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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).
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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?
Ad for Amnesty International makes the point of the power of petitions nicely, don’t you think? (Coudal)
Do you live on more than $1 a day? Have an internet connection? A bank account? If the planet were only 100 people… (OneManCan)
Web Achievements: things to do before you die.
Soundsnap is a free online sound library (and sharing site).
Some of the inventors who have left us this year (MeFi):
Spokeo - track people online; whenever they do something online, Spokeo will inform you of their updated Facebook, Flickr, Amazon…..
Questions we thought but didn’t ask in 2007. More Questions we thought but didn’t ask in 2007. And then, more questions we didn’t ask. (Magnetbox)
What did you change your mind about, and why? (Edge.org) 120 of the world’s best thinkers answered this question…
Snarkout has a dump on White Christmas.
Yeah, you know how to right click and left click and scroll…but did you know nine ways to make your mouse roar?
Whitesoap (beta) is a place with way too much information to comprehend - and is updated every 5 minutes.
Adventures in Stacking - New Scientist published an awesome little article this week about nothing more complex than stacking blocks of wood…
Net.Art is a place where you can “create” your own artwork. Typing in ieclectic yielded the above…
101 simple appetizers in 20 minutes or less. (NYT)
A-Z of Big Ideas (Good Magazine)
Peter Sellers reciting the Beatles Hard Days Night in the style of Shakesperear’s Richard III (Kottke)
The Tale of the 14 Christmas Ringers. (MeFi)
12 Days of Christmas Cutbacks. (Presurfer)
Christopher Walken dancing to Weapon of Choice
Then, A Very Walken Christmas.
The “Free” business model of Chris Anderson. (Wired)
Bookfinder’s Top 10 US books out of print (Fimoculous)
Working Poor Finder. The key, it appears, is to locate your Payday loan business by triangulating the proximity of liquor stores, pawn shops, and gun shops.
Haven’t yet gotten around to writing Christmas Cards? Quick, go to the Bureau of Communication, fill out the Holiday/Christmas form, and send away.
Hitchcock on Hitchcock includes, among other nuggets, the origin of “MacGuffins.” (MeFi)
IBM unveils the 5 Innovations that will change the way we live in the next 5 years.
Fortune’s 101 Dumbest Moments In Business
What’s your karma? Take the test.
Drive someone insane with postcards. (Coudal) “During the course of my holiday I will send three postcards to one person of your choosing. These postcards will be rant-ravingly insane, yet they will be peppered with unmistakable personal details about the addressee. Details you will provide me.”
Richard Dawkins wishes us all Happy Newton Day! For better or worse, ours is historically a Christian culture, and children who grow up ignorant of biblical literature are diminished, unable to take literary allusions, actually impoverished. I am no lover of Christianity, and I loathe the annual orgy of waste and reckless reciprocal spending, but I must say I’d rather wish you “Happy Christmas” than “Happy Holiday Season”. Fortunately, this is not the only choice: 25 December is the birthday of one of the truly great men ever to walk the earth, Sir Isaac Newton. His achievements might justly be celebrated wherever his truths hold sway. And that means from one end of the universe to the other. Happy Newton Day! Are there any other product design nuts reading this post? If so, you’re going to love the Tarati (Sanskrit: through).
Via JWalkBlog:
A man in Chicago calls his son in New York the day before Christmas and says, ‘I hate to ruin Christmas this year, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough.’
‘Pop, what are you talking about?’ the son screams. ‘We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,’ the father says. ‘We’re sick of each other, and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Atlanta and tell her.’
Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. ‘Like hell they’re getting divorced,’ she shouts, ‘I’ll take care of this.’ She calls Chicago immediately, and screams at her father, ‘You are NOT getting divorced. Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then, don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?’ and hangs up.
The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. ‘Okay,’ he says, ‘they’re coming for Christmas and paying their own way.’
Hear voices? It may be an ad. (Ad Age)
Then again, maybe we’re all just living on a speck…Horton Hears A Who.
Neil Gaiman stages a marriage proposal. (GrowABrain)
Michael Schumacher Drives Taxi In Airport Dash. The seven-time Formula One world champion took over from his taxi driver in order to make it to the airport in time for a flight, it has emerged. Cabbie Tuncer Yilmaz watched in awe as the racing legend, 38, showed him how his job ought to be done. “I found myself in the passenger seat, which was strange enough, but to have ‘Schumi’ behind the wheel of my cab was incredible,” Mr Yilmaz told German newspaper the Muenchner Abendzeitung.
Andy Warhol meets the Jetsons in this trailer for Speed-Racer.
The 70 Ideas That Made 2007 What It Was. (NYT)
Where commercials come from (George Lois) - via Adland.
Duelity is a split screen look at creationism vs. Darwiniasm.
Unrelated, but from same source, Merry Christmas. (Unless Christmas makes me blue…(MeFi)
On a roll, The Guardian has “one man’s terrifying vision… ”
Gospel Truth: AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples. It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.
So, how fast can you type? Take the test and find out.
Find free Christmas songs online. (WebUpon)No country for old men photo set. (NYT)
The Story of Stuff is making the internet rounds. It’s all about the whole cycle of production to consumption - a linear system on a finite planet. The resource section of her site has two pdf’s documenting her claims.
Then, here’s a music vid making the rounds: Here Comes Another Bubble.
Video of cat in zero gravity, where research and animal cruelty collide with comedy gold. (Fark)
Charlie Brooker’s hilarious, rude, obnoxious and downright watchable Screen Wipe: “10 Biggest Cocks and she cocks in advertising”; “10 Biggest Cocks In Advertising”. (Boing Boing)
Just in case you want to feel a bit more manly, here’s 25 Skills Every Man Should Know.
The Three Ball Mills Mess: It is considered somewhat of a milestone in juggling, “a mind-boggling pattern of circling balls, crossing and uncrossing hands, and unexpected catches.”
The Key To Reserva is Scorcese filming a “lost” Hitchcock script trailer for an upcoming film that, frankly, looks brilliant! Now, if only it were an upcoming film, instead of being a commercial…which documents how advertising is moving on and, thankfully, truly entertains.
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