right in the middle of the problems they highlight. I look forward to see how this progresses.

Caught another short film on YouTube, and on the fund’s website. Check them out!

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

As previously mentioned, I had trouble getting my head around the concept of Twitter. While I’m still of the same general opinion (Do I really need to know you’re craving anchovies?), I’ve since come around a bit.

While I don’t contribute much (although I suppose I’ve been ramping up as of late), I find it extremely interesting to follow what others send out into the ether. There’s certainly a fair share of boring stuff to sift through, but the gems tend to be quite interesting (for instance, watching John Gruber collecting info before posting to Daring Fireball). It appears as though I can count on one hand the number of people I actually know on Twitter (most of whom don’t seem to be using it as of late), so there’s a vaguely voyeuristic feeling of following the people I don’t personally know. Curiously, of those, the most prolific are in the web design and Mac development crowds.

On a side note, it seems as though there’s a bit of a waning of interest in online personas among the people I personally know (exception: LinkedIn). Methinks it might be just another effect of getting older. All the social networking sites that promised so much ~4 years ago (Friendster, Orkut, etc.) haven’t delivered a compelling reason to stay active on them - from my demographic’s point of view, I suppose, as Brazil seemingly has taken over Orkut. (Disclosure: I’ve deleted my Orkut account out of frustration from getting friend requests in Portuguese and I’m not sure why I haven’t done the same with Friendster, other than “out of sight, out of mind”.) The second wave, MySpace and Facebook, don’t offer much of a compelling argument to join for me - they’re overcrowded with the generation after my own and still don’t deliver a compelling selling point. I remain perplexed when people older than me by at least a decade have official representation on MySpace (1970’s-era rockstars who probably exist in a void of ignorance on behalf of the general membership).

Personal blogs have been withering on the vine as well (yes - I freely point out my own). I know my own reasoning had everything to do with shrinking free time, not out of disinterest. I’ve since purchased a new domain and have ideas for facelifting this blog before moving it to the new domain. I’ve started the 365 project (despite it being on hiatus currently) and continue to come across things that I’d like to share.

I guess where I’m meandering off to with this post is that I do want to follow through on my original plans, but I think I’ll probably augment it with Twitter - I haven’t raided the WordPress plug-ins lately, but I would certainly guess there’s one that will pipe your “tweets” straight to your blog (this will kill the “Random Bits” category of this blog due to the redundancy). I’ve got some free time on my hands now, so I’m hoping to press forward with these changes soon. Stay tuned!

OK, so Peggle might not be enough for you? Try Iconfactory’s Frenzic. A very fast-paced puzzle game with pieces reminiscent of Trivial Pursuit wedges.