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Contenu (hide) 1. Metafilter"Charity degrades and demoralizes." The latest RSA Animate adapts a lecture by Slavoj Zizek. Previously. Previously. »
[+] The plot thickens...The CIA is watching him. He's been addressed directly by powerful people all across the United States government.
And earlier today on his website and across the internet, the same man has placed a 1.4 gigabyte encrypted file labeled "insurance." So, you always wanted to be a musician, but your pops wouldn't send you to music school? And you can't afford a decent instrument? Aw, quit yer whining and go get a garden hose. »
[+] Flower Power»
[+] Track RecordThe Wall Street Journal investigates web snoops. The 50 sites installed a total of 3,180 tracking files on a test computer used to conduct the study. Only one site, the encyclopedia Wikipedia.org, installed none. Twelve sites, including IAC/InterActive Corp.'s Dictionary.com, Comcast Corp.'s Comcast.net and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com, installed more than 100 tracking tools apiece in the course of the Journal's test. More from the WSJ project: The Web's New Goldmine How to Avoid the Prying Eyes What They Know About You Analyzing What You Have Typed What They Know: A Glossary Tracking the Trackers: Our Methodology Watch what you click though: The Journal also surveyed its own site, WSJ.com, which doesn't rank among the top 50 by visitors. WSJ.com installed 60 tracking files, slightly below the 64 average for the top 50 sites. »
[+] An Introverts ManifestoMisery Bear: Goes to London - Celebrates Christmas - Has a day off - Gets a Valentine's card - Looks forward to the World Cup »
[+] Strange Cargo»
[+] Alpha-Dog mythIs the alpha-dog method of training, as promoted by Cesar Millan, a myth? Rival trainer Victoria Stilwell thinks so and has launched a competitive assault on Cesar's Dog Whisperer by starring on It's Me or the Dog and spreading her system of positive-reinforcement training. From the Time article: "The debate has its roots in 1940s studies of captive wolves gathered from various places that, when forced to live together, naturally competed for status. Acclaimed animal behaviorist Rudolph Schenkel dubbed the male and female who won out the alpha pair. As it turns out, this research was based on a faulty premise: wolves in the wild, says L. David Mech, founder of the Minnesota-based International Wolf Center, actually live in nuclear families, not randomly assembled units, in which the mother and father are the pack leaders and their offspring's status is based on birth order. Mech, who used to ascribe to alpha-wolf theory but has reversed course in recent years, says the pack's hierarchy does not involve anyone fighting to the top of the group, because just like in a human family, the youngsters naturally follow their parents' lead. Says Bonnie Beaver, former president of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA): "We are on record as opposing some of the things Cesar Millan does because they're wrong." Likewise, the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) issued a position statement last year arguing against the aggressive-submissive dichotomy." Alexis Soyer lived quite an an amazing life. According to his wiki, he "was a French chef who became the most celebrated cook in Victorian England" who also "during the Great Irish Famine in April 1847, ... invented the soup kitchen and was asked by the Government to go to Ireland to implement his idea. This was opened in Dublin and his "famine soup" was served to thousands of the poor for free. Whilst in Ireland he wrote Soyer's Charitable Cookery. He gave the proceeds of the book to various charities. He also opened an art gallery in London, and donated the entrance fees to charity to feed the poor." And then there is also the remarkable story of Soyer's Magic Stove. »
[+] The faces we wearFaces, a short animation by Lei Lei (??), an independent Chinese animator and designer. He's put most of his works on Vimeo, including a short TEDxShanghai talk he gave several months ago. Cartoon Brew profile, with an embedded video profiling Lei Lei. He was also recently at the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, where he rapped with Dan Silverman of Simpson's fame providing accompaniment on the tuba. Via Anipages Daily Arron Diaz of Dresden Codak (previously previously previously) shows us how he makes his colorful comic pages at Indistinguishable From Magic, an art/instruction blog about Character Design, Hands In Storytelling, and Batman. Free music downloads without committing piracy! Freegal is a new service that libraries around the country are now offering to library card holders (up to 20 per week per library card). Freegal offers DRM-free mp3 downloads with no third-party application involved from Sony's massive music catalog. Some say libraries who use this service are subsidizing public music purchases. Others love it. »
[+] old new musicAcousmata is a unique music blog devoted to "idiosyncratic research in electronic and experimental music, sound and acoustics, mysticism and technology" with special focus on the early history of electronic music. The Adam and Joe show ran on Channel 4 during the 90s. There are many marvellous memories from the late-night lo-fi bedroom fest, but most fondly rememberered are their re-enactments of popular films and shows using toys. Kids. This Life.
Toytanic.
Shine.
Se7en.
American Beautoy.
Saving Private Lion.
Furends.
The Toy Patient.
ToyTrainspotting. Noted literary agent Andrew Wylie has made a deal with several of his authors - including Saul Bellow, John Updike and Phillip Roth - to release their e-books exclusively on Amazon. Macmillan's John Sargent and Tyler Cowen react. »
[+] Dynamic Linear ModellingIt has applications in Economics, Biology, Pharmaceuticals, and is rooted in State Space Modeling, which with Kalman Filtering (paper, breakdown [warning: long]) was used in the Apollo program. Dynamic Linear Models are gaining in popularity. There exists an R package, and both a short doc and a really great (read: worth buying) book (sorry, not a download, but here's chapter 2) by Giovanni Petris, Sonia Petrone, and Patrizia Campagnoli with its own little website. »
[+] A portal into the pastThis is what it looked like then... Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov takes old WWII photos and go to exactly the same place it was taken, then combines the two. Some of my favorites »
[+] A Bad MooooooveCorrectional Services Canada and the Harper Administration say they will close the Frontenac Institution prison farm. A group called Save Our Prison Farms in Kingston Ontario says they won't. Conflict at 11. Save Our Prison Farms has done everything it can think of to stop CSC and the Harper Administration from closing the prison farm program at Frontenac Institution. Petitions, letters, public rallies (one in June featured noted Canadian author Margaret Atwood and 1,000 friends) and a peaceful blockade of CSC headquarters have done nothing to sway the Harper government from the planned closure. A poll in the Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper) shows that 92% of respondents support keeping the prison farms. The herd is scheduled to be auctioned of in Waterloo, Ontario on August 10. Bidders will view videotape of the cows before bidding. At some point after this, the government will attempt to remove the cows from Frontenac Institution, a 900 acre farm located just outside of downtown Kingston. Opponents of the closure, who are observing the institution 24 hours a day, will alert their network when the cattle trucks are spotted entering the facility. Hundreds of residents have said they will block the trucks with their bodies if necessary to prevent the herd from being taken. August 11 should be an interesting day in Kingston. Final Kodachrome produced and processed. 13 months after (previous
MeFi thread) Kodak announced they were discontinuing production of Kodachrome, the final Kodachrome
roll made by Kodak has been processed by Dwayne's Photo Service, in Parsons,
Kansas—the only Kodachrome processor left in the world. It
was given to and shot by (NPR interview) Steve McCurry, of "Afghan
Girl" fame, around New York City for a documentary by National
Geographic. Just a reminder: you only have until December 30th, 2010 to get any
rolls of Kodachrome developed before Dwayne's Photo stops processing
Kodachrome. Daft Punk's Tron Legacy Score Leaked Online Youtube user alexdaft26 has
uploaded
the
entire soundtrack in nine films on youtube. [+ desc][+ titles]
2. Boing Boing
We're thrilled that everyone seems to be digging our new Submitterator! (More about the launch here.) Every day, folks are submitting a slew of wonderful links. Thank you! In fact, I browse it as if it's a group blog edited by a bunch of my most interesting friends that I haven't yet met. For those of you who missed the announcement earlier this week, the Submitterator is essentially a public submissions form. Every link you submit is shared with everyone else visiting the page. Vote 'em up or vote 'em down. We're keeping a keen eye on the Submitterator for front door posts and also getting a kick out of the stuff that doesn't end up here on the blog. We hope you are too! Got a link to share? Please submit to the Submitterator!
