Highlights from Andy Kaufman's wrestling career - a truly epic stunt. #
YouTube - Amazing Indoor Skydiving - I tried this once...wasn't quite this good. #
Calligraphy in light - beautiful. #
The history of the Earth in 60 seconds - to scale, natch! #
The Homer Simpson metric: "Homer is not going to use his body for anything. That’s the American value system in a nutshell. And that’s what we who are trying to design alternative transportation are fighting against. We've got to make something that's clean, cheap and mechanically efficient without the individual feeling the physical consequences. That’s tough." #
I'm late to view the Siftables demo, but it really is inspiring. #
First-person video of a bike race finish - can't believe I never thought to do this (the filming, not the near-crash). #
Flow chart of where our emissions are really coming from - interesting that land use change (deforestation, etc) is as significant as transportation. #
The Long Now Foundation - Store - Books - great book recommendations from the Long Now Foundation. Love the <10-word reviews; I should try that. #
"The gospel is not primarily a set of facts but a way of seeing and a way of being in the world because of God." - Richard Rohr #
YouTube - Are Violent Video Games Preparing Kids For The Apocalypse? - I'm pretty sure this was what Kenneth Boulding was talking about. #
"The future will always surprise us, but we must not let it dumbfound us." - Kenneth Boulding #
"The vice president began to tremble with rage. He shouted, 'The telephone system was destroyed last night and you had better believe it. If you don't by noon, you'll be fired.'" - Idealized Design: How Bell Labs Imagined -- and Created -- the Telephone System of the Future. Great example of prototyping future experiences to inspire innovation. #
Google finally solves the age-old question of the ideal crank length: 87 minutes #
"In his first week in office, President Obama requested that he see 10 letters a day 'representative of people's concerns, from people writing into the president,' recalls Gibbs, 'to help get him outside of the bubble, to get more than just the information you get as an elected official." - ABC News. Very cool way of tapping into real people's needs. #
Coolest commute ever - kids in Colombia riding a zip line over a 1200-foot valley to get to school. #
"If called, I will certainly serve," he said. "But if not called, I will probably serve anyway." - Carl Malamud, who works to make government documents easily available. Love the attitude. #
For all those times you've said "I wish I could invest in that person": Swayam: Education Funding, people investing in people - "We offer ordinary people the opportunity to become angel investors in the education of talented students, in exchange for a share of their future income." #
Informing Ourselves To Death - a good counterpoint to the "inforevolution": "I believe you will have to concede that what ails us, what causes us the most misery and pain -- at both cultural and personal levels -- has nothing to do with the sort of information made accessible by computers. The computer and its information cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane." #
Christopher Columbus @ All About Explorers - Librarians sabotage the internet to teach kids that you can't trust online information. Great. #
Kevin Kelly reports on Amish technology adoption - "One Amish-man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs (yes he knew about them) was that 'you got messages rather than conversations.'" #
Imagining the Internet - good list of books and resources for forecasting and concept design #
Saul Griffith expands on his previous analysis of the energy we need and use as a planet. Really compelling stuff; who wants to start an energy company? #
"It's not bad to own fine things that you like. What you need are things that you GENUINELY like. Things that you cherish, that enhance your existence in the world. The rest is dross." - Bruce Sterling #
Flexitarianism - describes my diet pretty well. Here's another good article. #
Fun with the conference bike - a 6-hour adventure yesterday. #
Songsmith fed with Stock Charts - if the news were a song, here's what last year would sound like. #
Awesome tea infuser - you really need a clear cup, but this is great. #
What Technology Wants - Kevin Kelly is getting closer to his 4-year goal of finding "the meaning of tech". He also connects what technology wants to what humans do; energy efficiency, clean water, and intelligence are all shared goals. #
New Metrics for Today's Social Entrepreneurs - various ways of measuring social and environmental, as well as financial, returns on investment, following the idea of blended value. #
Peak-end rule - I refer to this often; people remember the peak and the ending state of experiences the most. So get those right! #
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." - Albert Einstein #
How to prepare a kiwi - favorite tshirt I saw in New Zealand. #
Left New Zealand tonight, got home this morning. Weird. #
The Scramble meal planning site - takes a holistic view of shopping, cooking, and eating...could make meals much easier to plan for many. #
"It's the late fifties or early sixties, and Doug [Engelbart]'s chatting with Marvin Minsky, one of the fathers of Artificial intelligence. Marvin talks about Al and Doug says, "You're going to do all that for the computers? What are you going to do for the people?" - Jaron Lanier #
"Deep Time Purpose of Science, Technology, Art, Culture - To provide adventures of sufficient seductive beauty to seduce humanity away from mass-suicide" - Jaron Lanier. Now that sounds like a worthwhile design task. #
"[Old Entish] is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to." - Treebeard in The Two Towers #
Passage: a Gamma256 video game by Jason Rohrer - This game is incredible...I knew what was going to happen and it still hit me hard. The guy who built it is pretty interesting too...here's his explanation of the game (play it first). #
This hovering war robot is pretty out of control. Check the video and the comment by Brent below. #
Video of a trip to space - the fun starts around 1:40...who needs Richard Branson? #
"In this age of mindless consumerism, of atomized populations living in boxes, working in boxes, and traveling in boxes, almost always alone, with only the electronic voices of their new feudal lords to guide them through life, the bicycle becomes an instrument of gentle revolution." - Bicycle Fixation #
This 3-meter-long, 2mm-thick carbon fiber table won't fit in either my house or office, but I want it anyway... #
"Brendan Walker is currently the world's only Thrill Engineer." - history: THRILL LABORATORY. I think that should be everybody's title. #
"We went and watched one Buster Keaton and one Charlie Chaplin movie per day," he said. "What it did was confirmed our gut [instinct], which was that there's nothing you can't get across if you ripped away everything and could only do it visually." - Andrew Stanton, director of WALL-E #
Hamburger ethnography - featuring cultural insights and hamburger usability testing! #
e2eMaterials produces petroleum-free, biodegradable composites from bamboo, kenaf, flax, and a soy resin. #
Why we create economic bubbles - "For the price to track the fundamental value, says Noussair, 'everybody has to know that everybody knows that everybody is rational.' That’s rarely the case." #
The fascinating story of how Roosevelt's leaked battle plans influenced the course of World War II. #
All (recent) issues of Bicycling magazine now online and searchable. Nice work Google! #
HP packs its new laptop in a laptop bag - love the thought, though I wonder if it's really less waste if you don't want the bag. #
NFB - Carts of Darkness - "In the picture-postcard community of North Vancouver, filmmaker Murray Siple follows men who have turned bottle-picking, their primary source of income, into the extreme sport of shopping cart racing." More on YouTube. #
"The Dancing Plague of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace, France in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and over the period of about one month, most of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion." Huh. I especially like the prescription authorities prescribed: "More dancing"! #
Stage 2 of next year's Tour of California includes all my old stomping grounds...Tunitas Creek, Bonny Doon, Empire Grade. And it's on a holiday too (President's Day). Awesome! #
Ah, the dilemma: "There's a lot I want to experience, but not a lot I actually want to do." #
This video of a frozen pizza factory just keeps getting better and better as you watch. The pepperoni machine is my favorite. #
Charter For Compassion :: projects - interesting crowdsourced effort to help unify the world's religions...which of course reminds me of the similar effort written about in Dune... #
A fantastic long article on the "used future" of Star Wars - ties together George Lucas, Jane Jacobs, Robert Morris, Jonathan Swift and more. The presentation is also excellent, in a side-scrolling page format with half the space dedicated to excellent pullquotes from related works. (via kk) #
Three brightest objects smile down from the night sky - the moon, Jupiter, and Venus formed a smile for Australians yesterday... #
"I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace." #
Very cool self-contained vehicle wheel - includes engine, brakes, suspension, and tire. #
PledgeBank - Tell the world "I'll do it, but only if you'll help" - perhaps also a way to bootstrap a new product? Confirm sales if you get enough... #
"In nonzero, Robert Wright speaks of two major factors which allow a culture to progress. These are communication and transportation...Communication is the key to eliminating redundancy. Transport is the key to enabling progress." - Sustainable Communication. My two passions...no wonder I can't choose between them. #
"If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person." - Thomas Merton. Man, would that make small talk more interesting. #
YouTube - "Mankind Is No Island" - a convicting story, beautifully told in the text of street signs. #
AutoViewer Download - nice flash slideshow player; simple and clean. #
Digital Pictures Interactive » Blog Archive » Papervision - Augmented Reality - amazing software recognizes a pattern in a video feed and splices in a 3d character on top of it. Try it with the flash applet below the video. #
YouTube - Louis CK "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy" - I guess we do have things pretty good... #
What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? - great article from 40 years ago. Only positive things, but some that are far beyond what we've done and some that barely scratch the surface. Now where'd I put my "intelligence pill"? #
Project Pigeon "was American behaviorist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile...Three pigeons were to control the bomb's direction by majority rule." They pecked at an image they'd been trained to recognize...awesome. #
Coolest hallway ever: Underwater with sharks in Dubai #
YouTube - Third World Record for Marshall - ok Peter, this is getting ridiculous! #
Plan To Straighten Out Entire Life During Weeklong Vacation Yields Mixed Results - How'd they find out about my vacation? #
YouTube - Marshall sets another World Record - Wow! Peter's tearing it up...how come this didn't happen when I retired? #
Peering into the micro world - The Big Picture - Boston.com - incredible photos of microscopic (mostly) natural objects #
In 100 years - actually, in far less than that. Exciting stuff... #
Michael Crichton's creative simplifications: "He said he removed complications from his life while writing by having exactly the same food at every meal, so he never had to waste time deciding what to eat." Echoes of Flaubert? #
Chip log - Wikipedia - Wow! The term "knot" comes from the act of tying a rope attached to a piece of wood overboard and watching how many "knots" in the rope passed by in a given amount of time. #
oblong industries, inc. - the Minority Report science advisor has a company making the gestural interfaces reality. #
The web in the world - great summary of current tangible, ubiquitous, and real-world computer interactions. #
Rovio, a very cool remote (web) controlled webcam robot - not bad for $300! #
The Associated Press: US swimmer Marshall sets unlikely world record - Congratulations Peter! #
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis #
Amazing in-depth interviews about the creation of the Nintendo Wii - very cool to hear how they made the major decisions: a single remote, cartoonish avatars, the tiny console, etc... #
The shift in county-level voting over the past 16 years - pretty remarkable...interesting that Clinton was elected when the map was more "red" and Bush when it was more "blue"... #
SweetSkinz tires have wild patterns in them, and are even reflective at night. Nice idea--unfortunately only in MTB sizes so far... #
Time Magazine's "Best Inventions of 2008" - in a painful one-at-a-time UI. Favorites I hadn't seen before: a shadowless skyscraper; flying wind turbines; the MonoTracer enclosed motorcycle; enhancing food with sounds; and a braille camera for the blind #
YouTube - Awesome CNN Hologram Interview - whoa. Reason enough to have an election, if you ask me... #
Writing as sense-making: "I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it." - David Foster Wallace #
Dean Kamen on the interesting way they score the FIRST robotics competition - "We work really hard to 'ambivalence-scale' our competition, as we call it. We create a competition where there's a lot of luck added to it. The rounds are only 2 minutes long; the scoring system isn't particularly fair. It favors, throughout each round, the underdog...We did everything we could to make it fun enough that if your robot didn't win, it's not a personal thing. " #
High-speed photography of a parrot in flight - if I could design something 1/100th as elegant, I'd be ecstatic. Nature does it for free... #
Discount Dead On Annihilator - crazy tool with a great name. Axe, nail puller, demolition hammer, chisel, wrench...and bottle opener. #
"I scarcely spoke at all for two years. I couldn't be completely free of words, but my wife had to talk to people for me. I didn't want to say anything, make any sounds, until I was pretty sure what those sounds meant and why I wanted to use them." - R. Buckminster Fuller, explaining his two-year silence. #
A fascinating biography of Buckminster Fuller. I didn't know about his self-imposed isolation, a la Thoreau: "Fuller moved his wife, Anne, and infant daughter, Allegra, to a one-room apartment in a Chicago slum, withdrew completely from all friends and social contact, and vowed not to speak again until he really knew what he thought. And then he began to think. His virtual silence lasted for almost two years..." #
How to make a globe - I love this video. #
Fun gallery of wild Dutch bike designs at the Designhuis exhibition. My favorites: the Giant Downtown, with integrated handlebar lock; a bike you connects two bikes to make a 4-wheeled vehicle; a dinky little recumbent trike; a slick carbon recumbent; a rowing-action pullcord drivetrain; and an internal-drivetrain suspended recumbent. #
Wattzon - Profile Summary - bobryskamp - my personal energy use. Averaged out, I use roughly 11,759 watts of energy, all the time. That's 118 100-watt light bulbs burning constantly...or 2,627 gallons of oil per year. Ouch. #
Wattzon - perform your own energy use analysis. Built by Saul Griffith, whose own energy analysis I found fascinating... #
"The starting point for a new way of thinking is to give up the fantasy that there was once a golden age to which we can return. What might have been a golden age for one segment of society was a time of torture for other segments." - Fred Taylor. Good to keep in mind as we watch our most recent economic golden age crumble... #
It's striking to me that the place Christianity is growing fastest--China--is where it is limited by law to churches of fewer than 25. #
Immersive design - "The immersive design process attempts to describe two simultaneous entwined tasks: 1) To design intact worlds that are coherent, have interior logic, contain history, geography, surface, metaphor and story, and allow an audience to be fully immersed in both environment and story. 2) To put in place a non-linear immersive process that provides a fully collaborative, often virtual production space for creators and the work that they are creating." Coined by Alex McDowell, production designer for Minority Report, Fight Club, etc. #
Melee - looks like a nice distributed/digital brainstorming app, virtual sticky notes; supports clustering and prioritizing as well...will be released in a couple days #
Manta Bicycle Saddle - it's certainly different... #
One Dollar Diet Project - a couple lives on a dollar a day each for food. #
Toyota's "Winglet" personal transporter - I like this thing a lot; like a Segway you can carry around. #
"Don't just do something, sit there." - Zen saying #
Sleeping in a room with a fan lowers a baby’s risk of sudden infant death syndrome by 72 percent. Wild. #
The ZAP Alias seems similar in approach to the Aptera, but with a shape that seems more palatable today. #
SuperUse, a new PBS show about designers building things from found waste. "Generally, architects...make a final design and then find the proper materials to make the vision real. But what we do is look at the materials that are there and incorporate them in the project that we have...so it's kind of backwards thinking." #
ThinkGeek :: MicroFly Tiny R/C Hovering UFO - looks like way too much fun. #
"Thus even though our knowledge is expanding exponentially, our questions are expanding exponentially faster...In fact, it’s a safe bet that we have not asked our biggest questions yet." - Kevin Kelly. Exciting stuff--I'd agree that the questions seem only to be getting bigger: climate change, world economies, the web. #
MamaMikes.com - cool service that allows you to send payments and gifts to anyone in Kenya and Uganda; everything from flowers to cell phone minutes to fuel vouchers. Meant mostly for the African diaspora... #
Very slick: a zero-energy humidifier made of water-resistant paper that forces water into tiny droplets, which evaporate more easily. A good cooling strategy as well... #
Kevin Kelly's final statements about what the web will be in 5000 more days: "There is only One machine. The web is its OS." Sounds really similar to the Islamic Shahada...coincidence? I also like his earlier quote, that "We have to get better at believing the impossible." #
Free University in Internet - despite his grammar woes, this guy has uploaded and organized hundreds of videos on Google to create his own online "university". Awesome. #
Halloween contact lenses - way too tempting... #
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand; And a Heaven in a Wild Flower; Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand; And Eternity in an hour." - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence #
Always push the bees the way they want to go - Gerald Cooper. As Russell says, about the best advice you'll hear anywhere. #
"Imagine, as a thought experiment, that everyone on the planet had the same share of the world's resources. It turns out your share is about six acres (2.5 hectares) of dry land. Now imagine if that were your whole world. How would you treat it?" - My little world (and yours, too), an interesting thought experiment that shows how radically we need to change our lifestyles in the developed world. #
WorldChanging: Thriving on Earth ForeverAn interesting quote in the comments: "If plastics will be here for 50,000 years, how are we going to learn to live with 50,000 years of bad design decisions?" I think the assumption is that we won't have to--that we'll be extinct by then. But what if we aren't? What if we survive? #
Nashville pumps dry after panic about rumor of no gas - a self-fulfilling prophecy...these videos of the situation are like a glimpse into the future... #
The Temples of Damanhur are an amazing set of underground buildings carved over 30 years, in secret, beneath an utterly unremarkable Italian country home. Wow. #
A motto for our times: "Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul. " - from The Machine Stops, by E.M. Forster, a pretty good prediction of the future from 1909. #
mobaganda* - world's simplest event invitation website. No registration, no nonsense. #
Nice overview of the sustainable design process (PDF). From the upcoming book, Design is the Problem #
"The important thing is not to stop questioning…. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein #
Innovation is "invention that sells" - Larry Leifer #
YouTube - IF Mode - Pacific Cycles - finally, a full-size, cool-looking folding bike #
Interesting: because we take in so much more information than we realize consciously, we make decisions based on feelings, not thoughts. "Traditional models of affect posit that ... first we decide what we think, and then we decide how we feel about it. However, the evidence ... indicates that the real order of things is likely to be the reverse of this... what we feel about something tells us what we think." #
A good summary of 10 creativity "paradoxes" from Csikszentmihalyi's Creativity, which I took notes on earlier. #
It's a trap! Off to the woods! "This is a stunning moment in economic history...today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel)." #
I do a lot of staring into space, so this was good news: "[Scientists have] demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections...'If your mind didn't wander, then you'd be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now'" #
"Think of a world where everything is by default on, where the 'record' and 'capture' button is replaced by 'pause'. And then re-imagine the Airplane Mode. Intentionally or not, it's a little switch with a big future." - Jan Chipchase #
Kevin Kelly doesn't think that technology is duping us because the most technical people embrace it most. But I don't really agree with his premise - "By this logic we should expect the least technologically cultured people to be the least duped, and to be the most aware of the plainly visible dangers...But, in fact, those disenfranchised people not under media’s spell are often the most eager to trade in the old for the new." I think there's probably different types of technology that dupe us in different ways...and some are more dangerous than others. #
Long-term X Prizes - pretty huge problems to solve, if you've got some free time...everything from a cure for AIDS to flying cars... #
Vote for Change - pretty slick voter registration system; created by the Obama campaign but useful for anyone. #
Cycling - News - Universal Sports - new site streaming cycling races both live and archived. World Championships on now! #
"Justice is what love looks like in public" - Cornel West, via the powerful-looking film Call + Response, about human trafficking. #
"Communication always changes society, and society was always organized around communication channels. Two hundred years ago it was mostly rivers. It was sea-lanes and mountain passes. The Internet is another form of communication and commerce. And society organizes around the channels." - Vinod Khosla #
"Around the time that we went public we disclosed in our filing that Beanie Babies accounted for 8 percent of the inventory on the site." - Pierre Omidyar on eBay #
"I made a list of 20 different products that you might sell online. I picked books because books are very unusual in one respect. And that is that there are more items in the book category than there are items in any other category, by far...having a bookstore with universal selection is only possible on the Web. You could never do it with a paper catalogue....and you could never do it in a physical store." - Jeff Bezos #
The history of the Internet - as told by its inventors. Pretty cool... #
The invention of email: "[Ray Tomlinson] said, I need some symbol that separates the name of the recipient from the machine that the guy’s files are on. And so he looked around for what symbols on the keyboard were not already in use, and found the “@” sign. It was a tremendous invention." - Vint Cerf #
"Consequently, whoever he is, that, owing no man any thing, and having food and raiment for himself and his household, together with a sufficiency to carry on his worldly business...seeks a still larger portion on earth; he lives in an open, habitual denial of the Lord that bought him." - John Wesley lays it down #
Avatar is an upcoming 3-D (stereoscopic) film by James Cameron. He describes the process of making it in this interview with Variety. I liked this tidbit: "Small displays will especially benefit from stereo because the small size of the screen can be offset by using Z-depth to stack information...In the future world shown in 'Avatar,' all display devices, including handheld devices and even photos, are all in 3-D." #
Why Apple doesn't do "Concept Products" - a good post and discussion around the wisdom or folly of creating concept designs, especially releasing them publicly. The author's law: "A commercial company's ability to innovate is inversely proportional to its proclivity to publicly release conceptual products." #
An interesting perspective for those who deem themselves "experience designers": "It is important to understand that, for Dewey, no experience has pre-ordained value. Thus, what may be a rewarding experience for one person, could be a detrimental experience for another...The value of the experience is to be judged by the effect that experience has on the individual's present, their future, and the extent to which the individual is able to contribute to society." - 500 Word Summary of John Dewey's "Experience & Education" #
The oak beams - or, "how to run a culture" #
Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD on Vimeo - skateboarders bombing down the hill behind my house...which is scary on a *bike*. #
San Francisco Twilight Criterium - this Saturday at 8pm, should be cool. #
Fat Cyclist » Blog Archive » Exclusive: Lance Armstrong Returns to Pro Racing! (Plus Insider Reactions) - of all the Lance second coming articles, I think this one's probably the most accurate. #
Prototyping 3d objects with balsa wood - basically, cut out thin slices and glue them together. Nice outcome though, and looks more sturdy than foam. #
"We are naturally reverent beings, but much of our natural reverence has been torn away from us because we have been born into a world that hurries." - Macrina Wiederkehr #
How to read a movie, by Roger Ebert. Includes a jam-packed paragraph on cinematography and emotion, as well as a description of "reading a movie", where you pause frequently to discuss a shot or scene as a group. #
The Long Now Foundation - Seminars About Long Term Thinking - all of these look tremendously interesting. Off to one on Tuesday evening... #
Beloit College Mindset List - each year Beloit publishes a set of "cultural touchstones" that its entering freshmen share. Fascinating to see the world from the perspective of someone younger... #
I love this poem...and especially the first line: "The people Jesus loved were shopping at the Star Market yesterday..." #
Hidden radio - in the era of the iPhone, sometimes "no user interface" is a refreshing way to go. Reminds me of the Muju CD player as well. #
"The one thing on which we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor...and God is with us if we are with them." - Bono #
Profiles: A Man of Taste - how one of the world's best chefs created food when cancer took away his ability to taste it. "Achatz hopes that, ultimately, the months he has spent without his sense of taste will make him a more creative chef. Regulars at Alinea praised the food that he prepared during his radiation treatment. This worried him; he thinks it suggests that [before cancer] he was cooking timidly." #
Shredding on a Keyboard - really clever; the game JamLegend (a GuitarHero for the web) suggests you hold the keyboard sideways like a guitar. #
Using Real Options to Value Design Concepts - interesting way to value concepts: plot out all possible outcomes, with probabilities and values. This way you can compare the development options as well as evaluate the concept overall. #
This is pretty wild: "Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self...people are disproportionately likely to live in places whose names resemble their own first or last names (e.g., people named Louis are disproportionately likely to live in St. Louis)...people disproportionately choose careers whose labels resemble their names (e.g., people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among dentists)." I also like the name of the paper: "Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore" (PDF). So how many people choose careers based on their names? Approximately 1% #
Quickrelease.tv » The Best (and Worst) Bicycle Saddles Ever - including some I hadn't yet seen #
Saul Griffith, "Energy Literacy" - fascinating talk on measuring and calculating the energy needed by individuals and all humanity, and what we need to do to meet it. #
IFTF's Future Now: The case for human-future interaction - "At its core, human-future interaction would be the art and science of effectively and ethically communicating research, forecasts, and scenarios about trends and potential futures...[there is now] a growing view of the future as a medium that anyone can affect and co-create, and less as looming inevitability to be passively consumed. #
Walls made from discarded plastic bags - since recycling them is less than desirable, why can't we use them for something else? Looks like urban art to boot... #
"People who write books, people who work in universities, who work on big projects for a long time, are on a diverging course from the rest of society. Slowly, the two cultures just get further and further apart." - Neal Stephenson. So how do I get on that course? Stephenson, by the way, works for Intellectual Ventures. #
"You can't have art without resistance in the materials" - William Morris #
ZuiPrezi zooming presentation editor - might be fun for documenting brainstorms, actually. #
Love-ability is a key to Sustainability - I want to work at the intersection of sustainable and beautiful design...these tips seem a good way to get there. #
Finding Paths through the World's Photos - gorgeous way of browsing through a 3d world made up of thousands of people's photos. #
How I talk about my job - I think I've used all those options, actually... #
Korean artist Yeondoo Jung took children's drawings and built the scenes in real life. Time to dig up my childhood sketches, I think... #
Cool: Bike Furniture Design - "Welcome to Bike Furniture Design, the preeminent designer and producer of fine, hand-crafted, contemporary / modern furniture made from recycled and reused bicycles." #
Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets - the amazing taste-changing fruit, now in convenient tablet form. Anyone for a lemon-eating party? #
Berkeley Public Library :: Tool Lending Library - With Amazon and the web, I haven't been to a library in a long time. That's about to change... #
When General Motors Was Dreaming - wild concepts from the 50s. Wonder if the wildness of the concepts was caused by--or caused--the booming business they used to have? #
Infrastructural Branding - making logos/names integral instead of slapped-on. #
Volkswagen to Make Limited Edition of 1-Liter Car (282 MPG!) in 2010 - nice to see the big manufacturers getting up to speed on efficiency. #
Thallium-Doped Lead Telluride - Try saying that five times fast. Apparently it can turn heat into electricity twice as efficiently as any other material, and might be able to reclaim heat from car engines to power them further. #
Gravity Bikes - stripped down BMXs with fairings, meant for going downhill only. Check out the videos and pictures, and how to build your own. #
IKEA provides free bicycles and trailers for hauling your stuff home - But only in Denmark so far: "About 20% of IKEA's customers ride their bicycles to the stores - even though most of then are located outside the cities. IKEA in Denmark has now introduced a free bicycle hire scheme with VELORBIS bicycles and trailers. You can borrow a bicycle and trailer to take home your newly purchased items." #
Liv'it Fly Shelf Projection Screen - slick; it rolls up into a shelf when you're not using the screen. #
Environmental Constraint = Better Quality - A major motivator behind my own environmental constraint: "Time and time again we see that when we reduce environmental harm, we end up producing better-performing, higher-quality Patagonia garments. And sales of those improved garments often enhance our business health and profitability." Includes lots of good examples. #
"Eritrea has, sadly, a long history of civil war with Ethiopia. They got their freedom in 1992. There are lot of land mines. As a result, at the University of Asmara in Eritrea, I'd say maybe 25 percent to a third of the students are missing a limb. Those who are missing legs cannot get up the stairs to the second floor or the third floor. No questions asked, the students just carry each other. I've never seen anything like it. Very naturally, somebody offers you his back and you climb on it and he takes you up to the next floor." - Tom Campbell #
Flash Cards Gone Mental | Mental Case - "RSS for your head" - set it to create flash cards from things you want to remember... #
The world's ten oldest jokes - I think you probably had to be there. #
Block Posters - finally, an online utility to blow up photos nicely across many standard size sheets of paper. #
"To be an industrial designer, you have to be three people at the same time. You have to be the crazy person. Then you have to be the person who reviews those crazy ideas and says, 'no, not that, and not that either.' The third person has to be the observer who stands off to the side and manages that process." - Syd Mead #
Infinite OZ | Tin Man | SCIFI.COM - a beautiful immersive experience. Like living paintings you fly through... #
A dump truck that's a work of art. Amazing. #
Shoreditch tricycle race benefits social entrepreneurs - D'oh! It's the week after I leave London..."it's a pedal powered race of epic proportions, mixing the glamour of Monaco, the endurance of Le Mans and the idiocy of adults attempting a street race on children's toy tricycles" #
Nike Ultimate Ignition SS V-Neck - there's something cool about taking something really simple to a performance extreme. Like a t-shirt. #
Tony Blair on his role in world events - Surprisingly humble: "Truthfully, the British prime minister has limited power to affect this. Maybe 80 years ago he did. The only way I affect it is by persuasion. And by giving people a sense of strategy and a plan. No one outside the US president has meaningful levers in their hands." #
"Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the 'one thing necessary' may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed." - Thomas Merton #
A design company posts their business plan online - Nice philosophy: "So what about people stealing our ideas? Well, the 'how' of how we do it isn't as much of a competitive advantage honestly...It's just technology, and eventually everyone gets the same stuff anyways. It's really about people and process." #
Two Things Design Experts Do That Novices Don't: design lots of different concepts and reframe problems to be solvable. Cites two interesting studies, How designers work (a Ph.D. Dissertation) and Expertise in Design (PDF). #
Cool Tool: Sleeptracker Pro - "... a wrist watch that monitors your sleep cycle from barely asleep to REM by tracking a succession of small bodily movements." A watch with value beyond telling the time... #
"It's heavy to drag, this big sack of what you should have done...But Now has arrived and is looking straight at you." - William Stafford #
Wow. "The Acropolis was besieged twice during the Greek War of Independence, once by the Greek and once by the Ottoman forces. During the siege the Greeks were aware of the dilemma and chose to offer the besieged Ottoman forces, which were attempting to melt the lead in the columns to cast bullets, bullets of their own if they would leave the Parthenon undamaged." - Wikipedia #
BBC - Dragons' Den - people pitching investments to highly entertaining venture capitalists. #
GM is making a big bet on electric. Yes, they tried this once before...but never with this much effort. These sink-or-swim turnarounds are fascinating to me... #
The Jesus Sutras are scrolls from early (7th century) Chinese Christians. They interpret stories of Jesus in a Chinese Buddhist/Taoist context (e.g. Jesus saves people from karma)...looks fascinating. Here's an interesting discussion about Christian and Buddhist similarities and conflicts. #
"Everything has been created out of sea-mucous, for love arises from the foam" - Lorenz Oken, seen at the Hayward Gallery #
High-res Video using Still Photos - this is amazing stuff. "Object removal" near the end makes me think the era of trusting video footage is near its end (still photos, of course, have lost all credibility) #
Flying past Saturn - Looks...lonely. (best viewed in Quicktime Player) #
Tofu packed in baloons, japan. - Beautifully elegant. Come to think of it, tofu could come in any shape...where's the creativity? #
Sliding Liberia - "A story of war, peace, and surfing". Looks great. #
Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno on the future...in 1993 - "15 years ago some of these predictions were far more outrageous than today, and some are more outrageous today than back then." Sounds like a fun thing to do with friends. #
Yvon Choinard on fly fishing (video) - "You have to look at a river and be able to read a river like a rock climber reads a rock...[and] match that with the right fly. It's not about catching fish, it's all about adapting yourself to where you're worthy of catching the fish. It's not about catching the fish, it's about the fish catching you." #
Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto? - good intro into Google's work in Africa, and Nairobi specifically. #
You can now add items from any web site to your Amazon wish list. It's already where I look first for most things anyway. Now, if they'd only improve the wish list UI itself, it'd be perfect. #
The new Radiohead video was made without cameras--just laser-traced 3d data. Try the viewer they used to do the "filming", and imagine movies made this way--you could choose where in the movie's world you wanted to view from! #
Air pollution helium balloon - like an ambient orb for the entire city. Try ignoring that! #
How To Tell A Story - nice concise tips. Most everything is a story in one way or another...so useful for most work. #
How an art museum visit inspired the design of the Air Max 1 - "Had I not seen the building, I might not have suggested we expose the air bag in the shoe" #
Visual thinker - except for the Spanish, this could have been one of my exams... #
Enduring ideas - interesting timeline of business strategy and operational frameworks. I wish more of them were described and annotated (only 2 are)...but perhaps they will be in the future. #
"'I just don't know what to do next,' [said] the choreographer...Gower [Champion, famous director] replies 'Well do something, so we can change it!'." - Michael Johnson Talk Report - Upcoming Pixar #
Conversation with Michael B. Johnson of Pixar - Part 1 - really great insight into Pixar's process, through talking about their tools. #
"Too much debate about scriptural authority has had the form of people hitting one another with locked suitcases." - N.T. Wright #
Nintendo Wii MotionPlus - the Wii gets another motion controller for more accurate pointing... #
Dark night sky over Death Valley - warped a bit to make a rectangular panorama, but still cool. #
How to design thrilling experiences: "In the beginning, my work was more conceptual, strategic. But recently, I've been getting jobs where I do have to design or choreograph the ride. I'm not designing what a particular ride might look like; it's more like creating storyboards of the way a ride will feel." - Brendan Walker #
The rest of Markus Kison's work is great as well: Folding Polaroids to make a 3d scene; live webcams projected onto static 3d cutouts #
Invisible Memorial in Dresden - very cool secret experience; assume the position of someone cowering from the Dresden bombing and you can hear the sounds through vibration. #
Kodak Zi6 | Uncrate - $180 HD pocket camcorder... #
My ideal notebook - just refill with A4 sheets whenever you run out! #
YouTube - Train Runs Through Bangkok Market - Fastest. Market setup. Ever. #
BC Bike Race || a Seven Day Mountain Bike Stage Race from Victoria to Whistler, BC, Canada - the race that would deliver the singletrack I just posted about... #
Quorn | About Quorn - got to be the meat substitute I love in the No-Meat Treat #
"The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer." - Zadie Smith #
YouTube - Kinetic sculpture at the BMW Museum (full lenght) - like a living cloud...and would be the coolest 3d prototyping tool ever, though they only hint at that. #
Video of Train Plowing Deep Snow - man, one of these would have made Michigan winters *much* more interesting...also see 9 other railroad snowplows #
Notebook Portable Grill - beautiful folding charcoal grill #
Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb - this looks awesome. One of those things you can't believe they let people do... #
"So long as you live as a Christian you keep looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life." - Henri Nouwen. Sounds like a good life for a designer... #
Rosetta Stone Claims Infringement - I thought this must have been a spoof headline; after all, copying (ok, via translation) was the whole point of the real Rosetta Stone. #
Wimbledon TV watchers cause a power surge in the UK - " A 1,400 megawatt spike - equivalent to 550,000 kettles being boiled - was recorded at around 9.20pm, as the Spaniard lifted the trophy...National Grid spokeswoman Isobel Rowley said the surge was huge because fans were so transfixed by the tennis, they could not move from the sofa to switch the lights on until the end." It was a pretty great match. #
Telling description in the Lonely Plant entry for The Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour: "Tour length depends on drinking time." #
Scenario planning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - in-depth description of it as a science; I'm mostly interested in how you visualize the futures you foresee... #
V&A Building Trail - Victoria and Albert Museum - the museum has several "trails", meant to guide you through the huge collection. Here's another good one. #
Aerial --- tailored emotional experience - interesting design consultancy...focuses on designing emotional experiences. And it's based in London, so there's lots here to explore... #
Oakland Museum of California - while we're visiting every single museum in London, I never knew there was one in Oakland. The current exhibit, Birth of the Cool, looks...cool. #
Cool bike racing cartoon on YouTube - the final sprint is very stylized...but looks just like they feel in real life! More here. #
The Tri-bot is an omnidirectional, three-wheeled toy robot controlled with a tilt-sensing wand. This seems more interesting to hack into than robotic dogs... #
"Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. The more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world." - Etty Hillesum #
"Long time no see" is an expression created by Chinese dock workers trying to speak English; it's now used commonly by native English speakers - Wikipedia #
"An estimated 300 million Chinese -- roughly equivalent to the total US population -- read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese." - WIRED #
Freehold Or Leasehold - we saw several "leasehold" flats for sale in Notting Hill today and wondered what you were buying with that...not much, it turns out. #
Marginal Revolution: The secrets of *Lost*, revealed - spoilers and speculation included, of course. I love this notion; reminds me of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth. What better way to build a new story than on a framework tested for millenia? #
Fireworks, lightning, and a comet - all in the same photo. Who needs tv when you've got a sky like that? #
When pro mountain bikers can't stop talking about great singletrack, it means a trip there is in order... #
Giant drawings in sand. Here's more. Awesome. #
"All the political, religious, and moneymaking institutions' power is built upon those institutions' expertise in ministering to, and ameliorating, the suffering, want, pain, and fears resultant upon the misassumption of a fundamental inadequacy of life support on our planet and the consequent misfortune of the majority of humans" - From "Cosmography" by R. Buckminster Fuller, 1983 #
Anil Dash: Bill Gates and the Greatest Tech Hack Ever - "Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria. That, effectively, is what Bill Gates has done." #
The feel-good YouTube video of the year - and a neat statement about people around the world. #
Very cool sketch notes - without concern for overlaps, which just make them more interesting... #
X-bike - very cool concept bike, via Bicycle Design #
Unicycle.com :: Products :: Ultimate Wheel - who needs a seat...or two wheels. #
Global Nomadic Expatriates - interesting to read about while trying it out ourselves... #
And yet: "We are seeing the growth in what could be termed a new aristocracy. Their emphasis on the home and family, on personal fulfillment and the environment are all testament to this new way of thinking." - Guy Salter, chairman of luxury-brands firm Walpole #
I knew it--it's a trap! "Being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed." - Daniel Kahneman #
SEED 3 Sketchnotes - Much more organized than mine. Larger pullquotes, sketch of each speaker, varying "fonts". Pretty slick. #
Product Design - WSJ.com - Nice in-depth report on the design process #
Amron Experimental - cool little design concepts, like a toothbrush+rinse tool and a money clip made from, well, money. #
Consulting Wisdom - most apply to other jobs as well #
this is a working library - beautiful blog design #
The Highest Popping Toaster in the World - and it's in *my* city. Seriously, I love this over-the-top stuff. #
Amazing record player animations - Takes advantage of the RPM of the record player. Mesmerizing... #
"Many companies enjoy packaging their goods inside nasty materials covered in gaudy graphics.That's because many companies are controlled by crazy people." - Help Remedies #
June 21: the summer solstice? Yeah, but more importantly: Go Skateboarding Day #
Indentured advertude - "advertising where you are held hostage to look at it and you know all it's doing is paying for the crappy experience you're having." #
::whike:: - "This recumbent bike can take advantage of the wind to propel itself, while still allowing cycling (if there's no wind)." #
Lexon Around Clock - acquire - clever way to show time, with a single rotating cylinder #
Extreme Instability - wild photos by a professional storm chaser; check out "Images by year" #
Images of Fly Geyser - man's most beautiful mistake? #
Lonely panda - hee hee. #
I love how the finish line cameras can't deal with spokes spinning so fast. Also, my old friend Kirk O'Bee continues his winning ways... #
"It's a terrible world, and modern parents are trying to cocoon their kids as much as possible...What better way to protect them than wrapping them in nostalgic brands?" - Alfred Kahn. Spoken like a true marketer. #
Mystery on Fifth Avenue - a truly awesome treasure hunt designed into a house by the architect. Every product should be so intriguing... #
Scenius - "like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes." The growing science of collaborative work. #
The carbon footprint of food - "83 percent of emissions came from the growth and production of the food itself. Only 11 percent came from transportation, and even then, only 4 percent came from the transportation between grower and seller." #
J.K. Rowling on the value of failure - "Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged." #
SURFWISE the Film - about a family of 9 who dropped out of the system and surfed all day. Plus a cool website... #
Incredible interview with Werner Herzog - detailing his wild exploits, including midgets, volcano bombs, and getting shot (starts at 30:00) #
Cultures collide - via my new favorite site, The Big Picture #
Incredible photos of the Chaiten Volcano eruption - the electrical storm photos look like a doomsday movie. #
Sunset on Mars - somehow this makes it much more real. Big version #
Seriously, the dancing prison will become a landmark in world history. Seriously. #
The Height Gap - "A survey of some six thousand adolescents in the nineteen-sixties showed that the tallest boys were the first to get dates. The only ones more successful were those who got to choose their own clothes." Hmm...what if you're really tall, but still have trouble choosing your own clothes? #
Spending on Happiness - "Can money buy you happiness? Yes--so long as you spend the money on someone else." #
An interesting way to measure the value of subjective experiences - for an item costing four times as much as another, "Would you recall, with fondness, the experience of one four times as often as the experience of the other?" #
"[Negative numbers] darken the very whole doctrines of the equations and make dark of the things which are in their nature excessively obvious and simple." - Francis Maseres. I spent so much time learning about negative numbers growing up, and just realized how ridiculous it all was. #
Jeff Bridges still has the coolest website around. #
Santa Fe 1 hour opera - very cool concept, introductory opera in a format that doesn't scare people. Wonder if that technique could scale to other culturally intimidating experiences? #
How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight? Hee hee...and, 19. #
