While a number of sites talked about this apparently photoshopped photo of the missile launch in Iran, the site War and Piece has the best write up on it. Take a look at what is outlined first.

I’ve seen and heard of Photoshop being used for lots of different purposes, but this appears to be a first.

Two great dining events happen yearly in Toronto: Winterlicious and Summerlicious

As you can see from the graphic, it’s on for most of July. You can get more information here or here

And if you are a customer of American Express, you get an additional benefit. See the links for why.

Pamela Bell has a smart idea when it comes to balancing having a well designed interior and having a happy houseful of kids and ultimately a happy house. This article, Renovating When Perfect Is Not the Goal at NYTimes.com has the details, but I like this quote:

“It is Ms. Bell’s conviction that the house belongs not so much to her as to her children, and the choices she makes on a daily basis support that.”

Very smart.

(Photo by Phil Mansfield of the New York Times)

According to the Detroit Free Press, Flint cops crack down on sagging pants | Freep.com | Detroit Free Press

“Dicks (the new Police Chief) who took over the department last month on an interim basis, announced that his officers would start arresting people wearing saggy pants that expose skivvies, boxer shorts or bare bottoms.”

For those of you who live or visit Flint and are concerned about going to jail, the following chart was prepared:

What I want to know is: what about all those old guys who pull their pants up to their chest? What’s going to happen to them?

I guess Flint must be so quiet, crime-wise, that the Chief of Police needs to give the police something to do.

There are thousands — millions? — of web servers now, but the first one was this NeXT machine that Tim Berners-Lee possessed. You can find out more about it and this picture here

For some strange reason I am proud it was on a NeXT machine and not some second rate Wintel box….it must be the IT snob in me. 😉

(Found via boing boing).

If you are booking a flight and you have flexibility as to when you buy your tickets, you MUST go to Farecast.

It “does just what you want when making an airplane ticket
purchase: it predicts if the price is going to go up, down or stay
level and advises when you should buy (now, wait)”

You owe it to yourself to try it. And I would be happy to take 10% of anything you save. Make that 5%! 🙂

(Tip: the always useful Data Mining site)

That’s easy: wherever there are people who love to dance, you’ll find Matt.

To see what I mean — if you haven’t seen this already — check out this video:

There’s more on the story here. It’s a great story. And kudos to Stride gum! If you have a chance, buy some!

While I am a big fan of The Moment, I would recommend at the very least that people check out the posts titled “The High Low”. For fashionable people, it’s all about:

“Good style mixes high-ticket items with brilliant affordable gets. In this column, T’s fashion team rummage for the cheap and the chic.”

And if you are not so fashionable, well, you have to wear something, so show the world how smart you are by wearing what the good folks at T are recommending. (And if you are really smart, you will get your feedreader to go through the feed and extract JUST these recommendations. 🙂 )

I mean even the fashion adverse would be comfortable in this:

while fashionistas — does anyone say that anymore? — might covet this:

For more on The High Low, go here

Calorielab has the numbers, but better still, they have a state by state breakdown of where people are lean (Colorado) and not (Mississippi), as you can see here:

See here for more details: Fattest States 2008: The CalorieLab United States of Obesity Rankings

For the film posters and web site of Hellboy II: The Golden Army there is a warning posted: this film contains depictions of tobacco consumption.

Now, I appreciate why this is done generally. But it strikes me as funny when associated with this film. I can’t imagine parents saying: no, Johnny, you can’t go to see Hellboy II because there are people smoking in it! I mean, if you can’t smoke a cigarette in Hell, where CAN you smoke? 🙂

P.S. Gripe: movie sites are all flash, so I can’t include an image here of Hellboy. I think movie sites should put badges or other links for bloggers to use. Hey, it’s free advertising!

Over at Kevin Kelly’s blog is a great review/peek by Merlin Mann of the new Peter Walsh’s book, It’s All Too Much

While you might think the book is ostensibly about clutter and too much stuff, it is really about much more than that. It is about how materialism can get out of control and ruin our lives. It’s a form of obesity, and capable of ruining our lives as much a being greatly overweight can.