The Anti-Defamation League has announced its opposition to the building of an Islamic community center (or mosque, as CNN and others put it) in Manhattan, near ground zero. It accepts that the builders have every right to do so, but believes that they should not because its presence there will cause offense and pain.
Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain --unnecessarily -- and that is not right.Perhaps the Anti-Defamation League could produce some helpful maps to delineate the areas in our cities where Muslims may live, work and pray without causing more pain. The original statement was linked to here by others, but it's not currently available. Via CNN. Discussion: Tablet, Wonkette, and TPM.
According to the Weather Channel, this is the country's largest hail stone. It's 8 inches in diameter and weights approximately 2 pounds. It fell in Vivian, South Dakota, leaving damage like that seen in the image above right. "Record breaking hail"
"empty home on Bloomington Ave S, Minneapolis" by Andrew Ciscel via CC OK, so I'm not an economist. But as a venture investor in early-stage medical and technology companies I read the usual financial articles that come across my screen and I see the same statistics everybody is seeing. I listen to Obama and I watch the TV shows where pundits argue with Congressmen about the wisdom of this or that particular tax or stimulus measure to restart our sick economy. I have nothing to say about this, no statistics of my own and no fancy theory, so instead of taking sides in this particular debate I keep looking for the things that are missing. What is missing is this: Over two million American families have now lost their homes; foreclosure figures are at an all-time high. Several million new families will be thrown into the street over the next year, no matter what happens to taxes or the stimulus. This is a given. Yet, among Washington and Wall Street experts this disaster is only reflected in the form of statistical figures they mix up and datamine alongside many other figures, where the numbers lose their special, tragic character. It's not a very newsworthy disaster, either, so after a while it even fades from TV news: no dramatic shots of oil gushing up from a broken well or birds coated with black tar. No sense of urgency here, just a big spreading tragedy. The experts only know that the banks are off the hook: they have been given tons of new money to help with mortgages. The fact that this money sits unused and that many banks have not even appointed managers to deal with desperate homeowners does not come to their attention. My Bank of America branch won't even talk to you about mortgages - they send you to a faceless office downtown where nobody knows you. In such complex situations, it is healthy for somebody to just state the obvious before trying to develop cute, complicated theories. You don't look smart by stating the obvious: Duh! Everybody knows that. You won't get invited on the CNBC morning show. You knew what I'm going to say all along but perhaps you hadn't thought it through. So here is an obvious statement: if you have just lost your house you are not likely to go buy a new TV set for a while. If you just moved your family into a cheap motel, you probably don't think about ordering new drapes for the living room; and if you also lost your job (as thousands of people continue to do every day) and now live in your car in some urban park, you won't be shopping for refrigerators, sofas and camcorders for a long, long time to come. Since nobody can find you because you don't have an address any more, the statisticians won't be asking for your opinion about the economy, which may explain the puzzling discrepancies in the mysterious tables called "consumer sentiment," a figure that is now at a five-month low. This "obvious" fact may also account for the lack of any serious recovery; or the probability that the economy will not be very robust for a while, no matter how "stimulating" the climate gets in Washington around election time; it may explain the chill over the Chinese industry, which makes all the refrigerators, the sofas, the TVs, the drapes and the camcorders you used to buy when you had a house to put them in; and the uncertainty in Europe, which makes the machines China needs to make TVs, camcorders, drapes and sofas. So that uncertainty travels around the planet in opposite direction to the Earth's rotation and comes back to hit us from the east, because we used to supply lots of goods and services to Europe to make the machines, etc. No wonder Mr. Bernanke finds that things are "unusually uncertain." At least he still has his sofa.
