I think it is hard to appreciate the magnitude of change in a country like China. I see cracks appear, like this one:
Slave Labor in China Sparks Outrage | TIME
We saw similar cracks in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. It’s time to watch for more cracks such as this.
Technology Review has an article on Holland and what it is doing in coming to terms with the affects of Global Warming, since it will be affected sooner than anyone. See Part I: Saving Holland
I saw Tim Ferriss talk recently . Now he’s featured in the nytimes.com web site:
The Hectic Chronicles – New York Times
He has lots of great advice on his web site and in his book: The 4-Hour Workweek.
I recommend you check them both out now (instead of continuing to plough through your email. Go on…the email will be there when you get back 🙂 ).
Like alot of IT workers, I use LinkedIn, but pretty passively. However, the Web Worker Daily blog has a article outlining 20 Ways to Use LinkedIn Productively that I need to take a look at.
As Lotus Software used to advise: work the web. 🙂
They say it is for “kids”, but who doesn’t like ice cream? Now you can make your own without no equipment other than a bag. See Kids Domain Crafts – Ice Cream in a Bag. The first person to try it, please comment here, ok?
(Image from gettyimages.com)
What I find remarkable about this talk by Ken Robinson is how it manages to be insightful and very funny. You can watch it just for the humour and have a good laugh. But like any TED talk, you will also gain alot by the ideas presented. Goto YouTube and see:
Do schools today kill creativity? (Ken Robinson, TEDTalks)
It’s also a Master class in how to present.
LabPixies – My Progress Bar is fun! You can set your own progress bar settings for things, such as: 30 minutes until lunch, 60 minutes of meeting …fun, 90 minutes to finish this presentation, etc. You can post it all kinds of places, like your Google home page, myspace, and other places.
Those LabPixie people have lots of fun gadgets you can borrow.
The washingtonpost.com has a cool map showing all the places in the world Bill Clinton has spoken. It’s impressive.
(Clinton’s Golden Voice | Bill Clinton’s Paid Speeches | washingtonpost.com)
If you read this article, Bill Clinton Made $10 Million From Speeches – washingtonpost.com you’ll see some impressive numbers, including:
For example, Clinton earned $750,000 from three speeches over three days in February in Australia and New Zealand and $1.74 million from six speeches over four days in September in England, Ireland, South Africa, Germany and Denmark. The latter total included $450,000 for a single speech in London on Sept. 26 at a gala dinner of the Fortune Forum, a nonprofit group that aids international charities.Clinton made 352 speeches last year, but only 57 of them were reported on today’s form as having generated personal income. The others were given for no fee or for donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation, a charity he founded to promote causes such as fighting HIV/AIDS and global warming.
Clinton has earned more than $40 million in speaking fees in the past six years, records show. After leaving office, he made more than $9 million a year in 2001 and 2002. His income from speeches dropped to $4.4 million in 2003, when he was writing his memoirs, and less than $1 million in 2004, when he had heart surgery, before picking up in 2005, when he pulled in $7.5 million.
352 speeches last year?! That’s almost one a day!
The Zen habits blog is full of great advice. For those of you who might want to start running, or used to run but haven’t run in awhile, I strongly recommend you look at this: Beginner’s Guide to Running | zen habits
There’s lots of great tips there.
One site they didn’t mention is Hal Higdon‘s web site. It is PACKED with good advice. You can buy lots of magazines and books on running. Or you can save your money for better shoes and use these sites instead.
Sure, damask is pretty bold. But for B-O-L-D, check out the warping wall paper at SURREALIEN
The nytimes.com online has a good article on the problem of captchas are having. It’s a bit worrisome. See A Dog or a Cat? New Tests to Fool Automated Spammers – New York Times
Perhaps it is time to get out the Voight-Kampff machines.
The globeandmail.com
has a great column on the effects social networking site, Facebook, is having on family dynamics. It will be interesting to see FB transform from a college dorm party to a family wedding.
