- Pandora is to be blocked to users outside the US… Which is a tremendous shame and almost certainly a significant long-term damage to their business…
Category: Random
- OmniGroup have put up a screencast of how they’re expecting OmniFocus to work… I have to be honest, I think I need this application right now. I’m rather overwhelmed with little jobs to do and am desperate for a decent way to manage them. This looks perfect…
- This totally bizarre video meanders quite aimlessly around the place until the last ten seconds where it turns into Brass Eye… I’m … gobsmacked …
- Fascinating Newsweek story about treating people whose hearts have stopped… Apparently if a patient’s heart has stopped beating for five minutes or more, it’s not that the brain starts degrading but that it will degrade catastrophically if oxygen is restored rapidly.
- xkcd’s awesome map of online communities will, I suspect, surface in a million corporate talks this year… I think I live right in the middle in Flickrland…
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- My namesake Tom Coates Jr is busy getting into trouble for producing sculpture of women with their tops off made of wire… The sculpture is a bit Athena 1987, but it’s fun to hear about what this particular doppelg√§nger is up to. Other name twins are researchers in HIV and a watercolour artist.
- Incredible imagery of a graffiti covered building in New York City… Sort of glorious. I need go exploring more with my camera. Interesting photos are based on interesting subjects. Too many pictures in my Flickr stream of chocolate eggs and croissants…
- The best bit ever in Life on Mars (no spoilers) is the famous Camberwick Green intro to the episode… I keep saying the lines from this to people and no one knows what I’m on about, so I thought I should probably link to the damn thing.
- Monoclebizarre magazine of the overpaid design-savvy intellectual eliteis selling co-branded bicycles… I’m still not sure I get the magazine, but I have to say I’m bloody loving the look of that bike. If I actually ever used a bike, that’s exactly the kind of one I’d want…
- Matt Biddulph has gone full time as CTO of Dopplr… I’m very happy for Mattand love dopplrjust can’t help feeling a little bit sad that we’re not working with each other, which is something I’ve wanted to do again pretty much immediately ever since we both left the BBC… Miss Webb as well…
- Grant Morrison has written a potential film script for We3, and a script review of it has found its way onto the internet… Any film of this would be heavily CGI, and it might not be an obvious candidate for the transition, given how sad and violent it is. But the comic was really weirdly moving. 21st Century Watership Down?
- The “Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies” has sold for $4000 at auction… ‘Allo ‘Allo went from quite poor to really terrible as time passed, but still I have some vague affection for the idea of this picture going to auction.
- My Los Angelene film industry chum Kerry recently went to watch the first episode of ‘Drive’ at the house of super-hot Firefly star, Nathan Fillion…. What he doesn’t mention is how at the event he ran into Twitter’s Biz Stone and then had a weird conversation about me. Had a conversation about me in a super-hot famous person’s house? Let me know!
- London’s Kerning is a hugeand I suspect quite beautifulposter recreating a map of London out of typography… It’s ¬£100. I’m really tempted. I wonder how much it would cost to get framed. Probably a hell of a lot more money than I’ve got available at the moment…
- The Guardian Technology blog has revealed that for the second time in almost as many months The Independent has got something startlingly wrong… This is the mobile phones kill bees thing that went around a while back. Apparently even the researchers of the original paper are sort of horrified by the way it was presented by the increasingly ‘invisible ray’-afraid Indy…
- Mike Migurski on Disinfo graphics… I have to say that I’ve found Dion Hinchcliffe’s diagrams around this subject absolutely totally confusing and meaningless but I’ve never had the nerve to say so in public until Biddulph pointed me towards Mike’s piece…
- I’m pretty gutted that Grindhouse’s release date has been pushed back in the UK, and more concerned still that they might release it as two films… I mean, come on! The general noise is that people who went to see it loved it, but that a whole bunch of people didn’t go and see it. Do people really think cutting it in half and making people pay twice will help?
- The adventures of Rob Manuel… I briefly worked with Rob at B3ta, and found this surprisingly entertaining. I can’t tell off the top of my head whether it’s a joke he’s complicity with or would hate.
- Hicks likes Coda, the new application from Panic software on the Mac Hanging out with a bunch of Web Devs at work at the moment. Lots of debate generally around the place about whether Coda’s any good or not. PC people areas usualsuspicious of the hype…
- Coda is a relatively impressive looking new application for developing web sites… It’s quite beautifully implemented, and seems to simplify the professional web production process by drawing together all the applications you might need into one coherent application…
- Cameron Marlow has use the Yahoo maps API to create a super simple Long/Lat finder… I really really like this. I think it’s because it’s so simple a tool, so completely understated, that it totally could be a little desktop application. I can see this being genuinely useful to a whole bunch of people.
- Awesome design work on the new Manhattan transport maps… A significant improvement in an interesting balance between the London Underground maps and a street map. Very nice.
- My search for a headshot has now become an attempt to make a decent picture the most ‘interesting’ one on Flickr… Hence I’m linking to it here, hoping that the few extra page views it gets will result in it usurping that bloody thing Kottke linked to a while back. Bastard.
- A planet has been found that’s only 1.5 times the size of earth and appears to have liquid water running on its surface… Wow. That’s pretty amazing. What interests me is twofold. Firstly, obviously, is there life. Secondly, if there isn’t, how easy would it be to introduce some?
- Natalie Downe talks about Oxford Geek Night 2… This was a while back, but I love grassroots events and Nat’s done a really sterling job getting this one together. The next one’s supposed to be in June, I believe…
- Etsy’s Splatgirl creates beautiful little carrying cases for your Moo Cards – both for men and women. Also keyfobs! These are really lovely, and I actually might have to go and buy some.
- The Independent is quoting studies saying that WiFi is dangerous and could result in a whole bunch of cancers and stuff… These studies are highly dubious and have been quite rigorously debunked in certain quarters. This seems to me to be scaremongering to find a story, combined with a little bit of anti-technology angst.
- A fascinating follow-on editorial from The Independent on the whole WiFi gives you cancer scare… Really interested to note the absolute absence of citations of anyone who might conceivably disagree, or any quotations from people who might actually be generically expert in the areas concerned…
- Ian Betteridge dissects the current hysteria around WiFi as a cause of Cancer with significant aplomb… A good read, and a pretty comprehensive evisceration of the Independent’s coverage.