randomwalks/dj

Too busy to post much lately. But if anyone’s still checking this site, here’s a teaser for you — a couple sketches for a work in progress. Click a thumbnail below for a poster-sized PDF. Feel free to use as you see fit.

Originally from Social Design Notes reBlogged on May 12, 2006, 6:31AM

Originally from Social Design Notes, on May 12, 2006 7:53 AM

A few details regarding Tim Bray’s criticism of iCal’s inability to recover data from a corrupt calendar file.

Originally from Daring Fireball by John Gruber reBlogged on May 12, 2006, 3:40AM

Originally posted by John Gruber from Daring Fireball, on May 12, 2006 7:53 AM

Ballmer and me (Matt) Today Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer invited me (Matt) for a twenty-minute drive in his car to the Microsoft campus in Mountain View. I decided I could hang with Steve (Eric was busy with Google's shareholders meeting). So I hopped into his Escalade, whipped out the ol' audio recorder, and asked him questions as someone else drove and he knocked back Planters peanuts (you will hear his loud crunching), sipped at a Starbucks' iced tea and played with its accompanying green straw. Here is the audio file. His comments on Google and Yahoo are revealing. The audio clip begins after we start talking about some Google products, and you will see that he rips into Google's Desktop, calling it a "random hodgepodge of a bunch of incompatible things....I think it's more embarrassing than anything else." Later in the clip, he talks about all the areas of current and possible deeper cooperation with Yahoo. He talks warmly of Terry and Jerry. Here are links to the Mercury News stories about Ballmer's visit: --Coverage of his comments at the Churchill Club/Commonwealth Club (including praise of Facebook) --An edited text transcript of the Q&A I had with Ballmer in the car. --Related Merc story about how Microsoft is trying to shake up the PC gaming market. It is by Dean Takahashi who knows his stuff. He's authored a book on gaming, released just this week, called Xbox 360 Uncloaked....

Originally from VentureBeat by Matt Marshall reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 11:13PM

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from VentureBeat, on May 12, 2006 7:53 AM

Jason linked to an NPR interview with David Remnick, the Editor-in-Chief of The New Yorker. It's notable because it's the first time I've ever heard or read anyone take Remnick to task for his pro-war stance in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Remnick hems and haws and says "No one got the story quite right." This is one of the most enraging cop-outs that I hear reported over and over as an excuse for the press' total lack of spine and vision last year. I wish Remnick would simply apologize, which is clearly the right thing to do. There's more shame in not owning up to your mistakes than in admitting them. It seems like a minor point, but I naively hold the magazine to a higher standard.

I know Art Spiegelman left The New Yorker largely because of this issue, and now I see he's doing covers for Harper's, which seems silly and derivative. All in all it's just a minor footnote to this whole sad episode.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 11:02PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 12, 2006 7:53 AM

From Sam's interview in URB: ...When I'd first met Ghostface nearly two months before at the Wu Tang reunion show, he'd seemed more upbeat and energetic, more optimistic not only about his own album but about the Wu's future and its past. "Yo, (being here with the Wu) is like fucking with your crimeys again," he'd exclaimed to me. "You...

Originally from hiphopmusic.com by jsmooth995 reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 4:16PM

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com, on May 11, 2006 10:45 PM

The Stev(ph)ens Dubner and Levitt report on some recent research suggesting that people who are good at things got good at them primarily through practice and not because of innate talent.

Their work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers -- whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming -- are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of cliches that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular cliches just happen to be true.

The talent myth described here seems to be distinct from that which Malcolm Gladwell talks about in relation to talented people and companies, but I'm sure parallels could be drawn. But back to the original article...I was particularly taken with the concept of "deliberate practice":

Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task -- playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

"Deliberate practice" reminds me of a video game a bunch of my friends are currently hooked on called Brain Age. Available for the handheld Nintendo DS, Brain Age is based on a Japanese brain training "game" developed by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. The game measures the "age" of your brain based on your performance of simple tasks like memorizing a list of words or addition of small numbers. As you practice (deliberately), you get faster and more skilled at solving these mini-games and your brain age approaches that of a smarty-pants, twitchy-fingered teenager.

Speaking of talented teenagers, this week's New Yorker contains an article (not online) on Ivan Lendl's golfing daughters. In it, Lendl agrees that talent is created, not born:

"Can you create athletes, or do they just happen?" [Lendl] asked me not long ago. "I think you can create them, and I think that Tiger Woods's father proved that. People will sometimes ask me, 'How much talent did you have in tennis?' I say, 'Well, how do you measure talent?' Yeah, sure, McEnroe had more feel for the ball. But I knew how to work, and I worked harder than he did. Is that a talent in itself? I think it is."

Translation: there's more than one way to be good at something. There's something very encouraging and American about it, this idea that through hard work, you can become proficient and talented at pretty much anything.

(with comments)

Originally from kottke.org reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 3:29PM

Originally from kottke.org, on May 11, 2006 10:45 PM

Vi(m) is a versatile editor with great power built into it. There are a whole lot of commands which one can use to accomplish complex tasks which are next to impossible in other text editors barring say an Emacs. A couple of months back, in an article on Vim editor, I had covered some of the most commonly used commands. But what I had covered was only a tiny spec of the number of commands

Originally from All about Linux by Ravi reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 2:25PM

Originally posted by Ravi from All about Linux, on May 11, 2006 10:45 PM

You know, once you realise (as I just did, in a comment on my last post) that this easytags idea is actually just about giving wordpress.com users the ability to edit themes without the ability to execute PHP directly — the proposed tags will only be used in the online editor, and are therefore pointless for anyone with FTP access — the knicker-twisting on wp-hackers gets exponentially more amusing.

None of the people involved in that discussion have even mentioned wordpress.com. I find that split interesting. It’s like every coder not on the Automattic payroll has forgotten it exists. This is probably because they can’t chuck any code in here so it is basically worthless to them.

Originally from wordpressâ„¢ wank by wank reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 1:54PM

Originally posted by wank from wordpressâ„¢ wank, on May 11, 2006 10:45 PM

Today's happy fun news comes from bruce_schneier, wired_27b_6, & so_very_doomed:

• Major Vulnerability Found in Diebold Election Machines: Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways. "This one is worse than any of the others I've seen. It's more fundamental." (See also Voting Machines versus Slot Machines.)

• NSA Creating Massive Phone-Call Database: The NSA is collecting a massive traffic-analysis database on Americans' phone calls. This looks like yet another piece of Echelon technology turned against Americans. "The agency's goal is 'to create a database of every call ever made' within the nation's borders." Note that this database does not just contain phone calls that either originate or terminate outside the U.S. This database is mostly domestic calls: calls we all make everyday. AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth are all providing this information to the NSA. Only Quest has refused.

• Fun With Surveilance: It's important to link this up to the broader chain. One thing the Bush administration says it can do with this meta-data is to start tapping your calls and listening in, without getting a warrant from anyone. Having listened in on your calls, the administration asserts that if it doesn't like what it hears, it has the authority to detain you indefinitely without trial or charges, torture you until you confess or implicate others, extradite you to a Third World country to be tortured, ship you to a secret prison facility in Eastern Europe, or all of the above. If, having kidnapped and tortured you, the administration determines you were innocent after all, you'll be dumped without papers somewhere in Albania left to fend for yourself.

• Domestic spying inquiry killed: The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance. "Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation."

• US energy research is declining: Given the decades-long warnings about a looming world energy crisis - punctuated by the recent spike in crude oil prices - you'd assume the U.S. has been ramping up its research and development spending on energy. Think again. Since 1980, energy research has fallen from 10 percent to 2 percent of total R&D spending. And while the Bush administration lists energy research as a "high priority national need" and points to its recent energy bill as evidence, the 2005 federal budget cuts another 11 percent from energy programs.

Originally from jwz by jwz@jwz.org reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 6:07PM

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on May 11, 2006 10:43 PM

The 3D buildings OGLE'd from Google Earth are not ready to be 3D printed off the bat. Each building is a composition of multiple vertical volumes that have walls and a ceiling but no floor. By computationally (i.e. hacked up OBJ-file-processing perl script!) copying all of the roof polygons to floor polygons, we got the job done:

Ground Zero (in Google Earth):

Columbus Circle (in Google Earth):

At 'sunset' (two prints not on same scale):

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 5:35PM

Originally from OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D blogs, on May 11, 2006 10:43 PM

Inspired by Neal Stephenson's fictional Snow Crash, Google is now integrating user created environments into Google Earth. CNN See also Google 3D Warehouse

Originally from Archinect.com Feed reBlogged

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, on May 11, 2006 10:43 PM

The censors are too strict to allow any posts lately...I'll get 4 paragraphs typed out and close the window, writer's block-like.  Rule #1:   Start each blog post with some reference to sluggish posting.
It can't go beyond today. 

I must thank all the fine engineers over at Schectermatic for allowing us to showcase the pressure profiling piston pump, the muscular manifestation of geekdom we demo'd down in Charlotte.  It hung next to that Synesso like industrial bling and we were happy to half-explain the theory behind the gadget all weekend.  Thanks Andy.

I enjoyed QT with the 8 people comprising the Gimme entourage.  We all enjoyed chatting with the trade folk.  There is so much to learn. 

Former Gimme baristas Chris and Gabe placed 9th and 10th respectively in the USBC.  I guess we'd better start training for next year.  It's a high-pressure performance situation.  Congratulations to everyone who had the gumption to participate.

We've made some substantial equipment upgrades in the past few weeks.  The Synesso went on the bar at State Street, but not before Tomas built and installed a modification kit for the paddle-group action.  He wanted the paddle intervals to be more pronounced.  His kit allows the Synesso owners to change the pressure that is required to move the paddle.  Now he's happy.