Richard Metzger: "Rather astonishing news from the fashion and film world. Dangerous Minds’ fave filmmaker Kenneth Anger has released a two-and-a-half-minute film dealing with the fall/winter collection of the Varese-based house of Missoni, produced by filmmaker/Anger manager/Dangerous Minds pal Brian Butler and scored by French composer Koudlam." Watch the video here.  This Saturday in San Francisco, the largest bicycle-powered music festival in the world takes place in Golden Gate Park's Speedway Meadow and throughout the city. Bike powered? Think Gilligan's Island. In Golden Gate Park, more than a dozen bands will play through a 2000 watt pedal-powered audio system and a variety of crazy party caravans will travel through the streets during the day and night. All of the infrastructure for the event is haulable via bicycle and no cars or trucks will be involved in staging the festival. My family will be attending, and we're especially excited to see our favorite San Francisco singer/songwriter Diana Gameros. We first heard Diana perform solo at Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, a very old and excellent tiny restaurant in San Francisco's Mission District. At Roosevelt's, Diana mostly performs traditional Latin music but in her own modern, soulful, and passionate style. Diana's original music is enchanting indie pop infused with her strong Latin heritage. Check out Diana and her band at noon on Saturday or on her MySpace page. Diana's tune "Para Papa," listenable in her MySpace player, is one of my favorites. Diana Gameros (MySpace)
 I've posted previously about the Webb Gallery, an immensely interesting gallery in Waxahachie, Texas that specializes in outsider art and the artifacts of secret societies, and overflows with an incredible (dis)array of curiosities, from tramp art to circus sideshow banners. I discovered Webb Gallery and met the delightful proprietor, Bruce Webb, last year when he sold me an artwork by William S. Burroughs who had exhibited at the gallery right before his death. The Texas art site Glasstire has published Christina Patoski's photo tour of the Webb Gallery and Bruce and Julie Webb's equally odd living space above. Glass Houses 21: Julie and Bruce Webb
 Opening Saturday July 31 (tomorrow night): The Sea No Evil art show benefitting the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Above, a piece by Gary Baseman from the show. The donating artist list is pretty incredible. The opening night event features Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and focus of Animal Planet TV series "Whale Wars," who will give an update on the state of affairs in the world's oceans. The Crystal Method and artist-DJ Shepard Fairey will both perform sets. (thanks, Gary Baseman)
Last weekend*, I joined around 90,000 of my closest friends at the Twin Cities Flugtag in St. Paul. If you aren't familiar, Flugtag is an event that tests out the skyworthiness of home-built flying contraptions. For the most part, there's more of an emphasis on art and comedy than on effective engineering. Teams design their flying machines (and costumed skits) around a theme, they perform for the audience, and then push their craft off an elevated runway and (usually) directly into a major body of water below. It's entertaining. I had a good time watching giant purple narwhals (narwhals!) and open caskets piloted by zombies crash into the Mississippi River. But what really made Flugtag post-worthy is the moment captured in the video above. My husband called this before the flying even started. Walking around the "hangar" area, looking at the crafts before the show, he spotted what looked like an anorexic WW2 bomber on stilts. It wasn't the most elaborate craft. Or the most hilarious. But it was going to fly further than anything else, Baker predicted. Unlike some home-built aircraft, this thing actually had an airfoil. Later, we found out that it also had controllable flaps. And a for-real-real pilot&mdashMajor Trouble, her band of Dirty Dixie drag queens took care of the entertainment portion—at the controls. We'd already watched six or seven contraptions utterly fail to fly. We'd gotten used to a routine. The team pushes off. The team goes straight down. It is hard to describe the utter elation that swept the crowd when Major Trouble's plane came back up**. And flew. Really, truly flew. For a second, we all forgot that jet planes existed. For a second, we were all back at Kitty Hawk, in 1903, witnessing a previously unimagined miracle. Major Trouble and the Dirty Dixies flew 207 feet before ditching in the Mississippi. They broke—by 12 feet—a Flugtag flying record that had stood for 10 years. Everything happens in the Midwest. You are missing out. *I meant to post this Monday. Somehow, I forgot. Whoops. **Another thing it is hard to describe: The frustration that rippled through the crowd every time the RedBull announcers referred to the Mississippi River as "the ocean". This happened repeatedly. Guys, we get it, you're used to staging these things on the coast. But there's a freaking opposite bank, right over there. And the people on that side are rolling their eyes at you, too.
![Blogs Intelligenttravel Translocation Elephant-Crossing[3]](http://www.boingboing.net/images/_blogs_intelligenttravel_Translocation_Elephant-Crossing%5B3%5D.jpg) Via Submitterator, BB pal Marilyn Terrell shares with us the above photo of a magnificent elephant crossing a road between stone cottages in Scotland. Huh? This image is from Translocation, a new book by photographer George Logan, depicting African animals shooped into Logan's home of Scotland: a cheetah running beside a loch, water buffalo and celtic cross tombstones, and the like. National Geographic has a gallery of the photos. From NatGeo: Logan, a gold medal winner at the Association of Photographers Awards, traveled to such locations as South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, and Botswana to photograph his subjects in their natural habitats before combining them with shots of his native Scotland, including the Isle of Skye. The idea for the book was inspired by Logan's own childhood fantasies of exotic animals being part of his familiar surroundings.The Elephants of Scotland
The good news: You're less likely to injure yourself while working out with Wii Fit than while working out at the gym. The bad news: The Wii is safer because you are doing less. "People tend to burn twice as many calories per minute doing an actual activity than when doing the same activity on the Wii." What some are identifying as the Daft Punk score for Disney's Tron Legacy movie has been leaked. I blame Julian Assange.  On the cover of the current issue of TIME: Aisha, an 18 year-old Afghan girl whose nose was cut off for "shaming" her in-laws. Her story blogged previously on Boing Boing here. The cover is sure to shock, and some criticize it as "Afghansploitation": an image used at a sensitive moment, to inspire support for endless war. (Thanks, Kristie LuStout)
The coach for the North Korean soccer team has been banished to a life of hard labor as a construction worker, because the team failed in their "ideological struggle" to succeed at the World Cup in South Africa. [ Watch video: view at YouTube or Download MP4. ]
Boing Boing Video proudly presents Markets of Britain, discovered by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz from the archives of a great and underappreciated documentary filmmaker named Lee Titt, who also never existed. Earlier this week, we presented this Boing Boing Video interview with Popper and Serafinowicz about their "Look Around You" DVD, just been released in the USA. This film was presented at a recent launch event in Los Angeles, blogged previously on Boing Boing. Mini emus! Buy the DVD. Below, a trailer for the DVD produced by BBC America. The actual show is a lot weirder.
Electronic musician Tettix just released A New Challenger, a remix album featuring tracks from his earlier T.K.O.E.P.. Alex Mauer, Derris-Kharlan, Disasterpeace, Hélas Techne and Minusbaby worked with him to create it. How did it come together? Well, it's a funny story. Initially it was a project for Attractmode. Adam Robezolli over there contacted me about doing a shirt for Dragon Punch. He was going to get this guy Akutou to do the shirt, print it up, split the proceeds with me. I was totally down for that. Then he recommended maybe releasing an EP of Dragon Punch remixes to go with the shirt and had some remixers in mind. This was almost a year ago now. That's an aeon in internet time! Obviously things did not go according to plan. The shirt, it turns out, was a total creative block for me and I eventually gave up and told Adam it was too stressful to work a design job all day and then come home and try to design a shirt, so I was handing the reins back to him. Perhaps a shirt will one day be created, perhaps not. So it goes. So you took over the remix project yourself? I took over the remix project myself. Started contacting chiptunes musicians I respected about being involved. Decided it would be more fun to open up the entire album for remixing instead of Dragon Punch. I was surprised how responsive people were! Initially, it was still going to be called "Dragon Punch E.P." and was also going to feature the album version of Dragon Punch in addition to the remixes. Did you get everyone involved you wanted? I had the whole thing buttoned up and ready to release. And then minusbaby got back to me three weeks after I emailed him and wanted to remix Clothesline. Obviously, I wanted him involved so I decided to hold off the release. His sudden unexpected inclusion was also when I got the "A New Challenger!" idea. So what was once "Disasterpeace's Dragon Fist Rising Mix" became "Disasterpeace vs. Dragon Punch!" and so on. I wrote the interstitial tracks, which were a ton of fun. Might do an extended mix of Continue, too. And then rebuttoned the album up for release. I'm glad minusbaby was such a late-comer, I think the album concept is much stronger because of it. And his remix is sick. So, somehow, this project started as a Dragon Punch t-shirt and ended up as a T.K.O.E.P. remix album. Download A New Challenger free of charge at Tettix's website.
