The New Internet Eclectic
By | July 1, 2008
School’s out, the sun is high and sand and waves and softball and golf and sailing and grass cutting and watering and weeding and corn eating and brat eating and rib eating and steak eating and….be sure to leave a little room for this month’s take on what was best in June.
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This month…
Blog Roll: One Post Wonders; NNDB Mapper
Cooking: Culinary Scorecard; Mouton Rothschild’s Artistic Labels; Picture Perfect Weight Loss; The Finger Test…
Design: Reinventing Color; Penguin Design Award; European Design Award; The History of Guerilla Marketing; Packaging Design; A Brief History of Type
History: Speculum Theologiae; Remembering the Hollywood 10; Afghanistan’s Hidden Treasures; Baby Farming
Language Arts: The Name of the Rose; The cunning Linguist; Summer Books; The Story of Edgar Sawtelle; The Book of Love; Take the Funning and Run…
Music: Alton Kelly’s psychedelic 60’s Concert Posters
Pics: Picture of the Week; Photography Channel; Silent World; Images of Earth from Planetary Spacecraft
Science: Carl Zimmer; A Ne Step in Evolution; Put a Little Science In Your Life; Dark, Perhaps Forever; How Isaac Newton Changed The World; The Inner Beauty of Cells…
Spin Zone: Hamas And The End of The Two-State Solution; The Problem Within; Preparing the Battlefield; The Islam You Don’t Hear About; The Power And The Glory
Travel: Top Tourist Destinations American’s Can’t Visit; Dispatches From Places You Didn’t Know Had Tourists; Hotel Everland
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This Month’s Web Bytes
Just added to Ideation Guide: Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Random Facts, but all true.
Ever hear of Pecha Kucha (20 slides/20 seconds each/6:40 total)? Have one in your city?
This Brave Nation - brings together some of the most passionate, intelligent and creative individuals for a short videotaped conversation.
Lifestraw named world-changing idea.
National Geographic Flashback - pics from yesteryear; Trunk Show, Turtle Riding, Cooking with Fresh Verbs, Atrists Palette, Man-Size Appetite.
J.K.Rowling’s commencement speech to Harvard focuses on the fringe benefits of failure and the importance of imagination.
UPM Forest Life (Finland) - interesting interactive site dedicated to the preservation of forests (and available in English).
In the same vain, try MOMA’s Tall Buildings - visit the 25 tallest buildings, learn who the architect was and take a virtual tour of each.
The Charles and Ray Eames stamps are now available.
The 10 Greatest Defunct Web Sites.
Exploring Google’s Hidden Features.
Then, from the Boston Globe, Stopping Google: GOOGLE MAY BE widely admired for its technical wizardry and its quick, accurate search engine, but one of the company’s most impressive accomplishments has been its ability to grow as powerful as it is while still remaining, in the minds of most Americans, fundamentally likable. The company today is a behemoth, with more than 15,000 employees and a market value as big as Coca-Cola and Boeing combined. Its search engine is the tool of first resort for expert researchers and schoolkids alike; for suspicious employers, first-daters, long-lost friends, blackmailers, reporters, and police investigators - in short, for seekers of any and all sorts of information.
Mystery of Fifth Avenue (NYT). Finally, one day last fall, more than a year after they moved in, Mr. Klinsky received a letter in the mail containing a poem that began:
We’ve taken liberties with Yeats
to lead you through a tale
that tells of most inspired fates
iin hopes to lift the veil.
The letter directed the family to a hidden panel in the front hall that contained a beautifully bound and printed book, Ms. Bensko’s opus. The book led them on a scavenger hunt through their own apartment.
In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.
The Boston Globe has launched a new blog aptly names The Big Picture. If you were as struck by the Saturn pic as I was, here’s more…
The Suruhawa Tribe (film by David Cunningham). Background.
Another film: AgileMobileHostile (a year with Andre Williams)
I’m Tom Freakin’ Skilling (YT)
War movies, military videos and more at realmilitary.
The Serious Leisure Perspective.
UrbanPrankster chronicles pranks from around the world.
A Living Library. Check out people instead of books.
USA Road Sign Test. Five part, 30 questions each, multiple choice test on US road, highway and traffic signs. The average for part 1 (the easiest) is only 82% and 15% of takers score less than 70%.
Invention At Play (Smithsonian).
Here’s a site with 9 amazing flash animations. I particularly like this stylish and different b+w line drawing.
Just added to the Map Guide: Ruminations (Ruminations on the borderlands of cartography - New York Map Society.)
Mentat Wiki is up: Memory techniques, tools for critical thinking, creative thinking and much, much more.
The Birth Clock. I just love everything about it! Here’s another clever one: Analogy by Jesson Yip. Yet another that spells out the time.
Play Mission Planet: As the Executive Director of Planet Earth, you will manage seven film crews around the globe to acquire never before seen footage for this groundbreaking new series from Discovery Channel.
This is starting to go viral: Bluegrass Darth Vader. This is attempting to go viral: 10 Optical Illusions in 2 Minutes (Samsung Promo). Here’s one I think should find it’s way - Block of Glass.
Architectural blogs abound on the net. For those who read those, first watch this, then read this
New Acropolis Museum (NY Times slideshow)
How a drunk Scotsman invented golf (Robin Williams) NSFW launguage
Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out Of Balance). I’d watch just to hear Philip Glass.
On May 25, Victor Bugliosi (Helter Skelter) is releasing his newest book.
The National Trust For Historic Preservation has released its Most Endangered list.
Flight of Fancy. Migration is underway. Attenborough video. Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. Here’s one I get in my backyard. I’ve never seen a swarm, although I’ve witnessed battles. I think it’s time to get more feeders. Want to learn how to attract more to your yard?
Marketing to women is as simple as Y O G U R T.
Topics: July | No Comments »
The New Internet Eclectic
By | June 1, 2008
I can’t believe its already the start of summer. (In part because spring in these parts has been so wet and cold. To paraphrase Garrison Keilor, after you spend a spring in Wisconsin, you’ve got to let your eyes adjust to the light…you look like a lemur.) Nonetheless, June is back and I gladly share these finds from the month that was May.
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This month…
Blog Roll: The Brilliant Sergio Viera de Mello; The FreeFall Research Page; Everything You Wanted To Know About X; Today, we learn about Canada…
Cooking: The Problem With Top Chef Season 4; Mark Bittman; Herve This; How the ‘47 Cheval Blanc got to be the best wine ever; saltiest dish in America…
Design: 5 Rules of Book Cover Design; Konstfack College spot; A Potpourri of Production Design; Francis Bacon in 6 parts; Michael Beirut…
History: Everyone’s A Historian now; History of Money; History of the Color Wheel; History as a weapon; A People’s History of the United States…
Language Arts: Joseph Bottum on phonesthemes; Jon Fried’s Definitions; Cannabis, Forgetting and the Botany of Desire; The Library In The New Age…
Music: How To Write A Song; Inside Dylan’s Brain; The Dakah Orchestra; Music Expression; The Big Bang; Tonori-On.