We also purchased the "Matt Riddle Pro Model" the VERY GB5-3EE that the reigning USBC champ used to win in the finals.  I thought to myself, "That's a machine with some clever provenance."  I figure if Matt wins in Berne, I should be able to sell it to Doug Zell for a 100% mark-up.  Anyway, we installed that machine down in the Brooklyn store and Team Gimme Metro was suddenly all smiles.

For a change of pace I sample roasted 7 different Brazils yesterday.  We cupped them through the espresso machine this morning and found a few that were interesting.  Happy to avoid desk work, I found myself in the roaster again this afternoon roasting 3 juicy Kenyans.  Needless to say, this job keeps giving and giving.

We're still in the home-stretch for the twice mentioned roaster expansion.  We're expecting to close on our new light industrial facility sometime by the middle of June.  With some deep cleaning and probably 55 gallons of paint, the space will blossom as our new headquarters. Tomas is certainly ready to move out of his 150 square feet, and slip into something a bit more comfortable.

Originally from gimme! coffee by Kevin Cuddeback reBlogged

Originally posted by Kevin Cuddeback from gimme! coffee, on May 11, 2006 10:41 PM

The Apple fan community (mob?) is whipped into a tizzy over this bootleg "G6" being sold with a pirated version of OS X for Intel. I don't get the animosity. This thing looks pretty cool to me. This is probably exactly what a low-end Mac would look like if Steve Jobs hadn't put the kibosh (kibbosh?) on clones when he came back to Apple.

I'm still waiting for the "Google OS" to to emerge in a similar manner, which could simply be a nice Ubuntu box with the Google bookmarks and APIs baked into Gnome.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 12:18PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 11, 2006 2:49 PM

No, really, Wordpress Wank is a Wordpress tough love fan blog. Today he insults Six Apart's Style Contest and Wordpress.com's lack of search for security updates. But then Arvind (one-third of the team behind the Style Contest) and Matt (who puts the MATT in autoMATTic, the company behind Wordpress) show up to talk shop. Good times.

Our Wankette also takes some time to compare and contrast Wordpress and Movable Type's template methods:

The $ is moderately scary, but we need it because it distinguishes the tag from the surrounding HTML. The MT is only there because Blogger did it first, that could be scrapped if designing from scratch. The CamelCase sucks, but at least there’s no unnecessary underscores. The MT user has to get used to the $, and that really won’t take long. The Wordpress user has a whole bunch of unrelated characters to come to terms with. Every time you want to code a theme you need to cut and paste massive chunks of code because if you try typing out that shit stuff is going to go missing and break. There is basic stuff, like blog descriptions, which don’t even have tags of their own but live in parameters; what’s up with that? Why can’t I just bang in <? blogdescription ?> and be done?

It's still mind boggling to me that wordpress folk tolerate needing to know PHP to create templates. It would be analogous to typepad or Movable Type requiring knowledge of HTML::Template or Template::Toolkit.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 10:32AM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 11, 2006 2:49 PM

Talking Heads perform Psycho Killer on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1978. Worth watching for David Byrnes's clothes alone.

Posted to music

Originally from Stunned reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 7:48AM

Originally from Stunned, on May 11, 2006 2:07 PM

Caveat lector: This is a rant, and it contains no facts.

Seemingly forever, there have been persistent and vague rumors that Apple is going to build some sort of handheld device — based on the Palm operating system, based on the iPod, based on the Newton, based on smoke and mirrors, whatever — and I’m sick of them not being true. There’s even recent evidence that certain Apple patents strongly suggest a forthcoming announcement of some sort. The time for a truly user-friendly portable device is now and that device should be, at least in part, a mobile phone… mostly because all of the mobile phones now in the market are just terrible.

I have a Treo 650 that’s bulky and over-featured, but the only reason I hang onto it is that it’s truly the best of the worst. It has a reasonably good user interface for call management and text messaging, but the only crucial thing it does really right is integrate my contacts on the phone with my contacts from Apple’s Address Book, via iSync. For me, that’s the whole ball of wax.

Not on Speaking Terms

But since reinstalling Mac OS X 10.4 after a hard drive failure earlier in the year, I can no longer get the two devices to sync. Notwithstanding the fact that synching in general just stinks, I fault the Treo. PDAs are obscurely designed and uncooperative in all but the simplest use cases, and trying to get a Treo that had previously been synchronized with the exact same computer to sync again is too much to ask, apparently.

Every time I think about spending the time to resolve this, to get the Treo to somehow get back on speaking terms with my Mac, I groan and I procrastinate. This is a familiar feeling; in spite of the Palm’s much ballyhooed elegance, I’ve always had this experience, since owning my first Palm OS device in 1998. There’s a veneer of elegance to a Palm device, but it doesn’t take much digging to unearth the aging, uncooperative infrastructure beneath the superficial user interface.

The Moribund Mobile Phone Market

As I said, the sad thing is that all mobile phones stink, not just the ones sporting Palm OS user interfaces. Few enough of them work with iSync, and when I go down the list of such phones, none of them seem to promise a particularly pleasant user experience. Which is to say, none of them capture the right combination of hardware compactness and software elegance that, well, only Apple can produce.

It might have been reasonable and even canny for the company to eschew the PDA market while it slowly entered entropy, but the mobile phone market seems like an inevitability; it’s not just their existing customers who would rush to any cellular device that bears that trademark Apple ease of use, it would be legions of new customers, too, who are constantly looking for an improved mobile phone experience, and who regularly and enthusiastically chuck out their current handsets in favor of cool new ones. How can the company resist? I’m hoping they can’t.

Originally from Subtraction by Khoi Vinh reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 1:03AM

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on May 11, 2006 2:07 PM

david posted a photo:

I tried to speak.

Originally from david's Photos by david reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 11:13AM

Originally posted by david from david's Photos, on May 11, 2006 2:05 PM

No, not the usual dangers about liver, there's more to worry about now. According to this article, Is it OK ... to drink wine? in The Guardian:

The debate about the social and health impact of alcohol consumption, including wine, is well rehearsed elsewhere, but the production of wine also throws up a number of concerns, with the reality often far from the bucolic idyll of lore.

Many of the world's vineyards are now highly industrialised. Of most concern, perhaps, is the increasing reliance on pesticides. Several recent studies have discovered pesticide residues in wines, including some labelled as organic. This suggests that vines could be particularly vulnerable to contamination from airbound pollutants. One study of Bulgarian wine found that wine from a vineyard in a heavily polluted region contained more than double the legal limit of lead.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to discover that we've poisoned our food supply as we poisoned our planet, but still, it's a bummer. The article also raises the issue of the sustainability of shipping bottles of wine around the world. Some times the more I think about food production and sustainability, the more depressed I get.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 10:54AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 11, 2006 2:05 PM

So I meant to post last week to say that the paperback of Everything Bad is Good for You was released on May 2. It's a nice new edition -- I wrote a little afterword reflecting on the intensity of the book's reception, and it has an amazing four page spread of quotes from the reviews. It's funny with Everything Bad -- I assumed given the controversial thesis that it would attract more critical reviews than my other books. But in the end, I think it turns out to be the most positively reviewed of all four of them.

I'm doing a little publicity for the paperback, but nothing like last May/June, which was truly unlike anything I've ever experienced before. (For those of you who missed it, here's the May archive for this blog.) I've said this a number of times in public talks about the book but I'm not sure I've ever said it here: I wanted to start a conversation -- and perhaps even change people's minds a little -- about the state of pop culture with this book, and certainly the conversation part succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. (It's harder to judge the mind-changing bit.) But for all the book's emphasis on games and new media television, I needed to write an old-fashioned book to start that kind of debate. I needed 200 pages of sustained, linear argument for people to take it seriously, particularly given how preposterous the idea sounded to many people at first hearing.

So yes, books are not the dominant cultural form they were in the 19th-century, and yes, some of these new forms have amazing complexity to them that we'd do well to understand and appreciate. But books still matter in this culture, and if you're trying to change the way people think about a complicated issue, the advice is the same as it was two hundred years ago: write a book.

Originally from stevenberlinjohnson.com by stevenberlinjohnson reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 10:36AM

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on May 11, 2006 2:05 PM

Steven Johnson responds to (blasts? slams?) the endangered joy of serendipity piece I just linked to, arguing that the web is a much better serendipity engine than the library. (BTW, I think Steven is part machine himself...after posting that link, I took out the trash and ducked out to get something at the bodega around the corner and when I got back, there's a message from him in my inbox with a link to his rant. Jesus.)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 1:30PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 11, 2006 2:02 PM

nuts, they should've added the gloating dog  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 1:21PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on May 11, 2006 2:02 PM

Originally from Modern Art Notes reBlogged

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on May 11, 2006 10:22 AM

The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Arts are getting together to correct the alleged “dramatic decline in literary reading” with a program called The Big Read. I’m sure librarians won’t mind getting some grant money, but can we admit that the decline in literary reading isn’t the same as a decline in reading, or book buying, or library attendance?

bigread, imls, nea, reading

Originally from librarian.net by jessamyn reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 7:30PM

Originally posted by jessamyn from librarian.net, on May 11, 2006 10:21 AM

What do you think game designers can be thinking?

Let’s design our games assuming no women will play. Let’s market games by using booth babes at conventions or employing girl gamers as “totty with trigger” (you’d think it was a parody but it ain’t) and oh, we’ll run ads showing dead, naked women even when the games themselves have no naked women in them. A focus group? Oh great, but remember to ban women from the focus group, because they’re women and therefore not interesting. (Fortunately, several of the men in that particular focus group spoke on behalf of their girlfriends who are also gamers.) And how about the media? When Wired does a special issue on gaming, they leave out the women - oh, except for that risqué sex game with the dildos. We’ll include that. (I hadn’t realised Wired was a men’s magazine. It’s my favourite to buy on flights and so on - far more interesting than Cosmopolitan or something, and more, um, relaxing than the more intellectual alternatives.)