Read the review: you will get much just from that. Then buy the book, read it, use it, and then give it to someone else.

As for me, I have been doing this for some months now. I don’t miss the stuff I tossed or sold, and my life is better off. How many cheese slicers does a man need, anyhow? 🙂

I was curious about a comment Ana Marie Cox made on twitter today: “I am no longer enjoying this election”. This was followed by: “The only way this election could be more disappointing is if either of the candidates win. Uh. Hm.”

Since Cox writes for Time.com’s Swampland blog, I checked out what she wrote recently, and it turned out it was this . While her feelings come through to some degree in the Swampland piece, a more detailed picture comes out when cross referenced with twitter. Her Swampland piece is critical and sarcastic towards Obama’s comments on abortion, but her feelings are more obvious in her “tweets”.

As people use social computing (blogs,twitter, etc.) for communications, others will cross reference the information — like I did here — to build profiles of people. I don’t think it will necessarily surprise people, but what may surprise people is that others are doing it.

The nytimes.com has a great profile on Dara Torres: Dara Torres – Profile – Olympic Swimming – NYTimes.com

While the article seems to imply that she is not too extraordinary, I think she is incredible. While older athletes may continue to maintain their fitness, what the article doesn’t appear to touch on is that athletes often lose interest in the demands of training for so much. Not Torres: she seems driven.

Great photo by Robert Maxwell, too. Even if you don’t read the article, just looking at this woman’s body tells you she is unique. Incidentally, you would never get to see her this way in a Speedo LZR.

I don’t know why airlines send out emails like: low cost flights from one city to another, but then when you try and find them, you can’t! Porter Airlines is just one of many airlines that do this. All it does is encourage me to go to Expedia or Travelocity. And once I do that, I am now looking at other airlines as well. So for airlines who think this a good idea, think again.

…when it takes a law to get Nelson Mandela removed from it, I would say it is poor. See here: Mandela off U.S. terrorism watch lists – CNN.com for more information.

WALL-E is another in a sequence of great films from Pixar. What is great about Pixar films, besides the obvious, is the way they include great detail in each film. For WALL-E, there are a number of things, obvious and otherwise, that can be found in the film, as noted in this article from slashfilm.com: WALL-E Easter Eggs

One thing this article doesn’t point out is the references to “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Kubrick. I spotted at least two: the references to HAL and the part with the apes. There’s likely more.

For folks like me with kids who will watch these things over and over again :), all these details are appreciated.

This was my favourite: George Bernard Shaw’s room. But there are so many, with many similarities. See
the guardian for more, but be prepared to spend lots of time looking around.

(Thanks to andrewsullivan.com for the tip)

I’ve seen Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk and Sir Ken Robinson’s talk and they are both great. The other eight are likely to be as good. So go see, Top 10 TED Talks courtesy of Boing Boing

P.S. I like watching my on the subway using my Apple Touch. If you are going to load alot of these videos up, though, you will want a bigger one than mine (the low end 8 GB).

You know you are loved as a company when the sign of your inability to stay up gets a FAN CLUB. Yes, this image

which all twitter users are TOO familiar with due to twitters frequent downs now have a fan club. See:
The Fail Whale Fan Club

(thanks to Andy Piper for pointing this out…on twitter, of course!)

There’s been a number of sites created already that allow you to create widgets for facebooks, MySpace, blogs, etc. Of the few sites I have seen, most of the widgets that I created were rather simplistic. However, over at
iWidgets, they seem to have a more sophisticated approach. I just started playing with it, but it looks quite good.

If you want to create a widget, it’s worth your while to check it out.

Long time twitter users (sufferers?) are used to seeing the whale image being lifted by birds: it means twitter is down. Again. Well, if twitter is a whale, this time the two birds coming along to lift it up are Jeff Bezos and Boston’s Spark Capital, to name a few. According to businessweek.com, twitter will see an influx of cash, and as a result:

‘The new investments, from Bezos and Boston’s Spark Capital, will give the company “some runway and breathing room” as it invests in a big technology upgrade, says Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder. He would not disclose the dollar or equity amounts of the investments. The goal, he says, is to rebuild the architecture “piece by piece.” The process is already underway and “will take months,” Stone adds. Existing Twitter backers Union Square Ventures in New York and Tokyo-based Digital Garage also participated in the most recent round.