Pics: Sea Slugs; Albert Kahn; 21 Best Mug Shots Ever
Science: Mars in high res; Cosmic Voyage; From Eye to Sight; 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Relativity; Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope…
Spin Zone: Everything You Love You Owe To Capitalism; Pride is Empty; The Rise of the Rest; What do a billion Muslims really think; The worst political TV spot…
Travel: Dream Works; The World’s Scariest Runways; Yatt’it.
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This Month’s Web Bytes
Just added to the Map Guide: Ruminations (Ruminations on the borderlands of cartography - New York Map Society.)
Mentat Wiki is up: Memory techniques, tools for critical thinking, creative thinking and much, much more.
The Birth Clock. I just love everything about it! Here’s another clever one: Analogy by Jesson Yip. Yet another that spells out the time.
Play Mission Planet: As the Executive Director of Planet Earth, you will manage seven film crews around the globe to acquire never before seen footage for this groundbreaking new series from Discovery Channel.
This is starting to go viral: Bluegrass Darth Vader. This is attempting to go viral: 10 Optical Illusions in 2 Minutes (Samsung Promo). Here’s one I think should find it’s way - Block of Glass.
Architectural blogs abound on the net. For those who read those, first watch this, then read this
New Acropolis Museum (NY Times slideshow)
How a drunk Scotsman invented golf (Robin Williams) NSFW launguage
Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out Of Balance). I’d watch just to hear Philip Glass.
On May 25, Victor Bugliosi (Helter Skelter) is releasing his newest book.
The National Trust For Historic Preservation has released its Most Endangered list.
Flight of Fancy. Migration is underway. Attenborough video. Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. Here’s one I get in my backyard. I’ve never seen a swarm, although I’ve witnessed battles. I think it’s time to get more feeders. Want to learn how to attract more to your yard?
Marketing to women is as simple as Y O G U R T.
First you tell your joke, then go here for the rim shot.
La Cabina (The Telephone Box) 1, 2, 3, 4 (Emmy Award Winning Short)
Spike Jonez feature length skateboarding video Yeah Right.
A Mathematician’s Lament. (pdf)
Hollywood Chinese: Arthur Dong’s look at how Chinese American’s are portrayed in film.
Deep State Coup Averted In Turkey. Below the Fold.
1 Man + 6 Horses = Flying Frenchman
Oxford Muse. “A foundation to stimulate courage and invention in personal, professional and cultural life”. Browse the self-potraits, participate in projects, go universal, or just learn what the Muse is about.
Have some Phun (an immersive and fun tool to learn physics.)
Ways of Seeing, Part 1 Episode 1, the BBC documentary written and hosted by novelist and art critic John Berger, is back up on YouTube. Watch it while you can. Scroll down to bottom of page here for all links.
Malric Kittens (YT)
Part 1, Part 2 of audio interview with Stanley Kubrik discussing his early days. (Here’s the trailer for Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It was done by a fellow named Pablo Ferro; it was his first movie trailer. Steven Heller writes: After seeing Ferro’s commercials, Kubrick hired him to direct the advertising trailers and teasers for Dr. Strangelove and convinced him to resettle in London (Kubrick’s base of operations until he died there in March 1999). Ferro was inclined to be peripatetic anyway, and ever anxious to bypass already completed challenges he agreed to pull up stakes on the chance that he would get to direct a few British TV commercials, which he did. The black and white spot that Ferro designed for Dr. Strangelove employed his quick-cut technique — using as many as 125 separate images in a minute — to convey both the dark humor and the political immediacy of the film. At something akin to stroboscopic speed words and images flew across the screen to the accompaniment of loud sound effects and snippets of ironic dialog. At a time when the bomb loomed so large in the US public’s fears (remember Barry Goldwater ran for President promising to nuke China), and the polarization of left and right — east and west — was at its zenith, Ferro’s commercial was not only the boldest and most hypnotic graphic on TV, it was a sly subversive statement. Ferro also worked on the iconic main titles for the film. Ferro went on to make several well-known movie title sequences, including those for Bullitt, the original The Thomas Crown Affair, and To Die For, as well as on the trailer for A Clockwork Orange.)
I Love The Whole World (Discovery Channel)
Topics: June | No Comments »
The New Internet Eclectic
By | May 1, 2008
April showers have indeed brought May flowers, and a lot of other wonderful things to look at.
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This month…
Blog Roll: Stuff Nobody Likes; Biobigotry; More From Less; Take Control of Your Maps; Gin, TV and Social Surplus
Cooking: Cultural Phenomenon of Chinese Food; The Myth of the 30-Minute Meal; Clarkson Eats an Ortolon Bunting; Chef Owners Who Work The Line…
Design: Design Conferences - Isn’t it time we demanded more; Chaos In The Printshop; Don’t Buy This Book; Droste Effect Packaging…
History: Old Walt; Paul Revere; John Brown; To Catch A Thief; Whatever Happened To Old Europe; Ezra Pound - Foreign Correspondent…
Language Arts: The End Of The Line; Sleuths In Love; Separated By A Common Language; Eighteenth Century Bling; A Tipsy Picaresque…
Music: How To Write A Song; Inside Dylan’s Brain; The Dakah Orchestra; Music Expression; The Big Bang; Tonori-On.
Pics: Eclectic 2.0; Robert Frank’s Unsentimental Journey; Novodevichy; Photogenic Print; Nature’s Best
Science: Attack on the clones; Biolumenesence; Galactic Collisions; Modeling The Future; Rogue Waves; Sods Law; Ice Nine…
Spin Zone: The Rise of Chinese Capitalism; An American Backlash; China Monolith Narrative; China’s Building Boom; Whole New China; Or Is It?
Travel: Dream Works; The World’s Scariest Runways; Yatt’it.
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This Week’s Web Bytes
Ways of Seeing, Part 1 Episode 1, the BBC documentary written and hosted by novelist and art critic John Berger, is back up on YouTube. Watch it while you can. Scroll down to bottom of page here for all links.