Let’s look at the facts. Apparently 24-35 year olds are the heaviest gamers. According to a recent survey, 65% of women in this age bracket play games. Only 35% of men in the age bracket do. The survey found that women play “slightly less” console games than men and that many more women play casual games, like flash games in web browsers, solitaire or online Scrabble. They didn’t think to ask the women why they liked casual games, but assume that it’s because they’re non-violent and non-cometitive (they can’t have played many games at games.com). Great. Let’s just assume gender stereotypes instead of asking.

Interestingly, Nick Yee’s statistics from MMOGs show the same trend: while boys are clearly dominant among teenaged players, women players outnumber men for players above 23 years of age:

[edit 22/5: see Torill’s comment below, this stat doesn’t quite prove that]

So let’s see: despite the game industry marketing games almost exclusively for young men, almost twice as many women as men play games in the biggest market segment, based on age. Many of these games are casual, but even for console games, only “slightly less” women than men play. More women than men over 23 play MMOGs.

And yet the game industry continues to market and design games almost exclusively to that slim market of teenaged horny boys.

And I continue to get stupid comments from male players in WoW - “wow, I didn’t think women played games!” (Doubly idiotic since they can only see my female character and not me.)

Tags: gender, games

Originally from jill/txt by Jill reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 3:33AM

Originally posted by Jill from jill/txt, on May 11, 2006 10:21 AM

A Swarm of Angels is a project to create a fan-funded sci-fi thriller with funders participating in every step of the movie making process. The project is unsing the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license.

Some interesting talent has already signed on with the project, including most recently The Kleptones as soundtrack producers.

You can be one of the first 1000 angels.

"A new way to create cult media."

"Active entertainment."

"Be part of a giant media experiment."

Via Boing Boing.

Originally from Creative Commons Blog by Mike Linksvayer reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 3:35PM

Originally posted by Mike Linksvayer from Creative Commons Blog, on May 11, 2006 10:21 AM

IT Vibe is reporting that the ICANN rejected the .xxx domain. Whie it may seem that this domain would be one of the few points that the adult entertainment industry and its opponents would agree upon, it's actually not the case.

According to the article, "Opponents of the plan felt it would endorse pornography, while porn industry opponents expressed concern over the level of state control."

Originally from Sex & Games by BrendaBrathwaite reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 9:23AM

Originally posted by BrendaBrathwaite from Sex & Games, on May 11, 2006 10:21 AM

According to M&C Tech, a ring tone offered for sale online that makes fun of illegal Hispanic immigrants has been pulled from the Cingular Wireless Web site.

"In the ring tone entitled La Migra, a siren is heard, followed by a male voice that says in a southern accent: \'Calmate, calmate, this is la migra. Por favor, put the oranges down and step away from the cell phone. I repeat-o, put the oranges down and step away from the telephone-o. I`m deporting you back home-o.\'."

Hours after Cingular received complaints of the "la Migra" ringtone, it was pulled from the company website , reports WROC TV News. "Eight people had purchased the ring tone since it was available in March".

"Cingular agreed the ring tone should have never been a part of its collection and called it "blatantly offensive." The tone was made by Barrio Mobile, a brand owned by a French media company. Cingular says the company will monitor its ring tones more closely in the future".

Related: - Response to "offensive" ringtone's removal mixed

Originally from ringtonia.com by emily reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 2:38AM

Originally posted by emily from ringtonia.com, on May 11, 2006 10:21 AM

I’ve been traveling a bit this week, which means I’ve also been accessing the net on untrusted networks. For general web surfing this doesn’t both me, but when it comes to editing my blogs or accessing any web service that doesn’t authenticate over SSL, I’d feel better if I knew my passwords weren’t floating past some coffee shop’s network admin in clear text. Fortunately, there’s an easy solution: SSH tunneling.

There’s plenty of information online that describes how SSH tunneling works and how to set it up, but not surprisingly, you have to do a bit of Googling to actually find concise, step-by-step instructions that actually work. So here we go: Erik’s Three-Step Plan for Looking Like You Know What You’re Doing SSH Tunneling. (For the record, I’m using a PowerBook running OS X, tunneling to a server running Ubuntu Linux.)

[STEP 1] On the remote server I’m running Privoxy (an HTTP proxy.) On a Debian/Ubuntu box, getting Prixovy running is as complicated as typing: sudo apt-get install privoxy

[STEP 2] Assuming you can SSH into your remote server (ie., no firewall blockage), launch Terminal.app and issue something like this: ssh -N -L 8118:127.0.0.1:8118 remoteuser@serveraddress (changing “remoteuser” and “serveraddress” appropriately.) Using the -N flag you’ll still need to authenticate with the server, but you won’t actually get a command prompt — the window will just look like nothing’s happening.

[STEP 3] Tell your browser to use a proxy for HTTP and HTTPS running at 127.0.0.1 on port 8118.

You’re done! You can now hit WhatIsMyIP to see it working.

Of course, just like other three-step programs, there’s a little fine print and few extra details that might help to know:

1. Privoxy is an HTTP proxy, which translated means that instead of your browser asking a server for a web page, you’ll be asking Privoxy and Prixovy will relay the request and pass the resulting content back your way. Using a proxy is handy when: (1) You want to tunnel your browsing activity, and/or (2) When you’d like to have the proxy do some content manipulation for you (which is what Privoxy was written to do.) This content manipulation can be anything you want, but most of the time it means stripping out advertisements and possibly cleaning up bad HTML before the browser sees it.
2. If you haven’t used Privoxy before, you might want to read the docs and poke around in the config files to tweak as needed.
3. By default Privoxy runs on port 8118, hence the 8118 mapping the ssh statement.
4. Save yourself some time by storing your proxy settings for future toggling. To cover most OS X apps you’ll be creating a new Network Location for this. Go to the Apple Menu / Location / Network Preferences to create a new location profile. Toggling can be done using the Location menu under the Apple menu. For Firefox (which ignores the system-wide proxy settings), you’ll need to enter the settings directly into the Firefox’s Preferences or install the SwitchProxy Firefox plugin to enable a pop-up menu for proxy switching from the Firefox status bar.

Happy Surfing!

Originally from [eriksmartt.com/blog] by erik reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 2:56PM

Originally posted by erik from [eriksmartt.com/blog], on May 11, 2006 8:57 AM

Tomorrow night Gus is giving a presentation on SQLite at the Seattle Xcoders meeting. I’ll be there. You too?

(Plus a bonus sneak peek at VoodooPad 3.0!)

Originally from inessential.com reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 6:28PM

Originally from inessential.com, on May 11, 2006 8:57 AM

In Ringtonia.com today:

-- Cingular pulls racist ring tone A ring tone that makes fun of illegal Hispanic immigrants has been pulled from the Cingular Wireless Web site.

-- Shia ringtone sparks scuffle in Iraqi parliament A fight broke out in parliament after a mobile phone ringtone played a Shia Muslim chant.

Originally from textually.org by emily reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 4:24AM

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on May 11, 2006 8:52 AM

"I said if you ain't up on thaaangs / tuberaider's the name youtube's the game..." If y'all were staying up on tuberaider you would have been seen that Sly Stone clip. Here's some other stuff you've been missing: Lauryn Hill live in New Orleans last week Frank Zappa live with John Belushi on saxophone Meshell, Frank Zappa, and NWA on...

Originally from hiphopmusic.com by jsmooth995 reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 7:00PM

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com, on May 11, 2006 8:49 AM

Originally from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs by kumo reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 4:52AM

Originally posted by kumo from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on May 11, 2006 8:43 AM

The new title is Super Smash Bros. Brawl! The game was revealed by Nintendo to select press behind closed doors. Lots of new characters.

Originally from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs by kramkoob reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 4:43AM

Originally posted by kramkoob from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on May 11, 2006 8:43 AM

Originally from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs by turtlehat reBlogged on May 11, 2006, 1:10AM

Originally posted by turtlehat from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on May 11, 2006 8:43 AM

Here's the original 13-minute version of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket. (thx, janelle)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 11:31AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 10, 2006 12:53 PM

I know you've already heard about the red paperclip guy. He's all the way up to an afternoon with Alice Cooper. (thanks, kelly!)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 11:09AM

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on May 10, 2006 12:53 PM

click here and here
k

Originally from Happy Famous Artists by happy famous artists reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 10:34AM

Originally posted by happy famous artists from Happy Famous Artists , on May 10, 2006 12:53 PM

Video-sharing service YouTube rolls out mobile upload, which lets you post a video via email from your video cameraphone.

Similar to Flickr's upload by email, set up your YouTube upload by email profile and get a secret email address. Then, take a short video on your phone and send it via MMS to that email address. You can set the default privacy level and category in your profile; and create two separate profiles (and get two separate email addresses) for different types of movies (like for public cute cat videos and private cute baby videos). YouTube currently supports uploads from Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. I just gave it a try with my Cingular service and the video showed up immediately. Neat.

Mobile Video Uploads [YouTube via CNET]

 
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Originally from Lifehacker reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 10:30AM

Originally from Lifehacker, on May 10, 2006 12:53 PM

Originally from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs by mariohs reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 8:46AM

Originally posted by mariohs from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on May 10, 2006 12:53 PM

Originally from Modern Art Notes reBlogged

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on May 10, 2006 12:53 PM

Project Detail Systems is the first business we know of built around providing Basecamp add-ons via the Basecamp API. Their first product is BCTix.com, a support/issue tracking tool that integrates with Basecamp. It’s still early, but it’s worth checking out and following along if you need this functionality.

