randomwalks/dj

hugely obvious, but most publishers are short-sighted, paranoid luddites [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on Oct 7, 2006, 1:08PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on October 7, 2006 6:38 PM

Boot Camp users need to decide which operating system they want to run, and the Mac becomes dedicated to that platform. If true, under Leopard, users can dual boot and fast user switch to Windows and back again to OS X.

Originally from digg / Apple reBlogged on Oct 7, 2006, 1:10PM

Originally from digg / Apple, on October 7, 2006 6:37 PM

Earlier this year, we worked on our very first New Ventures project, developing the brand identity, product strategy, and design for the Soundflavor DJ application and its companion website. The music recommender product has launched, as has our in-depth case study of the work we did.

We want to give a big shout out to the Soundflavor crew on a successful launch. We know that this tool will take the world by storm.

And I want to acknowledge the great work our team did bringing this sexy and fun product to market. Hats off to Lane, Dan, Rae, Tim, and Chris for your remarkable efforts!

Originally from Adaptive Path by peterme reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 12:44PM

Originally posted by peterme from Adaptive Path, on October 7, 2006 11:11 AM

Following previous lists issued by Harvard and Yale libraries, the New York Public Library has issued a list of missing antiquarian maps and a list of rare books from which maps have been taken. Via Maps-L. I don't have any...

Originally from The Map Room by Jonathan Crowe reBlogged on Oct 3, 2006, 4:55PM

Originally posted by Jonathan Crowe from The Map Room, on October 7, 2006 11:06 AM

Design means business. Seriously, it does – hello Target, Method, Apple et al.

As business shines a spotlight on design, “Gain” provides shining examples of design’s impact on business success. Featuring case studies from a variety of industries, “Gain” demonstrates the broadening role design plays in business strategy, leadership, process and product.

Participants will hear business and design leaders share their innovative approaches to generating greater return on investment, fostering emotional connections and providing positive brand experiences for customers.

‘Design means business’ also means finding real world solutions for everyday tasks like research, development and organization. Business and design leaders who attend “Gain” will explore how organizations can tap the full value of design by integrating it into their business culture.

Tom Kelley, general manager, IDEO and author, The Ten Faces of Innovation, (personal hero, will serve as moderator for Gain: AIGA Business and Design Conference.

After having numerous conversations on “the role of the 21st designer” this week, I’m really looking forward to hearing participants opinions on the strategic business role designers can and should be looking to embrace. A designer’s job is no longer to “make things pretty” – it is to make life better and offer workable solutions to serious business and social issues. No mean feat, but GAINfully exciting.

New York, Oct 26-28 – get booking your tickets via [AIGA].

Originally from l-e-mental by clairehyland reBlogged

Originally posted by clairehyland from l-e-mental, on October 7, 2006 11:04 AM

Posted by Bret Taylor, Senior Product Manager

Today we launched Google Code Search, which gives programmers a single place to search publicly accessible source code. I am really excited about this launch, as it caps off a long sequence of Google product launches for developers in the past year, including Google Maps API v2, Google Calendar API, Google Web Toolkit, Google AJAX Search API, Google Checkout API, project hosting on Google Code, Google Base API, and Google Gadgets for Your Page. Google's developer team is focused on building tools that help developers extend and improve Google's products and improve their own applications, and we are really excited to see all the amazing things that have been created already (traffic map for your Google homepage, anyone?).

The success of the Google Maps API taught us that an API doesn't need to be complex to be powerful, and that principle has formed the basis of our API design. If you haven't seen how far cut-and-paste can get you, check out the list of sample applications we've published for the AJAX Search API. Or check out the Google Calendar API examples; to get a feed of your calendar entries, you just need to fetch a single URL from Google's servers.

We have also launched a number of general-purpose developer and open-source tools like Google Web Toolkit and project hosting on Google Code. Our view is what's good for the web is good for Google -- we want users to have the best online experience possible, and we hope these tools will help developers create compelling applications for their users.

