Archive for December 2006
December 29th, 2006
Anybody have a SlingBox I can commandeer via IP? Just moved into a new place and no TV for a week.

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December 28th, 2006
is extremely happy that Newsvine just made Time Magazine’s Top Ten Web Sites of 2006…

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December 26th, 2006
Non-technical female is not getting it.

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is trying to explain Twitter to non-technical female.

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An Animated Look at Why E-Mail Is Broken

The interactive animation below accurately describes the state of my e-mail situation, in this, my 13th year with the medium:

Over the last couple of years, I’ve gone from someone who returns 99% of e-mails — and relatively quickly — to someone who routinely takes days, weeks, and sometimes even months to return certain mails, recently resorting to instant deletion just to avoid the buildup.

I’ve tried to figure out how to best express the dynamics of the situation in words, but an animated illustration seemed to get the point across much better, so this weekend, I whipped out Flash for the first time in about a year. The end result is kind of soothing actually… turn spam off, slide the top to “Fast”, and slide the bottom to “Manageable”. Now that’s e-mail nirvana… something I’ll never achieve.

Thanks also to professional mathlete Tom Laramee of SongStage.net for helping me even out the slider effect with an exponential decay equation.

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December 24th, 2006
Ok, I still don’t get it. I must be an OLD MAN. OLLLLLLLLLLLLLLD MAN I tell ya!

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This has got to be the noisiest web app ever invented. The input is excellent though… who will be the first to use it in an actually-useful way?

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December 22nd, 2006

Inquisitor: Spotlight for the web

A nice little tool which transforms Safari's search box into a live search box.

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What's In Al Gore's Bookmarks Bar?

December 21st, 2006

I have this really peculiar habit of always examining what is in the Bookmarks Bar of people’s browsers. I do it when I’m looking at someone’s computer screen, when someone sends me a screenshot which includes their browser, and even on TV when I see a browser somewhere in the frame. You can tell a lot about someone by what they’ve decided to drag in there.

So tonight, I was watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” on DVD and about halfway through the movie, they cut to a scene of Gore typing on his Powerbook. For a split second they showed his web browser and I hit pause and snapped this picture:

I’m not sure exactly what URL that is, but it appears to be one of the results from this Google Images search.

I don’t know why I think this is worth posting about, but it just seemed weird to me. You can tell by the rest of his Bookmarks Bar (not shown) that he hasn’t customized much else, but he apparently felt the need to have photos of him on the web one click away at all times.

So what’s in your Bookmarks Bar? Post screenshots in the comments using a standard IMG tag…

UPDATE: Thanks to Mike West’s further investigative work, we also now know that Gore is apparently using Gwen Cassidy’s nytimes.com account! … and possibly her laptop as well.

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How Pregnancy Happens

Thanks to D.L. Byron for sending this to me. I normally hate it when people send me web cartoons, but this one is pretty damn funny.

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Gale force winds applied directly to people’s faces. (via @itscolossal)

Fungible:

An excellent, must-read treatise by Stijn Debrouwere about how journalism is slowly being replaced by other services which perform journalistic duties (inform, entertain, etc.) without being journalistic entities unto themselves. Examples include Netflix reviews, Quora Q&A threads, and the like:

There are organizations and websites everywhere that are taking over newspapers’ role as tastemaker and watchdog and forum. These disruptors don’t replace investigative reporting, but they replace the other 95% of what made professional news organizations important.

The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever:

Fascinating article about how memories work and how we are very close to being able to biologically destroy them.

“Memory comes with a natural updating mechanism, which is how we make sure that the information taking up valuable space inside our head is still useful. That might make our memories less accurate, but it probably also makes them more relevant to the future.”

How The Huffington Post Ate the Internet:

This is the best article about the Huffington Post that’s ever been written. If you care at all about business or the news industry, it’s an absolute must read. Whether you love or hate HuffPo, the story of how they rose to prominence is fascinating and instructive. When you’re done, also make sure to check out this 1983 New York Magazine article about Arianna (then) Stassinopoulos.

The Daily Show on Easter vs. Passover. When you’re done with part one (above), make sure and check out part two. I guarantee it’s the funniest thing you’ve seen all week.

The “worst” baseball cards in history… which of course means they’re the best. The Bill Pecota one is particularly great. Thanks Fleer! (via @gruber)

Stamen's Beautiful Alternative to Google Maps:

Using OpenStreetMap data, Stamen Design has taken map design to a new level. I love these. Goodbye Google Maps? (via jasonsantamaria)

How Three Germans Are Cloning the Web:

A fascinating story about the Samwer brothers and their lucrative-but-icky-feeling business model: identify American internet companies right after they become successful in America and then clone them internationally, to great financial success.

In today’s episode of Our Stadium is Better than Your Stadium… play this full-screen with the volume cranked.

Children’s Classics as Minimalist Posters: These are amazing. I particularly like the Princess and the Pea poster.

Did You Hear We Got Osama?:

This is a really great post; one of the clearest, most concise, and personally important ones I’ve read in a long time. It’s important to understand that the reason most people consume news is in order to entertain themselves. This isn’t the aspirational reason… it’s just the true reason, in most cases. If you can get your news consumption refined to the point where you are staying amply-informed without being overwhelmed, you stand to be a lot more productive.

NFL Logos Redrawn with Manningface. This is fantastic.

Solitude and Leadership:

Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think.Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information…

Takes a little while to get going, but overall a great article about the virtues of seeking solitude from distractions in order to develop your own original thoughts.

“I think you’ve got a pretty good imagination, despicability-wise!”

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