June 2011
20 posts
1 tag
what do we we do the other 364 days? →
I get it, these cities want to be hip. Me too. But really, isn’t every day social media day, don’t most people spend their day on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, writing a blog (or more likely starting a blog with the intention of being rich and famous but then realizing that it takes hard work… not that I have littered the landscape with blogs like that of course), or even just...
#bestheadline Mating turtles shut down runway at... →
If this doesn’t make you laugh… you were probably trying to fly out of JFK. But even still can you imagine the pilot making that announcement over the PA system in flight… “um ladies and gentlemen, we’re being rerouted because of….”
@mkapor, Keystone Kops in action
*Mitch Kapor (@mkapor //twitter.com/mkapor>)*
6/26/11 18: 47
Please someone explain how it makes sense for Lehman's Chief Risk Officer to
become World Bank Treasurer http: //t.co/WWNLvuR
I tried to think of other phrases and failed. Like Charlie Sheen policing a
brothel didn't quite work.
The kicker in this article is that the reporter concludes that it's probably
okay for this appointment since "she was kicked out of meetings in which
risk was discussed". Um, good reasoning there.
3 tags
@amazonlocal sends me a daily deal, when did they...
Having canceled my Groupon subscription this weekend (too much Botox, too far away) I was surprised to find an AmazonLocal deal in my inbox this morning.
Surprised because I hadn’t heard anywhere that Amazon was launching this service. Maybe I missed it in the frenzy of anti-Groupon articles or in the articles about which other deal services LivingSocial just acquired.
But I am surprised...
2 tags
I can only dream-Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor... →
We lived in Zurich for a time and it was pleasant. We walked everywhere and in the downtown cars weren’t all that common.
We also lived in Paris and yep, cars and motorbikes everywhere. But there was great transportation underground as well as rental bicycles (yeah Velib!) as well. Right before we moved the city added a bunch more bike lanes. Good move.
I can only dream of such a thing...
1 tag
Tumblr battles an old foe: spambots are creeping...
is it me or do I have more and more followers each day? I know my writing is wonderful, the prose explaining all the mysteries of life and technology and my quest to always be smarter. But hm… why do so many of these followers post naked pictures of themselves or require that I go through a Google URL shortener (kudos to Google, they warn about phishing when you use one of these URLs).
...
xkcd: Connoisseur hits a little too close to home →
Um… why are you looking at me? I don’t write a blog about primal living and barefoot running and the joys of grain-less living. I mean really, grass-fed beef is just that much better and shoes are the great killer of our times.
And I only sometimes bore people to death talking about the differences between Oregon Pinot Noir vs. French ones.
2 tags
TSA-proof energy drink sub has fliers talking... →
If Red Bull and vodka was a bad idea (and it was) then Sheets is almost certainly worse. I can see this being the cool new things for kids (and by kids I mean anyone under 30:) as it’s a simple caffeine ingestion device. And it is probably easy to pop these things throughout the day and forget just how much caffeine a cup of coffee has. Coffee is also somewhat self-regulatory as trips to the...
3 tags
Domain squatting just became less valuable →
For anyone who bought a bunch of domains hoping to sell it later for a hefty sum they just dropped in value. Moving forward I suspect many of the big players will simply become mail.google or halo.xbox or of course iPhone.apple. If the company or entity owns the TLD then most of their branding efforts will simply accrue to that TLD. I can’t imagine Apple paying millions (reportedly) for...
3 tags
Why You (Probably) Can’t Exercise Too Much |... →
This article is an example of really shoddy science writing. First the conclusion of the piece is based on the fact that Tour de a France riders appear to have a life expectancy 17% greater than others.
For all we know being at high altitude repeatedly caused the change. Or given what we know of Tour riders and doping you could equally claim that massive amphetamine usage can help you live 17%...
1 tag
"Don't Chop Water When You Should Be Carrying... →
My phrase of the week, maybe worth printing and sticking to my work computer.
How often do I work on tasks which are on my list or useful but really truly aren’t the most important things that need doing. Or other times when I work very long and hard on a project, let’s call it water carrying, when the only thing I will be rewarded for is carrying wood. But the thing is I prefer...
3 tags
Creative Kids Win Kodu Video Game Design... →
Many days it’s hard to answer the question “what do you do?” And while Kodu predates my tenure with Fuse Labs it’s so nice to point to things like Kodu and say “stuff like that”.
We saw several Kodu Cup entries and they were all, each one of them, amazing. So congrats to the Kodu winners and also to the Kodu team in Fuse Labs who worked so hard to get this...
3 tags
The Future of Voice Search... Perhaps, we'll... →
Voice search and other voice-powered tasks have been promised forever (or at least forever in digital time). I recall doing voice dictation in the 90’s and being told it was getting better soon, very soon. And even then it was sort of cool and you thought “maybe, just maybe…”
And now here we are and voice is heating up again. And why not, phones do voice inherently as...
HootSuite for Twitter, social app experiment of...
I am using HootSuite this week to understand its popularity and appeal. Do we need aggregators? One thing that is immediately clear is that HS is not designed for the regular user, the UX is fairly complex and easy to mess up (so if you see odd retweets and posts this week, sorry). When you join 4 networks together each of which have many streams trouble is brewing I think. Check out this...
3 tags
It’s A Facebook World … until it's not →
Good info graphics and the spread of Facebook. The nugget at the bottom is interesting though, the rise of Twitter and LinkedIn in the US. My hunch: I use Twitter and LinkedIn (and of course Tumblr) to deal with personas (public, business, tech thoughts respectively) that Facebook just doesn’t allow me to deal with. Others are apparently doing the same thing.
3 tags
xkcd: Magic School Bus →
XKCD is one of those things that just keeps giving. Not every day, not every comic, but reliably my funny-bone is tickled.
3 tags
Bacon Ipsum | A Meatier Lorem Ipsum Generator →
Okay team, I expect to see more interesting text in our next project!
“Visual pollution; nobody knows how ill this makes us”
– Dieter Rams - talking about our cities and scared landscapes. (via gregmelander)
Scared or scarred:-) Both make sense.
3 tags
Innovation Starts With Disruptive Hypotheses.... →
This is not the only way to innovate. Sometimes innovation happens through repetition, sometimes it happens via trial and error. But this process is certainly more interesting and prescriptive. Go ahead, give it a try.
2 tags
Stop the Stress Reflex at the Start to Avoid... →
Do you ever feel fight-or-flight at work and just wonder what in the world is going on? Most of us have jobs which are, thankfully, safe from true danger. And yet our minds can tell our bodies to react as if we are in imminent danger.
I’ve certainly had days where I just feel wired from stress all day. My tip is dimly to write down the key things I need to accomplish that day and focus on...