So if you haven't been to Google Code lately, check it out. We are continuously adding useful tools to our suite of developer products, and it's a great way to leverage the power of Google's infrastructure in your own projects.

Originally from Official Google Blog by A Googler reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 1:19PM

Originally posted by A Googler from Official Google Blog, on October 6, 2006 11:27 PM

Google launched a new code search feature today. At least two sites already offer this functionality, but a great deal of attention follows Google wherever they go.

Code search is a great resource for web developers and programmers, but like the making available of all previously unsearched bodies of information, it's given lots of flashlights to people interested in exploring dark corners. Here are some things that people have uncovered already:

• Key generation algorithm for WinZip (via airbag)
• Wordpress usernames and passwords. Looks like a lot of these are the result of people zipping/tarring up their Wordpress files and putting the zip/tar file in a publicly accessible directory. I imagine other such applications are just as susceptible to this issue. (via airbag)
• Like Movable Type. This only turns up one username/password, but it's for Gawker. Which in turn reveals this open directory with all sorts of code and u/p goodies...but they restricted access to it after being notified of the problem.
• Profanities. Try your own. (via andy baio)
• Possible buffer overflow points. (via live aus der marschrutka)
• Tons of nerd jokes like "here be dragons".
• Confidential code and code with restricted rights. (via digg)
• Coders complaining about stupid users. (thx, zacharie)
• All sorts of code that needs to be fixed. (thx, andy & david)
• Programmers who want to get a new job. (thx, brian) In the office just now, we were talking about turning Google Code Search into a job posting board by inserting "Like our code? Come work for us!" text ads in the comments of source code which is then distributed and crawled by Google.
• Kludge-y code. (thx, nick)
• You can also use it for vanity searches. A surprisingly small amount of code is returned on a search for Linus Torvalds. Jamie Zawinski. Alan Cox. There have to be more prolific programmers out there... (thx, justin)
• Programmers coding while drunk. Also: "I am drunk and coding like I am the greatest coder of all time." (thx, tom)
• Customer databases with names, addresses, zip codes, phone numbers, and weakly encrypted passwords. Ouch. (No link to this one because I don't really want to get anyone's data out there.) (thx, jon)
• Expression of which programming language sucks more. For instance, Python sucks. (thx, paolo)
• Code vulnerabilities: "this will crash". (thx, james)
• Listing of some backdoor passwords. (thx, james)

Got any other Google code search goodies? Send them along.

Originally from kottke.org reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 2:49PM

Originally from kottke.org, on October 6, 2006 11:26 PM

I see where Powerset is going to provide the next generation of Internet Search, and has raised some money from some apparently-smart people. Me, I’ve seen this movie before. Good luck to ’em; they’ll need it. [2 comments]

Originally from ongoing reBlogged

Originally from ongoing, on October 6, 2006 11:26 PM

Today the tech community (at least all of my friends) are abuzz with news of Google’s new Code Search mechanism. Now, this is just cool. From this day forward when I’m struggling with some poorly documented, hard to use, or even private API, I should be able to just type it into Google code search and see how other people have managed to use it.

But that’s only the useful angle - not enough to really create buzz on the net. The two things people are having fun with today are exploring the answers to these questions:

1. What does code search know about me?
2. What private information does code search know about others?

The first is the natural extension of the ego search that many of us commit on a regular basis (or have RSS subscriptions set up to to do for us). It’s fun to read about yourself, especially when somebody else is doing the writing. For instance, I learned of several new “thanks to Daniel Jalkut” type comments in source code and readme files. Neat! I like that.

The second is more problematic. Google grabbed a bunch of the world’s “source code” … basically anything it could find with a suitable file extension, and made it easily searchable. What’s wrong with this? A lot of files with source-code extensions actually contain sensitive information, but have been left mistakenly world-readable on some web server. For instance, John Gruber points out the rather stunning example of WordPress database configuration files, including the database login and password information. He directs our attention towards Jason Kottke who has assembled several other interesting phenomena. I personally am amused by the search “This file contains proprietary and confidential information.”