In the world of design, urban mobility is much more than how you get from point A to point B. Urban mobility operates at the intersection of myriad innovation freeways, from architecture to infrastructure, technology to transportation, city planning to style. It's about feet, fashion, bikes, busses, automobiles, and yes, even cars that fly. Just ask Jens Martin Skibsted, co-designer of Terrafugia's new Transition Roadable Aircraft, aka flying car.
Kevin Kelly has compiled a list of the 100 greatest long-form magazine articles ever published. He has found links to the text of each article, and says: "I'd like to have folks start to vote up the best (although they can still add). There's a Top Five that has emerged. Maybe we can get a top 10."
Here are the top 5 (based on the number of people who have recommended them to Kevin): David Foster Wallace, "Federer As Religious Experience." The New York Times, Play Magazine, August 20, 2006. David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster." Gourmet Magazine, Aug 2004. Neal Stephenson, "Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet." Wired, December 1996. On laying trans-oceanic fiber optic cable. Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Esquire, April 1966. Ron Rosenbaum, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box." Esquire, October 1971. The first and best account of telephone hackers, more amazing than you might believe. My contribution to the list is Susan Orlean, "Orchid Fever." The New Yorker, January 23, 1995. The Best Magazine Articles Ever
Rocky and Balls's "Girls Like Boys With Skills" is probably the dirtiest double-entendre ukulele ditty since George Formby sang "With My Little Ukulele In My Hand."
Team America lives on. Jeff Koyen sends this along and asks, "Anyone remember Evil Bert spotted alongside Osama in Bangladesh?" Indeed. At left, a snapshot of the original Kim Jong Il puppet from the Team America movie. I shot the photo during a visit earlier this year to South Park Studios. The little guy does get around.
A press alert received by Boing Boing from the U.S. Army Public Affairs Office reports that PFC Bradley Manning— who is believed to have provided Wikileaks with a trove of classified data including the "Collateral Murder" video and the recent "Afghan War Diaries" archive— was today transferred from the Theater Field Confinement Facility in Kuwait to the Marine Corps Base Quantico Brig in Quantico, Virginia. Snip:
Earlier today, an announcement that investigators had found evidence linking Manning to the Wikileaks material, and Wired reported of previous conflicts Manning may have had with Army higher-ups, over YouTube videos the 22-year-old uploaded containing information about classified facilities.
"An Army private suspected of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks was admonished as a trainee in 2008 for uploading YouTube videos discussing classified facilities, according to an Army official with direct knowledge of the incident." Wired News has more. Rebecca MacKinnon reports: "Numerous major American and European news outlets are reporting that Google is blocked in China, based on the information appearing on Google's Mainland China service availability page. However no journalist has actually confirmed with a human being at Google that this information is correct. What's more, I've heard from several dozen people all over China who say that Google isn't blocked for them when they access it on their Internet connections from Beijing to Shanghai to Sichuan to Hunan." 
In this Instructable, talbotron22 shows how to make "Kitty Crack," an ultra-potent catnip extract containing nepetalactone, catnip's active ingredient. One pound of catnip yielded 143mg of nepetalactone. A note about safety. Yes, it is safe to use this extract on cats. I have looked into it, and there are a number of studies (very interesting in their own right) using pure nepetalactone on cats in experiments trying to figure out why it causes them to go bonkers. The upshot is that it's pretty safe. In the last of the references below, the LD50 of nepetalactone was determined to be 1550 mg/kg (about the same as aspirin), meaning you would have to force feed your average 5 kg cat ~8 grams in order to cause it any harm. So as long as you are reasonable with the extract it should pose no harm.DIY Kitty Crack: ultra-potent catnip extract
Prepare to have your mind blown. Certain dinosaurs—physically disparate enough that we've always thought of them as different species—may actually be the same animal at different stages of its life cycle. Also: Those big, protective-looking bone formations surrounding some dinos' heads and necks probably weren't all that useful as a defense against predators. Case in point, triceratops. Or, maybe we should be calling it torosaurus now, I'm not sure. See, according to research done by scientists at Montana's Museum of the Rockies, the familiar triceratops is really just the juvenile form of the more-elaborately be-frilled and be-horned torosaurus.
There are other species this might apply to, as well. Some with even bigger shifts in appearance. While this is a Big Hairy Deal for dinosaur science, it also elicits a little bit of a "duh" moment when you go back and look at the animals in question. What you should really be getting out of this story is an illustration of how difficult it is to study a creature that's been extinct for millions of years. After all—as my husband pointed out—nobody would be shocked to learn that a baby chick, an adult chicken, and plate of parmigiana were all the same animal. But that's because we've experienced chickens. Were an alien to drop in on Earth for one afternoon, they might be just as amazed at the life cycle of poultry as we are now at the triceratops/torosaurus'. Paleontologists are tasked with reconstructing the lives of animals nobody has ever seen alive. And that creates a world where the obvious just isn't. New Scientist: Morph-o-saurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us (Via John Taylor Williams) Image courtesy Flickr user lindseywb, via CC
Kite designer Tim Elverston sent in this video through Submitterator, showing his friend making a piece of kite line move "magically" with the help of static electricity. Also, they got shocked. If you listen to the video through headphones, you can clearly hear an electrical buzzing every time their fingers get close to the kite line. Interestingly, the effect seems to have been dependent on the line material, and the bench the kite was tied to—both of which were made from plastic composite.
»
[+] 3D-printed clothing
Via our Submitterator, Fang McGee points us to this novel use of 3D printers: spitting out fabric structures for clothing. From Ecouterre:
"Are 3D-Printed Fabrics the Future of Sustainable Textiles?" (via Submitterator)
I'm speaking Monday, Aug. 16th, at the University of New Mexico's INCBN IGERT Symposium, which focuses on the integration of neuroscience and nanotechnology. As the pre-symposium dinner entertainment, I'll be talking about "Those Fabulous Octopus Brains"—looking at cephalopod intelligence and brain structure. I fully admit that my topic choice is a blatant attempt to curry audience favor w/ cute pictures of octopuses. If you won't be attending, don't worry. It looks like I should be able to get video of the presentation, which will be posted here. (Unless I bomb, in which case we shall never speak of this again.)