We’re excited to see what else people come up with using the API. Here’s someone playing with a mobile version of Basecamp using the API.

Originally from Signal vs. Noise reBlogged on May 10, 2006, 11:56AM

Originally from Signal vs. Noise, on May 10, 2006 12:49 PM

FYI, the 'Flickr' uploader is using the same protocol as Lifeblog. So, if you know how that is done, you can theoretically post to other Lifeblog compatible sites.

Originally from Lifeblog by charlie reBlogged

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on May 10, 2006 12:49 PM

an impressive collection of beautiful data visualizations that depict human feelings & moods harvested from a large number of weblogs. a system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" & "I am feeling", records the full sentence & identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.).
the different data visualizations consist of a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. the particles' properties (color, size, shape, opacity) indicate the nature of the feeling inside, & any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. the particles move wildly around the screen until asked to self-organize along any number of axes, expressing various human emotions.
see also moodgrapher & moodstats & moodnews.
[wefeelfine.org]

Originally from information aesthetics by infosthetics reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 10:04PM

Originally posted by infosthetics from information aesthetics, on May 10, 2006 8:41 AM

Tricia posted a fantastic meditation on Google's new name in China: Gu-Ge, which literally means "Harvest Song."

Jin talks about how Google probably interprets 谷歌 as a romantic name that highlights the "fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way." But Jin says it just as equally conjures up images of "slow and remote agricultural scenes."

I don't have much to add. If you know Adriana, you can ask her how this ties into her translation studies sometime. Otherwise, just hope she posts about it.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 7:05PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on May 10, 2006 8:41 AM

Google has walked away from acquiring Santa Clara company, Olive Software. We wrote earlier that Google was negotiating to buy Olive for $70-80M, to gain access to Olive's technology that helps transfer off-line content into a form where Google can search it (Olive converts PDF documents, microfilm and any other files to XML). Turns out, Google has passed. Though the story is a bit strange, based on the accounts of two independent sources:...

Originally from VentureBeat by Matt Marshall reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:56PM

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from VentureBeat, on May 9, 2006 7:11 PM

Every divorcee's nightmare will come true for Lance Armstrong on Tuesday as his ex-wife Kristin visits the Oprah Winfrey Show and dishes with Oprah about their marriage and “why it ended” (check local listings).

Update: Here's the former Mrs. Armstrong in Glamour's Sex & Love column. Hat tip to my wife (I swear!).

Meanwhile, Armstrong has not settled into a quiet retirement, sitting lazily around the ol' fishing hole. The 7-time Tour winner, whose philanthropic battle with cancer is featured in a cover story in this week's Sports Illustrated (cover), is in Belgium taking in a couple of stages of the Giro this week, then will participate in Livestrong Day May 17. On May 28, he'll strap into a special Corvette Z06 pace car as he paces the Indianapolis 500.

Originally from Tour de France 2006 by Frank Steele reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:18PM

Originally posted by Frank Steele from Tour de France 2006, on May 9, 2006 7:11 PM

So Apple laptops have this great power-saving feature that will automatically dim the user's display after N minutes, and then return to full strength on any kind of keyboard or mouse activity.  Can someone please explain why my Thinkpad doesn't do the same thing?

Originally from this is sippey.typepad.com by Michael Sippey reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 9:07PM

Originally posted by Michael Sippey from this is sippey.typepad.com, on May 9, 2006 7:11 PM

About Google Importer
When you begin a Spotlight search, Google Importer will instantly grab the top results from Google and show them right next to the files from your computer.

With one click, the result will open in your default browser. You can even choose to only search a particular website.

This product is not in any way affiliated, supported, or endorsed by Google Inc.

Originally from Mac OS X Downloads - Spotlight Plugins reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 4:00AM

Originally from Mac OS X Downloads - Spotlight Plugins, on May 9, 2006 7:11 PM

She did it and no one deserves it more! Régine won a Webby Award for we-make-money-not-art.com in the Blog - Personal/Cultural category, over boingboing, Rocketboom, TreeHugger and Cute Overload.

The Webby Awards full list is posted her.

What Wired wrote: "With a record 65 award categories, this year's Webby honorees ranged from well-known sites like the Washington Post, a popular vote winner for best newspaper site, to more obscure newcomers, like Remember Segretation, named best home page.

Winners will accept their honors on June 12 at the 10th annual Webby Awards ceremony in New York City, hosted by fake news comedian Rob Corddry of The Daily Show with John Stewart. The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 535-member judging organization of experts in online media and related fields."

Originally from textually.org by emily reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 1:47PM

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on May 9, 2006 7:09 PM

The two things we respect most in an entrepreneur are experience and passion. In entrepreneurship, as in life, they do not always go together. So we are thrilled to be working with Peter Semmelhack, the founder of Bug Labs, our latest investment. Peter is undeniably experienced. This will be his third start-up. He is also undeniably passionate. For the past year and a half, he has committed every moment he could spare from his family and his day job, and more money than he should have, to the development of a product and service that he believes the world needs.

Here is Peter's description of his new company.

Bug Labs is developing BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services + hardware platform. Designed for the general audience, not just the technically inclined, Bug seeks to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the Internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media.

Over the last few months, Peter has challenged some of our basic assumptions about the relationship between web services and devices. You can see some of that reassesment in Fred's February post - Web Serivces and Devices.

We agree with Peter that the relationship between web services and devices will become more intimate and more seamless. We share his enthusiasm for this vision and are confident in his ability to make it real.

Originally from Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing by brad reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 1:24PM

Originally posted by brad from Union Square Ventures: A New York Venture Capital Fund Focused on Early Stage & Startup Investing, on May 9, 2006 7:09 PM

"One of Google's great strengths has been its lack of a past. In creating its Web OS, it's had a clean slate. It hasn't had to make compromises with other business units or with existing products. It's constructed its Web OS's cluster architecture out of cheap commodity components and a custom-built version of Linux. It's hard to picture Microsoft giving its engineers a similarly clean slate as they develop a competing cluster architecture."

Originally from tecznotes links by Michal Migurski reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 12:50PM

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on May 9, 2006 7:09 PM

my current host and the old host for Upcoming, now one happy family [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 2:26AM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on May 9, 2006 7:09 PM

Just to follow up on my wildly popular report from day one of Creative Good᾿s Good Experience Live (Gel) Conference, here are some notes on day two: this was the heart of the whole thing, a tightly orchestrated, ten hour marathon of speakers, hosted by the generally impressive Mark Hurst. Each person spoke for twenty minutes a piece, and Hurst was gracious and firm in keeping them on schedule — it seemed unnecessary at first, given how expensive the tickets were; I felt that if anyone had something to say that it should be said regardless of the clock. But I had to admit, the time constraints kept things lively and entertaining. What also helped was the diversity of the talks; Hurst did a knockout job of bringing together folks from unexpected walks of life, many of them truly inspirational, and most all of them thoroughly entertaining.

Here are some very quick notes on the slate of speakers from that day.

Click through for the whole post - well worth reading!

Originally from Subtraction by Khoi Vinh reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 11:54PM

Originally posted by Khoi Vinh from Subtraction, on May 9, 2006 7:09 PM

I've played around with AdWords before, just to learn about how it works so I could write about it with some first hand knowledge. But I was never a "real" AdWords advertiser - I didn't have anything to sell. Sure, my publisher (and Amazon) have purchased the "John Battelle" keyword, which is great, but I had nothing to do with that.

That all changed today, when I created an account with Google and started a campaign, for real, promoting Federated Media's new ad platform. Now, sure, it may be odd to use one ad platform to promote another, but I believe that AdWords and FM are complementary, and further, well, I'm a big believer in intent driving content, as anyone who's read this site or my book knows. Plus, the more I know about Google, the smarter I might be as we take FM into the future.

The lessons so far are really, really interesting. I'll be sharing them as I go along, but a few to start:

- The AdWords experience so far is really slick. I know many of you who have used AdWords for a long time may have serious beefs, but for me, I was really blown away at how good the initial setup and UI experience is.

- I had a question and got an answer via a real person using IM within five minutes. That is really impressive, in particular given the griping I uncovered a year ago when my reporting consistently turned up how difficult Google was to contact.

- I thought perhaps of using IM again to ask this question, but instead, I'm wagering you all might know. My campaign has been running now for about 8 hours, and I'm starting to see clicks coming in. What strikes me as amazing is the number of impressions on "Google Content" sites (ie, AdSense) versus Google Search. It's not even an order of magnitude larger, it's several orders larger. When you think about it, this is not surprising (the market knows that search is riper pickings than content, after all.) But, Google breaks out reporting for search clicks (ie, for a particular search keyword, here are the number of clicks), but not for Google Content clicks. At least, that's how it seems to work. I wonder why? Anyone know?

- So far, I've been experimenting with about 30 keyphrases, and the most interesting stuff is to see how often that phrase is actually typed into Google. From what I can tell, I have not burned through my daily limit, so I'm getting a pretty accurate reflection of how often those terms are requested each day. Even if I'm only seeing a portion of the actual number of searches, it appears I'm getting an apples to apples comparison of which of my search terms get the most impressions, which is interesting learning.

- Lastly, I've read Google's AdWords TOS, and from what I can tell, I'm not in violation of them by posting this. If I am, I'm hoping some kind reader from Google or one of Google's partners will let me know how, and why.

I'm really looking forward to discovering more, and quite impressed - one day in - with the power of the service. It makes me wonder if the analysts covering GOOG from Wall Street are actually Google customers. Here I was, yapping about the company, but not actually interacting with this side of their equation. Fascinating.