Malric Kittens (YT)
Part 1, Part 2 of audio interview with Stanley Kubrik discussing his early days. (Here’s the trailer for Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It was done by a fellow named Pablo Ferro; it was his first movie trailer. Steven Heller writes: After seeing Ferro’s commercials, Kubrick hired him to direct the advertising trailers and teasers for Dr. Strangelove and convinced him to resettle in London (Kubrick’s base of operations until he died there in March 1999). Ferro was inclined to be peripatetic anyway, and ever anxious to bypass already completed challenges he agreed to pull up stakes on the chance that he would get to direct a few British TV commercials, which he did. The black and white spot that Ferro designed for Dr. Strangelove employed his quick-cut technique — using as many as 125 separate images in a minute — to convey both the dark humor and the political immediacy of the film. At something akin to stroboscopic speed words and images flew across the screen to the accompaniment of loud sound effects and snippets of ironic dialog. At a time when the bomb loomed so large in the US public’s fears (remember Barry Goldwater ran for President promising to nuke China), and the polarization of left and right — east and west — was at its zenith, Ferro’s commercial was not only the boldest and most hypnotic graphic on TV, it was a sly subversive statement. Ferro also worked on the iconic main titles for the film. Ferro went on to make several well-known movie title sequences, including those for Bullitt, the original The Thomas Crown Affair, and To Die For, as well as on the trailer for A Clockwork Orange.)
I Love The Whole World (Discovery Channel)
Charting the Uncanny Valley (Part 1 of 7)
Breaking the Record Mentos and Coke Explosions.
2008 Cherry Blossom Timelapse. (Brooklyn Botanic Garden)
Is Mathematics Discovered Or Invented?
If you are at all afraid of heights, don’t watch El camino del Rey.
Data Visualization blogs you might not know about.
Pie Jesu by Andrew Johnston (13) in Britain’s Got Talent follows in the footsteps of Paul Potts singing Nessum Dorma.
Trailer for Glass - A Portrait of Philip in 12 Parts.
Tales of Two Cities: Building cities from scratch in the Middle East. (Slate)
Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press. A six part BBC series. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Stephen travels to France and Germany on the trail of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press and early media entrepreneur. Along the way he discovers the lengths Gutenberg went to keep his project secret, explores the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors, and discovers why printing mattered so much in medieval Europe.
The Donald Rumsfeld Quotes of the Decade (Radio 4).
Not really sure whether this should make the list. I just saw this trailer for Hancock on the tube last night and thought ‘Hadn’t we all had enough of Will Smith being a burned out super cool super hero, when stumbling around this a.m. I discovered it’s actually the second trailer. The first is here.
What I’ve Learned (Vint Cerf at Esquire)
How is Mazda going to destroy 4703 cars?
Natural Phenomenon (Vanity Fair) In 2000, six world-renowned architects competed for the commission to build the new California Academy of Sciences building, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Five of the six arrived for the interview with the academy’s board of trustees bearing a large scale model to illustrate their proposals. The sixth, Renzo Piano, showed up with just a sketchpad. The 70-year-old Piano, who is tall, bearded, and the distillation of charm, had walked around Golden Gate Park for a while and then had climbed onto the roof of one of the old, condemned buildings, which had been damaged in the 1989 earthquake. “It was a very bad roof, in pieces,” Piano says, “but I could see views of the surrounding hills, and I was in among the treetops of the park.” When the architect came down, he had a simple drawing: several curved green lines, looking like hills, above a straight line, representing the ground. It didn’t really look like a building at all—more like a park without a building.
Piano got the job.
Turbonique. For those seriously needing a turbo drag axle, or if you’ve got a tobacco fortune in your back pocket.
Das Rad (The Wheel) is an 8:00 animated short film on the nature of time as told by two rock piles on a hillside.
50 Greatest Comedy Sketches (Nerve)
Download free documentaries online at Freedocumentaries.org
An Engineer’s Guide To Cats. Of course, not everyone is a cat fancier…in which case, perhaps Jerry can teach you something.
Eagle vs. Goat is both disturbing and fascinating.
Previous Web Bytes
Best Story Ever. Site has both good and lame stories galore.
Train your memory with Mnemonic Arts. Who’s Ramon Llull?
18 Minutes With An Agile Mind (Clifford Stoll on TED Talks)
Hammer Quiz. Guess what each is used for. Answers after the pics.
Atoll Gallery (slow loading gallery of 247 atolls).
Henry Miller - Bathroom Chronicles. Part 2. Part 3 and follow on. (Links to Henry Miller.)(MeFi)
Simply Google - all Google features listed on one page.
Brain Rules - 12 brain rules that share what we know about the brain and what me might do about it.
Supercharge the right click function of your mouse (Windows Explorer). And, while on a roll, 91 Utilities to Supercharge Windows (PC Magazine)
Comparison of MetaFilter comments vs. YouTube comments.
Saul Griffith Wattzon’s “Redefining Climate Change As An Engineering Challenge.”
This is Charley. 2:00 YouTube Goodness.
Easter, Purim, Persian New Year and Spring recipes. Will any believer be left with out a chance to cook something up?
The idea of dragging the early 1900s parlour game Exquisite Corpse into the 21st century and applying it to the very small screen of personal media players is spawning an ongoing series of scripts and films, with a different director picking up where the other left off. The concept of an interconnected, content driven and non-linear film series made specifically for download to iPhones, iPods and Sony PSPs, which would not only entertain, but give directors the chance to stretch their imaginations, appealed to Little Minx… the eyes of everyman upon her she turns back and faces forward, at peace she walked calmly disappearing into the darkness without missing a beat, she asks, “Want waffles for breakfast?” she stares longingly at what she had lost
10 Greatest Stolen Ideas In The Web.
Siezure Warning: download Kings of Power 4 Billion % - 12 AVI from Pixel artist Paul Robertson at risk from much flash.
While I don’t normally highlight flash on this site, this flash is something else.
Topics: May | No Comments »
The New Internet Eclectic
By | March 31, 2008
April, sweet April. I finally got around to removing the Flickr photos along the right sidebar, as it was simply taking too long to download. I’ve also been working on a new site, which will go live April 7th. I’ll update this post accordingly, when the time comes. Until then…
Time has come for the reveal…i-sorcerer is now live. You may want to take The Sorcerer’s Challenge.
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This month…
Blog Roll: Pruned - Aurora Bibliotheque; iwritefunny; Hezbollah Tofu
Cooking: Onomastic sobriquets; Thomas Keller; eating videos;fast food vs. reality; 45 Cooking And Baking Tips; Dining On A Dime.
Design: Tekken Kinkreet; Michael Beirut; Diamond Shreddies; Kinetic Typography.
History: Champlain Was Here; Bluestockings.
