Just some little bits and pieces from across the web this weekend….
Art & Design

• I love their mission, but the art dork in me loves the hand-drawn telescope logo for 826 Seattle even more.
• I want a t-shirt with the logo for BEASTS! splashed across the front. That thing’s just bad-ass. More information on the BEASTS! book blog.

Blogging

• K.G. Schneider makes some interesting comments about Movable Type over at Free Range LIbrarian, in her post Movable Type: Declaring Victory and Moving On. I’m not yet to the breakup stage of my relationship with Movable Type, but I may implement some of the things she’s tried Media Manager sounds awesome.
• Also in the make-my-blog-better category: Smashing Magazine has an intriguing post up called Web 2.0: Buzz-Monitoring and Tracking. Useful stuff.

Comics

• Eddie Campbell has a brilliant little anecdote and sight gag about what happens when a writer – even great writers like Alan Moore – miss some dates in their research.
• Sequential Tart interviews Nick Bertozzi, rising comics star and brother of my friend Vanessa.
• Mike “Hellboy” Mignola is interviewed at Fanboy Radio.
• interesting story of how DC botched the option to make James Bond comics back in the 1960s.
• Houghton Mifflin has been bought by an Irish software publisher. Weird, but verrrrry interesting. The new company’s name will be the Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group. (I’m struggling to resist making a Riverdance joke here.) HM published Harvey Pekar’s Best American Comics 2006, but the software company is apparently primarily interested in HM’s textbook business. I wonder what this will mean for the comics end?
• Interesting piece from Sequential Tart on the new business models of comics: The Undiscovered Country by Antony Johnston.

IPTV

• From my IPTV research: NYT: Wal-Mart Plans to Test Online Films; more at ipodnn.com. Also a similarly interesting piece on User Generated and Niche Internet Video Heading for Your Living Room, courtesy of PVRWire.
• More IPTV research: The Future of Web Video, as linked to by Brightcove.
• From Broadcasting and Cable: HBO’s Digital Strategy? “HBO says it is exploring plans to distribute its programming online—so long as those plans don’t jeopardize its subscription-based business model or its licensing agreements with cable operators, which account for 80% of HBO’s revenue.” So does charging a hundred clams for a boxed season of Deadwood enter into that model?

Mobile Media

• Nokia Design’s Explore Concept 2012. God damn, I need to get this mobile media white paper out the door so I can stop worrying about stuff like this.
• Nokia to Integrate Yahoo in Mass-Market Handsets. Hottt.

Music

• Courtesy of Warren Ellis: Electric Gypsyland. Technobalkangypsytunes. Sweet. Check out the track “Homecoming” on the album’s MySpace page.
• Laura and I caught part of the James Taylor tribute special on PBS last week, and I was amazed by the size of Sting’s lute. (Wow, that sounded dirty.)

Writing

• I think I may have to start using the online Writer’s Market tool to take some of this stuff to the next level.
• Am contemplating adding a Workblog like Warren Ellis uses, to keep myself sane. I doubt it would help.
• Twitter’s six-word story contest is an interesting concept. I may have to get in on that. Presented in conjuntion with Smith Magazine, which looks pretty sharp.
• I am highly intrigued by Mechademia: An Academic Journal for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts. True to the academic model, the deadline for the Call for Papers for the Fall 2008 issue is January 7, 2007. A year and a half production window per issue?
• Grand Text Auto points to a Digital Writing Fellowship available over at the Literary Arts program at Brown University, which I’d consider applying to if I weren’t reluctant to start collecting Master’s degrees. I should have my MS (or SM, depending on who you ask) in the spring, while this one is an MFA. Collect ’em all!

Miscellaneous

• Neat – podcasts from the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Check out A Brave New World parts 1 and 2 for some insights on indie animation production from the guys at JibJab.
• An older article from Joystiq, yet an interesting one: Can You Create a Gaming City? Obviously someone pulled it off with Austin – I wonder if the same could be done for Cleveland.