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 11:40PM

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on May 9, 2006 7:09 PM

I and many other Chinese Google users have been calling Google "Gou-Gou" which literally means Doggy (狗狗). However after reading Jin's post at Intercultural Learning that analyzes the semantic implications of Google's Chinese name, I think I may have to stop using that moniker. Google announced on April 12 that their exact Chinese name is "Gu-Ge" (谷歌), which literally and officially means “harvest song." The new name has left many Chinese webbots mystified because Gu-Ge has no direct lexical meaning to internet searching. Jin talks about how Googleterpreters probably construe Gu-Ge 谷歌 as a romantic name that highlights the "fruitful and productive search experience, in a poetic Chinese way." Well I think even that's quite a semantic stretch. For Jin, he says Gu-Ge just as equally conjures up images of "slow and remote agricultural scenes." For me, visions of many happy women in uniforms singing about collective farming productivity comes to my mind.
"Names are not mere codes in Chinese. Each character of Chinese language has its own meaning but when two characters come together to make a phrase, it very often becomes more meaningful. Two character phrases are most common and easy to remember. Translating names into Chinese can be tricky, particularly so with alphabetic languages. In most cases, translation of a name is in fact a conversion of the sound. So as Google did this time. But since all Chinese characters have its meanings, the selection of the characters can be very crucial. The story about the Coca-Cola's translation would tell a bit about the tricks:

The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole"; or "female horse stuffed with wax"; depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, ko-kou-ko-le, which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth"; (from Funny Translation Errors)
Google will also be known as Gu-Ge in China. No matter what people would say about the new name itself, Google seemed to have made the right move in terms of pursuing its long term goals in China. With its new Chinese name, Google wants to be a "culturally-friendly" as its major local competitors like Baidu, whose name was in fact also taken out of an ancient poem. And with this new name, Google manifested its strong hope for further development in the local market by the local ways. At least Google demonstrated its "intercultural" efforts, despite all other controversies. Its new Chinese name would certainly help it to take more roots among millions of the internet users and in the general public where not all are willing to learn English, and some perhaps even dislike it for reasons that it has "corrupted" the Chinese language. There are people who are still taking a closed view and simply feel uncomfortable with anything that is foreign.
Google might have learnt from the strategies of McDonald and KFC that localization of these two companies have both emphasised the importance of the cultrual impact to the extent that you can even buy noodles and Sichuan flavoured food at their local stores. It is perhaps right to say that in terms of marketing what matters is if it would eventually help to sell." Read More

<!-- technorati tags start -->

Technorati Tags: business, china, chinese, culture, google, gu ge, harvest song, intercultural, interpretation, jin xiao jun, marketing, media, names, 狗狗, semantic, translation, 谷歌

<!-- technorati tags end -->

Originally from YouMeiTI 有媒体 reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 4:59PM

Originally from YouMeiTI 有媒体, on May 9, 2006 7:03 PM

---

TV sketch artist, documenting the atrocities...

Originally from Tom Moody by tom moody reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 6:29AM

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on May 9, 2006 7:03 PM

Originally from lifeblog by Jesus Park reBlogged

Originally posted by Jesus Park from lifeblog, on May 9, 2006 7:03 PM

A friend recently asked me to beta test his new product. I’d heard about its development over the past few months so I was curious.

When it was finally time to sign up for the beta I dove right in. Well, I wanted to dive right in but the signup process was 5 steps of heavy forms with all sorts of questions that just didn’t seem relevant at the time. I’m sure they were relevant to the engineers who built the product, but they weren’t relevant to me. Why did they need to know which school I went to? Why did they need to know my gender?

That signup process solidified my long held belief: don’t ask for it if you really don’t need it. And I mean if you really don’t need it. There’s a world of difference between “nice to know now” and “need to know now.”

We’re staying true to this as we build Sunrise. Sunrise is about people. People have all sorts of data associated with them: phone numbers, email addresses, companies, job titles, addresses, etc. You know — everything a vCard can have. Lots of fields and lots of data. But how much of it do we really need to know up front? Just their name. And that’s all we’re asking for.

If a field is optional consider leaving it off the page during the add process. Display it on edit, but hide it on add.

When you build an app that requires data entry, think hard about how much you really need now. If you don’t really need it now then don’t ask for it now. There’s always time to fill it in later.

Sunrise Sidenote: For those who are wondering when Sunrise will be released, we don’t know. We recently decided we didn’t like where it was going and we threw most of it out. We’ve started on what we think is a significantly simpler and better Sunrise. We’re making good progress. We went through a similar process when we designed Backpack — we tossed about 2/3rds of the app out and focused hard on simplification. It worked then and we believe it’s working great this time as well. We’ll provide more information when we’re ready to share it.

Originally from Signal vs. Noise reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 6:36PM

Originally from Signal vs. Noise, on May 9, 2006 7:00 PM

Tod did it again, and based on an idea I had while talking to Chris, he wrote a Roomba to MIDI application, which lets you play a Roomba like a musical instrument (check out the video). Chris is considering composing some music for it. Phil blogged it on MAKE. Congratulations Tod and thank you, Phil! Also, this weekend marked the 4th not-quite-annual Power Tool Drag Races. My contribution was a vehicle made of a roller skate, a Victrola motor, a piece of electrical tape and a pair of vice grips: It was an excellent, busy, chaotic, hilarious event. As always, not really a competition, but an extended improv absurdist theater performance that's more about drag (i.e. bringing out the hidden side of tools) than racing. Here's Liz explaining the roller skate (named "Scratch") to John Hell, one of the announcers: I knew Scratch didn't work well, so I dressed up as an early 20th-century "inventor," brought an actual gramophone with records, and hoped that being the only windup entry in the races would be good enough: (photo by Scott Beale) In the end, after 8 hours of waiting, the windup rollerskate went about 6 inches before getting stopped by a...

Originally from Orange Cone by mikek reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 5:34PM

Originally posted by mikek from Orange Cone, on May 9, 2006 7:00 PM

Lifehacker pal and all-around productive guy Ryan Carson has a great idea for being more productive and less stressed. Ditch your traditional five day work week in favor of four days.

But does it work?

Once we trained ourselves to stick to the four-day work week, the benefits were absolutely amazing. It was like someone had added another Saturday to our week! On Fridays, we sleep in, fire up the coffee around 9 or 10AM and then relax around the house or head into town to a coffee shop. It really is amazing.

For many Friday is a day spent daydreaming and generally not being productive anyway. If this is something you can do, give it a shot and let us know how it works.

The Four-Day Week Challenge [A List Apart]

 
Comment on this post
Related: Solving problems with your subconscious
Related: Advice for staying calm
Related: Ask Lifehacker Readers: Live a long life by being honest

Originally from Lifehacker reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 5:00PM

Originally from Lifehacker, on May 9, 2006 7:00 PM

Here are some highlights from "Let's Have a Three-Way" Huffington's ASME talk.  - I like, employ the people who get the Internet regardless of whether or not they roll in at noon. I would add it would be great if they could tele-commute once in a while. I also like find out who on your staff blogs and get them involved

How deep is the online ad well? Article looking at size of online ad market.

Dolphins recognize each other by name. In other news from nature my sister's bees are acting up. Apparently they are too crowded after a long winter and unless she puts on a new super they might swarm. She is also back to posting about them though I'm confused by her last post. She refers to them as the girls but I thought other than the queen they were all boys.

Google map hack that shows what the NYC area will look like if the sea level rises. At 3 meters Red Hook begins to look like its 1800's  island self. (via Curbed via Kottke) As a side note, this would make the potential Gowanus Expressway tunnel obsolete shortly after it's completion. (via hello.typepad)

Originally from DefinitiveInk by joshua mack for definitiveink reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 10:53AM

Originally posted by joshua mack for definitiveink from DefinitiveInk, on May 9, 2006 7:00 PM

Harassing someone by text messaging has become such an invasion of oneÂ’s private space that Oklahoma legislators passed a bill last March making harassment by text messaging a criminal act, reports gmtoday via Poynter Online.

The House Bill 1804, by Lance Cargill (R-Harrah), makes it illegal to use any electronic or telecommunication device to terrorize or harass another individual.

"This bill expands current harassment laws to make clear that not only are harassing telephone calls illegal, but so are harassing e-mails, faxes and text messaging," Cargill said. "This legislation was requested by an Oklahoma County assistant district attorney, who was concerned about victimsÂ’ rights."

Originally from textually.org by emily reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 3:23AM

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on May 9, 2006 12:29 PM

social collaborations as play

The Benetton Interactive Department Research Centre, FABRICA, recently developed Benettonplay, an online game site exploring play as a form of expression and communication. "We believe that putting people into new kinds of creative and playful relationships with each other is itself an important statement."

Play is now a central part of our cultural life. Interactive gaming has grown into an enormous global media industry. Playing together on computer or console is one of the key ways we know ourselves and each other. We believe that play is too important to be left to shoot 'em ups and driving sims. We believe that the meaning of a game is not what it says directly, but in how it helps players find new ways to be together and to speak to each other.

Originally from networked_performance by michelle reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 3:20AM

Originally posted by michelle from networked_performance, on May 9, 2006 12:29 PM

Bamboo Technologies of Maui has launched the first International Design Competition for Structural Bamboo Buildings. Some of the winning entries will be chosen for manufacture by the world's premier builder of international building code approved bamboo homes. The competition is open to architects, builders, designers and students anywhere. Registration deadline December 31, 2006. Bamboo Competition

Originally from Archinect.com Feed reBlogged

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, on May 9, 2006 12:29 PM

Fun video of FedEx planes getting into the Memphis airport around a thunderstorm. They look like ants trying to avoid a puddle of water. (via rw)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 1:13PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 9, 2006 12:28 PM

Wondering what all those crazy greens are at the farmer's market, or in your fancy "mixed greens" at the restaurant? Epicurious to the rescue with an illustrated guide to salad greens.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 1:05PM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 9, 2006 12:28 PM

Cloud Cult has been Pitchforked, Clap Your Hands Say Yeahed by Gothamist, and is already the last next big thing, but that's not going to stop me from recommending them to you. Here's their latest album (which was instantly good and still so after a week), befriend them on MySpace, or download a few free mp3s. Minnesota represent!