Language Arts: His Illegal Self; BookLamp.org; Hints on pronunciation for foreigners; History’s Greatest Replies; favorite signature passages…
Music: MC5 - True Testimonials; Hallelujah; 5 Auditory Illusions; Celemony aims to destroy live music; 1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die.
Pics: Annie Liebovitz; A Flipbook On China; the ama girls by Yoshoyuki Iwase.
Science: Spotted hyenas in Sociable And Smart; Magical Thinking; Carcharodon Megalodon; Newton; The Universe’s Most Powerful Blast.
Spin Zone: Oppressing The Danes; The Man Between War & Peace; The collected controversies of William F. Buckley; Why I Am No Longer A Brain Dead Liberal.
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This Week’s Web Bytes
Best Story Ever. Site has both good and lame stories galore.
Train your memory with Mnemonic Arts. Who’s Ramon Llull?
18 Minutes With An Agile Mind (Clifford Stoll on TED Talks)
Hammer Quiz. Guess what each is used for. Answers after the pics.
Atoll Gallery (slow loading gallery of 247 atolls).
Henry Miller - Bathroom Chronicles. Part 2. Part 3 and follow on. (Links to Henry Miller.)(MeFi)
Simply Google - all Google features listed on one page.
Brain Rules - 12 brain rules that share what we know about the brain and what me might do about it.
Supercharge the right click function of your mouse (Windows Explorer). And, while on a roll, 91 Utilities to Supercharge Windows (PC Magazine)
Comparison of MetaFilter comments vs. YouTube comments.
Saul Griffith Wattzon’s “Redefining Climate Change As An Engineering Challenge.”
Previous Web Bytes
This is Charley. 2:00 YouTube Goodness.
Easter, Purim, Persian New Year and Spring recipes. Will any believer be left with out a chance to cook something up?
The idea of dragging the early 1900s parlour game Exquisite Corpse into the 21st century and applying it to the very small screen of personal media players is spawning an ongoing series of scripts and films, with a different director picking up where the other left off. The concept of an interconnected, content driven and non-linear film series made specifically for download to iPhones, iPods and Sony PSPs, which would not only entertain, but give directors the chance to stretch their imaginations, appealed to Little Minx… the eyes of everyman upon her she turns back and faces forward, at peace she walked calmly disappearing into the darkness without missing a beat, she asks, “Want waffles for breakfast?” she stares longingly at what she had lost
10 Greatest Stolen Ideas In The Web.
Siezure Warning: download Kings of Power 4 Billion % - 12 AVI from Pixel artist Paul Robertson at risk from much flash.
While I don’t normally highlight flash on this site, this flash is something else.
Sports Business Journal: There is a PowerPoint presentation that has been making the rounds in league offices and among ad buyers for the past six months. Distributed by multiple networks, the full color presentation uses a series of bar graphs to bash everything about ESPN. It describes ESPN’s multiplatform strategy as a flawed concept. It calls ESPN’s marketing machine a myth. It says that a sports property’s TV ratings consistently decline on ABC and ESPN. The presentation, titled “The Emperor’s New Clothes: How ESPN’s Multi-Platform Strategy Hasn’t Improved Ratings,” looks to illustrate how sports properties such as the NFL, NASCAR and the NBA have seen significant TV rating and viewership declines on ESPN and ABC in the past year. It’s a compelling read.
Typematching - what typeface are you, and who are you compatible with?
InSuggest - Tell it a website you like, and it will make recommendations on other sites.
YouTube 2007 Award Winners. But wait, who were the nominees?
Fitna (English version). Radio Netherlands: About Fitna (YouTube). Spiegel Online explains in print. Imam Fawaz Jneid of The Hague’s As-Sunnah mosque is included in the part about the Theo van Gogh murder. In his prayer, Fawaz said to Allah: “Cause Van Gogh a disease which all the inhabitants of the earth are unable to cure. Cause him suffering making him long for death. Blind the sight of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, give her brains a cancer. Give her tongue a cancer.” Fawaz said this week he had just wanted “to blow off steam”.
Ralph Lauren has a great car collection. Here’s two short film clips - 1 and 2. Here’s a trailer for the Discovery Channel program from 2005. (MeFi)
What do your favorite colors reveal about your personality?& Teller: The Last Living Entertainer in Las Vegas.
Visual Arts - No Revolution in Hyper Space. A former insider laments the dumbing down of art museum websites. (Includes some terrific links to sites.)
Hand Shadow show by Raymond Crowe. (YouTube)
Stubby Beer’s Symphony spot.
Remember Wake Up Cat, an animated short about a hungry kitty and a sleeping human? Simon Tofield has now released Let Me In. (MeFi)
Ted. Ted. Ted. Everyone’s talking about TED. What, not invited? Fed up with it all? Then again, if your ego permits you to not be invited and still OK with yourself, here’s a fun little talk about steve Jurvetson’s little hobby: Rockets. Or, if you’re rooted to terra firma, try Roy Gould & Curtis Wong demonstrating WorldWide Telescope.
Braille on beer cans (inventions).
Beat-boxing Basset (flash)
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. Documentary (2 hours, 18 minutes)
The Pyrotechnic Imagination. (NYT) Cai Guo-Qiang says his favorite artistic moment is the pregnant pause between the lighting of the fuse and the detonation of the gunpowder. “There is a pressure in it to be preserved, and then it explodes,” he says. “This moment belongs just to the artist and the work.” On a breezy afternoon last September, in a large A-frame shed at the Grucci fireworks plant on Long Island, he was setting the stage. With the help of his wife, Hong Hong Wu, he cut a long green fuse into segments, then laid the pieces carefully on eight contiguous panels of handmade Japanese rice paper. After three young female assistants placed stencils in the shape of an eagle’s wings, head and beak onto the panels, Cai, a onetime serious student of martial arts, moved gracefully as he sprinkled different grades of gunpowder, some custom-made for him. “I don’t know what the result will be, even though I preplan,” he told me, speaking through an interpreter in Chinese. “It is like making medicine — a little of this, a little of that, watch it and taste it a little and see how it is working. My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.” (In Chinese, the word for gunpowder is literally “fire medicine,” an allusion to the eighth-century Chinese alchemists who accidentally invented it while searching for a magic elixir.)
Ironic Sans has termed a new typographic term: Keming.
The dying art of penmanship and calligraphy.
Philately, the modern stamp. Set 1. Set 2. Set 3.
NYC Highline: Piet Oudolf design (pdf) for the highline; his vision on gardening, work with perennials, respect for nature, and other work. (MeFi)
Also found at MeFi, My Paper Mind.
Why $0.00 is the Future of Business. (Wired) The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It’s as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?) You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal.