On August 14-15, San Francisco's Golden Gate Park will host Outside Lands, a massive music festival with several dozen excellent bands, food, wine, art, and a big dose of Bay Area culture. Main stage performers include Kings of Leon, Furthur featuring Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, The Strokes, My Morning Jacket, Al Green, and Cat Power. There are also a slew of killer acts throughout the day on smaller stages, from Gogol Bordello to Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars to Rebirth Brass Band. The best news is that our friends at Outside Lands kindly provided Boing Boing with two pairs of two-day tickets to give away to our readers! ($140/ticket value!) Want them? Tell us why. Or rather, sing it to us. To enter our Outisde Lands 2010 ticket contest, please compose a song about why you want to go to the festival, and record it on video or audio. Your song can be as simple (a capella!) to as elaborate (orchestral!) as you want. If you make a video, please upload it to YouTube. Audio only recordings should be posted on Archive.org. Our own Dean "Dino" Putney is going to judge, so email dean at boing boing dot net with a link to your entry. The deadline for entries is August 4 at 11:59pm PDT. We'll announce the winners on Friday, August 6. Good luck and we look forward to, er, hearing from you! For more on Outside Lands, click here. For Boing Boing Video coverage of Outside Lands 2008, click here.
The assignments included eating fugu (blowfish sashimi that has a toxin that could kill you if not prepared properly), going to a capsule hotel, visiting the Ghibli Museum, riding a roller coaster on top of a building in a shopping center, reporting on the "coolest of the cooler things happening in Japan" (some kind of barrel with poles on it and tentacle-backpacks hanging from it -- I have to admit I had no idea what he was talking about here), eating okonomiyaki (a bowl of raw egg, red ginger, pork, squid, shrimp, and cabbage that you cook yourself), and so on. Schwieger's art is funny and detailed, and his observations are insightful. Moresukine is an enjoyable, too-brief account of a Westerner trying to discover Japanese culture.
[+ desc][+ titles]
3. MoreoverAd - www.pennystockpickalert.com Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:42AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:41AM GMT »
[+] Et cetera | Book reviewsGuardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:41AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:41AM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 31 2010 12:41AM GMT New York Times Jul 30 2010 11:53PM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 30 2010 11:45PM GMT Guardian.co.uk Jul 30 2010 11:23PM GMT Chicago Tribune Jul 30 2010 10:47PM GMT Chicago Tribune Jul 30 2010 10:47PM GMT Chicago Tribune Jul 30 2010 10:47PM GMT Chicago Tribune Jul 30 2010 10:47PM GMT Chicago Tribune Jul 30 2010 10:47PM GMT Telegraph Jul 30 2010 10:34PM GMT Science News Online Jul 30 2010 8:36PM GMT Science News Online Jul 30 2010 8:35PM GMT Science News Online Jul 30 2010 8:35PM GMT New York Times Jul 30 2010 7:49PM GMT Electronic Intifada Jul 30 2010 7:34PM GMT Livemint.com Jul 30 2010 5:48PM GMT Livemint.com Jul 30 2010 5:48PM GMT Antiques Digest Jul 30 2010 5:35PM GMT Star-Telegram Jul 30 2010 4:01PM GMT Star-Telegram Jul 30 2010 4:01PM GMT [+ desc][+ titles]
4. Gary Shewan5. Roland Piquepaille’s Technology TrendsSteven Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, recently talked with BusinessWeek. In this column, he expressed his thoughts on a wide range of topics. Here are my favorite picks. Until now, 3D scanning was expensive and mostly used by corporations. Now, a new technology developed in Australia by CSIRO has the potential to deliver 3D scanners in our homes, if manufacturers are interested of course. One of the growing market segment of the bakery industry is the production of buns and other rolls for fast-food restaurants. Now, research engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are working with bakers from Flowers Bakery on a machine vision-based approach in a quest to produce perfect buns. In "Robo-receptionist clocks on," Nature tells us the story of Inkha, a robot which greets guests of King's College London (KCL) and adds artificial intelligence to the front desk. »
[+] Is Time Travel Possible?You probably read Timeline, the book by Michael Crichton in which a group of historians travels back in time. As the movie adaptation is about to be released, Scientific American discussed with theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, whose ideas inspired Crichton, and asked him if time travel was plausible. During SC2003, the TeraGyroid Project used more than 6,000 processors and 17 teraflops at six supercomputing facilities located on two continents. The New Scientist says that a robot able to carry humans was demonstrated in Tokyo. The article provides a nice picture. [+ desc]
6. AEIOU7. GlobebloggerCross-posted from the Spanning Backup Blog
Now the ability to back up Google Calendar, Contacts, and Docs is commercially available at spanningbackup.com. Data loss and corruption is a serious problem for Google Apps users. Browse through the Google Apps help forums and you'll find hundreds of posts from users who have lost their data and need help. The usual reply, when one is given, is, "Sorry, your data is gone for good." If those users had been using Spanning Backup, they'd be able to restore their data with just a couple of clicks. Clay Spinuzzi is an associate professor at the University of Texas and an early user of Spanning Backup. Here's what he has so say: I've been using Google Docs almost daily since 2006, and I'm totally sold on cloud-based word processing. But how about cloud-based backups? For years, I had to safeguard my thousands of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations by manually downloading them once a week - and I always worried that I would miss something. But with Spanning Backup, I never have to worry about backups. Backup is dependable, browsing files is easy, and restoring a file is transparent. It just works. Spanning Backup is a pure cloud-based application built on Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, SQS, EBS, CloudFront, and CloudWatch) and is designed to scale to millions of users. It uses a number of Google API's (Calendar, Contacts, DocList, Docs, Spreadsheets, Provisioning, AuthSub, and OpenID Federated Login) and is natively integrated with the Google Apps Marketplace to support domain-wide provisioning and Google Universal Navigation. The service is available for individuals at spanningbackup.com or for entire Google Apps domains on the Google Apps Marketplace at spanningbackup.com/marketplace. After a 30-day free trial period, a subscription costs $3.95/month or $39.95/year per user. Educational, non-profit, and volume discounts are available. Spanning Sync customers get an automatic $10 discount off their first year's subscription. Spanning Sync, Inc., based in Austin, Texas, was founded in 2006 by Charlie Wood and Larry Hendricks. The company's eponymous product For more information please contact info@spanningbackup.com.
New Polymath is a breathless run-through of the technological forces that are defining the new rules of business and the companies that are successfully harnessing those forces to succeed. (If that sentence hurt your brain, you might want to get a good night's sleep before diving into New Polymath.) While many business authors stretch what should have been an article into a book, Vinnie compresses what could have been a collection of business books into a single volume. Vinnie's passion for innovation and sweeping knowledge of what's happening right now make New Polymath a fascinating read. Disclosure: Vinnie is a friend of mine, and mentions my company in his book.
