Journal: News & Comment

Links of interest (2005-10-14):

Permalinks to this entry: individual page or in monthly context. For more material from my journal, visit my home page or the archive.

• "It's not inconceivable that just as DVDs have surpassed box office in revenues and the theatrical release has become a commercial for the DVD sale, the network TV broadcast could become the commercial for the download sale."
  
  
• "Increasing the number of social contacts a miserable person has is the best way of cheering them up."
  
  
• Is Vancouver the best city in the world? Well, I think so.
  
  
• Wondering what would happen if you looked at the sun through a telescope or binoculars?
  
  
• What is the 7-Eleven milk test? And what does it have to do with buying wood screws?
  
  
• Here's why smartphones largely still suck.
  
  
• Intuit provides you with a cheat sheet to reach humans on the phone at a ton of big companies, from Citibank to Apple Computer.
  
  
• Chris Pirillo's gada.be is pretty neat. Chris explains.
  
  
• Go watch this presentation—it's a great example of the anti-PowerPoint approach. It was inspired by Larry Lessig.
  
  
• See visually how different jazz masters improvise.
  
  
• Jason Lefkowitz has some fun at the expense of far-right Republicans in the U.S.A.
  
  
• Dave Shea has a geeky but neat approach to backing up web server files automatically from a Mac.
  
  
• Oh, DoctorQ, we hardly knew ye.
  
  
• How collaborative networks help non-tech companies be more productive.
  
  
• Darren is right that RSS is still too geeky for most people. Oddly, though, podcasts aren't, and they're built with RSS.
  
  
• Tim Bray identifies the few types of programs that are likely to remain outside the browser, and further notes that open formats for data storage are the only way to go.
  
  
• People deciding what to read on the Web are often making unconscious risk analysis decisions.
  
  
• It's not always easy to disentangle why customer service is bad in so many places.
  
  
• Rollyo lets you search using Yahoo!, but only for a small set of sites you're particularly interested in.
  
  
• Here's a free PDF document that can help you be a better supervisor or manager.
  
  
• I agree with Robert Scoble that, while Google is getting the hype right now, Yahoo! really seems to be on the ball with many things right now. Except that Flickr registration stuff, of course. It is odd to hear them say they're new to search, though.
  
  
• "The person here did not tow your car. They are here to help you get your car back. If you cooperate, you will get your car back faster."
  
  
• Podcasting is a great way to record family memories.
  
  
• Sure, E=mc² is famous, but here's how it applies to you every day.
  
  
• CBC Radio host Shelagh Rogers managed to get all the way across Canada and back before her union's lockout ended.
  
  
• An old NYT article on Susan Kare, designer of the original Mac icons.
  
  
• Yet another side of Nobel prizewinner Richard Feynman.
  
  
• I'm a pretty techie guy, but even I found this account of a techie's morning a bit confusing. Is it all the stuff, or is it the writing?
  
  
• If class size in school is supposedly not such a big deal, why do all private schools advertise their small classes?
  
  
• Ouch.
  
  
• Kanye West does not seem to have hurt his career with his rant.
  
  
• "We prefer our risks manageable, and our thinking small."
  
  
• "The involved users, the ones who used to play with ResEdit and hack startup screens, are now reading weblogs to learn about the latest site that hacks Google Maps or Flickr, listening to podcasts, or evangelizing Web standards and copyright reform. These people may use Macs, and they may squawk when Macs aren't supported, but the Mac itself has merely become a conduit to what's new and interesting, rather than being itself the focus."

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