Now, the quite reasonable reaction we’re likely to hear from Google is, “This was already public information, we’re just indexing it.”

True! But let’s not dismiss the power of indexing. Google is too big to “just index” anything. They’re the search engine of record. Too big to blunder with technology that endangers the innocent. I imagine that with 8000 employees, at least several hundred of them are smart coders who have been beta testing this service for several weeks or months. The chances of them not noticing these funny holes seems infinitely unlikely, considering that among my friends they were the first things we observed.

So what should they do? Stand in the way of progress to protect the innocent? I’m sure dealing with problems like this will become less onerous as time goes on and people become more sophisticated about protecting their own privacy, but until that happens, Google has special responsibilities. When they substantially advance the state of information retrieval on a world-wide basis, they should think about how they can soften the negative blows of those advances.

It’s hard to say what Google should have done, but even a well-publicized warning might have helped. For those who have been compromised, I imagine their view of Google would be a lot higher if the buzz last week had been on the forthcoming advancement and what it meant for everybody’s privacy.

Originally from Red Sweater Blog by Daniel Jalkut reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 3:05PM

Originally posted by Daniel Jalkut from Red Sweater Blog, on October 6, 2006 11:24 PM

I just read on Dan Shanoff's post-ESPN blog that the rumor is Eva Longoria left Tony Parker for Mario Lopez, also known to adoring TV fans as "Slater."

Back in July, we linked a little item on Erin Podolsky's blog about Lopez and Longoria, spotted by Erin's friend Brian, who told it this way:

Brian: tried to get into the new club at the Wynn on sat night waited 2 hours, werent letting us in. We held out hope that we could still get in unti... Eva Longoria and Mario Lopez walked by Mario, ON Eva…

UPDATE: Or, um, maybe they're not broken up at all. And maybe Eva Longoria's flying to France to be with Tony Parker. Can't wait until we get a real story with a real source. Both of those links have a lot of "Ryan Seacrest" in them.

Originally from True Hoop by Henry Abbott reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 6:19PM

Originally posted by Henry Abbott from True Hoop, on October 6, 2006 11:19 PM

DSC07757
Originally uploaded by monsteratomic.

My friend Silas posted some pictures from his trip to China.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 4:59PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on October 6, 2006 11:19 PM

Betty Glover Library Workout Tape, an excellent archival fun video showing us what libraries were like in 1987. COM CAT spin! Is that Devo I hear?

bettyglover, librarians, libraries, youtube

Originally from librarian.net by jessamyn reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 11:12PM

Originally posted by jessamyn from librarian.net, on October 6, 2006 11:14 PM

the bike and the bingo hall, by Literal Salmon.

Originally from Bike Hugger by Frank reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 1:16AM

Originally posted by Frank from Bike Hugger, on October 6, 2006 11:13 PM

I suppose you could say today's word is a hard one to be tired of. But, I think it's just that I belong to the last generation of the non-natives who live this hyperconnected life as much as a non-native can.

Internet - Sigh. I wonder if in the late 19th century, everything was about telegraph still or was it finally accepted by then. When will be stop talking about the 'Internet' as much as we've stopped talking about the phone network, the telegraph network, the electricity network? When does the Internet stop being a place and we start talking about what we do in terms of verbs. I am pretty sure my kids will have no separate concept of what the Internet is.

You can review all my previous 'Tired Words' here on this page.

Originally from Lifeblog by charlie reBlogged

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on October 6, 2006 11:12 PM

Calling the Rebecca's Pocket Brain Trust: I'm looking for clear and especially useful resources on educational blogging, particularly for the Middle School to High School range. What would you recommend for a teacher who is new to blogging who wants to introduce her students to blogging?

