May 2008 - Posts
Whoa,
TinySong is like TinyURL in that you enter a bit of data and it gives you a nice little URL to make sharing easier. In this case, however, what you enter isn't a long URL but a song title. It gives you a few choices from its search results and spits out a short URL. The link then takes you to a place called Grooveshark to listen to the song for free. It didn't find songs that were too obscure but still,
cool trick. (Stuck in my head
all day today for some reason. And this one's been in my head all week because it's
whistled almost subliminally in the Toyota commercials that have been playing on MSNBC.)
Speaking of sharing music, the Reddit community discusses the
best background music for programming. Good to pick through for things you've never heard of.
Speaking of things I'd never heard of,
ever heard of focus fusion energy? This item makes it sound pretty promising and includes a process description I won't attempt to summarize here.
Speaking of new green ideas,
Student isolates microbe that lunches on plastic bags - The description of the experiment is nice a clean. The question I had was about the waste because my understanding is that degraded plastic is not necessarily environmentally sound. But: "The only outputs are water and tiny levels of carbon dioxide -- each microbe produces only 0.01 per cent of its own infinitesimal weight in carbon dioxide, said Burd."
World’s first
Live Holographic Video Feed from California, USA to Bangalore, India - You only need a few seconds of the video to get it. I mean seriously, do I have to make the "You're our only hope" joke?
Valleywag
breaks down all the Web memes in that Weezer video in case there were any you didn't recognize.
That
Young Hillary Clinton video. They've showed this one on the air a few times so I guess it's worth posting in full. I think it's a little unfair to Hillary but I guess political satire isn't really about fairness.
Speaking of political silliness,
Obama tattoos. No.
I don't care. No.
NOTE: Further exploration of that College Humor site may result in the discovery of boobs or other unsafe objects.
Also in the political silliness category,
Make your own 404 pageWhat makes
Cream Puffs in Venice a stand-out food blog for me is what some refer to as the "food porn" photos.
Speaking of recipes,
How to make tonic water
It's no great puzzle to figure out that I have too many balls in the air at work right now and Clicked updates are suffering. I'm bound and determined to keep the updates going and the "smaller pieces" strategy may be the best solution.Music catch is a strangely soothing game although if you turn off the music it gets pretty stressful.
Funny Web jargon phrase of the day: "
social geobrowsing." By the way, I think that's what
Whrrl is supposed to do as well. Even though I'm rolling my eyes at the language, I actually really like map interfaces and wouldn't mind at all using one covered in opinions and citations from people I respect as a guide.
Beard stroking ponder-sentence of the day: "
The signature defect of modern political journalism is that it has shredded the ideal of proportionality." In fact, "modern political journalism" is just a subset of the modern Web-powered media environment. The actual subject of the piece, "How small stories become big news" is interesting to me so I'm making this my Commuter Click.
Here's the print link so you don't have to turn the page.
Speaking of beard stroking... (thanks Matt)
Find Sarah Connor:" "Metal Storm's 40mm weapons mount, the company tells us, can deliver both high-explosive and less-lethal rounds. Which makes it perfect for
everything from urban assaults to "border patrol" to 'infrastructure protection' to 'crowd control.'" The craziest part of this item is the mention of the firms showing off at a defense trade show. How many movies have some crazy death robot displayed for an approving military audience? Check out that poster in the photo.
A
1940's Picture of The Minutemen from Watchmen - I try not to be distracted by comic book movie spoilers and sneak peeks but there's something in the
steampunk retro quality of this that makes the mind wander in a fun way.
Beautiful And Original Product Designs - Sometimes there will be a list like this that'll have one or two good ones and mostly clunkers so I'll single out the good ones through their original sites. In this case, however, the list seems to go on forever and is guaranteed to elicit multiple "oh damn!"s.
Somehow not on the above list, these
super-sick touch screen turntables.
Cat ladies is the new man babies.
From the mailbag:
From
Americablog today, as an old Monty Python fan it had me rolling. Seems
like it's in your wheelhouse:
I'd been thinking for a while that this is what the Clinton campaign had boiled
down to. Her speech last night was only missing a threat to bite his
kneecaps off.
-Dina
Will adds: What makes this especially surreal for me is that John Cleese was
booked to be on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight and a couple of hours ago he walked past me, just a few feet away. It is very weird to suddenly look up and realize you're looking into the face of John Cleese. I said hello and he said hello back, as though I always pass John Cleese in the hall. And then Dina sends the above clip. (And that's not to mention the sudden breaking of
Clinton's current situation.) Whoa.