Why bother living green? - "Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can't prove that it will." - Michael Pollan. Reminds me of Daniel Engber's reason: "to create a cultural climate that's more conducive to significant global change". #
"We do not think our way to right action. We act our way to right thinking." - David Milch #
Wow! The Miracle Fruit, a Tease for the Taste Buds - "The berry rewires the way the palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so, rendering lemons as sweet as candy." #
REGIONAL» Blog Archive » Self-portraiture and emerging artistic consciousness in Dafen - amazing what Chinese reproduction painters can do when turned loose... #
YouTube - Spaceless in Action - pretty slick furniture concept to fold things into the floor... #
"If markets were costless to use, firms would not exist. Instead, people would make arm's-length transactions. But because markets are costly to use, the most efficient production process often takes place in a firm." - Ronald H. Coase, Biography. So as markets become less costly to use, do firms disappear? #
Free nature-friendly home plans - pretty cool business model, offer designs for free and partner with material suppliers and builders for revenue. #
Now the ethanol frenzy is making high-fructose corn syrup and movie tickets more expensive. I wondered while reading The Omnivore's Dilemma if the environment would end up forcing us to be healthier...looks like it might. #
Photos from Luminale 2008, an artistic festival of lights across the city of Frankfurt. #
The Littlest Big Bang | Popular Science - one theory of the universe is that it is a 3d world suspended in a 4d superstructure...so what might that 4d structure be? #
The Write Stuff? | Popular Science - very cool pen that records and transcribes your writing, and also records audio in 3d via two earbuds you wear! #
Alien activity in Africa? - nope, just salt ponds. Wild colors though... #
For those (like me) suffering from disaster fatigue: the China earthquake really hurt and the news keeps getting worse. Deny your fatigue a bit by donating for relief. #
"Prayer is not introspection...Prayer is the presentation of our thoughts to the One who receives them, sees them in the light of unconditional love, and responds to them with divine compassion." - Henri Nouwen. One neo-interpretation of prayer is as simply a meditative, time-boxed personal practice; Nouwen rejected that, seeing it as a constant conversation. #
Crocs Santa Cruz - crocs comfort + canvas casual #
"Today, a person standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building on a cloudless night would be unable to discern much more than the moon, the brighter planets, and a handful of very bright stars--less than one per cent of what Galileo would have been able to see without a telescope." - The Dark Side: The New Yorker. I'm really interested in how this affects our thoughts about the universe beyond us, as Kottke notes, and how we might reclaim our sense of wonder about it. #
"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - EB White. Amen to that... #
"[Will Wright's] car was a mess, inside and out; Wright never washes it, because he wants it to look like one of the banged-up starships in 'Star Wars.'" - The New Yorker #
Why smokers are happier when cigarettes cost more - because it gives them an excuse to quit. Wonder if the same will be true for gasoline and driving? #
PlasticsEurope > The World in 2030 - somewhat standard futurist outlook...the interesting thing was that this was the first time I looked at it and thought "But who would want that?" I'm already an old curmudgeon... #
Whoops, quoted that one wrong: "Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night." William Blake - The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Though, swapping reading for eating isn't such a bad trade... #
How the mortgage crisis happened - nice explanation in a 1-hour radio program. #
Jet-powered wingsuit - I really want to fly...but this looks a little crazy. #
Microsoft TouchWall can inexpensively turn any flat surface into a multi-touch display - apparently still just a demo...but a nice one! #
"The argument is that divisionalization allows you to have general managers who then make operating decisions that are fast moving. The problem with that is if the customer wants an integrated experience it now looks like they're looking at a federated experience." - Eric Schmidt #
Nick Bostrom's home page - more from the futurist who hopes we don't find life on Mars. #
WorldChanging: Don't Just Be the Change, Mass-Produce It - the designer's role in sustainability? #
Doodles: A Really Giant Coloring and Doodling Book - very cool concept: don't just color inside the lines, draw on top! #
Feel-good story of the day: World-famous violinist plays in Newark airport parking lot #
Why it's good news if we don't find evidence of life on Mars - it would mean we have a chance of future life on Earth. #
WWJ Newsradio 950 - Creative Economy Gets Access to State Tax Credits - I've said it before and I'll say it again: Michigan is past due for a major creative revitalization. All that talent and infrastructure could be very powerful...if they could just fix that snow problem. #
Hulu - Pet Chow: Saturday Night Live - hilarious! #
The Gegenschein is "a rarely discernable faint glow [that] can be seen 180 degrees around from the Sun in an extremely dark sky" #
bookofjoe: Transparent Post-It Notes - interesting, lends itself to overlay uses. Looks pretty wasteful though, if it's plastic. #
"Insight could be orchestrated...They had different backgrounds and temperaments and perspectives, and if you gave them something to think about that they did not ordinarily think about...you were guaranteed a fresh set of eyes." - Malcolm Gladwell, reporting on Intellectual Ventures, an "invention company". #
"A scientific genius is not a person who does what no one else can do; he or she is someone who does what it takes many others to do." - Malcolm Gladwell, channeling Robert K. Merton #
A Final Farewell - WSJ.com - more on Randy Pausch, including some fascinating stories since the lecture. The book sounds good too... #
"[My chapters] start with a Shakespeare quote for two simple reasons. One, to remind everybody that most of what science has to tell us about human behavior already has been divined by writers with great insight. Science helps us confirm which writers were right and which were wrong, but it rarely tells us something that a writer of Shakespeare's caliber didn't come up with first." - Daniel Gilbert #
"I guess it seems a bit ambitious to ask practitioners in an emergent field to suddenly take on responsibility for marketing and strategy and all that colossal headache but I'm convinced that some sort of Experience Design will become the master discipline for businesses that want to be good at selling stuff." - Russell Davies #
"I'm telling an old myth in a new way...I guess I'm localizing it for the end of the millennium more than I am for any particular place." George Lucas, commenting on how Joseph Campbell's work influenced his films. #
A modular, self-assembling robot - Andreesen says it well: "Don't fool yourself -- they're coming for us" #
Timeline of the universe - pretty awe-inspiring stuff. And the culmination of this is...reality TV? I don't think so... #
Amazon on advertising in their boxes: "Amazon.com shipments are opened virtually 100% of the time." I wonder where the "virtually" came from... #
"There's a reason we talk about 70/20/10, where 70% of our resources are spent in our core business and 10% end up in unrelated projects, like energy or whatever. Actually, it's a struggle to get it to even be 10%" - Larry Page on trying to get Googlers to spend time on speculative projects #
"We had all this internal risk we had just invented. It's not that we were going to starve or not get jobs or not have a good life or whatever, but you have this fear of failing and of doing something new, which is very natural. In order to do stuff that matters, you need to overcome that." - Larry Page on his fear about starting Google #
Don't know why I bothered biking all the way up Mount Diablo, when I could have just gone there with Google Maps #
Dairy ratings according to sustainable practices - including animal treatment and organic methods. Aka, who to buy your milk from. #
"When we enter meditation, it is like a 'mini-death,' at least from the perspective of the ego...In this sense, meditation is a mini-rehearsal for the hour of our own death, in which the same thing will happen." - Cynthia Bourgeault #
slowLab > slow design - a movement to design for the "slow" lifestyle: Reveal, Expand, Reflect, Engage, Participate, and Evolve. #
The New York Times > Real Estate > Interactive Feature > First, Hide the Bed - narrated slideshow about making an incredible space out of a tiny studio apartment. Slide the bed under the floor! #
"In the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, [his four-year-old daughter] jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen...She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, 'What you doing?' And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, 'Looking for the mouse.'" - Clay Shirky, on how computers fundamentally change how we view media; we expect that we can interact with it and change it. #
"Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat." - Clay Shirky. I know that's how I use tv... #
Omnisio - an interesting way to watch videos, especially presentations. Better in some ways than being there live... #
Experience gifts - all in New York, but good ideas in any case. #
"[In fifty years] there won't be any designers. The designer of the future will be the personal coach, the fitness trainer, the nutritionist. That's all." - Philippe Starck. Sounds like the Experience/Transformation Economy to me... #
Street Use: One Gate, Multiple Locks - interesting idea; by stringing locks together the ability to open any single lock can open the entire gate. #
"She walks in beauty, like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes" - Lord Byron #
edun LIVE: organic t-shirts and blank t-shirts made in sub-Saharan Africa - Bono has a t-shirt company? #
Super-offices - "At the rate at which flat screens are expanding while dropping in price, one could put together one of these modern super offices in a few years." Ah yes...but what would you put on the screen? #
Using newspaper page numbers to deliver more information - a fact for every page...nice surprise. #
Enkin: navigation reinvented - pretty wild; overlays map data on a viewfinder to annotate the real world. One reason I'm excited about Android... #
"Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy." - Miyamoto Musashi #
A Protected Night Sky Over Flagstaff - imagine looking up in prehistoric times and not knowing what was out there. Heck, it's awe-inspiring even today. Here's another, over Sweden #
Trek Ends Relationship With Greg LeMond - maybe this means LeMond bikes on sale? I'll pick up a few more... #
"Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don't want to just collect more fuel." - Brad Bird #
"I said, 'Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.' A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well." - Brad Bird, explaining how he fought "complacency" at Pixar during its most successful time #
Desiging New Technologies for a Better Life - "Polak discovered how important affordability was when he sold two kinds of lug wrenches to Somalian donkey-cart owners. One was a $12 wrench with a lifetime guarantee, and the other was a $6 wrench that would soon break...the donkeycart owners preferred to buy a wrench they could afford today, to make more money for tomorrow, than a wrench they would have to save for, and risk going out of business from a flat tire in the meantime." #
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken #
"The train was delayed, and for hours I sat there thinking and thinking and thinking...The irony is I almost always have pen and paper; I write all the time. And on this one occasion when I had the idea of my life, I didn't have a pen. For four hours my head was buzzing."How J.K. Rowling came up with Harry Potter #
Photo Essay: Unlikely Places Where 'Wired' Pioneers Had Their Eureka! Moments - where television, Netflix, quantum electrodynamics, and Harry Potter were conceived. Notably, none in a brainstorming session...or even at work. #
Tour of Gondwana - Post-Tour Index - pretty amazing stories from an in-progress, 3+ year tour of all the continents originally part of Gondwanaland (South America, Africa, Australia, India, etc) #
"In 1994 Jo Ann Ussery found herself in the market for a new home...When she was looking for a mobile home, her brother-in-law Bob Farrow, an air traffic controller at Greenwood Airport, suggested she might look for a retired jetliner." - And she did. Oh wow, here's more airplane homes. And they're offered by a company named Max Power (previously) #
Cool Tool: StrechCordz Short Resistance Training Belt - love it--a bungee cord does a better job than a $20K endless pool #
American Originals: Letter from Fidel Castro, as a young student, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 #
Weekend YouTube fun: Pre taped call in show, Orphan game show, and The Audition #
Cellphones - Third World and Developing Nations - "As a family's income grows -- from $1 per day to $4, for example -- their spending on I.C.T. increases faster than spending in any other category, including health, education and housing...'What people are voting for with their pocketbooks, as soon as they have more money and even before their basic needs are met, is telecommunications.'" #
A House Not for Mere Mortals - New York Times - "Its architecture makes people use their bodies in unexpected ways to maintain equilibrium, and that, she said, will stimulate their immune systems." #
"I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers. Poets are our original systems thinkers: they look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand." - Sidney Harman #
What CEOs read - it's not business books: Steve Jobs once had a huge William Blake collection; Phil Knight has an Asian art and poetry library; Michael Moritz mentions Seven Pillars of Wisdom; Dee Hock's favorite is the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. "If there is a C.E.O. canon, its rule is this: 'Don't follow your mentors, follow your mentors' mentors'" #
"So I've got a god in the room here. I know a lot about gods and I have found what god this is by the way it behaves. This is the God of the Old Testament: a lot of rules and no mercy. And if he catches you picking up sticks on Saturday you're finished" - Joseph Campbell, talking about his computer #
"Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life." - Joseph Campbell #
Pretty cool recumbent trike...yep, I'm on that kick again. #
"If you took a poll of primitive man, happiness would be getting a fire to light more easily. But we've expanded our horizon, and that kind of happiness is now the wrong thing to focus on. Extending our knowledge and casting a wider net of consciousness is the purpose of life." - Ray Kurzweil, searching for things to do with technology. #
"We've made great strides in integration, yet I think we'll be integrating into a burning house...and we're going to just have to become firefighters" - Dr. Martin Luther King to Harry Belafonte, just before his death 40 years ago today. #
New designs for British coins - H.O.T.T. Definitely need to get a full set of these in London this summer. #
"Government is the way we inject values into our economy" - James Gustave Speth, arguing that our market economy needs government controls (especially financial ones) to avoid tragedies of the commons like pollution. #
Great review of life ("Outside") as if it were a game - Eerie how well it maps..."On the whole, Outside is overrated, and many gamers will find themselves forced by friends and family to play it against their will, but it still deserves a high rating. I give it 7/10, and look forward to improvements in future patches." #
"I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact. Everything I designed was unnecessary...I want to find a new way of expressing myself ...design is a dreadful form of expression." - Philippe Starck, voicing the new designer's dilemma. #
"Nobody knows anything about themselves because they're all worried about everybody else." - Jack Johnson - Wasting Time #
Washington Phillips, gospel music pioneer - apparently no one can figure out what kind of instrument he's playing. Listen for yourself at Rhapsody. Totally unique...again via Alex, who guesses it was "a music box, plucked like a mandolin." #
Lincoln the innovator - "As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country." #
NONOBJECT Design Fiction : Behind the Scenes Camera - fun concept design; a camera that takes two pictures at once, one forward and one backward. #
Exercises for your brain - some, like showering with your eyes closed, I've tried with hilarious results...in general though, this sort of sensory exercise seems really interesting. #
Kidsave - Because Every Child Needs a Family - organization connects US and international orphaned kids to US families for short-term (and possibly permanent) stays. #
"Possession is becoming progressively burdensome and wasteful and therefore obsolete." - Buckminster Fuller #
The Vatican's mortal sins, circa 3508 A.D. - "3. THOUGHT LARCENY, or the pilfering of another person's ideas through telepathic technology. Such thievery violates the sacredness of the individual conscience." #
Holophonic sound (go try that now) plus stereoscopy a la U23D plus gestural interactions via via projector/tablet or Nintendo Wii hacking = ??? #
A sneaker sanctum - "In downtown Boston, there is a sneaker store that is concealed beyond what looks like a cigarette and candy hole in the wall...You enter a cramped little store, there is a guy surrounded by lotto tickets and cigarettes...You must approach the Coke machine and if you get close enough, it disappears every so suddenly...and you are admitted to the inner sneaker sanctum." #
Leica Camera AG - Service - m8upgrade - Finally, someone working against planned obsolescence--upgrade your digital camera instead of replacing it: "The M8 is designed to deliver professional results over many years. With the M8 Upgrade Service you have the possibility to upgrade your LEICA M8 with the latest technological developments." #
Bitstrips: Comic Builder - pretty cool Flash tool for storyboarding #
Interesting research on philanthropy and matching gifts - "The existence of a matching gift did very much matter [in soliciting more donations]...But the size of the match in the experiment didn’t have any effect on giving. Donors who received the offer of a one-to-one match gave just as often, and just as much, as those responding to the three-to-one offer." #
Picasso "was a marvelous, funny, nice guy to be around, but you'd find by the end of the day [that you] were totally nervously exhausted; that everybody around him had suffered from nervous exhaustion; and he, at the age of eighty or eighty-five, would go off into his studio, strutting off into his studio, and would work all night on your energy." - John Richardson #
Ah, so that's how Semco lets people set their own salaries--they're public knowledge in the company and your coworkers have the power to fire you if they don't think you're worth it - YouTube - The Caring Capitalist - Brazil #
Water Lilies - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - wait a minute, Monet started impressionist painting at the same time he had cataracts? Somehow that seems like cheating... #
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon - one of Picasso's first cubist paintings, said to be inspired by African tribal masks #
The World’s 50 Best Works of Art (and how to see them) - some fascinating stuff #
"Never own more than you're prepared to lose in a shipwreck" - Turkish proverb, through Pete Postlewaite #
Timberland Men's Canvas Rippler Slip-On - another simple eco-shoe, like the Toega...though I'd prefer it done without leather. #
Paint an object you want--then sell the painting for the price of the object you painted, so you can buy it for yourself. #
How to run a great company in two easy steps: 1) Hire only the right people; 2) Treat them like adults. #
YouTube - Wireless neckband allows first voiceless phone call - another step closer to telepathy... #
"From the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the townships of Johannesburg to the garbage dumps of Mexico, tourists are forsaking, at least for a while, beaches and museums for crowded, dirty — and in many ways surprising — slums." - Slum Visits: Tourism or Voyeurism? #
"McGonigal presented a forecast (to 2013) of some of the most plausible scenarios she and her colleagues expect in the coming years: 1) Quality of life will become a primary metric for evaluating experiences; 2) Positive pyschology will become a principal influence on design; 3) Communities will form around different visions of a "real life worth living"; 4) Value will be defined as a measurable increase in real happiness or well being, what McGonigal calls 'the new capital'." - SXSW2008: Jane McGonigal - Keynote #
"Laggards have a bad rap, but they are crucial in pacing the nature of change. Innovation requires the push of early adopters and the pull of laypeople asking whether something really works. If this was a world in which only early adopters got to choose, we'd all be using CB radios and quadraphonic stereo." - Paul Saffo #
The Girl in Qatar - crazy henna hand tattoos #
Berkeley/Alameda County Hazardous Waste dropoff center - got a few non-Method products that need a safe home... #
"The highest form a civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust." - Charlie Munger #
General Overview of What's In America's Trash - from the EPA. Paper and yard trimmings make up almost 60%. #
An interesting diet plan made just for you from biological indicators: "Bannock...created my plan after running me through a series of tests that included genetic biotyping, blood and urine analyses, and metabolic screening. He asked me to collect saliva samples during a typical day to track hormonal patterns and had me fill out a lengthy questionnaire. With that data, Bannock crafted a list of foods that targeted my cholesterol, food sensitivities, caloric requirements, vitamin and mineral needs, and glycemic-index targets. In other words, a diet just for me." #
Big love is a renewable building material, says Clay Shirky. Like the Ise Shrine in Japan which is rebuilt -- out of love -- every 20 years. Turns out the longest lasting things don't have an enduring edifice, but an enduring process. - CT2 #
Some gems from the most recent Bike Biz magazine: the folding Zed city bike, a new take on an foldable helmet. #
Marginal Revolution: What books should you read on Africa? - enough to stay busy for a while... #
"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." - Proverbs 13:12 #
Sample Syllabi: Academic Programs - Syllabi for classes on blending contemplative practice into work and life. #
"I believe that an organic and functioning city is nothing more than a machine for producing confrontation with the Other." - Adam Greenfield, objecting to how technology can create an echo chamber of our own beliefs instead of broadening them. #
"When infant eyes absorb a world of virgin visions, colors are processed purely, in a pre-linguistic parts of the brain. As adults, colors are processed in the brain's language centers, refracted by the concepts we have for them." - Wired. Basically, how you see color depends on what language(s) you speak. #
Cool Tool: Six Great Long-Distance Bike Trails Without Cars - multi-day bike tours entirely on bike paths? Where'd I put my tent... #
Six Principles for Making New Things - "I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly." - Paul Graham #
From the "didn't see that coming" department - "In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com is abandoning its effort to outshine Internet search leader Google Inc. and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives." #
Chemirocha - a song recorded in 1950s Kenya as a tribute to country singer Jimmie Rogers. "Rodgers' records were the first to be heard in this part of Kenya and the name came to mean anything strange or new. The similarity of his guitar sound to the local lyre meant that a whole legend grew around him: he was supposedly a friend of a local musician and also a faun descended from the god Pan, half man and half antelope." - Hugh Tracey archive (via Alex) #
"In order to read many books, buy just a few." - Juan Ramón again. #
"In order to disorder my inner life, I have to tidy up my outer one." - Juan Ramon. Reminds me of Flaubert's "violent and original" quote. #
Not Star Wars: SkyWalker 12-Foot-Tall Bicycle Probably Requires Jedi Abilities - ok, so I guess my bikes aren't *that* big... #
"I should emphasize that we do not measure the progress of our investments by what their market prices do during any given year. Rather, we evaluate their performance by the two methods we apply to the businesses we own. The first test is improvement in earnings, with our making due allowance for industry conditions. The second test, more subjective, is whether their 'moats' - a metaphor for the superiorities they possess that make life difficult for their competitors - have widened during the year." - Warren Buffett, in Berkshire Hathaway's 2007 letter to shareholders #
History of war through food - wow. #
Public neutral tech support - watch out, Bobby Julich is out to steal your wheels! #
Escaping the Entrepreneurial Seizure: Interview with Michael Gerber - "Entrepreneurs invent businesses that work without them. Technicians create businesses that work because of them...81% of all businesses in the US employ no people besides the owner. They’re sole proprietorships. True entrepreneurs are never sole proprietors." #
Design Strategy - California College of the Arts - an MBA in design strategy... #
Bomberos - the calm look on their faces says a lot about these kids who tow on carts behind trucks in Peru #
YouTube - George Carlin's famous stuff routine - "If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house--you could just walk around all the time! That's all your house is--it's a pile of stuff with a cover on it." #
Adobe Tour Tracker - really an amazing web app--and the content ain't bad either. #
Absolut Quartet: robots making music with ping pong balls and brandy glasses - Engadget - gorgeous, and perhaps an easier option than hiring this guy to play the glasses for you. #
Emotiv Systems - upcoming $299 mind-reading headset... #
Standardizing Your Profile Across Social Websites | White African - well, looks like the lazyweb is alive and well: an effort to standardize online profiles around a single profile you own, just like I asked for the other day. #
INDIGO snowboard - I love the stainless steel inlay with the bamboo board... #
"It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light" - G.K. Chesterton #
BabyPlays Toy Rental Program - Netflix for toys! #
modu - make new connections - tiny mobile phone that plugs into other devices to power and connect them. #
One-line mission statements - Walt Disney: "To make people happy"; 3M: "To solve unsolved problems innovatively" #
The Obree Postiom (mk 2): "Superman" Position - man, that brings me back. It was a really uncomfortable position, but pretty fast... #
Headed to the Tour of California prologue! #
Voyager Golden Record - a good description of the effort to summarize Earth on a single disc. #
"Face time trumps Facebook" - how the tech-savvy are retreating from online lives and using tools like Facebook as merely utilities--not destinations. #
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL): Synthetic Fuel Concept to Steal CO2 From Air - fascinating. One step closer to cars that clean the air as they drive, instead of polluting it. #
russell davies: the magnificent seven and the double-deckers - Double-deckers sounds more fun... #
Spent the morning trying to manage several online accounts and "profiles", each with different settings, some impossible to change...ridiculous. Managing my real life is hard enough. #
Proctor and Gamble's Connect + Develop program solicits ideas from outside the company for development and partnerships. "By 2000, it was clear to us that our invent-it-ourselves model was not capable of sustaining high levels of top-line growth," wrote Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab. P&G hadn't changed their development model since previously moving from a centralized core to one that leveraged its global offices. Now CEO A.G. Lafley says that 50% of new products should come from outsiders. #
Anomaly - a new type of branding agency. Sure, they'll do your ads, but they'll funnel the profits into creating their own brands to compete. When they reached their self-imposed limit of 100 people, they spun off an autonomous clone of themselves. (from the March 2008 Fast Company, not yet online) #
Why do companies "greenwash"--market their products as more sustainable than they really are? Perhaps because "genuinely going green would mean giving up most of the products and services that clutter our consumer culture...until we are collectively ready to really go green, greenwashing will be with us," David Roberts #
"It's pretty well accepted that at the point at which the usual human being gets pronounced dead, all their cells are alive. It's a very eerie question: if all their cells are alive, what is death?" - Lance Becker, director of the Penn Center for Resuscitative Medicine. #
"Garbage is useful stuff in the wrong place" - Alex Steffen. Does that make it an information problem? #
Nokia remade - phones made entirely from reused/"upcycled" materials, including cans, tires, and bottles. #
SuperCook - The Intelligent Recipe Search Engine - enter what you've got in the house, it chooses recipes for you. #
"Paper is no longer the master copy; the digital version is." - Brewster Kahle #
"This means that a household in which both parents work part-time on their careers and part-time looking after children and the home does not make rational economic sense. Two halves are much less than a whole." - Tim Harford #
Ouch. "The logic of comparative advantage highlighted something that most men--except economists--have found it hard to get their heads around: there is no reason to believe that men were breadwinners because they were any good at it. They might simply have been breadwinners because getting them to help around the house would have been even worse." - Tim Harford #
MAKE: Blog: 7,200 bananas - well, now I know what that looks like. #
Kodak Knows a Little About Dying Business Models - could a 1600-page-per-minute printer create custom newspapers and save that industry? #
Insane Superhuman French People - 3 amazing videos of dance and acrobatics #
Pixar - Lifted - the perils--and power--of advanced interaction designs #
1959 buick convertible - Google Image Search - ooh...a contender for my classic car dreams? #
Soft as a Rock - Baekdal.com - very cool, pillows that look like giant rocks. #
Several pics of Mazda's recent concept vehicles - they're really on a roll...I hope some of them make it to the streets. #
Bloomberg Terminal manual (PDF) - about 80 pages of keyboard shortcuts. Now that's a power application! #
HEXBUG Micro Robotic Creatures - can walk around, sense bumps, and change direction on command. #
Data for the "paper or plastic" choice - paper was much worse than I thought, especially the energy required to "recycle" it. The real answer? Bring your own. #
Using Google to settle African land disputes - "Google can even get you a picture of a mulalo urinating on the Kabaka's tree or a government official forging the kyapa [title] to the Kabaka's land. So all that monkey business - with due respect to the nkima clan - will be no more" #
History of Religion - the religion map is pretty interesting too. #
5000 years of Middle Eastern empires, animated - entire empires I hadn't heard of... #
iPod 1.0 | Shorpy :: History in HD - listening for planes in pre-radar days #
Tour d'Afrique Ltd. - Bicycle Race & Expedition Company - bike tours the length of Africa, across Asia on the Silk Route, and on the Orient Express route. Wow. #
Frozen Grand Central at Improv Everywhere - beautiful, really. #
Skooba Design :: Superbungee Strap : Travel Accessory - cool stretchy replacement strap for sling bags #
bookofjoe: Slippery Low-Friction Tape - looks like fun #
FreedomFiler - a good way to organize personal files? Could some of the principles apply to digital organization as well? #
Netflix: Flex To The Max - "And what happens when someone doesn't live up to expectations? 'At most companies, average performers get an average raise,' says Hastings. 'At Netflix, they get a generous severance package.' Why? Because Hastings believes that otherwise managers feel too guilty to let someone go." #
Bonobos Store :: active styles :: clarks - a pants startup. This is what you get when you encourage MBAs to start companies...at least they're cool pants. #
Portfolio - Crossbreed folding bicycle wheel - not sure how inflatable tires would work, but interesting. #
Green Roofs - GreenGrid® Modular Roof, Rooftop Garden, LEED - build your own green roof #
Inhabitat » Amazing Green Roof Art School in Singapore - beautiful arch design #
"I think the president has to say very credibly and forcefully to the American people that [they] have to think hard about their definition of the meaning of the good life, that hedonistic, materialistic society of high levels of consumption, increasing social inequality is not a society that can be part of the solution of the world's problems. And, therefore, the president has to project to the American people a sense of demanding idealism. Idealism which is not based in self-indulgence, but on self-denial and sacrifice, and on this such an America is going to be credible to the world." - Zbigniew Brzezinski (video, with Kissinger and Scowcroft) #
Catalog Choice - Eliminate unwanted catalogs you receive in the mail - help reduce the 53 million trees used for paper catalogs each year. You've still got the internet, after all... #
collision detection: Paper explains how the "engineering mentality" produces terrorists - interesting...engineering can certainly promote universal solutions rather than local diversity and uniqueness--and thus further intolerance? #
"Work is love made visible." - Kahlil Gibran in The Profet #
MBDC | Cradle to Cradle Certification - good criteria for designing sustainable products #
"The way [Bob] Blaich had design at Philips organized, under one big office, with a team built around each brand or project, and designers moving around between teams, that's a model of design management I've always liked. It's tough; companies go through periods of time when they're centralizing everything, and periods of time when they're decentralizing everything. There's never a right answer over the long term, only for a certain period of time. But Philips seemed to handle this well." - Rob Pew, Steelcase chairman #
IDSA Ecodesign - great links to eco/green-design materials and tools #
Commercial Real Estate - City of Alameda California - hmm...works for Squid... #
"Childhood capacity for work is one of the best predictors of adult mental health and the capacity to love" - How Can America's Rich Teach Their Children the Value of a Dollar? -- New York Magazine #
"What, I ask Stratyner, do the most distressed rich kids fantasize about when it comes to their family money? That they didn't have it? 'Rarely,' he answers. 'They're not stupid.' Having less? 'No, not really.' So what, then? He thinks for a long moment, then finally gives an answer. 'That they'd made it themselves.'" - the plight of the super-rich #
"At [age 11], I was quite certain I would someday be a famous cartoonist for newspapers. I imagined it quite clearly. And when my career later took a turn toward cubicles, I woke up surprised every day that I wasn't already a well-known cartoonist." - Scott Adams #
magdeburg water bridge - Google Image Search - that seems a bit indulgent...although apparently it eliminated a 12km detour. #
"We've agreed that on any major decisions the three of us agree." - Eric Schmidt on working with Larry and Sergey #
Cool patterned bike tires - reflective too #
The Simple Life (Eller) 3 - some interesting thoughts on simple living for Christians: "The motive of Christian simplicity is not the enjoyment of simplicity itself...the sole motive of Christian simplicity is the enjoyment of God himself--it is 'the view of the stars,' 'the contemplation of the heavens rather than of fireworks'...More specifically, Christian simplicity is so to use 'things' so that, first, they do not interfere with one's absolute joy in God, and, second, they actually point toward and contribute to that joy." #
Paleo-Future: Disposable Clothes Just Around Corner (1961) - "Part of the problem is one of salesmanship. Disposable clothes are still a novelty and command novelty prices. In addition, the American public is still hamstrung by the idea that waste is bad." #
Hunt Rettig: Film & Looped Paper Sculptures - now that's pretty. #
"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it." - Walter Chrysler #
Michael Ball from Rock Racing deals with sponsors pulling out - I'm starting to like this guy..."We just got another phone call from another sponsor who is wavering. And go! See ya. I don't care. I'll buy all the equipment. I'll make my own. Next! And guess what? I'll make it better, cooler, and I'll take your market share." #
Richard Gregg: The Value of Voluntary Simiplicity - "The essence of personality does not lie in its isolated individuality, its separateness from other people, its uniqueness, but in its basis of relationships with other personalities." Hadn't ever thought of it that way, but he's right. Our personalities only matter in relationship with others; their relative differences are less important than their shared traits. #
Richard Gregg: The Value of Voluntary Simiplicity - nice split-screen content + footnotes layout as well. #
Richard Gregg: The Value of Voluntary Simiplicity - "It would be consistent with a real awareness of human unity if I should invite into my house for a meal and a night's lodging a starving man who has knocked at my door. But if my rugs are so fine that I am afraid his dirty shoes may ruin them, I hesitate." #
"Design is a response to social change" - George Nelson, Herman Miller's lead designer in the 1940s #
"There were three reasons why we survived. We had no money, we had no technology, and we had no plan. Every dollar, we used very carefully." - Jack Ma #
Inside the billionaire service industry - "'If the income inequality persists, we could end up with real armed camps, like in South Africa.' She said she was increasingly aware of the tension between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots,' and she described a surge in demand among the ultrarich for real estate in out-of-the-way places such as New Zealand and rural Argentina--expensive insurance policies in case things go haywire for some reason at home." #
YouTube - Let's Paint,Exercise,& Blend Drinks TV! - I still think this is the funniest thing on the internet. #
St. Teresa's Prayer - Ahh... #
In Praise of Idleness By Bertrand Russell - "Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever." #
The Simpsons - The Land of Chocolate - hee hee... #
Cycling the PCH - "I have learned a new phrase the bikers use along the coast. It is 8 and 8. That would be 800 mg's of Ibuprofen every 8 hours." Good tip to keep in mind for my trip... #
"An honest empiricist must conclude that while the open approach has been able to create lovely, polished copies, it hasn't been so good at creating notable originals. Even though the open-source movement has a stinging countercultural rhetoric, it has in practice been a conservative force." - Jaron Lanier #
Pultius TV remote control - 20 inches long, with a key for every channel between 1 and 100. Now that's usability! #
wrapping up 2007 (28 December, 2007, Interconnected) - "The more effort we put into driving well manually, the less need there is for robots. So we don't get flocking cars and we have to work harder. That's the story of the 20th century, if you ask me." #
"Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand." - Confucious #
Listening: Alone: The Home Recordings Of Rivers Cuomo 1992-2007. Loving "Longtime Sunshine". #
A "minimal bar" - "Vodka, Gin, dry vermouth, tonic, cranberry, Triple Sec, olives, Rose’s, soda." Also suggestions for "basic" and "well-stocked" bars. #
"Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an e-mail." Eliot Spitzer. #
What one man learned from saving his trash for a year - "The vast vast vast majority of trash comes from food packaging. Packaged food is less nutritious, on the whole, than fresh food. Packaged food, ounce for ounce, is often more expensive than fresh food. I've learned that making less trash, by consuming less packaged food actually makes me healthier and wealthier." #
Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less - pretty interesting recipes...10 minutes is about my limit. #
BNET Book Brief: The 4-Hour Workweek - great video summary of the book; well worth watching. #
Felt Bicycles 2008 - some more cool city bikes...man, these things are springing up everywhere. #
Elkhide Sewn-on Bar Covers - pretty slick, nicer than any tape I've seen. #
Brodie - 2007 - very cool city/commute bike, simple and slick. #
TED | TEDBlog: Why design? Philippe Starck on TED.com - "With billions of people who have been born, worked, lived, and died before us, these people who have worked so much, we have now bring beautiful things, beautiful gifts, we know so many things. We can say to our children, OK, done, that was our story. That passed. Now you have a duty. Invent a new story. Invent a new poetry. The only rule is, we have not to have any idea about the next story. We give you white pages. Invent. We give you the best tools, the best tools, and now, do it. That's why I continue to work, even if it's for toilet brush." #
"You must and will go on at all costs including comfort and health and kicks; but keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy." - Kerouac to Cassady #
Once - Music From The Motion Picture on Yottamusic - actually great music from the movie, which was fun as well. #
Why do teenagers take too many risks? - "It turns out they estimate the costs of drinking and drug-taking pretty accurately, they simply see the benefits as higher than older people do." #
adaptive path » sketchboards: discover better faster ux solutions - interesting pre-wireframe prototyping technique; take the giant sheets of paper filled with sketched ideas to your team for early concept feedback. #
FREE RICE: FEED HUNGRY MINDS, FEED HUNGRY MOUTHS - play a game, donate rice. They're doing so in a way that lends itself to one more "bottom line"--you could use the linguistic results to power a natural-language computing engine. #
"Sometimes incompetence is useful. It helps you keep an open mind." - Roberto Cavalli. Well, that's always been my strategy. #
Corporate Design Foundation - Interview with Michigan's Governor - Jennifer Granholm a designer? This plus Detroit's resurgence makes for interesting prospects... #
Detroit: the new Wild West for creatives - whenever I'm back in Michigan, I do think it would be a great (and cheap!) place to start a company...from the article: "It's a familiar story: pioneering artists and creatives move into an abandoned industrial area, infuse the place with creativity and the life that only the right-brained can bring, and within years you've got a revitalized, hip (and no longer affordable) SoHo, Berlin, Billyburg or DUMBO." #
How to edit your OS X hosts file - the command in Terminal: sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts #
"I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable." - Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad #
Taking things seriously - Caring more for fewer things may be my favorite way of avoiding consumerism and building sustainable products. #
SimpleDB from Amazon - let Amazon handle your database as well as your files and hosting! #
Photo: Steve Jobs at home in 1982 - "This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had." - Steve Jobs #
2007 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards - more great high- and low-tech inventions. #
Windbelt - Third World Power - Wind Generator - WAY cool way to generate electricity by harnessing wind on a micro or macro scale! #
Disappearing Car Door - nice rethinking of the car door... #
Regret the Error » Crunks 2007: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections - the best jokes are those you don't intend to make... #
"The ugly corollary is that there might be a time when an industry isn’t yet ripe for UX, when a technological solution with a poor UX is still economically advantageous and competitively viable...The opportunity is to identify when an industry and organization is ready for engaging in UX." - Brandon Schauer #
Niti Bhan: Design for an emerging world - A reason for designers to cultivate simplicity in life? "The world class designers are all who practice in conditions of abundance. They create with no shortage of materials, funds, resources, fuel or energy. If we need to design products and systems under maximum constraints using minimal resources...where better to begin seeking answers but amongst those who already live under these conditions?" #
"By the time most scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things.... Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice." - Francis Crick #
OLC = One Less Car - pretty interesting plywood bike...some drivetrain and steering innovations as well. #
These Time-Management Issues Will Be Easily Resolved With A Series Of Streamlined Meetings - are "organized" and "efficient" actually opposite concepts? This one hits a little too close to home. #
What stock options actually "cost" companies - "From an economic standpoint, stock options are a transaction between the employee and existing shareholders and the true 'cost' is represented by the potential dilution of their interest in the company...there is no 'expense' to the company." #
Want to stave off aging? "Look for opportunities to practice standing on one leg." Funny how the most basic things in life (like standing up) can fall out of practice in our imbalanced world. #
Products with more than one main feature risk alienating customers, who prefer more focused products in many cases. #
UPS used computer modeling to optimize their routes - including minimizing left-hand turns, proven to waste time and energy, especially across 95,000 vehicles daily. #
MoMA Store - 3D Drawing Pad - looks like fun #
Futuristic movie interfaces would also be good wall-inspiration. #
The evolution of Apple product design - worth printing poster-size, I'd say... #
Exercising Common Sense - 10 common sense--yet often ignored--parts of transforming a company (or group). Good as a checklist when trying to do so... #
Springwise: Ready-to-cook meals delivered to busy urbanites - finally, I've been looking for this for years. Now I just have to more to Singapore... #
PressDisplay.com - Newspapers From Around the World - interesting service...plus the homepage adjusts to fit your screen resolution. Looks incredible on my 30" screen... #
Cool suspension wheel by Dahon - uses a floating axle to provide 12mm of suspension. #
"Had Sony targeted consumers in established markets, the pocket radio would have bombed. But for teenagers, the alternative to a Sony pocket radio was no radio at all. By competing against nonconsumption, Sony set a very low technical hurdle for itself: The product just had to be better than nothing in order to find delighted consumers." - Clayton Christensen #
"How's this for a mission statement: We make crummy products for non-consumers." - most disruptive innovations start out as poorly-executed products for people who currently aren't buying anything, writes Clayton Christensen #
"Incumbents usually see the same technologies that entrants do. Because of their processes and values, however, incumbents predictably 'cram' the technology into the largest and most obvious market applications...The problem with cramming is that it changes the innovation in ways that obviate its inherent disruptive energy. It takes an innovation from a circumstance in which its unique features are valuable to a circumstance in which its unique features are a liability." - Clayton Christensen #
"The initial absolute size of a disruptive opportunity is generally too small to justify any substantial amount of investment or even management" - Clayton Christensen #
HBS Entrepreneurship Conference - looks interesting; will have to follow up, hopefully notes are published. #
Investigating the unknown - "If you look at Sustainable Habitat, some of the product and service concepts are already generating interest, because the notion of sustainability has firmly become rooted in mainstream consciousness,' he continues. 'Two and a half years ago when we talked about this kind of issue people thought we were being alarmist - now it makes perfect sense. That's how quickly the cultural tide can turn, and it shows the value of our probes program." #
Investigating the unknown - why Philips does long-term, exploratory design research: "With probes, we study emerging trends and behavior and examine the link with associated technologies that, in a number of years time, may be relevant for our business. This involves tracking developments in five main areas - politics, economics, environment, technology and culture." #
ThinkGeek :: Electronic Bubble Wrap Keychain - pretty funny, and the every-100th-click-sound is a good example of the "random surprise" that keeps you on your toes. #
How to Become an Early Riser - "The solution was to go to bed when I'm sleepy (and only when I'm sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night." #
