Ian Duncan Matt Capucilli at the table where he made the best-selling iPad app Video Time Machine. He also painted the portrait.

The fifth floor of an Avenue B walk up might not seem like the most likely place to find a computer programmer with a best selling app. But from his kitchen table Matt Capucilli developed Video Time Machine, which is now riding high in the iTunes store.

Since the launch of the iPad app on June 17, it has been climbing the charts, and as of last night, was the most downloaded iPad application, knocking the wildly popular Angry Birds, off the top spot. The app was also climbing up the more competitive iPhone rankings, reaching number two in the entertainment category. The app lets users pick a year and one of seven genres — games, television, ads, news, sports, movies and music — and serves up relevant videos. Showing off how the app worked, Mr. Capucilli selected 1968 and TV, pulling up an episode of “The Gumby Show”.

Mr. Capucilli, who is 29, said the app aims to tap into nostalgia for old TV. “It’s discovery based on things you might have once come across before in your life,” he said, “things you didn’t remember you remember.”
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Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Would-be messages from the East Village, in 140 characters or less.

I, Phone,

…have taken over, man! You can’t do without me,
forget about it, dude, you’re screwed, don’t you
understand anything? I own you

Personal

Neither a fighter nor a lover, me. Presenting: 180 lbs. of
Humanity. Single, sober, solvent, rents a flat. Touch-
starved. That’s that

Banker’s Advice

Although he could not understand the financial
information Mr. Li was giving him, he suspected Mr. Li
did not fully understand it either

Cosmopolitan (J.P. Morgan Chase)

When he informed him he was moving to France for six
months, Mr. Li looked genuinely puzzled. “France?
Why would you want to go there?”

Finding it difficult to frame a simple answer to such a
complex question, he was polite. “Oh, you know, I just
feel like going somewhere”

The Old Lovers

A decade unmet, fearful of Time’s traces,
they settled on a dinner date
in which they would dine in different places

A Chinese Hair From A Chinese Head

… coiled among murky translucent shells ripped from
shrimp bought on Canal piled like dozens of used
condoms in a bowl on the kitchen table

Embarrassment

The first warm days of Spring can be a scary thing.
Overnight, so calmly – as if they had never been – coats
and hats are shed

and each body’s truth revealed. Eyes grow busier,
bolder. They meet at crossroads. They mate. Cheeks
susceptible turn pink, then red

Madison Avenue

Uptown, you breathe the clean clear air of money. Saw
James Merrill there once, on the street. Imagine what he
could have done with a tweet

Weeping Tom

He can only hear through the air shaft, not see: The song
of life as sung by students from F.I.T. Loud, obnoxious,
excited, cheerful… young

Absence

After she died, he sensed (just once) her watching him
from the sky above 3^rd Avenue. For days she stayed
with him, like the sun’s warmth.

But now three years have passed since her burial
overseas, in an old French city, and the sky above the
East Village, his home, is empty