December 2008
Top 10 most annoying Americanisms →
Toby Harnden/ Telegraph
“Michelle Obama just sent me an email wishing me “Happy Holidays” and asking me to give money “to causes that are especially meaningful to me and my family” (food banks and deployed troops - not the Obama campaign this time).
She doesn’t mention Christmas at all, instead talking vaguely of “a time to celebrate our blessings, the...
Electric Mini →
Technology Review/ MIT
“BMW stole a march on some more ballyhooed electric-car programs by releasing an electric version of its Mini at the end of 2008. Where most of its competitors are engineering electric cars from scratch, the German automaker was able to adapt an existing electric drive system from California’s AC Propulsion to fit the Mini’s chassis. Five hundred of the...
In response to zehnuhr's request
… rant to boycott the Tumblr awards, to which I absolutely agree - I suggest voting for the Independent Spirit of Tumblr Awards.
thanks yooniverse!
DailyLit →
Read Books Online by Popular Authors
“DailyLit sends books in installments via e-mail or RSS feed. We currently offer over 1000 classic and contemporary books available entirely for free or on a Pay-Per-Read basis (with sample installments available for free). You can read your installments wherever you receive e-mail/RSS feeds, including on your Blackberry and iPhone. Installments arrive in...
Writing Without Words →
Book : Stefanie Posavec
“Writing Without Words: This book explains two approaches to analysing On the Road: the Literary Organism patterns and the Sentence Drawings.”
Literary Organism
Sentence Drawings
“One moment it was there, another moment it is gone. One moment we are here, and...”
– I Heart Quotes
The Big Picture: 2008 - The Year in Photographs →
Boston Globe dot com
Part 1 of 3 — Part 2 of 3 — Part 3 of 3
Leah Evans Textiles →
Artist’s Statement
“My quilted wall hangings consist of layers of the following techniques: appliqué, reverse appliqué, piecing, natural and synthetic dyeing, needle-felting, hand printing, and a variety of embroidery stitches. There is an overall balance between hand and machine work.
My current work combines aerial photography, maps, and satellite imagery. I also find myself...
1 tag
More Tumblr Thoughts →
Abide/ eightysixfourhundred.vox.com/
“A few more weeks in to playing Tumblr, and I have a load of other thoughts to unpack. The first is that Tumblr is more of a game than a mode of communication. Or at least, that was my original statement. I eventually revised it to say that it was like knitting group, but knitting group is just like getting together for a tabletop RPG. That is to say...
Top 10 Web Platforms of 2008 - ReadWriteWeb →
ReadWriteWeb/ Richard MacManus
“2008 has seen a proliferation of new Web platforms, including a few major ones built using open standards. In this final instalment of our series of top products of 2008, we choose the top 10 Web platforms of the year.
We’ve written a lot of times about platforms for the Web. A web platform can be as simple as an API, like the one offered by Twitter,...
The Buzzwords of 2008 →
New York Times/ Week in Review
Illustrations by Jessica Hische
“Politics without buzzwords is like sports without clichés, math without numbers or Blago without bleeps. Tough to imagine, in other words, especially in such a game-changer of a campaign year in which buzzwords were flying like shoes.
Buzzwords are what political wiseguys use to sound all important and knowing in a profession...
1 tag
Drowned in Sound’s 50 albums of 2008 →
Sean // Drowned in Sound
“Let’s face it, 2008 hasn’t been a great year for popular music. Whilst sales don’t equate to great music, compiling this list we found little of merit with a platinum/gold/silver disc to its name. After years of bands from ‘our world’ breaking through (Arctic Monkeys, Franz, Outkast, Strokes, Bloc Party, Gnarls, Arcade Fire,...
William Eggleston's 'Democratic Camera' at the... →
Tim Connor/ Looking at Photography
“William Eggleston is a Southerner whose 1976 show of color photographs at MOMA & subsequent book, Willam Eggleston’s Guide, leapfrogged him past the curatorial establishment & largely redefined the still picture for the next three decades. ‘Democratic Camera’ at the Whitney Museum is his first major New York show in 32 years.
...
Yuichi Hibi, Photographer, Illuminates the Night →
The City Visible/ New York Times
“YUICHI HIBI moved to New York from Japan in 1987, when he was 22. He was an aspiring actor, but spoke no English. For him, the city was bleak, grimy and alienating, the New York of “Taxi Driver” and “Midnight Cowboy,” gritty films he had watched as a teenager in Japan. He spent many late nights sitting in bars, watching people and wanting to be seen as one...
Murders in the Rue Morgue →
Internet Archive: Details
From IMDb: In 19th Century Paris, the maniacal Dr. Mirakle abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship. He constantly meets failure as the abducted women die. Medical student Pierre Dupin discovers what Mirakle is doing too late to prevent the abduction of his girlfriend Camille. Now he desperately tries to enlist the help...
If programming languages were religions... →
Aegisub
C would be Judaism
Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity
PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity
C++ would be Islam
C# would be Mormonism
Lisp would be Zen Buddhism
Haskell would be Taoism
Erlang would be Hinduism
Perl would be Voodoo
Lua would be Wicca
Ruby would be Neo-Paganism
Python would be Humanism
COBOL would be Ancient Paganism
APL would be Scientology
LOLCODE would...