In other YouTube-isms,
the new Weezer video is (yet another)
tribute to Web memes. I enjoyed the video but I confess I'm suffering some meme-fatigue. No more "Chris Crocker as himself" cameos please.
I'm having a hectic day but on the reasoning that it's better to post something than nothing, this is what I clicked lately in no particular order.
Could this
double knock-out possibly be real?
I had heard about
the wedding photographs taken during the China earthquake but this is the biggest collection of them I've seen. (This may be
a bigger collection but it's annoyingly paginated.)
I just told our tech section editors they need to implement
Tag Galaxy as the new navigation for their section.
Engobi is a puffed chip-like snack infused with caffeine. I'd like to try it but I don't want to buy a case online. Anyone in the NYC area let me know if you see them on shelves.
Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web - Also,
Generation Y has no culture and
This is a call to arms against Millennials. Looks like the next generation is coming of age, for better or worse.
That Barack/Hillary Star Wars video,
The Empire Strikes Barack. See also
The Real McCain for a sense (in case you hadn't already noticed) that the future of campaigning is in cleverly edited amateur video.
Reddit is launching a
weekly TV show based on the stories selected by readers. Maybe not a completely new idea but likely worth checking out.
Bacon air freshener - Like the time you forgot the croissandwich in your glove compartment and parked in the sun.
Trailer for
Traitor. Looks like another great performance from Don Cheadle.
Print Magazine rounds up a massive collection of
view-through-legs cover art.
The Ten Most Important Satellites Orbiting Earth Now - Given the significance of satellites in our lives, doesn't it seem like they should be more celebrated somehow? I guess we don't pay much attention to our power plants or phone lines or anything but for what they do and how they do it and the fact that you can see some of them like they're stars it seems like there could be more public awareness of them.
This was going to be my Commuter Click but I accidentally read the whole thing:
An ex-Jack Sparrow spills on life at the Magic Kingdom - On the one hand it's a salacious expose in which he reveals not only the demands of being a Disney employee but the pirate perversions of a striking number of women who visit the park. This kind of reminded me of
that former Scientologist's video where he's clearly out of group but still has lingering characteristics of their members.
Actual Commuter Click:
The Most Curious Thing - Errol Morris digs into the story behind the story on one particular Abu Ghraib photo. I'm about a quarter of the way through so far and it's really enlightening. It's not a rant against the war or the military, it's (so far) a human level look at how things are there in Iraq.
Jet-Powered Bicycle Makes 50 MPH Feel Waaaaay Too Fast - Holy moly! How does that even stay together!?
Solio is a solar powered battery charger that looks like it was issued by Star Fleet. (Assuming your next question is the same as mine: a hundred bucks.)
8 Types Of Annoying People You’ll Find Inside Starbucks - I once nearly literally got in a fist fight with the Starbucks guy at LaGuardia airport for being annoying type #8. I asked for a medium black coffee and he kept saying, "Grande?" And I kept saying, "Medium" because I don't know their damn lingo and I hadn't had any coffee yet that day and airports already make me edgy and this guy clearly spoke English so why was he giving me a hard time pretending he doesn't know what medium is? After going back and forth a few times I seethed, "Whatever your size range is, I want the one in the middle!" He told me to take it easy and acted like I was the crazy one. Humph. Now I'm angry again.
Used regular cars are better than new green cars because making new green cars requires more energy than fixing an old car - outweighing any emissions or mileage benefits. I'd still prefer a city with low-emission, fuel efficient cars instead of old guzzling belchers but then, I don't live next door to a car factory.
Speaking of comparing green cars, Myth Busters tested electric vehicles against their corresponding gas vehicles. The headline is a bit misleading but the
electric vehicles held their own for the most part.
Speaking of green cars, VW will have
a 230 mpg "car" in production for consumers by 2010. I put the quotes on "car" because it's pretty skimpy as cars go. I'm not sure at what point a car can no longer be called a car but this might be close. Then again, if you commute to work alone anyway, who cares what you call the vehicle you drive as long as it has a radio?
Wow, what a great idea for a site!
Cassette From My Ex - People share mix tapes made for them by former lovers. I have tons of old mix tapes, mostly from friends and some just made for myself from the radio. What a great resource to tap.
Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too - The idea is that employees who take the buyout offer don't appreciate the company culture so the company is better off getting rid of them early than allowing dead weight clock punchers to bring the rest of the staff down.
Massive Indiana Jones Lego boulder - (And speaking of Indiana Jones,
Roger Ebert liked it. I'm actually beginning to dare to believe that this movie isn't going to be a tired sequel-that-shouldn't-have-been-made.)
Andy Baio read my mind on the flying penis that attacked Gary Kasparov.
That's a griefer tactic in Second Life. What the hell I'm talking about:
- Yeah, his speech was interrupted by a replica of a man's tackle with a double helicopter propeller. (And yeah, NOTE: NSFW, though really it's so absurd to see a security guard swat a flying penis out of the air, it's hard to imagine a boss who wouldn't forgive you.)
- Griefers in Second Life are what we might think of as trolls in other community spaces but they're able to express their obnoxious disruptiveness with 3-D animation.
- Second Life griefers famously interrupted an interview with a CNET Second Life reporter by flying flocks of penises through the scene of the interview.
(By the way, speaking of Waxy, I fixed the link to the
Fanboy Supercuts from the other day.)
And speaking of disruptions, a helicopter penis totally trumps
mere egg throwing as a protest statement.
That old Angelina Jolie video where she talks about bad things. Whatever. She seems to have redeemed herself. It's no secret she has a weird streak.
YouTomb - "YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation." NOTE: Everything I see now is SFW but I guess the content is changing all the time so I can't say what'll be there when you click.
Though I could swear we've seen something like this before (maybe something different but similar from the same artist?) the recurrence of
this MUTO link in my daily surfing is too prevalent not to mention again. The online sketchbook is
here. Check out the video tab. I think maybe it was "
Walking" that we saw last time.
Iceland tops the
Global Peace Index, whatever that is. (Noteworthy because I also clicked this item about
why Icelanders are so happy.)
This guy turns his bedroom
lights off with Twitter.
"If a small team of Silicon Valley millionaires get their way, in a few years, you could have a new option for global citizenship: A permanent, quasi-sovereign nation floating in international waters." The term to know is "
seasteading" and it's interesting that it comes on the heels of the news of that Ron Paul gated community. It also brings to mind Noah's ark and Waterworld for some reason.
An interesting tangent to the story of the earthquake in China is made more interesting by my cherry picking links that encourage a supernatural conclusion. There's speculation online that
this video and others like it are examples of "
earthquake light" that serves as a sort of
alarm system in the sky to tell us when the ground is about to move. (The more likely answer: a coincidental
circumhorizontal arc.)
I'm a little behind on the day but I wanted to share this one as it's now spread through the entire cube farm here.
From the mailbag:
You need this.
Yes, you need this. It's
especially useful at work, particularly in meetings. Maybe the best thing ever on the web. (I'm not saying you need this because of the quality of
your work. I'm saying that this is a
tool that everyone needs, and I happen to be writing to you at the time.)
-jbm!
This is mostly a clearing of my notes for the coming week but since I need a theme at the top to write a headline to, here's my latest "two's a trend" item:"
SomethingStore is a fun new website that operates simply: We will send you something, an item selected randomly among many things from our inventory, for $10 (free shipping) and you will find out what your something is when you receive it." By random chance I also clicked this guy's photoblogging of his purchase of a few
$1 mystery bags. I understand the fun here but I think it's a better idea if you send in ten bucks or buy the mystery bag for someone else. So it's a genuine surprise for all involved. Buying one for yourself is like giving someone ten bucks and saying, "Just buy me something, I don't care what, I just want stuff." That's pretty lazy.
Graffiti art to boost your inspiration - Obviously it's no challenge to find photos of graffiti online but this is the one I clicked and I did feel a bit inspired by the end so there you go. For what it's worth, the best online graffiti source I know is the
Art Crimes site.
Heinz on Quest for Sweeter Tomatoes - My first reaction was that it's just another thing on the list to complain about when I'm old. "I remember back in the day when ketchup tasted like ketchup!" But then, cutting corn syrup and not resorting to "Franken-ketchup"... how can you resent a company for that?
Founding Father Steven SeagalNice slide show:
Toxic nudibranchs - soft, seagoing slugs.