Bijan Sabet, a partner at Spark who landed a Twitter board seat through the investment, says the “highest priority is providing rock-solid service.” He envisions Twitter becoming “a global communication utility system,” though he didn’t elaborate on what that will look like. Bezos didn’t respond to a phone call seeking comment.’

I am not sure if twitter.com will become a global communication utility system, but something like it should.

For more details, see the article here: Twitter Gets Help from Bezos.

…you can get it here: Etsy :: BluLima :: Keep Calm and Carry On Screen Print Poster in Classic Red

(tip to the lovely blog White and Wander)

In the 80s I loved these comics, especially the “equal parts Metropolis and film noir” that they contained (as it says here Amazon.com: Mr. X: The Definitive Collection, Vol. 1: Paul Rivoche, The Hernandez Brothers, Dean Motter: Books)

For those who love Metropolis, film noir, architecture, or just a good read, check out Mr. X.

This is impressive for Lego neophytes like me. Lots more cool photos here

(Found this via Geekdad).

There’s some controversy going on over whether or not the women above used in the Dove ad were real. While a recent New Yorker ad strongly implies the image above was heavily adjusted, the article here: Dove: We Didn’t Airbrush Our Lumpy Ladies – Media Blog – Jeff Bercovici – Mixed Media – Portfolio.com) points to a letter from Dove that strong states they weren’t.

Having read the material, I would be inclined to thing they weren’t retouched. And it somewhat — though not entirely — misses Dove’s point of arguing that beauty belongs to more than just thin women who walk down catwalks for a living. It’s the appreciation of everyone’s beauty that is the key point, not whether or not skin tones were tweaked.

Now it could be argued that there are better ways of arguing this than putting a group of women together with just their underwear on. I think this will be a step forward if the debate shifts towards that.

Over at nytimes.com’s blog, The Moment, is a great vignette of Amy Winehouse. While I encourage you to read
the blog post, I think they get it right with two simple sentences:

“We love her. We really do.”

And looking at the photo, and listening to her singing, what’s not to love?

I produced this at wordle.net by using my current resume as input.

Besides being undoubtedly cool :), I found a problem with an overuse of a term in my resume. (No doubt a problem of cutting and pasting). I fixed it as a result.

So Wordle: not just a pretty face!

Over at Fluevog Shoes they are using crowd sourcing to find and select new designs for their innovative style of footwear. They called it Fluevog’s Open Source Footwear

and what it means is that some of their new shoe designs are selected..

“…through a combination of peer voting, feasibility and if we just plain like the designs. Then, we cover all the costs & development process (it takes about a year to produce a shoe) and get your shoe onto the market, without having to put our prices up or go broke. Always a bonus. It’s worked beautifully and you’ve proven that Fluevogers have more to say than just, “Way rad, dude”. You do it; we love it. Bring it on.”

Other companies allow for the design of product to some degree. For example, Nike used the web to allow customers to customize an individual’s shoes. But Fluevog is a much more involved approach. Very Web 2.0!

So if you have always wanted to design shoes — or just see how others go about innovating — check out the site.

Now you can easily follow the latest space mission with Twitter / MarsPhoenix

Here’s its pix

It’s bio is simple: I dig Mars! And if you want more than “tweets”, you can go here

While I imagine most people would easily believe that China is growing fast, it is sometimes hard to appreciate HOW fast. To me, these numbers showing the amount of cement used illustrates that in a dramatic fashion. Even taking other factors into account, that’s stunning.

For more on the graph, see the blog The Oil Drum | A Pretty Stunning Graph of World Cement Production (and China is Certainly Using It)

(Found via andrewsullivan.com)

Amazon has com up with an interesting approach to using twitter: they broadcast daily deals on music.

I think this is well done. They don’t abuse twitter or their followers because they are limiting it to one broadcast a day. And they are letting people in on good deals, making it more likely that people will want to follow them.