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-12-21) →
King Crimson (114)
Richard Thompson (97)
Paul Weller (92)
Nine Inch Nails (84)
The Jesus and Mary Chain (70)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
No ISP Filtering Under New RIAA Copyright Strategy →
Threat Level from Wired.com
“The Recording Industry Association of America on Friday announced a new strategy in its quest to curtail online copyright infringement — a plan that for now requires no filtering from internet service providers. “There’s no filtering,” said RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth. “We are simply passing along a notice of detection and the ISPs...
Hey guyzzz... New Tumblr fun!
butterflyeffect:
You may have seen my post the other day regarding my new photo project.
Well, I’m going to tell you about it again, because I really, really want more people to join with me in this. I started Project 365 on Jan 1 this year with a group of over 20 Tumblrs and I would like to have at least a similar number for this year’s project.
The project is called 52 Locations. The idea...
The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun →
Box of Crayons
Design Concept: Winners 2008 Life Science →
red dot online: design award
“With a built-in Braille printer, the Braille Polaroid Camera is designed for the blind to record and print Braille images of the world around them.
The heightened sense of touch developed by blind people has been harnessed for the ...
Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits →
Wall Street Journal/ Sarah McBride & Ethan Smith
“After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy.
The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about...
“Either Stephen Harper is playing three dimensional chess at such an advanced...”
– John Ivison/ Harper mounts an assault built on retreat
Full Comment/ National Post
Not quite what I had in mind →
George Oats on her reaction to being laid off from Flickr. George is responsible for much of what is good about Flickr; what’s up with that Yahoo?
“I’ve been cooking up an end-of-year blog post, feeling like my 35th year was one of the best so far. I’ve been unbelievably fortunate to spend quite a lot of it traveling the world to tell people about The Commons on Flickr....
The Case for a Notebook at Macworld →
Fortune/ Apple 2.0/ Philip Elmer-DeWitt
TBR’s Ezra Gottheil issued a remarkably detailed description Tuesday afternoon of the “inexpensive mobile device” he believes Apple (AAPL) will announce at MacWorld on Jan. 6 for delivery mid-year.
“It will come in two sizes,” he writes, “one much like the MacBook Air and one similar to a netbook, with the smaller unit priced at $599.”
Almost as if he...
Google Hints at the End of Net Neutrality →
The Register
The cache makes perfect sense
“Network Neutrality, the public policy unicorn that’s been the rallying cry for so many many on the American left for the last three years, took a body blow on Sunday with the Wall Street Journal’s disclosure that the movement’s sugar-daddy has been playing both sides of the fence.
The Journal reports that Google “has...
Net Neutrality and the Benefits of Caching →
Google Public Policy Blog
“One of the first posts I wrote for this blog last summer tried to define what we at Google mean when we talk about the concept of net neutrality. Broadband providers — the on-ramps to the Internet — should not be allowed to prioritize traffic based on the source, ownership or destination of the content. As I noted in that post, broadband providers...
The Medium: Content and Its Discontents →
New York Times/ Magazine/ Virginia Herrernan
“For years, we in traditional media have consoled ourselves about the increasing irrelevance of our work. First, we insist that content is king. If a story, image, film or report is compelling enough — a candid photo of Malia Obama, “Slumdog Millionaire,” the columns of Maureen Dowd — it will translate into pixels. It will flourish on any...
A Visual Exploration on Mapping Complex Networks →
visualcomplexity.com
“Complexity is a challenge by itself. Complex Networks are everywhere. It is a structural and organizational principle that reaches almost every field we can think of, from genes to power systems, from food webs to market shares. Paraphrasing Albert Barabasi, one of the leading researchers in this area, “the mystery of life begins with the intricate web of interactions,...
My Top 5 Tracks →
(Week Ending 2008-12-14)
Stars of the Lid – Apreludes (in C sharp major) (33)
Songs To Sleep To – don’t forget to phone your sister (22)
Songs To Sleep To – 2-13-08 (20)
The Twilight Sad – I’m Taking the Train Home (18)
The Who – I Can’t Explain (13)
Not imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Brilliantly Bookish →
WebUrbanist
15 Dazzling Modern Library Designs
“The word “library” doesn’t immediately conjure up a sense of coolness but these libraries are much more than just book storage depots. From public archives of knowledge to centers of learning at colleges and universities, libraries can be amazing places - so why shouldn’t they look the part? From alien blob monster buildings to futuristic...
Proposed Web Filter Criticized in Australia →
New York Times/ Internet/ Meraiah Foley
“The Australian government plans to test a nationwide Web filtering system that would force Internet service providers to block access to thousands of sites containing questionable or illegal content, prompting cries of censorship from advocacy groups.
The proposed filter is part of a $82 million “cybersafety plan” started in May with the goals of...
Myst Online to be Released Fully Open-Source →
Negative Approach/ CNET/ Dave Rosenberg
“Cyan Worlds has decided to release all of Myst Online URU Live’s assets to the public as open source. This includes the client and server architecture. Cyan will also hold one Myst Online server shard open for players to have a centralized world, while others can now freely put up their own Myst Online servers.
This will be an interesting...