Downloading Pirated Science - This essay is mostly a gateway to broader discussions (like
here and
here) but the subject is one that's come to my mind (my not-particularly-aware-of-conversations-taking-place-in-the-halls-of-science mind). Why isn't it easier to get bootleg science articles online? Or, for that matter, legal, free versions. I think about it every time I'm in a university library and they have the most recent social science journals in the periodicals area, chock full of potential Commuter Clicks but all requiring pretty high subscription rates if you want more than the abstract online.
(P.S. The other thing I don't understand why there isn't more of being traded illegally is sheet music.)
(P.P.S. Yes, I'm prepared to be told I just don't know where to look.)
"
Insect Lab is an artist studio that customizes
real insects with antique watch parts and mechanical components."
Afrigadget is a blog devoted to African inventive ingenuity.
Rape kits for "Jane Doe" - This would have been a good link to pair with Friday's item about the girl making the rape accusation on YouTube. I don't see how a DIY rape kit would help with the rest (and seemingly more difficult parts) of the process of prosecuting a rape, but whatever makes things easier for a rape victim can only be good.
I couldn't find a real spark of interest in
Cubescape until I hit the "replay construction so far" button.
City of Ember - See if you had the same reaction
Helen and I did.
drag over: (
What?? Was that Bill Murray?)
Facebook in reality - I recently had to explain Facebook to my parents and by the looks on their faces I think this is pretty close to what it sounded like to them.
World's smallest helicopter takes off - That should say smallest
ridable helicopter. It's yet another step in the long pursuit of personal jet pack the future was supposed to have provided by now.
Speaking of dubious inventions,
the Fizz Cup looks fun and might even make a good DIY project but if you're going to have an extra plastic cup, why not just use a bigger one and pour the soda into it with the ice cream. Regardless, it's bound to be a better solution than
A&W's all-in-one solution, which was kind of icky.
Dear John Mayer, Geeks do still exist. No, not everyone is one. And even if you enjoy buying expensive new gadgets, if you are a huge rock star and have had intimate relations with any number of the world's most desired women, you are automatically disqualified. Sorry 'bout that.
How to make a balloon bass -
via this, which is mostly noise but still kinda cool. It's funny to hear him refer to "balloon twisters" and "non-balloon twisters."
The growing success of
the vlogging wine guy furthers my belief that smart people who are enthusiastic about their subjects are inherently entertaining.
With apologies to the haters:
Why Twitter Matters - "The key question today isn't what's dumb on Twitter, but instead how a service with bite-size messages topping out at 140 characters can be smart, useful, maybe even necessary."
That teenage rape victim YouTube clip. Jezebel has the CNN segment
along with some remarks. The story in brief is that the girl believes she was raped but authorities are charging the guy with "promoting sexual activity of a vic less than 16-years-old." This doesn't appear to be a news story (yet) so I'm hesitant to relay any details I can't confirm. I can't even confirm the authenticity of the video. Regardless, bringing rape allegations to YouTube is an idea I don't think we've seen before.
Speaking of judging teenage girls, here's that girl who was barred from entering her prom because her dress was too much... or rather,
not enough.
Speaking of teens and sex and the law,
Jailbeta is a disturbingly active blog tracking stories of teachers accused of having sex with their students and other inappropriate acts.
Portion sizes then and now - I generally believe the premise of this because I distinctly remember when I was young I'd order the largest of any size that gave me a choice. At the time, large was called "large." But even if I still had my boyish metabolism there's no way I'd be able to keep up with today's largest sizes. That said, I'm not sure I agree with everything on this list. Maybe coffee was served in a smaller cup, but weren't you more likely to drink that at a counter where a waitress would refill it? And I know for a fact that the tub of popcorn is more than 20 years old.
Jason Kottke
rounds up some interesting links on the controversial gray area between real photos of real things and illustrations.
Related: I'm making
this item on photo retouching my Commuter Click. I read a crappy summary of it and I see it at the root of a lot of discussion online so I should read the original piece. This is the guy who says the "real" women in the Dove ad are still pretty heavily photoshopped.
No off switch: "Hyperconnectivity" on the rise - Not surprisingly, a new study shows that people are online at work and online at home and online in between. There's an ominous tone to this piece with a focus on work/life balance and worker fatigue. That's hard to deny but at the same time (and obviously I'm biased here) I think there's something to be said for having an overlap in home/work tools. A person who has integrated Web use into their whole life is more likely to be more efficient at its use than someone for whom the Web is something they wrestle with only at work. (P.S. I think that graph is wrong.)