Originally from kottke.org reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 10:34AM

Originally from kottke.org, on May 9, 2006 12:28 PM

I'd love to know.

Are Aerons really the only answer?

Help.

My back hurts.

Originally from Andrea Harner by Andrea reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 10:00AM

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on May 9, 2006 12:28 PM

John Battelle sets up Google Adwords. He finds it a snap and learns a lot, and he wonders how many of the analysts covering GOOG have experienced this side of the company experience. I imagine most journalists are also in the dark. That's one whole part of the blogging experience that we're not getting on this site. The ads get sold, they pop up, they (presumably) make money for the company. We learn nothing about it. We also learn nothing about design and get very little information on analytics.

In a lot of ways, we're experiencing only one side of blogging. I tried for a weekend to remedy this last year when I set up another blog. I posted on it, and then I thought, "Why not put this on Blogspotting?" End of experiment.

Originally from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting by stephen_baker reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 8:37AM

Originally posted by stephen_baker from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on May 9, 2006 12:28 PM

story links: time 100 most influential people red carpet gala, jimmy wales, craig newmark, steven colbert, martha stewart, will smith, arianna huffington, al franken, kiki smith, jennifer lopez, sean diddy combs

Originally from Rocketboom by Rocketboom reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 8:17AM

Originally posted by Rocketboom from Rocketboom, on May 9, 2006 12:28 PM

Riding a wave of publicity from his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, might Al Gore run for President in 2008? (My answer: unlikely.)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 12:04PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 9, 2006 12:21 PM

I love this time-lapse video of FedEx planes arriving at Memphis during thunderstorms -- particularly when the storms finally center themselves squarely over the airport, and all the planes suddenly scatter. Reminds me of some ant foraging animations I've seen. It also looks frighteningly disorganized, like all the planes are individually coming up with a flight path on their own, though I'm sure that's not the case.

Originally from stevenberlinjohnson.com by stevenberlinjohnson reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 11:04AM

Originally posted by stevenberlinjohnson from stevenberlinjohnson.com, on May 9, 2006 12:21 PM

Quirky Manhattan eatery Shopsin's not moving to Brooklyn as previously reported.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 10:49AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 9, 2006 12:21 PM

While looking at some data, I noticed that pictures on flickr are some of the most saved pages on del.icio.us. A quick flurry of instant messages later, and now we automatically show a thumbnail of the saved photo. To commemorate the occasion, I have expanded our Blogging Policy to allow photos of small dogs in our "cat pictures" category.

Originally from del.icio.us by joshua reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 3:06PM

Originally posted by joshua from del.icio.us, on May 9, 2006 12:21 PM

I romped in the grass and after we got home Phoggie rolled me over and combed my fur. She found a teek. I know it was a teek because Phoggie kept going, "Teek! Teek!" It was just crawling around on my leg so Phoggie nabbed it with a tissue and drowned it in mouthwash. I thought Phoggie looked very green.

Originally from Blue's Sunny Life by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 3:21PM

Originally posted by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) from Blue's Sunny Life, on May 9, 2006 12:21 PM

I like big dogs and I cannot lie You other doggies can't deny That when a dog walks by with a super furry waist And a round rump in your face You get... umm... strung

Originally from Blue's Sunny Life by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) reBlogged on May 3, 2006, 1:47PM

Originally posted by find_me@dogster.com (Blue) from Blue's Sunny Life, on May 9, 2006 12:21 PM

Originally from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs by registerx reBlogged on May 9, 2006, 2:31AM

Originally posted by registerx from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on May 9, 2006 12:12 PM

the controller is aware of position, velocity, and tilt [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 1:47PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on May 8, 2006 2:07 PM

From the latest Wax Poetics, typed up by Kate404 on OKP: When did you first learn of artists sampling your work? Well, it's hard to remember. The earliest stuff (that I knew of) was Blackstreet, and then my wife started making me aware. People would request stuff. If it wasn't too foul-mouthed, then I would usually okay it. A range...

Originally from hiphopmusic.com by jsmooth995 reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 1:44PM

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com, on May 8, 2006 2:07 PM

It's official: General Mike Hayden has been nominated to head the CIA. Republican lawmakers are already spooked by the choice -- and not just because of his domestic wiretap project, or his shaky grip on the 4th amendment says. But one military intelligence specialist tells Defense Tech that he likes Mike:

If we leave aside the obvious political arguments over the NSA program which are sure to come up at any confirmation hearings, Hayden is a great pick. One of the big talking points on both sides of the aisle is how CIA needs to be fixed... Hayden did the same thing at NSA, dragging it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He overcame a lot of bureaucratic inertia to accomplish that. I would say he is the best candidate to do just the same at CIA. Additionally, being a in the military might afford him a little extra protection from some of the political sniping that comes with a regular political appointee. Time will tell, but if we are serious as a nation about our security and having competent intelligence services to help provide that security, I don't think we could fins anyone better for this job at this time. If certain Senators want to play politics and kill this nomination (if it comes) to make some partisan points, what we will inevitably end up with running the CIA is a milquetoast, non-threatening figurehead who is acceptable to everyone, and such a person will have no leverage to produce any reforms in the Agency. That result would be the intelligence equivalent of FEMA/Michael Brown. That should be unacceptable to us all.

I'll be curious to hear what guys like Bobby Ray Inman, Patrick Keefe, and James Risen say tonight during their New York Public Library talk. If there are any truly juicy tidbits, I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, check it constantly with Laura Rozen and TPM Muckraker, who are all over the CIA transition story.

UPDATE 12:14 PM: I've been away for a few days (more on that in a bit), so I didn't get a chance to comment on the downright hilarious spin whizzing around Porter Goss' departure from the CIA. I didn't work in Washington all that long. But I was there long enough to know that top-level guys like him do not get fired suddenly over long-standing turf battles or routine staff shake-ups. Frankly, the poker-and-hooker theory makes a whole lot more sense.

Originally from Defense Tech reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 12:34PM

Originally from Defense Tech, on May 8, 2006 2:07 PM

Agent Bork: Chief! Ya know that guy whose camper they were whackin' off in?
Agent Fleming: Bork, you're a federal agent! You represent the United States Government! Never end a sentence with a preposition.
Agent Bork: Oh, uh... Ya know that guy in whose camper they... I... I mean, that guy off in whose camper they were whacking?

... Serena, remember when we saw this film?

I've just heard Blair saying the word 'absurd' without pronouncing it abzurd. He once said 'palpably absurd' like it was palpbly abzurd and that was the icing on the cake for me. That, and his Opus Dei pals.

Radia's website has been redesigned so one can now read it without getting a migraine. This may be old hat: US military plans to provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum in a state of emergency. Features a pic of Rummy doing his Tommy Cooper impersonation.

When I ask students what literature is, and we discuss defamiliarisation and the foregrounding of language and suchlike, we read some anonymous Rumsfeld. Followed by a brilliant review of the 1926 Budapest phone book by another joker, with the title removed.

Originally from the lady upgrade project by mr tibbles reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 12:30PM

Originally posted by mr tibbles from the lady upgrade project, on May 8, 2006 2:07 PM

In the now-historic trademark battle between Apple Corps and Apple Computer, the computer company was found not liable for violating its trademark license agreement. Distressingly, the grounds on which Apple Computer won were stupider than anything I could have come up with. The London High Court ruled that iTunes was not a seller of music, but rather a data transmission service. Is grooved vinyl or magnetic tape any less a data transmission device than an mp3? Doesn't that make Sam Goody a data transmission service? Look for a different opinion from Apple about whether they sell music when arguing that...

Originally from Stay Free! Daily by Charles Star reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:14AM

Originally posted by Charles Star from Stay Free! Daily, on May 8, 2006 2:07 PM

now, kiss and make up  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 12:14PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on May 8, 2006 12:21 PM

The Faces of Organic: Swanton, Farmer is a first in his field. Grows organic berries and offers great benefits and pay to his employees. [via del.icio.us/sautewednesday]

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 11:49AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 8, 2006 12:21 PM

There's a great article in this week's New Yorker, Paradise Sold
What are you buying when you buy organic? by Steven Shapin. Long but worth it. [Thanks Jason]

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 11:36AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 8, 2006 12:21 PM

New York City's Department of Health claims that three years into the smoking ban in all workplaces, there is 99% compliance citywide. Sure, you probably know a couple of bars that wait until after the time of night when...

Originally from Amy's Robot by Amy reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 11:13AM

Originally posted by Amy from Amy's Robot, on May 8, 2006 12:21 PM

I've been babbling about ramps for several weeks now but here's an article with pictures and instructions for gathering your own in the woods, Ramps: Wild vegetables bring fresh flavor to spring dishes. Also includes a few recipes, though my new favorite is the one I've made several times in the past two weeks (and forced some friends to make too!)

Roasted ramps and baby potatoes

Two bunches of ramps
2 - 3 lbs of the smallest baby potatoes you can find (I used ones barely bigger than my thumbnail!)
sea salt
pepper
olive oil

1. Pre-heat oven to 375°. Clean potatoes and place in baking dish. Toss to coat in olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. When the oven is to temperature, place dish on rack in the middle of oven.