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 8:30AM

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on October 6, 2006 11:11 PM

When Michael Ruhlman finished up his blogging stint here in July, I was sad to see him go. It was great fun to have the opportunity to read frequent musings from one of my favorite food writers. But all along, my secret plan had been to get him addicted to the immediacy of blogging so he'd launch his own site. [Insert evil "mwah ha ha" laugh here.] Now I can announce I've succeeded: Ruhlman's very own blog is live! Yay!

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 1:01PM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on October 6, 2006 11:09 PM

Shacktoberfest begins today at the Shake Shack and runs through October 15th. The Shack will be serving special wursts, beers, and concretes. You know I'll be there at least once!

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 12:57PM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on October 6, 2006 11:09 PM

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work - in the web browser itself.

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 2:59PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on October 6, 2006 11:09 PM

Im really bummed I couldn’t make it to the Yahoo coming out party for BB Auth and the new slew of Open APIs.  Though it wasn’t announced - open APIs for MyYahoo will be the creme of the pudding, the cat’s meow, the straw that broke the camel’s back on ‘the rest of them’.

Once we have open APIs out of (and hopefully back into) MyYahoo - I really think this inter-connect, web services, mashup, persona driven distriuted mesh thing can take off.

Having Facebook Import helps - but it doesn’ take a return path in - yet.  Flickr has led the way with these sorts of APIs, but that’s nothing compared to Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Photos or MyYahoo.  Add this to the stuff they’re already doing with YUI, Brickhouse and Jumpcut and you got some serious mojo working.

I am totally jazzed by these developments and have been waiting - over 2 years for them to appear.  Watch for later version of PeopleAggregator to fully support BB Auth and add all sorts of new capabilities onto our platform - because of this leadership position Yahoo has established.

Right on to Chad Dickerson, Brad Horowitz and anybody else who had anything to to with this.

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 2:59PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on October 6, 2006 11:06 PM

Glitchy sends along an interesting project from the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University known as News at Seven, which scans news and blog headlines and automatically creates a three-minute newscast which is then delivered via text-to-speech translation by everyone’s favorite female first-person shooter, the Alyx character from the Half-Life games. I’d love to see this in a virtual world, automatically generating a newscast from 3pointD stories and the like. The demo newscast seems to have been tarted up by the app’s creators (”The engine, and our extensions to it, allows us to present believable human-like newscasters as well as more imaginative scenes and sets that are only possible because the show is virtual. We also use techniques to make the generated vocal audio more interesting and believable.”), but there’s no reason why a straight show shouldn’t work. An entertaining addition to the growing number of aggregators out there.

games, media, news, video, voice

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 2:59PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on October 6, 2006 11:06 PM

Apache is one of the most popular web server which is stable and which scales very well. This web server which has been released under a free licence has the honor of powering many of the very high traffic sites, not to speak of the 100s of 1000s of ordinary websites dotting the net landscape. Usually, when you host a website on a shared server, you are not provided any rights or access to modify

Originally from All about Linux by Ravi reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 9:59PM

Originally posted by Ravi from All about Linux, on October 6, 2006 11:05 PM

Can't make it to PopTech this year? Good news: they're showing the whole thing live on the web for free.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 6:38PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on October 6, 2006 11:05 PM

Designer Melissa Clifton has a great step-by-step tutorial for turning your photographs into Lichtenstein-inspired pop art.

Achieving this effect will require a bit of Photoshop-fu, but the tutorial is detailed enough that even a beginning Photoshopper might want to try his/her luck on this one - especially since the results are so cool. This is actually also the kind of tutorial that's nice for beginners because it lets you get your hands dirty with several essential Photoshop tools. — Adam Pash

Pop Art Inspired by Lichtenstein [Melissa Clifton]

Originally from Lifehacker

reBlogged by Matthew Haughey on Oct 6, 2006, 9:00PM

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed reBlogged on Oct 6, 2006, 4:39PM

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed , on October 6, 2006 11:05 PM

Two nights ago while Jonah and I were walking up Elizabeth street from Canal, we crossed paths with Ziggy Sobotka at around Grand street. Ziggy and I met eyes and I thought, Ziggy doesn't seem nearly as dumb as he is on the show and that folks, was my first lesson in 'TV is not real and actors are not their characters'.