California Building
220 MPH High-Speed Train from San Francisco to LA -
The California High-Speed Rail site has a cool map of the route. I have to think it's easier to do this in California than on the
Eastern Seaboard because they don't have to deal with any interstate
issues.
Here's
that Tennessee GOP video attacking Michelle Obama that the news has been chewing on this morning.
The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates - While it's interesting to see that the RIAA has an automated system that uses Limewire to search for songs, check IP and send a takedown notice to the University (if it's a university IP), what I want to know is how they narrow their prosecution down to individuals. Like what made them think
this lady was a pirate and what went wrong in their analysis?
Microsoft TouchWall can
inexpensively turn any flat surface into a multi-touch display - This reminds me a little of the
projected keyboard in that it can see what your hands are doing even though you're not touching any real hardware. The part I don't understand: "Microsoft is quick to say that they have no current plans to productize and sell TouchWall." Why the heck not??
That Bill O'Reilly freak-out
remixed with a dance beat. Actually really catchy.
NOTE: Remember this was chock full o' F bombs.
Speaking of fun new music, the new Flight of the Conchords video for "
Ladies of the World."
Still speaking of silly videos, we've seen a few examples of obsessed fans making compilations of tiny pieces of their favorite movies and shows. I think the most recent example was that assemblage of characters on Lost saying, "What?" It turns out that kind of thing has a name,
Fanboy Supercuts, and Waxy has put together a list of what must surely be every single one of them.
The Mirror joins
the Guerrilla gardener who is secretly brightening up London - I love the idea of "plantfiti" and sneaking some living things into barren urban environments but this story is really weird. The police and town council actively enforce keeping public gardens ugly and untended?
Looking at the Web site they seem pretty well organized. I'm surprised they can turn the project into something like the adopt-a-highway program (except that they actually do something.)
Why has no one previously figured out that it's a good idea to
put a lid on the bottom of a jar as well as the top?
9 Ways To Start a Fire Without Matches - Was this on the man-list we saw the other day? Does the fact that this appears on a site called The Art of Manliness mean we can identify a trend in "real man" instruction?
How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag - When I was away last week the rule for checked luggage on Delta changed while we were away. On the way back we were allowed fewer bags than when we left. We were three people with four bags, which would have meant a 25 dollar fee. The mistake we made was the snap decision to just take the smallest bag as a carry on. That was the toiletry bag which of course had all those bomb making shampoos in it. What we should have done was stuffed the smaller bag into the bag containing the child car seat.
The TV folks just did another one of those "what the bloggers are saying" segments that seems more like "what the bloggers are saying about what cable news is saying." What I see political bloggers talking about a lot is the number of
lobbyists tied to McCain and his campaign.
Speaking of the Web picking on McCain,
Things that are younger than McCain - The latest in what seems to be a new trend of one-liner URLs. Did you see
Things I did last night?
Man babies is a pretty funny meme. Coming soon as an option at the Sears Portrait Studio near you?
The
blurted curse of a local New York news anchor comes just as video of a
Bill O'Reilly meltdown finds new life online. (Gawker actually went whole-hog with a
top ten on-camera meltdowns list.)
NOTE: F-bombs galore.
I thought Last FM's
Most Frequent top 10 Tracks would be a good way to see what's hot in music right now. Unfortunately it also seems to be a good way to find out what's new and free on Last FM right now. The whole first page is from the new free Nine Inch Nails album. (
Album? What the hell do you call it when it never makes it to a tangible medium?)
I played a bit with
Microsoft's World Wide Telescope last night. It's like Google Earth for the night sky. My only note is that even on a pretty fast machine it takes a really long time to start up and there's not a whole lot of indication that it's doing anything. I thought it was broken because for a few minutes the only sign of activity I got was a brief title screen. Then suddenly the whole thing came up.
Ron Paul supporters are doing something they call "
a reverse money bomb." When they were doing fundraising for the candidate they called big fundraising days "money bombs." In this case, reversing the money bomb isn't about the candidate, it's about taking money out of banks. The idea (as best as I understand it) is that if enough people do it they can affect the value of the dollar by decreasing its availability.
Cool optical illusions.
You almost don't see it.
Related: This explanation of different but similar looking
cool motion illusions.
Speaking of illusions, the very last photo on page two reveals how this guy
makes himself stick to the wall with one hand.