2. While potatoes are cooking, clean ramps by rinsing thoroughly in water and removing outer layer. Trim off ends and then cut ramps into 1" pieces, separating whites from green.

3. After ~fifteen minutes in oven, remove potatoes and toss with ramp whites (reserving greens) and replace in oven. (The idea is you want to roast the ramps with the potatoes but not the whole time because they'll burn up. I've found about half the time is good.)

4. After ~25 minutes, check potatoes. If the potatoes are almost done, stir in the greens and cook until greens are wilted and warmed (~ five minutes).

5. Remove and eat. Can be served as a side dish with a roast chicken or fish or just about anything.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:49AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 8, 2006 10:40 AM

The last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic -- and the last one to have any memories of the event -- has died at age 99.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:25AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 8, 2006 9:48 AM

Saturday was a sports viewing doubleheader in our household: the Kentucky Derby followed by a lackluster Lakers vs. Suns game 7. During the basketball game, the commentators referred to the speed of the Suns' Leandro Barbosa and that plus the similarity of his name to Derby winner Barbaro's led to a discussion about which of the two would win in a race the length of the basketball court. Three of us argued that the horse would win and one argued for the human winning.

So, how fast are horses and humans? In winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973, Secretariat averaged 37.5 miles/hr over a mile and a half. World record holder Asafa Powell averaged 22.9 miles/hr in the 100 meter dash. Jesse Owens raced horses over a 100 yard distance and beat them, but only because the horses reared at the sound of the starter's pistol, giving him a sizable head-start. In 2004, in an annual race held in Wales, a chap named Huw Lobb beat a field of horses and other humans over a distance of 22-miles.

But that doesn't do much in answering the question of which would win over the short distance of a basketball court (94 feet or 28.7 meters). I searched high and low online and found little about the acceleration of either horses or humans. No doubt horses are much faster than humans, but a man is probably quicker off the line. So I put the question to you in hopes that you can answer it:

In a 94-foot race between a human sprinter and a thoroughbred race horse, who would win? Assume a standing start for both, the horse races on dirt, the man runs on the court, and both horse and man are among the fastest at their respective distances.

Originally from kottke.org reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:11AM

Originally from kottke.org, on May 8, 2006 9:48 AM

The blog East Meets West wonders, Are chefs more likely to be libertarians? They present two reasons they think the answers might be yes. The first, because, "chefs...are basically in the hedonism business" and secondly, "[c]hefs and restaurateurs must deal with government regulations that are often ineffective and arbitrarily enforced."

I concede their points, but I wonder -- if we assume chefs are libertarians -- if their reasons are causes or effects of pre-existing libertarianism. I think people who are attracted to the culinary industry in the first place are a bit off. They already eschew a traditional work environment for one filled with long hours of intense labor that's sometimes violent, often times hectic, and during most months, hot as hell. Renegades are drawn to the kitchen (Bourdain talks about this in Kitchen Confidential, I believe) so for me it more likely follows that many chefs enter the kitchen as libertarians. All the government regulations probably just push them further over the edge than they already were.

Originally from megnut.com blog reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 10:00AM

Originally from megnut.com blog, on May 8, 2006 9:48 AM

This is the most wonderfully nerdy thing I've ever read about politics and blogging. "So in fact, Reynolds has managed to fit five units of wrongness into only four declarative statements! This is the hackular equivalent of crossing the Chandrasekhar Limit, at which point your blog cannot help but collapse in on itself." (via cyn-c)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 9:45AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 8, 2006 9:48 AM

Silicon Graphics, a maker of high-performance computers that has been on the skids for a while, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (subscription required). SGI builds desktop workstations and server systems that offered high-end graphics, but has failed to adapt. Stock trading at 32 cents....

Originally from VentureBeat by Matt Marshall reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 9:21AM

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from VentureBeat, on May 8, 2006 9:48 AM

Good talk

Originally from Lifeblog by charlie reBlogged

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on May 8, 2006 9:48 AM

It’s a remarkable experience. Instead of passively playing the games, with the new controller you physically perform them. You act them out. It’s almost like theater: the fourth wall between game and player dissolves. The sense of immersion–the illusion that you, personally, are projected into the game world–is powerful. And there’s an instant party atmosphere in the room. One advantage of the new controller is that it not only is fun, it looks fun. When you play with an old-style controller, you look like a loser, a blank-eyed joystick fondler. But when you’re jumping around and shaking your hulamaker, everybody’s having a good time.

The Wii Zone has the scoop on the new Wario Ware for Wii. Since Wario Ware Twisted was so much fun (as opposed to Wario Ware Touched), it makes perfect sense to make Wario Ware the pilot game for the Wii.

Originally from hello, nintendo by David Jacobs reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 11:06PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, nintendo, on May 8, 2006 8:11 AM

BrainEthics has just posted up a couple of news items of interest to those keeping track of developments in neuroaesthetics - the neuroscience of art and creativity.

The first is that video from the recent conference on Art and the New Biology of the Mind is now online. Speakers include David Freedberg, Eric R. Kandel, Antonio Damasio, Ray Dolan, Vittorio Gallese, Joseph LeDoux, Margaret Livingstone, V.S. Ramachandran and Semir Zeki.

The speakers variously discuss 'emotion and consciousness' and 'vision and aesthetics'.

Secondly, Martin Skov writes about the launch of the new Institute for the Study of the Brain and Creativity at the University of Southern California. It will be led by Professors Antonio and Hanna Damasio.

Link to video archive from Art and the New Biology of the Mind conference.
Link to info on Institute for the Study of the Brain and Creativity.
Link to Washington Post on neuroaesthetics.

Originally from Mind Hacks by vaughan reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 8:03AM

Originally posted by vaughan from Mind Hacks, on May 8, 2006 8:06 AM

Are any of you here right now, reading this blog? Because I find it difficult to believe that you actually exist. Hillary Clinton leads her Democratic rivals in the polls and in fundraising. Unfortunately, however, the New York senator is part of a failed Democratic Party establishment -- led by her husband -- that enabled the George W. Bush presidency...

Originally from hiphopmusic.com by jsmooth995 reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 7:57AM

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com, on May 8, 2006 8:06 AM

Jasjeet Sekhon runs some benchmarks of Linux, Mac OS X (Tiger) and Windows XP running statistical software on a 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro. There are also links to the AnandTech articles, No more mysteries: Apple's G5 versus x86,...

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 7:46AM

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on May 8, 2006 8:06 AM

Please welcome a very special guest to the Mr. Sun microphone -- Aquaman, who has something to say about the David Blaine affair:

Originally from Mr. Sun! by Mr. Sun reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 6:00AM

Originally posted by Mr. Sun from Mr. Sun!, on May 8, 2006 8:06 AM

"MySpace users are filling out marketing profiles that are mined by the company that are then presented as these people's personal webpages. MySpace knows that controlling content on these profiles is essential, which is why they will commonly censor anything they disagree with. Considering MySpace has a considerable amount of bloggers, this is a serious issue for free speech advocates."

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 3:24AM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on May 8, 2006 8:06 AM

Brian Fling has written some great guidelines on Pricing a Project that I think will be of value to consultants and others who serve nonprofit organizations. He takes a transparent approach that challenges me somewhat, but I think that's a very good thing.

Originally from Nonprofit Online News reBlogged

Originally from Nonprofit Online News, on May 8, 2006 8:06 AM

You can use iTunes and a little AppleScript to make custom ringtones for Mail.app. I could have it play When Doves Cry everytime I get email from Anil.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 3:13PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

NASA - Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn: "New views of the most distant touchdown ever made by a spacecraft are being released today by NASA, the European Space Agency and the University of Arizona. The movies show the dramatic descent of the Huygens probe to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan on Jan. 14, 2005."

• View from Huygens: a sped-up spacecraft-view of the descent.

• Descent with bells and whistles: this one is cool in a very screen-saverey way: I especially like how they created an IDM soundtrack with a beat every time an image slice came in, and a background based on signal strength.

Originally from jwz by jwz@jwz.org reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 2:28PM

Originally posted by jwz@jwz.org from jwz, on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

I'm not in love with the shoes from Adidas' Adicolor campaign, but all of the supporting materials and marketing promotions have been fabulous (especially the short films). Now, as you can see on the right, they're displaying some of their shoes in bodegas around New York City. In this case, a shoe from the white series is set in amongst feminine hygiene products. (CAPNDESIGN.COM)

Originally from Agenda Inc. Live Feed reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 2:25PM

Originally from Agenda Inc. Live Feed, on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

Red Sweater Blog: “Then I spotted a call to ‘CGPostError.’ Well, that’s interesting. A well-defined error reporting mechanism? The results of which the developer never sees?”

Originally from ranchero.com by Brent Simmons reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 1:55PM

Originally posted by Brent Simmons from ranchero.com, on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

Photograph by Bates Littlehales “Snow-capped companion of a city, Mount Hood—50 miles to the east-provides Portlanders with a cooling view on a clear day. Here a telephoto lens brings it closer. The dormant volcano, at 11,235 feet (3,424 meters) OregonÂ’s highest peek, signaled journeyÂ’s end for pioneers trekking west on the Oregon Trail.”—Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in "Oregon's Many Faces," January, 1969 National Geographic, Magazine

Originally from National Geographic Photo of the Day by Bates Littlehales

reBlogged by Matthew Haughey

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed by Bates Littlehales reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 1:31PM

Originally posted by Bates Littlehales from mathowie reBlog feed , on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

I mentioned before how much I liked the Google Calendar daily agenda by email feature. I take it back. Its completely worthless. Why? Because they send it to you whether or not you have any events happening that day. How many times do you have to get a daily emails with zero content before your brain stops seeing it? For me it took about 3 days, and then it faded into the noise of uncaught spam.

