April 2008
66 posts
“While I’m a believer, I don’t think religious folks have a monopoly...”
– Barack Obama in his “faith” speech
On holiday.
Death of the sitcom frees up 2,000 Wikipedias... →
Clay Shirky’s posted a transcript of a recent talk he gave on “cognitive surplus” — the idea that automation gave us an enormous amount of free time to think and cogitate, and that sitcoms and other…
The Last Judgement - Part 9 →
Update: Rackspace Files IPO, Will Set Price Via... →
Web hosting provider Rackspace filed for an initial public offering with the SEC last night, as we predicted it would. The company will try to raise $400 million, and it intends to set the…
Presdo, The Magical Online Scheduler →
I want you to stop what you are doing right now and go try Presdo. It is a deceptively simple online scheduling assistant that is a prime example of what a modern Web app should be. It only…
The Last Judgement - Part 9 →
What Vint Cerf has learned →
Vint Cerf, an heroic pioneer of the Internet, tells Esquire what he’s learned: It may seem like sort of a waste of time to play World of Warcraft with your son. But you’re actually interacting with…
Producing Videos For Niche Market →
Mail Tribune:
Steve Brown is the owner of Media 14 Productions, a full-service video production company located in southern Oregon. Greg Stiles, a reporter for the Mail Tribune recently…
Map of Entrepreneurs Around the U.S. →
Assuming I haven’t utterly messed up in creating this cartogram, the following figure shows startups per capita by state around the U.S. in 2007. My source for the data is the excellent new report…
Gary Wolf profiles SuperMemo creator in Wired →
Gary Wolf wrote a terrific profile of Piotr Wozniak, creator of a memory program called SuperMemo, for Wired. I’ve been using SuperMemo (the Mac version, called Genius) to learn Spanish…
Turing Test 2208 →
Restraining Order →
Genetics study shows human race nearly extinct... →
“Wozniak’s discouraging numbers were roughly consistent with the results...”
– Gary Wolf in Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm, WIRED 16.05
Busy →
Should Yale Name a College After David Swensen?... →
There is a largely fact-free piece in the WSJ today about efforts to have a college named after super-successful Yale fund manager David Swensen. In case you have somehow missed it, Swensen has…
Rupert Murdoch Firm on Trial for Alleged Tech... →
Did a Rupert Murdoch company go too far and hire hackers to sabotage rivals and gain the top spot in the global pay-TV war? This is the question a jury will be facing in a spectacular five-year-old…
Why Men Like Web 2.0 →
60% of world's paintings come from one village in... →
A single village in China is responsible for cranking out 60% of the world’s paintings. The overwhelming majority of the paintings are slavish reproductions of famous paintings. The artists doing the…
Frame Hanger: a piece of art you hang coats on →
& Design’s “Frame hanger” is a huge, leaning cut-out of a silhouette of an artistic scene, intended to be used as a coat-hanger. Link (via Cribcandy)
Student’s Invention Is The Biz →
Norwich Evening News:
A young entrepreneur from the University of East Anglia has been named a national finalist in a prestigious business competition for his pioneering invention.
Luke…
The Decline and Fall of Tech on Digg →
If you’re a fan of digg, you’ve probably been noticing that tech stories are becoming less and less a feature of the social news site. The reason? Digg is attempting to attract a large…
Children's book about plastic surgery →
My Beautiful Mommy is a new kids book about plastic surgery. It was written by Michael Salzhauer, a plastic surgeon in Bal Harbour, Florida. Salzhauer says he came up with the idea to help…
Techno →
Nintendo's Wii Fit: Like A Brisk Walk, Only More... →
We don’t have our hands on a Wii Fit yet (it goes on sale May 19), but other people do. And The Guardian (UK) passed out the Fit to one of its readers to see what she thought of it. Her…
Gartner predicting the past with 99% certainty →
Windows at risk of becoming obsolete? Who knew? Well, check out this story where those big genius analysts at Gartner predict that Windows is “in danger of collapsing” and “risks becoming…
Swiss Interface Syndrome →
Sebastiaan de With on the garish practice of mixing Helvetica with Lucida Grande in Mac UI design.
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I’m Not Lying →
Brilliant Dropouts →
Ted Turner, founder of CNN (Brown University, expelled)
Steve Jobs, co-founder and C.E.O. of Apple (Reed College)
Ralph Lauren, fashion magnate (City College of New York)
Larry Ellison,…
The Upside of the Credit Crunch: Less Mail →
There is an upside to the credit crunch: Less mail… Mortgage and home equity direct mail down (Source) Credit card direct mail declines continue into 2008 (Source) And this is with a mere…
The New York Times on Philip M. Parker: "He Wrote... →
At least I’m hovering At least I’m still breathing Still alive…
Girl's got rhythm →
This is Hillary doing some funky moves at a senior aerobics class in Philly with some very non-bitter Pennsylvania residents. Happy Sunday.
New IBM chip promises storage of half a million... →
Zappos wants you to return those shoes →
“We are a service company that happens to sell.” Zappos wants you to call their 800 number. They want you to order too many shoes. They want you to return (at their expense) the shoes that don’t…
DIY Alarmist Tech Article →
"One in five Nature readers -- mostly scientists... →
One in five Nature readers — mostly scientists — say they up their mental performance with drugs such as Ritalin, Provigil, and Inderal.
The Decline And Fall of Western Civilization Part... →
Are you feeling Twitter overload, or just sick of hearing about it? Blogger/Cartoonist/Ad Man Hugh McLeod feels the same way. He illustrated a post titled Why I Deleted My Twitter Account with…
Overqualified →
“Thumin’s report implied that if people drink lots of cola regularly, they can...”
– The Annals of Improbable Research (13:1), p. 6
Microsoft: Please Make MySong Into a Web App →
Via an article in the New Scientist today, we were pointed to a Microsoft research project called MySong. MySong isn’t web technology, but it is very, very cool technology, and clearly it…
Pechtold: Onderzoek Fitna-gesprekken →
D66-leider Alexander Pechtold wil een onderzoek naar de ‘waarheid’ over de gespreksverslagen rond Fitna. Uit de verslagen, die vorige week openbaar werden gemaakt door het kabinet, blijkt dat Wilders…