Wax Scrawls: Game Music Goes Jazzy and iPhone Hype Goes Fucking Nuts

Everyblock‘s Adrian Holovaty, who used to write some great stuff about news and journalism, redoes a tune from Super Mario Bros. 2 in ‘gypsy jazz’ style. The result is incredible and had me grinning ear-to-ear – it was impossible not to think of sitting in a friend’s basement about 15 years ago playing the game. You can even download an MP3 and tabs of the track on his site. (Oh and for good measure, here‘s a Super Mario Bros. art installation).

Tossell hits one out of the park again, outlining some of the reasons that there is so much iPhone hype. Essentially, he suggests that the iPhone makes the internet instantly accessible anywhere and that this is quite a profound shift: “Having the Web handy changes how we navigate daily life, much like access to mobile telephones already has. It’s a cure for uncertainty: Constant access to online maps means an end to getting lost; constant access to retail websites means comparison shopping on the fly; constant access to Wikipedia means always having an answer in an asinine debate at the pub.” Hyperbolic? Sure. But he still has a point.

Speaking of the iPhone hype, let’s look at some major blogs shall we? On July 10, Engadget posted 10 stories. Crave wrote 28 iPhone related posts. Giz posted 35. Thirty-five! Now, imagine what mine and everyone else’s Google Reader looked like today. Yeah. I actually want an iPhone but fuck me!

Racism on the Web: You’re Part of the Problem. I am so glad someone from the tech world actually had the guts to say this about the Loren Feldman ‘Tech Nigga’ fiasco (seriously, how stupid do you have to be?). Good on ya’ Hank Williams.