The Google Enigma - "Nearly everything the company does...is aimed at reducing the cost and expanding the scope of Internet use...[and] because the marginal cost of producing and distributing a new copy of a purely digital product is close to zero, Google not only has the desire to give away informational products; it has the economic leeway to actually do it...Google faces far less risk in product development than the usual business does." #
The Google Enigma - great article on Google I've been recommending to lots of people. "First...we don't even know whether its approach to management, and in particular its approach to innovation, is a cause of its success or a product of its success - a crucial distinction. Second, we don't know how well Google's example applies to other businesses....Is the company an exemplar or a freak?" Link requires registration but it's worth it (plus it's a good publication). #
My Amazon wishlist, online and in RSS. You know, just in case...oh, and don't buy me books, those are added for other reasons. #
Patagonia Men's Rimu - nice pull-on shoe #
"I've said that to open a novel is to arrive in a music hall and be handed a viola. You have to perform." - Kurt Vonnegut #
"For a lot of people, TV is life itself. Churches used to provide people with better company than they had at home, but now, no matter what your neighborhood life or family life is like, you turn on the television and you get relatives, family...Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that." - Kurt Vonnegut #
"I always say to people, practice an art, no matter how well or badly [you do it], because then you have the experience of becoming, and it makes your soul grow." - Kurt Vonnegut #
FOODPAIRING - tells what foods go together...useful in planning meals? #
Howstuffworks "1961-1964 Cadillac" - cool article on the design evolution of my favorite car #
United Nuclear - Aerogel - buy it online, in powder or block form. Powder is much less expensive; what can you do with it? #
Provisional Application for Patent - $100 buys you a year to sell your idea... #
Advice on licensing product ideas - "I’ve talked to inventors who have been contemplating or working on ideas for years. That’s not me. When I have an idea, it only takes me three days to three weeks to find out if the idea has legs. On average, I recommend that my students take no longer than three weeks to three months before they make the decision to keep working on the project or dump the idea and move onto the next one." #
Kids' paper prototypes for laptops - I want kids to design all my products... #
Canvas Vertical Sling For MacBook Pro : Incase Products - cool laptop bag #
MIT World » : Leading by Omission - "The problem, Semler figures, is that there's 'something fundamental about organizations and...leadership that makes it almost impossible for people inside a business to change their own industry.'" #
Guano Islands Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - wonderful, the U.S. passed a law allowing it to take possession of any unoccupied islands in the world, as long as they're covered in bird poop. #
"More and more, we know more of less; until there will come a time when we will know much of nothing, and nothing of the whole." - George Bernard Shaw #
Marginal Revolution: The end of angst? - I guess most people are not of the same mindset as I#
oobject » crazy bicycles - some really creative and cool stuff! #
What Would Jesus Buy? - looks interesting... #
gladwell dot com - designs for working - Gladwell on the emerging social workspace, and how to physically design it...part of his next book? #
"We stand on the threshold of rocket mail." - U.S. postmaster general Arthur Summerfield, in 1959. #
When speaking publicly, try to avoid ultimatums: Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future #
Tough Spelling Bee - tough kid! #
"We've had the wrong research-and-development strategy. We've been focusing on improving parts of the system rather than focusing on the system as a whole. As a result, we have been improving the parts, but not the whole. We have got to restart by focusing on designing the whole and then designing parts that fit it rather than vice versa." - from Bell Labs #
All prayers should be this humble: "Dear God...whose name I do not know...Thank you for my life. I forgot how big..." Joe Versus the Volcano #
Ride today from Berkeley to Crockett and back - about 70 miles, 4500 ft of climbing. Ouch. #
Nicholas Kristof, from Election 2004: "One of the Republican Party's major successes over the last few decades has been to persuade many of the working poor to vote for tax breaks for billionaires...[John Kerry's supporters] should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates." #
Understanding Customer Experience - "Customer experience is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company." #
Algeria property for sale - Properazzi - just across the Mediterranean from Nice... #
Magnet Skateboards - could they do for skateboarding what clipless pedals did for cycling? Another good link #
"Everybody's debt is somebody else's asset." - Warren Buffett, explaining why he doesn't worry too much about interest rates affecting the overall economy. #
"Stanley designed [the Fubar, a new kind of hammer with an appetite for destruction] because today’s contractors use hammers mostly to break stuff—they drive nails with pneumatic guns." #
U.S. Army enlists anthropology in war zones - "American officers lavishly praised the anthropology program, saying that the scientists' advice has proved to be 'brilliant,' helping them see the situation from an Afghan perspective and allowing them to cut back on combat operations." #
Humour: How To Talk To Non-cyclists | BikeRadar.com - "Non-cyclists aren't ready to hear about your exquisite existence in its unadulterated perfection. No, you will need to translate the sublime cycling experience into terms they might be able to understand." #
A Brief Message: Arrogance and Humility - "Figuring out how to be arrogant and humble at once, figuring out when to watch users and when to ignore them for this particular problem, for these users, today, is the problem of the designer." #
The Right Brain vs Left Brain test - "Do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?" Whoa. #
Malcolm Gladwell on the future of work - "We will require, from a larger and larger percentage of our work force, the ability to engage in relatively complicated analytical and cognitive tasks...Jobs have gotten harder and more demanding. You're still going into the same place and wearing the same clothes, but a lot more is being asked of you...You're going to have to create internal structures that will help people grow into positions." #
"We have given people virtually unlimited access to data, to information; the next question is, can we give them better tools for making sense of that information...I'm quite prepared for the possibility that the next revolution is not going to come from a machine; it's going to come from creating a more thoughtful work force and giving people the opportunity to be thoughtful." - Malcolm Gladwell #
"It seems that the more complex an organization gets, the more likely it is that inefficient and unproductive businesses accumulate in the nooks and crannies and back alley--and sometimes right up there in center aisle. These businesses are subsidized by their cousin, brother, and sister businesses that are doing well, and they stick around for too long because there's a bias against shutting things down." - Richard Rumelt #
"If you ask a group to put aside the bullet points and just write three coherent paragraphs about what is changing in an industry and why, the difference is incredible. Having to link your thoughts, giving reasons and qualifications, makes you a more careful thinker—and a better communicator." - Richard Rumelt #
"I use another tool I call 'value denials.' These are products or services that are both desired and feasible but are not being supplied to the market...A classic example is an airline ticket guaranteeing that your luggage will not be lost. It just isn’t supplied at any price...There are times when we would pay the premium, but those services are not offered." - Richard Rumelt #
"Then in 1998 I had the chance to talk with Steve Jobs after he'd come back and turned Apple around...'Steve,' I said, 'this turnaround at Apple has been impressive. But everything we know about the personal-computer business says that Apple will always have a small niche position...What's the longer-term strategy?' He didn't agree or disagree with my assessment of the market. He just smiled and said, 'I am going to wait for the next big thing.'" - An interview with Richard Rumelt #
Apparently, Tour de France cyclists used to get their drinks by stealing them from stores - "The chasse a la canette? Well, that translates into 'hunting for cans' - drinks cans. Riders would get off their bikes at the sight of a bar, run inside, grab all they could off the shelves and out of the refrigerators and disappear with armfuls of booty which they had no intention of paying for. It was a colourful feature of the Tour de France until the organisers realised that what riders needed was more and not less to drink." #
fietstocht.com - my new hero #
One year by bicycle - Including "the warmup, across the USA...I expect this to be a tough, but not too strenuous ride that gives me a good chance to get both myself and my equipment in better shape." Wow. #
Another unique saddle: the RIDO saddle from the UK #
A couple unique saddle designs: Adamo racing saddle, Moon saddle #
63xc.com--How To | Magic Gear - adapting a frame with vertical dropouts to support a fixed gear...or a coaster brake, like I need... #
"The idea of the program is that a good way to learn about a new idea is to write about it. As someone who's written a lot, I can attest to the validity of that. I've never learned as efficiently about something as when I’m trying to write about it." - Robert Frank . Reminds me of how we remember 95% of what we teach #
YouTube - Sergey Brin and Larry Page: Inside the Google machine - both Larry and Sergey went to Montessori school...interesting (8:45) #
Bret Victor's website - some very fun stuff here. #
Creative Think: Design A New Calendar - interesting thought experiment; I think mine would have 3-day weekends and a day off in the middle of the week as well... #
A nicely broad definition of design - "Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones." - Herbert Simon #
SFMOMA | Exhibitions | Exhibition Overview: Take your time - Olafur Eliasson's exhibit at SFMOMA, with one room of rounded corners and constantly-changing lights, and another of pure yellow light that makes everyone look monochrome. Said of the former, "every time the light changes, you have different ideas." #
ABEC 11 Skateboard Wheels - Flywheels 97mm - giant skateboard wheels...smooth... #
Rosemarie Fiore: Vintage Video Game Long-Exposure Photography // Centripetal Notion - I love seeing things in the fourth dimension; reminds me of Sugimoto's Theatres, where he kept the shutter open for an entire movie. #
Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies // Centripetal Notion - whoa...books cut from the front to reveal layers of imagery and text. Beautiful. #
Patterson Pass ride - another cool climb I haven't done...BART to Dublin/Pleasanton, ride to Livermore #
dead-end bike rides off Skyline Blvd - sadly, have never done these! #
Blue Man Group starts a preschool - "Some schools feel like they've got to rein the kids in," Wink said, banging on a drum the size of a hot tub. "We kind of let them have moments of unbridled exuberance." #
Neatorama » Blog Archive » Family Ditched Car Completely for a Better Life - "Shopping on a bike, says Erick, prompts the question: 'Do we really need an extra box of Crunch ‘n Munch?'" #
YouTube - Soundwagon vw bus - toy bus drives around a record to play it, instead of spinning the record. #
Earth in 250 million years - "The next Pangea, "Pangea Ultima" will form as a result of the subduction of the ocean floor of the North and South Atlantic beneath eastern North America and South America. This supercontinent will have a small ocean basin trapped at its center." Somehow I doubt we'll be around to see it. #
Interesting quote on why individuals should be environmentally responsible - "But the goal of personal (or consumer-based) environmentalism isn't to solve the problem single-handedly. It's to create a cultural climate that's more conducive to significant global change." #
Three factors to organization success - According to McKinsey: "Clear roles for employees (accountability), a compelling vision of change (direction), and an environment that encourages openness, trust, and challenge (culture)." #
Moving On - WSJ.com - "Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things...the brick walls are there to stop the *other* people." - Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch's "last lecture", as he's diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and just a few months to live. #
Rory - Neopoleon : The Loveliest Little Thing - truly all creations should be this thoughtful #
Local Harvest / Farmers Markets / Family Farms / CSA / Organic Food - how to find local organic food #
Farmer's Market - Three in Berkeley, Sat, Tues, Thurs #
9/10 heart surgery patients don't change their lifestyle after surgery, even though the consequence is death. But teaching people "to appreciate life (rather than fear death" causes change 70% of the time. "When even the threat of death can’t make people change their lifestyle sustainably, it becomes clear that motivation based on avoiding something is simply not as effective as motivation based on achieving something." #
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - Dwight D. Eisenhower #
adaptive path » demystifying data analysis - good walkthrough of how to organize and decipher design research #
Slipstreamz - Products - The Spoiler - these things actually work pretty well...I'd say they cut about half the wind noise from cycling, and all the high-pitched hissing. $6 for a lifetime of better hearing on and off the bike? I'll go for that. #
TruVativ Rouleur - finally, a new 180mm crankset that's not $400. Also, this one is just $72 but only takes 1 chainring. Good for TT bikes, perhaps...or commuters. #
Belt drive design - very slick, it uses a special dropout to let you pass the belt through the rear triangle. #
A couple more rides going north from Berkeley: to Crockett and to Napa (80 miles round trip) and Orr Hot Springs (140 miles one-way) #
Creative Generalist - "If you're wondering, a meal at Moto starts with an edible menu and then move on to such delights as liquid salad, noodles made from pureed rice, mac and cheese with quail, a Chicago hot dog with melting mangoes, charcoal, freeze cooked tuna, cotton candy truffles, and sweetened nachos with a chocolate topping resembling ground beef. 'I want you to remember each course 10 years from now,' says Cantu." #
In their own words -- literally - Los Angeles Times - the advantages of inventing a language...or at least a word: "The phenomenon was noted by early 20th century linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. They proposed a theory that language had the power to broaden or constrain a speaker's thoughts. That is, it is hard to think about concepts without the specific words to express them." #
Masters of the Breakthrough Moment - “Teams are a way of making groups more comfortable for men by adapting the language of sports. Groups were about collaboration and learning, but teams can be focused just on winning. This appeals to organizations focused on the bottom line, but the ability of people to make breakthroughs is compromised." #
Masters of the Breakthrough Moment - "Productivity and creativity in the workplace, in their view, occur when members of a group or team wade together into the muck of confusion and unspoken assumptions in order to surface concerns and conflicts that get glossed over in the rush of daily life." #
How to make fire wire with steel wool | Dangerously Fun - "Most people don’t consider steel flammable but steel wool will burn vigorously if you give it enough oxygen. An easy way to achieve this is to swing the burning wool in a wide circle. The result is surprisingly entertaining because tiny bits of material melt and fly off, creating a firework-like pyrotechnic display." #
Kevin Kelly has compiled a list of what he calls True Films -"documentaries, educational films, instructional how-to's, and what the British call factuals - a non-fiction visual account." Some interesting categories are Artists at work and People at work. As he says, "Perfect for Netflix!" #
Wild coincidence in Cambodia - "I found Mr. Niem at the ruins of Angkor Wat. Notice that he also graces the cover of my Lonely Planet guidebook to Cambodia. Mr. Niem could not speak any English so communication was not easy. I do not think he knew that he was on the front cover of a book, until I showed it to him. He was so excited. I had to be careful, as too much excitement might not be good - he seemed like he might be about 200 years old." #
Hiroshi Sugimoto (the oceans photographer) is showing at the SF de Young Museum until September 23... #
The Dilbert Blog: Absence of a Thing - "Recently I was wondering if life as a rock would be superior to life as a conscious entity...Perhaps you think that sitting around pain free would not be enough to make you happy. It would be boring and unfulfilling...But boredom and lack of fulfillment are types of pain. Imagine sitting around doing nothing while having no tinge of boredom, or lack of purpose, or loneliness, or any other discomfort. I think it would feel like happiness. The ideal happy creature would be a rock with consciousness. It would have no discomfort and no goals beyond eroding." #
My library - Google Book Search - made a list of all the books I've read that are currently on the shelves or that I remembered offhand...more to come, I hope. #
An Online Version of Your Library - ok, I didn't notice this before, but the new "My Books" in Google Book Search is...searchable. Well, I know what I'll be doing this weekend..."Probably the most important reason you should build the library is because it becomes searchable. Imagine being able to find a scene from one of your books without knowing its title and by typing some keywords that describe the scene." #
Dori's Moblog: Design As Margaret Mead - "Some of the old Design people sought new lands to explore who they are and what they could do...some of the groups landed in the land of Anthropology [where] some said kill them for they bring disease. Others said we should take care of them and mate with them; we have something to learn from them. The latter group won, but the former group constantly eyed the visitors with suspicion." #
"The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones." - Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, former head of OPEC; mentioned in William McDonough's TED talk #
Cal Cycling - Fruit Stand - fun ride today...though I missed the fruit stand! #
Awesome photo series of Spanish beach tourists helping African migrants, just arrived from a 1000 km sea journey - World Press Photo #
Tents for the homeless in Paris; protects people while raising their visibility - World Press Photo #
9 year old sex worker...and she's (gasp!) smoking! Yeah, our kids, um, sometimes play video games too much... - World Press Photo #
Gorgeous photo of the ocean - I want this 6 feet tall on my wall. Pretty much the opposite of the Tokyo wave pool link. #
Tokyo wave pool packed beyond capacity - Stop the ride, I want to get off. #
Cannondale folding bicycle - Cycle-Licious - Sooo....hotttt. Enclosed drivetrain, single-side fork and rear stays, folding in the middle, saddle on a beam. Please manufacture this, Cannondale. #
"No building ever feels right to the people in it unless the physical spaces (defined by columns, walls, and ceilings) are congruent with the social spaces (defined by activities and human groups)." - A Pattern Language #
Management Methods | Management Models | Management Theories - like a full MBA on a single page. Yikes. #
Sanders Says: Rehearse the future = "Horst Rechelbacher, the founder of personal care product maker Aveda, has a great way of leveraging meditation to sharpen his business effectiveness...He believes that when you internally account for a day's activities it enhances your ability to be more mindful in the future...he's able to keep a perspective about his work that's removed from the frantic pace of real business life. " #
designverb - Tunnel House - just, wow. A conceptual art installation in a house scheduled to be demolished. #
Bearskinrug, The Homepage - really beautiful blog; of course doing custom illustrations for each post helps... #
The real problem with software - "No matter how cool your software is you still use it on a computer, which is fundamentally kinda boring. I've compensated for this a little by working in mobile, so at least you can use my stuff outside. But if you're outside why not climb a tree or something rather than reading news feeds or texting all your friends to talk about climbing a tree." #
Yahoo! Avatars - customize cartoony characters and pose them... #
Simple online comic strip creator - for kids...or me. #
"Stop searching for God and just sit!" - Zen Buddhist quote #
:: PIMPAMPUM :: Bubblr! .:. - create comics by dragging speech bubbles onto Flickr photos #
Seth's Blog: The Galapagos Post Office - "On a deserted beach on a small island near the equator, there's a barrel and some ziploc bags. This post office has been here for more than a hundred years." You drop letters off, someone going the way you need your letters to go picks it up and delivers it for you for free. "Apparently, you can send a letter anywhere in the world and count on it showing up. There's actually a shortage of mail... more people want to carry the letters then write them." #
Two of John Maeda's Laws of Simplicity: Simplicity and complexity need each other. More emotions are better than less. #
ThinkGeek :: Power Strip Space Saver - the "aha" is not the flexible extension for power bricks--it's the fact that the back side still has a plug so you don't lose any space at all! #
"Focusing exclusively on tasks and goals means that you tend to ignore or de-emphasize all of the activities that people engage in that are specifically not goal-oriented. It also means that you will often ignore the messy jumble of activities that take place around but are not oriented toward your system...When it comes to designing for the total experience, the activities that have little to do with the system you are designing are often just as important as those that are central to it." - Todd Wilkens #
Family Guy storyboards - as they put it, "see how the sausage is made." With a lot of effort, it seems... #
Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith - Mother Teresa said she almost never felt God's presence once she began her famous work...she learned to overcome that and even use it as her foundation. "Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear." — to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September 1979 #
Online Book Rental. Cheap Books. Borrow new releases and classics at BookSwim. - Yes! Netflix for books! #
How the Wright brothers tested wind drag before building their planes - benefits to owning a bike shop! #
wyndowe - iinnovate episode 3: David Kelley, founder of IDEO - "[Typical] offices are particularly bad, about status, you know, like who has the big office in the corner. I suggest if you were a business owner, take the crummiest office in the place, then you’ll never have to deal with that. If somebody comes in says they don’t like their office, say 'will you trade with me?'" #
Will Wright buys collections of things and then gives them away - "I'm uncollecting. I buy collections on ebay, and I disperse them out to people again. I have to be like an entropic force to collectors, otherwise all of this stuff will get sorted." #
"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." - William Hazlitt #
Eating Italian in San Francisco - Gridskipper, the Urban Travel Guide - Looks pretty good... #
Ming the Mechanic: Learning to Learn - "It's the old story of a human being able to pay attention to just 5-7 things at the same time...I think we're actually a lot better wired than we readily think. Your sub-conscious mind deals with millions of variables quite well. Your intuition does great with complexity. You probably do have the equipment you need to operate at a much higher level. But it isn't necessarily going to work if you leave your 5-7 bit mind in charge." #
The flip side of Kenneth Boulding/Scott Adams/Spinoza's idea that we are engaged in building a greater intelligence? That we might be part of a simulation for someone who got there first. #
The Books of The Bible | Home Page = "The Books of The Bible is a groundbreaking new presentation of the Scriptures designed to accurately reflect the biblical authors' intentions." Emphasizes the reading of "whole books" by reordering the books, removing chapter/verse numbers, printing in full-page-width and more. #
"Cold sweat" ice cream contains 3 types of peppers and 2 types of hot sauce - "[A customer] said it tasted like 'fire -- with a side of fire.'" #
Amazon.com: Pulltaps Classic Bronze Corkscrew in a Gift-box: Home & Garden - the best corkscrew I've ever used. I use the basic $10 version; this is an upgrade. #
YouTube - (2008) Be Kind, Rewind Trailer - this looks great. #
"Formal education slows down our process of growing up." - makes sense to me, anyway. Most of the "growing up" I've done happened outside of school, when I had to make my own decisions. A commenter adds some positive spin though: "[It] is partly designed to remove young people from the labor force for a period of time - it wasn't until the Depression that most children went to high school, and that was a deliberate policy choice - it employed more teachers, and it kept teenagers from competing for jobs with men supporting families. In some other sense, formal education is designed to slow our process of growing up - we don't require children to show as much responsibility, in exchange for giving them the tools to do better when they do accept adult responsibilities." #
The "Vomit flashlight" - A flashlight that strobes and throws patterns that incapacitate viewers. "There’s one wavelength that gets everybody," says Lieberman. "Vlad calls it the evil color." #
Marginal Revolution: The Persistence of Poverty - "If pains and troubles are high enough, extra pain and trouble just isn't so bad. You hardly notice it. But that overturns standard economic assumptions of diminishing marginal utility..."Getting tough" with the poor through policy is more likely to backfire than succeed, as it just encourages more mean-reducing, risk-taking behavior...It can make more sense to give money to people on the verge of leaving poverty, rather than people deeply mired in poverty. The former transfer will get people onto "normal" marginal utility curves, but the deeply poor will just squander their new wealth, as it doesn't much alleviate their unhappiness." #
Watermelon steak - roasted for 2 1/2 hours... #
YouTube - Barry Bonds #756 - what it was like in the stands, four rows from where the ball landed. Chaos. #
Cooling big buildings with ice - "Credit Suisse's Trane-designed system in the Met Life tower freezes water in tanks at night, when power demands are low, and pumps chilled air via fans by day as the ice melts." #
Side-mounted bicycle pedal - very cool concept #
Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith -- New York Magazine - "Most Americans believe they work more today than they did 35 years ago. Yet according to the American Time Use Survey...Americans now have five more hours of leisure per week (38) than they did in 1965...Americans [also] experience their leisure quite differently and therefore may feel as if they’re working more. For one thing, it’s non-contiguous leisure time, time meted out in discrete increments...we gain 90- second reprieves with our microwave ovens. But do we do anything meaningful in those 90 seconds? Or do they vanish in the same particle puff?" #
Door dwell - The amount of time it takes for the door to close after having boarded an elevator. #
"Pines found that the most-burned-out people were nurses working in children’s burn units--'It was too painful'--and the least were serial entrepreneurs, those metabolic wonders creating companies as if they were baking cakes." - Where Work Is a Religion, Work Burnout Is Its Crisis of Faith -- New York Magazine #
"[E.T.] was probably my most personal film, because it was the first film I had made about something that had happened to myself" - Steven Spielberg. Of course, he meant the emotional parts...I think... #
"I've been afraid of most everything most of my life, so falling in love with fear is something that was in my DNA." - Steven Spielberg #
Steven Spielberg started his career by simply getting off a Hollywood tour bus and walking around the lot. He found an empty office and just set up shop, waving at the guard every day as he drove in... #
"Virtual groups, where people brainstormed individually, generated nearly twice as many ideas as the real groups...In addition, in the studies where the quality of ideas was measured, researchers found that the total number of good ideas was much higher in virtual groups than in real groups." - from The Medici Effect, which I desperately need to read. #
"The other guys think the purpose of communication is to get information. We think the purpose of information is to get communication." - Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder. There's really something to that...if organizing and supplying information is a service, then communication is an experience using that service--a higher-level offering. I think Zuckerberg's limiting this to person-to-person communication though; automated communication be as engaging and useful. #
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: A Question and a Quickie - why not to sell out to merchandising: "Animated movie tie-ins with fast food places are always the same thing: the kid's meals come with a toy from the movie, thus cementing the idea in people's heads that animation is for kids only and that animation itself is cheap, low quality and unsatisfying like fast food. Who wants the public to equate their film with greasy cardboard Happy Meal boxes and the smell of French fries?" #
Smart Recharge Station - unclutters wires; probably easy to build one #
Films for the Humanities and Sciences - Educational Media - The Launch: A Product Is Born - a reality show about a product design firm...too bad this one didn't make it past the pilot. #
Mike Creed » Lame - sounds like Mike Creed is having problems stemming from sitting crooked too. Only his have a lot more miles behind them than mine. #
1/8"x4'x8' Tileboard White - good whiteboard material from Lowes, item #16605 #
Was I right about the dangers of the Internet in 1997? - By David Shenk - Slate Magazine - "Probably the greatest overall threat [of the information culture] is that so many potentially meaningful experiences can easily be supplanted by merely thrilling experiences." #
dezeen » Blog Archive » The Secret Life of cars by BMW - huge report on how people use their cars--especially the little things like gestures between drivers, cupholder use, how multiple couples sit, and more. Truly awesome. #
cabel.name: New! Product Update - Soda with vitamins, mystery-flavor Doritos, and cereal straws. Amazing, the lengths we go to trying to use all that corn... #
Norman Borlaug, a pioneer of the "Green Revolution" who was born on a Cresco farm in 1914, became one of only five people in history to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, Nobel Peace Prize and Presidential Medal of Freedom. Never heard of him? You've probably heard of the others: Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel and Nelson Mandela. Some videos of the man... #
Out Of The Ashes: Lowe's Makes "Katrina Cottages" Available Nationwide - Consumerist - awesome. Smaller homes are a viable market segment; unfortunate that it took a hurricane to expose it. #
Alarm Ring - worn on your finger; vibrates to wake you up silently. #
YouTube - "Thriller" - performed by "1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines". Wow. #
Microwavable custom insoles - not sure how good they are for cycling, but perhaps worth a shot... #
"Far too long, historians have accepted the claim that the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (ca. 285-337) caused the triumph of Christianity. To the contrary, he destroyed its most attractive and dynamic aspects, turning a high-intensity, grassroots movement into an arrogant institution controlled by an elite who often managed to be both brutal and lax." - Rodney Stark #
Markee Dry-Erase Paint - makes something more like a pinkboard than a whiteboard, but it's a start... #
Solutions MB: Eliminate Graffiti - MB3000 Whiteboard Repair - whiteboard paint! #
World Bicycle Relief - another great project using bicycles to change the world. I'm of course a sucker for these things due to my cycling interest, but I do believe that bicycles can have a huge impact on people's lives. #
Rich ethnographic reports about the uses of ICT in low-income communities « Culture Matters - reports from around the world. One excerpt: "all Internet users in the Accra slum studied used the internet only for chat with foreigners (as well as some diasporic family members and friends). There was exceptionally low awareness of even the existence of websites". #
Ben Cohen's Oreo presentation - given at the Global Philanthropy Forum; a good way to visualize our country's financial situation and opportunities. #
The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World plots all human societies on a single graph, with axes for "traditional/secular" and "survival/self-expression" values. #
World Values Survey - "This is a place to learn more about values and cultural changes in societies all over the world." #
"This weekend, Paris placed over 10,000 bikes in just 36 hours , launching an ambitious bike sharing system that is meant to 'lead a revolution in the way Parisians move around the city'." #
"Video is 3 dimensional, because it’s two dimensional—graphic, and the third dimension is time" - Jakob Nielsen #
Nearly 20% of the donations made online to the Red Cross last month were by people using stolen credit cards. - apparently donating to a charity doesn't require an address nor raise the ire of an in-store clerk, so thieves donate to charity to see if the card is valid. Amazing. #
Microsoft's new collaborative design/development space for mobile phone designers; slide 5 looks especially nice #
glumbert.com - Japanese Tetris - this is awesome. Note how the best strategy for getting through is rarely the one suggested by the cutout...but most people try that one anyway. #
Tech Center - very cool new aerobar mounting method; on the faceplace of the stem. #
Tech Center - great article on hacking shorty aerobars for road riding #
» How to Travel the World with 10 Pounds or Less (Plus: How to Negotiate Convertibles and Luxury Treehouses) #
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution." - Albert Einstein #
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: The Secret to Practically Everything (well, duh) - contradicting (or perhaps just extending) Rolf's "just copy" strategy: "It was pretty evident from that exchange that one key to great life drawing is to use the model for inspiration and capture the essence of the model and the pose while using design to make a pleasing picture. That's why my sketchbook drawings work when they do: I am filling in the gaps in my memory, using design to make choices instead of trying to remember exactly what I saw." #
Job holders as servants - "Free enterprise isn't anything like big-corporate capitalism. We've been told the two are equivalent, but that's just another bit of cultural brainwashing...Job holders by definition aren't capitalists. Job holders, no matter how well paid they might be, function merely as the servants of capitalists, just as medieval serfs functioned as the servants of lords. They are beholden. They function in a climate of diminished responsibility, diminished risk, and diminished reward. A climate of institutional dependency." #
James Madison on entrepreneurs Well, farmers actually, but the same statements hold - "The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: They are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself." - James Madison #
Why to Not Not Start a Startup - a good test for whether your company is "big" or not? "If you took a nap in your office in a big company, it would seem unprofessional. But if you're starting a startup and you fall asleep in the middle of the day, your cofounders will just assume you were tired." #
blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Big Companies, part 2: Retaining great people - interesting list; how to fix the problems that evolve as a company grows...in order, "Don't give up [having a startup feel]", "Focus", "Clean house", "Promote your best people", "Simplify and clarify your organizational structure", "Don't rely on recruiters for everything", "Ramp up college recruiting", "Communicate within", "Shake things up". Also, how to keep your great people and how *not* to retain people... #
Clayton Christensen on why it's hard for companies to innovate - and why it's so rare that companies pull it off: "Never does an idea pop out of a person's head as a completely fleshed-out business plan. It has to go through a process that will get approved and funded. You're not two weeks into the process until you realize, "gosh, the sales force is not going to sell this thing," and you change the economics. Then two weeks later, marketing says they won't support it because it doesn't fit the brand, so we've got to change the whole concept. All those forces act to make the idea conform to the company's existing business model, not to the marketplace. And that's the rub. So the senior managers today, thirsty for innovation, stand at the outlet of this pipe, see the dribbling out of me-too innovation after me-too innovation, and they scream up to the back end, "Hey, you guys, get more innovative! We need more and better innovative ideas!" But that's not the problem. The problem is this shaping process that conforms all these innovative ideas to the current business model of the company." #
Clayton Christensen's Innovation Brain - interesting that he puts limits on the iPhone's true success possibility: "The iPhone is a sustaining technology relative to Nokia. In other words, Apple is leaping ahead on the sustaining curve [by building a better phone]. But the prediction of the theory would be that Apple won't succeed with the iPhone. They've launched an innovation that the existing players in the industry are heavily motivated to beat: It's not [truly] disruptive. History speaks pretty loudly on that, that the probability of success is going to be limited." #
Doug Pagitt at Sanctuary - "Second-order faith": to talk about your faith. Real Christianity is lived; reflecting on it, talking about it, and hearing about it are secondary activities. #
Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Innovation - "Always ask the people who are adopting your product or service why they're doing it, then give them more reasons to do it. That is very different from asking the people who are *not* adopting your product why they are not adopting it and trying to fix it for them. I have never seen that work." #
Article on how children aren't allowed to run free anymore - I was thinking about this while reading Calvin and Hobbes last night; Calvin, of course, runs free all over the place, as did I growing up. It was great. The report "warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations." #
Smashing The Clock - "At most companies, going AWOL during daylight hours would be grounds for a pink slip. Not at Best Buy. The nation's leading electronics retailer has embarked on a radical--if risky--experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for "results-only work environment," seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours." #
mob incentive: Home - fascinating...raise money as a prize for the first person to do something you want. Like endowing your own X-prize on anything that's important to you! #
Danger Bomb Alarm Clock | Uncrate - my alarm clock got "lost" in the move...maybe this would be a sufficiently-annoying replacement? #
Amazon.com : Cannibal Apocalypse: DVD - hee hee: "i had very high hopes when i bought cannibal apocalypses..." It's very hard to find non-war movies about Vietnam, but this is still pretty bad. #
www.cyclingnews.com presents the 59th Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré - "This is the view the winner of a major stage race gets" #
cbs4.com - Bob Barker Hosts His Final Showcase Showdown - "Here I am, 83 years old, been doing something I love all of my adult life." #
Bob Barker's last show - "He hosted for 35 years. He is 83. That means he started hosting when he was 48. So at that age he was still able to find a carrier to begin that would be his life work - Awesome." #
The Dilbert Blog: Minutia - Scott Adams liveblogs his day; how he creates Dilbert! #
Crushpad wine - specify the settings and label for your wine, they grow it, bottle it, and send it to you. Optionally they'll also distribute and sell it for you. The foundation for a 4-hour workweek? #
Wired 15.04: The See-Through CEO - "Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system." #
Employee Lounge: Offices that look like living rooms make you happier—and more productive." - Popular Science - "I can't remember the last time I had a great idea at my desk" - Robert King, CEO of Humanscale #
Wired 15.03: Snack Attack! - "Radio SASS (Short Attention Span System), an experimental radio protocol currently in development that takes classic tunes and whittles them down to about two minutes." #
'omg my mom joined facebook!!' - I heard this from a family counselor as well recently: "Facebook is all about being a reflection of real-world relationships," she said. "The same thing you’re experiencing with your daughter online is a reflection of how you’re not a part of her social network in real life." #
ABC.com: American Inventor - Home Page - back on the air this Wednesday, with George Foreman as a judge! #
Tour de Frank Info, Trailers, and Reviews at FilmSpot - "A comedy about competitive bicycling"...awesome #
Yay Hooray | brain cell structure same as universe - more support for the universe as giant brain theory? #
Psst! from the archives: "There is no multi-tasking. There is only the monkey mind jabbering so fast it seems like multi-tasking." #
Personal History: How I Spent the War: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "After is always before. What we call the present, this fleeting nownownow, is constantly overshadowed by a past now, in such a way that the escape route known as the future can be marched to only in lead-soled shoes." #
evhead: You have to decide what game you're playing There are several established games: 1) The Big Game 2) The Little Game 3) The Fun Game You can also make up your own game. #
Helix — a 1D skyscraper with a single corridor - The first comment: "But how would you deal with people rolling bowling balls down the corridor?" #
TED Talks: Robert Wright - Google Video - a great intro to my favorite author's ideas #
Debunking Christianity: What Would Convince Me Christianity is True? - attacks only the straw men of fundamentalism, however. #
The keys to creativity - from Edward de Bono: "There are three things that are necessary for creativity; motivation, thinking skills and lateral thinking." #
Better living through self deception (kottke.org) - how our thoughts and memories impact our performance and experience..."Perhaps the way to true personal achievement and happiness is through lying to yourself instead of being honest, loafing instead of practicing, and purposely forgetting information." #
TerraCycle Inc - beautiful business model: they take trash (organic waste), compost it using worms, then package it in old soda bottles bought cheap from schools who collect them as fundraisers and sell it as organic fertilizer. #
"We do not spontaneously learn that we don't learn that we don't learn." - or, "We don't learn that we don't learn that we don't learn". #
Wondermill Webworks - User Experience Designer Required - a good level to shoot for with any design: "When people have created an account with one of our products, they should shed a tear because the experience is over. They should write ballads and march from town to town reading them to anyone who'll listen. They should hang signs from highway overpasses proclaiming our good name, hold 3-day block parties and call up radio stations to dedicate cheesy songs." #
Pedal Revolution Donations - good home for old bike stuff #
shelter in a cart - designboom - designing a shopping-cart-sized portable home for the homeless #
archibald - designboom - what to do with a big metal radiator? Repurpose it to steam and dry your clothes! #
milkmoments - designboom - world's coolest cereal bowls... #
bookofjoe: I'm in search of a lifestyle that does not require my presence - just love the title quote, by Kinky Friendman #
YouTube - Invisible Boards by Spike Jonze - seriously, this is what it feels like...magic. Especially the last scene. #
TuneCore: Welcome - indie artists can easily get their music sold on iTunes, Rhapsody, etc... #
The Value Of Aggregating Content » Publishing 2.0 - "Disaggregation — taking apart media — is only step one of the media revolution. Step two — or 2.0 — is finding dynamic ways to put it back together." #
Rainbow Liquid Chalk Markers - Blick Art Materials - multi-surface whiteboard markers? #
A Hot Little Portable Grill for Summer: ArtBuzz - beautiful, little, and cheap #
bookofjoe: Larry J. Kolb learns why 'I don't know' is not only the best but the correct answer "If you happened to be asked, 'Why did Mr. Gandhi go to the restaurant?', your answer could not be 'Because he was hungry' or 'To eat.' Your only truthful answer would be, 'I don't know.' Because, even if Rajiv told you he was hungry, that's just hearsay, and you don't know what went on in his mind that made him go into the restaurant. But, if you were asked, 'Did Mr. Gandhi eat in the restaurant?,' ands you were in the restaurant when he was, and you saw him eat there, your answer would be?" Finally a part for me. I said, "My answer would be 'Yes.'" "Correct," said Frank. "Your answer would be 'Yes' and it would not be 'Yes, I saw him eating apple pie in the restaurant.' Because they didn't ask that, and it's not up to you to volunteer anything." #
991001; Atlantic Monthly, p. 47 - 57; Beyond the Information Revolution - "This means that the key to maintaining leadership in the economy and the technology that are about to emerge is likely to be the social position of knowledge professionals and social acceptance of their values. For them to remain traditional 'employees' and be treated as such would be tantamount to England's treating its technologists as tradesmen -- and likely to have similar consequences." #
Bill Moyers and Jon Stewart - "You know, one of the things that I do think government counts on is that people are busy. And it's very difficult to mobilize a busy and relatively affluent country, unless it's over really crucial-- you know, foundational issues...I'm sure what [Bush] would like to do is send 400,000 more troops there, but he can't, because he doesn't have them. And the way to get that would be to institute a draft. And the minute you do that, suddenly the country's not so damn busy anymore." #
I Chat, Therefore I Am... | Technology | DISCOVER Magazine - paging Dr. Turing...or not #
I Chat, Therefore I Am... | Technology | DISCOVER Magazine - paging Dr. Turing...or not #
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Darwin's letters archived on web - "Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin thought the voyage of the Beagle was a "magnificent scheme" allowing him to spend time "larking round the world"." #
APOD: 2007 May 16 - Dark Matter Ring Modeled around Galaxy Cluster CL0024 17 - "How do we know that dark matter isn't just normal matter exhibiting strange gravity? A new observation...is shedding new dark on the subject." Ha ha. Plus, a pretty amazing image. #
Gluing captions to cats - on metadata; reminds me of Kottke's metadata overfizzle post a while back... #
Can CBS Put the Net Into Network? - WSJ.com - "CBS's new chief Internet strategist now jokes that the Web address for Innertube should be 'CBS.com/nobodycomeshere.' CBS, after a year of experimenting with various Web initiatives, says that forcing consumers to come to one site -- its own -- to view video hasn't worked. Instead, the company plans to pursue a drastically revised strategy that involves syndicating its entertainment, news and sports video to as much of the Web as possible." #
'Mudtrails' caused by trawlers revealed - first heard about this from a friend on Saturday; now an old friend is leading the visualization research on its impact! #
Pamela Kendall Schiffer - Welcome - my aunt-in-law's (is there such a thing?) new site showing her amazing paintings, especially of the Santa Barbara area. We're proud to have a couple hanging in our home. #
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Carrying a Sketchbook, part one - "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that a sketchbook is more than a way to improve your drawing, it forces you to focus on the world around you and analyze it. Just trying to record the world on paper makes you observe and study everything around you instead of just letting the world wash over you without a glance." #
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Carrying a Sketchbook, part one - "The best advice I can give you about becoming a better artist is to carry a sketchbook with you all of them time and to draw in it whenever you can." #
"Reading becomes dangerous when instead of waking us to the personal life of the spirit it tends to substitute itself for it" - Marcel Proust #