If you don't already watch The Wire, do it now! Tell your boss with a really grim look on your face that you have to leave as "there's been an emergency" and don't say "emergency", spell it out like it's just too emotionally heavy to say ("there's been an e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y") and he won't question you further. He'll also never want to talk to you again for putting him in such an awkward situation.

Originally from Andrea Harner by Andrea reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 9:52AM

Originally posted by Andrea from Andrea Harner, on October 5, 2006 7:04 AM

By Kim Pearson: For refusing to hand over unaired video of a WTO protest, Wolf has been imprisoned for contempt; members of the media have rallied to his aid.

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on Oct 3, 2006, 1:13PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on October 5, 2006 7:01 AM

Explains the boot process used to initialize the Mac OS X operating system.

Originally from ADC Reference Library Updates reBlogged on Oct 3, 2006, 4:00AM

Originally from ADC Reference Library Updates, on October 5, 2006 7:00 AM

A guided tour of (Bourne) shell scripting, including control structures, numerical computation, regular expressions, subroutines, and error handling.

Originally from ADC Reference Library Updates reBlogged on Oct 3, 2006, 4:00AM

Originally from ADC Reference Library Updates, on October 5, 2006 7:00 AM

Shows off using Quartz Extreme to provide borderless OpenGL content on the desktop.

Originally from ADC Reference Library Updates reBlogged on Oct 2, 2006, 4:00AM

Originally from ADC Reference Library Updates, on October 5, 2006 7:00 AM

"Icon genres help communicate what you can do with an application before you open it. Applications are classified by role—user applications, software utilities, and so on—and each category, or genre, has its own icon style."

Originally from digg / Apple reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 4:40AM

Originally from digg / Apple, on October 5, 2006 7:00 AM

Here are three reasons why some Mac users want Leopard NOW! Safari 3.0 extends the browsing experience in fun, useful ways. Not only tabs, but also simple page searching and text forms are improved over anything else now available to web surfers. The article has three short screencasts as well as text descriptions.

Originally from digg / Apple reBlogged on Oct 5, 2006, 1:10AM

Originally from digg / Apple, on October 5, 2006 7:00 AM

Where do Craigslist's Missed Connections occur in NYC? Gawker has the breakdown by location and subway line.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 6:16PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

Nikon recently sent a bunch of new D80s to some Flickr photographers and are now using some of the shots those photographers took in an ad campaign. "Nikon did what every major brand should be doing...it got out of its own way and let the real people that counted do the talking: their own consumers." PDF of the ad spread.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 3:06PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

Collection of x-rated movies posters from the 60s and 70s. NSFW.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 2:03PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

Recently, I had lunch at ssäm, a small Asianish restaurant in Manhattan that serves rice bowls and wraps. To accompany my bowl with Berkshire pork, beans, slaw, and a red kimchi puree, I had a Dr Pepper. It seemed like an odd combination, but since there were very few other beverage choices, I reasoned the Dr Pepper was offered because it complemented the food. Once I began eating, I discovered how nicely the Dr's peppery fizz complemented the richness of the pork and beans, while cutting through the heat of the kimchi. As they say in the biz: it was a good pairing.

Of course, I'm not always so lucky. There've been plenty of times when my beverage didn't work with my meal, and a few times when clearly the drink was at odds with the dish. That's why Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page's new book What to Drink with What You Eat: The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers is a wonderful addition to my culinary library. Not only does it include chapters such as "Food and Beverage Pairing 101" and "Selecting and Serving Beverages," it also includes wonderful lists of ingredients (beef tacos, Kit Kat candy bar) and the drinks that can accompany them (Syrah, African tea).