Here’s the article:
Father’s Day is coming up, and with ties going the way of the dodo
bird, perhaps the next best thing for a Father — new or old — is all
things BBQ. So if you are going to give your father something BBQish,
perhaps give him a print out of this article:
Grill The Best Steak Ever – Men’s Health
Oh. Some nice steaks would be good too.
Time is money. In fact, it is more valuable. And since you want to get the most out of your time, read this article while eating a health snack and doing some isometric exercises. Ok, at least read:
Time is All We Have: 3 Ways to Increase Return on Investment
When I watch this video, I feel like two different parts of my brain are working at the same time: one part comprehending the beauty and another comprehending the terrifying content. See it yourself:
When I was a kid, we had the Classics comics. Now there’s Manga Shakespeare. I think these are better.
Smartly, they started with Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet. Get some for the teens and preteens you know at:
….perhaps this is his way of saying: shutup, already?
..my question is: why? What’s closed about it now? 🙂
For those of you who think about such things as I do, check out Memories of Life and Death in an Architectural Masterwork – New York Times
For such a slight building, it’s also very influential. I think the key to living there is good pajamas. And not scratching your butt. Or scratching your butt but not caring anyone might notice. 🙂
I get the sense from looking at this photo from the 2007 G8 summit that Bono is thinking what we all think.
BTW, since when did Bono become the leader of a G8 country? 🙂
Over at someecards.com are some REEEAAALLLLYYY snarky e-cards you can send friends people. Some of them are really rude. Which appears to be the point.
For really hard core nerds, check out
WiReD has the latest on LoLcats. It has to end soon.
You think that with all the money they have, the good folks at The Saatchi Gallery might have a top notch web site. Instead, it looks like a MySpace reject.
Perhaps the next time they’re contemplating buying a dead animal, they might use it to redo their web site instead. 😉
I have always been a fan of the design of PHILIPPE STARCK. I’ve been to alot of his hotels and cafes (such as Cafe Costes above) and I have a number of his consumer designs (including a fly swatter!) I think he is a good designer.
So why is his web site such a usability nightmare!? Just try finding anything there.
Maybe it is just the English version, but I doubt it.
My friend Jean-Francois told me about this site. People post Do It Yourself videos on the web for others to see. If this takes off, it could be quite something. I wonder if Home Depot knows about this? Beat them to it. See
Not the gas, the web site! What is Helium about?
Whether you care about pop culture or politics, Helium is for you. Helium is the best place on the web to post your perspective and read what others have to say. When you write at Helium, you receive instant recognition from an audience of millions. No one will delete your articles or skew your opinions. Your contribution remains whole. Helium is a free market, where articles on the same topic compete for the top spot.
When you share, Helium shares back. You earn a share of the advertising money earned here at Helium. If you write well, and write often, you earn more recognition and reward. It is that simple. Unleash the writer inside of you. Be passionate. Be opinionated.
Join the quest to build the best user-created reference there is. Say your piece and find peace. Find quality insight and stop wasting time searching for it. Help build a place where knowledge rules.
Admit it: you want it!
Not calamari! The iPhone! 🙂 (Ok…some calamari would be good , too.)
I know I know, it’s still a computer and it will hang up and crash and all that stuff….anyway….see for yourself.
I read alot of kids books. I enjoy them even when I am not reading them to little ones. Poppleton is my favourite series, with the possible exception of Stella and Sam. the Poppleton stories are wonderfully illustrated in watercolour, with plenty of small details to point out. The language is straightforward but not “Dick and Jane”, and the stories are fun to read aloud and to listen to. Even the characterization is good (yes, I know, they are only short books, but trust me. 🙂
I bought as many of them as I could find at Indigo. Here’s one, the first one we had.
Poppleton and Friends by Mark Teague
And here’s one of the Stella books:
Stella Star Of The Sea by M Gay
I highly recommend them.