Paul H. Rubin - Evolution, Immigration and Trade - washingtonpost.com - Another way that we're unprepared to understand situations on a global scale: "In a group of 100 people, when we observe something that has happened to someone, it is a reasonably likely event. In a society of 300 million, when we learn about something happening to one person, it may be an extremely unlikely event, but we often perceive it as likely when we see it on the news." #
UIE Brain Sparks » Blog Archive » Would You Bet Your Life Savings On It? - a good question to ask before making strong recommendations #
AlterNet: Blogs: Video: Update: Cartoon Marketing Ignites Bomb Scare [VIDEO] - Years from now, this will still be cited as a turning point, in so many ways. The press conference they gave (video at the site) is especially fascinating. "A guerrilla marketing campaign for a cartoon show about a box of french fries and his milkshake pal set off a scare that nearly shut down Boston's commercial district yesterday, as bomb squads closed highways and two bridges in search of what turned out to be magnetic-light versions of the cartoon characters." #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "In that kind of life, you have a small refrigerator, because you can get to the store quickly and often. By this logic, the bigger the refrigerator, the lonelier the soul." #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "Three years ago, two economists at the University of Zurich...found that, if your trip is an hour each way, you’d have to make forty per cent more in salary to be as 'satisfied' with life as a noncommuter is." #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "People tend to behave in their cars as though they are alone in a room. Road rage is one symptom of this; on the street or on the train, people don’t generally walk around calling each other assholes. Howard Stern is another; you can listen to lewd evocations without feeling as though you were pushing the bounds of the social contract. You could drive to work without your pants on, and no one would know." #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections." - Robert Putnam #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "'Drive until you qualify' is a phrase that real-estate agents use to describe a central tenet of the commuting life: you travel away from the workplace until you reach an exit where you can afford to buy a house that meets your standards." #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "Pisarski calls commuting 'the interaction of demography with geography,' and the nuances are legion." #
current work - visualizing the plastic bags, shipping containers, war money, guns, drugs, and more used in the United States. Incredibly powerful. #
» Outsourcing Life and How to Eliminate E-mail Overload "The Master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone. The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done." Tao Te Ching Chapter 38 #
``If I look at the mass I will never act'':\ Psychic numbing and genocide - "In this paper I have drawn upon common observation and behavioral research to argue that we cannot depend only upon our moral feelings to motivate us to take proper actions against genocide. That places the burden of response squarely upon the shoulders of moral argument and international law." #
``If I look at the mass I will never act'':\ Psychic numbing and genocide Mother Teresa: "If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." #
[Mailbag] Raymond Chen, Pinkberry, Massimo Vignelli, Frank Gehry, etc. - (37signals) - "In the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry, the architect explains that he creates multiple scales of a model to remember that the model is not the project. He explains that its often too easy to become infatuated with the model itself instead of remembering it is a representation of a building." #
06 le tour de menlo half century PDF map - Edgewood, Crestview, etc...crazy hills! #
Annals of Transport: There and Back Again: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker - "A commute is a distillation of a life’s main ingredients, a product of fundamental values and choices." #
Freakonomics - Baby Boomers - Aging - Middle Age - Economics - New York Times - "As much as people may love music, most of them apparently don’t feel the need to make it for themselves. According to Census Bureau statistics, only 7.3 percent of American adults have played a musical instrument in the past 12 months." #
Church brainstorm ideas - Google Docs & Spreadsheets - random stuff to help spark ideas #
The Flying Scotsman - Official Movie Site - Graeme Obree movie playing in SF! #
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will | The A.V. Club 1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'" #
EXKATE- Electric Skateboards and Powerboards - higher-performance than most...higher cost too. #
bookofjoe: BehindTheMedspeak: The higher the ceiling, the better you think - 10-ft ceilings produced more creative ideas than 8-ft ceilings #
Tim Ferris Interview - Part I - "In 2004, I was working 80-hour weeks in Silicon Valley as the CEO of my own start-up, and I realized that income had no practical value without time." #
Desks4Computers: Prota-6 Height Adjustable Glass Top Desk - pretty slick, sit+stand+type+draw #
How to live on $1 a day. - By Tim Harford - Slate Magazine - "In 1981, 40 percent of the world's people lived on less than $1 a day, according to Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion of the World Bank. The figure plummeted to 21 percent by 2001 and may be as low 15 percent by 2015. We can hope." #
How to live on $1 a day. - By Tim Harford - Slate Magazine - it's counted differently than I thought..."In other words, a Kenyan farmer might have 50 cents a day to spend but still not count as "very poor" because 50 cents in Kenya buys more than $1 would in the United States. However you look at it, a dollar a day is a tiny income." #
bookofjoe: Philip Johnson's Iconic Glass House To Open to Visitors Next Monday - one of my favorite houses... #
Amazon is letting third-party companies use their shipping and distribution network - amazing--Amazon's infrastructure is amazing and they've nailed the shipping problem; can't wait to use this network for my own products! #
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Listen to Your Ol' Pappy K! - "Those times when you are just sitting there with nothing else going on, immersed in the people and happenings around you are when you really get to see special things: people just going about their ordinary business. That's when people are at their most fascinating." #
Springwise: Flexible pet ownership - Netflix for dogs! And I thought Netflix for books was innovative... #
George Foreman iGrill | Uncrate - ok, that's pretty cool: $150 for a compact and cool-looking grill that plays your iPod too. #
Micro Persuasion: The Participation Ladder and Its Impact on Marketing and PR - more along the lines of the low creation rate on YouTube, etc. #
How We Learn - we learn "95% of what we teach to someone else" #
Participation on Web 2.0 sites remains weak - Well, more of an audience for the creators: "The vast majority of visitors are the Internet equivalent of the television generation's couch potatoes -- voyeurs who like to watch rather than create, Tancer's statistics show." #
Humboldt Fog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - wonderful goat cheese #
david belle le parkour translated - Google Video - freestyle walking! (inside joke...) via Google's new recommendation service #
Space Shot: Genzyme Center, Cambridge, MA - "Still, although there's more actual space here--350,000 square feet--there's less personal space. Genzyme...opted to create more common areas, as a means of boosting the site's collaborative potential. 'Most of the employees don't sit at their desks from 9 to 5...the whole building was created around the idea of a highly communicative work environment.'" #
Flight Plan - DayJet - Ed Iacobucci - Complexity Science - "We're dealing with a problem where the problem specification itself is changing as you go along," Sawhill says. "You no longer want to find the best solution--you want to be living in a space of good solutions, so when the problem changes, you're still there." Fluidity is the greater goal than perfection. #
gladwell.com: Enron and Newspapers - "But I think we should also recognize what the Enron case tells us about the value of newspaper journalism. Maybe, in other words, we have underestimated the value of impartial, professionally-motivated, under-paid and overworked generalists in tackling the kind of information-rich, analysis-dependent “mysteries” that the modern world throws at us." #
Slashdot | Chimps Evolved More Than Humans - yeah, but humans evolved *better*...not all innovation is valuable... #
Adobe Tour Tracker - 2007 Tour De Georgia - Tour de Georgia being tracked with live video and images just like the Tour of California was! #
UPS Pressroom: Advertising - beautiful lightweight, *conversational* ads...with whiteboards #
Secret Bookcase Doors | Bookcase with Doors - Woodfold - oh man, I've got to get me some of these... #
Welcome to Syntactica - cool concept for automatically summarizing websites #
Is Content Still A Business? » Publishing 2.0 - "Sales are so down and so off that, as a manager, I look at a CD as part of the marketing of an artist, more than as an income stream" - Jeff Rabhan #
TED | Talks | Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? (video) - "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original...And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that ability." #
coRank - collaboratively filter the internet...like StumbleUpon but for a smaller subset of friends? #
Roll Out Flower Gardens - that's right, a garden that comes in convenient "roll" form...awesome. #
Make No Little Plans - "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized." - Daniel Burnham #
Weekend Web - Trek Bikes - Videos - WMAQ - video explaining the Trek Lime #
Collection: Design Patterns - Flickr pool...very cool #
Debunking Christianity: Why atheists should go to church - satirical and a bit insulting at times, but in interesting contrast to the Gallup poll from a couple days ago. #
Epicenter - Wired News - fascinating raw interview with Eric Schmidt about the management of Google #
Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com - "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare." - W.H. Davies #
ROLL-AROUNDS INSTANTWHEELS SET/4 - add wheels to anything! #
Apple - Pro - Profiles - Trek Bikes - "We’re big believers that the office is not the best place to experience things if you’re trying to create relevant products" #
YouTube - John Cage "4'33" - in *full* orchestral version--ha! Bet Cage didn't anticipate people experiencing this via YouTube... #
YouTube - Eric Schmidt at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference - interesting video #
Foonz - Free Conference Calls and Group Calls - like it sez...looks easy too. #
Hyperbolic discounting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "The functional equation for hyperbolic discounting is as follows: v = V / (1 + kD)" #
Hyperbolic discounting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "Hyperbolic discounting refers to the empirical finding that people generally prefer smaller, sooner payoffs to larger, later payoffs when the smaller payoffs would be imminent; when the same payoffs are distant in time, people tend to prefer the larger, even though the time lag from the smaller to the larger would be the same as before." #
"Today’s games-and-entertainment enthusiast has an insatiable appetite for digital high-definition content" - Really? No, really? Because that actually sounds like a made-up need for a made-up person. #
World's weirdest indoor cycling trainer - for astronauts (big .mov file) #
Bicycle Design: What kind of bikes can change the world? - "I have no problem with heavy slow utilitarian clunkers, but lets face it, people all over the world are abandoning those bikes as soon as they have the means to do so. The bikes that have the most potential for change are the ones that people really WANT to ride, not the ones that people HAVE to ride for lack of a better option. " #
Amazon.com: Snug Plug Drain Stopper - Set of 2 plugs (2 packs) - (White) - Large Set of 2: Kitchen & Housewares - finally, a great drain plug! #
Wonderland: Etech 07: Raph Koster on magic - "Games, and each individual game, has to be FUN. We game designers obsess about making all of those micro bits entertaining. Clearly designers of typical application productivity software don't do this." #
Wonderland: Raph's Keynote - "If you don't have a pattern library, you are going to die. You won't be able to tell an apple from Drano. Fun is the feedback the brain gives while successfully absorbing a pattern." #
MediaShift . Futurama::How the Online Newspaper Can Become a Community Hub | PBS - "With time becoming a more precious commodity to most, and the endless hours spent in the work place on computers, picking up a print out (newspaper) that does not involve going back on a computer will remain an attractive option." #
Techmeme @ 2:05 AM ET, March 26, 2007 - interesting thoughts on the future of newspapers...my thoughts to come... #
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Carrying a Sketchbook, part one - "Carrying a sketchbook is very, very important. A sketchbook is your best opportunity to catch real life as it passes by you. Why is this important? Because what makes great storytelling, animation, characters and films of every kind is that they capture a truth about real life." #
"My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots" - world's greatest user experience rant #
Microfinance - Investing for Social Impact - Google Video - very cool talks on a different kind of investing #
Prayer blessing enemies by a Serbian Orthodox bishop - among others, "Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background." #
Cognitive Daily: Artists look different - "Trained artists learn to...draw the world as it really appears. Even world-famous artists such as Leonardo da Vinci have had to resort to tricks such as looking at their subject through a divided pane of glass in order to render proportions accurately. As you can see from the two examples above, even when looking at a picture, artists look differently." #
Storage inside a bike seat - A-ha! On the very slick Trek Lime #
Google signs software deals in two African nations - I'm proud of my company today; developing Africa's economy through technology is one of the greatest things we can do. It's just a start, but a good direction... #
Wow, a Choose Your Own Adventure DVD - though I wonder how you simulate holding your fingers in place--you know, in case you make a mistake and have to go back... #
Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines - aka "task-based" interfaces...some good tips to help design them, including four main ones: "Focus each screen on a single task; State the task; Make the screen's contents suit the task; Offer links to secondary tasks." #
Ben Stein on money today - fantastic rant on the bankrupting of society to pay for the excess of the rich. #
Yeeaahh! Home - nicely-gridded Yahoo home page redesign #
gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards": random thoughts on being an entrepreneur - "Bill Gates may have a million times more money than me, but he isn’t going to live a million times longer than me, watch a million times more sunsets than me, make love to a million times more women than me, drink a million times more fine wines than me, listen to a million times more Beethoven String Quartets than me, nor sire a million times more children than me. Human beings don't scale." #
Coasting Home Page - a few bikes built on the Shimano/IDEO bicycle project findings...not as different as I'd hoped, but nice, clean and fun. #
Wild lifelike billboards and posters - gives me hope for print media advertising #
Amazing New 'Swiffer' Fails To Fill The Void | The Onion - America's Finest News Source - puts product design in perspective... #
Help! - Aero Ace Won't Charge. - RC Groups - this happened to several of my planes; need to try this fix! #
Jean Baudrillard quotes "Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation." #
Jean Baudrillard quotes - Baudrillard may know now, RIP: "Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void." #
The Dilbert Blog: Smarter Than a 5th Grader - "If it were up to me to add some classes to the grade school curriculum, I think I’d put more emphasis on these skills: public speaking, risk assessment, bullshit detecting, social skills, decision-making, managing your own body, and influencing people." #
Interspire WebEdit - very cool, just drop a PHP file into a directory and you can edit any other files in it with a WYSIWYG tool. #
bookofjoe: Post-it Table - wow... #
Samsara - a film by Ron Fricke, the sequel to Baraka - hopefully released in 2007? #
Mark Scandrette » CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION - Creativity is one of seven vows the reImagine community has taken as part of their growth: "Although some people may fear the concept of imagination, (as though it is synonymous with myth or fantasy), as a culture I believe we suffer, not from too much imagination, but a lack of redemptive imagination." #
Warren Buffett's 2006 shareholder letter - really a fun read; thoughts on lots of topics #
Polyurethane Foam and Resin - source for polyurethane foam, 2 lb density #
RED campaign raises only $11M - sure, it's more than I could give, but for its high profile that sure didn't accomplish much...a single Bono fundraising dinner could probably do that. #
High-Water Marketing - washingtonpost.com - "Cause marketing soothes the compunctions of a mass-consumption culture at the same time that it contributes to that excess. It allows us to be giving at the same time that we are selfish." #
Black & Decker InfraWave Oven | Uncrate - finally, a smaller oven! 90% of the time you don't need all the space in the big one... #
Continuously-variable planetary transmission - uses rotating balls to change gear ratios...nice animation shown. #
ThrustPac - Empower Yourself - crazy fan-powered propulsion in a backpack! Like a horizontal jetpack! #
Ning - new Ning poses some interesting possiblities...a social network for every group you're in... #
Don Norman's jnd.org / Why doing user observations first is wrong - "Let’s face it: once a project is announced, it is too late to study what it should be – that’s what the announcement was about. If you want to do creative study, you have to do it before the launching of the project." #
Wengomeeting.com - video conference - in Flash, no registration required, up to 5 users at a time...pretty nice! #
Insurance Executive Fakes Own Life | The Onion - How different is this from most jobs? "But I just couldn't keep it up. I couldn't stand the lies. Faking your own life is harder than it looks." #
TopStyle and AlleyCode both seem to be like Taco HTML Edit (with live preview), but for Windows... #
Interesting Gallup poll on religion and evangelism - finds an emphasis on living well personally or converting others to your beliefs, not direct social action: "Only a small percentage of highly religious Americans -- 15% -- believe the best way to spread their religion is to change society to conform to their religious beliefs." #
"No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Samuel Beckett #
The Myth About Creation Myths - Story - Background - Origin - Don't quit your day job: "In other words, companies aren't born in garages. Companies are born in companies." #
Flash Reference Guide > Create A Video Conference - using Flash #
The Kamusi Project | The Internet Living Swahili Dictionary - also cool for looking up domain names! #
1videoConference - Open Source Instant Video Conferencing, No Downloads, No Installations - well...except that you have to run WinXP and install an applet. Still, looks good, and their demo is inspiring #
Imagination Cubed - virtual whiteboard for one-time use from GE...stylish though #
Thinkature - Real-time collaboration for the web - very cool virtual whiteboard in a browser #
Saintsbury Carneros Pinot Noir - my favorite Pinot Noir #
Cloudy Bay chardonnay - my favorite chardonnay #
Benessere Black Glass Zinfandel - my favorite zinfandel #
Connect 18 - wow, cycling+travel+watching tv+learning a language...exercise classes where they teach you languages while you work out! Only in SF... #
How to praise your kids - It turns out you should praise them for their effort, not their intelligence. If you praise kids for their intelligence, they tend to avoid tasks they fear they will fail at. #
Kellogg's™ Lego® Fruit Flavored Snacks - Designer's food #
IDEO's bicycle project - results in a mass-market easy-to-ride prototype #
Marketing as it should be: "…the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself." - Peter Drucker #
June Walker: Tax & Financial Advisor to the Self-employed since 1979: Designers Dozen: Tax Saving Tips for the Graphic Artist #
bookofjoe: 'I have yet to meet a person who's under 20 who would not give up email first' [before texting or IM] #
"I am teaching you how to see as opposed to merely looking, and stopping the world is the first step to seeing." - Carlos Castaneda's don Juan #
APOD: 2007 February 5 - Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning - now THAT's a picture! #
I, Pencil - "If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing...one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith. " #
I, Pencil - "I am a lead pencil--the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write...Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me." #
"Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night." - William Blake #
YottaMusic - better web UI for Rhapsody's awesome music service. Better recommendations, too, it seems...though that may be just because I had to start my library fresh. Cool social aspect too. #
CEO morning rituals - interesting that email is such a prominent thing even in the morning; I would have expected it to be less embraced by strategic people (more on this topic soon). #
miswanting (mis.WAWN.ting) pp. Desiring something that one erroneously believes will make one happy. #
What to do with food - "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." #
"No material thing can ever achieve full and utter acceptability. People are too ductile to have their problems solved. People are time bound entities transiting from cradle to grave. Any 'solved problem' that involves human beings solves a problem whose parameters must change through time. A 'thing' is no more stable than the humans who cherish it. Properly understood, a thing is not merely a material object, but a frozen technosocial relationship." - Bruce Sterling #
Vegetable Love - Pythagoras was a vegetarian? #
Charles & Marie: Battery Lamp Presale - the minimum state of a lamp: battery+LED+shade #
Serotta Competition Bicycles - some great stuff about bike fit, summarized at Velonews #
Brand Noise: Interview: Marc Gobé Tells It Like It Is - "Design is the new advertising. The agencies should fold, they’re out of line and out of touch. The only advertising that works is about product that you’re drawn to any way." #
2057: Discovery Channel - show about the future, in 2057? #
Introducing the brand new Jawbone Bluetooth headset - beautiful and elegant use--definitely the one to get! #
SimpleGTD : Organize your stuff online - another cool new to-do list #
Hiveminder - Get busy! - cool new to-do list #
TIM HARFORD | The Global Challenge of Corporate Governance - great summary of differential pricing, price discrimination, and more #
Independent Online Edition > This Britain - the world's happiest man? Buddhist... #
Tibet Press Kit - like Asimov's First and Second Foundations? "For centuries our best minds, our saints and our philosophers concentrated all their time and energy to understanding the nature of the mind. And who can say which would really matter in the end--the landing on the moon or the understanding of the mind?" - Lhasang Tsering #
Nieman Reports - Winter 2006 - about newspapers in the digital age... #
Connecting Cultures, Changing Organizations: The User Experience Practitioner As Change Agent :: UXmatters - interesting stuff about the cultures of design vs. business #
Creative Generalist - "Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing." --Konrad Lorenz #
Cocktail Recipes: iDrink: 14800 Free Cocktail Drink Recipes - enter what you have, they tell you what you can drink! Saves your list for the future... #
Ming the Mechanic: Learning to see - "You're in the periphery, not in the focus" #
World Economic Forum - Knowledge Concierge - quick briefings on a TON of subjects for participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos...but free to us proles too =) #
ThinkGeek :: Wireless Extension Cords - wow, wireless power! UPDATE: Can't believe I fell for that...it seemed TOO easy... #
The Accidental Innovator - "Artists think they develop a talent for causing good accidents. Equally or perhaps even more important, they believe they cultivate an ability to notice the value in interesting accidents. This is a non-trivial capability." #
Louis Pasteur - Wikiquote - "I am on the edge of mysteries and the veil is getting thinner and thinner." #
Louis Pasteur - Wikiquote - "In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind." #
The Accidental Innovator - "Another, a potter, showed me how he would create beautiful pots and then, while they were drying, whack them with a stick. Sometimes they just broke, but other times he'd get an interesting shape that he'd never seen before. Then he'd make a whole series based on that new shape. He was trying to get outside of what we would call his "cone of expectations and intentions" to create something truly new." #
The Accidental Innovator - "It takes a considerable capability to see the value in an accident, and to build upon it to create even more value." #
The Business Innovation Insider: Harvard Business School's 25 most popular articles - 5 on innovation #
Evgen Bavcar - if a blind guy can be a photographer, i can too, right! #
Wayne Gretzky quotes - "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." #
Creative Generalist - how an episode of family guy is made #
Quaker City Wheelmen | Home - cycling team in Philly #
Boundless Philadelphia :: gophila.com - The Official Visitor Site for Greater Philadelphia - things to do outdoors in Philadelphia! #
Deja Vu - WSJ.com Why didn't they imagine that more people might want to fly? How can I not ignore those opportunities? "The giant airplane of 300- to 400-passenger capacity, while technically possible," wrote a U.S. aviation official in 1944, "appears to offer little economic advantage and to involve a great sacrifice of convenience for the traveler, owing to the inevitable reduction in scheduling frequency which results from using such large units." #
Neatorama » Blog Archive » 13 Photographs That Changed the World. - photography is "a blazing poetry of the real" - Ansel Adams #
Martin Seligman on God - the idea that God is the culmination of infinitely increasing complexity in the universe, based on Robert Wright's Nonzero. "A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness. Omniscience is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of science. Omnipotence is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of technology. Righteousness is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of positive institutions. So in the very longest run the principle of Nonzero heads toward a God who is not supernatural, but who ultimately acquires omnipotence, omniscience and goodness through the natural progress of Nonzero. Perhaps, just perhaps, God comes at the end" #
Creative Generalist - "The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand." --Frank Herbert #
Mixing Memory : Coolest... Experiment... Ever - "Eight out of fifteen direction-givers failed to notice that the person they were talking to changed in mid conversation!" #
The Mystery of Picasso - Google Video - timelapse of Picasso painting; fascinating to see when he takes something normal-looking and twists it! #
RSS Scripts Directory - interesting PHP-based tools to merge/render multiple RSS feeds into a website #
metathings - Connecting your metadata - similar #
Profilactic.com - preventing an online identity crisis - similar combination of online web services #
SuprGlu - Gluing your life together. - combine lots of web services on a single page #
Power of Myth - interviews with Joseph Campbell #
IAAF International Association of Athletics Federations - IAAF.org - Medical & Anti-Doping - Medical & Anti-Doping News - amateur cyclist takes drugs as an experiment #
ENTROPÍA - El túnel del tiempo - spiral calendar shows the linearity of time... #
Creative Generalist - "Let's Paint, Exercise, and Blend Drinks!" #
Invention: Skateboard meets Segway - tech - 02 January 2007 - New Scientist Tech - my skateboard =( #
Sanders Says: Start out with a fresh to-do list in 2007 - how to sort a to-do list, based on Stephen Covey's 4 quadrants #
Magpie RSS - PHP RSS Parser - reads RSS, uses PHP to display it as HTML. Good for MakingStuff combine? #
Marginal Revolution: My favorite things Brazil, music edition - cool Brazilian music selections... #
One Club / The Organization > The Alchemists Film - about 5 people who create powerful advertising messages... #
reBlog by Eyebeam R&D - perfect for MakingStuff? "reBlogs are useful to individuals who want to maintain a weblog but prefer curating content to writing original posts. They can also enable organizations to tap the contributions of their employees, members, and communities-at-large in order to easily redistribute relevant content." Good ol' Frumin... #
We Are What We Do - Do Something - Actions Listings - small things to do to learn a bit more and help out a bit #
The Medici Effect : Frans Johansson - game based around the Medici Effect book insights #
5 Things to Know About Users - "The user's intentions, context, knowledge, skills, and experience are the essential things that every designer needs to know." #
toddwarfel.com » Blog Archive » The Task Analysis Grid - interesting way of presenting use cases and matching them to features and designs #
Dangerously Fun » High FPS Slow Motion - cool videos "revealing incredible detail that we normally miss" #
Marginal Revolution: The One-Minute Rule - "Most people are neurologically programmed so they cannot truly internalize the scope and import of deeply significant, long run, very good news. That means we spend too much time on small tasks and the short run. Clearing away a paper clip makes us, in relative terms, too happy in the short run, relative to the successful conclusion of World War II.." #
The Six-Word Memoir Contest: presented by SMITH Magazine and Twitter - like WIRED's six-word novel #
Short videos about biology - learn something in 5 min... #
sawzall-20030814.gif (GIF Image, 1080x540 pixels) - very cool graph of Google search queries...like the world breathing... #
Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay - fake I'm sure, but still funny: "He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree." #
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories - Turn an RC car into a floor sweeper! - ok, this would make me clean the floors... #
Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Quote of the Day About TV - "TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests." - David Foster Wallace #
K'NEX Vertical Vengeance Coaster Play Set - Wal-Mart - cool K'Nex kit, 5-foot tall coaster #
Sanders Says: Say yes,and instead of yeah--but - Joe Pine video #
Charlie Rose - Fouad Ajami / Dov Charney - Google Video - Dov Charney on American Apparel #
FT.com / Weekend columnists / Tim Harford - Undercover Economist: Check this out - working with better people makes you better because you don't want to be accused of slacking off: "But why? There are, broadly, two explanations. One is that workers are spurred to greater efforts when contemplating the superior speed of their colleague. This is psychologically plausible but economically irrational. A more cynical explanation is that workers do not like it when faster colleagues are looking at them, because they fear being accused of slacking off. It might seem impossible to distinguish between these two possibilities, but at the checkout each worker is looking towards one colleague with his back to a second colleague who is looking at him. It turns out that facing towards a fast worker makes no difference, but having a fast worker face towards you encourages frenetic scanner-wielding. So the cynics have it. And next time you hear the beep of a supermarket scanner, remember that Big Brother is watching you - and he’s an economist." #
OddPeak - 10 Most Bizarre People on Earth "Nakamatsu: photographed and analyzed every meal for 34 years - Yoshiro Nakamatsu (born June 26, 1928), a.k.a. Dr. NakaMats, is the Japanese inventor claiming to hold the world record for number of inventions with over 3,000, including the floppy disk and "PyonPyon" spring shoes. He has being photographing and retrospectively analyzing every meal he has consumed during a period of 34 years (and counting). The goal of Nakamatsu is to live over 140 years old. " #
The Business Innovation Insider: Off the Grid Innovation - "People can be divided into three classes: the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no idea of what has happened" (more quotes in the video) #
Walt Stanchfield book: Gesture Drawing for Animation - printable PDFs #
"Forget the detail" and other animation-inspired lessons - (37signals) - cool sketching ideas #
d.school news - dschool blog #
Bachelor of Innovation(tm) - program at UColoradoCS #
CareerJournal | Business Schools Apply Lessons From Branding 101 - Berkeley biz school focusing on "innovation" #
roundedcorners (PNG Image, 500x500 pixels) - Google Groups generates dynamic rounded corners! #
ideo.com :: About Us :: Teams :: Environments - creative spaces? #
Wonderful Wizardry of %u2018Woz%u2019 - 10 Zen Monkeys (a webzine) - "If you look through history, a lot of geniuses and people of this ilk have also been pranksters. I couldn't get Steve to stop telling me about pranks. In fact, most of the time, I wanted to get all this Apple stuff, and he wanted to talk about the time that he pretended he was Henry Kissinger and called the Pope." #
Wonderful Wizardry of %u2018Woz%u2019 - 10 Zen Monkeys (a webzine) - interview about the Steve Wozniak book: "WILL BLOCK: What comes across in the bio is an incredible purity, innocence and delight in learning how the world works. GS: That's what the tapes of my interviews with Steve sound like. It's all, "Wow! And then I was able to develop the Apple I and...Wow! Then I was able to add color, and...Wow!" He hasn't lost that innocence. He hasn't lost that sense of enthusiasm. When he looks back, you can see that youthful kind of vigor in his face." #
In some cases, nothing succeeds like failure - The Boston Globe - idea of "innovation labs" for big companies...could it be outsourced? "She said some companies, such as mutual funds giant Fidelity Investments, have more success setting up "innovation labs" specifically charged with churning out new product or service concepts within 90 days to six months." #
Welcome to Sky High Sports - room full of trampolines! #
Jon Udell: Hunting the elusive search strategy - very interesting writeup about advanced searching... #
ChangeThis :: How To Be Creative - "We think weʼre “providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “helping America to really taste freshness.” In fact weʼre just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth." #
ChangeThis :: How To Be Creative - "They’re only crayons. You didn’t fear them in kindergarten, why fear them now?" #
ChangeThis :: How To Be Creative - "Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with books on algebra etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, 'Iʼd like my crayons back, please.'" #
The Gnomon Workshop - Scott Robertson - sketching instructional DVDs #
Hacking vs. Research. Many-to-Many: - Howard Rheingold: "If I was a Nokia or a Hewlett-Packard, I would take a fraction of what I’m spending on those buildings full of expensive people and give out a whole bunch of prototypes to a whole bunch of 15-year-olds and have contracts with them where you can observe their behavior in an ethical way and enable them to suggest innovations, and give them some reasonable small reward for that. And once in a while, you’re going to make a billion dollars off it. " #
Create the Medici Effect - HBS Working Knowledge - "This is what I mean when I say that Marcus Samuelsson has low associative barriers. He makes unusual associations outside the field of Swedish cuisine. When Samuelsson thinks of, say, tomatoes, his associations reach further than for most Swedish or European chefs. When I say pesto, he doesn't think basil; he says dill. If I say tandoori, he doesn't instantly think chicken; he says smoked salmon. This can go on all day. "Lingonberry?" I ask. "Chutney," he answers. "Caesar salad?" I suggest. "Caesar salad soup," he responds." #
Doug Engelbart's INVISIBLE REVOLUTION - great videos of Doug... #
Koffski Wallet | Uncrate - holster wallet #
Custom printed toilet paper - wow #
Shimano MW02 Winter Boot Shoes MTB 84.99 USD Free P & P to UK & Ireland, Cheap International Rates. Next day delivery from Europes Largest Online Bikeshop. - cheap source for these #
Slipstreamz Cycling Earwear for Headphones (Everything Else for all) - blocks wind noise? #
Breaking cycles (at Fury.com) - "I'd like to live like I'm in a foreign country when I'm at home" - Kevin Fox #
- "So every one of your cells, every one of the cells of your friends, of the prime minister, everyone, is a town of bacteria, and you yourself are a gignatic city, a megalopolis, of cells, each one of which is a town of bacteria. If when you look at somebody, you realise that, then immediately your seeing....you've stripped away the anaesthetic of familiarity, you're seeing something which is true, and always has been true, but which you didn't realise, and I think your life is enriched for realising that. " - Richard Dawkins #
Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and... - Google Book Search - "There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative or ordinariness, which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence." - Richard Dawkins #
Beyond the Information Revolution by Peter Drucker; print and read! #
Milton Glaser on creating - "All I ever wanted to do was to make images and create form. This instinct for form-making seems to be something that is very characteristic of our entire species. It's one of the things that almost defines humankind." #
The Business Innovation Insider: Michael Michalko on creativity and innovation - "It is not possible to think unpredictably by looking harder and longer in the same direction." #
The Business Innovation Insider: Michael Michalko on creativity and innovation - "A DuPont chemist working on the problem enjoyed looking for connections and associations between unrelated subjects. He recalled stories his grandfather used to tell him about building mine shafts to mine gold. He forced associations between a mine shaft and Nomex." #
Archie McPhee® Toys, Gifts & Novelties - Cubes Set 1: Bob #
OneButton FTP - cool ftp for the mac #
My Boring Ass Life » Apparently, less IS more - kevin smith's interesting "celebrity playlist" #
Flickr Photo Download: busy airport - tons of planes in the sky at once! #
NEED Magazine - about world humanitarian efforts #
Scott Adams on noticing funny things - "As a professional humorist, I read the news differently than you do. I’m mining it like the old guy on the beach with a metal detector. You see miles of sand and sea shells and used condoms, but I see a potential windfall of 35 cents in coins plus half an earring. That’s why my life has more meaning than yours. But my point is not to brag. I’m just saying." #
3 Silverlit Picco Z XRotor RTF Electric RC Mini Helicopters Version 2 (3 Channels and 3 Colors) - cool new aero-ace-style helicopters #
Flickr: Camera Finder - see what cameraphones people are using for Flickr #
SF Neighborhoods - A Local's Guide for Visiting or Moving to San Francisco - finally, a good map and description of SF #
Michael Michalko on idea quotas and Edison - "Thomas Edison guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months." #
The Business Innovation Insider: Michael Michalko on creativity and innovation - good idea-generation games--idea lottery, idea quotas, "yes, and" brainstorming tactic, etc #
Idea lottery - IDEA LOTTERY. Have a monthly "idea lottery," using a roll of numbered tickets. Each time a person comes up with a creative idea, he or she receives a ticket. At the end of each month, share the ideas with the staff and then draw a number from a bowl. If the number on anyone's ticket corresponds to the number drawn, he or she gets a prize. If no one wins, double the prize for the next month. #
leather wrap journal - Google Search - good search to find other leather wrap journals (no kidding, eh?) #
Amazon.com: Lama Li Classic Leather Journal 5"x7" 100 Pages: Office Products - another cool one, handmade in Nepal... #
Tool Belt Systems - could maybe go sling-style #
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe - "Rationalizing the familiar is easy" #
Amazon.com: Delta CDRIVE 26-Inch Belt Drive Hybrid Bicycle: Sports & Outdoors - commercial belt drive bike #
Products - Shimano Cyber Nexus; an electronically shifting version of my favorite commute hub? Comes in coaster brake too... #
Bicycle Design on Squidoo - cool resources... #
Dangerously Fun - very cool site #
Personal recommendation software predicts consumer choice - November 27, 2006 - Interesting goal for Slide, the weird photo slider app: "Instead of quantifying the odds of your stealing money, he's building a "machine that knows more about you than you know about yourself."" #
(Frank) Gelett Burgess quote - To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life. - Quotations Book - "To appreciate nonsense requires a serious interest in life." - Burgess, (Frank) Gelett #
Leonardo da Vinci Quotes - "Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen." - Leonardo da Vinci #
russell davies: Account Planning School Of The Web - interesting concept #
On Simplicity, Complexity and Human Design "Complexity is another word for simplicity unfolding in time." - Cliff Crego #
FlickrExport - export directly to Flickr from iPhoto #
Flickr: Create a new group - private groups are possible; not sure if photos are hidden too #
bookofjoe: 'If we wait until we're ready, we'll never get started' - Eleanor Roosevelt "If we wait until we're ready, we'll never get started" - Eleanor Roosevelt #
Design by Fire "The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring." - Paul Rand #
MPR: Minneapolis church at the forefront of a cutting-edge religious movement - " Pastor Doug Pagitt sits on a stool that he slowly turns 360 degrees to make eye contact with everyone at the service. This is by design. Before the service, Pagitt explains there is no hierarchy within this church or with other churches. "This tendency for Christians to see themselves as the most elite of the spiritual people in the world is not only distasteful to a lot of us but it's sort of maddening, because that image has been well-earned over the last 50 years -- that Christians speak as if they're the elite, they're the believers and everybody else are the non-believers," Pagitt says. " #
Moleskine - Cristobal - a photoset on Flickr - great example of a sketchbook posted online #
NPR : Rock, Paper, Scissors! - amazing intricate psychological tricks at play here #
russell davies: how to be interesting - write things, do things--be "interested" #
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. - Jacque Fresco's YouTube profile! #
Movie about Jacque Fresco, futurist inventor - "The process with which you think about things is based by indoctrination, what you're given by society. So your range of thought is limited by the dominant values of society." - Jacque Fresco #
This Blog Sits at the: Rachael Ray: branding goddess? - Rachel Ray, experience designer: :In the post-Rachael era, a new approach emerges. Now we want to sell what food turns into, the meals, the social occasions, the brimming kitchens, people communing, families eating..and talking...and being a family. And from this point of view, the consumer is not a cook, she is a very different kind of problem server." #
The Dilbert Blog: Affirmations - sounds kind of like many explanations for prayer...and anyway it seems like a good way to remember what God has done: "My best guess about what really happens when you use affirmations is that several normal phenomena come together to create what seems abnormal. I’ll describe a few theories of what might be behind affirmations. Maybe there are more." #
Ready.gov: Get A Kit - good basic kit for emergencies #
Tech Talk: Real bikes for real people - Tom Ritchey's new Project Rwanda stuff #
Search For Amazon Prime Items - shows only Prime items! #
The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way... - Google Book Search - Robert Wright: "Your brain may give birth to any technology, but other brains will decide whether the technology thrives. The number of possible technologies is infinited, and only a few pass this test of affinity with human nature." #
Interview with Michael Lewis about The Blind Side - I'm about halfway through #
Cool sky photo - good for a painting? #
Creating Passionate Users: Ease-of-use should not mean neuter-the-software - the perils of designing for the lowest common denominator. #
Sanders Says: A Mission Statement that rocks: The End of Suffering - all mission statements should be this ambitious, e.g. "Organize the world's information", "End suffering". Specifically how you do it can be more focused and narrow, but your *mission*, *why* you're doing it, should be broad and ambitious. #
The Shopper Bicycle / Bike Trailer - BicycleR Evolution - cool, simple, cheapish #
Still Playing After These Years on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - James Watson on making models: "It was a symbolic gift, since Watson’s breakthrough technique in 1953 involved fiddling with 3D metal models. 'We needed a shortcut, so we build a model instead of solving a formula. Our three strand model was crap, so I was told to build no models… So, it all happened in about two hours. We went from nothing to thing.'" #
RealClearPolitics - Articles - Bring Them Freedom, Or They Destroy Us - fascinating alternative article on how the Middle East works #
Filed Notes - ZIBA Design's ethnography work in China for Lenovo...which led to their purchase of IBM! #
Einstein on what counts - "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." #
t-list: T-shirts - another of my ideas hits the streets... #
Plan, organize, store and share. Get Zoho Planner - looks really good for external todos #
Stuck In Customs » Blog Archive » HDR Tutorial - Focus on Clouds - great tutorial from my favorite HDR photographer...gotta do this! #
The Seeds of Ahimsa - "Gandhi gave up most his possessions because he felt it unjust for even one person to claim ownership of property while others remain unjustly dispossessed. "If I take anything that I do not need," he said, "I thieve it from somebody else." #
:::: : Solomon's Porch - A Holistic, Missional, Christian Community in Minneapolis, Minnesota : ::::: #
mozdev.org - ietab: index - gotta install #
MercuryNews.com | 08/17/2006 | Sheriff plans crack down on bicyclists breaking road rules - idiotic sheriff's department doesn't understand the rules of the road #
Google Product Releases | Yahoo Without Motto | Angela Merkel Video Blog? | Google Coupons? - what happens when you don't have a clear company mission...even the CEO doesn't know it. #
Red Cross Store - emergency kit, probably pick up a couple #
American Red Cross- Food and Water in an Emergency - great tips; print out and save #
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Rwanda: archive special - amazing and tragic; stories written live during the genocide; motivation for me to work every day. #
Core77 Design Blog - cool interview b/tw Merholz and Beirut #
dk_iiid_experience_design_2006_download.pdf (application/pdf Object) - good summary of experience design issues and strategies; print it out #
Investing articles :: Why Do People Buy Stocks? | Investing articles for websites - best explanation I've hear, but I still don't get it..."No one buys shares because he expects to collect an uninterrupted and equiponderant stream of future income in the form of dividends. Even the most gullible novice knows that dividends are a mere apologue, a relic of the past. So why do investors buy shares? Because they hope to sell them to other investors later at a higher price." #
Action Treadway Cummerbund Bag | Uncrate - dang it, someone beat me to market. Well, at $500 I can still beat them on price... #
Vintage Wine Merchants - interesting shop in SJ, carries Bennessere #
Quotes: George Bernard Shaw - A Splendid Torch - "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." #
Has Americans' Charity Waned Since 9/11? - John Wesley: "Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can." #
The Dilbert Blog: Sleepless in California - "Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt." #
All U Can Eat - Ben Folds Lyrics Database - wow...cool. #
Welcome to Zinn Custom Cycles - time to get some loooong cranks! #
CNN.com - Ricardo Semler, Semco SA - Oct 7, 2004 "The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life." #
CNN.com - Ricardo Semler, Semco SA - Oct 7, 2004 On first day, renamed company Semco, fired two-thirds of management and eliminated all secretarial positions. #
George Kennan's State Dept. quote from 1948 - really can't imagine why, given this information, they chose "dominance" - "We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction. The day is not far off, when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts." #
myEarthLink Reader - All Recently Updated - new RSS reader, pretty clean, nice "river" view #