In a related article, here’s their mini-Wiki on how to make money around free content.
Larry Lessig - The Creative Commons.
Picturingtolearn is a site going live 2/15. In American Scientist Online, Felice Frankel writes “Informed Decisions“…an example of what has become for me an obvious, but too-often ignored, transformative exercise: clarifying and learning science by thinking about how to visually represent an idea, a process or a structure in science, for the purpose of explaining it. My Harvard colleague and coauthor George Whitesides, with whom I am working on the book No Small Matter, forthcoming in 2009 from Harvard University Press, asked that I make an interesting representation of nanotubes. I am a science photographer, not an illustrator, so my first course of action is usually to think photographically. The obvious, making a scanning electron micrograph of a nanotube, was not an option. Others have done that, probably much better than I would have. I decided to photographically simulate a nanotube structure. Here’s what I did. First I printed a black hexagonal pattern, representing a standard carbon lattice, on an 8×10 piece of transparent acetate (a).
Annotation: EVIL. (Harpers) Google’s addiction to cheap electricity…
Moonshine Moves Out Of Mason Jars. The sensation starts with a slight burn at the back of your tongue. An innocent tingle that quickly builds into a slow- burning, skin-removing inferno in the back of your throat. By the time it hits your stomach, you’re wondering if your esophagus remains intact…
Strange Things You Likely Didn’t Know. My favorite: The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
Topics: April | No Comments »
The New Internet Eclectic
By | March 3, 2008
March is starting to bring spring back, and with it my spirits. None too soon!
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This month…
Blog Roll: Matt Webb’s Closing Keynote Speech; Better Than Free; Cosmic Variance “Postmodern Climatology”; Overcoming Bias “My Favorite Liar.”
Cooking: Land of Plenty; Anthony Bourdain interview (YT); Incompatible Food Triad; Culinary Seductions; Herve This (pronounced Thees) on Molecular Gastronomy…
Design: History of visual communication; Design for the elastic mind; 100 years of design (ID); How to be creative; Pantone’s Fall 2008 Fashion Color Palette…
History: A better place; Illustrated history of copyright; Early visual media archeology; Tiki; A lead on the ark of the covenant…
Language Arts: John Cleese’s Letter to America; Idiom Shortage (Onion); The Charms of Wikipedia; Begging the question; 100 Greatest Headlines…
Music: Welling Up; Historic American sheet music; Soft Focus; Facemelter; Songerize; Album Covers (Alex Steinweiss)…
Pics: Child Labor; Breakthrough movie stars; Film Techniques of Alfred Hitchcock; The ones We Love; America’s best kept secrets…
Science: When incest is best; Getting Duped; Encyclopedia of Life; Punctuation Marks In Language; Trail blazing scientists; Worldwide Telescope (TED)…
Shopping: Wrought Iron Art; Mackintosh House Numbers; anarchy in the aisles; novelty toaster; a measuring gaggle
Spin Zone: Atheism is the new black; America Still Works; Wall Street Meltdown (YT); What Makes A Miracle; Independent Kosovo…
Travel: Smithsonian’s picks of those places you have to go; Moscow Diary ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
& Teller: The Last Living Entertainer in Las Vegas.
Visual Arts - No Revolution in Hyper Space. A former insider laments the dumbing down of art museum websites. (Includes some terrific links to sites.)
Hand Shadow show by Raymond Crowe. (YouTube)
Stubby Beer’s Symphony spot.
Remember Wake Up Cat, an animated short about a hungry kitty and a sleeping human? Simon Tofield has now released Let Me In. (MeFi)
Previous Web Bytes
Ted. Ted. Ted. Everyone’s talking about TED. What, not invited? Fed up with it all? Then again, if your ego permits you to not be invited and still OK with yourself, here’s a fun little talk about steve Jurvetson’s little hobby: Rockets. Or, if you’re rooted to terra firma, try Roy Gould & Curtis Wong demonstrating WorldWide Telescope.
Braille on beer cans (inventions).
Beat-boxing Basset (flash)
Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. Documentary (2 hours, 18 minutes)
The Pyrotechnic Imagination. (NYT) Cai Guo-Qiang says his favorite artistic moment is the pregnant pause between the lighting of the fuse and the detonation of the gunpowder. “There is a pressure in it to be preserved, and then it explodes,” he says. “This moment belongs just to the artist and the work.” On a breezy afternoon last September, in a large A-frame shed at the Grucci fireworks plant on Long Island, he was setting the stage. With the help of his wife, Hong Hong Wu, he cut a long green fuse into segments, then laid the pieces carefully on eight contiguous panels of handmade Japanese rice paper. After three young female assistants placed stencils in the shape of an eagle’s wings, head and beak onto the panels, Cai, a onetime serious student of martial arts, moved gracefully as he sprinkled different grades of gunpowder, some custom-made for him. “I don’t know what the result will be, even though I preplan,” he told me, speaking through an interpreter in Chinese. “It is like making medicine — a little of this, a little of that, watch it and taste it a little and see how it is working. My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.” (In Chinese, the word for gunpowder is literally “fire medicine,” an allusion to the eighth-century Chinese alchemists who accidentally invented it while searching for a magic elixir.)
Ironic Sans has termed a new typographic term: Keming.
The dying art of penmanship and calligraphy.
Philately, the modern stamp. Set 1. Set 2. Set 3.
NYC Highline: Piet Oudolf design (pdf) for the highline; his vision on gardening, work with perennials, respect for nature, and other work. (MeFi)
Also found at MeFi, My Paper Mind.
Why $0.00 is the Future of Business. (Wired) The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It’s as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?) You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal.
In a related article, here’s their mini-Wiki on how to make money around free content.
Larry Lessig - The Creative Commons.
Picturingtolearn is a site going live 2/15. In American Scientist Online, Felice Frankel writes “Informed Decisions“…an example of what has become for me an obvious, but too-often ignored, transformative exercise: clarifying and learning science by thinking about how to visually represent an idea, a process or a structure in science, for the purpose of explaining it. My Harvard colleague and coauthor George Whitesides, with whom I am working on the book No Small Matter, forthcoming in 2009 from Harvard University Press, asked that I make an interesting representation of nanotubes. I am a science photographer, not an illustrator, so my first course of action is usually to think photographically. The obvious, making a scanning electron micrograph of a nanotube, was not an option. Others have done that, probably much better than I would have. I decided to photographically simulate a nanotube structure. Here’s what I did. First I printed a black hexagonal pattern, representing a standard carbon lattice, on an 8×10 piece of transparent acetate (a).
