If you haven’t heard of Edward Tufte or have but haven’t read anything by him, I highly recommend you check out his site: Edward Tufte
The book above, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, will change the way you look at the depiction of information. He has lots of great books, including his new one:
He also writes scathingly on Powerpoint. 🙂 See here. Unfortunately, Powerpoint marches on. Pity.
Lifehacker has the goods here, including two options:
option 1: How to host a personal wiki on your home computer
option 2: Set up your personal Wikipedia
(Hint: they use different software stacks.)
If you want regular updates on value wine in Ontario, check out the excellent Billy’s Best (Value) Bottles. Always great advice. For example, one wine I forgot is the the Italian Merlot from Cesari: $6.20! A steal.
a Sunlight Foundation pilot project to prototype tech ideas to improve government transparency and political influence disclosure. We also provide technical support to Sunlight Foundation sponsored projects.
Politics is going to get more interesting.
…: everyone. 🙂
The good folks at getty images have revamped their site, making it even better to access their wealth of material. Check it out! Changes are, if you look at advertising (and who doesn’t), you are already familiar with their work.
There’s a gem of a story here on being appreciated (or not being appreciated here) in: A Dog’s Life
Ok, I posted on Amy W before, but I love her music, so here is her big hit, the very timely, Rehab
I have always been impressed by the construction of Justin Timberlake’s/Timbaland’s Sexyback. I figure a DJ could spin that song any of a thousand of ways and have people dancing to the same song for an hour. It’s really well made in that sense, which is no surprise, given the involvement of Timbaland.
I was thinking something similar tonight when listening to Rihanna/Jay-Z’s Umbrella and the massive hooks in it. (Think: “ella-ella” and anything else you can’t get out of your head after listening to it.) It too is really well constructed, which is also no surprise, given Jay-Z’s involvement. You could watch the video, but it will distract you from the very taut vocals. Check out Rhianna singing Umbrella.
ok, here’s the (so-so) video of the anything but so-so Rhianna 🙂
and here’s Sexyback
bubbl.us is a nice mindmapping tool that is web based. I like it’s export features, among other things. It makes nice jpegs like this:
(Actually, it makes even nicer drawings…I just crunched it down to make it fit. Try it! :))
CNN, in conjunction with
has some advice on how to live A better life in no time
While my first response is to be snide, it is good, if not earth shattering advice. At the very least, look at it and say: yup, got that covered. 🙂
The Web site, The Printable CEO™, has a great tool called the Emergent Task Timer. It
Check it out at: Emergent Task Timer Online (Flash Alpha)
Or go to David Seah’s site for more productivity tips:
It is easy to justify wasting spending time with your computer (or blackberry) to access the Web compared to watching TV. With the Web, it feels like you are doing something useful: you are researching, or communicating with friends, or learning about new ideas and new technologies. Comparing this to the watching TV, it seems positively virtuous.
In fact, often times I believe people are simply wasting time on the Web. (Put your hand up if you have watched the Diet Coke/Mentos phenomenom or LOLCats). You may be like me: tired, or bored, or procrastinating, or just in the habit of sitting in front of computer. Likewise, you can be learning about things on TV, too. While there may be more opportunities to learn on the Web, there is a false dichotomy between the web and TV. YouTube has shown that, and Joost will push that concept even further. Indeed, television may have been the precursor to the web, just like telephone and telegraph were precursors to TV. It is all a continuuum, with crossovers of ideas between the various media.
Some thoughts on surfing around the Web when I knew I should be doing something better. Now go watch some TV and be a better person. 🙂
One alternative use of a BB is a flashlight.
When you have the backlight on high, it can illuminate more than you might think.
Something to think about in a jam. (pun intended.)
One of the key techniques in creating a successful blog is constant and regular updates. And the key ingredient for that is sources of content. One source can be a handful of web sites or blogs you can refer to and comment on. Another source is people who read and comment on your blog. Either way, if you have good sources of material for your blog, it gets a lot easier to do it.
One of my favourite parks is the one in Toronto’s Yorkville district. It has a distinctly untraditional layout. I recall a lot of people didn’t like the layout. It didn’t conform to what they thought of as a park. That’s was one of the things I liked about it. It made me think about parks, and how even older parks are contrived. There is nothing natural about most parks: they are quite artificial. This makes them no less beautiful. But they are man made nontheless. And it is this quality, among others, that I like about the Yorkville park.
One of the nice features that WordPress has is the ability to blog via a mobile device. Just goto https://m.wordpress.com
Very cool.
One thing interesting about FB is that you can start to see interesting patterns and behavoirs. Some of them are just random, but it is interesting. For example, a colleague from work and my mom recently changed their photos:
I think it is interesting that they both chose flowers and at the same time. It could be random, but I believe there is something more to it than that.
I was looking up someone on FB today, and by accident I came across someone I hadn’t seen since I worked at the Dalhousie gymnasium in the early 80s. While that is approximately 25 years ago, I still recognize her, and when I saw her photo, I remember what she used to look like, even though we were just acquaintances and I hadn’t thought about her since I left university.
Now this is not a new phenomenon. People used to leave a community and then return much later and recognize people. What is different, though, is the breadth and depth of how this can be done and how it will be done. Breadth: as more and more people join social networking sites like Facebook, you will be able to see MANY more people you haven’t seen in ages. Depth: you will be able to find out much more about them than you could in typical social settings. You can see their friends, their families, what they do, etc.
Smart People I Know 