Gliffy.com - Create and share diagrams online. - like linkstuff...but real =) #
Ditch Monkey: Thank you and goodbye - his final post; maybe I should donate now... #
Reflections On Gandhi by George Orwell: - interesting remarks about his autobiography... #
metacool: metacool Thought of the Day "Strange but true: The more specific a film is, the more universal, because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone." - Roger Ebert #
Philips HTS9800 Home Theater System | Uncrate - very cool home theater system... #
The business of giving | Economist.com - need to activate Economist online subscription... #
QBike | Shop for Bikes - Find Low Bike Prices - aggregates prices from lots of online stores! #
SQUID Labs :: Engineering Design and Technology Innovation - "We're not a think tank, we're a do tank" #
design matters: Skeet shooting in the dark - "Design consists of creating things for clients who may not know what they want, until they see what you've done, then they know exactly what they want, but it's not what you did." #
AskTog: Multiple Mistakes Drown Dishwasher - "Not only does a simple visual appearance not automatically result in a simple interface, it usually results in the opposite, unless the task domain is equally simple--and foolproof." #
Web navigation is about moving forward: New Thinking: Gerry McGovern - once people choose a direction, stop insulting them by showing them links in other directions... #
Memorable Quotes from The Time Machine (2002) - A good explanation of time-travel causalilty and why you can't go back in time before a time machine was created (or decided upon): "You built your time machine because of Emma's death. If she had lived it would never have existed, so how could you use your time machine to go back and save her? You are the inescapable result of your tragedy, just as I am the inescapable result of you." #
Specialized Bicycle Components : Equipment - Toupe Saddle - pretty cool minimal saddle #
Map Amazon(.com) - amazing infovis of all Amazon categories/books uses scroll wheel to zoom in/out #
Collexis - Information Retrieval - interesting professional search tool #
Ellington | The online publishing platform for newspapers. - cool "pro" interface; just a lot of controls... #
Carbonmade: Show off your work. Your free online portfolio. - very cool, slick portfolio app #
Perspective: The endangered joy of serendipity - "The harder the conquest, the more glorious the triumph. 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value." - Thomas Paine #
Rotman Magazine - archives of all their excellent issues on design, business, etc. #
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Future-making - "If we want to change the world, one of the most powerful things we can do is show how the future could be better. One of the most exciting forces for change these days is the speed with which people are making and sharing tools for doing just that." #
Bianchi USA 2006: Rollo™ - Awesome townie bike "with attitude" #
Noise Between Stations » Blog Archive » Innovation must be top-down and bottom-up simultaneously - "Innovation needs to be top-down and bottom-up at the same time. Good ideas come from everywhere. An open and participatory process yields more and better ideas. Learning from any part of the organization should be proliferated throughout. And support from top officers is vital in setting the tone and commitment to qualities of innovation." #
Global-i from Infomagnet - 3D globe full of world data - like Google Earth but specifically meant to show data; in a web browser too! #
CSSVista: Live CSS editing with Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously - gotta try on Windows machine #
Visible Earth: January, Blue Marble Next Generation w/ Topography and Bathymetry - great huge desktops...good for work computer? #
TerraTrike Cruiser - another option, $1299 #
ActionBent Recumbents - Tadpole Trike - current model of that trike, $1350 in the U.S. #
Photos: Spinning new ideas for bikes and trikes | CNET News.com - nice compact recumbent trike; good for commuting? #
bookofjoe: Color-Cycling LED Frisbee - much nicer than breaking glowsticks and spreading radioactive glass on the frisbee... #
Real-time Domain Search - much easier than using networksolutions or godaddy itself... #
The New Yorker: The Critics: Books - "Marriages thrive on stories. They die on conventions." #
Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: The Art of Driving Your Competition Crazy - crazy bold business ideas: "During the Korean War, the U. S. Army Office of Strategic Services left a supply of condoms for the Communist Chinese to find. The condoms were specially manufactured in an extra-large size. The label on the boxes, however, said, 'Made in the USA Size Medium.'" #
Signum sine tinnitu--by Guy Kawasaki: Six More Crazy Stories - great crazy stories about bold business moves #
m03.gif (GIF Image, 300x214 pixels) - cool bike pivots in the center along the bike's axis #
bikepartsusa.com - Product 01-130061: SHIFTER SHI HB SL-8S20 8s-NEXUS REVO () - the shifter, $17 #
Alfred E. Bike - Parts & Accessories Catalog - nice cheap 700c black disc rim #
The Nata village blog - talking about the problems controlling HIV/AIDS in an African village #
Thyme - A PHP Calendar - Embedding a Calendar - embed an iCal calendar in a PHP webpage #
plusminus: C'ALL future phone - "Imagine the device that unites everything that you carry along: a mobile phone, a player, your credit and discount cards, your apartment and your car keys. We have imagined it and now introduce you to the future." #
Dr. Brilliant Vs. the Devil of Ambition - "But in the long run, preferences don't matter to your success or to your happiness. They distract you from seeing what is most important to you. The point of life is to transcend the smallness of the finite self by identifying with things that last." #
Dr. Brilliant Vs. the Devil of Ambition - "There are people who get exactly what they want. You think they're the lucky ones, but they're not. The lucky ones are those who do what they are meant to do." - Neem Karoli Baba (Larry Brilliant's guru in the 70s) #
Irish Times by Patrick Street on Rhapsody - containing song from Napoleon Dynamite #
Deals/Coupons on bike parts - new forum #
Americans More Likely to Donate Money, Not Time, to Charities - "Gallup's annual Lifestyle survey finds that most Americans have donated money to a charity in the past year, but fewer have volunteered their time for charitable causes. One in seven Americans say they have donated blood in the past year. The poll finds variations in charitable giving by household income, church attendance, and age." #
Adjustable Curve Template (24 in.) : Sporty's Tool Shop - very cool, for transfering curves... #
Q-Phrase: Next Generation Search - interesting contextual search products; without keywords, browse-based #
biomega - copenhagen bike is cool...internal drive, internal shifting, disc brakes, slick fenders...if only it was folding too... #
Postcards for Human Rights In India - handmade postcards from India #
Paul Boutin : - "Hating things is a form of attachment, too."—Kevin Kelly #
Wired News: Steve Jobs' Best Quotes Ever "Nobody has tried to swallow us since I've been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste." -- Apple shareholder meeting, April 22, 1998 #
apophenia: what do you fear to be wrong about most? - great great question... #
"G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide" - "One challenge in designing sociable systems is to provide enough opportunity for strangers to collide without providing the structures for people to exercise power." #
"G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide" - "When mass media began, people assumed that we would all converge upon one global culture. While the media has had an effect, complete homogenization has not occurred. And it will not." #
"G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide" - "We have all sorts of local cultures connected through a global network, resulting in all sorts of ugly tensions. Designers who work with networks must face these tensions and design to take advantage of the global while not destroying the local." #
WORDPLAY/Columns/06. Crap-plus-One - "'Crap-plus-one' isn't really worth aspiring to. And it's not much of a career strategy." - Tim Elliot #
Genometri - Genovate - Software - fascinating software generates thousands of design tweaks to choose from #
Makita Autofeed Screwdriver | Uncrate - the world's coolest power tool...like a machine gun... #
American Beliefs: Evolution vs. Bible's Explanation of Human Origins - half of Americans don't believe in evolution, choosing creationism instead #
Kiva - fantastic microfinance idea; loaning directly to the individual entrepreneurs (and run by Matt Flannery!) #
south by southwest festivals conferences - mp3s of many of the sessions... #
Fast Pitch Competition - Tech Coast Angels - video of Guy Kawasaki on innovation; great great stuff #
The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Haas School - reading list for entrepreneurs #
Songs I would use to break a heart... - Galahad_duLac's Journal - Last.fm - not that I'm planning it, but beautiful songs nonetheless... #
Complexity causes 50% of product returns: scientist - Yahoo! News - "Most of the flaws found their origin in the first phase of the design process: product definition". Amen. #
Bottle Stopper-Pourer shopping in Crate and Barrel Wine, Bar - slick one-piece pourer/stopper #
Maybe I put too much stock in work as being a source of purpose and redemption (Philosophistry) - Phil on meta-meta-happiness #
Holophonic Sound - Google Video - another example of holophonic sound #
Holophonic.ch | Flash Intro - dunno how they do it, but this sound stuff is amazing! #
Wheels 4 Life - Providing Low Cost Quality Bikes for Third World Countries - bike-providing charity #
Re~Cycle - Relieving Poverty by Taking Bikes to New Territories. - "Re~Cycle's mission is to collect and ship second hand bicycles and parts to Africa. Local partners teach local people the skills of how to repair and maintain them, to improve their lives in a sustainable manner." #
MeaningofLife.tv - good stuff with E.O. Wilson #
Color Palette Generator - makes a color palette out of any picture! #
VisitorVille: Bring Your Web Site Traffic To Life -- Now in 3-D! - try on a windows machine #
Paul Saffo - Public Opinion - CIO Magazine Fall 2003 - "Americans may seem to be privacy-hawks, but they are also lazy and suckers for anything that sounds like a deal. Given a devil's choice between privacy and convenience, the vast majority of consumers will choose the latter." #
Sunset Palo Alto - great sunset calendar of times and graph #
Apartment Therapy on Successful People & Less Stuff - "From having visited many, many people at home in the past three years, I can tell you that those that have been the most successful have had the least stuff around them and the most desire to get rid of even more." #
Ethnic and regional diversity - the effects of globalization on local populations. - composite photos of 100 people from different cities #
Malcom Gladwell on the power law of homelessness - Philip Mangano, Bush's homelessness czar: "It is very much ingrained in me that you do not manage a social wrong. You should be ending it." #
GrApple - Aronnax`s Firefox Themes - make FF look like it belongs on the Mac... #
Matt Kahn Exhibition at Stanford Gallery - amazing video of Matt talking over pictures of his paintings. Finally, Matt Kahn stuff online! #
Jump Associates - new website, lots of great resources and readings! #
Fitzsu.com: Wedding Registries, Unique Modern Gifts, Alessi, Iittala - hug shakers, another store #
Colibri - Type Ahead. - like Quicksilver for Windows??? #
famfamfam.com: Icons - nice tiny free icons #
Typodermic - Quality fonts designed by Ray Larabie - Expressway font; like Interstate but free! #
Optimus Mini Three | Uncrate - good for a custom application launcher! #
Early Retirement - "Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated." #
Quintura - The Way People Search - new websearch, requires a download... #
Brainstorming rules, software and free training - another priceless piece of interface design... #
ParaMind Brainstorming Software -- Idea Creation/Creative Writing Technology - "This is a MAJOR piece of crap!" #
crabfu steam toys - yes, steam-powered radio-controlled tanks and trains. yes. #
UncommonGoods: DIAMOND PAPERWEIGHT - quite a ring...=) #
Standpoint / What do you believe? - interesting way to make claims on the web... #
Financial Times - Tribal Workers - "The notion that one can do anything is clearly liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimise personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them. One might see this as a sign of extended adolescence. Eventually, they will be forced to realise that living is as much about closing possibilities as it is about creating them." #
Let the Good Times Roll by Guy Kawasaki: Hindsights - his commencement speech; pretty wild... #
Interesting brainstorming software - suggests ideas based on seed keywords... #
Political bias affects brain activity, study finds - LiveScience - MSNBC.com - Members of political parties get a rush from ignoring alternative viewpoints #
The New York Review of Books: Genocide in Slow Motion - Kristof gives an incredible overview of the genocide in Darfur. #
IVR Cheat Sheet(tm) by Paul English - how to get a real person on the phone for many many companies! #
OGLE: The OpenGLExtractor | OGLE: OpenGLExtractor by Eyebeam R&D - Frumin made something you use for 3-D mashups... #
IsGoogleEvil.pdf - the paper arguing that Google hurts culture through its externalities; hurting certain types of knowledge. #
Marginal Revolution: How Google changes information markets - "My main worry is that we learn more about topics with readily imagined keywords, and we neglect hard-to-define abstract concepts." Interesting... #
National Geographic News Photo Gallery: Top Ten News Photos of 2005 - "Gas Theif Escapes on Tricycle"...awesome. #
ESSAY; Wish List: No More Books! - New York Times - "Several years ago, I calculated how many books I could read if I lived to my actuarially expected age. The answer was 2,138...In principle, there would be enough time to read 500 masterpieces, 500 minor classics, 500 overlooked works of genius, 500 oddities and 138 examples of high-class trash. Nowhere in this utopian future would there be time for ''Hi-Ho, Steverino!''" #
The MySpace Generation - we gotta figure out why this MySpace thing works so well... #
MyAncestry.org - my family! #
Marginal Revolution: The best sentence I read last night - "Expressed loosely, being smart makes women patient and makes men take more risks." - Shane Frederick #
Marginal Revolution: Invisible hand podcasts - "I am excited by podcasts, but only in the abstract." -- this is exactly what gets people into investment trouble; if you won't use something, why do you think other people will? #
MAYA Design: Events: IA Workshop, Dec. 2005 - redesigning the Carnegie Library #
feltron vii - a personal annual report...wonder how he calculated work vs. play? #
BananaRepublic.com: men: sale: accessories:Signature sterling silver cuff links - Banana Republic cuff links have my initials on them! #
Two interviews with Fred Rogers on Google Video #
How to Save the World - some _really_ dangerous ideas...including Vonnegut and Buckminster Fuller... #
THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER 2006 - Why haven't we met aliens yet? "Most bright alien species probably go extinct gradually, allocating more time and resources to their pleasures, and less to their children." - Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychologist #
DVDs and Videos - Fibre Glast Developments - good videos on intro to fiberglass #
The E Zone: Composite Molding Made Easy DVD Review - interesting way of making a mold using HydroCal gypsum cement mix...does look pretty easy! #
Learning Center - Fibre Glast Developments - incredible resource for learning about fiberglass/carbon molding #
Mold Construction Techniques - how to use a mold for fiberglass (one key seems to be waxing and coating the mold for a good "release" of the part, with no sticking to the mold) #
Education quote - "Education is learning to use the tools which the race has found indispensable" - Josiah Royce (I disagree--I think that comes naturally, it's the non-natural stuff we need to learn, how to combat our unhelpful learned tendencies) #
You and Your Research - "For myself I find it desirable to talk to other people; but a session of brainstorming is seldom worthwhile." #
You and Your Research - "I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness within their grasp don't succeed are: they don't work on important problems, they don't become emotionally involved, they don't try and change what is difficult to some other situation which is easily done but is still important, and they keep giving themselves alibis why they don't." #
You and Your Research - "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." #
You and Your Research - "The great scientists, when an opportunity opens up, get after it and they pursue it. They drop all other things. They get rid of other things and they get after an idea because they had already thought the thing through. Their minds are prepared; they see the opportunity and they go after it." #
You and Your Research - "I finally adopted what I called ``Great Thoughts Time.'' When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that." #
You and Your Research - "If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results." - Isaac Newton #
Good and Bad Procrastination - "Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work." - Paul Graham #
bookofjoe: Neo-Nordic Skateboard Chair - very cool laminate birch shape--also presumes you'll help balance yourself by putting a foot down, which helps the chair itself be leaner and sleeker--brilliant! #
Urethane Foam , Expanding Marine Polyurethane Foam - 4lb or 8lb pourable foam might work for carving molds! #
Guide to Working With Floral Foam by Pete Flynn - good for carving? #
John Stuart Mill on happiness - "Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness...Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." #
John Stuart Mill on happiness - "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." #
Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the World's Poorest Citizens, Makes His Case - Knowledge@Wharton - "I have described poor people as like a bonsai -- that little tree that grows in a flower pot. I said you pick the best seed of the tallest tree in the forest, and plant it in a flower pot, and it will grow into a tiny tree. Is there anything wrong with the seed? Nothing is wrong with the seed. It's the best seed. Then why is it tiny? Because you planted it in a flower pot. You didn't allow it to grow in the real soil." #
Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the World's Poorest Citizens, Makes His Case - Knowledge@Wharton - his vision for the future: "Two things: to make credit a human right so that each individual human being will have the opportunity to take loans and implement his or her ideas so that self-exploration becomes possible. And second: that it will lead to a world where nobody has to suffer from poverty -- a world completely free from poverty." #
metacool: Innovation starts in the field - "Judgment is the opposite of compassion, and by deferring judgment, one starts the process of innovation." #
Skating | Inline Skates | Rollerblade | Roller Skating | Inline Roller Skates - rollerblades with two giant wheels on each skate...cool... #
Web 2.0 - velocity matters..."Google doesn't try to force things to happen their way. They try to figure out what's going to happen, and arrange to be standing there when it does. That's the way to approach technology-- and as business includes an ever larger technological component, the right way to do business." #
Mark Lyon's GMail Loader (GML) - Import Your Mail into GMail - looks like it preserves date/time sent as well... #
GiveMeaning - cool grassroots charity groups #
Powers of Ten - Google Video - the Eames video online #
bikepants1.gif (GIF Image, 600x208 pixels) - why bike seat design is all backwards... #
iPod shuffle 1GB sold out until January - Engadget - www.engadget.com - "Consumermas" - I can't believe I've never heard that term before... #
:: rogerebert.com :: Commentary :: Ebert's Best 10 Movies of 2005 (xhtml) - some good stuff I hadn't heard of... #
TripStalker - online travel bot continuously scours the Internet looking for the best price possible for airfare, hotels, cars. - set it and forget it... #
Infinite desktop movie - watch out, lifestreams! #
USATODAY.com - This is the Google side of your brain - how we're offloading our memories to Google..."even writing didn't change the process of memory, just what we chose to remember..In pre-literate societies, what was worth remembering might be complex information about who can marry whom, or the history of long-term trading relationships, she says. Today, "the emphasis on what kinds of knowledge need to be remembered has shifted." #
One Billion Internet Users (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - and most of them not in the U.S... #
bookofjoe: Cheetos Lip Balm - cheese-flavored lip balm...awesome. #
Karova | KS2.0 tour - slick for-purchase ecommerce templates/code for any site. #
The Bible - Its Evolution, Contradictions and Inconsistencies - The myth of Jesus' birth - points out historical issues #
Donate to This Year's Foolish Charities [Fool.com: Special Features] - Motley Fool's chosen charities #
G A P M I N D E R: HOME - great visualization of the UNDP development goals #
Macworld: News: Steve Jobs discusses music labels, iPods and Intel Macs - "We are very careful about what features we add because we can't take them away." #
bookofjoe: Shark Bite Bottle Opener - good for surfers? #
UIE Brain Sparks » UIE Brain Sparks Audio Library - Jared Spool on Scent, Search, and the Pursuit of User Happiness #
Marginal Revolution: Pledge Drive - good explanation for a pledge drive: "Without prices not only is the incentive to produce diminished but so is information about what to produce." #
Napoleon Dynamite Lip Balm - yep...flippin' sweet! #
Putting people first: Overview of experience design companies - lots of links to companies #
most needy cause - Google Search - analytical paper on the people who "need Christianity the most" in the world; could this be extended to those who need humanitarian aid the most? #
Cartoonbank.com - Product Details - "No, Thursday's out. How about never--is never good for you?" #
Xooglers - Google's speed: "The upside of this philosophy is that Google did many things quickly, most of which turned out to be positive. The downside is that Google sometimes did things with unforeseen effects and individuals occasionally misinterpreted exactly how much power they possessed. The tradeoff appears to have been worth it." #
Ask E.T.: A solution to Fermi's paradox: Does local optimizing eventually lead to global pessimizing? -weird Tufte musing on how we're destroying ourselves by being self-centered... #
Amazon.com: Cyclone Washer Washmate: Kitchen & Housewares - portable plug-in washing machine; nice and simple... #
rideoregon.schtuff.com - McKenzie River Trail - must...ride...this...trail...like this guy... #
Google Local - Must ride this road; Welch Creek, off of Calaveras in the East Bay #
Raising the Bar: The Role of 'Social Information' in Charitable Giving - Knowledge@Wharton - "Our primary result is that social information can influence contributions," the researchers write. Those members who were told that another donor had contributed $300 gave an average contribution of $119.70 while those in the same group who were not told about the other donor's contribution (the control group) gave $106.72. This $13 difference "would translate into a 12% increase in revenue for the station had all callers been offered the $300 social information," the researchers note. #
Christian Peacemaker Teams: committed to reducing violence by "Getting in the way." - whoa, hardcore stuff... #
bookofjoe: BehindTheMedspeak: The more you forget, the better your memory - "'Until now, it's been assumed that people with high capacity visual working memory had greater storage but actually, it's about the bouncer--a neural mechanism that controls what information gets into awareness.' In other words, it's not your memory capacity that makes your recall good or bad, it's how good you are at disregarding the irrelevant" #
Marginal Revolution: Pledge Drive - why hold a pledge drive: "Efficiency says that goods with zero marginal cost should have a zero price but without prices not only is the incentive to produce diminished but so is information about what to produce...Thus, to decide how much to invest in this venture we markup donations to get an estimate of our social value and we put positive weight on social welfare in our utility function." #
TOBYK dot com >> Misc >> Google Map Tool - to create easy route maps! #
nomo zilla - why someone might leave a successful company..."And there's another factor involved, which is that you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company. Netscape's early success and rapid growth caused us to stop getting the former and start getting the latter." #
The E-Mail Time Capsule - Forbes.com - send an email to yourself in 20 years... #
Declaration of Independence - tragically, I could see Iraq writing a very similar document about us today... #
The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town - Is the 35-hour French work week to blame for the 2005 riots? "There are many explanations for the estimated forty-per-cent unemployment rate in the banlieues that have been the site of recent riots, but part of the problem is that voluntary leisure for some Europeans has helped lead to involuntary leisure for others. The less work that gets done, the less work there is to do." #
Wayfaring Map - Date Night - nice night in SF; also a cool site showing the curator culture... #
bookofjoe: zoom Zoom ZOOM - Steve Wozniak: "The Apple philosophy is to continually unveil great surprises to its users" #
Live Simple: Radical tactics to reduce the complexity, costs, and clutter of your life - interesting to browse... #
Soller Composites - looks like a good source for carbon fiber and epoxy #
Civilian Covert Harness Bag | Uncrate - cool unique gear bag #
tips.pdf (application/pdf Object) - wallet-sized tips sheet for Google SMS #
The Bicycle Forest :: BikeCAD - design your dream bike...upright, recumbent, or more... #
WebVisions 2005 | Presentations | Simplicity - why simplicity is important #
bookofjoe: Men's Belly Button Brush %u2014 'Developed by NASA' - labelled "For the Man who has everything"...and navel-gazers...maybe not such a positive gift? #
Bright Feet - Home - slippers with lights, not a bad idea... #
Who Has Time For This?: Heracles' Marathon to Olympus, Athena Awaits - fantastic never-say-die story of a flight to Greece #
Archie McPhee® Toys, Gifts & Novelties - Leonardo da Vinci action figure...awesome... #
gladwell dot com - the bakeoff - "the decisive edge had come not from the collective wisdom of a large group but from one person's ability to make a lateral connection between two previously unconnected objects" #
gladwell dot com - the bakeoff - "...if you want to design a truly innovative software program -- or a truly innovative cookie -- the costs of bigness can become overwhelming." #
gladwell dot com - the bakeoff - If something's new it doesn't have to be perfect, and if it can't be perfect then it'd better be new! "For those in the food business, the lesson was unforgettable: if something was new, it didn't have to be perfect. And, since healthful, indulgent cookies couldn't be perfect, they had to be new..." #
gladwell dot com - the bakeoff - "Those of us whose only interaction with such innovations is at the point of sale have a naïve faith in human creativity...But if you're the one responsible for those bright new ideas there is no such certainty. You come up with one great idea, and the process is so miraculous that all you do is puzzle over how on earth you ever did it, and worry whether you'll ever be able to do it again." #
Welcome to Give.org - the Better Business Bureau on giving to charities #
Happiness and Public Policy » Happiness Quote of the Day - "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." - Albert Camus #
Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories: Bicycle - Bicycles for the mind..."Apple had recently taken out a two page ad in Scientific American, featuring quotes from Steve Jobs about the wonders of personal computers. The ad explained how humans were not as fast runners as many other species, but a human on a bicycle beat them all. Personal computers were "bicycles for the mind."" #
911Tabs.Com - External Link - Death Cab for Cutie tabs for I Will Follow You into the Dark #
Bill Watterson at Kenyon College - "Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came." #
Bill Watterson at Kenyon College - "A friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea." #
Bill Watterson at Kenyon College - "If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood." #
bookofjoe: Yohji Yamamoto Toilet Paper? - black toilet paper...fantastic. #
Fairly Good Practices - simple things to make business non-pathological #
The "all-direction vehicle" - sweet! #
ABC.com: American Inventor - cool sounding show, makes scientists the cool ones! Dean Kamen would be proud... #
Star Wars Halloween Masks - Forbes.com - Larry and Sergey masks #
Edge: TURING'S CATHEDRAL by George Dyson - Science fiction writer Simon Ings: "When our machines overtook us, too complex and efficient for us to control, they did it so fast and so smoothly and so usefully, only a fool or a prophet would have dared complain." #
Edge: TURING'S CATHEDRAL by George Dyson - Alan Turing: "Intellectual activity consists mainly of various kinds of search." - 1948 #
Edge: TURING'S CATHEDRAL by George Dyson - John Von Nuemann's computer - "Uses which are likely to be the most important are by definition those which we do not recognize at present because they are farthest removed from our present sphere." #
Archive of American Television Interview with Fred Rogers Part 2 of 9 - Google Video - "Until television became such a tool for selling, it was a fabulous medium for education. that's what i had always hoped that it would be." #
Henri Nouwen - Journey to L'Arche - how he moved to a community of physically- and mentally-disabled people and found home #
Playground Blues archive - very nice clean simple blog list #
Good Experience - Problems of complexity and choice - Lots of good bits about making things simpler: "In introducing tech products today, the main emphasis is on differentiation and how your product is unique. But if you fast-forward another five or 10 years, ... we will start to see ease of use become the most compelling feature of all." #
Memorable Quotes from Twelve Monkeys (1995) James Cole: "I am insane, and you are my insanity." #
UIE Brain Sparks » Blog Archive » MP3 of What Users Want Available - good talk on how it's really hard to templatize good design; the devil really is in the details... #
"Academy of Television" "fred rogers" - Google Video - great long long interview with him... #
UIE Brain Sparks » Blog Archive » Global Site Navigation: Not Worthwhile? - "Global navigation (versus local navigation) is often static on the site (meaning that it doesn’t change from one page to the next). We know that most of the time, users come to the site with a specific goal in mind. Maybe they’ll click on the global navigation on the home page (however, probably not, if the page is well designed). Then they’ll never click on it again, because, after all, they are now looking for local information — not global information." #
Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Combating the Perception of Bloat (Why the UI, Part 3) - why adaptive menus are bad...just show me everything already! #
PARC Forum Series on Innovation | October 28, 2004 - Paul Saffo's incredible talk on innovation (like the one he gave at Stanford)..."We substitute velocity for management and I would argue that is a very rational act. Because if you slow down to manage well, you're not going to be able to take advantage of the opportunities. Because when you're in a deep innovation space the uncertainty level is so great you cannot possibly get your hands around all the factors and forces affecting your business." #
Shirky: The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview - "The Semantic Web specifies ways of exposing these kinds of assertions on the Web, so that third parties can combine them to discover things that are true but not specified directly. This is the promise of the Semantic Web -- it will improve all the areas of your life where you currently use syllogisms. Which is to say, almost nowhere." #
Creating Passionate Users: The Concept Carification effect - Steve Jobs on how innovation gets strangled: "Here's what you see at a lot of companies; you know how you see a show car and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible,' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse." #
How to win at Powerball - Lifehacker - change the game... #
Noise Between Stations: A Business Design Blog » Blog Archive » Bloomberg and the open office - the benefits of a cubicle-free workspace #
The Library of Babel - like the interweb..."When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope." #
IF YOU HAVE TWO, GIVE ONE AWAY - Marc Scandrette's new campaign... #
Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times - "We love Google not because it brings us the entire Web but because it filters it out, bringing us the one page we really need. In our new age of overload, the winner is the technology that can hold the world at bay." #
Genius at Work - Bill Strickland (no, not Lance Armstrong's friend) on money: "I don't need the money," he says. "It's not my thing. Don't get me wrong - I do like money. But I don't know that it's ecologically appropriate to hoard millions and millions of dollars. We don't need to have so much wealth concentrated in so few hands. Our culture needs to recognize that having $20 million in the bank is not an absolute requirement for being happy. We have got to be more attuned to the idea that the life experience has its own value." #
Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Gallery Koyanagi - incredibly calming photo of the ocean #
Campbell Laird Studio : Modu Series - some cool modern art i'd hang in my place... #
KillerClips | extreme movie browsing! - clips from movies; can't imagine this is long for this world... #
the collective - A 16mm Mountain Bike Film - looks pretty great... #
Meet the Life Hackers - New York Times - gotta grab some quotes from here... #
Design Observer: writings about design & culture: The Darwinian iPod - "In the real world, design is Darwinian. To consider the iPod, it did not spring fully formed from the mind of a powerful Designer, but rather it represents one distinct point on a long evolutionary timeline." #
Gangs of New York - "People get turned off of games because repeated failures aren't appealing to them - because that's what the rest of their life is like." - Dan Houser, creative VP of Rockstar Games #
ONLamp.com: Rolling with Ruby on Rails - easier tutorial? #
The Bicycle Forest - tons of crazy cool wild bike designs! #
Tech Yogurt » 23 Ways to Speed Up Windows XP - some new ones here... #
Marginal Revolution: The Undercover Economist - how Safeway makes money #
GNG | global nomads group - cool film documentaries from darfur, rwanda, etc... #
Make a Spanglish Sandwich | Missions | Collective Detective - this sounds amazing... #
Nashbar.com Coupons - Nashbar Coupon Codes, Bike Nashbar Coupons, BikeNashbar.com Coupon Codes @ eDealinfo.com #
Kareem Mayan's Weblog: customer experience, emerging technology, media, and more - Web 2.0: Conversation with Five Teenagers - hundreds of dollars on ringtones and more...wow... #
REDLINE | ADULT BIKES | 9-2-5 - cool fixed-gear commute bike #
Halloween Costumes for Adults, Teens and Kids - BuyCostumes.com - wow. just, wow. watch out this halloween! #
Archie McPhee Toys, Gifts & Novelties - awesome stuff, Christmas is coming! #
The Word Spy - joy-to-stuff ratio - my favorite equation! #
Finally, a good article in the NYTimes about the intelligent design debate - being fair to both science and religious people's feelings #
Search.CSS - simple Google search CSS style #
Religion may hurt society - "RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today." #
GirlHacker's Random Log - freaking great simple blog design; gets around the "titling" problems by, well, not titling. #
tremble.com: we clap on the downbeat - "If I were to make a list of things I am "doing" right now, it would be long and impressive and possibly even make you wonder [how I] can get it all done. Well, here's the answer: I don't." #
Team Varna II - finally a cool-looking position for a recumbent...wonder if it's practical for a long ride? #
Invisible Children/ Child Soldiers - discussion on Omidyar.net #
Children Solidarity Foundation - providing reconstructive surgery for child burn victims in poor countries. Very disturbing images... #
The Opiates of the Middle Class - hopefully Google can stay objective and avoid leading people in biased ways, like the protagonist here: "He believes in the news media providing an accurate representation of the risks in the world. They don't. By what I call the narrative fallacy, the media distorts our mental map of the world by feeding us what can be made into a story that can be squeezed into our minds." #
Backfence: You may get a charge out of this - "Anything that complicates things for the end-user is invariably described as improvement. ('Dear customers: To serve you better, we are now placing rabid explosive wolverines in the parking lot.')" - James Lileks #
i-mate K-Jam Revisited - Gizmodo - pretty cool phone with full qwerty sliding out... #
the foolishness of god Desmond Tutu and forgiveness film index - can't tell if this is released yet... #
Ashrita Furman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - this is amazing; he just picks a record and sets out to beat it! #
Lucius Annaeus Seneca Quotes - "A man's as miserable as he thinks he is." #
Ray Kurzweil - "Change is not a constant" -- it's an exponential (speaking at Google) #
Ray Kurzweil - "As an inventor, I realized that my inventions had to make sense when I _finished_ the project, when the world was inevitably a different place..." (speaking at Google) #
Online Extra: Jakob Nielsen on the Unwieldy Web - "One of the big lessons from user testing is that life is too short to click on buttons you don't understand." #
easyCruise - cheap cruises plus the world's longest dropdown box... #
The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town - I hope they raise gas taxes through the roof..."Americans are happy with the free market when it allows them to buy cheap T-shirts and twenty-nine-dollar DVD players, but they tend to like it less when they have to pay fifty dollars to fill up their gas tanks." #
How to invent a better screw - "The screw is so simple and cheap--most cost less than a penny apiece to make--that it has been easier to design around its deficiencies than to come up with a better model. But LeVey, 40, says he was "too dumb"to listen to naysayers; with his name on 19 patents and with 18 more pending, he thought it was silly to keep working around the problem when he could try making a better screw. " #
How Smart Is Yahoo! Search?: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance - Yes, "the Google" would lose a big customer - "A Microsoft purchase of AOL would have an immediate negative impact on Google, since AOL is among the Google's biggest customers." #
technology and the social » work / life - "Professor Balbus argues that the modern cycle of compulsive production and consumption can usefully be understood as a cultural defense against depressive anxiety and guilt and that a reparative response to that anxiety and guilt is the key to a more mature relationship to our world and our products." #
Genius at Work "The worst thing about being poor is what it does to your spirit," says Strickland, "not just your wallet. I wanted to build something that would give the people who come here a vision of what life could be, to create an environment that says that life is good." #
3G Simple Cell-Phones—for Grandma! - Gizmodo - finally, a simple cell phone. I'm a 25-year-old tech geek and I want one of these... #
Henry David Thoreau Quotes - "Being is the great explainer" #
Compy 386! - "The internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens. You need to take advantage of that". #
bookofjoe: Apple Slicer %u2014 With a twist - best apple slicer #
Oval Oil and Vinegar Cruet - very cool way of pouring oil and vinegar #
Pote / The Online Text Editor - very cool, very simple text editor #
IPEVO - cool Skype phone, takes advantage of the fact it knows you have another screen, so it's more like a remote control... #
The World Summit: Eight Ways to Change the World - this with a better UI == howtosavetheworld.info #
"Leadership is about details" - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) - "Management is about maintaining the status quo. Leadership is about finding the new direction." #
The Lazy Way to Success: Wonderful Quote from Thelonious Monk - "There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices." - Thelonious Monk #
Ethnography for business - " The keys to understanding behavior are the same whether the subject is hunting in the Amazon jungle or shopping on Amazon.com, researchers say...In America, researchers study people in their natural habitat — in the home, at work or out shopping — to understand why they do what they do. " #
Bebop Wood Rack | Uncrate - very cool wood holder for fireplaces...like ours! #
nihilistic_kid: I just bought a giant-sized Hershey bar for a dollar - being poor in the third world #
Whatever: Being Poor - being poor in the U.S. #
CVS to launch one-time use video camera for $29.99 - Jun. 6, 2005 - very interesting...i doubt most people would need to even get the video off it... #
ReliefWeb » Home Page - interesting worldwide focus; almost like the rankings for HTSTW (howtosavetheworld.info) #
Do you MySpace? - "Although many people over 30 have never heard of MySpace, it has about 27 million members, a nearly 400 percent growth since the start of the year. It passed Google in April in hits, the number of pages viewed monthly" #
Talking the Walk - "The North American students of European background, as a group, spent more time gazing at the focal object (a leopard) in the photo's foreground. Students from China spent more time studying the background (the jungle around the leopard) and absorbing the whole scene." #
Zinn Cycles - custom cranks, up to 220mm; i should be riding these! #
metacool: Knock Knock - Seth Godin's new ebook about designing websites; nothing new, just reiterating that you'd better know what you want people to DO when they visit, or else the best design and marketing can't save you. #
Is Google up to Something? - old google results design showing up for people; strange... #
Amazing counter-intuitive designs - hot-plate-styled coasters, lots of recycled goods, brick-styled handbag! #
LEM Piston Stool | Uncrate - curiously similar to my freedom seat; international design award, you say? #
The Mythical Man-Month - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - great summary of the ideas in the book #
Chewbacca wears the ultimate Man-Bag at Purseuing - I always thought it was a bandolier... #
Jons Guides: Bluetooth Help Guide: Driver Installation - to connect any BT device to your PC #
Palm Tungsten T Bluetooth USB Adaptor internet connection - updated windows driver for my iogear adapter? #
Using Bluetooth headset with SmartButler - for adapters that already support the headset profile. #
/ / jacob carpenter . com / Tools / LinkBlog - enabling keyboard buttons for Rhapsody #
Logitech Wireless Music System | Uncrate - this is cool... #
HRW: Remembering Rwanda: Africa in Conflict, Yesterday and Today: What You Can Do - to prevent future genocide #
Wired 13.07: God's Little Toys - William Gibson on cut-and-paste creation; curatorial culture: "Meaning, ultimately, seemed a matter of adjacent data." #
Bad to the Last Drop - New York Times - why bottled water is bad for the world. Sounds like someone needs to design a reusable solution that works... #
Pirovano, Stefano Canaglia Nail Clipper for Alessi - cool growling animal nail clipper #
The David Allen Company - Lists that are handy to have... #
Welcome to Taylor Gifts - SMART PLUG MULTI OUTLET - sits flush against the wall... #
Historical Atlas of the 20th Century - amazing, "state-of-the-world" resource #
University of Glamorgan - homepage - beautiful and readable university website! #
The Christian Paradox (Harpers.org) - how Christians get Christianity all wrong... #
Eat and Code (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) - "The lesson I drew from this is that the human mind is such that whatever you do, it will try to avoid it. So you might as well aim high. Now the question is: what do you do with the rest of time?" #
Aaron Swartz: The Weblog^WOnline Magazine - "The lesson I drew from this is that the human mind is such that whatever you do, it will try to avoid it. So you might as well aim high. Now the question is: what do you do with the rest of time?" #
PRESS RELEASE: Infineon Raceway hosts summer cycling series - like Grattan but in California! #
The "Not Insane" To-Do List @ AMERICAN DIGEST - awesome...real people do this... #
It's in the Cards @ AMERICAN DIGEST - "Let go or get dragged." #
It's in the Cards @ AMERICAN DIGEST - "There is no multi-tasking. There is only the monkey mind jabbering so fast it seems like multi-tasking." #
Moneywallet.org - make a wallet out of money...very meta... #
Download of the Day: Words screensaver for goals and todo's : Lifehacker - just what I wanted for quotes... #
Who Knew a $10 Bill Had Such a Nice Bouquet? - New York Times - good cheap wines #
metacool: metacool Thought of the Day How about a Cadillac? "Sell the Honda Odyssey. Buy a 1955 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce. And let the kids take a bus." -- P.J. O'Rourke #
//// COLOURlovers :: palettes of colour love. - distributed palette creation... #
Moby Dick Chapter 1 My sentiments exactly..."There is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, - what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!" #
template kingdom - Website Templates (Dreamweaver, Frontpage), Flash intro templates, Logo templates - pretty solid overall...good for quick inspiration #
What You'll Wish You'd Known "If you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right." #
What You'll Wish You'd Known On geniuses: "If they were just like us, then they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being lazy." #
More from The Relationship Revolution "The fact is, people -- not information -- create the value that matters, and information is merely one of many ingredients that people use. Consequently, the real future of digital technologies and networks rests with the architects of great relationships." #
Michael Schrage, The Relationship Revolution "The biggest impact these technologies have had, and will have, is on relationships between people and between organizations...Remember, the old Bell System's most successful post-War advertising campaign wasn't "Reach out and Inform someone"or "Reach Out and Exchange Data With Someone at 1.5 megabits per second;" it was "Reach Out and Touch Someone." #
Yes, You Can Buy Happiness - Forbes.com - what it costs to make up the happiness lost from life events; implies the happiest way to be is married, white and female. Hmm... #
Business 2.0 :: Magazine Article :: In Front :: The Dismal Science Measures the Meaning of Life - Switzerland and Colombia are tied for the "happiest" countries on earth despite being only the 4th and 45th richest, respectively; the US is just 14th-most happy despite being 2nd richest; Luxembourg is richest yet still just 5th happiest. #
Jim Wallis Baccalaureate at Stanford echoing a Hopi saying: "When people would complain, as they often do, that we don't have any leaders today, or ask where are the Martin Luther Kings now? - Lisa would get angry. And she would declare these words: 'We are the ones we have been waiting for!'" #
Wide Awake Living "Become the peace that you seek." - Mahatma Gandhi #
"Fighting poverty is a moral value." - Jim Wallis #
"A budget is a moral document." - Jim Wallis #
"God is personal, but never private." - Jim Wallis #
"The best way to find common ground is to move to higher ground." - Jim Wallis #
"Churches ask for the edges of our lives and that’s what they get. Faith asks for all of our lives." - Jim Wallis #
BibleGateway.com Passage Lookup: 1 Timothy 6:17-18; "Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share." #
1 Timothy 6:7-10 "For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." #
BibleGateway.com Passage Lookup: 2 Corinthians 8:13-15; Giving should not cause you pain: "Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."" #
What Should We Do? : Luke 3:10-14 : What Jesus Did! : HEARTLIGHT® "The crowd asked, "What should we do?" John replied, "If you have two coats, give one to the poor. If you have food, share it with those who are hungry." Even corrupt tax collectors came to be baptized and asked, "Teacher, what should we do?" "Show your honesty," he replied. "Make sure you collect no more taxes than the Roman government requires you to." "What should we do?" asked some soldiers. John replied, "Don't extort money, and don't accuse people of things you know they didn't do. And be content with your pay." #
Welcome to Menlo Park Presbyterian Church / Silicon Valley - "There is a kind of love that seeks value in what is loved, and there is a kind of love that creates value in what is loved." - John Ortberg ('s friend, Ian) #
NAZARENE PASTOR - "You know, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work." - a professor friend of Henri Nouwen #