Originally from Laughing Meme reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 12:40PM

Originally from Laughing Meme, on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

An 80's hip-hop classic straight from Video Music Box, complete with Ralph Mcdaniels intro! From that brief period in hip-hop history when havoing a bodyguard was considered something to brag about. Ahh, innocence lost...

Originally from Tuberaider Video by Jay Smooth reBlogged

Originally posted by Jay Smooth from Tuberaider Video, on May 7, 2006 11:08 PM

Go to BLDGBLOG and read the impassioned, ingenious essay by Geoff Manaugh. We're not going to sum it up for you here, because, well, you just need to read it.

(Posted by Sarah Rich in QuickChanges at 03:06 PM)

Originally from WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future by Sarah Rich reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 7:06PM

Originally posted by Sarah Rich from WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future, on May 7, 2006 11:06 PM

Wallet Notesâ„¢ is a neat product that puts the power of sticky notes into your pocket, wallet or purse.

Wallet Notesâ„¢ keeps pen and paper always in your wallet! The size of a credit card, its slim cover contains a pad of 15 self-stick notes and a tiny pen with Flexigripâ„¢ "wings" for a stable grip. It fits easily in your wallet for instant access anywhere, and pop-up tabs on the top and sides make it easy to retrieve.

Wallet Notes [Magellan's via 43 Folders]

 
Comment on this post
Related: Downsize your wallet
Related: Grow a grass armchair
Related: Jimi Wallet

Originally from Lifehacker reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 5:30PM

Originally from Lifehacker, on May 7, 2006 11:06 PM

The C.I.A. covert officer whose name was publicly disclosed three years ago has agreed to sell her memoir for a little more than $2.5 million.

Originally from NYT > Home Page by MOTOKO RICH reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 12:00AM

Originally posted by MOTOKO RICH from NYT > Home Page, on May 7, 2006 11:06 PM

You have about six more centuries to hear developments in a composition by John Cage called "As Slow as Possible."

Originally from NYT > Arts by DANIEL J. WAKIN reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 12:00AM

Originally posted by DANIEL J. WAKIN from NYT > Arts, on May 7, 2006 11:06 PM

Busted! What is Jaime de la Vega, the deputy mayor in charge of transportation and mass transit policy, doing to help Los Angeles reduce greenhouse gases? Answer | Via

Originally from Archinect.com Feed reBlogged

Originally from Archinect.com Feed, on May 7, 2006 11:06 PM

Just part of a masterful rant about the state of architectural criticism from BLDGBLOG:

“The Archigram of today is not studying with Bernard Tschumi and openly imitating The Manhattan Transcripts. The Archigram of today works for Electronic Arts, has no idea who Walter Gropius is, and offers more insights about the future of urban design, space, and the built environment to more people, in more age groups, in more countries, than any practicing architectural critic will ever do, writing about Toyo Ito.
Videogames are the new architectural broadsides.”

Excellent.
—
* happens to be the title of a book about Archigram that I haven’t read yet…

Originally from Blackbeltjones/Work by Matt reBlogged on May 6, 2006, 7:25PM

Originally posted by Matt from Blackbeltjones/Work, on May 7, 2006 10:59 PM

$

250

Title: Red Gallery: Roq la Rue

A lot of Catalina Estrada's art is like being shot up with a syringe full of sugar. I mean that in a good way. A really really, very good way. Her less overjoyed sugary pieces are beautiful and brilliant as well, so make sure you check out the fine art section of her site.

Originally from we[heart]prints reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 10:51PM

Originally from we[heart]prints, on May 7, 2006 10:59 PM

My thinking about computers changed this week. I’ve been watching the general trends in Web traffic and data sizes and so on, and been kind of worried that the servers aren’t going to be up to the loads that we’ll be throwing at them. Well... now I’m not worried about that any more. But we have some serious software pain coming at us.

Originally from ongoing reBlogged on May 5, 2006, 10:27PM

Originally from ongoing, on May 7, 2006 10:59 PM

Google Earth Hacks - File Downloads - Current Events - Tour de France 2006

Over at Google Earth Hacks, “Lucifer” has an exact map of this year's prologue in Strasbourg, and a provisional map for Stage 1, and will be filling in more route details as they become available.

If you're planning on seeing the Tour firsthand, this will be an invaluable resource, since you can “prefly” the route to pick good locations.

Originally from Tour de France 2006 by Frank Steele reBlogged on May 6, 2006, 11:13PM

Originally posted by Frank Steele from Tour de France 2006, on May 7, 2006 10:54 PM

The first video and single from Nelly Furtado's upcoming album.. co-starring a freakishly muscular Timbaland, and Justin "I'm that punk who sold Janet out" Timberlake. Not bad, I guess.. I'm more of an Esthero man myself.

"The new Nelly Furtado single and video 'Promiscuous,' coming in advance of her new album 'Loose.'"

Nelly Furtado's third album, Loose, will be released on June 20, 2006. In the U.S. the Spanish dance track "No Hay Igual" was released as the album's first single on April 11, 2006, followed by "Promiscuous", featuring Timbaland, only two weeks later on April 25, 2006. In Europe, "Maneater" will be the first single off the album. The album, mostly produced by Timbaland and his production partner Danjahandz, will include songs such as "Maneater", as well as "All Good Things", a collaboration with Coldplay's Chris Martin.

Originally from Tuberaider Video by Jay Smooth reBlogged

Originally posted by Jay Smooth from Tuberaider Video, on May 7, 2006 10:54 PM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos by david reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 3:11PM

Originally posted by david from david's Photos, on May 7, 2006 10:48 PM

Sometime in the next few weeks, French billboards will be able to speak to your mobile phone - but only with your permission . The IHT reports.

"People with certain kinds of phones who download a special software program and say they want to participate will receive digital advertising - when the phone is near the billboards.

It is the latest twist in the budding niche of mobile marketing, wherein the cellphone becomes a conduit not just for communications but also for commerce.

... Advertisements most common on mobile phones now are self- promotional text messages sent by phone companies to subscribers. The difference with the new project is that consumers consent to receive alerts about digital advertising as they move through the city"

Related article from Netéconomie (in French)

Originally from textually.org by emily reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 11:51AM

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on May 7, 2006 10:48 PM

Here.

I think he's horrified because some cruel soul has put a pair of Y-Fronts on him.

Originally from the lady upgrade project by mr tibbles reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 10:31AM

Originally posted by mr tibbles from the lady upgrade project, on May 7, 2006 10:48 PM

Adam Joinson discusses the process of community building via technology in his book Understanding the Psychology of Internet Behaviour (p11, ISBN 0333984684), noting that there is nothing new under the sun:

The cost and lack of privacy tended to inhibit personal communication between members of the general public using the telegraph. However, for the telegraph operators the network provided an 'online community encompassing thousands of people, very few of whom met face-to-face' (Standage, 1999, p122-3). The sense of community among telegraph operators was heightended by their own norms and customs, vocabulary, the use of short (usually two or three letters) signatures or 'sigs' and the sense of ownership of a particular line. According to Standage, experienced operators could even recognise their on-line friends simply from their style of morse code.

pdf of Joinson's chapter on the history of tech-mediated communities.
Link to Adam Joinson's homepage.
Link to Tom Standage's homepage.

Originally from Mind Hacks by vaughan reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 8:12AM

Originally posted by vaughan from Mind Hacks, on May 7, 2006 10:48 PM

The prospect of Democrats capturing the House or Senate is a powerful tool to motivate the conservative base.

Originally from NYT > Home Page by JIM RUTENBERG reBlogged on May 8, 2006, 12:00AM

Originally posted by JIM RUTENBERG from NYT > Home Page, on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM

Originally from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs by alaskawii reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 8:40PM

Originally posted by alaskawii from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos by david reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 6:36PM

Originally posted by david from david's Photos, on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM

Matt Gemmel has a nice post on programmers being creative, or how most managers like to pretend that there is no creativity in programming. Ha!

(Actually, I've met programmers who think there is no creativity in programming... weird, huh?)

I saw what Matt describes all over the place when I was working at m1. It was so silly.

Obviously not all managers are like that. When I worked at Mizzou I had pretty much the freedom to do the graphics and layout and anything I wanted on the projects I worked on. I even got a wacom tablet (and I've been hooked ever since). The pay sucked, but as far as what I was doing and the teams I was on- that rocked. Management pretty much said "this is what we need" and we were free to use what technologies worked and got it done best, design the look and feel.. everything. It also helped that we were all very competent in our respective areas as well.

And we created apps that we were told were impossible to write. (Stupid consultants, what do they know?!).

Moral of the story? Let your programmers be free, they know what they are doing. And if they don't... well, fire them ;)

Originally from Gus's blog, adventures in Flying Meat. reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 3:16PM

Originally from Gus's blog, adventures in Flying Meat., on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM

Barry Bonds hit his 713th home run Sunday night, moving within one of tying Babe Ruth for second place on baseball's career list.

Originally from NYT > Home Page by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS reBlogged on May 7, 2006, 9:49AM

Originally posted by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS from NYT > Home Page, on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM

Meshell sits down with Arsenio and brings her Les Paul Gibson bass, to demonstrate the bassline for Prince's "Let's Work" among other funkisms.

Originally from Tuberaider Video by Jay Smooth reBlogged

Originally posted by Jay Smooth from Tuberaider Video, on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM

A really weird short film starring David Cross as a piece of doodoo that Michel Gondry first tries to flush, then adopts as a son.

Originally from Tuberaider Video by Jay Smooth reBlogged

Originally posted by Jay Smooth from Tuberaider Video, on May 7, 2006 10:45 PM