Pixelpipe is a free iPhone app and online service whose latest version lets you upload full 720p videos (up to 200MB) from your iPhone 4 to a variety of online services including YouTube. It even features queued uploads that work in the background, so your phone isn't tied up while you're pushing all those bits. In my testing so far it's worked flawlessly and is exactly what I was looking for. It also performs a bunch of other functions, like uploading photos and routing your videos and photos to various social media channels, but I haven't looked into those yet. Following up on yesterday's post I just tried uploading a 720p video from my iPhone 4 to Apple's own MobileMe service. Disappointingly, the uploaded video was downsized from its original 1280x720 resolution to 568x320 and compressed from 12.9MB to 983KB. The resulting loss of quality was, needless to say, significant. What I want is a way to shoot 720p video on my iPhone and upload it directly to the cloud without any loss of quality. It looks like SmugMug supports HD video with their $149/year Pro plan, but it's not clear whether their iPhone app allows uploading HD video, and given the number of reviews claiming it crashes when trying to upload video I'm not inclined to test it myself, at least not yet. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them. Thanks! Since iPhone 4 can now capture 720p videos, I wondered if uploading them directly from the Camera app to YouTube would result in any loss of quality compared to syncing the iPhone with a Mac and then uploading from there. The short answer is that yes, they do. I shot a quick test video and uploaded it from my iPhone. Even though the original source was shot at 720p, the resulting YouTube video maxes out at 360p: I then transferred the same movie from my iPhone to my Mac with iTunes and uploaded it to YouTube via their web interface. The resulting video can be shown at the full 720p resolution: So if you want your iPhone videos to look best on YouTube, don't upload them directly from the device. Instead, sync them to your Mac or PC and upload them from there. Anyone know if any video hosting services allow full-fidelity 720p uploads directly from the iPhone? »
[+] My Career PivotsChris Dixon has written a great post about pivoting: Ask yourself: if you started over today, would you build the same product? If not, consider significant changes to what you are building. The popular word for this today is "pivoting" and I think it is apropos. You aren't throwing away what you've learned or the good things you've built. You are keeping your strong leg grounded and adjusting your weak leg to move in a new direction. I suggest the same line of reasoning should apply to your career. Ask yourself: if you were starting out today, would you work at the same company? Would you even be in the same business? As I look back on the last ten years or so of my career, I see a set of such pivots that took me from content management and syndication (at Vignette and Stellent) to syndication and enterprise RSS (at NewsGator and Spanning Partners) to enterprise RSS and GData (with Spanning Sync) and now GData and other cloud-based API's, storage, and compute (with Spanning Backup). At the same time I've done an extensive tour of the org chart, first as an engineer, then in presales, then sales, then product management, then up the hill as a director, then VP, and finally a co-founder. (That being said, the last title on that list is both the lowliest and best job I've had.) Unsurprisingly, I've had more than one hiring manager raise an eyebrow when looking at my resume. Admittedly, it can look like I've taken a random walk through the technology industry. But in fact it's the result of doing exactly what Chris recommends: "keeping your strong leg grounded and adjusting your weak leg to move in a new direction". It will be interesting to discover what pivot is next. But I'm in no rush. Cross-posted from the Spanning Backup Blog The cloud is great. Your stuff is stored in only one place. No copies in email attachments, no copies on your laptop, your desktop, and your server. Make a change and there's no need to send out updates, because it's always in one place. Right? Right. But delete it in one place and it's gone. Gone. You can't just find a copy in email. Or on your laptop. It was stored in only one place, and now it's no longer there. Loosely connected systems are messy, but they have redundancy built in. Highly connected systems are more fragile. They need explicit redundancy, explicit backup systems. However important backup is in traditional desktop environments, its much more important in cloud-based environments.
Exposure We're getting close to the commercial release of Spanning Backup, so it's time to start directing people's attention toward it. (We recently performed our two-millionth backup. Time to light this candle!) Toward that end, here's a quick video showing what it's all about:
We work at the leading edge of Google's API's, so there's often information we need that's not documented anywhere. What's the maximum payload size for an HTTP POST to the Google Docs API? How do you enable compression when talking to the Google Calendar API? Is Google planning on implementing contact sharing, or would it be a good thing for us to do? The answers to these questions are at I/O, not online. Relationships It's important to remember that there are real people creating all of these ecosystems, companies, products, and features. And even though better online communications tools exist now than ever before, face-to-face conversation (often in a conference hallway or a hotel bar) is the most powerful way to establish and strengthen relationships with those people. Zeitgeist Finally, I want to get a sense of where Google and its ecosystem are going. From where I sit it looks like Google is emphasizing Android over the web, a strategy I would consider dangerous and ill-advised. I want to see if I get the same sense at the show. Oh Yeah, and a Party! Be sure to join us and our friends at RedMonk for beers at House of Shields Wednesday night. The first $500 of the bar tab is on Spanning! But even if you can't make it Wednesday night, please come by the Spanning booth in the Developer Sandbox area and say hello. We have some very exclusive laptop stockers for you. :-)
I started shopping for other laptop cases, and mentioned my broken Brenthaven bag on Twitter. Minutes later, someone from Brenthaven contacted me and suggested I send the bag back to get a replacement. As it turns out, they have a lifetime guarantee on their products and this kind of problem is covered. (Take that, Tumi!) I hadn't registered for it when I bought the bag, but that didn't make a difference. I contacted their service department, got a return authorization number, and sent it in. That was two weeks ago today. This morning FedEx delivered a brand new Trek backpack to my door. It's even a newer model, with better zipper pulls and tracks. I have to say I'm delighted with both Brenthaven's product and their customer service. The backpack itself is very high-quality, fits my 15" MacBook Pro like a glove, and has just the right number and type of compartments. Also, after carrying an older Targus laptop bag for the last two weeks—and feeling every minute of it in my lower back—I'll never go back to carrying a traditional over-the-shoulder case again. Aside from that, the fact that they're actively listening for customers who need help is more than just icing on the cake; it's turned me into a customer for life. The next time I need anything Brenthaven makes, like maybe an iPad sleeve, I'll look no further. »
[+] Talking iPadMy buddy BJ and I had a great time talking with Omar Gallaga at the Statesman earlier this week about our new iPads. Here's Omar's article, plus some video they shot:
I just ran the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on my iPad and my (2.66GHz Unibody) MacBook Pro. The raw results are here and here, respectively. Here's the comparison:
It's one thing not to be able to run Flash apps. But JavaScript performance like this effectively means the iPad can't run complex JavaScript apps either. Interesting. Update: Tim Anderson reports that even his $325 netbook runs the SunSpider benchmark 4.5x faster than an iPad. This (plus, of course, Flash support) could turn out to be a distinct competitive advantage for Google Chrome OS netbooks, which will surely be JavaScript speed demons. Update 2: Iñaki Rodríguez ran the benchmark on his Acer 1810T netbook ($612 at Amazon) running Google Chrome. The results were 13.3x as fast as an iPad. This could turn out to be a BFD. Update 3: According to the benchmark, the iPad runs JavaScript 1.52x as fast as an iPhone 3GS. In his post The Kids are Alright, John Gruber quotes a bunch of people complaining that the iPad isn't a hacker playground. Cory Doctorow kvetches that you can't open it up. Alex Pane frets kids with iPads won't grow up to become programmers. Mark Pilgrim despairs that Apple is trying to stunt his kids' sense of wonder. Good lord, guys, get a grip! As Gruber points out, you can indeed write code for iPad—it just requires a Mac to do it on. And just like Gruber, my first computer—the one that inspired me to learn how to write programs—was an Atari 2600. Could you code directly on it? The BASIC Programming cartridge aside, no. But I wanted to learn to write the kind of games I was playing, so when my dad bought an IBM PC I picked up the BASIC manual and got cracking. Machines like these inspire kids. They want to know what makes them work, and how to make them work differently. If you want to bag on a technology platform, go after the video game console market. Good luck cobbling together a little app in your bedroom for your PS3. But the minute my kids ask me for a Mac mini and an Apple Developer Program account, I'll buy it. And when they do, I bet they will have been inspired by a descendant of the iPad. Compare this image (click for larger image):