Here Magazine "Sam wants to be treated as an individual. But, living in a competitive and utilitarian society, he doesn't have sufficient talent to be treated as an individual." - from a New Yorker review of The Assassination of Richard Nixon; competition squelching individualism and restricting compassion? #
Quote Details: Mahatma Gandhi: Happiness is when what... - The Quotations Page "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." - Mahatma Gandhi #
The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat - "Cyberspace may indeed change humanity, but only if it begins with humanity as it really is." - Chip Morningstar and Randy Farmer #
The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat "In the most carefully constructed experiment under the most carefully controlled conditions, the organism will do whatever it damn well pleases." #
Abraham Maslow Quotes "If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." #
Blowing out Advertising's Walls "Design is not a plan for decoration," he says. His goal is something more tangible, the definition Charles Eames preferred: "Design is a plan for action." - Brian Collins #
The Architect of a Different Kind of Organization "Architecture is not created by individuals. The genius sketch . . . is a myth. Architecture is made by a team of committed people who work together, and in fact, success usually has more to do with dumb determination than with genius." - Josua Prince-Ramus #
Be Cooler by Design "Don't tell me you need a bridge, show me the canyon!" - Giuseppe Delena #
MSNBC - Designing the Future - "We won't get everything right the first time. Change requires experimentation. But no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it." - William McDonough #
MSNBC - Designing the Future "I love nuclear energy. I just want to make sure it stays where God put it—93 million miles away, in the sun." - William McDonough #
MSNBC - Designing the Future - "Being less bad is not being good." - William McDonough #
Fortune.com - "My advice to young men is to be ready to revise any system, scrap any methods, abandon any theory if the success of the job demands it." - Henry Ford #
- Forbes.com - What it costs to "live well" - it's so freaking expensive, even in Portland and Seattle, that it's just not worth it to try. I'd rather give my money away or invest it. Spending it is ridiculous. #
True Cost to Own ratings at Edmunds - includes fuel, insurance, depreciation, etc. Good if I ever buy a new car (hah!) #
Sex Better Than Money for Happiness - "In fact, the economists calculate that a lasting marriage equates to happiness generated by getting an extra $100,000 each year. Divorce, meanwhile, translates to a happiness depletion of $66,000 annually." #
Design and Communication (Tesugen) - "Baudrillard distinguishes between the technical and the cultural aspects of design. The technical aspects concern form, function, technology, and ergonomics, whereas the cultural concern communication; the relationship between the user and the object; the user’s values, dreams, and desires." #
Roald Dahl - how he saw from the perspective of children...literally: "Dahl once said that adults should get down on their knees for a week, in order to remember what it’s like to live in a world in which the people with all the power literally loom over you." #
metacool: On Leadfoot Prius Drivers - "For all the time and money you spend crafting the story behind your offering, your customers are going to write at least a few additional chapters in the book of your brand. And those are the pages that matter to the world." #
LukeW: Web Application Form Design - nice resource for form standards #
How Do Cycling Teams Work? - What Lance Armstrong's "domestiques" do. By Daniel Engber - good explanation for newbies... #
BABC Home Page - cycling around the SF Bay in 210 miles...wow #
The origin of the joystick - "Wherever the idea came from, the translation of human will into machine movement via a single stick may be one of the most overlooked achievements of the last 100 years." #
Supergo » Live Catalog - cool page-flipping and item selection from a printed catalog #
Celsius1414: Zen Pockets - being intentional about what we carry; could help the sling bag philosophy #
tour.tv2.dk - UpTour - my weekend activity... #
metacool: metacool Thought of the Day - Chris Conley: "The idea is not the design. Only an embodiment of the idea is design." #
Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) by Neal Stephenson (kottke.org) - Kottke is on to the same idea I've had recently: "Is fiction better at presenting ideas in a non-theatening manner than non-fiction?" I'd add that it's more compelling as well... #
Crazy eBay mom - I need to look at this at least once a week to convince me to throw stuff away. #
Celsius1414: Zen Pockets - "1. What tools do I truly need to carry with me everywhere, every day? 2. What other tools do I really need to do my work today? Carry no more, and carry no less." #
Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out - New York Times - Neal Stepheson thinks techies in the U.S. are the "Jedi" of our era; doomed to extinction because we have lost touch with those doing the real work - "The tedious particulars of keeping ourselves alive, comfortable and free are being taken offline to countries where people are happy to sweat the details, as long as we have some foreign exchange left to send their way. Nothing is more seductive than to think that we, like the Jedi, could be masters of the most advanced technologies while living simple lives: to have a geek standard of living and spend our copious leisure time vegging out." #
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race - Jared Diamond says it was agriculture, which made the rich possible and enslaved the poor #
Design Observer: writings about design & culture: The Obvious, Shunned by So Many, Is Successfully Avoided Once Again - "Pullman stared at the mess for a moment, and then his face brightened. "Hey," he said, as if a great idea was just occuring to him. "Why avoid the obvious?" He then took away everything but the headline: GIVE BLOOD NOW. "Try that!" he said cheerfully, walking away." #
David Foster Wallace at Kenyon's Commencement - "The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." #
David Foster Wallace at Kenyon's Commencement - "There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." #
David Foster Wallace at Kenyon's Commencement - "If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down" #
Tumbleweed Tiny House Company | Houses - these are awesome; strange that a big guy like me would want a little house, but maybe that's why...i have enough big things already... #
PageFlip v2 pre-release by Macc - www.iparigrafika.hu - very cool, open-source... #
velorution » Stranger than fiction - incredibly-bad cycling paths from the UK #
great web fonts resource - rankings, popular choices, cross-platform information. #
Code Style: Windows font survey results - most common fonts found on windows #
Drawers in the stairs! - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) - great idea to fit drawers under stairs; i like them under the bed as well. But better if you don't need them at all...then you could have skeletons of stairs... #
Google Search: denial style summer lyrics - the song on Comedy Central's summer promo is "Swollen Summer" by The Bravery #
Folklore.org: Macintosh Stories - and a great platform for storytelling in general...great stories about steve jobs, etc #
gizmag Article: Intelligent Energy shows the ENV fuel-cell motorcycle prototype - very cool fuel cell minibike #
Rivendell Catalog - Nitto Water Bottle Cage - absolutely beautiful water bottle cage #
Julius Caesar Quotes - "Men freely believe that which they desire." Julius Caesar #
Julius Caesar Quotes - "It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life." Julius Caesar #
Julius Caesar Quotes - "I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome." Julius Caesar #
Steve Jobs challenges Class of '05 to 'stay hungry, stay foolish.' - video clip of the end of his talk at Stanford #
The Onion | Chinese Factory Worker Can't Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans - "A cup holder is not a necessary thing to own.", "No more insane flying toys for Western pigs!" #
Microsoft Acrylic Technology Preview - Home - their Photoshop competitor? #
The Apple Blog » Quicksilver Changes Everything - nice walkthrough #
Irish Times Article - Blobitecture: is design going pear-shaped? - "It seems strange that many designers are being drawn back towards the amoeba. We've evolved from globule creatures into an advanced technological race, and yet what do we do with the technology? We create plastic, concrete and metal amoebas with it." #
The Onion | New Gas Bill Designed By Some Kind Of Freaking Maniac - i know the feeling... #
Boing Boing: I have seen God in a cup of chocolate - I WANT to drink this chocolate; now THAT's a recommendation! #
The Teenager's Guide to the Real World Table of Contents - interesting book, wish I had read it younger...still trying to take hold of my life today. #
Mechanical Spirit - Arthur C. Clarke quote: "If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative." #
bookofjoe: 'To feel rich is far better than to be rich' - by Ben Stein: "Gratitude. As my pal Phil DeMuth says, it's the only totally reliable get-rich-quick scheme. Gratitude." #
Strategy at the Edge of Chaos - how to manage in the new economy; like "chasing" the customer #
Design - Freeman Thomas - "You only get one life; this life is not a rehearsal. So chances are, you want to have fun. You still want to act like a child. That spirit is a frame of mind, not an age. And the automobile gives you a chance to have an adventure every day. Say you drive 20 minutes to work every day. Your commute could be totally pragmatic, but it doesn't have to be. Having a really nice car is like wearing a really nice suit. It's like a role you play -- a role you get to play. Who doesn't want a thumbs-up experience?" #
Three lessons for a better cycling future -- Wardlaw 321 (7276): 1582 -- BMJ - "The health benefits of cycling are so great---and the health injuries from driving so great8---that not cycling is really dangerous" #
If You Can Make It in Silicon Valley, You Can Make It . . . in Silicon Valley Again - New York Times - serial entreprenuers in the bay area; man, salaries are for suckers. #
Rapid afterimage - cool illusion... #
Monkey Business - New York Times - monkeys can learn to use money; for good and for bad. I'd like to see what it does for their stress levels... #
Remind Widget - for Dashboard; kinda slick, but most importantly an interface to a well-designed program. #
Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion - terrifyingly well-done Star Wars Flash movie #
Best Tool For the Job » Flash Interfaces That Don%u2019t Require Clicking - very cool; my clicking fingers are the first to get RSI... #
Steven Wright Quotes - "I think God's going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding." - Steven Wright #
INDEX: - SCOOTERDESK - bike seat on a rolling work desk #
Spaceship Earth operating manual - "If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top." - Buckminster Fuller #
Sweetdex: Recommendations and other goodies. - personal "favorites" lists of stuff #
Virginia Woolf Quotes - Bloggers? "We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print." #
Blaise Pascal Quotes - "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter. " #
Blaise Pascal Quotes - "Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him." #
Still Angry After All These Years - "Plus, I happen to believe that only pissed-off people change the world, either in small ways or large ways." - Tom Peters #
Maeda's SIMPLICITY: Doing Just Do It - "It's much harder to make stuff versus just talking about it like you know what you're doing." - John Maeda #
Projects are Conversations - "I argue for sitting with the apparent disorganized mess for a while before imposing order upon it. I make this suggestion because sitting with the mess is where we learn about others and about the context. If we impose a tidy orderliness upon ourselves first, before we understand our surroundings, we are unlikely to be well adapted to the variety surrounding us." #
Pointment.com - Oracle-free appointment scheduling #
Top 100 Speeches by Rank - with mp3s #
Real Simple | Cleaning | The Keep-It-Clean Plan - 19 minutes a day? I could watch the Simpsons in that much time! #
fundable.org - for group fundraising; ex. each person to contribute $100 or you all get your money back. #
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes - "A room without books is like a body without a soul." #
Mark Scandrette's story and mission - "We are a movement of people in San Francisco, who, believing that our city is loved by God, seek a way of life that reverberates with the goodness and beauty of the kingdom of God." #
Wartagging: A Lifehack on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - apply tagging to real-world objects and you see how ridiculous it is... #
Rtm86 - Main - personal site Webby award winner, with good reason... #
CNN.com - E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot' - Apr 22, 2005 - IQ of people juggling work and email drops by 10 points! #
Jeffrey Veen: Fire in the Redwoods - man's house burns down and he realizes he needs none of the stuff; could I do that? #
Creating Passionate Users: Users don't care if you are the best. - like Schrage said, innovators don't matter, those who use innovations matter. #
Upcoming.org: How to Sell a Startup by Paul Graham at Xerox Parc George E. Pake Auditorium (Wednesday, May 4, 2005) #
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger : Page 9 - spotlight details #
Excerpt: In the Bubble - "Thirty years ago, in Design for the Real World, Victor Papanek observed that "there are professions more harmful than industrial design -- but only a few."" #
Excerpt: In the Bubble - "On just one single day of the days I have spent writing this book, as much world trade was carried out as in the whole of 1949; as much scientific research was published as in the whole of 1960; as many telephone calls were made as in all of 1983; as many e-mails were sent as in 1990.[vi] Our natural, human, and industrial systems, which evolve slowly, are struggling to adapt." #
MAY FC READERS' CHOICE AWARD - very cool design book this month; an excerpt #
MacMerc.com: Adobe Photoshop Tip: Comic Art Effect - turning a photo into a comic book illustration #
Voluntary Simplicity & Simple Living Resource Guide - What is Voluntary Simplicity? - actually pretty radical ideas... #
The New York Times > Magazine > Absolutely, Power Corrupts - more by Lewis on Moneyball #
Metroactive Features | Pierre Omidyar - his new venture to revolutionize philanthropy with a one-to-one approach, like eBay... #
IDFuel, the Industrial Design Weblog - amazing story of a man who planted thousands of trees over decades and transformed part of the world. "In order for the character of a human being to reveal truly exceptional qualities, we must have the good fortune to observe its action over a long period of years. If this action is devoid of all selfishness, if the idea that directs it is one of unqualified generosity, if it is absolutely certain that it has not sought recompense anywhere, and if moreover it has left visible marks on the world, then we are unquestionably dealing with an unforgettable character." #
Bud vase features - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals) - 'A "bud vase feature" is functionality outside the core purpose of a product that evokes emotion about the product, and allows the user to express their personality or character in their use of the product.' #
velorution » 2000 free bicycles for Lyon citizens - paid for by ads #
Six Apart - ProNet - Firefox to make your life easier - a few extensions... #
Experiment with position:fixed - snook.ca - fixed-position comment fields allows you to comment while reading the article... #
Creative Quotations from C. P. Snow (1905-1980) - "Technology . . . is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other." #
Color Schemer Gallery: Website-ready color schemes for Color Schemer - nice bright palettes for sites #
The Lotus 23, or: umbrella 2.0 - Engadget - www.engadget.com / - very cool umbrella collapses inside iteself, very slick! #
Phil Gyford - nice interleaving of notes/links/reviews, a la Kottke #
getting a this. with addEventListener and attachEvent - how to use addEventListener to attach a generic event to a specific element #
Gottman on strong relationships and honoring each others' dreams - "But we like to help people understand why it is that it didn't work, so that the next relationship, or next set of relationships, can be better. One of the major things we found is that honoring your partner's dreams is absolutely critical. A lot of times people have incompatible dreams — or they don't want to honor their partner's dreams, or they don't want to yield power, they don't want to share power. So that explains a lot of times why they don't really belong together." #
John Gottman - "What I have added to this field of emotion is my concept of "met-emotion," or how people feel about feelings, what their history is with specific emotions like pride, respect or disrespect, love, fear, anger, sadness. What their philosophy is about emotions and why they have this philosophy. It's critical to parenting and to couple relationships as well. It determines emotional behavior in families." #
velorution » Bike racks - shaped like bikes; now THAT's affordance! #
IT Conversations: Malcolm Gladwell - SXSW Interactive 2005 - "I believe that research is a fundamentally social process; the way that you find out interesting anecdotes is that when you have an idea that you want to pursue you tell absolutely every person that you ever meet that you are interested in it...I have enormous faith in how much gold there is to be found in random social encounters" #
danpinkinterview.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object) - 6 new skills for business: design, story, empathy, sympathy, play, and meaning. On story: "In the age of google, if you can find a fact, i can find a counterfact. Logical argument is often not enough. You need to put those facts into a story with emotional impact; story is a new product differentiator." #
bikeTV-Bike Move (Portland, OR) - amazing movie of a person's move (to a different house) using only a group of cyclists : "And the best part, when you get there, you've got like 20 people to help you unload. And you're done in no time." #
apophenia: Craigslist housing Google Maps = brilliant - another pic, since the site is down #
Google Maps Craigslistings : Lifehacker - amazing, combining two free programs #
NPR : 'Wordless Diagrams': Explaining the Everyday - illustrative designer #
Igor | Creating Company Names Product Names Company Naming Guide - printable, suggests fun, made-up and co-opted names like Yahoo, Virgin, etc. rather than Coexambitechthon and its ilk... #
Edit in Place with JavaScript and CSS - amazing WYSIWYG editing using innerHTML, sorting, etc. #
Wacky Neighbor: Flaunt it Baby!: Oblique Strategies - in a clickable-to-get-another-one Flash app #
Marginal Revolution: What do we know about tipping? - empirically-proven ways to increase or ruin your tips #
rodcorp: How we work: Georges Seurat, artist - "They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it." #
Death as a great invention - "But there's another sort of death in which cells - and perhaps, controversially, even whole organisms - choose annihilation because of the benefits it brings to some greater whole. In other words, death is an evolutionary strategy." #
Keyconfig extension: Firefox - MozillaZine Knowledge Base adds Next Tab, Previous Tab to Firefox keyboard shortcuts #
On excess, info devaluation and unplugging - "A friend of mine’s hard drive fried recently, and she didn’t have a backup. “I was panicked at first,” she told me. “After awhile, to my surprise, I realized I didn’t miss very much at all.”" #
Red Alt - I Like Your Colors - find the HTML colors for any site #
The New York Times > Arts > Critic's Notebook: On the Internet, 2nd (and 3rd and . . . ) Opinions - "The Web is not really a web after all. It is a list of lists." #
Many-to-Many: EVDB Goes Live - $2.1M for something like an ugly E@S? What is going on... #
metacool: metacool Thought of the Day - "Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope." - James Dyson #
About Design - Great Quotations - "Work without vision is drudgery. Vision without work is self-deception." -Ernest Holmes #
Ask E.T.: Sidenotes v footnotes - Tufte argues against automatic sidenoting; but if they were smart enough...a way to fill the copious extra space on blogs and widescreen monitors... #
Delicious Linkbacks - like webwide comments #
StructuredBlogging.org - embeds formatting and background images into blogs posts it recognizes as a certain type (book review, movie listing, calendar event, etc). Better to do this automatically by scraping data than by requiring people to write in structured ways, I say... #
Jon Udell: PubSub's structured blogging initiative - why design mockups matter: "If we ever get a virtuous cycle going around this stuff, it'll only happen because people see things they want to imitate. Appearance matters." #
My first 5 minute attempt at a transparent screen on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - might reduce eyestrain? #
Tagging Not Likely The Killer Solution For Search - tagging unlikely to help search, even if done by the community at large...web comments problem? #
Cycling.tv - Euro road cycling on the web; streaming video, most of it free #
metacool: Design = Marketing = Design - create a cool product and it markets itself; a trend that will become all-encompassing as it becomes easier for people to share their thoughts and opinions with each other. #
New Scientist Breaking News - Pay up, you are being watched - "We can manipulate altruistic behaviour with a pair of fake eyeballs because ancient parts of our brain fail to recognise them as fake, he says." #
Add Label Click Support to Safari: Chris Cassell Dot Net - nice hack, worth adding to default JS scripts #
PanicGoods - Nice T-Shirts For The Panic Family. - the prettiest drag/drop interface i've seen #
Drag-and-drop Sortable Lists with JavaScript and CSS - very slick re-ordering script #
life hacks - "this is about seeing tools as more than circuit boards in search of a problem." #
Interview: father of "life hacks" Danny O'Brien : Lifehacker - "Roadknight made the observation that geeks are able to memorise almost any trivial fact, apart from the trivia of their own lives...So, the trick is, tell a nearby geek the trivia of your life, and they’ll remember it better than you do. And vice-versa...The best organising systems always involve other people." #
Interview: father of "life hacks" Danny O'Brien : Lifehacker - "Power users trust software as far as they have thrown their computers in the past" #
Wisdom of Crowds - Pascal: "All problems arise from the fact that man cannot sit in his room quietly by himself." #
Instant message a phone : Lifehacker - very cool, send SMS via AOL IM #
Cory Doctorow's Life Hacks Notes - they were good last year, should be this year #
umd_video.mpg (video/mpeg Object) - Trip through the human body, courtesey of the Visible Human thin-body-slicing project #
:: Centarsia :: A mosaic of photos - free image mosaic creator #
Library Journal - In Defense of Stupid Users - "The job of information professionals is not to make all users into information professionals. Our job is either to give them the right tools for the job or do the job for them." #
The Lazy Way to Success - "Hard work is passé. The paradigm-shifting concept is "Smart Laziness" – where success comes through cleverly avoiding work but still getting the job done." #
Protestant Laziness Ethic - "In essence, then, the Protestant laziness ethic dictates that one should pour no more effort into a task than is warranted by the outcome." #
Paul Wilson - Interview with the world's laziest man - "In both of the businesses that I started, I had no prior knowledge or experience...Whatever I didn't know I just learned. Whatever I didn't have the aptitude for, which was just about everything, I'd find great people who could do it." #
C:\vim\vimfiles\colors\desert.vim.html - good color scheme for coding; reduces eye strain #
The One-Fork Rule - says that you should only ever use one fork/knife/bowl/etc; if it's dirty, wash it before using it. Avoid a stack of dirty dishes by not having that many! Stuff literacy... #
bookofjoe: 'Nothing can be predicted, but everything, as soon as it happens, will seem to fit' - why you can't rely on the lessons of the past; everything is obvious in retrospect, but someone had to make the call. 'Nothing can be predicted, but everything, as soon as it happens, will seem to fit' #
Flickr: Photos tagged with whatsinyourbag - amazing, incomparable research material for slingbag #
IT Conversations: David Pogue - Toward Mac OS XX - what he thinks OSs will be in 10 years #
Class Matters | Classism and Cross-Class Alliances - on classism; bad things money does to you... #
Le coeur fait boum... Chez Maya ! - crazy dragging swinging animation in javascript #
bookofjoe: Bag Valet - organizes plastic bags and makes them useful as trash bags #
IT Conversations: Search is a Platform. Where is it Going? - Web 2.0 - maybe some interesting ideas? #
Google tells you information before a search through their logo - "If you’re wondering what the women’s symbol on the Google logo is today, happy International Women’s Day! Not to get all googly-eyed (hee! ok, sorry), but I just love when a search engine offers useful information before you type anything in." #
Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools - whiteboard-covered walls, cheap! #
How Jybe Works - allows co-browsing sessions from different locations; like a virtual browser? Could I have a session at home that i pick up the same way at work, tabs and all? #
Morae: A Complete Usability Testing Solution for Web Sites and Software - cool program captures screen video, webcam video, and clicking and logs it for anaylsis of website usability #
Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice | Baekdal.com - some good uses for it with forms especially #
Jon Udell: The on-demand blogosphere - using RSS to get things done? #
The J Curve: Childish Scientists - "I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore" - Sir Isaac Newton #
Marcus Bains Line - a line showing on a calendar where you are currently. #
The world could really use Google Calendar (by Jeremy Zawodny) - mostly a bunch of useless feature requests; no one has yet figured out something truly new... #
The New York Times > Dining & Wine > Here's a Switch: Tips From the Delivery Guys - how to tip a delivery guy #
Management Craft: How to Interview Potential Employers - ask THEM questions; take control of the interview #
Do gadgets make you happier? I'm unconvinced, but this is interesting: "The happiness boost is merely temporary. But while that's true of each individual gadget, the fact that new cool stuff is being invented and brought to market all the time is an ongoing process that creates many happiness-enhancing moments over the years." #
mozdev.org - greasemonkey: index - fix/add javascripts to any page to autolink urls; fix bad popup scripts, etc. Love this automatic rewriting of other people's pages... #
Bloglines integration - BlogMarks.net : Blog - extension allows you to change links on the current page via javascript, to make them more useful #
PIXELPOST - Small Photoblog Software - can add photos to an existing blog? #
Bissantz & Company - SparkMaker: an MS Office add-in for creating Sparklines from TrueType Fonts (TTF) - updated to support lines and bar charts #
Marginal Revolution: The African Cliff - the saddest diagram I've seen; life expectancy in Africa is plummeting. #
rodcorp: How we work: Edward de Bono, psychologist - how to organize big sets of data? "His flat is filled with piles of stuff, but on top of each is a white tile with a number, rating it in importance." #
Make No Little Plans - "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized." #
beyond bullets: Why Board Members Should Ban Bullets - "Removing the text [from Powerpoint presentations] increases retention, or the ability to remember the information, by 28%. Even more significantly, removing the text increases transfer, or the ability to apply the information, by 79%." #
Permalinks to every bit of content is more important to me than links to more information from every bit of content; purpleslurple comes to mind. Can you dynamically wrap everything in an anchor tag, but only have those with "href" attributes show and work as links? Then you could click/reference every item on the page. #
Purseuing: Ellington Europa Field Bag - man's bag goes vertical rather than horizontal; steps toward the Sling... #
Purseuing: Man bags - if they keep adding them it'll be a good resource for the Sling #
A possible grand cycle of life? Biology->Morality->Society->Design ->Biology again? #
In the Soviet Union, everyone believed in an unjust society, so you'd better take advantage of that or you'll be left behind. In the U.S., society is based on trust, so you can't have cheating because it breaks down the trust. Reminds me of different ways to run companies today: trust the employees or not? If you don't, they'll know it and try to exploit the system. Treat them well and they'll self-police (like Ricardo Semler in Brazil!) #
Paul Ekman. Ph.D : Training CDs - train yourself to recognize people's subtle facial expressions, to avoid those moments of "momentary autism" #
George Lakoff -- 3 types of emotion are necessary to change the world: 1) Emotional, gets you going; 2) Compassionate, keeps you going; 3) Cognitive, helps you help effectively. #
Between birth and age 5, half your neurons die! That's how you learn, when the unused neural pathways die off. Important to early on expose your children to the full range of emotions and experiences you want them to be able to feel. #
Why do we respect those with similar beliefs as our own, even if we're not related? Because their genes are likely similar to ours if we ended up in the same place? #
Face: "Furless canvas of self-expression" (William Hurlbut) #
Paul Ekman - There are 23 distinct emotions; 16 types of enjoyment #
George Lakoff - "We understand the world in terms of what our body can do" #
Emotions come from events, so to express them, tell a story about the event; don't try to describe the emotion, it's too difficult (Paul Ekman) #
Fast Company | French Hours - work through lunch sometimes, and some late nights, but not all the time--and you'll have a chance at a remarkable product instead of "the usual": "If we get too comfortable, if everything is business as usual, it can be hard to create something remarkable." #
All Work, No Play? It Doesn't Pay. - you should seek to maximize workers' happiness, not their immediate 'productivity': "In a business world ever more reliant on its real intellectual property -- that is, people -- taking care of those folks over a longer time horizon will always be a winning strategy. Even if it means putting up with the occasional three-course lunch." #
Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime - "Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day." #
Winston Churchill, Painting as a Pastime - "To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real...Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death." #
The Atlantic Online | July/August 2004 | Plan of Attack | Bruce Hoffman - the importance of clearly defining your goals: "We know we're killing a lot, capturing a lot, collecting arms," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reportedly told a meeting of defense analysts and retired officers at the Pentagon last year, commenting on U.S. attempts to thwart the growing insurgency in Iraq. "We just don't know yet whether that's the same as winning." #
TIME Magazine Archive Article -- And on the Seventh Day We Rested? -- Aug. 02, 2004 - why it's important to rest; Pope John Paul II wrote, "When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes merely part of a 'weekend', people stay locked within a horizon so limited that they can no longer see 'the heavens'." #
Tall Tales - telling stories to improve business processes. Why? "Actions follow from narrative." #
The New York Times > Business >Robert Frank: The Theory That Self-Interest Is the Sole Motivator Is Self-Fulfilling - how people do unselfish things even though they shouldn't...but why? Not because of this reason, I don't think: "We make anonymous donations to charity. From society's perspective, our willingness to forgo self-interest in such instances leads to better outcomes than when we all act in a purely selfish manner" #
The New York Times > Magazine > The Way We Live Now: Unintelligent Design - a Darwinist struggles with Behe's blind-watchmaker intelligent design; yet Behe's belief is similar to Ed Fredkin in Robert Wright's book, and Keanu Reeve's statement of a "game" in the otherwise terrible _Constantine_..."Whether or not he is correct, his version of intelligent design implies a curious sort of designer, one who seeded the earth with elaborately contrived protein structures and then absconded, leaving the rest to blind chance." #
Marginal Revolution: Losing status makes you less productive - if you are a high-testosterone individual; "Blessed are the meek", for they will be better off if they lose status. #
bookofjoe: What do pretty faces and can openers have in common? - beautiful "Rosie" can opener #
Amazing powered stuff - snow motorcycle, bushpig, powered snowboard, and more... #
Powerboard skateboard - up to 15mph! #
RedNova News - Can This Black Box See Into the Future? - it records human emotive influence, like studied in coin-tossing experiments Robert Jahn in the late 1970s; perhaps a way prayer works? "But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too...For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey. " #
UncommonGoods: DIAMOND PAPERWEIGHT - huge! #
Gullible.info - amazing but true facts, posted daily! (update--ok, there's no way they're true...damn it, they even had "gullible" in the URL and it didn't tip me off!) #
Plausible lies and false truths (kottke.org) - Kottke with another great conversation-starter #
Why we overcommit ourselves - "Research by two business-school professors reveals that people over-commit because we expect to have more time in the future than we have in the present. Of course, when tomorrow turns into today, we discover that we are too busy to do everything we promised." #
Expired Domains and Dropped Domains Portal - great for domain name ideas #
Improv Everywhere Mission: McDonald's Bathroom Attendant - more performance art; love these guys... #
men.style.com: Home - very cool unconventional layout; not sure if it helps anyone though... #
IT Conversations: Malcolm Gladwell - Tech Nation - Gladwell talking about Blink again; it's fun to listen to all these while reading the book... #
The New York Times > Technology > Image > Ins and Outs - the inside of a flash drive; how flash memory works! #
Smartmoney.com: Consumer Action: Ten Things Your Real Estate Broker Won't Tell You - how to buy or sell a house without getting scalped #
White's of Henry Lane » Gmail Journal - how to use Gmail as a personal journal; but perhaps I could make it easier? #
jwz - Hula - how to build a non-useless calendar application #
jwz - Hula - thinking like users again: "How will this software get my users laid" should be on the minds of anyone writing social software (and these days, almost all software is social software). #
Wink - [Homepage] - free Windows screencapture software #
Princeton University: WebMedia - Lectures - huge number of archived video lectures; architects, designers, and more #
Heuristics for User Interface Design - top 10 things to include/rules to follow for design #
Designing web sites for non-geeks - "We've got to get out of ourselves...Web geeks: power technology knowledge code gadgets work money sex...Real people: puppies babies god nascar celebrities sex #
Image: CliC Adjustable Front Connect Reader 1.25 Strength, Blue Frame - cool front-connecting design; couldn't this work without even connecting? #
IT Conversations: James Currier - Web 2.0 - talk on consumer psychology #
century 22 : public / environmental art and innovation by Josh Levine - includes such projects as the Garbasail, a sail made of garbage bags. #
Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | 'Idleness is good' - "Semler never forces his staff to do anything they don't want to do, and draws an analogy with his young son. "He'll say, 'I don't want to eat this,' so I say, 'Don't eat it'. People say, 'My God, he'll be undernourished and he'll never eat vegetables.' But it's not that simple. He'll eat fries for a week, but then he doesn't want to see fries for 10 days. He is such a sophisticated piece of machinery; we don't come close to understanding what makes him up. The chances are that whatever design came built-in he also knows that if greens are good for him, he's going to want greens at some point. But the idea that I can get him to eat greens by force is a very stupid concept." #
rodcorp: How we work: Ricardo Semler and Semco, entrepreneur - rely on peer pressure to make people work: "There is little bureaucratic control beyond financial accountability; almost everything depends on peer pressure. "We have a higher trust in human nature," says Semler, "but we're also convinced that peer control is fabulous as long as there is a common interest. If someone's interested, the sort of corporate corruption you see elsewhere can never happen." #
Ricardo Semler: Set Them Free - let people decide themselves when it's worth it to work: "In some ways it's an unforgiving system, because you have to figure out your own answer for how to best spend your time. When you don't come in on Monday morning, absolutely nothing happens. But when you're sitting on the beach Monday morning at 11 o'clock, and you're the only one on the beach--that's a different story. Maybe then it's worth it to work a little harder. No one really knows how to measure the value of that moment." #
famous quotes with design - ThinkExist quotations "Good design keeps the user happy, the manufacturer in the black and the aesthete unoffended." - Raymond Loewy #
famous quotes with design - ThinkExist quotations "I'd like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right." - Brad Pitt #
famous quotes with design - ThinkExist quotations "I don't design clothes, I design dreams." - Ralph Lauren #
famous quotes with design - ThinkExist quotations "It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good." - T.S. Eliot #
famous quotes with design - ThinkExist quotations "I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is." - B. F. Skinner #
metacool: metacool Thought of the Day "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" - Thomas Keller #
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: God and Evolution - Kristof on how we're seemingly "wired to believe"; which doesn't prove God exists, but does suggest we won't abandon religion anytime soon #
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The Age of the Résumé Gods - the deifying of celebrity in America today; "Though, of course, the VIPs must be taken care of" #
XML.com: Very Dynamic Web Interfaces - great step-by-step intro to XMLHTTPRequest #
FutureMail - send mail to yourself on a future date! #
The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager - beautiful interactive visualization of baby names over time #
Tesugen: Peter Lindberg's Weblog/Blog - A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket, and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return. - Francis Bacon #
How to Extract DNA from Anything Living - using Detergent, eNzymes (meat tenderizer), and Alcohol #
Forbes.com: Irrational Act - how "tithing will liberate the tither from financial worry." After all, it's the *love* of money that is the root of all evil... #
Why Carly Fiorina got fired - because her actions didn't live up to her charisma; Gladwell cautions against this. "Rakesh Khurana...found that search committees were often so wowed by presentations from charismatic candidates that they failed to carry out full assessments of record, skills and industry expertise...The emphasis on charisma artificially limits the number of candidates considered, giving them extraordinary leverage to demand high salaries and power. It also raises expectations and increases the chance that a CEO will be fired for failing to meet shareholders' hopes...While presentational skills are a requisite of any senior executive role, they must be accompanied by deep industry knowledge, operational knowhow and a knack for strategic decision-making. 'Charisma is not a very good proxy for these qualities,' notes Mike Useem, professor of management at the Wharton School of Business." #
CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Save PDF Forms, Edit PDF easily;. - free PDF for Windows #
Chad Thornton | Design Portfolio - future coworker #
The work of Josh Nimoy - more great infodesign; plus web work #
bookofjoe: Trail Blazer® Snow Auger - brilliant manual snowblower! #
CreativeBits: OS X: Optimized Finder and Desktop experience - icon previews, default folders, etc. #
Conveyor-belt sushi is making the rounds in the Seattle area - Dave Winer's apt metaphor for how to treat news/RSS; like Hurst's "bit literacy" #
TurboTax Tax Freedom - free, not advertised elsewhere? #
The best food I've tasted - but never seen | csmonitor.com - "Surveying the plate with archeological care and eating the fish flake by flake seem to elevate the meal to a higher level. I almost hoot with delight when I encounter a cherry tomato in an unexplored sector of my plate." #
Another LeTourneau quote - "I shovel out the money, and God shovels it back to me-but God has a bigger shovel." #
Spiritual Mathematics "The question is not how much of my money I give to God, but rather how much of God's money I keep for myself." R.G. LeTourneau #
famous quotes with turned out - ThinkExist quotations - you can search quotes by phrase? awesome! #
Top 7 Tricks to Getting an Interview - some funny resume tricks that I'd be too scared to try #
Terragen - La page de Luc Bianco - amazing renderings of digital landscapes; perfect for desktops! #
Tagwebs, Flickr, and the Human Brain (by Jakob Lodwick) - the power of tagging, illustrated #
William Gibson's secret to success - "I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here." #
“A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” - Tecumseh Sherman #
Chinese proverb - "The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed." #
Mike Kuniavsky thinks the web is less interesting than physical designs - not sure I agree, but the quote he uses is funny: "And the ephemerality and increasing sameness of the Web is pushing smart people toward physical objects (confirming what Chicken John said years ago: 'All these dotcom people, you know what they really want to be doing? They want to be working with wood.')." #
Patterns | R.BIRD - great examples of market research reports, with recommendations for action, for different products #
Architecture for Humanity - Our Projects - a chance for designers and architects to work on humanity's real problems #
Open-Source "Real" Stuff - "However, with the exception of carpooling, he acknowledges he is hard-pressed to find instances where sustained sharing of valuable things is prevalent in the world outside information technology. For most goods and services, sharing will remain the exception not the rule." #
Ian's Shoelace Site - Shoe Lacing Methods - some decorative ones that would be nice with "cool" shoes #
Rules for survival - from the founder of GoDaddy #
Working Smart: The Master Task List - sounds like Life Balance's life goals and subgoals; he says the next step is "time blocking", which might be what I'm looking for with UpNext #
Tie-a-Tie.net | Learn How to Tie a Tie - all right! #
usabilityworks.org - "Study found there was no reliable difference between paper and computer prototype usability results. This has been studied quite a lot and seems to play out each time." #
The Economics of Cooperation video talk - "If you are involved in a 'Tat-1' situation [your partner always contributes just a little bit less than you do], the _best_ you can do is to contribute the most you can" -- they will contribute a lot then, even if it is less than you did. Sounds like a Christian/life lesson... #
SLOWER.NET LOG: B&W Conversion - including Photoshop action file for one-click conversion #
Cycorp, Inc. - teaching computers "common sense": "The Cyc knowledge base (KB) is a formalized representation of a vast quantity of fundamental human knowledge: facts, rules of thumb, and heuristics for reasoning about the objects and events of everyday life." #
Eric von Hippel Publications - he studies "lead users" to research innovation. Lead users, aka "early adopters", aka "alpha pups" #
Lucky or Smart - "Lucky things happen to entrepreneurs who start fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive companies...Was I lucky? You bet your ass I was lucky. But I was also smart: smart enough to realize that I was getting lucky." #
The difference between "freedom" and "liberty" - wordgeek stuff #
ColorMatch 5K - great color scheme finder; only works in IE/Win #
Creating Passionate Users: Users aren't dangerous - as a designer/developer, you have to talk to and observe users #
The dullest blog in the world - and yet an incredible community erupts around it! Give people an open canvas and get out of the way... #
PanicGoods - Nice T-Shirts For The Panic Family. - beautiful drag and drop interface--perfect for UpNext! #
People lose excitement about products as more and more are "on sale" - perhaps why Woot.com is so popular (sells only one item at a time): "Tversky and the young Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir asked experimental subjects how they would react to a desirable Sony appliance placed in a shopwindow, radically marked down. The offer met with predictable enthusiasm. When a second appliance, similarly marked down, was placed alongside the bargain Sony, enthusiasm—and sales—dropped." #
Why we're 'happier' with fewer choices than with many - "Schwartz suggests that it has to do with the irrational way people measure 'opportunity costs.' Instead of calculating opportunity cost as the value of the single most attractive foregone alternative, we seem to assemble an idealistic composite of all the options foregone. A wider range of slightly inferior options, then, can make it harder to settle on one you’re happy with." #
Hegel on freedom - "The ordinary man believes he is free when he is permitted to act arbitrarily, but in this very arbitrariness lies the fact that he is unfree" #
Usability Articles Timeline - uses sparklines to show trends in articles written on different topics #
The Map Is The Territory - visualizing conversations, histories, networks, and more #
The New Yorker - review of The Paradox of Choice #
Design and Evaluation of Embodied Conversational Agents - how to design a Clippy that doesn't scare and irritate people #
Loom Software - software that visualizes conversations; like sparklines for conversations... #
The Tyranny of the Visual - "At first, one is tempted to claim that spatial considerations are common in stories. For example, the Odyssey is at heart a story of a journey around the Mediterranean. Isn't that fundamentally spatial? ...The best evidence we have for the chimeric nature of spatial factors in story is the fact that the actual spatial relationships are never specified. Odysseus travelled for many days and came to the Land of the Lotus Eaters — where is that? How far away is it from Scylla and Charybdis? Is it closer to Troy or to Ithaca? We don't know any of these relationships, because they aren't specified in the Odyssey — because they're not important." #
How can you make a standard web page into a conversation? By allowing people to talk back, of course! Allow them to "fisk" the page; to add a note or two via a toolbar (like Google's); to add a comment to a centrally-hosted commenting site. How about a site that just collects comments on other people's sites? It doesn't even have to be associated with the original site! #
Conversational Metaphor - conversation as a viable approach to computer design: "But the hard reality is that a conversationalist entertainer must always have an audience of one, and it's pretty hard to make money with such a tiny audience. So conversation never developed as an entertainment form...But now we have a technology that eliminates the restriction on the audience. Think of a computer game as a "conversation in a can". Through the medium of the computer, the author interacts with the audience, and that interaction is a direct, one-on-one experience. Yet, we can duplicate the floppies on which the potential conversation is stored, thereby allowing the great conversationalist to reach many people. Suddenly, conversation has become an economically viable form of entertainment!" #
From The Paradox of Choice - "Gilbert and Wilson note that there is one exception to the rule that hungry people overbuy and sated people underbuy at supermarkets: it’s people who bring a grocery list, which the two psychologists call 'a copy of A Theory About What I Will Want in the Future.'" #
NBS: IA as Conversation - "The reader is ultimately interacting with the designer. This interaction happens via the content. With all the technology and information before us, it's easy to forget this interaction is about people talking to each other." #
ColorBrewer - Selecting Good Color Schemes for Maps - and charts, and graphs, etc.. #
EasyRGB - Match your RGB and color data with paint, inks, color cards and more. - creates "harmonies" in HTML color hex codes; very useful! #
Rob Roy Kelly Courses: A Mini Course in Color - great little exercises to learn color theory by doing it #
Gapers Block - A site about Chicago, IL - beautiful jam-packed newpaper layout #