On the one hand I love the idea of
scanning membership cards into a phone instead of keeping all those plastic cards in my wallet. On the other hand, once you're dealing with photos of bar codes, doesn't that make counterfeiting that much easier? On the third hand, does it really matter if I share the image of my PetCo discount card with my online friends?
Review: 13 Rule-Breaking FilmsA photoset showing the similarities between
Grand Theft Auto 4 and real life. Matches game photos with real photos of New York City. Tourism in New York City (or anywhere really) based on film locations or TV shows is common but I can't think of any other video game location sites. See also
real life restaurants in NYC from GTA. How soon before you can pay to have your restaurant included in a video game?
6 Ways Remote Workers Can Prove They're Working - Though the headline has potential to be a joke entry, it's basically sound advice about staying in touch at work. What I like about it is that it's also pretty good advice if you're not working remotely, which makes me wonder if some companies wouldn't run better if the employees were working remotely and following guidelines like this.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users - Hard to explain, it's a funny chart that matches Web activities with your mood -kind of.
Thing that I already know is going to eat up my evening tonight:
60 Photography Links You Can’t Live WithoutThing that I already spent too much time on today:
AudioTool - See the
Wired review here.
Well respected and established world-wide blogging initiative
Global Voices Online was a first-click for many surfers and they are doing a great job with suggested links for further looking. They also have lots of videos.
Shanghaiist is seriously owning this story with their liveblogging. I'm also watching
IfGoGo for continuing updates. Also lots of updates from
The Beijinger.
Naturally the first place to look when there's an earthquake is the USGS site. Here are the
details of the big one but you can see by
the larger map of Asia that it wasn't just single shot.
I had to do quite a bit of zooming out before
the Google map began including enough places I knew to give me some geographical context.
Evacuation photos aren't really as panicked as I expected. One blogger describes evacuated Beijing office workers as "
bemused." Of course, when you don't know what's happening it's hard to know how serious to be.
This blogger's eerie clip is a great example of that uncertainty.
If you're not impressed with the number of evacuation videos out there, here's a nice YouTube video showing
what it was like to experience the quake itself. I'm not sure I'd hide under that counter like that guy's doing but I'm not one to judge. Glad they made it out.
Wikipedia is calling it the
2008 Sichuan earthquake. It's always interesting to watch breaking stories develop here in front of your eyes. A second ago someone replaced the entire story with pi written out to 10,000 place but that was quickly corrected.
News from China in English.
Newsweek's Melinda Liu informs us that we can expect superstitious interpretations of this event. "Many Asians see major calamities as examples of "divine intervention" -- such as the recent Burmese cyclone which many citizens there interpreted as karmic payback for the military junta's bloody crackdown on monk-led protests back in September." I saw one page with photos of a mass frog migration from May 7 suggesting the frogs knew the quake was coming.
The Twtitter section:
A vast analysis of how news of the quake broke on Twitter.
Was this the first mention of it on Twitter? I'm still trying to figure out how to confirm that. ADDING:
Here's a timeline of the first mentions of the earthquake. It shows
this one as first.
The copious Tweeting by
Robert Scoble on this story has some talking (
seriously now, instead of speculatively) about Twitter journalism. Depending on when you click that Scoble link you may see what I'm talking about and you may see updates on whatever tech conference he's at right now. I suppose Twitter journalism works as a good live updater but as an archive to look through it's messy and impermanent. A problem Twitter doesn't address that was also a problem with blogs is that
searching the service doesn't help separate the worthwhile first hand accounts from the people saying things like, "Hey, China had an earthquake." That said, when you look at the information in the
main Global Voices story covering the event you see a lot of useful items with a Twitter link as the source reference.
Twitter Local is somewhat useful in helping find people on the scene. For example you can search for
people Tweeting within 20 miles of Beijing.
Only distantly related but still really fascinating,
ancient Chinese earthquake detection contraption. Any quake shakes the marble from the dragon's mouth whereupon it clangs into a metal cup.
I'll update as I find new things worth adding. Let me know if there's something I should include.
This gated community of Ron Paul supporters
would seem like a weird idea to me if I'd never been to North Florida
where it seems like gated communities are everywhere. It does seem odd
to get all worked up about living in a free country only to gate
yourself into a place that allows you to paint your house only three
shades of pale blue and you can't drive faster than 15 mph but then I
guess part of freedom means being free to give up freedoms. At least in
a Ron Paul community the dues are probably smaller. "You're free to
live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for
other people's life styles you may not agree with." And I imagine there
are fewer rules, not more in a community with libertarian leanings.
