Keaton's genius gets props, 86 years later

After reading a very interesting Wired magazine story on Buster Keaton's ground-breaking stunts and special effects, I went online in search of the 1924 movie in question. Outside of the clip with the Wired story, I never found a legal version of the movie. I did stumble across the video above, however, which delivers a summary of Keaton's crazy genius in matching stunts and choreography. 

He was the Jackie Chan of his day, and while I knew his name, I have never seen his work. Shame on me.

I always thought The Three Stooges deserved major props for their masterful choreography. Add Keaton to that list. 

Remember Avantgo?

Old-timers may remember Avantgo, one of the first web companies to serve content to the handheld market.

In my case, I used a Palm V and Palm VII to sync with Advantgo, which hosted feeds from a variety of news outlets. It was the early days of the mobile web, with mostly text and grayscale screens.

I stopped using Avantgo years ago, and stumbled across their name only periodically when I'd dive into bakersfield.com's metrics and see one or two users reading our content from an age-old unregistered feed we created to circumvent Avantgo's pay-to-play wall. It officially died this summer, although its last sign of life was long before that.

Avantgo lives on Wired.comMy reason for this post, is that while Avantgo died six months ago, Wired magazine's "Wired News On The Go" page is living in the past. My guess is the only Wired readers still using Avantgo are the same folks who still use betamax video recorders. 

Thanks, Wired, for a nice blast to the past.