Annotation: EVIL. (Harpers) Google’s addiction to cheap electricity…
Moonshine Moves Out Of Mason Jars. The sensation starts with a slight burn at the back of your tongue. An innocent tingle that quickly builds into a slow- burning, skin-removing inferno in the back of your throat. By the time it hits your stomach, you’re wondering if your esophagus remains intact…
Strange Things You Likely Didn’t Know. My favorite: The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
Anthony Bourdain Casting Call for No Reservations FAN-atic special…Qualifications: To be cast for the Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations FAN-atic Special you must be a legal resident of the fifty United States or the District of Columbia, 18 years of age or older and unaffiliated with the Travel Channel, its parent, subsidiaries or affiliated companies. No more than one video per person can be submitted.
The Atlas of Strange Maps. Strange Maps grew out of a love for maps, and a frustration with atlases. As much as I love to read atlases, most of them essentially tell the same story. The blog was meant to be a repository of maps unlikely to be included in one of those ‘regular’ atlases – an ‘anti-atlas’ (geography buffs might appreciate the double-entendre) aiming not for any kind of comprehensiveness, but only to surprise and delight the many people who love maps.
Even an ‘anti-atlas’ itches to be published, and the 5,000,000 mark might be a good moment to announce that there shortly will be a real-life book, tentatively titled The Atlas of Strange Maps. An agreement to that effect has been concluded with Viking Studio Press, an imprint of Penguin USA.
Although the Atlas will be based on the blog, it will not be a quick-and-dirty blogsploitation job. I’m selecting the best maps on the blog for the book, rewriting the entries to incorporate the many necessary corrections and helpful additions provided. I’m also looking for maps that have not appeared on the blog to be incorporated into the book.The Atlas of Strange Maps will be inspired by the eponymous blog, but will stand apart from it.
February is National National Awareness Month Awareness Month! (Scroll down for a month-by-month rundown of what’s important to be aware of…)
EarthLive: Discovery Channel site with good interface lets you see the dynamics of weather and climate.
Stumble Card #9 - Are you a collector?
Howcast is a YouTube like site with an ever growing list of how to videos.
Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year, 2007.
Very cool flash site that despite slow loading is nonetheless worth the wait…
Now that the writers strike is coming to a close…are you interested in when your favorite shows are coming back…?
This month’s Vanity Fair: The Holywood Issue. Hitchcock movie posters shot with today’s stars.
Kick A Migrant.Beautiful, slow motion skateboarding intro by Spike Jonze (Review).
Nano - Nikon’s interactive universcale.
This year’s 2008 Animated Shorts Nominations are…right here
JEWGLE - Would it hurt you to pick up the phone and call your mother?
Virtual Cable car navigation is nicely intuitive and in beta…
The Mindscape of Alan Moore (documentary, fansite).
Cultural icons from throughout history…how many do you recognize?
100 Things You Can Do With Google Maps.
Around the World in 2 Billion Pages.
The Hitchhiker is a short digital animation by Simon Reeves (Presurfer)
The Atlantic.com is now free. Explore the last 12 years of articles. Consider The Dark Art of Interrogation. The Profits of Doom. A Reader’s Manifesto.
David Gallo on TED Talks: Underwater Astonishments
Everything you need to know about 2008 (Wiki)
Dark and beautiful ad on AIDS (nsfw)
Galifianakis as model for the new web celebrity? Here’s this clip (Fiona Apple Not About Love). Then here’s one a tad bit older.
Here’s a graphic calendar/clock that’s worth a look.
The best of the personal finance blogosphere 2007.
Gnooze (pronounced newz, the “g” is silent)is Marta Costello’s take on the top 3 stories…
And, on somewhat of a theme, announcing the debut of The Digg Reel. The top ten, or so, of the Digg community’s video’s each week.
Topics: March | No Comments »
The New Internet Eclectic
By | January 28, 2008
February is indeed a short month that came up all too quickly. From where I live, it’s typically a pretty dreary time, overcast, gray, still cold…and I’m starting to feel like a shut-in. Let me tell you, I’ve got to do something about my surroundings - albeit this month’s just new Design Guide has virtually nothing to do with interiors, it nonetheless contains much to do with everything else design-related. Check it out!
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
This month I encourage you to delve deeper into:
Blog Roll: Recycled Words; 40 Words for “Looked”; Against Bi-Partisanship
Cooking: The Holy Church of Food; The Trouble With Organic Food; KFC’s Famous Bowls; Anthony Bourdain
Design: Charles and Ray Eames; Visual Arts Data Service; Data, branding, web design, pouring acid into my eyeballs and what graphic design is for…
History: Polar Dinosaurs; Ephemerea Society; The Early Days; Cliopatria; Discredited Historical Theories; Ancient Egyptian Medicines; The Color Mauve
Language Arts: My Wife Is An Immigrant; Banned Words; The Many Faces of Eustace Tilley; Dry Store Room #1; Contronyms; Not The Last Word…
Music: Steve Reich’s City Life; screenplay from Pink Floyd’s The Wall; Qtrax beta; 21 Fun Facts About Music…
Pics: Franco Donaggio; breaking the sound barrier; miniatures; edible photograph; The Johnson Treatment; The Emptied Prarie; Revealing Character…
Science: Your brain on music, magnets and meth; Bionic Eye; Watching David Attenborough; Dinosaur extinction caused by insects; Squirrels are indeed sneaky…
Shopping: Mackintosh House Numbers; anarchy in the aisles; novelty toaster; a measuring gaggle
Spin Zone: Myth of the Strong Man; The Mind of the Market; The Fall of America…
Travel: Smithsonian’s picks of those places you have to go; Moscow Diary ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
This Week’s Web Bytes
Picturingtolearn is a site going live 2/15. In American Scientist Online, Felice Frankel writes “Informed Decisions“…an example of what has become for me an obvious, but too-often ignored, transformative exercise: clarifying and learning science by thinking about how to visually represent an idea, a process or a structure in science, for the purpose of explaining it. My Harvard colleague and coauthor George Whitesides, with whom I am working on the book No Small Matter, forthcoming in 2009 from Harvard University Press, asked that I make an interesting representation of nanotubes. I am a science photographer, not an illustrator, so my first course of action is usually to think photographically. The obvious, making a scanning electron micrograph of a nanotube, was not an option. Others have done that, probably much better than I would have. I decided to photographically simulate a nanotube structure. Here’s what I did. First I printed a black hexagonal pattern, representing a standard carbon lattice, on an 8×10 piece of transparent acetate (a).