Which way do you see the world? There's a powerful lesson there. »
[+] What I Tweet AboutThese days I, uh, tweet a lot more than I, er, blog. Here's what I tweet most about, according to tweet cloud:
This is a paper I wrote for my Health Economics class. I originally shared it on Google Docs, but due to popular demand (well, from one person anyway :) I'm cross-posting it here. Comments welcome. Charlie Wood On November 7, 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 3962, a comprehensive health care reform bill that included among its numerous provisions the creation of a health insurance program to be operated by the federal government, commonly called "the public option", and a mandate that most legal U.S. residents obtain health insurance.1 This paper examines how the combination of the public option and the individual mandate should, all else equal, be expected to affect health insurance premiums facing both participants and non-participants in the program and total medical expenditures. What is the Public Option? In order to analyze the effects of the public option it is important first to define it. The public option as described by HR 3962 is a government-operated health insurance program that will offer coverage to legal U.S. residents who are not covered by existing government programs like Medicare or Medicaid and who do not have insurance through their employers. Reimbursement rates for health care items and services will be negotiated with health care providers by the government. The premiums charged to participants will be required to cover the cost of the program itself, including startup costs, benefits, administrative costs, and a "contingency margin" of at least 90 days of estimated claims. Benefits and premiums for the various levels of coverage available under the public option will be published online. In addition, although participation in the public option itself is voluntary, HR 3962 includes a mandate that most legal U.S. residents obtain health insurance coverage. Effects on Premiums Faced by Those Not Covered by Group Insurance People eligible for the public option will see the most immediate, direct effect on the premiums they face for health insurance. Since they are covered by neither employer-provided plans nor government programs like Medicare or Medicaid, those people currently have two options: forgo health insurance altogether or purchase individual coverage, which is typically very expensive. Four main factors contribute to the high premiums in the market for individual health insurance: adverse selection and a lack of economies of scale, both of which increase the insurer's costs, and the market's oligopoly structure and limited price transparency, both of which allow insurers to set prices above marginal cost. Together the public option and the individual mandate address each of these factors, which should lead to lower premiums. First, the information asymmetry inherent in the market for health insurance can lead to adverse selection and ever-increasing premiums. People generally know more than their insurer about how much health care they're likely to consume. Relatively healthier people, that is, those who expect their health care expenditures to be less than the premiums they face, can simply opt out and not buy insurance. The remaining pool of people is relatively less healthy and will therefore incur higher average health care costs, driving up actuarially fair premiums (AFP's). Again, the healthiest people in the group opt out of insurance and the cycle repeats, driving premiums ever higher. The individual mandate included in HR 3962 prevents this cycle by requiring most legal residents to carry qualifying health insurance, solving the problem of adverse selection and substantially lowering AFP's. Second, the cost of insuring individuals is significantly greater than that of insuring groups due in large part to the economies of scale enjoyed by group insurers. Loading fees for individual policies ranges from 60%-80% of benefits, while those of groups of more than 1,000 are only 5%-8% of benefits.2 The public option is a group plan expected to cover millions of people, and should therefore enjoy significant economies of scale. Third, the health insurance industry is not a perfectly competitive market, as evidenced by the fact that insurers are able to generate and sustain profits.3 In fact, individual health insurance markets are typically oligopolies dominated by their top three firms.4 As oligopolists, private insurers set prices above marginal cost (PO in Figure 1) and provide an economically inefficient quantity of insurance (QO).  Figure 1. Oligopolistic vs. Competitive Pricing Since the public option is required to (and presumably, only allowed to) break even, it acts as a competitive firm, setting premiums equal to marginal cost and thereby lowering premiums faced by consumers from PO to PC. Finally, since information about benefits and premiums for the public option will be easily available via an online exchange established by HR 3962, consumers will enjoy increased price transparency, leading to more competition and lower premiums. One factor that would make the public option more expensive for some people than it would otherwise be is the requirement that it not vary premiums to reflect differences in enrollees' health. While such a community rating system benefits sicker participants, to cover its costs it does so at the expense of those who are healthier, since they would pay lower premiums if their good health could be taken into account as with experience rating. However, some risk-adjustment mechanisms for the public option are specified and allow premiums for the oldest participants to be twice those of the youngest, helping to mitigate the issue. By solving the problem of adverse selection with an individual mandate, taking advantage of economies of scale, setting prices equal to marginal cost, and increasing price transparency, the public option is expected to offer premiums that are lower than those currently facing people not covered by group insurance. Effects on Premiums Faced by Those Covered by Group Insurance Two other groups will be eligible for the public option in addition to individuals not currently covered by group insurance: employees of small businesses that choose to participate in the public option and workers with employer-based coverage whose existing premiums exceed 12 percent of their income. Even though the public option will enjoy greater economies of scale than do private plans for small groups, it will still be smaller overall than existing large insurers and will, according to the Congressional Budget Office, "probably engage in less management of utilization by its enrollees and attract a less healthy pool of enrollees," and will, "typically have premiums that are somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans."5 Higher premiums will provide no downward pressure on premiums for existing employer-provided plans. Effects on Total Medical Expenditures Total medical expenditures are determined by the prices paid for medical care and the quantity of care consumed. The public option's impact on these factors will determine its effect on total expenditures. While larger insurers are able to negotiate lower rates with providers, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the administrator of the public option will have limited price negotiating power, and that therefore, "The rates the public plan pays to providers would, on average, probably be comparable to the rates paid by private insurers."6 In other words, the public option will not have an appreciable effect on prices paid for medical care. Its effect on total medical expenditures will therefore be determined by how it impacts the quantity of care consumed. Demand for certain types of medical care is elastic, and in such cases the quantity consumed depends not on the prices actually paid to providers for care, but the effective prices facing the consumer. The public plan's limited cost-sharing makes these two prices different. For instance, demand is elastic for both well care and mental health care.7 Both are covered by the public option, so program participants will face lower prices for these services (shown as P1 in Figure 2) than the prices actually paid to providers (P0). These artificially low prices will lead people to consume more of these services than they would otherwise.8  Figure 2. Increasing Medical Expenditures Due to Increased Utilization Since the prices paid to providers are expected to remain the same but the quantity consumed should increase, total medical expenditures should be expected to increase. Conclusion: Lower Premiums for Some, Higher Total Medical Expenditures The public option is only one of many provisions of the health care reforms being debated in the Congress, and will affect more than just health insurance premiums and total medical expenditures. Nevertheless, its expected effects on these two important facets of health economics are clear. Health insurance premiums facing people not currently covered by government- or employer-provided programs should be significantly reduced, while those for others should remain largely unchanged. Prices paid to providers for medical services should remain unchanged, but consumption should increase. As a result, total health care expenditures should be expected to increase. 1 Sweeping Health Care Plan Passes House, The New York Times, 7 November 2009 No longer content merely to drift into irrelevance, Microsoft is now actively trying to sabotage itself—and nary a tear will be shed. Now, go follow @dondodge.
