SXSW 2013 has come to a close. Everyone who attended the music, film and interactive festival is no doubt spending this week recuperating. After having spent the last two consecutive years at SXSW, I’ll admit that it felt weird to skip out on the festivities this year (however, Gadling’s Robin Whitney was on the ground). I went searching for a good video from the event and found this one by Giovanni Gallucci. Pairing images of live events with the streets and everything in between, Gallucci captured the essence of SXSW well with these shots. Enjoy.
The Historic Homes Where Jimi Hendrix And George Frideric Handel Were Neighbors (250 Years Apart)
When walking in London, keep an eye out for the Blue Plaques. These historic markers will tell you where famous people once lived, and occasionally make for strange combinations.
One blue plaque at 23 Brook Street in the exclusive Mayfair neighborhood tells how Jimi Hendrix lived there from 1968-1969. Next door at number 25 is another Blue Plaque, this time for Classical composer George Frideric Handel, who lived in the house from 1723 until his death in 1759. Sadly, there’s no record of what Jimi thought about living so close to an earlier and slightly different composer.
The upper stories of these two homes are now the Handel House Museum, which, as the name implies, is dedicated to Handel and not Hendrix. The house has been refurnished with period furniture and paintings and contains a collection of Handel’s personal items. The museum hosts many special events and concerts throughout the year, including weekly recitals. My wife is a big Classical music fan and taking her here to listen to a string quartet is something she still talks about years later.
One disappointment was not being able to see where Jimi Hendrix stayed. He loved London and loved his place, calling it his first real home of his own. At that time he had no neighbors and so he could practice his music as loudly as he wanted.
When the Handel House Museum opened in 2001, his apartment was restored to look like it had when he lived there, minus the large amount of drugs scattered about. Sadly, the apartment is now used as museum’s administrative offices and isn’t generally shown to the public.
[Photo courtesy David Holt]
Souvenir Of The Week: Kooky Korean Socks
In South Korea, everyone will see your socks because it’s customary to remove shoes in most public places. That might be why Jonathan Kramer, Gadling’s resident Kimchi-ite, tipped us off about the assortment of cheap, colorful anklets everywhere you go there. You might even find a sock vending machine. Designs are heavy on cartoons and bears, but hardly any motif is spared – the gamut runs from staid argyles, polka dots and stripes to sassy statements like boy bands, American cigarette logos, mischievous babies, Obama, schoolyard insults (“stupid”) and your favorite global megabrands (Starbucks).
First person to find a pair of Dennis Rodman socks wins!
[Photo credit: Todd Mecklem via Flickr]
Google Translate Adds Phrasebook To Save Your Most Common Phrases
Google continues to be one of the most innovative companies in the world, developing everything from wearable technology to self-driving cars. And while they’re incredibly busy inventing the future, the Internet search giant also continue to upgrade some of their existing products and services, bringing useful new features to the tools we already use.
Take, for example, Google Translate, the fantastic service that gives us the ability to translate text from more than 50 languages. The web-based version is indispensable for reading foreign websites, while the mobile app is great for translating while on the go. Both versions offer the ability to speak the phrases out loud, which can be a handy feature for those of us who happen to be linguistically challenged. The service can be very helpful for anyone looking to learn a new language too, providing help with pronunciation, spelling and more.
Recently Google Translate was updated with a new feature called Phrasebook, which actually lets you save your most commonly used sentences for quick access in the future. To add something to your Phrasebook simply type in the text you want to use and when the phrase appears in its translated form a small star will appear on the screen. Clicking or tapping on that star will then add it to the Phrasebook for quick referral later on. It doesn’t get any simpler than that, but Google has conveniently provided us with step-by-step instructions none the less.
Frequent users of the Google Translate service will no doubt appreciate this addition, particularly if they are using the mobile app while traveling. It can definitely save a lot of time if you find yourself regularly asking the same questions. In the age of cloud services and account syncing, I would have liked to have seen my personal Phrasebook saved across multiple devices, but perhaps that is something we’ll get in a future update. It would be great to type in important sentences on my laptop and have them automatically appear on my smartphone as well.
Travelers will love Google Translate as it obviously applies nicely to what we do. But the addition of the Phrasebook will no doubt come in handy too, saving time and effort while visiting a foreign land.
[Photo Credit: Google]
Video: NYC In Slow Motion
New York City is famous for never sleeping. The people within NYC are famous for rushing around. What if we could slow the whole thing down? James Nares gives viewers a glimpse of what this would look like with a video of NYC in slow motion: STREET. In a city as dense as NYC, magical little moments occur every second on a corner somewhere. Nares attempted to capture some of these moments, to give the small events room to breathe. And he did it beautifully.
[Thanks, Laughing Squid]