Spot-On: Hot Spots

It's not every day that you can put a presidential candidate - a male presidential candidate - in a dress.

The folks at CartoonDolllEmporium have taken care of that. They've got a Rudy Guiliani doll, complete with the drag costume the former New York mayor donned one year - heels, wig and sequins! - for a charity gig. There's a Bill O'Reilly doll, too, complete with star-studded boxers and uh, a Steve Colbert doppleganger, a defensive-looking George Bush and an oddly curvaceous Hillary Clinton.

So dress your favorite candidate as you see fit. The fun and games are today's HotSpot.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 7:06 PM | Permalink

Before GoogleMaps, London cab drivers were the guides to city; rigorously drilled in travel routes, converted into easy-to-remember rhymes.

Sunday, ResonanceFM, an Internet radio station run by London musicians will - sort of - stand this idea on its head with a performance of "If the Route: The Great Learning of London" (a taxi opera), a recitation of many of those rhymes. The piece is being rebroadcast through May.

The idea of turning a famous gnomic learning device drenched in London cockney slang into an piece of spoken art strikes us as pretty neat. Here's Resonance's Sunday schedule so you can figure out the timing.

Enjoy, it's today's HotSpot.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 11:07 AM | Permalink

The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg have broke outta paper.

Yup, they've landed on the web with AllThingsD. As Spot-on loves to see Big Media joins the networked news environment we welcome the dynamic duo of tech reporting (we'll let you decide which one is the Boy Wonder) as they extend the chicness of their wildly popular conference - D:All Things Digital.

D - It's hot.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

Here's something so cool it deserves to be hot.

Garagista Music is a web-based music company that finds artists, records them, markets and sells their music. You can download tunes, buy and entire records or just sample what they've got on offer.

If you've heard of them, they're probably not on the Garagista label. But a lot of what Garagista offers is worth hearing. It's todays HotSpot.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

Iron Chef America - the English language version of the wacky Japanese cooking show - features one of Spot-on's favorite restaurant chefs, Chris Cosentino, this week. He challenged celeb cooker Mario Batali.

So we're making his OffalGood, today's HotSpot.

In Chris' kitchen, as anyone who has eaten at San Francisco's Incanto knows, offal ain't awful; it's wonderful.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 8:37 PM | Permalink

Planning a European vacation this summer, maybe to the ultra-cool city of Barcelona? Or has the dreadfully dropping dollar made you rethink your plans? Either way, today’s HotSpot can help.

It’s a 3-D model of Barcelona. (Hit that little British flag in the upper right for English.) You can see what restaurants will be near your hotel, or just check out what sites you might have seen. This beta version is put out by QDQ.com, which offers a good online yellow and white pages for Spain (in Spanish). It’s all almost as cool as being there.

Posted by Deborah Klosky at 2:02 AM | Permalink

Today's HotSpot is totally self-serving. We don't care. We're excited.

Spot-on's Christopher Brauchli has the great pleasure of seeing his son, Marcus, get a big job. The boy - er, younger man - has just been named managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. You know, that newspaper that everyone with money reads.

Congrats to all. And no, we can't help ourselves: They've got the apple but we've got the tree.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 10:28 PM | Permalink

One Spot-on writer - we'll let you guess which one - claims the Internet is only good for porn and government statistics.

You can quarrel with either part of that statement. But there's no question both of them are easier to find on-line. Today's HotSpots offers evidence.

First, The New York Times' map of candidates' support - a quick-and-dirty snapshot of who gave what. Second, the Washington Post's more detailed database of contributions. Both are based on the Federal Elections Commission filings campaigns were required to make on Monday.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 9:51 AM | Permalink

Moms have it tough. And being saintly is part of the problem.

But the Internet is here to help. TrueMomConfessions is a site for those of you with something to confess - but perhaps not the understanding friends to confess it to. Think your kid is ugly? Your daughter looks too much like your sister-in-law? Or worried you're going to disappoint your kids? TMC's for you and it's today's HotSpot.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

There will be eulogies, tributes and essays galore. Kurt Vonnegut was, after all, a writer. But seeing the dead through the eyes of those who loved them is perhaps the only way to understand how much they will be - each - missed.

In this, author Kurt Vonnegut was blessed. His wife, photographer Jill Kremetz, took a lot of pictures. Authors are horrible subjects; chroniclers of the absurd, like Vonnegut, even more elusive, their imaginations harder to capture, to distill, to make approachable, familiar, friendly.

But Kremetz succeeds. Of course. So today's HotSpot is the New York Times' collection of her Vonnegut portraits.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

Guitar Hero has a following, that's for sure. Among a certain crowd - say 40ish guys who are never going to own a pair of leather pants - it's the video game of the season.

But among another group, younger men who love computers and the code that makes them work, the game is not enough. These guys - GarageGeeks - built an android that plays Guitar Hero. They gave it a guitar and they learned how to make it "talk".

The whole thing - which comes to us from Rhizome - is today's HotSpot. We're ready to take that long walk.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 3:02 PM | Permalink

We're going to stop accusing Big Media types of not having a sense of humor.

Why? Take a look at the Washington Post.com's "Peep Show". The paper asked readers to make a diorama (you know, like 5th grade shoe-box art) using peeps, those little sugar-coated marshmallow candy things that show up every Easter but, unlike boiled eggs, have no "good" use after the holiday. Unless you're, uh, creative. Or nuts.

We'll let you make the call; the "Peep Show" slide show of winning entries is today's HotSpot.

The Internet was made for stunts like this.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

Just 'cause you got religion don't mean you can't have fun.

The folks at Beliefnet are indulging their sense of punning and hosting an "egg" hunt to remind us, too. Find the Easter eggs on the site, click 'em all and get the chance to win a prize.

It's goofy. It's a nice pun on the phrase used to denote "hidden" features in websites, it's a great excuse to read some nice writing and it's today's HotSpot.

Posted by Chris Nolan at 1:00 PM | Permalink

After we were reminded about the books, we wanted to share our nostalgia and send you to the Maxwell House Haggadahs that everyone celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover used at their grandparents' house. But even the current edition of the coffee brand's prayer book for the seder is so retro that you've got to head into the real world to check it out.

So, for today's HotSpot we offer you Jewish website Aish's guide to all things Passover. From a brief groaner of a video that's barely supporting an extended Passover pun to recipes to impress your mother-in-law, the pages are likely to have something of interest to most celebrants.

Posted by Deborah Klosky at 12:56 PM | Permalink