Dornenburg and Page have also filled their book with tons of expert advice from wine directors, sommeliers, and restaurateurs, and included sample tasting menus (with their wine accompaniments) from some of America's best restaurants. The book is so packed with information, it will take a while to digest it all. But that's good, because this is a book you'll actually use as a reference over and over again, whether you have a wine you're not sure how to pair, or whether you've got an ingredient and need a beverage partner. Or maybe it's just a season, "Winter" and you want something new to drink. In that case, barley wine, Burgundy, and hot buttered rum are all recommended.

As great as its information is, what really recommends "What to Drink" is its tone. We all have an image of an obnoxious sommelier or server who huffs when one member of the party wants beer, and the others insist on red wine with fish. But Dornenburg and Page don't scoff at such pairings. They avoid the snootiness often associated with wine. They don't fill their book with rules, only thoughtful suggestions. On page 22, they write:

The success of any pairing is measured by what happens when a sip of the beverage you're drinking interacts on your palate with the bite of food you've just eaten. When those sensations are jarring or otherwise unpleasant, you've stumbled upon a bad pairing. When those sensations are mildly or even wildly positive, you've got yourself a good match.

Ah yes, like my pork bowl and Dr Pepper! I couldn't find a listing for Dr Pepper in "What to Drink," but I did get a chance at the end of my meal to talk to ssäm chef and owner David Chang about the pairing. Turns out he and his chefs just like Dr Pepper, so they decided to stock it. The grand pork/Pepper pairing plan I'd suspected didn't exist. Which goes to show you can plan your drinks and your food all you want, but a little serendipity can still be good. I imagine Dornenburg and Page would agree.

Feel free to share your favorite food/beverage pairings in the comments.

Note: this entry is part of a Virtual Book Tour for "What to Drink with What you Eat." For more information, please visit the Virtual Book Tour schedule.

comments are open

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 11:49AM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

On Saturday night, I went to a party where everyone invited was required to bring one thing: something to fry. The host had a commercial deep-fat fryer in his kitchen. (Aside: you know you're getting old when a fun night is playing with a commercial fryer.) During the course of the evening we had homemade french fries, onion rings, fried fish, fried scallops, fried "Boris balls" (quail egg wrapped in banger sausage, battered), fried Twinkies, fried Oreos, fried chocolate, and my "healthy" contribution, fried apples.

At first I thought about bringing liver, because I had some really tasty chicken fried duck livers at Cookshop recently. I planned on doing a chicken fried chicken liver. But the day got away from me, and I had a lot of apples in my fridge (and no chicken livers), so I decided to do some kind of fried apple instead. Let me tell you: fried apples RULE! I made a simple batter and enhanced it with cinnamon and sugar. I peeled, cored, and sliced the apples, as you would for a pie. The coating puffed up nicely (which I'd expected) and the apples turned wonderfully mushy (which, for some reason, I hadn't expected). Eaten in one bite, each slice was like a little apple pie in the mouth.

I was very pleased with how they turned out, and I'm going to try and make them again here at home. Without the commercial fryer, I'm not sure they'll be quite the same. But it's worth a shot. In case you're interested in giving them a go, I've posted the recipe for Fried Apples in my recipe section. Meanwhile, I really want to get a commercial deep-fat fryer of my own. Man but frying is fun!

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Oct 3, 2006, 12:17PM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

...in an American accent.

Video responses found here.