Graphic Design Contract Sample Three - another good freelance contract; with portfolio rights #
free_culture - multimedia presentation by lessig; watch this in lieu of reading the book? #
Amazon.com: Amazon Prime Sign Up - the biggest button I've ever seen on the web...and an ok service too, free shipping if you pay a yearly fee. #
WORLDPROCESSOR - guy paints globes to show patterns, statistics, and trends #
Tech Web Design - apple position #
Google Ageshare Calculator - what age searches for what terms? #
Shopzilla Shopping Search Engine - Millions of Products, Smart Reviews - cool interface, especially the search results page; like shopping in a store? #
Stuff I Think : The Wisdom of Warren Buffett - "He said that many people talk about how they are going to just work at a high-paying job 'for a little while' and then go do what they love - he equated that to 'saving up sex for old age.' He said to 'never do something that doesn't excite you or that you dislike.'" #
gapingvoid: more demanding spiritually - "And all things being equal, people would rather buy from folk who believe in good, strong, powerful, wonderful things than from people who don't. Especially in markets which are already over-saturated with outstanding choices." #
netdiver.net newsarchive --> Best of the Year / 2004 - some crazy artistic sites...too bad they're all horribly unusable #
YouSendIt | Email large files quickly, securely, and easily! - up to a gigabyte for free; wonder how they do an HTTP file upload that big? #
a million monkeys typing >> Where GTD Falls Short - it fails to "be human", by quantifying everything and behaving like a computer, which is why uber-geeks love it. But Covey-esque life managment is deeper and healthier, he says... #
Some GTD pages to check out later: Marc's Outlook on Productivity, How to Save the World, a million monkeys typing » Do-It-Yourself Planner v1.0 , Getting Things Done Zone on OfficeZealot.com , What's the next action - A weblog about Getting Things Done, HomePage, David Allen #
Longhorn Developer Center Home: Longhorn Concept Videos - incredible stuff, way better than I had imagined! #
Art: Martin Wattenberg - more by the music visualization guy; he also did the "map of the market" #
The Shape of Song - Martin Wattenberg's visualization of songs repeating; Madonna's "Like a Prayer", Bach's Goldberg Variations, etc. #
Usability of Websites for Teenagers (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - has a great table showing how children, teenagers, and adults respond to various site elements (advertising, graphics, scrolling, reading... #
Escape the Sofa - and go exercise! #
Stefan Sagmeister: How Good Is Good - can design be "good"? or bad? #
Poynter Color Theory - great color study; color theory education #
adaptive path » downloads for designing the complete user experience - incredible set of documents used in a comprehensive product design--business brief, mental model visualization, persona chart, scenarios, interaction flow, usability testing, etc... #
How staff look for documents - "Observation of typical working environments has identified that there (at least) four different situations in which staff look for documents: known-item searching, unknown-item searching, own documents, other people's documents" #
stevenberlinjohnson.com: Tool For Thought - his weblog on "thinking assistants" that search through his own stuff for similar items; Google Desktop should do a "similar items" like this (does it?): "I have pre-filtered the results by selecting quotes that interest me, and by archiving my own prose. The signal-to-noise ratio is so high because I've eliminated 99% of the noise on my own." #
The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > Essay: Tool for Thought - Steven Johnson on the difference between searching others' thoughts and looking for patterns within your own...inspiring for self-organizational tools #
Wired News: My IPod, My Self - there's a lot of BS in this article, but I thought this line interesting on the benefits of shuffle mode: "Shuffle mode used to be a gimmick. Now it is the most viable strategy to access information that would otherwise be lost," he said. "It reduces the complexity of consumption." #
Spurl.net 1.0 - New spurls - good format for alerts? #
Firefox needs a drastic change to beat Internet Explorer | Baekdal.com - having separate mental models for "the internet" and "my stuff" is going to end...on which side? Google and Microsoft are squaring off... #
Bob Ryskamp at Business.com - people searching; returns their companies and contact info, if found. Pretty cool AI, like Googling for AI #
What You'll Wish You'd Known - amazing stuff on not planning, exceptional people, and more: "I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right." #
Computer "Spywear" - what is that, a trenchcoat or something? #
A9.com UI job - in Palo Alto #
Andy Card, Bush's Chief of Staff - uses memory techniques to "place" events in locations in the kitchen in his mind...uses little paper, no computer, etc. to keep the POTUS organized. #
Borges' Animals - classification gone awry...or not? #
The New York Times > International > Interactive Feature > Asia's Deadly Waves: The Impact on India #
Rivendell Catalog - SpeedBlend Tires - change colors as they roll! #
Time/system - pretty cool time management binder; shows you project timeline, daily plan, goals, etc. all at once...necessary? probably not...presenting all the information is not the same as absorbing all the information... #
Born Suckers - The greatest Wall Street danger of all: you. By Henry Blodget - Self-attribution Bias, The Gambler's Fallacy, Prospect Theory, Conservatism Bias and Confirmatory Bias, Overoptimism, Outcome Bias, Buffett's "Rearview Mirror", Hindsight Bias and more #
Taskline - full-featured task management; plugs into outlook; includes "do this after ___", etc... #
Overture- Keyword Selector Tool and BidTool to view search term bids for advertising -- good for finding out what people search for and how much it's worth to advertisers #
art.com artPad - great online Flash painting app #
Implementation of a Web-based E-notebook: Reimer and Douglas: JoDI - some great tips on how people need to use such a thing... #
50 Strategies for Making Yourself Work - good for designs, too: "Ideas are a dime a dozen once you learn how to find them. Become a supplier rather than a consumer." #
Marginal Revolution: Why has transportation progressed so slowly, relative to expectations? - "We have focused on moving physical resources and information, rather than moving people. In the former areas progress has been immense. Who needs better transportation when the world can be brought to your doorstep?" #
GM FastLane Blog: Lutz Speech on Design - "Tumble-home is the angle of glass from the beltline to the roof as viewed from the front or the rear of the vehicle." #
TIME.com Print Page: TIME Magazine -- Grow Up? Not So Fast - on "twixters", my indecisive generation #
Folksonomy Notes: Considering the Downsides, Behavioral Trends, and Adaptation : Bokardo.com - One more downside no one seems concerned about is the way it encourages expression of the lowest common denominator. We've now got people trying to sum up their entire beautifully-written essays in a few pithy words...Let Google worry about that; write like a person, not a machine. Your words certainly have value beyond the few tags you think of after writing them. #
Why ride a bicycle? Even more reasons - this one resonates with me: "As a protest of the vast inefficiency of having to haul around a 3000-pound transportation appliance just to go somewhere, and then having to find a place to put it when I get there." #
Difference between the male and female brain - Larry Summers is breathing a sigh of relief: "In general, men have approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers." #
collision detection: Can you think better when you're typing? - of course, neither typing nor handwriting would suffer from cognitive overload if writers would merely think of what they wanted to say BEFORE blathering it out...a casualty in the age of immediacy? #
Bob Ryskamp Design Portfolio - increase size of pictures, you crazy man! #
xkr.us / javascript / escape(), encodeURI(), encodeURIComponent() - they each encode strings differently, important for form submission, especially with XMLhttpRequest submissions #
Ta-Da Javascript - including XMLHTTPrequest, writing DOM elements on-the-fly, etc... #
Good Experience - Interview: Barry Schwartz, author, "The Paradox of Choice" - "...what if Amazon did a simple experiment of not showing 20 books, but only the top five? You can always click to the next screen and see more. My prediction is that if you reduce the choice set, you increase the number of books sold. This should be true of anything you're selling - office chairs, CD players, vacation packages; the shorter the list, the more attractive the items on the list will be." #
iSMS 2 - SMS alerts for iCal events; could this be used on a server to alert everyone in a web app system? #
Josh Fallon Portfolio {MRV Design Center} - nice CRM task list; good way of graphically expressing due dates (a status bar that fills up as the date approaches) #
The Sect of Homokaasu - The Rasterbator - creates giant pixelate images from a source, suitable for wall-mounting #
ESPN.com: MLB - The interview: Malcolm Gladwell - more on situations creating greatness--or at least the idea of the possibility of greatness! "Dominicans are not "better" infielders than everyone else. But if you are a nine-year-old kid playing in San Pedro de Macoris, you know that it's possible to be a major leaguer, in a way that the same kid growing up in Maine does not. When symbolic barriers are broken -- the first man from the Dominican Republic to make the majors, the first person to break four minutes -- the context in which we think of achievement changes dramatically." #
ESPN.com: MLB - The interview: Malcolm Gladwell - great people are simply those who experience great situations: "I think that we tend to call clutch hitters simply those who are lucky enough to have a run of hits in memorable situations." #
MICHAEL WOLF | PHOTOGRAPHY | HONGKONG - crazy Hong Kong pictures; hard to believe people live like this, no wonder they're kicking our butt in everything, imagine the motivation to get out! #
Corporate Identity home page - national logos, etc #
The Ward-O-Matic: The Polar Express: A Virtual Train Wreck (conclusion) - a guy tries to fix the Polar Express' creepiness #
43 Folders: The Beauty of the Recurring Task - how different apps approach them #
Importing Video -> Make background transparent - how to make a flash video with a transparent background (summary: not easily!) #
Do SUVs Make You Stupid? / Pointless, dangerous and vain as ever, land tanks still sell millions. Only one explanation possible - "But, really, we have to just admit it: the SUV is hypocrisy incarnate. It is the perfect emblem for the American view, for our position in the world: gluttonous, vain, dangerous to almost everyone else on the road, mostly useless (over 85 percent of SUVs never see a dirt road, much less need 4-wheel drive), ugly as hell and as graceful or practical as a school bus on an ice-skating rink." #
Googlism for "next monday" - a way to find out how people naturally express event dates #
Users' mental models change depending on which type of device you are using to access a site - e.g., don't use the same interface/architecture for your PDA access as you do for desktop users, like Ryan Singer said... #
Compute Date Php Script - calculates the end date when you specify the start date and duration..."for ONE YEAR starting WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 19..." #
Multi.com - PHP Date Drop down - date picker without a GUI; just a select box and the next 90 days generated... #
BBC - Radio 4 In Our Time - The Mind/Body Problem - audio discussion on Descartes, current mind/body beliefs #
A Nation of Faith and Religious Illiterates - "Although Americans are far more religious than Europeans, they know far less about religion...according to a 1997 poll, only one out of three U.S. citizens is able to name the most basic of Christian texts, the four Gospels, and 12% think Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. That paints a picture of a nation that believes God speaks in Scripture but that can't be bothered to read what he has to say." #
Marginal Revolution: Who is James Buchanan? -"When all is said, I have faced few genuine choices between work and play because there is really no distinction." #
ATI Developer - amazing screensavers including "animusic", where virtual instruments play a song... #
Digital Web Magazine - Web Design for All the Senses - design for more than just sight! #
"Learning is work, work is about learning, and both are social" - John Seely Brown, Fast Company 1/05 p.16 #
bookofjoe: Stendig Calendar - great designer's calendar; for my cubicle? #
Don Norman's jnd.org / books - "Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles" -- interesting anti-tech beginning... #
Where Emotional Design Fails - design appropriately, not "well" #
Colour Contrast Check - snook.ca - with a great DHTML slider #
Amazing Volvo websites in Flash - like you're really driving the car, in an apartment, etc--since you're buying the experience, it makes sense to demo it on the site! #
Sortable Table Demo (WebFX) - can sort inputs as well! #
Global : Ideas : Bank - Listening with affection and excitement - how to listen well...unconditional attention #
Clarke Ching's I Think Not, Baby Puppy: paradox: people value complex design, rather than simple designs #
Albert Einstein - Time Magazine's Person of the Century "You must be able distinguish between what is true and what is real." #
Surface Magazine - cool ID mag #
Neowin.net > [VS] Wurp - another link #
ThemeXP - Wurp - clean grey theme #
Information Gathering as an End in Itself : Bokardo.com - awesome, and perhaps the only thing that can bring down Google now... #
Mac-esque Dock Example - in javascript for the web! #
Slashdot, PeterMe, ideant, and my old dormmate adam mathes on folksonomies, something made easier with tools for del.i.cio.us and blog posts, imagined locally by Tom Coates, and still criticised by some, including myself #
plasticbag.org | weblog | A fragment of a world full of metadata... - we're unable to deal with computers helping us reach more than we can grasp; until computers are doing the grasping for us, we're in trouble. #
css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design - scrolling clouds background #
43 Folders: Map Folding: Building a Weekly Plan - he wants upnext... #
XML Extras Online Tests - copy and paste for my apps? #
Reviving Advanced Hypertext (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - Jakob on advanced features that would bring the web up to speed #
Samsung Design - how Samsung designs tvs #
"It's not that I'm so smart," Einstein once said, "It's just that I stay with problems longer." - from a good article on his humility and failures #
Phone Design competition and Japanese Design database - both interesting inspiration #
Left-hander's are more successfully violent than right-handers - while righties have little experience fighting lefties, lefties have plenty of experience fighting righties, and thus often win in a cross-handed fight #
Cope's Rule says that bigger is better - evolutionarilly, that is... #
Americans' attitudes about religion - 9/10 say "Merry Christmas"; 96% celebrate Christmas, regardless of religion, though already about 84% say they are "Christians" and church attendance has risen 10% to 44% in the past 10 years, so that's not too surprising. #
gapingvoid: purpose-belief - company mantras should not be dependent only on the company, they should reflect real human needs: "What these ideas have in common is: All the ideas can exist quite happily without their host companies." #
Designing for Civil Society: Aha - just listening doesn't work well - people have to talk amongst themselves in order to learn #
Why are refrigerators so deep? How about a shallow one? Easier to clean, to grab items. Another instance of people being allowed to keep more than is necessary? #
The New York Times > Books > Questions and Praise for Google Web Library - "Already, libraries buy fewer reference materials because such materials are online, she said. At the same time, the number of library visitors doubled in the last 10 years to 1.2 billion visits a year now, she added, with many visitors seeking help in managing vast amounts of information. As she put it: 'People are saying, "I went on Google and I got 40,000 hits. Now what?" ' " #
The New York Times > Books > Questions and Praise for Google Web Library - "What I've learned is that libraries help people formulate questions as well as find answers," Ms. Wittenberg said. "Who will do that in a virtual world?" #
How to Fold a Shirt - wow! #
When more isn't necessarily better - idFuel, there's a limit to how much we can absorb; similar from rootburn #
quiet american - one-minute audio "vacations"/experiences...very cool, like we should do with Veritas talks? #
Interesting web design firm with a guided navigation - even a Start button! #
The SphereXP - spherical interface for windows xp...actually looks ok... #
Gizmodo : Toyoto i-foot and i-unit - more i-unit stuff...the way it stands up is pretty cool... #
It'll Never Work! - "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." - Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977. Well, I think he's right... #
Some inspiration from Edgar A. Guest (Signal vs. Noise) Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you'll never do that; At least no one ever has done it"; But he took off his coat and he took off his hat, And the first thing we knew he'd begun it. #
The New York Times > Magazine > You Don't Need Superstars to Win - "Of course, even as one anonymous team after another takes down the stars, a new star rises: the miracle-working coach in charge of all those role players." #
Many-to-Many: "You don't know me, but...": How did I miss this? - interesting paper on designing for normal people...big pdf #
Jahozafat.com - Movie Quotes all in Wavs & MP3s Sounds - audio for most good movies #
Do It Now by Steve Pavlina - extreme productivity...hmm #
but she's a girl... » Rails GTD application - in beta #
Mind Hacks - cool new blog related to the book #
Marginal Revolution: What are the best Christmas gifts? - people prefer experiences, not possessions. #
Malcolm Gladwell, a NY Times bestseller, signing his book "Blink" - at the Stanford Bookstore January 19! #
Lake-effect snow! - an image from space that shows the effect #
coroflot.com - job detail - lifestyle design, a firm in santa barbara! #
Marginal Revolution: German fact of the day - "On average, a working-age German works about 2 hours and 35 minutes per calendar day." #
The Road to Serfdom - by Hayek, in cartoons #
The New York Times > Business > Business Special > Forest/Trees: With So Many Choices, No Wonder You Need Help - designers as curators, collectors, scaffold-builders: "They are comfortable with hiring a quote-unquote professional to guide them," Ms. Sheridan said, "just as they would hire an accountant or they would hire a financial planner; people who have specific training. They look to a designer to guide them in these purchases." #
Amazon.com: Books: Mind Hacks (O'Reilly's Hacks Series) - good Christmas item for some people I know? #
"If I am looking for intelligent and unselfish understanding of our problems, and a generous approach to their solution, I shall seek it among the makers and builders with far more confidence than among the talkers, the manipulators, and the vote seekers." Walter Teague #
"All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered." - Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation #
CNN.com - From cell phone to sunflower - Dec 6, 2004 - cell phone cover that contains a sunflower seed and nourishes it into a flower when it is thrown away #
Edge: INDIRECT RECIPROCITY, ASSESSMENT HARDWIRING, AND REPUTATION: A Talk with Karl Sigmund - the idea of indirect reciprocity being sourced in Robert Trivers, the idea of "paying it forward", like Heifer International #
"In the future, designers will create scaffolds for experiencing. We will design and build convivial tools. In doing so, we will learn how to help everyday people to express their own creativity." - Elizabeth Sanders #
The Becker-Posner Blog: Introduction to the Becker-Posner Blog - some great thinkers here... #
Portals to the World from the Library of Congress - amazing resource of information on any country #
Richard Posner - "Knowing the moral thing to do," he writes, "furnishes no motive, and creates no motivation, for doing it." #
4096 Color Wheel Version 2.1 - like photoshop's color picker, online! #
Getting Things Done with Index Cards - a photoset on Flickr - analog UpNext? #
Toyota's cool "iUnit" prototype - can we make one out of our scooters? #
The "endowment effect" - we tend to value more things given to us for free #
Cool retro-styled checks - code tfvr gets about 1/2 off #
The New York Times > Health > What Makes People Happy? TV, Study Says - "The new survey method prompts people to relive a normal day, rating how pleased or annoyed, depressed or competent they felt while doing specific activities, like watching TV or commuting to work...Re-imagining the day's activities, rather than reporting what they could or should be feeling about them, allows people to be more honest about their actual enjoyment at the time, some psychologists said." #
Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Printable Version - A Field Day for Executives - recommending CEOs do the work of their low-level employees; like Jason Fried's insistence on answering every support request himself--"That way, if you make a mistake, _you_ feel the pain." #
WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language / - displays all the words in the english language by their common usage...talk about a long tail... #
Savannah College of Art & Design - redesigned tax forms; graphing the game of baseball, designing bus schedules, and more, all in an attractive green interface. #
Transport for London Real-time Map - realtime map of the london underground; wish there was something like this for Caltrain! #
Wired 12.12: START - land-mine-detecting weeds; sprinkle a field with them and spots with mines turn up a different color--ambient devices, watch out! #
murat n konar - awesome, someone else's timeline interface, to their portfolio this time! Yes! And it works! #
mnk::scanjam::concept demo - amazing scanner-created music...the objects on the scanner cause music to play when scanned #
mnk::fotosite::about - really easy photo uploader/compressor/folder-maker for website updating #
Am I the "non-prodigal son"? We always focus on he who lost his way from home, but how about he who takes everything at home for granted? Isn't that similarly "prodigal"? #
Fast Company | No Wonder the Economy Is Dragging! - poor knowledge harnessing and digital publishing inefficiencies are the top two estimated costs facing business in the U.S., at $1.4T and $750B, respectively; want to cut me off a slice of that? #
bookofjoe: Migo - 'Make any computer your own' - usb drive uses software to make any computer use your last 30 documents, settings, screensaver, etc. #
Pornography actually wrecks the brain, says president of the Institute for Media Education - it forms neural pathways that stay there, like brain damage #
The December Fast Company talks about a study that found bad moods sometimes increase creativity.
#Depending on a number of factors, negative moods can enchance workplace creativity. Good moods signal that good progress has been made and current efforts are sufficient. By contrast, negative moods can signal that things are not going very well, that the status quo is problematic, and that more effort needs to be exerted.
You can't be great if you're good #
Edward Tufte: Ask E.T. forum - another Stanford Tufte talk the afternoon of Dec 8 #
Victorinox 30422 Pen, Large, For 91mm Knives - great little pen to use in a sling bag? #
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Who Is John Stott? - Answer: He's a logical and foundational Christian evangelical, someone much more credible than Falwell; a good person to explore evangelical principles? #
TikiWiki : Designing The Human Experience - Stanford freshman seminar on workplace design; presentations on Thursday 12/2 #
Marginal Revolution: Milton Friedman School for Tots - paying kids for good grades; taking out of their paycheck for bad behavior. It works, but does it make you need external motives to do good things for yourself (the opposite of autotelic work)? #
Sciral - Consistency - for OS X, lets you set todos for a certain _range_ of time; "water plants every week"; like UpNext in ways? via 43Folders, where there is good commentary #
Over-Design: how everything in a child's life is designed for them - does this hurt their ability to "learn", as Carl Zimmer emphasized was necessary? "The reader is left with the impression that a child's life is no longer his or her own. So intensely is daily experience designed, from marketing to prams to playground sets and lunch boxes -- even a child's ability to play sports!! What's left to discover?" #
Successful and happy people have less stuff - "In our day and age the virtues of brute force and stockpiling have been replaced by those of intelligence, lightness of spirit and clear focus, qualities that work best when unencumbered by too many books, cds, clothes, papers or unnecessary responsibilities." #
FTLCtimelines - OS X timeline program; also creates "time circles"? #
Screenplay Systems - Product Walk-through - nice timeline view for writing stories; multiple levels and dimensions at each point #
Core77 and Timex present 2154: The Future of Time Design Competition - lots of great entries, especially in the "notables" uncategorizable section... #
Marginal Revolution: Is economic Armageddon coming? - on the falling dollar and impending investor retreat #
Feedburner can combine a Flickr, blog, and linkblog into one RSS feed - perfect for the "lifeblogging" interface! #
HypViewer Download - great 3d network viewer #
Robert Putnam blames television for the decline of social engagement in America - does the Internet do the same thing? Or is it more like reading newspapers, which have the opposite effect? #
eMachineShop - Online Machine Shop - with FREE CAD Software Machine your custom parts online #
Wednesday, December 8, 2004: BayDUX (BayCHI) - "The Future of Digital Product Design"; same day as Tufte, unfortunately #
Secret Santa - using Amazon's wishlists #
Velonews RSS feed - courtesy of FeedBurner #
What about a "virtual firefox"; where you have iframes in tabs and switch between them with dhtml? You could try to use ie7 to enable css stuff too... #
New York Changing Rephotographing Berenice Abbott's Changing New York - time-lapse of New York (kind of) #
Gallery Browser - cool time-lapse movies #
Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin's Evolution Theory; Almost half of Americans believe God created humans 10,000 years ago #
coroflot.com - job detail - One & Co for an industrial designer #
Adam Bosworth's Weblog: ISCOC04 Talk - long piece on designing subpar systems because they're more flexible #
How does SR accuracy change over time - speech recognition getting better all the time; trend is toward human-like levels #
OurFamilyWizard.com - interesting personal life managing software #
43 Folders: Hack your way out of writer's block - great "oblique strategies" for getting started #
It's Hip To Be Unknown - music recommendations that include Ratatat, Ben Folds, other favorites...check more of them out on Rhapsody! #
Metropolis enterprise; sermon on the mountain - Suroweicki on Tufte #
bookofjoe: Why you need a FedEx account - free and kinda cool... #
Edward Tufte: Courses - in Palo Alto Dec 9-10, SF Dec 6-7 #
Edward Tufte, "Beautiful Evidence" - at Stanford December 8th at 7:30 #
The Truth About Cars - The Truth About Hybrids - why hybrids ain't all that #
Converting an app using document.designMode from IE to Mozilla. - amazing rich text editing online... #
ChangeThis :: ChangeThis - some good new ones about urban design, another by Spolsky, etc. #
Buddy Lee - Don't Flinch - 90 foot girl #
squidfingers / favs - a great favorites list; animators and designers all #
squidfingers / patterns - more great tiled patterns #
God's Smuggler - Brother Andrew's story #
The Sphere of Design (Web Design from Scratch) - you can't have maximum style and maximum functionality: "There is a natural trade-off between functional and aesthetic richness. You can't have something that is at the same time both an excellent high-functionality application and a great work of online art. That point falls outside the sphere of design (1). The reason for this is that things that have the highest aesthetic beauty and impact cause you to stop and look at them, while things that are most functionally effective help you to do the job you want to achieve without being looked at. The two can't happen at the same time." #
ongoing · The Atom End-Game - don't innovate in specs, just build: "What on earth would give us the idea that we're smart enough to predict what features the world is going to want? Our job is to write down what we already know works, to do it as cleanly and clearly as possible in as few pages as possible, then get out of the way." #
Adam Bosworth's Weblog: Evolution in Action - why you should develop web services instead of web products #
Jon Udell: RESTful Flash - making Flash show its state to the browser (so you can link into it, etc) #
Intro tutorial to PHP OOP - good example of a user record #
Edward Tufte: Ask E.T. forum - tufte's favorite websites #
On The Rails - follow along with a guy developing a Ruby/Rails app for the first time #
Guiding principles for Moodle CMS - using "social constructionist pedagogy" #
coroflot.com - job detail - ziba's looking #
Rich Internet Applications as the future of web design, pimps Flash most, a company that's doing HTML ones #
bookofjoe: Wall decals - you can take it with you - great alternative for when you can't paint...or don't want to #
Software Project Management - huge number of links; blogs (near bottom) especially useful #
Open Workbench - Home - open-source alternative to microsoft project; worth checking out for its differences/advantages #
Edward Tufte: Ask E.T. forum - on analogs between paper and digital organizing principles; linked from the project management discussion #
Edward Tufte: Ask E.T. forum - the discussion on project management software; many voices echoing 37s' assertion that you can't plan both features and time together, because things change! #
Top 100 Voice Brands in America - most companies don't have any kind of voice/audible branding! cool opportunity! #
Functioning Form - User Experience Comes in Threes - the "three things" about web design #
Marginal Revolution: Should you give money to beggars? - an economic perspective; basically the answer is "no", to stop encouraging the elastic response of more beggars; give to the poor who aren't begging. seems shaky... #
Wasting our gifts - maybe we aren't able to find our full purpose here on an imperfect earth; and perhaps we aren't supposed to use all our gifts. #
HOW TO STUDY - start by printing this! #
More Proce55ing/Flash links: Processing 1.0 _ALPHA_ >> Comparison, Levitated , Paul Bourke - Personal Pages, Neave Lab, kirupa.com - Introduction to XML in Flash: Loading XML Into Flash, Edward Tufte: Ask E.T. forum, since1968.com: Benjamin Fry Interview, FOR.THE.USER, Theban Mapping Project, Entries recibidas, #
Neave Lab › Space - with the amazing Parallax stars, great model for linkstuff 3d navigation download #
Disseminate: emotional design - comparing three attributes of design: Reflexive (brand, reputation), Behavioral (how it works), and Visceral (sensory appeal). All are valid; all need designers. Interaction design includes all three. #
Touchstone Archives: Miraculous Daily Planet - GK Chesterton on journalism (and, by courtesy, new media strategy); " We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding. Yet this latter fact is fundamentally more exciting" #
Design and Redesign: New York Times 2002 Weather Graphic - nice graphic comparing time, historical data, current data and precipitation; definitely a Tufte apprentice... #
Desktop Manager - for OS X; makes virtual desktops work like fast user switching; great transitions and cool work/home possibilities #
Processing Language - for interaction visual effects; elasticity example, particle example, lots more amazing ones; great for linkstuff; commercial uses of this would be unexpected and amazing! #
Alphachimp Tour: Graphic Facilitation - someday I hope my class notes are this good... #
Research - Even the Furniture Can Affect Business Attitudes - Stanford GSB - design around you influences your working style #
Delicious Library - finally available! #
PHP Foundations - "A programmers guide to learning PHP for people with no PHP experience." #
ONLamp.com: Working with Forms in PHP, Part 1 - tricks with multiple selects, checkboxes not registering #
Peter Drucker on self-management and knowledge workers - "Know people's strengths. Place them where they can make the greatest contributions. Treat them as associates. Expose them to challenges." #
IDFuel, Designing Community - designing community over distances through shared ideas and ideals #
Breakup lines from various schools of philosophy - not something I'm planning on doing, but a good one-line summary of different philosophical viewpoints; teleological and deontological having come up recently #
Mixing Memory: The Internet as Distributed Cognition - like the LazyWeb; put a question out there and let the "wisdom of the crowds" figure it out; successful questions for this probably follow similar patters to most of Suroweicki's tips... #
Marginal Revolution: Time management tips - great ones, including do important stuff in the morning, on a "zero discount rate"; finish hungry so you'll at least start the next day; put ever-expanding tasks into a strict time-limited slot--you'll get them done... #
Business Plan Archive - biz plans from the dot-com boom to learn and grow from #
Shirky: Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software - Interactions are more than human to computer; with social software it's human to human(s), with all the complexity that entails: "We have grown quite adept at designing interfaces and interactions between computers and machines, but our social tools -- the software the users actually use most often -- remain badly misfit to their task. Social interactions are far more complex and unpredictable than human/computer interaction, and that unpredictability defeats classic user-centric design." #
Kristof nails the difference between Democrat and Republican politics "To put it another way, Democrats peddle issues, and Republicans sell values." #
Google Answers: Origin of "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" - similar to the "discipline sets you free" of progressive Christianity... #
Google Search: tiger lily sondra lee - my first crush... #
Object Oriented JavaScript - Photo Interface Example - might be a good porfolio interface? #
Simpsons - Wikiquote - first quote Matt Groening says sums up the whole show...Seinfeld-esque #
Invent Now | Hall of Fame | Overview - fun stuff #
Main Page - Wikiquote - worth looking up other quotes from my quotes page? #
Lecture 10 (10/14/98): "In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide" by Michael Tooley - summary of Tooley's argument #
The Morality of Abortion: A Critique - another good summary of varied viewpoints #
Philosophers on Abortion and Infanticide - good summary of different viewpoints, including Tooley's extreme one. #
Steven Pinker on infanticide - concludes that policy satisfactory to all is unlikely, but compassion to those who make the tough choices should be standard (and legislated, as possible). "A new mother will first coolly assess the infant and her current situation and only in the next few days begin to see it as a unique and wonderful individual. Her love will gradually deepen in ensuing years, in a trajectory that tracks the increasing biological value of a child (the chance that it will live to produce grandchildren) as the child proceeds through the mine field of early development...." "No, the right to life must come, the moral philosophers say, from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess. One such trait is having a unique sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people. Other traits include an ability to reflect upon ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death and to express the choice not to die. And there's the rub: our immature neonates don't possess these traits any more than mice do." #
NONE OF THE ABOVE - people who don't vote psychologically distance themselves from "the system"; its benefits and detriments. "This intellectual callus might make some things easier to bear, but I'll bet it comes at a cost. The world must be a more terrifying place when you don't know all you can about why things happen the way they do, and why people do what they do, and whether there's anything out there that can leap out at you from the dark." #
Marginal Revolution: Should you vote? - summary: voting is selfish, often done at nonzero opportunity cost which could be better spent. #
Collaborative Filtering - explains the types and the methods briefly #
bookofjoe: World's Best Baked Apple - recipies, apple recommendations, etc. #
klog » multiselect - converts all select multiple items into scrollable divs with checkboxes at runtime #
NGf - Map of Creativity - very similar to linkstuff presentation needs #
Octopus Navigation - good for linkstuff? #
[ DreamHost : Shared Hosting : Plan Comparison ] - great plans, unlimited MySQL, multiple full domain hosting, and huge transfer...generally good reviews... #
Boxes and Arrows: All watched over by machines of loving grace: Some ethical guidelines for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings [1] - Adam Greenfield on the rise of smart objects and how to design their interactions to "do no harm" #
Clay Shirky says free content will trump micropayments - I've always thought that you can't expect to sell freely-duplicable digital content; rather you should use give away your existing creations for free and expect to be paid to create custom new creations for others. #
Jon Udell on the myth of the One True Device - he also argues that what we love is the information, not the interface; once you can decouple the two, people will choose the best interface for each situation to get their information. #
Human Universal Traits - from The Blank Slate, traits found in all human cultures #
BASEMENT.ORG: Rich Internet Applications - web applications are about the information, not the interface; the direction is away from browser interfaces and toward embedding that information in other products (computer and otherwise...) #
phpComplete » Select Multiple Done Right - replace HTML's select multiple box with an ordered list, checkboxes, and labels #
LinkStuff.org - to help anyone create Flash maps like the ones Ben Fry makes and WIRED publishes static #
Who Slate's writers are voting for - Hitchens and Wright both for Kerry as the lesser of two evils #
The Lure of Data: Is It Addictive? - old NYTimes article, maybe I've posted it already? #
Belle and Sebastian: Dear Catastrophe Waitress - amazing pseudo-baroque melody (RHAPSODY Link) #
BBC America - Life Laundry About The Show - show about radically cleaning out your junk; shown on PBS apparently #
Tools & Gadgets : Cool Tool : - cool pen/screwdriver #
Learning Movable Type: Backing Up Your Blog - more MT backup instructions #
zonageek: software: TypeMover - does a full backup of movable type, including settings and templates #
gapingvoid: cultural & technological alignment - how implementing some technological solutions impacts the company culture; an oft-ignored side effect, though company culture is ignored enough on its own. #
frontline: merchants of cool: interviews: dee dee gordon and sharon lee | PBS - "At the top of the triangle, there's the innovator, which is like two to three percent of the population. Underneath them is the trendsetter, which we would say is about 17 percent...Underneath them is an early adopter--it's questionable exactly what their percentage is--but they are the layer above mainstream, which is about 80 percent. And they take what the trendsetter is doing, and they make it palatable for mass consumption...and that's when the mass consumer picks up on it and runs with it and then it actually kills it. " #
IT Conversations: Malcolm Gladwell - Human Nature - phenomenal talk by Gladwell on why we can't trust people's opinions; often we say we dislike new things because we don't yet have the vocabulary to describe them, and thus couldn't justify our decision to like it. #
Marginal Revolution: Status, Stress and Sex Ratios - high-status families have more sons; or rather, pregnancies with boys receive more nourishment when the father has high status; low-status families are more likely to have girls (who are able to marry into status more easily). #
Unique gifts that help end world hunger | Heifer International - give a goat to help a family run a business off it; they promise to "pay it forward" #
How humans lived, live and will live throughout history - where, how, etc. from an evolutionary standpoint #
lifeEXPERIENCES - the ultimate gift - give experiences instead of goods; trips, dates, etc. #
Entity Relationship Modelling - 2 - fantastic ER tutorial; step-by-step how to create a database diagram from your situation. Good for general business strategy as well? Worth a shot... #
IT Conversations: Don Norman - Emotional Design - audio stream from ETCON 2004 #
Longhorn's "Today" screen - calendar, emails, etc. on one page #
Building a Web Application: Database Design - snook.ca - very high-level overview; links to normalization tutorials, etc. #
centricle : ruler 1.2 - javascript "ruler" measures any selection on the page #
Small World Gallery - Nikon's Microscope Photography Contest Winners; beautiful forms to inspire design #
- Site06.com - James Dvorak's portfolio site - - great Flash site; walkthrough of a house to see features #
How Human Behavior Drives Investment Activity - Knowledge@Wharton - irrational exuberance, Taleb-esque methods: "Maximum wealth 'isn't all there is to life,' Sanders added. 'In the value world in particular, you make the most money by feeling the most insecure. Do you really want to do that with your life? Is it worth it?'" #
Building a Web Application: Intro - snook.ca - step-by-step documentation #
Welcome to threetwoone.org - amazing Visio flowcharts of ideas and histories; like what I'd love to do with my blog posts. #
Embodied philosophy - Lakoff's anti-universal-truth philosophy; "truth comes from metaphor" #
The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Economic View: What if a Sales Tax Were the Only Tax? - how a "consumption tax" economy would work #
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: What Derrida Really Meant - "Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger." #
Eyeball-tracking maps of news webpages - lists of headlines get the most traffic; don't make people work too hard to find the articles! #
mono » Well-Designed Weblogs , Volume 2 - inspiration for Stanford templates #
Quality of Life - Methodology - bizjournals.com - how one business journal measures the quality of life: commutes, neighborhood stability, etc. #
Jugglezine - Wrestling with Television - how to watch less TV #
Jugglezine - Intentional Living - "How to find the time to do anything (not everything!)" #
Books & Culture Weblog: Content & Context - Books & Culture - Nathan on giving (or not) to panhandlers #
Sarah McLachlan - World On Fire - $150,000 for a music video instead donated to charities enumerated in the video (also available on iTunes here) #
Sean Coonce - Online Portfolio - from NSC #
PHP Text File Database API - PHP Text DB: access Text Files with SQL - use text files as a real SQL-esque database, searchable, etc. #
PHP Markdown Test - importing a text file and converting it on-the-fly to html; using text files as a database (instead of XML, etc) #
Unsanity.org: Strangelove - remove metal interface from Panther? May be disabled past 10.3.3... #
Orange Cone - Mike Kuniavsky has new emphasis on product design #
Do we repel the idea of making all knowledge available because we are innately afraid of the unknown? (ISIS critics wanting some things to remain private because we "don't know what would happen if they were made known") #
Phidgets Inc. :: Unique USB Interfaces - add "weight sensing", or "motion sensing", or many other capabilities to ANY OTHER PRODUCT through a USB interface...hmm... #
Computer Depiction @ MIT - non-photorealistic (sketch-like) computer rendering; amazing! #
FunServices - amazing ambiently-interactive flash elements, lots of fun to discover! #
Singlefile book catalog website - design by 37signals, possible partner for UpNext's books? #
'BentRider Online - with reviews of actually _cool_ recumbents #
RSS is dead - Danah Boyd - "Syndication readers are the modern day whack-a-mole." #
The New York Times > Week in Review > Saved, and Enslaved, by the Cell - "cellphone use may be making us less autonomous and less capable of solving problems on our own, even when the answers are right in front of us." #
Great New Dell 19" Monitor/TV - very cool-looking #
The David Allen Company - creating a tickler file; 43 daily and monthly folders to track date-related items and manage workflow #
attentionxml - Technorati Developers Wiki - a good way to tie in RSS/Web/Email to UpNext? One copy of each item, intelligently ranked and labelled by time... #
HELLO, my name is Scott -- Professional Speaker, Author and "that guy with the nametag" - he wears a nametag daily to increase community and conversation #
CUSTOMER-MADE - the brilliant trend of companies to let their users/fans design their products for them #
Creating a Toolbar for Netscape 7.x - or Mozilla; using XUL #
The Medici Effect - excerpt from a new book about how innovation today comes from cross-disciplinary work, not within a single field #
Jawbone Adaptive Headset - headset that takes audio signals from your jawbone instead of just through the air, to remove background/wind noise; good for cycling and talking? #
UI Designer : The Next GUI--Maybe LUI - proposing "lists" as the replacement for the WIMP interface; information-centric instead of WIMP-tool-centric #
43 Folders: Does this "next action" belong someplace else? - how one person chooses where to file a "next action"; should you create a new project with this as an action, or is this a solo action? #
37signals: An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design - the way 37s builds pages #
flo's freeware - Notepad2 - for windows only #
TypeItForMe - a Mac utility that does autoreplace of any text string in any application (e.g. "br" could always turn into "Bob Ryskamp", "ahr" into ""); SpellCatcher, TextExtras, and KeyboardMaestro are similar. #
Notational Velocity - notepad with autosave, simple interface, would be great to emulate for the web... #
scott designworks - portfolio - the guy who made the metal-ring kleenex dispenser has more fun stuff #
L'Abri Fellowship International Home Page - Baxter and Gentry's model for a someday intellectual retreat #
Goffice word processing - Microsoft Word online, for free! #
identity theory | interviews - lots of interviews with cool authors: michael lewis, hitchens, ehrenrich, et al. #
World Phonecard - Home Page - bought first USA to Uganda phone card from them #
a bike story - 460 mile ride from San Jose #
Color Photos from WWI - seeing them in color takes them out of the imagined and makes them more real to me... #
cityofsound - has the best interaction design blogroll I've seen yet #
elastic space › Mess TV: SMS and MMS community television - tv screen design #
StanfordBlog Test - for styling tests with EditCSS for the Stanford Blog project #
SCPD - Enrolled Students - Online Seminars - interesting stuff by Englebart, Knuth, etc. #
Frederick Stout's History of Utopias - the urban studies professor I'm learning from. #
JavaScript Toolbox - Selectbox / Select Box Functions For Manipulating Options, Etc - do they work cross-browser (Mac esp.)? Good for dynamically ordering items, like in a playlist... #
www.fluidtime.net - a project to embrace unstructured, fluid time; like UpNext depends on. #
Advanced GTD workflow diagram - to print and try #
Life Balancing Getting Things Done and Franklin/Covey - a user's account of using LifeBalance software, with experience in GTD and Covey #
Media Creation > Real Export Plug-in - export to RealPlayer from Quicktime (though I'm not sure why you'd want to!) #
Synergy - software that makes all your separate computers act as one; cross-platform. One step closer to your computer following you around. #
gladwell dot com / The Ketchup Conundrum - ketchup and designing for individual preferences, universal consistency, and fundamental biological tastes. #
Marginal Revolution: Who volunteers the most? - it's Norwegians, at 52%. U.S. is 22%, Mexico 0.1%. Interesting example of culture influencing contributions to itself. #
State of California, Department of Motor Vehicles, Special Interest License Plate Internet Ordering System #
1954's vision of a home computer - with a steering wheel! Gotta be fake... #
Agoraphilia - blog of fun logic questions #
Undo Default HTML Styles [ACJ's Weblog] - simple way to strip css; uses * to match all elements. #
Eric's Archived Thoughts: Really Undoing html.css - a way to take out the default styling of browser elements so you can style them yourself and not have to deal with extra margins, padding, etc. #
Best online map and mapping tool - java applet works better than Microsoft Streets! #
Lions Gate Films - The Final Cut - editing memories; but more interestingly, searching and archiving them. #
GetSkinned - Qute 2 - for Avant Browser! #
Marginal Revolution: Economics of relationships - Megan will love this...why I don't call as much as I should. #
