Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
- Keep the light (faith)
More tells the story of an inventor who lives in a drab, colorless world. Day by day, he toils away in a harsh, dehumanizing job, his only savior being the memories of the bliss of childhood. But at night, he works secretly on an invention that could help him relive those memories and spread their joy to everyone in his despair-filled life.
When he finishes his invention, it changes the way people look at the world. But his success changes him, for with it, he loses an important part of himself.
- Monday reading
- I do this because I love to do it. or great local communities engaged with creative commons projects (openStreetMap.org).
- 13 Free web apps to simplify designer’s work life – including TinEye!
- BackType lands seed funding. Go BackType. Awesome to see a Ycombinator Canadian success story unfolding.
- My free software hero Benjamin Mako Hill
- A Slate take on Twitter: What the Heck Is Twitter?It’s not a Google killer, and it’s not a Facebook killer.
- There are 193,000 working photographers in the US.
- Leila’s music listening strategy. ipod? what ipod?
- I like Blaise’s free culture thinking – and essay!
- Via Benjamin Mako Hill: I believe that access to information is ethical issue. This is where I invoke Eben Moglen because he says it a lot better than I can. Moglen says: The great moral question of the twenty-first century is: If all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information, can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone — if everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything?
- What’s in your orange juice? Perhaps not the childhood oranges that you were once so fond of!
What isn’t straightforward about orange juice? HAMILTON: It’s a heavily processed product. It’s heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time…
- Via Seth’s blog: The two elements of a great presenter: 1. Respect (from the audience) 2. Love (to the audience)
Photograph By Greg Ma.
- Cough syrup makes a fine breakfast!
Yes I am still sick. This is sad. I should really go see a doctor as this insane cough is not going away; but again, why put an end to a great thing: silver lining of being sick? I lost 5 pounds! Catching up on my reading this morning so here are some sweet links. Enjoy.
A great Salon article by David Brin: Is the web evolving us?
Some of today’s most vaunted tech philosophers are embroiled in a ferocious argument. On one side are those who think the Internet will liberate humanity, in a virtuous cycle of e-volving creativity that may culminate in new and higher forms of citizenship. Meanwhile, their diametrically gloomy critics see a kind of devolution taking hold, as millions are sucked into spirals of distraction, shallowness and homogeneity, gradually surrendering what little claim we had to the term “civilization”.
Call it cyber-transcendentalists versus techno-grouches.
Via Evolving Excellence: A $170 million public company that manufactures high end hydraulic manifolds and values, profitable since it was started in 1970, six plants around the world employing roughly a thousand people. What’s unusual about that? How about this:
- There is no organization chart
- There are no job titles or job descriptions
- No performance criteria
- No bonuses and no perks
- No regularly scheduled meetings
- No approval levels for capital or expense spending
- No goals
- No offices or high-walled cubicles
- If the peers accept the idea, then “management” is presumed to accept it – hence the need for very little management
- Every employee is simply expected to figure out where they fit
Kevin Meyer recounts his visit to American Apparel:
No fancy lobby with glitzy lighting and display cases, no plush waiting rooms. An open entrance with a guard and a sign-in sheet. For a $500 million company with over 5,000 employees.
But here’s my final and perhaps most important lesson: do what works. It’s that simple. Tools, even lean tools, are just tools. Leadership requires people.
- Madeleines = Happiness
There are madeleines in the Idéeplex but by the time you read this they will all be gone. The madeleines were wonderfully baked by Martin! How awesome is that? Madeleines were my childhood snack and starting the day with a madeleine (or two) and a cup of strong coffee will ensure total happiness.
- Data Visualization
From Smashing Magazine: "The main goal of data visualization is its ability to visualize data" – well no kidding! Nonetheless: great article and fantastic data visualization I had forgotten about.
- One for you… One for me!
"[...] there’s a huge gulf between a head of state shaking your hand and a minister making a bank transfer."
Really? No! Who would have thought? Certainly not the one laptop per child folks!
After two-and-a-half years of relentless organizing, product development, and evangelizing, the so-called $100 laptop is ready to go into production in October. At a time like this, you’d think that übertechnology visionary Nicholas Negroponte and his team at the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization would be stockpiling champagne for a blowout celebration. Far from it.
While the notebook computer for schoolchildren in underdeveloped nations is just about ready for prime time, the goal of distributing tens of millions of the cute green-and-white machines still seems a far-off dream. The reasons: The computers, now called XO Laptops, will cost about $188 each to produce initially, nearly twice the original estimate; and, so far, not a single government has written a check.
- Creative Commons
Larry Lessig on the Texas suit against Virgin and Creative Commons
I doubt that any court would find the photographer in this case had violated any right of privacy merely by posting a photograph like this on Flickr. Nor would any court, in my view, find a noncommercial use of a photograph like this violative of any right of privacy. And finally, as the world is just now, while many might resist the idea of Virgin using a photograph of theirs for free (and thus not select a license that explicitly authorizes "commercial use"), most in the net community would be perfectly fine with noncommercial use of a photograph by others within the net community.
… but in this case Larry, Virgin was freeloading! Read Larry’s post for further Creative Commons clarifications.
- Scroogled
What if Google controlled your life. A great fiction piece by Cory Doctorow
- Free the WSJ and the $ will come!
Kara Swisher advocates for a free WSJ. I predict it will happen very very soon. This year? Rupert Murdoch won’t let me down. WSJ will be free before the end of 2007 and that’s that.
[...] while a paid model might have been right in the past, having a larger, powerful and global owner changes the stakes considerably and allows the tremendous site to make bolder moves than ever before. Kara Swisher
I work for the most amazing image search company in the world: 
Subscribe via RSS