Annotation: EVIL. (Harpers) Google’s addiction to cheap electricity…
Moonshine Moves Out Of Mason Jars. The sensation starts with a slight burn at the back of your tongue. An innocent tingle that quickly builds into a slow- burning, skin-removing inferno in the back of your throat. By the time it hits your stomach, you’re wondering if your esophagus remains intact…
Strange Things You Likely Didn’t Know. My favorite: The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.
Anthony Bourdain Casting Call for No Reservations FAN-atic special…Qualifications: To be cast for the Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations FAN-atic Special you must be a legal resident of the fifty United States or the District of Columbia, 18 years of age or older and unaffiliated with the Travel Channel, its parent, subsidiaries or affiliated companies. No more than one video per person can be submitted.
The Atlas of Strange Maps. Strange Maps grew out of a love for maps, and a frustration with atlases. As much as I love to read atlases, most of them essentially tell the same story. The blog was meant to be a repository of maps unlikely to be included in one of those ‘regular’ atlases – an ‘anti-atlas’ (geography buffs might appreciate the double-entendre) aiming not for any kind of comprehensiveness, but only to surprise and delight the many people who love maps.
Even an ‘anti-atlas’ itches to be published, and the 5,000,000 mark might be a good moment to announce that there shortly will be a real-life book, tentatively titled The Atlas of Strange Maps. An agreement to that effect has been concluded with Viking Studio Press, an imprint of Penguin USA.
Although the Atlas will be based on the blog, it will not be a quick-and-dirty blogsploitation job. I’m selecting the best maps on the blog for the book, rewriting the entries to incorporate the many necessary corrections and helpful additions provided. I’m also looking for maps that have not appeared on the blog to be incorporated into the book.The Atlas of Strange Maps will be inspired by the eponymous blog, but will stand apart from it.
Previous Web Bytes
February is National National Awareness Month Awareness Month! (Scroll down for a month-by-month rundown of what’s important to be aware of…)
EarthLive: Discovery Channel site with good interface lets you see the dynamics of weather and climate.
Stumble Card #9 - Are you a collector?
Howcast is a YouTube like site with an ever growing list of how to videos.
Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year, 2007.
Very cool flash site that despite slow loading is nonetheless worth the wait…
Now that the writers strike is coming to a close…are you interested in when your favorite shows are coming back…?
This month’s Vanity Fair: The Holywood Issue. Hitchcock movie posters shot with today’s stars.
Kick A Migrant.Beautiful, slow motion skateboarding intro by Spike Jonze (Review).
Nano - Nikon’s interactive universcale.
This year’s 2008 Animated Shorts Nominations are…right here
JEWGLE - Would it hurt you to pick up the phone and call your mother?
Virtual Cable car navigation is nicely intuitive and in beta…
The Mindscape of Alan Moore (documentary, fansite).
Cultural icons from throughout history…how many do you recognize?
100 Things You Can Do With Google Maps.
Around the World in 2 Billion Pages.
The Hitchhiker is a short digital animation by Simon Reeves (Presurfer)
The Atlantic.com is now free. Explore the last 12 years of articles. Consider The Dark Art of Interrogation. The Profits of Doom. A Reader’s Manifesto.
David Gallo on TED Talks: Underwater Astonishments
Everything you need to know about 2008 (Wiki)
Dark and beautiful ad on AIDS (nsfw)
Galifianakis as model for the new web celebrity? Here’s this clip (Fiona Apple Not About Love). Then here’s one a tad bit older.
Here’s a graphic calendar/clock that’s worth a look.
The best of the personal finance blogosphere 2007.
Gnooze (pronounced newz, the “g” is silent)is Marta Costello’s take on the top 3 stories…
And, on somewhat of a theme, announcing the debut of The Digg Reel. The top ten, or so, of the Digg community’s video’s each week.
The New Home of the New York Times. (Slate Photo Essay) Thirty years ago, Piano and Richard Rogers designed the Pompidou Center, which heralded high-tech architecture and culminated a decade later in Norman Foster’s Hongkong & Shanghai Bank. Since then, Foster has moved away from high tech, as evidenced in his sleek Hearst Building, just up Eighth Avenue from the Times. So has Piano, whose addition to the Morgan Library in New York typifies his current low-key approach. However, in the New York Times Building (designed in association with FXFowle) Piano returns to his Pompidou roots; not exposed pipes and ducts—those were always impractical—but dramatic structural details that say, “This is how I am made.”
Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies. #1: Broken Window One of the most persistent is that of the broken window—one breaks and this is celebrated as a boon to the economy: the window manufacturer gets an order; the hardware store sells a window; a carpenter is hired to install it; money circulates; jobs are created; the GDP goes up. In truth, of course, the economy is no better off at all. (Kottke)
Wikia : (NYT) Mr. Wales expects his new Internet search engine, Wikia Search, an early version of which is being made available to the public Monday at www.wikia.com, to follow a similar trajectory.
Another new site is Cullect, a collaborate feed aggregator.
“We want to make it really clear that when people arrive and do searches, they should not expect to find a Google killer,” Mr. Wales said. Instead, people who use the Wikia search engine should understand that they are part of the early stages of a project to build a “Google-quality search engine,” Mr. Wales said.
Like Wikipedia, Mr. Wales plans to rely on a “wiki” model, a voluntary collaboration of people, to fine-tune the Wikia search engine. When it starts up Monday, the service will rank pages based on a relatively simple algorithm. Users will be allowed and encouraged to rate search results for quality and relevance. Wikia will gradually incorporate that feedback in its rankings of Web pages to deliver increasingly useful answers to people’s questions.
Big Think: We are what you think we are. Video site featuring big thinkers from the worlds of politics, academia, science, and business.
Snow Plowing Train…just how do they see ahead?
LiveWeatherMap. Use the arrows on the edges to frame your piece of the planet.
Mr. Blackwell’s 47th Annual Worst Dressed List.
As Seen On TV: 10 most Laughably Misleading Ads.
40 Social News Sites is a look at 40 sites that aggregate a community’s take on what’s interesting on the web.
HP Office Orchestra plays Mozart. (Coudal)Prophet Motive: Kahil Gibran phenomenon. Shakespeare, we are told, is the best-selling poet of all time. Second is Lao-tzu. Third is Kahlil Gibran, who owes his place on that list to one book, “The Prophet,” a collection of twenty-six prose poems, delivered as sermons by a fictional wise man in a faraway time and place. Since its publication, in 1923, “The Prophet” has sold more than nine million copies in its American edition alone. There are public schools named for Gibran in Brooklyn and Yonkers. “The Prophet” has been recited at countless weddings and funerals. It is quoted in books and articles on training art teachers, determining criminal responsibility, and enduring ectopic pregnancy, sleep disorders, and the news that your son is gay. Its words turn up in advertisements for marriage counsellors, chiropractors, learning-disabilities specialists, and face cream. (The Prophet, flash paper)
The Gratitude Campaign - just say thank you. It isn’t political.