Originally from clusterflock reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 11:54PM

Originally from clusterflock, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

Originally from clusterflock reBlogged on Oct 4, 2006, 4:14PM

Originally from clusterflock, on October 5, 2006 6:59 AM

Sounds like a tactic out of The Wire: instead of mass arrests, law enforcement officials in a North Carolina city have been using pressure from families and the threat of arrest to drive drug dealers out of business. (thx, micah)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Oct 2, 2006, 11:26AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on October 3, 2006 9:26 AM

Unusual job opportunity of the day: Chief Librarian of the Detainee Library at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Perhaps the person who gets the job can add the text of the detainee treatment bill to the stacks. (thx, stefan)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Oct 2, 2006, 10:48AM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on October 3, 2006 9:26 AM

I thought you would be interested.

I am presently representing Josh Wolf, the jailed San Francisco blogger, who refused the Grand Jury subpoena to turn over pictures of a WTO demonstration.

Josh Wolf is being subpoenaed because the Anti-Terrorism Task Force believes he may have information about “anarchists” and other people who were at the demonstration. He’s already stated, and you will see, that there’s nothing in his tape in any way relating to the police car. The FBI and the government, having failed to be remarkably successful in going against Al Qaeda and related people, are now going after “terrorists” totally unrelated to the “September 11th problem.” They are using the September 11th issues to throw a net over other people who would normally be out of the reach of any Grand Jury. That’s why the Josh Wolf situation is so pernicious.

The difference between Judith Miller, the San Francisco Barry Bonds writers and Josh is apparent.

The Barry Bonds writers had Grand Jury information as a result of a leak.

Judith Miller had information potentially relevant to an ongoing federal investigation of a federal crime.

Unfortunately, the probabilities are that he will wind up being the longest-jailed journalist in America.

Best,
Marty

Originally from unmediated by yatta reBlogged on Oct 2, 2006, 2:07PM

Originally posted by yatta from unmediated, on October 3, 2006 9:18 AM

Songbird, the San Francisco start-up that has made a smart music player that searches and plays music on your desktop and on the Web, has raised about $1 million from Atlas Ventures and big name venture capital firm, Sequoia Capital.

It will soon unveil its second release, which has some cool new features. Songbird originally played only on windows, but the coming version will play on other operating systems, including Mac OS and Linux. It began testing the cross-platform release last week, and the new version will be ready over the next week or two.

Check out the screencast below (it is fun, especially the end), to see Songbird’s playing features. Songbird, as you’ll recall, is also browser, where you can browse web sites and find music to play. Songbird searches a site you visit for audio and other files, and displays them neatly at the bottom of the player. You can then click and drag them to your own media library, on your desktop. You can play them any time, and jump to any point in the song.

If you like a song or band, you can use a Web search bar to select from a number of music search engines, such as Scissorkick to find songs from the bands you like. Songbird also lets you subscribe to a music blog, and updates your player with the files as they come in, along with meta data telling you the name of the band, and so on. It can also play video files. Finally, it provides “skins,” or what it calls feathers.

The company’s name is officially Pioneers of the Inevitable. The money will be used as a “bridge” for the company, until it raises a first venture capital round, according to a credible source.

Originally from VentureBeat by Matt Marshall reBlogged on Oct 2, 2006, 9:50PM

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from VentureBeat, on October 3, 2006 9:15 AM

Katie Kurtz is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. She is currently in the graduate Visual Criticism program at California College of the Arts and is writing her thesis about green branding.

"Beyond the Tipping Point" was the track I followed throughout the weekend at West Coast Green (the others were Planning Design & Development; EEBA Houses that Work; The Business of Building; Homes & Our Health; Green Policy & Programs; Building Science; and Spirit of Place). I'm not sure whether or not this influenced the high rate of the phrase "tipping point" being used but I heard it in every session and keynote I attended (including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s powerful and erudite keynote). A couple of the speakers cited the number of registered conference attendees (about 8,000) as evidence of this conference being the tipping point for the public's interest in sustainability. True to its track, the speakers also cited examples of how, well, we've gone beyond that point and are already experiencing a different kind of climate change – one that is more hospitable to adopting green practices.

