this past weekend was a good weekend. my buddy kyle from chapel hill came into town to kick it and that we did. on sunday we took the opportunity afforded to us by the pleasant mid-December NYC weather (60ºF) to check out a graffiti exhibition on spring street. you can read all about it in this times article. but a brief summary is that there is a building located on 11 Spring Street in New York City that is a hot spot for all kinds of great graffiti. however, the building was recently sold to new owners who are going to convert it into condominiums. but instead of being dicks, they decided to be cool and have a kinda going away exhibition at the building where they brought in all kinds of graffiti artists from all over the world to decorate – inside and out. so, they just finished it a couple days ago and this past weekend was the only weekend where you could view the finished product because this week they were going to powerwash the inside and out and begin the remodeling proces.

so my buddy and i showed up around 3pm on sunday and saw the longest line in the world. it went almost 3/4 of the way around the entire block. i was awestruck by the line. and that’s to say nothering of the outside art. which was as awesome as advertised.

needless to say we didn’t get in to see the inside, but the outside was pretty incredible itself. i was told by a buddy at work though, that the inside was amazing. i’ll try to find his pictures of the inside, and i’m hoping to post some that i took of the outside in the near future. for now i’ll just give you this one.

yo so i feel guilty for not posting in a bit, but i was happy seeing my photos below and really didn’t have anything better to say for a while. but i did want to let you all know what i’ve been up to. and that is… bringing audio to the people.

that’s right. everybody wants to hear it right here and now. they don’t wanna click another link. they don’t wanna open it in itunes. they don’t want their browser to go to an all grey window with the little quicktime bar in the middle. no no my friend. they want the audio now.

anyway, that’s what i told to some of my bosses and they agreed and we’ve since been using the inline audio player i created for nytimes.com. we call it the “inline player” b/c, well, it can basically play anywhere. inline. um, yep.

but really i saw a need to replace the direct links to mp3s that we were consistently putting up on the front page (and throughout the site). the #1 problem with these links was that it was impossible to tell what the hell was going to happen when one of our readers clicked on the link. it could take you to a new browser window where it plays ur mp3. it could launch winamp. it could launch real player. it could go get a latte at starbucks. you just don’t know.

additionally. who really wants any that crap to happen? answer: nobody. if peeps are coming to ur page, they’re not coming to immediately be pushed off to a blank window, or worse , another application. they’re coming to browse the headlines, watch a video, check out a slide show, maybe, just maybe, listen to a little audio?

enter inline audio player. disco.

now it’s a simple little mp3 player that will play anything you throw at it. it’s resizable (as seen in these two different screenshots) so it’s flexible to fit where you need it. it carries the look and feel of the site. and hopefully it has upped the number of peeps listening to times audio. the best part about the whole development process was testing it out with the new lupe fiaso album. which is dynamite (the website looks pretty cool too, but i just saw it as i linked it).

continue livin’ large and enjoyin’ the audio.