List Universe has The Top 15 Amazing Coincidences.
The 50 Greatest Fishing Lures of All Time. (Field & Stream)
50 Things we know now (that we didn’t know this time last year).
Topics: February | No Comments »
By | January 1, 2008
A new year, already! Time to take stock, lose some bad habits and shed a few pounds. Want to head in a new direction? How will you know you’re headed in the right direction if you don’t know where you are going? Try the eclectic guide to Maps, new this month. And, pretty darn new, check out ideaThreads - an online companion site all about Wearable Passions (for the long tail).
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
This month I encourage you to delve deeper into:
Blog Roll: MaxWeber at Interconnected; Erich Schonfeld at The Next Net; ffffinding Out on ffffound
Cooking: Now That’s Italian!; Joy of Cookbooks; Gratin of Melting Potatos; Food Trends 2007; 2008 is Year of the Potato.
Design: Future Design Dreams; Optimus Tactus; Pentagram; foldable OLED display; A Lick of Paint; 3 Best Infographs
History: Ice Skating 3000 BC;ancient toolkit of the last ice age; The Truth About Democracy; The Relics of Temperance.
Language Arts: 25 English language oddities; The Head Trip; How’s your drink?; Why do people say “um” or “er” when hesitating?
Music: Pop music abstract; Wasted and wounded, it ain’t what the moon did; classic guitar afficianado
Pics: The lost border; amazing statues; National Geographic winners; Reuters Photos of the year; 800 billion suns and 50,000 light years across.
Science: Cooking up Bigger Brains; Accidental Algorithims; 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Snow; Amazing Chain Reaction…
Shopping: Modernist bird houses; Not Always Right…
Spin Zone: Yea Right!; The Islamist War on Muslim Women; The Great Fall of China; Short Cuts on Condoleezza Rice.
Travel: The 53 Places To Go in 2008
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This Week’s Web Bytes
The Hitchhiker is a short digital animation by Simon Reeves (Presurfer)
The Atlantic.com is now free. Explore the last 12 years of articles. Consider The Dark Art of Interrogation. The Profits of Doom. A Reader’s Manifesto.
David Gallo on TED Talks: Underwater Astonishments
Everything you need to know about 2008 (Wiki)
Dark and beautiful ad on AIDS (nsfw)
Galifianakis as model for the new web celebrity? Here’s this clip (Fiona Apple Not About Love). Then here’s one a tad bit older.
Here’s a graphic calendar/clock that’s worth a look.
The best of the personal finance blogosphere 2007.
Gnooze (pronounced newz, the “g” is silent)is Marta Costello’s take on the top 3 stories…
And, on somewhat of a theme, announcing the debut of The Digg Reel. The top ten, or so, of the Digg community’s video’s each week.
50 Fun Facts About Banks.
Previous Web Bytes
The New Home of the New York Times. (Slate Photo Essay) Thirty years ago, Piano and Richard Rogers designed the Pompidou Center, which heralded high-tech architecture and culminated a decade later in Norman Foster’s Hongkong & Shanghai Bank. Since then, Foster has moved away from high tech, as evidenced in his sleek Hearst Building, just up Eighth Avenue from the Times. So has Piano, whose addition to the Morgan Library in New York typifies his current low-key approach. However, in the New York Times Building (designed in association with FXFowle) Piano returns to his Pompidou roots; not exposed pipes and ducts—those were always impractical—but dramatic structural details that say, “This is how I am made.”
Ten Recurring Economic Fallacies. #1: Broken Window One of the most persistent is that of the broken window—one breaks and this is celebrated as a boon to the economy: the window manufacturer gets an order; the hardware store sells a window; a carpenter is hired to install it; money circulates; jobs are created; the GDP goes up. In truth, of course, the economy is no better off at all. (Kottke)
Wikia : (NYT) Mr. Wales expects his new Internet search engine, Wikia Search, an early version of which is being made available to the public Monday at www.wikia.com, to follow a similar trajectory.
Another new site is Cullect, a collaborate feed aggregator.
“We want to make it really clear that when people arrive and do searches, they should not expect to find a Google killer,” Mr. Wales said. Instead, people who use the Wikia search engine should understand that they are part of the early stages of a project to build a “Google-quality search engine,” Mr. Wales said.
Like Wikipedia, Mr. Wales plans to rely on a “wiki” model, a voluntary collaboration of people, to fine-tune the Wikia search engine. When it starts up Monday, the service will rank pages based on a relatively simple algorithm. Users will be allowed and encouraged to rate search results for quality and relevance. Wikia will gradually incorporate that feedback in its rankings of Web pages to deliver increasingly useful answers to people’s questions.
Big Think: We are what you think we are. Video site featuring big thinkers from the worlds of politics, academia, science, and business.
Snow Plowing Train…just how do they see ahead?
LiveWeatherMap. Use the arrows on the edges to frame your piece of the planet.
Mr. Blackwell’s 47th Annual Worst Dressed List.
As Seen On TV: 10 most Laughably Misleading Ads.
40 Social News Sites is a look at 40 sites that aggregate a community’s take on what’s interesting on the web.
HP Office Orchestra plays Mozart. (Coudal)Prophet Motive: Kahil Gibran phenomenon. Shakespeare, we are told, is the best-selling poet of all time. Second is Lao-tzu. Third is Kahlil Gibran, who owes his place on that list to one book, “The Prophet,” a collection of twenty-six prose poems, delivered as sermons by a fictional wise man in a faraway time and place. Since its publication, in 1923, “The Prophet” has sold more than nine million copies in its American edition alone. There are public schools named for Gibran in Brooklyn and Yonkers. “The Prophet” has been recited at countless weddings and funerals. It is quoted in books and articles on training art teachers, determining criminal responsibility, and enduring ectopic pregnancy, sleep disorders, and the news that your son is gay. Its words turn up in advertisements for marriage counsellors, chiropractors, learning-disabilities specialists, and face cream. (The Prophet, flash paper)
The Gratitude Campaign - just say thank you. It isn’t political.
List Universe has The Top 15 Amazing Coincidences.
The 50 Greatest Fishing Lures of All Time. (Field & Stream)
50 Things we know now (that we didn’t know this time last year).
What generation were you born into? How do you define a generation, anyway. Is it simply a matter of 10 years? Brainiac has been studying this subject recently. Are you a baby boomer? So-called Silent Generation? Or, something else entirely?