Speaking of living free, Colossal Castle or Humble Home?
Same Price – Your Choice
- Depression alert! Not economic depression, emotional depression that
results from seeing the kind of real estate you can get in other
countries versus what that money gets in major U.S. cities. Of course,
you might get a big house but then you'd have to live there. D'oh!
Better than lightning porn, this is
lightning volcano porn.
Funny YouTube Videos May Get Salvia Banned - I confess I never heard of this stuff but recently the health editor near me was researching it and I ended up watching a bunch of these druggy videos. The generation gap just got a little wider.
Dino Run is the hot new mini game. It could also be called "Run like hell" because that's basically what you do as a dinosaur outrunning death by asteroid. (I played on the mirror site as the direct link was slow to load.)
These
stolen laptop stories happen just often enough that I can't understand why the camera feature or other tracking technology isn't standard in all laptops.
Peel & stick solar fulfills the need ... for speed! In this case the speed is speed of installation and essentially "speed to market." In the video it takes 34 minutes to install and hook up six panels for 2.25 kilowatts.
Did you see that new
Clone Wars trailer? Sounds good with headphones on.
Gizmodo has
a different one. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing but I do like the idea of spin-off characters.
Acting like a fool in the background of someone else's photo has a name:
Photobombing.
NOTE: There's a bare butt or two down toward the bottom.
Green Porno describes the sex lives of bugs and other crawlies.
Wicked cool toy of the day: Time Tube - Plots YouTube videos on a time line.
Tips For Dealing With Information Overload - Advice from a number of heavy information consumers.
Wow, this
rewrite of the subtitles on a Hitler movie to make it about Hillary Clinton is about as offensive as you can get but it's amazing how compelling it is to watch. I'm not sure if it's compelling because of the Hillary story or the acting of the guy playing Hitler.
NOTE: I say it's offensive, not just because the Hillary role is that of Hitler but because it uses just about every single letter hyphen word we have (the F-word, the C-word, the N-word...).
5 Snacks That will Smash That Afternoon Groggy Feeling - I totally suffer from this. There are some days at 4p.m. when I need a defibrillator to finish out the day. Lately I've been having pretty good success with mixed nuts trail mix. Some other ideas here sound good, though I'm not sure I want to sit at my desk eating deviled eggs, there's something a little gross about that.
UPDATE: Oh! Here's a great contest opportunity. For one of those digital die and the weird USB LED light, give me the full sentence (not just the licenseplate phrase) that today's headline is based on and who said it.
It seems like a promotion for the
I Beat You site but then
she does seem to be interacting with the participants, so you don't get the impression she's one of these celebs who bopped in, read the script and left.
NOTE: Volume blast! You need the volume up to hear her in the beginning and then they lay a really loud dance track over the clip.
"On the average Web page, users have time to read
at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely." I'm not sure what kind of game they're trying to play with that "have time to read" phrase. More like "make time to read" or "bother to read" - not that I'm bitter. The question I have is whether visitors would read 100% of the page if I wrote 72% less or if that 28% is a standard "skim comprehension" number that is the bare minimum to understand the content on a given page. It looks like the report has the answer to my question but I'm sorry I just hit my 28%. Moving on!
Speaking of not reading, here's my latest bunch of Twitter related links you may click if you're interested or you may print out, chew into a wad and spit on your computer screen while cursing my name for foisting this trendy juvenile crap on you all the time.
- Tweet Wheel - "Find out which of your Twitter friends know each other"
- Twitter fone - Send messages to Twitter using voice
- Who should I follow? Enter your name and it recommends people to follow (maybe based on what's in your own stream?)
The beautiful game is a really well designed foosball table.
The Nissan Xterra that Dwight Schrute tried to flip on last week's episode of The Office is for sale on EBay from the real life owner. (Looks like the bidding ended early. I'd be interested to know the back story on how they ended up using a real car and not a studio prop car.)
I think this really is the
MySpace page of Tom Hanks. He hasn't blogged since last year but there's a new video on there of his endorsing Obama. I can imagine him calling his people and saying, "I want to endorse Obama, do I have a Web site or something?" And they say, "Well, you have that old MySpace page, wanna use that?"
Play Chronotron - Remember that game a while ago where you see previous turns you played so you end up having to help yourself get through the game? This is the same idea; you play into the level and then go back in time and see your own earlier moves.
