Blog of Sal

Here's a quick plug for a book that really digs into the evolution of cryptocurrency. Author Tim Swanson offers a thorough rundown of everything happening in the ecosystem, and the book contains great quotes from many professionals in the industry. Get the details on projects like Colored Coins , Mastercoin , NXT , Ethereum , BitShares ,  Counterparty , Ripple , and Open-Transactions , and learn more about top companies in the industry. I was interviewed for the book, and have some remarks published regarding where I see future opportunity in the industry. Check it out on Amazon: Great Chain of Numbers: A Guide to Smart Contracts, Smart Property and Trustless Asset Management by Tim Swanson

Remember where you were when the internet was born? I'll always remember a middle school camping trip my class took back in '92. We were traversing a scary railway bridge when our teacher pointed out thick wires bolted to the support beams below us and said: "Ça c'est le 'Information Superhighway!'" We were part of a "brain class". A group of students who were singled out, grouped together in a special class, and commonly referred to as "Les Nerds". I had one friend in that class who was an uber-nerd named Jeffrey B., and I was pretty sure he knew everything about computers. No offense to Jeffrey B., but he was one of these kinds of guys

I recently picked up a the Samsung Galaxy Note .  It's that fucking huge phone that came out recently in North America. You know, the one they're billing as the bridge between a tablet and a phone: I badly wanted this phone because of its cutting edge audio and video capabilities, and so I could fiddle with all of the latest and greatest apps. I've been using the SNote drawing app a ton. The stylus it comes with works well, yet isn't quite as precise as a real pen or pencil. And I'm finding a lot of different ways to get creative with the device. The videos I've been shooting are of better image quality, and of way better audio quality than my old Canon point-and-shoot. Check out this sample I shot as an underground promo for the James Street North Art Crawl in Hamilton: I've been recording music with it too. I used to have a couple mics rigged to my PC through an external soundcard called a M-Audio Firewire solo .  Honestly, the quality of the dem...

How High Will Zuckerberg's Star Rise? I have a history of predicting cultural and technological trends correctly. So after being bombarded with the culture of Facebook for years, I'd like to offer some thoughts on their initial public offering.  I know little about investing, so please think of this article as more of a blind rant than an investment recommendation. Zuckerberg built an amazing tool, and he turned that tool into a huge company. They did 3.7 billion dollars in revenue last year, not too shabby. As they go public, the fairy tale version of their story would go something like: public money allows facebook to unleash a plethora of amazing new technology offerings, stock prices rise steeply for years.  A story something like Google's, who came out of the recession smelling like roses, and have seen their stock rise from an $87 IPO in 2004 to a current price of $600 per share. But Google grew out of a time when it was easier to remain a global ...

I've been mentioning lately to  Zouch Magazine  staff how I'd like to pay a bit more attention to the flow of DYI and maker culture. There are so many innovative things happening there that bleed over into the art world. For example, you can use a Maker Bot like this: To create amazing works of art like this: How cool is that?  This machine actually builds things from  scratch   in front of your very eyes  based on 3D modelling software designs. I had the chance to have a nice chat with Paul Hart a member of the ThinkHaus.org  non-profit, and something came out of my mouth that sums up my state of mind lately: "art is really a big deal". I meant this in reference to the concept of art, and the way in which we are driven to create it. I was channeling a recent encounter I had with prominent electronic artist Norman White , who said something to the effect of how all of the modern creative stuff, from fine art t...