IHT: When looks count the most - the value of _industrial_ design, focusing on customer/user experience and ZIBA design in Portland! #
The Question of God . Local Schedule | PBS - set the VCR! #
folderblog - single-page php photo gallery with thumbnail creation #
The New Yorker: The Talk of the Town - Suroweicki on selling to the poor of the world to help them; "It's expensive to be poor". Perhaps a better alternative to debt forgiveness? #
The Atlantic Online | July/August 2004 | Organize Your Life! | James Fallows - Atlantic Monthly on David Allen #
Fast Company | You can do anything - but not everything. - David Allen on productivity; perhaps a good influence for UpNext? #
Sensory Element - a new product design blog #
Flash Kit: Fade script image gallery V3 - can I modify to make it dynamically loading? #
You have arrived @ MoseleyWebb Design - great Flash zooming interface #
DocBug: The next question? - what will our questions be in 10 years? #
FRONTLINE: home | PBS - classy, fullscreen design #
Exclusive Domains, Inc. - Thousands of Exclusive Premium Domains For Sale! - actually good names, not too expensive; good for brainstorming, etc. #
NOVA Online | Trillion Dollar Bet - a counterintuitive stock trading forumula #
frontline: the wall street fix - award-winning documentary on WorldCom and Wall Street #
Mark Cuban on the stock market - "I know that sounds crazy, but the stock market has gone from a place where investors actually own part of a company and have a say in their management, to a market designed to enrich insiders by allowing them to sell shares they buy cheaply through options." #
World Views Wiki :: World Views - very cool Christian topic resource; based in philosophy, citing Aristotle to C.S. Lewis. #
The "endowment effect", the "status quo bias" and "loss aversion" - "Aristotle, it will be recalled, contends that the activities we pursue produce the corresponding character and habit. Before we acquire certain habits, we are urged to consider which character and habits we wish to acquire and to select the activities we pursue accordingly. The character we acquire as individuals is up to us individually; the customs we acquire as a society is up to us collectively. “We become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions” (Nicomachean Ethics: 1103a35-b2)." #
Aristotle -- Ethics - Aristotle's claim that habit produces character; not the other way around. Quoting Hamlet, "Assume a virtue if you have it not" #
Jones Plumbs the Endowment Effect - "The term Endowment Effect describes the difference between the maximum price a person is willing to pay for something one minute, and the minimum price they would demand to sell it, immediately after they acquired it. Economists predict that the difference between these prices would be nearly zero, whereas psychologists have found that the minimum selling price tends to exceed the maximum acceptable purchase price. This suggests that the fact of ownership immediately 'endows' something with extra value. " #
Economist.com | Economics focus - the "endowment effect" is what causes people to value things they have more highly than they should--finally I've found that Psych 1 field I've looked for! #
Cooper: About Cooper - very slick monotone website; code is atrocious but the visual design is great. #
creatimation.net: journal - Live Request : XMLHttpRequest and You - a better live searching feature #
Marginal Revolution: Good news: your children will be slackers - "free time" will increase to 75% of our time by 2040, making autotelic use of it more essential...importance of being self-directed and motivated. #
Chicago Bike Winter -- Tips for Winter Biking - glad i don't have to deal with that anymore... #
The CIA Skyhook - and problems using pigs as test dummies: "Fulton first used instrumented dummies as he prepared for a live pickup. He next used a pig, as pigs have nervous systems close to humans. Lifted off the ground, the pig began to spin as it flew through the air at 125 mph. It arrived on board undamaged but in a disoriented state. Once it recovered, it attacked the crew." #
Mel's site - real people have xangas...why? #
Comparison of energy per person expended for various modes of transportation - train beats even a 5-person car; standard bicycle trumps all. #
Google Random Image - fetch a random image from Google based on your page's text. #
Marginal Revolution: What do you give the man who has nothing? - give the homeless voicemail; it seems stupid but instead lends them credibility that can help them get a job. #
Deluxe Calendar - test on windows #
Dynamist.com: Value of intangibles - is Virginia Postrel anti-Robert Frank? Her Substance of Style clashes with how she portray's Frank, as an opponent of style and blind adherent to functionality. Yet Frank seems concerned with whatever really makes you happy, material or not. #
Harnessing power generated by children playing to power machines - which really ends up making play, "work". #
Elevator 2010 Competition - build a model space elevator, $50,000 prize #
"Autistic Social Software" - Danah Boyd argues for software that mirrors how our actual relationships are, not that tries to use technology to change them (who sits down with a pen and paper to "rate" their friends? but we do so online). #
Tragedy of the commons - Wikipedia - good explanation of the concept; that a shared resource is vulnerable to exploitation by individuals seeking their own personal ends. A prisoner's dilemma: if all agree to share, it's best for all; if even one deviates and acts selfishly, it's best for all individuals to act selfishly. Corporate scandal, pollution, hordes of MBAs, etc.; the argument against innovation and for mindless corporate cloning. You can't follow a "good" business model in a commons where all others are following "bad" ones... #
Clayton Christensen on sustaining innovation - keep the innovators free of obligation to shareholders, either by staying private or spinning off a new arm of the company; you must focus on growth, not profit, to innovate successfully. Also ignore your current customer base; for growth, you need new customers, not just your old ones again. Let the old business group handle them... #
Clayton Christensen quotes Ted Leavitt on Product design - we used to do this in design classes--figure out the real problem..."People don't buy a quarter-inch drill. They buy a quarter-inch hole. You've got to study the hole, not the drill. The drill is just a solution for it." #
Clayton Christensen Interview - Pleasing shareholders dooms companies that need to grow..."In The Innovator's Solution you suggest, if I understand correctly, focusing on profit versus growth will prevent or impede innovation, thereby preventing future growth. And if we assume companies must innovate to grow, does that mean all public companies are incapable of innovation and will ultimately fail? Christensen:The evidence is just overwhelming that is true" #
CliffsNotes::All Titles - read all CliffsNotes online for free! #
Best Of Mountain View - restaurants and more... #
Explaining the rise of retro style for electronics - The Substance of Style argument: "When the available technology converges at a certain performance threshold, Dr. Lubar said, consumers begin to base their choices on nontechnical considerations like fashion to express their identity. Thus the appeal of retro gadgets." #
Hello : Introducing BloggerBot - free image hosting and gallery creation from Google and Blogger! #
NoteLens Note Taking - notetaking software designed for "flow" experience, live searching, no filenames, etc... #
The Loom: The Unwritten Self - our memories are our lives, and our lives our memories. Fortunately they seem to have a physical backup in the brain. #
Lamina Design: Download - the software that creates 2-D patterns you can turn into 3-D is now at demo stage #
mcgillis design portfolio - great, giant font homepage #
Editora DBA - Flash bookshelf #
S A C H A * D E A N * B I Y A N - crazy flash, yo #
Forces of Nature - from National Geographic, with a great zooming interface; something to emulate for a homepage? #
The Age of the Essay, by Paul Graham - how the "gift economy" of blogs benefits the writer at least as much as the reader. "An essay is something you write to try to figure something out...Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience." #
The Crying Bar - I don't understand Asian culture, I've tried. #
Rushkoff on blogging as a gift economy- "I believe the greatest power of the blog is not just its ability to distribute alternative information ...but its power to demonstrate a mode of engagement that is not based on the profit principle." #
InfoDesign: Understanding by Design - News - good information design resource #
sciforums.com - NewsFire 0.1 beta - more RSS for OS X #
KoalaRainbow Visualization Examples - like Phil's site #
Uh oh, Snoop Dogg's scooter is on to my saddle design... - i actually really hope this doesn't wake anyone up... #
Mozilla Camino home page - they released 0.8 #
VisiBone Card Collection - useful HTML/CSS reference cards #
Water background - like the tiled grass before #
Eastbay Redesign - asks "what do we want the user to do most easily on this page?" For them it's buy; for Veritas it's watch video/send to friend. #
Close-to-semantic Flash text replacement - for designer-spec'd fonts #
Empire Hotel // Llandudno, North Wales, UK - uses valid Flash embedding code #
( Justwatchthesky ) Neubix Phone Theme - for t616 #
gapingvoid: how to be creative - lots of emphasis on long, hard work; not "overnight sensations" #
Bruce Mau Design - Incomplete Manifesto - lots on autotelic design, forcing yourself into creative situations, growth as a designer #
View "Full Source" in IE - the dynamic code the browser is currently displaying, not just the source #
Color Palette Generator - upload an image, it generates a color palette! #
Welcome to MiniBlog! - Jeff Minard's Miniblog - 5kb blogging system #
Bitflux Blog :: Spotlight-like livesearch added - no-click searching! #
Forcing scrollbars - good for Scratchworthy site? #
Smooth scrolling demo - smoothly scrolls internal anchor links with a simple javascript; might be worth adding to my standard javascript file for every site #
bookofjoe: Virtual Addiction - addicted to work, via technology: "Everybody who's observed American culture, beginning with de Tocqueville, has said that Americans are uneasy with leisure," says Geoffrey Godbey, a professor of leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University. #
How to Make and Use the Solar Funnel Cooker - solar funnel cooker; better than parabolic or box solar cookers. #
Colour my forms - amazing use of backgrounds and colors for form elements; animated gifs in textareas! #
Deep Prose Software - a book library application available now #
Delicious Monster Software - the "Library" application guys; a cool grass background to their page. #
Think Secret - A Look at Delicious Library 3.0 Table of Contents: an amazing OS X application to track your real-life books, movies, and more #
Edward Tufte: Courses - Palo Alto on December 9 and 10! #
PHP Markdown - could this convert plain text files into a nice-looking webpage? (as mentioned here) #
macosxhints - Force Mail to display plain text by default - wonder if this includes displayling HTML attachments inline #
Great Hackers - Paul Graham on great people and what makes them great; autotelic personalities rank tops. #
INFRANGIBLE | Porch - beautiful, unexplained combination of image, word, and sound. A song for each page... #
Scott Adams on cubicles "Reason: What do you hate about cubicles? Adams: I think it's the symbolism more than anything--the fact that you're a grown adult and well into your career and you have to sit in a box. There's just something inherently degrading about that." #
Scott Adams interview in Reason - on making tangible stuff: "If you're on the assembly line, at least you've made something. Whereas Dilbert is like I was in my career: work 17 years and never do anything for anybody. Nothing tangible came out of anything I ever did...You never really get the feeling that you've done anything useful. You feel like you're bluffing all the time. It's the big difference." #
Marginal Revolution: The Economics of Declining Architecture, Once Again - restricting innovation in the name of higher "resale" value; I know people who do this with their careers... #
LA Weekly: Features: Memory and Manipulation - memory is malleable, much like perception #
SIMPLICITY at the MIT Media Lab; John Maeda, Bill Moggridge, etc. #
Baxley Design :: - unified theory of interaction design; a good set of checkpoints, and an order to approach the design of a site with. #
Jante's Law: Anti-Ambition (Signal vs. Noise) - Scandinavian culture tries to play down individual success; not because of an autotelic emphasis, but to try to level the playing field. #
The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan - McLuhan on the difference between cultures of oral tradition and those of textual information. Has the change created Jane Jacob's Dark Age Ahead by de-emphasizing conversation and shared society? "Tribal cultures even today simply cannot comprehend the concept of the individual or of the separate and independent citizen. Oral cultures act and react simultaneously, whereas the capacity to act without reacting, without involvement, is the special gift of "detached" literate man." #
Robert Frank on How not to buy happiness - buy "free time", not material goods. His main example compares a big house and long car commute with a smaller house and short mass-transit ride. "The less we spend on conspicuous consumption goods, the better we can afford to alleviate congestion; and the more time we can devote to family and friends, to exercise, sleep, travel, and other restorative activities. On the best available evidence, reallocating our time and money in these and similar ways would result in healthier, longer and happier lives." #
THE ABOLITION OF WORK - arguing that modern work be abolished in favor of a "ludic", play-based society. "I am not playing definitional games with anybody. When I say I want to abolish work, I mean just what I say, but I want to say what I mean by defining my terms in non-idiosyncratic ways. My minimun definition of work is forced labor, that is, compulsory production. Both elements are essential. Work is production enforced by economic or political means, by the carrot or the stick." #
Google Search: unburdened crawl toward death - an argument for shedding possessions from King Lear? #
Famine, Affluence, and Morality, by Peter Singer - Singer supports Kravinsky's kidney choice; is it possible to reconcile wonderful acts like that with an autotelic personality? "My next point is this: if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it." #
bookofjoe: Zell Kravinsky - Psycho or Saint? - kravinsky donated a kidney to a stranger because it was "1000 times more valuable to her"; the opposite of autotelism, though he argues he was compelled to do so. #
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Rheingold on Cooperation - Rheingold's cooperation project aims to usurp the current economy with one based on cooperation and mutual benefit; technology has greased the tracks to make this possible #
Many-to-Many: Hacking vs. Research - Howard Rheingold on letting lots of kids do your testing, waiting for a "hundred-bagger". #
Marginal Revolution: Is education good for growth? - education as a primarily heterotelic task, may interfere with productivity. Does that mean autotelic activities increase productivity? #
Tutorials - VX 220 Rendering - creating a finished rendering #
Tutorials - VX 220 Rendering - quick sketch tutorial, from pencil to markers to photoshop, in 8 minutes #
model making with paper, mesh, and paint - to do looks-like prototypes #
The Gnomon Workshop - Analog Library - design sketching DVDs, expensive though... #
glish.com : CSS layout techniques : 2 columns, ALA style - floated bulletproof columns #
The Official Site of The 86th PGA Championship and Ryder Cup - beautiful, standards-based, unconventional and unique designs; possible emulation for Veritas/Scratchworthy? #
Great commencement speech about artists taking over the world when computers make MBAs and engineers obsolete #
"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick - On "having done" things; the opposite of autotelism is doing things to "have done" them; it is the primary motivation for many educational and career choices. "You can't be this; you can't actually do this." He chuckled. "But you can have been and have done. We see to that." #
The Simpsons Archive: Episodes By Writer - good for finding other episodes by a writer whose episode you liked #
LandSurfer.com, The Future of Extreme Boarding - board with good pivoted turning radius as needed for in-city travel #
Future Horizons inc: Hoverboards - hoverboards?!?! #
Liming in Trinidad, The Art of Doing Nothing - Thomas Hylland Eriksen - doing nothing as an autotelic goal #
Colorcell Color of the Day Timeline - shows the preference of people for certain colors over time; quantifies "the new black" #
FreeFoto.com - Free Pictures - FreeFoto.Com - more free stock photography #
Popular Science | Tech '54, Where Are You? - Living with 1954 technology, the one roadblock to my desire to live in that time. #
Rounded Corners in CSS - Virtuelvis - when IE7 reached v7.0, this will allow rounded corners on any element with no additional markup! Now to get it working with just one image... #
OneLook Reverse Dictionary - describe the concept, and it tells you the word! #
SpellBound - spellchecking of web forms in Firefox #
Empire Hotel // Llandudno, North Wales, UK - pretty cool #
And all that Malarkey // WWF - Good design process detail #
MT Stuff: QuickCode Text filter - Encodes code with its HTML entities for posting online. #
Stratos .. About Us - product design firm in Seattle #
Apple - Trailers - Equilibrium - still haven't seen this one #
ZION CONTROL STATIC - web interface in the style of the Matrix's Zion Control Center #
Cross-Browser Table Sorting - does it work on the mac? #
World's most powerful pogo stick - bounce 5 feet in the air! At Amazon #
Jeff Bezos on Word-of-Mouth Power - "We don't do any television advertising...We take those funds that might otherwise be used to shout about our service, and put those funds instead into improving the service." #
InfoDesign: Understanding by Design | Profile of Adam Greenfield - "I'm increasingly convinced that helping people make better choices is the single most important thing we can do as designers." #
Finally, a useful color scheme picker - in Flash, recommends hexadecimal codes #
COLOR IN MOTION - amazing Flash movie on color theory; very entertaining! #
dayatwork.com | BETA - nice design for a schedule-listing page; good idea as well to show what people actually do at work. #
:: Bobulate :: Experience - cool-looking resume (PDF) #
wg:DHTML Table Fun - reorder a table row by row; good for reordering a to-do list? #
Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention: A List Apart - stop stealing my files! #
Blackbeltjones/work: War of the worlds: don't believe the type. - similar idea to my entertainment blogging; typing alone will not be enough soon... #
Doing Something Different:A Weblog by Doug Miller - remembrance agent on the web #
Remem: The Remembrance Agent - Nat's Dashboard for the Mac? #
Where * Johnvey Hwang * Intuitive Web Architecture - developer with great simple designs #
The worst corporate logo I've ever seen - I can't believe this is for a real company, particularly one in the business of high-level information security--it looks like it was done in Microsoft Paint! I would very much avoid business with them simply due to the logo. #
worldtrade_2.mov (video/quicktime Object) - timelapse of trade center towers falling... #
Writings on the Wall: Changes in a PDA Society - Justin Smith on the digital age #
extisp.icio.us - charting the tags of del.icio.us users - visualizing information much like the search engine zeitgeist #
Web Flowchart Stencil - for OmniGraffle #
The Omni Group - Applications - OmniGraffle - Samples - good examples of nice designs, with files #
mezzoblue § IA with OmniGraffle - good example of a sitemap #
XHTML Reference - all the tags, their descriptions, and examples #
My Personal Basecamp site -- let's see if I can approach my life as a "project" #
MacThemes.net | Reviews - great themes #
More people building crazy stupid stuff - awesome... #
Amazing evocative sketch from PA - accentuate humans, fade rest; just like our brains do. #
Boxes and Arrows: Opening Pandora's Box: Special Deliverable #1 - first in a series; very good for consulting design projects, exactly what you need to show clients #
Rolex Awards for Enterprise - amazing approtech beauty! #
Boxes and Arrows: Writing Smart Annotations - for wireframes #
2004 Timpani race announcement - race on August 1 #
: : cavil.com : : : - Cavil dot com is a web site design and development company specializing in online project creation with a cultural focus. #
A fun spoof: "Amazon for your Soul"--Kurt Keilhacker #
Odontis -The Tissue Engineering of Teeth - grow new teeth! #
Second Story Interactive Studios - amazing way to make the web into an experience #
Amazon.com: Books: Hidden Value: How Great Companies Achieve Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People #
PHP upload script - simple and clean #
Pepsi's Customer-centered products - corporate philosophy less about brand-building and more about customer serving; good job, Mr. Reinemund! #
J.K.Rowling Official Site - Harry Potter and more - cool "real-world-style" Flash site #
The Vision Thing: Dilbert of Future Passed - Dilbert's OA5 (Out at 5) principle is what I try to do with my work--get it done so I can go home early #
Pantone to RGB Colour Conversion - good for mimicking print on the web #
Kite Aerial Photography by Scott Haefner | 360° Panoramas - careful not to get vertigo! #
Alix Kates Shulman: Dances with feminists "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"; ok, maybe she didn't exactly say that--but isn't it cool anyway? Take the joy out of something and it doesn't matter how "good" it is...no one will join you. #
Web Survey and Internet Research Reports by SecuritySpace - reports on how many sites use javascript, flash, PNGs, Frontpage, etc... #
AdamPolselli.com :: Where'd Ya Get That There Color Scheme? - great collection of color schemes taken from nature photos #
the calvin and hobbes resource center - all the cartoons, archived by date and category! amazing! #
PearPC - Screenshots - run OS X on windows! #
Lamina Design - "Lamina makes it easy to fabricate large scale free-form structures from planar (sheet) materials like plastic, metal, or plywood" #
A Man, A Plan, 2002: The Palindromic Datebook - with a gorgeous design #
EarthLink Conference Manager - Mac OS X Port - multiple person videoconferencing #
3650 and a 12-inch - the bluetooth internet phone guy's blog #
Share internet connection from laptop to bluetooth phone - though it probably doesn't work with the T616... #
When something slides down the experience hierarchy, as "information" has slid down from product to good to commodity, can new levels slide in above them (i.e. "collections" or "programs" of information)? #
John Kerry's new slogan - he needs Karim's help... #
ITA Software: Trip Planner - best flight search engine; shows ALL options #
PurpleSlurple - turns any webpage into a Douglas-Englebart-certified information resource with paragraph-level permalinks (i.e. link to any element on the page, even if the author didn't provide an anchor link to it!) #
Marginal Revolution: Mall Science - how to position items in a store to sell better (know walking patterns, people like to shop away from the door so they don't buy the up-front "featured" items, provide seats for those dragged along shopping (husbands!)) #
Kurt Vonnegut On employment: "I believe half of the duty of every inventor is to make a product that is better and cheaper, and the other half is to create a job that is more satisfying. We do only half of it. People are never mentioned, as though they don't figure in the equation at all. Technocrats don't give a damn about anything but the machines." #
February 7 | Conan O'Brien's Commencement Speech - "I've dwelled on my failures today because, as graduates of Harvard, your biggest liability is your need to succeed. Your need to always find yourself on the sweet side of the bell curve. Because success is a lot like a bright, white tuxedo. You feel terrific when you get it, but then you're desperately afraid of getting it dirty, of spoiling it in any way. I left the cocoon of Harvard, I left the cocoon of Saturday Night Live, I left the cocoon of The Simpsons. And each time it was bruising and tumultuous. And yet, every failure was freeing, and today I'm as nostalgic for the bad as I am for the good." #
Make a Bonfire of Your Reputations - don't wait to do what you think is right: "I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time." #
overstated: Weblogs and authority - with a gorgeous CSS table #
THE SNOWSUIT EFFORT - as minimal as it gets; beautiful design though #
Jonathan & Joanne :: Nov. 20th, 2004 - gorgeous faux paper design #
Why we get our wisdom teeth out--we used to have bigger jaws to chew with, but food processing technologies (cooking, etc) eliminated that while our teeth stayed the same size (genetic, not adaptive): "The size of teeth has not decreased as fast (genetic factors control more of their variation); hence, modern teeth are actually too big for our mouths--wisdom teeth become impacted and require extraction." #
DEJA VIEW, Inc. - camera buffers continuously the last 30 seconds it's seen; saves it when you press a button. #
On Paradise Drive : How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense - book by David Brooks exploring the Culture of Fear idea that "Americans have always been united less by a shared past than by the shared dream of a better future"; also explains our crazy driven people contrasting with our slovenly laziness...could help understand my own motivations. #
dBforums - Closing Popup window when Parent Window is closed - i love the style of this page...great for an "archived" item, like most of my written content will be on ryskamp.org... #
More detailed bike map view - avoid the blue roads! #
Bike routes and paths around Mountain View - highlighting separate paths and roads with bike lanes... #
Miscellaneous Symbols - Test for Unicode support in Web browsers - just the expanded miscellaneous set #
Character Entity Reference HTML 4 - especially the section called "Expanded Character Entity List: Miscellaneous Symbols"; good iconic images spec'd by code...will need cross-browser testing #
♫ - Another cool symbol; where are these coming from, and where's a comprehensive list? #
graphicPUSH - Capturing and Optimizing Screenshots for Print - the "vector" section is especially good for creating picture-perfect images #
css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design - a visually-3d style; why don't we see more top-down 3d view in webpages? #
sorttable: Make all your tables sortable - i don't think this works in Safari, but it seems to in Mozilla--why? #
Standardice - Mimicking Magazines in CSS, something I'm planning on trying soon; I like the "table of contents" especially, that's something the web is way behind on... #
IE ScrollTable - amazing, lets you scroll tbody elements in internet explorer, with a fixed header! #
blosxom :: the zen of blogging -- blosxom is the real movabletype killer, with the ability to create static pages #
★ -- a cool star HTML symbol on OS X; how's it look on other systems? #
Install Apache, PHP, MySQL, and more for Windows! - easy enough that even I was able to do it! #
bookofjoe: E.M. Cioran returns - beautiful simple book image; i like the style, why can't we browse the web in portrait mode? #
Doblin - Ten types of innovation - like Fast Company comparing product and business innovations; this has 8 more ways to innovate! #
The Loom: Angels and Extinctions - why "normal science" rarely delivers the results that most people expect; that until you know everything about a subject, you can't really declare anything for sure...like The Structure of Scientific Revolution's normal science description. #
Kam Vedbrat - What influenced the visual design of Longhorn? - of course, only viewable in Windows IE... #
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / The semio-grads - semiotics, Ira Glass' and Steven Johnson's major at Brown. Weird, self-referential stuff...sounds like fun! #
Marginal Revolution: Is a bad American image bad for American products? - "Above a certain level of income, at least half of our discretionary consumption is driven by the desire to affiliate and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we are doing." - like Experience Economy predicts. #
Whisper - Screens - cool, non-weblog content managment #
Taste for Makers - Paul Graham's epic essay on traits of good designs #
gotomedia : strategic interaction design and usability consultancy - great portfolio section, very process-focused #
stevenberlinjohnson.com: Thinking Faster - part of our brains are fine with the accelerating pace of life; the emotional parts are not. We're able to accomplish more and more, but unable to feel it or comprehend it emotionally. #
Style.com: Home nice navigation that doesn't look like navigation; lots of "features"... #
Wired News: Pentagon Wants to Make a New PAL - goverment working on a "just-in-time" information tool, like whassup.org... #
Experience Design article on the 4 things people do online - learn, feel, connect, and trade. Relates to the holistic "sea change" design philosophy, try to connect with people on all these levels. #
Starck Contrast: Going Luxe - Philippe Starck wishes Americans had more design criticism, to improve their work; thinks Target's commitment to design is just "changing colors"; says "To be a designer is nothing--to live a full life, that is the goal." #
matt jones | work & thoughts | Greetings from (over and over again) Astbury Park, NJ - noting that following Bruce Springsteen's career doesn't involve listening to "Bruce Springsteen 7" before "Bruce Springsteen 8"...following a person as an experience... #
Daring Fireball: Nottke: Expose works on Macs b/c the window belongs to the application; doesn't work on PCs because the application belongs to the window! Related to kottke's Sherfari: "On the Macintosh, the visual scope of an application is the entire display. They are not contained within windows; windows belong to applications, not the other way around. Compare and contrast to the Windows MDI interface, in which an application is contained in a window, within which window are the app's document windows, "a desktop within a desktop." #
Spring: Home - worth another look... #
magazine: Introducing the Microcontent Client - Anil Dash on basically an "executive dashboard" for everyone #
Print On Demand Online Book & Manuscript Self Publishing Services - Xlibris Publishing - hardcovers too... #
MIPS Technologies CEO Addresses ``The Killer User Experience'' Phenomenon in Consumer Devices - People are still confused about this; they think adding features is the way to help the user experience..."For example, a user's HDTV experience should include not only HD viewing but features such as HD recording, web browsing and interactive sports viewing. And programs recorded on a personal video recorder in one room should be accessible anytime and from any room in the house." #
All News is Bad News (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) - noting that news is largely useless; only once filtered by editorialists (Atlantic, New Yorker, etc) is it useful and life-changing. More of the "urgent" vs. "important" conflict...news is urgent but usually not important. #
How Much Information 2003 - report from Berkeley group that contributed to the Forbes article...1 gigabyte = a pickup truck full of books #
The New York Times > Health > Mental Health & Behavior > Scientist at Work | Albert Ellis: From Therapy's Lenny Bruce: Get Over It! Stop Whining! #
the johnson banks website - beautiful way of presenting a portfolio; experience-based, showcasing process, simple text layout #
RSS and Repeat (Signal vs. Noise) - trying to make RSS readers better by grouping articles on the same topic; might be nice, but I prefer keeping them grouped by author, I'm more interested in viewing the thought process of a person than a topic; it's the experience economy, where we follow those whose worldview we share, we don't follow ideologies or systems, we follow people #
gladwell dot com / blowing up - amazing portrait of Taleb; "Taleb buys options because he is certain that, at root, he knows nothing, or, more precisely, that other people believe they know more than they do."; the philosophy of "being the house" in the stock market, but over a long, long, period...you give up some temporary gains but avoid the giant losses (in fact, profit from them, since Taleb buys and sells options, not shares) #
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Learning to Expect the Unexpected - Taleb's article on 9/11, etc; we explain away inconsistencies in our own experience by trying to fit them into existing patterns, when often they shouldn't fit. (furled also) #
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Home & Professional Page - interestingly, one of the few voices to acknowledge his own as well as others' ignorance of the role luck plays in our successes; relates to our inability to recognize luck in our success (like Godin's article in Fast Company); also how we misattribute stock rises and political voting to "correct" policies, when really it's just about who sells more stock or gets more votes on election day. #
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: A New Kind of Office Politics - the CEO now part executive, part politician; as stock price becomes less about a company's earnings and more about (the real reason) how much people want to buy the stock, the CEO is the one responsible for inciting people to buy. Reminds me of Covey's "personality vs. character", how business is increasingly about personality, unfortunately... #
Ned Batchelder: Paul Rand's geometry books - in which he writes: "mass communication = mass thinking; unanimity of thoughts = anonymity of ideas" #
Viewmasters: the audience's power over media's message - the important thing is not what the intended use of or reaction to an item is; it's what the audience's use and reaction is. #
DOM Inspector - for firefox, helps resolve CSS style conflicts/combinations #
v i d e o g a l l e r y - crazy cycling clips, sounds like fun... #
What You Should Know about XHTML 1.1 [dionidium.com] - perfect pastel colors and interesting article #
Crazy-cool-styled HTML form - probably won't work in Safari but it looks like a piece of paper! #
File input (or "upload") in HTML forms - I never knew how to do this! #
"Bob" not a very popular last name - don't know why, I wouldn't mind it! #
Marginal Revolution: Subjective time, or the tourist illusion - or why bike rides seem longer going out than coming home; expand that to your whole life and realize that the second half will seem much faster! #
Search WebFX message board - change URL to do different search #
Amazing styling resource for PCs - make them look like Macs and more #
photomatt » scripts » Random Image Script - better than the last? #
Dimensionizer - for OS X #
WeeMee on MSN - WWW.WEE-MEE.COM - another cartoon likeness #
:: stor troopers :: - make your likeness in cartoon form #
Hiveware - Image Rotator dynamic images within an HTML page #
My Amazon wishlist as RSS - this hadn't worked before #
The 2 to the Nth feature (kottke.org) - similar to the Forbes article about how we could create more data last year than all spoken words in the history of man; also how collections are becoming the biggest thing to design now, not individual pieces; Curatorial Culture indeed ... #
List of special collections at Princeton - some very cool stuff in there #
Executive Dashboards shouldn't say "Here's everything that happened since you left"; rather, they should say "Glad you're here now, here's the most important items currently", just as real-life executive assistants do. Difference between micromanagement and holistic style... #
"The Stanford brand of Kool-Aid" #
TheFeature :: Cybercafe Society - coffee as social stimulant? #
Old pre-revolution french newspaper - somehow this seems like it could be good online as well ... like alazanto and the morning news #
Tom Weller Presents - the author of "Science Made Stupid", the book that did horribly because you have to be really smart to understand why his joke science is funny. #
MINIM 16 - Long journeys seldom begin in Chinese restaurants - does this say something about productivity? #
Science Made Stupid - hilarious fake science; whoever said science had to be true? #
Interactive Telecommunications Program - Tisch School of the Arts - NYU - creators of Pac-Manhattan, among other cool stuff #
Pac Manhattan - PacMan in real life #
*org:star trek - OneLook Dictionary Search - amazing word search, lets you search by how a word ends and what it's related to, among other functions #
Mountaintop Corners: A List Apart - beautiful way to style ULs, DTs, etc. #
Google Search: spehl korector - trolling for hits by using others' proprietary words #
Free Illustrator vector art - for good flash backgrounds? #
The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Techno Files: Humans vs. Computers, Again. But There's Help for Our Side. - the "big heap" and "folded PJs" models of information categorization; not caring about storing, just about finding vs. carefully putting everything in its place. #
One Plus One Equals Three: Design is... - design quotes from Steve Jobs, Paul Rands, etc. #
Graphic Design USA - 2004 Color Forecast: pastels, goaches, watercolors and acrylics #
Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - download PDF #
OSXFAQ :: View topic - Dr. Mac - Your Own Free Copy of Apple's Garamond font - extract Garamond from OS X #
aplus » Can you place layers over flash files or drop downs? - overlapping those other elements #
aplus » Those things that refuse to obey - overlapping select boxes (and other objects?) #
bigshotmedia.com - stock flash - very cool for ambient flash effects #
Lindsay's Technical Books - how to make crazy crafts #
moock>> web>> flash>> production tips - great tips that macromedia would never tell you because they point out weaknesses in their program; but sometimes you have to work around them anyway. #
Project Zero - studying innovation at Harvard for 30 years #
What Do I Know - Flash slide show source - amazing Flash slideshow movie, <1K! #
ROLF PRIMA - loving the same-color navbar #
The New Republic Online: Easterbrook - interesting "possible history" about if Bush had acted on the intelligence gathered pre-9/11 #
Old Fishinghat - Moneyball-esque economics/baseball blog #
OneNote 2003 Product Information: The Microsoft Office note-taking and management program - looks like a good thinking interface ... #
drupal.org | community plumbing - possibly more featured for groups@stanford? #
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report - comparing non-intuitive software design to unsafe product design #
angermann2 - outside-the-box blog design #
This Blog Will Change Your Life - another one #
Run Like Hell and BENRICK - another one #
Jonas Jansson Blog - guy who's following the "This Book Will Change Your Life" rules #
Letterhead Fonts: Rare and Unique Typefaces for Artists - great for logo design #
Menu Calendar - instant calendar access - great calendar for OS X #
macosxhints - Cached 'favicons' in Safari can cause slowdowns - solve beach ball every few minutes #
How To Sell Accessibility - great $$ reasons to code the way I like #
Microsoft allows customizing color of mice - more substance of style #
"Open talks with Bin Laden or it's war forever" - more arguments that war is counterproductive, that respect goes two ways. #
Scrollable TBODY; fixed THEAD - but only in Mozilla #
Design by Fire: Interface Design Issues #07: The myth of navigation - phenomenal exploration of the boundaries of the page paradigm, web navigation vs. application design, and search vs. browse; replete with an amazon.com redesign! #
Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows: How it works: Inductive user interfaces - expert on Window's "wizard" inductive, experience-central, interfaces; moving away from "finding" files... #
The Two Things - for every discipline, there are just two things you really need to know #
Amazon Light 3.0 - beautiful for browsing amazon, but my main functionality is the wishlist... #
RedirectMatch for Apache - good for when i move all my files... #
MTEntries tag attributes - ok moron, looks like you can do it all in normal MT, as you would expect... #
MTCatEntries - allows you to retrieve entries from a given category on an index page...i think... #
DaveNet : Edit This Page - more on an Internet operating system #
DaveNet : Edit This Page - more on an Internet operating system #
Adobe After Effects Adobe Photoshop - cool 3d picture panning effect #
Entertainment.com - Dell deal with an entertainment book #
This Is Broken - Product Design - interaction designs gone bad in physical products #
ClearType Step 1: Turn on Windows XP ClearType - tune your text smoothing #
ComputerGeeks.com - Xact Communication WristLinx X3X Xact WristLinx Digital Wristwatch and 2-Way Radio $27.95 X3X-N - Dick Tracy watches! #
This is Powazek - great combo front page for a blog/portfolio site #
root / adhocracy #
Google's JSky search mode - automatically reformats pages to a "mobile" version; great for browsing any site on a mobile device! #
Brad Lauster's (e²) - he's writing again #
idea a day - good brainstorming resource #
Anil Dash: unsolicited advice - more about "output" of your good ideas #
The Bathing Ape Has No Clothes (and other notes on the distinction between style and design): A List Apart #
adaptive path » why content management fails - Jeff Veen says that the problem is not a poor technical solution; rather, bad content managment means bad content managers are in place. Hire an editor, not a CMS. #
Ambient Design Ltd. - ArtRage painting software #
Welcome to Usability News - 6.1 2004 - great articles on usability, the breadcrumbs and line-length ones for example #
iStockphoto.com - royalty free stock photography community - about $1.50 each #
PHP Photo and Image Gallery Script - STADTAUS.com - creates a gallery from a folder of images... #
Morguefile :: free stock photos - more good ones #
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | World getting 'literally greener' - is this yet another instance of us believing something because the alternative is too terrible to think about? Like the "outsourcing must be good" argument? #
All Consuming: Book Info: The Art of Innovation : Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm - similar to my book on revolutionary design? #
AIGA - Symbol signs - all the "universal symbols" #
lancearthur.com: Just Write: Bikqueers - hating cars and surviving in the streets #
UNITED CAMPS | CREATIVE SERVICES - very clean design, minimal and clear #
Deepak Chopra on staying cool in business - keep your emotions under control in business decisions or you'll make the wrong call #
Why outsourcing actually won't help our economy after all - i'm so confused: first politicians tell me it's hurting, then WIRED and FastCompany tell me it will help (eventually), now a government offical refutes that. I need an economist... #
EntryList plugin for Movable Type - posted before, but THIS IS HOW YOU DO A SINGLE CATEGORY TEMPLATE!!! The tag is <mtentrylistincludecategory> #
built for the future forward-looking, forward-thinking web design and development - cool design blog, sponsored the ReUSEIT! contest #
504 Gateway Timeout - GLsetup (if still alive) should configure and download the best OpenGL implementation for your system #
Calvin College - Festival of Faith and Writing - Bierma speaking with Veen #
GUIdebook: Graphical User Interface gallery - great history; yet somehow they all disappoint. GUIs mean different things to different people, so designing a universal one seems doomed. Can it be customized for each person? #
Internetworking (3.3): Article-Conceptual User Interface - Where users expect certain web objects #
matt jones | work & thoughts - great simple design, separation of work and play, good design content #
Design Observer: writings about design & culture: Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School - "it all comes down to output" #
Amnesty International - Library - China: Controls tighten as Internet activism grows - use the internet, go to prison. Makes you appreciate the ability to blog, eh? #
VLC media player - Overview - new version #
The Morning News - Virtue: Volunteering from Home - most of it involves "making stuff" #
Webmonkey: design: The End-All Guide to Small-Screen Web-Dev - designing for handhelds #
Massive Change - Radio - Bruce Mao's crazy manifesto audio archive #
floating atoll: Right of passage - monopoly extensions; good for "advanced monopoly"? #
Ian Buruma on "Killing Iraq with Kindness" - a sentiment I have seen suprisingly rarely in these recent years, even from the self-professed Christian culture #
Why Consumer Products Have Inferior User Experience (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox) - usability in product design #
"Obeying rules without an understanding of the reasons behind them creates an approximation of competence which leaves one vulnerable to the exceptions." -= Sea Kayaker's Deep Trouble (from Jeff Veen's presentation at SXSW) #
cuneAform - Templates... - as tacky as it is to like this design, i do... #
iStockphoto.com - royalty free stock photography community - cheap, about $1/ea. #
Carl Zimmer at Corante; his site #
EntryList plugin for Movable Type - "more entries by Bob"..."more in this category" #
Procrastination: Popular Posts - using MT Most Visited #
A Day In The Life Of BBCi Search - great way to understand what's going on... #
Cooper: Careers -interaction designer? #
Transport for London - "Congestion Charge", a very cool concept (and promising for cyclists as well!) #
Peter Van Dijck's blog -usability #
People and Places That Rock - Tom Peters' weblog #
Trading Up - consumer trends, similar to Experience Economy, substance of style, etc. #
Nerd Corner: A Brief History of the Nerd - Dr. Seuss invented the word "nerd"! #
Deals/Coupons on Bike Parts - Just saved me 25 bucks... #
The new revolution / How Mexico turned out its autocratic, long-standing regime - "Institutional Revolutionary"? Can you do that? #
WhatTheFont : MyFonts.com - identifies fonts with OCR #
-= Monkey Clan =- - Nice typography in Flash; can I replicate it in CSS? #
FOOOD's Icons - Urban PPL XP - good for groups@stanford avatars? #
The redesign continues... (kottke.org) - combining multiple weblogs into one #
Wavemarket - this is way way cool... #
Total Cycling - the really cheap mail-order bike store from Ireland #
Remember these? -Early ISIS work #
Awesome text color effect - how does it look on mac gamma? #
Xopus, the friendly XML editor - wow, the future of web development... #
Home | contentEditable.com - Like Time B-L recommended... #
No more lonely nights | A Danish positioning service for hooking up around town - Like ISIS Real-time events #
BEING SPACES - Similar to Blender #
DesignAid | Trade show in a box - for ISIS Blender? #
PLANNED SPONTANEITY - for ISIS realtime events #
Library It! - bookmarklets to search for Amazon, etc., books at your local library #
WSJ.com - The Segway: A Bright Idea, But Business Model Wobbles - "Imagine if Ford or Chevy had no dealerships," says Mr. Bills. "Where would you buy them?" #
Vera - Bitstream - open source fonts #
Netdiver Industrial design portfolio sites - mostly flash, unfortunately #
Robert Wright and Robert Pollack - 18 minutes, Pollack explains why understanding everything is impossible and contradictory #
Robert Wright and Steven Pinker - good stuff around 40 minute mark about moral imperatives #
Accelerating Change Conference 2003--can I get my dvds now? #
Thinking Robots: Bruce Sterling on "Curatorial Culture" #
Network theory's new math | CNET News.com - great summary of network theories and theorists #
CNN.com - Newest electronics short on simplicity - Jan. 30, 2004 - why interaction design is the future of product design #
Shirky: In Praise of Evolvable Systems "The Strength of Weakness" #
Beyond the Blog | A Whole Lotta Features - Matt Haughey on doing it all in MT #
Adding in tabs, blogmarks and a blogroll | Blog | 1976design.com - note the asterisks #
Language and Information - how it categorizes our thought #
Moveable Type XSLT - Carey Evans how to do it... #
Alazanto: XML through XSL and CSS and it looks good! #
Lists of Bests : Home - just what I need, more stuff #
Crystal's Musings - Happiness is a Journey - a very email-forwardy type of thing that somehow I like #
Hot Design Tips - ha ha! #
Last-minute travel packages - with hotel, flight, really cheap! #
jarango | Information Architecture - don't forget about it again! #
CNN.com - Why 'Bottom Up' is on its way up - emergence in action #
Nine Days, "Bitter"; a nice angst-ridden song #
Engelbart's Bootstrap Institute - practices what he preaches #
Firefighters For Christ - amazing Christian music, Bible, and teaching multimedia resource #
Isabelle Allende Lecture in May 2004 - for Megan #
More Flash examples - did he simulate quicktime controls or is that native? #
Child's Play - Purchasing from the Children's Hospital Wishlist #
John Dewey's Writings - Education theorist, "Psychology of Effort" #
Goonies cast not allowed to see pirate ship before shooting "The cast was not allowed to see the pirate ship before the scene was shot. When they did see it, some of the kids said "holy shit!" so the scene had to be re-shot without them cursing." #
Talking Flash character-this is fun... #
"The Passion" actor struck by lightning. I mean, wow. #
Boxes and Arrows: The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness #
Convergence of movies, their subjects, and their stars--"Freddy and Jason vs. Reese and Julia" #