WARNING NOTE: This has that freaking terrible idea from Facebook that automatically announces to your Facebook stream that you're playing this game. It does give you a "no thanks" option but by then you'll likely already have suffered shock and horror at being so invaded and how close you got to informing everyone on your Facebook list, including coworkers that you're playing a game in the middle of the day.
Make sure you're logged out of Facebook before you play.
The subprime primer - It's a pretty long but easy to read stick-figure slide show of what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis.
Super slow-mo video of the
Mentos/Diet Coke reaction.
Turn your point-and-shoot into a Supercamera - "The Canon Hacker's Development Kit, aka CHDK, is a firmware enhancement that supports an impressive array of Canon digital cameras." So basically there are hackers out there who are writing programs that tell your camera hardware what to do beyond what the factory has already told it to do.
Essential skills all men should have. Extra credit to Esquire for keeping the whole list on one page instead of going for the cheap page views.
I happened to see the "Yo Momma" headline on
the Newsweek story over someone's shoulder coming into the cube farm this morning. It's about
Postcards From Yo Momma, a site where people share cringe-worthy e-mails from their mothers.
Speaking of communal submissions here's
How I spent my stimulus. (Is this real or propaganda? Regardless, seems like a good idea if you can keep the haters out.)
Morning music: Following the link in the Newsweek item to see what's new on Jezebel I took
the recommendation to compare
Lindsay Lohan's "Bossy" with
the Kelis song.
NOTE: I only played that YouTube clip minimized while sorting through e-mail but looks like there's some bathing suit strutting and probably some booty shaking of some sort. Potentially unsafe.
"This collection contains television news programs recorded
live from around September 11, 2001 by the non-profit Television Archive to help patrons research this important part of United States history." No MSNBC but there is NBC. One of these days I'm going to go to the tape library here and look up my call-in on 9/11.
Random story: Sometimes people who read
my 9/11 essay want to know what happened before or after (or even around) the parts I described. Part of the reason I left some stuff out is that I was trying to write about fear, but also it's a little embarrassing. In fact, I was in the shower when the first plane hit and my wife called to ask if it was true that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. I leaned out the window to look and said, yup, completely clueless as to the severity of what was happening. Later as the morning progressed, I was on the phone with the newsroom when Tower 2 collapsed. I freaked out a little (see fear essay above) and the producer on the other end said, "Will, we're putting you through to the TV." I ended up live on the air with Lester Holt on the other end of the phone. I don't remember much of what he said, but I think it was something like "tell us where you were when the first plane hit." True to my long-winded form, I started my story with being in the shower - not at all what the TV folks were looking for in the midst of their coverage of this huge breaking news event. I reckon I was shuffled off the air quickly. So one day I'll look it up in the archive to see how my role in the history of that day has been recorded. But not today.
If you caught Colbert last night, this is the guy who is
performing surveillance on himself to (sarcastically) assist the government's anti-terror efforts.
The walking bike would have been cooler if they didn't show the video of how lousy it is to ride.
The latest free album download:
Nine Inch Nails, The Slip. You need a working e-mail address to click a verifying link. From there you need to know what format you want. I'm taking the mp3 version now and it's taking a long time but they've got a flac version by torrent if you prefer. Your download window lasts an hour. I don't know if you can resubmit the same e-mail address so best to try it when you have time to do the download.
In time for Mother's Day, next week is the
5th annual mom blog Mommyfest.
From the mailbag:I just saw this, from Slate.com, funny/harsh/on target. It seemed like you'd enjoy it.
PW
Just to close the loop on that Harry Potter contest a while back, Cat was the winner. I was hoping for a super-duper deluxe winner to answer the two officially asked questions plus the third implied question and though no one did that on their own, Cat did in a follow-up mail, so yes, she wins an umbrella with the msnbc.com logo on it. Plus that digital die thing. Plus, the super-duper deluxe prize which is a clip-on USB powered LED light. I'm not really sure what it's for, maybe to see the keyboard if you're typing in the dark and don't know how to touch type? Anyway, congrats to Cat, the stuff is in the mail.
I'm on one of those long weekend "as long as we came all this way to go to the wedding we might as well stay a couple days at that time share your mother's friend offered" trips. Flying home tomorrow.
I have to add that I'm softening my position on the bottled water ban now that I've had Orlando water for the past couple of days. Bleh. It's like liquid chalk!
