I love magazines. When I am commuting, there is nothing better. But other than plane travel, I haven’t bough a magazine in along time.  Magazines have been losing out to the Web. When I see all the amazing content online, all free, it is hard to justify buying magazines (and later throwing them into the recycle bin) when I can feast on all that is on the web.

I think flickr can make a better case than me. For people like me who love New York City, check out:

While there are still magazine out there with better content, the argument for them over the web will get harder and harder to make.

 
There was lots said on the world’s cheapest car awhile back. A lot of it was facile and derogatory.

What it reminded me of was the computer business. Computer prices level off from time to time, and the impression I used to have was: well, that’s it, you can’t make them cheaper than that. Faster maybe, but not cheaper. No sooner would I think that than someone WOULD come along and make it cheaper.

Now what making it cheaper did was 3 things.
1: it made people realize that there was no lower limit to how cheap you could make computers. And there is still no limit.
2: it greatly increased who could get access to computers, and everytime more people gained access to computers, better things occured.
3: It changed the design of the computers. Making more computers makes them better, not worse. 

And it is on that last point that I think that the world’s cheapest car could be a good thing.

For more, see Tata Nano: The Worlds Cheapest Car at New York Times. According the the Times:

“Over the past year, Tata has been building hype for a car that would cost a mere 100,000 rupees (roughly $2,500) and bring automotive transportation to the mainstream Indian population. It has been nicknamed the “People’s Car.” “

… walking!

First off, people can tell from the way you talk. It’s obvious. And it is obvious that you are squeezing them in. If they don’t mind being squeezed in, that’s fine. But if you owe them more, that’s not a good thing to do. For whatever else you say, what you are “saying” is that the only time you have for them is “down time”, your “time scraps”, that they are “not important”. If the call is important, take the time to call them when you have time. Better yet, arrange to meet them in person.

What goes for walking holds for other downtime as well, such as commuting, waiting in a food court, terminal, etc.

Do I have to say never call someone in the washroom? Yes, it is a stupid thing to do, and yes, I have seen people do it often, and no, I never do it, and you shouldn’t either. The only way I want someone to phone me in the washroom is if they just remembered they owe me a million dollars and that they are bringing it over right away. Then it’s ok. 🙂

Ok, ’nuff said. 🙂

Instapaper is a great solution to the problem of too much to read (on the web) but never a convienient enough time to read it. Go to the site: you will become an instant fan.

Thanks to Victor Chan for the great tip!

John Maeda has a great web site. There is much to discover here, including the Laws of Simplicity.

Here’s the first one:

“Law 1: Reduce. The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.”

To get the rest of the laws and other thoughts by him, it’s simple. Click here.

Note! If you want to read more about Haiti on this blog, click here.

For the latest on what is happening in Haiti, I recommend the NYTimes.com. They have a great section on Haiti here)

As I was going through the TIME archives, I noticed a quote from a Haitian government official on some matter of importance. It reminded me of something that struck me when I read “Paris, 1919”: the seeming importance of Haiti in world affairs. True, it was not as important as the Great Powers, but it was one of the countries at the table, both literally and figuratively.  It appears to be a middle player at the beginning of the 20th Century. And then it sadly declined.

One account of this is found here.

If you know people who like to worry, here’s a list of new things to worry about that they likely haven’t even considered!  See:

10 Disasters That Could End It All At Any Given Second

My favourite is rogue black holes. 🙂

(Thanks to transbuddha.com for the tip and Nasa for the image)

The globeandmail.com has a copy of the story from Reuters on how:

“A woman in Germany who became pregnant after an online sex auction has won a court battle to force the website that hosted the sale to reveal the names of the winners, so she can find out who’s the father. Six different men won Internet auctions to have sex with the woman in April and May last year. They were only known to her by their online names”

When I read this, my first thought was: I feel sorry for the child born from these parents. To call the father a “winner” is a stretch, to say the least.

Do I need to say more?! 🙂 Click here

TIME now has what appears to be all their articles online since 1923. It’s like being able to go through old magazines online and see what was being said then. It’s not obvious from their home page: look for the input box at the top with the “Search” button next to it.

As a test, I tried two well known and very different people: Einstein and Hitler. With Einstein, we see Relativity already well established (there are films out on how to explain it, and there is talk about an upcoming eclipse to demonstrate it). Nothing too surprising. What did surprise me was the articles on Hitler. You get to see this terrible force coming into but not yet in focus (at least through the lens of TIME). TIME uses terms like “Bavarian Fascisti” and even “monarchists”, although “nationalists” comes up too.

Regardless of your interest, TIME has made a great start of putting it’s material online.

Chuck Norris has a serious suit against a Penguin book that mocks him. I think he has a good case, regardless of what you think of Chuck Norris. However, the Yahoo! News title seems to continue the mockery with the headline:

Chuck Norris sues, says his tears no cancer cure – Yahoo! News

Perhaps he did say that, but most of the quotes in the following news article are pretty much what you expect coming from a lawyer.
But click on the story and you decide.

You can go and Search Video Archive of Charlie Rose and pull up all sorts of great stuff. Go on…there’s nothing better on TV right now.

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.

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.