On Friday, I came in a little late to Ray Cole's "Building New Expectations: Zero Energy Housing" but arrived in time to see his example of how – as he said it – "we can't legislate our way into change" when it comes to human interaction with the natural and built environments. The slide on the screen was an aerial view of a street with a traffic roundabout that had been installed in order to slow down drivers. The photo showed how drivers drove around the barrier and over the grass in order to maintain their speed. Cole used this photo to tell a story, something he returned to again and again throughout his presentation – that new ways need to be developed to tell stories and communicate information about sustainable practices.

Cole also suggested the need for establishing a common language about sustainability across industries and questioned the potency of terms like "ecological footprint," "carbon neutral," and "zero energy" when it comes to marketing and the public's perception of what those terms mean. "You hardly hear the word 'conservation' in contemporary debates," Cole pointed out. You also don't hear "preservation," "protection," and "reclamation," words I heard a lot growing up in an environmentally-conscious household. What the conference demonstrated more than anything is the high currency of "green" as a codeword for sustainable practices across industries and the high number of green-named businesses (green*light, Green Builder, Green Building Pages, Green-e, Green Festival, Built Green, etc.) indicate that they trust the customer knows what green means.

After a coffee break (organic and out of a biodegradable cup, naturally), I returned to the main auditorium to hear a conversation between Sim Van der Ryn (author, Ecological Design) and Tim Owen-Kennedy (President, Vital Systems). Van der Ryn was in fine form and, from what I gathered from Owen-Kennedy's introduction, his typical acerbic self. Midway through the conversation Van der Ryn said to the audience, "Those of you who are younger than me have a challenging job ahead of you – to redesign the world we live in. So… good luck." He wasn't kidding either. The general mood of the conference is a call for paradigm shifts in every area. Both Van der Ryn and Cole came back again and again to the same idea: that the built environment can no longer be addressed separate from values, ethics, emotions, and language. Similar to Cole's recommendation, Van der Ryn also talked about how new metaphors are needed in terms of how we talk about sustainability.

The conference also underscored how the current environmental movement is now framed as a consumerist's movement. Considering the context this was no surprise, it was a tradeshow after all. But on Saturday after hearing conference host Donald Sims say "Your vote in elections is one thing but your biggest vote is where you put your money" and Hunter Lovins (Founder & President, Natural Capitalism, Inc. and co-author of Natural Capitalism) praise Wal-Mart's entry into the green market, I began to wonder how the movement can ask for a wholesale paradigm shift and continue to promote the current economic structure in the same breath.

Near the end of the day Saturday, I sat in on Robyn Griggs Lawrence (editor-in-chief, Natural Home Magazine) talk "Green Goes Mainstream." Griggs Lawrence was struck by something she saw in Harper's about the lack of environmental concern in the hip hop community, and she used that to draw comparisons between the rise and eventual commodification of hip hop to the current status of the green movement.

Although this pairing wasn’t entirely successful (there were a few glaring oversights in her history of hip hop), it did point out something missing from every other talk I attended: 8,000 people who can afford the $475 to attend the entire conference does not necessarily signify a tipping point. In other words, as Griggs Lawrence pointed out, “To say green goes mainstream may be a little bit arrogant.” There’s a lot of good news in green but her point is well taken. Sustainability as a point of cultural identification doesn't yet come close to infusing the number and diversity of populations that hip hop does. Homeowners and builders are adopting in full force -- which makes a tremendously positive impact -- but what will it take to make green the new hip hop?

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in WorldChanging Guests at 10:05 PM)

Originally from WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future by WorldChanging Team reBlogged on Oct 3, 2006, 2:05AM

Originally posted by WorldChanging Team from WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future, on October 3, 2006 9:13 AM

The Deep
Originally uploaded by Lady Macabea.

"Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man..."--Moby Dick, Chp. 32

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Oct 2, 2006, 1:56PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on October 2, 2006 2:33 PM