It’s a small world. I came across the Code Monkey video at the Web 2.0 expo and posted it here on my blog which was read by my friend Leta who mentioned Jonathan’s web site, www.jonathancoulton.com, which I pointed out to some people a few months ago based on an article I read in the Nytimes.com!
So….check out his site. He’s got a great story, and lots of good music as well! Leta recommends: the acoustic version of ‘Baby Got Back’ is a treat
I have a tremendous personal fondness for this song in this movie. But it is a great video nonetheless. From the great Jonathan Demme / Talking Heads film, Stop Making Sense, here is
The Talking Heads with This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) Live
Hang in there for the wonderfully dance part with David Byrne and the lamp. I have a lamp like this, and I think of him whenever I see it.
There is almost a genre of small films based around World of Warcraft! LOL. This was shown at a conference I attended recently. It is a song that will have appeal to software developers everywhere:
Two striking videos on this subject matter, including the famous Dove Evolution ad. The first one, Doll Face, is longer, but it is worth watching.
This video is an astounding compilation of women represented in famous paintings. Each image transmogrifies into the next in a seamless way as if to suggest that all of western painting is a continuous work. You have to see it.
One thing that it made me think of is the actual women who model for the painters, as opposed to the painters and the paintings themselves. The ability of it to do this is remarkable.
One more reason why YouTube is great.
IBM has a tools called Many Eyes that allows people to create visualizations of day. This is related to my previous entry, but this time it’s Coalition fatalities in Iraq
The New York Times has an article on a show at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York which includes many items to show a grasp of the depths of world poverty and ingenious ways to attack it. such as the 20-gallon rolling drum for transporting water, above.
The OLPC is also there, as well as the design of other things.
I thing there are things people need that are essential — whether they be materially well off or not — and things they don’t need. I believe the exhibit focuses on the former. For example, as Nicholas Negroponte says, the point of OLPC is not the laptop, it is the focus on education that the OLPC enables. It is not that every child in the world should have a new thing.
That said, I think some of the design is….cool. Now if someone would design a half decent cart to help me get my groceries home without a car, I would be happy. But I digress.
Ok, I think there is alot of hype behind gadgets, widgets, etc. But there is also alot of potential power, as well. Technically your web site / page / blog / what have you ends up become much like a spreadsheet. Your blog+widgets = the next killer app. (There’s the hype thing again).
Anyway check out LabPixies and decide for yourself. For instance:
LabPixies – YouTube Top 10 – Coolest Gadgets on the Web!
Here’s the source:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.labpixies.com/lib/lp_gadget_syndication.php?_gadgetid=37&_frame_color=light_blue”> </script>
One of FM’s author is Kevin Kelly, of Kevin Kelly — Cool Tools
He’s much more than this. He has been doing cool stuff for many years, whether he was working on the Whole Earth Catalog (the Internet in a catalog form 🙂 ) or helping launch WiReD (before it became TiReD). His cool tools section of his web site always has interesting articles in it.
It’s a shame the Whole Earth Review isn’t around anymore. But KK’s web site is: soak it up.
Federated Media Publishing says:
FM represents outstanding authors whose sites cater to cultural influencers, technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders. Our first “federation,” focused on digital business and culture, reaches millions and millions of unique readers every month. New federations in the small business, media/entertainment and parenting categories, representing millions of entrepreneurs, upscale consumers and families, are in the process of launching as well.
So check out their author list: it’s a good one.
So you think you are having a bad day. Well at least this isn’t you…
This was one of the most popular photos on Yahoo! Miss Universe on Yahoo! News Photos
With the Web 1.0, if you mess up, many knows about. With Web 2.0, they tell all their friends, meaning that many more people know about it. 🙂
The site Operation Enduring Freedom: Coalition Fatalities has an online database with death counts for foreign fighters in Afghanistan. Only the US and Britain (just) have more deaths than Canada.
It says casualties, but the count is deaths, not injuries.
Smart People I Know 