If you are interested in what they are doing, or want to find out more about the deals, see Twitter / amazonmp3

Do you sometimes feel nostalgic for the old Mac OS? Today I did after reading Kevin Kelly’s article about the start of Wired magazine, which he used to write for using a Mac interface like this. So serendipitiously I came across this little tool. If y you have some time and an old USB key (say 32 MB or better), here is the project for you. With a little effort you can create a Mac-on-a-stick using Mini vMac to end up with this!

What’s not to like? 🙂

This is a great quote (courtesy of gapingvoid):

What’s true in life is also true in marketing: If you want to be boring, talk about yourself. If you want to be interesting, talk about other people.

I’ve seen these mentioned at kottke.org and other places. The photographs are striking, as this one shows.

You can see many more great photos at ALEXEY TITARENKO | PHOTOGRAPHY

I recently posted my first muxtape here.

Some asked me, why did you pick the songs you did? Did you think much about it? Well, I did!

For instance, the first song is one of my favourites. I love The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights. I have listened to and watched their great video many times. I think it is a rich song, even if it mostly synths (which I find can be boring). I love how it starts up with the simple beeps, and then it broadens with the bass notes, followed by the other electronic layers until the vocals appear, before it finally closes the way it starts. So well done. I also thought it was the best song to open.

The next song is very different. I saw Amy Winehouse sing this version of Valerie on YouTube and I was really impressed how she sat in this chair in a “green room” and belted this out. It’s worthwhile to compare this to Mark Ronson’s version. I think this version is superior to his in every way. It’s a great song too: it makes me think of the Great Gatsby for some reason.

Switching again from serious to funny is The Boys. I heard The Boys on tuneage.tumblr.com. I love this song: it’s great fun. It’s supposedly “indie”, but it has better pop smarts than most big names. The video is not so great…it IS very indie in a bad way. But the song is very smart.

If The Boys is a bit silly, Down on My Knees is very serious. I love the sound of Ayo’s voice. It is so muted. Beautiful. It’s a great song, too. And a great vibe.

I have always loved “The Israelites”. It’s one of the songs that just pops into my head every so often…I have no idea why. It is easy to denigrate pop music from the 1950s…I blame Happy Days! But so much of it was great. And this is one of those songs for me.

Taking a sonic leap forward I have Freedom 90. I like alot of George Michael, and I love the video — it makes me nostalgic for that time. The song is somewhat that way, too. I love this song: it’s complex but still very strong pop. And George is a great singer.

I like the message of Galvanize. It gets me pumped. Also a great video! But video or no, I like the music of the Chemical Brothers. Also a very smart group.

Now I slow it down a little. This Must Be the Place is a song I have loved since I have heard it. It is always on my mind too. It is smart, techno, R&B and romantic, in a geeky kinda way. My kinda song.

Picking up the pace again is Lovestoned. I like how Tiesto took the best of JT’s “Lovestoned/I think she knows” and remixed it into a superior dance numbers. He’s a smart guy, with this and other songs that he has done.

Dropping the tempo know is CBR’s Trouble Sleeping. It feels like something Ella Fitzgerald could have sung. It’s so lovely, just like CBR herself.

Finally,and somewhat relatedly to Trouble Sleeping is the last song that is sung with great passion by Amy Winehouse. Have I said enough yet how great I think she is? One last time: she’s great. 🙂 Hence, she gets two songs on my muxtape.

Enjoy!

I predict that Barack Obama will win as big as LBJ did over Goldwater. Why is that? The answers can be found here:

I. Wallerstein, 235, “Obama’s Victory? How Big? How Far?”

I noticed that dapper uses Ubiquity Hosting Solutions for (part of?) their hosting. (I saw the URL flash by the bottom of my browser). I went to check out their site and found reason #7 on why chose ubiquity: We Fear no Amount of Traffic.

I love that! If you are interested in knowing more, go here

Over the last year, over 18000 people have read this blog. I think that is incredible. 18000 people.

All I can say is: wow! 🙂 And thanks for reading.