BusinessWeek stole the idea, and even the headline, for this blog post. But I thought of it first. And mine's better. Steve Jobs is the CEO of the Decade. He's a multi-billionaire. And he's the best presentation presenter in the world. So what's his secret? Actually, he has exactly three of them. And by using these secrets, you can be the best presentation presenter in the world too. Here they are: 3. Make the best products in the worldThis one is so obvious that most people overlook it. It's hard to present a great presentation without something great to present. So first, create something everybody in the world wants, like a Mac, an iPod, or an iPhone, then give a presentation about it. Once you do, you'll be on your way to being the best presentation presenter in the world.2. Present themOnce you've made the best products in the world, don't make the common mistake of forgetting to present them to people. Find a stage, go up on it, and turn towards the audience. Then hold up these best products in the world that you've made and smile.Also, feel free to go ahead and tell people that your products are the best products in the world, just in case they don't understand why you're smiling. 1. Be Steve JobsBut the most important Steve Jobs presentation secret? Be Steve Jobs. Duh.
This article in the New York Times ponders Microsoft's seeming drift into irrelevance and quotes Google's Dave Girouard as saying, "The big difference in technology here is the pace of innovation." But as a developer using both Microsoft and Google technologies, I can tell you what the difference is. When I wanted to develop a new service using Google's technology their first question was, "How can we help?" When I wanted to develop using Microsoft's their first question was, "Where's your check for $100,000?" True story.
Wilson is being challenged by Rob Miller, a retired Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq. I just made a donation to Miller's campaign and urge you to as well. Here's Rob Miller in his own words on why he's running for Congress: I never thought I would run for Congress -- or feel like I had to. I have always thought of myself as a Marine. I started thinking that way not long after my father died when I was 14 years old. Since I enlisted at the age of 20, the Marine Corps has been my extended family and I couldn't imagine that would ever change. Since last night, Rob Miller's campaign has raised over $500,000. You can track his progress toward $1 million here. Last night Joe Wilson showed a shocking lack of respect for the presidency of the United States. He should now be shown the door.
Celebrity marriages are hard to maintain and often end in very messy, very public divorces. But for the moment at least, Apple and Google are still together. Eric Schmidt still sits on Apple's board, but now recuses himself from mobile phone discussions at board meetings. Presumably he'll need to start doing the same when the subjects of online productivity applications—or photo applications for that matter—come up. The news this morning: Dr. Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple's Board of Directors: "Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple's Board." —Steve Jobs This marks a sad turning point in the relationship between the world's two most innovative companies. I'm sure Jennifer Aniston, er, Steve Ballmer is pleased.
iPhone OS 3.0 Software Apple® iPhone™ users, get started with Wi-Fi Finally, a reason to go to Starbucks. And before you ask, Macworld explains why this is a big deal: Last year, AT&T granted its iPhone-using subscribers free access to what’s now 20,000 McDonald’s, Starbucks, airports, and other locations in AT&T’s U.S. hotspot network. But the process of logging in was tedious. At the hotspot, you had to enter your phone number, receive a free SMS, and then click a link to gain access. (App developer Devicescape made this process much easier via its Easy Wi-Fi apps.) iPhone OS 3.0 automates that process, not just for AT&T but for non-U.S. carriers who include Wi-Fi access in their plans. »
[+] Happy Flag Day!From Wikipedia: In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777. »
[+] Define: Pent-Up Demand
More specifically, what's the minimum number of people required to run Google's money-making operations? Anyone care to hazard a guess? (My estimate: the AdWords sales team, a few of these guys at each data center, and an accountant. Oh, and the Google Apps group. :)
Initially I thought, "Awesome! Now my Mac can access the Internet even when there's no Wifi! I'll use this all the time!" But when I tried to think of how often that happens I came up empty. The only places I find myself without Wifi are actually places that do have it but charge for it: usually Starbuck's, airports, and hotels. And at a rumored $15/month for tethering, it would be cheaper just to pay for the WiFi. At our cabin in Colorado we have great Wifi but no cell coverage. Same with most convention centers. (Have you ever tried to make a call from the bowels of Moscone South?) So while Apple and AT&T have been figuring out the details of tethering, WiFi has become more ubiquitous than cell coverage—at least for me.
And with Skype that real revolution just got one big step closer. It occurs to me that this "Great Recession" (and to paraphrase Axl Rose, what's so great about recessions anyway?) might wind up serving as a fascinating experiment: a no-holds-barred stress test of the economies of countries around the world, and of the global economy itself. Last week I read Daniel Suarez's Daemon, a techno-thriller in which an artificial intelligence threatens to take over the world. (Ha!) In the book, companies and governments are motivated to comply with the AI's demands by the threat of an unthinkable economic apocalypse. Well, since Mr. Suarez wrote Daemon, that apocalypse has become not only thinkable but, according to the news, actual. And although we may not have seen the worst yet, life goes on. When we come out of this thing on the other side, will we as a country and a world be forever weakened? I doubt it. We may come out not only stronger but also, having passed a serious stress test, more aware of our strength than ever before. [+ desc][+ titles]
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...Designer-researchers like Freedom of Creation in Amsterdam and Philip Delamore at the London College of Fashion are cranking out seamless, flexible textile structures using software that converts three-dimensional body data into skin-conforming fabric structures. The potential for bespoke clothing, tailored to the specific individual, are as abundant as the patterns that can be created, from interlocking Mobius motifs to tightly woven meshes.
In late 2005 Dirk Schwieger, a German cartoonist, went to live in Japan for a year. He got an office job, and started keeping a journal of his experiences in Tokyo. On his 
