- Modern Life is Rubbish posts on the top UK weblogs by Bloglines subscribers… It’s an interesting list. I’m not sure I buy the figures though. RSS feeds are messy things. Many sites support multiple URLs for the same content. Still interesting.
- The song “Guy Love” from Scrubs is sort of lovely… Thanks to Simon Minor 9th for helping me find this beautiful expression of comfort in the homosocial without getting all anti-gay and stroppy. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, be aware!
Category: Random
- Those lovely chaps at Moo have launched their second product – attractive combo post/greetings cards that you radically personalise… I got a few of these a few days ago as part of their beta-testing programme and they’re pretty lovely. I’ll probably post a snap of them on Flickr if you’re in the area…
- Josh Clark talks about the new ‘People Search’ project Spock that’s currently in a closed beta and relates it to ideas about cross-site identifiers… He proposes that Spock might be a good way to correlate IDs for people across a web of data. It’s a fascinating idea with only one area of anxiety for me – people freak out about the privacy implications of stuff like this. I’ll have to think more about this one.
- TechCrunch talks about the Spock people search engine… Still, it comes right back to me that generally people really don’t like the idea of information about themselves being aggregated against their will, and user generated annotation of individuals seems troublingly susceptible to accusations of libel…
- Bryant is the font that MOO.com use for their logo and headings… It’s really nice. I think they use the alt version with the single looped ‘a’. [Update 18th June, 6.05pm – Thanks to Peter for informing me that they actually use this variant, which now I want even more than ever]
- To compensate for yesterday, here’s where you get to tell me all about my bad traits… This is nohari – the negative of johari. Everyone was frankly far too easy on me yesterday, so now we get to see the dark stuff…
- Kurt Vonnegut has died aged 84… One of my all-time favourite authors, responsi ble for the creation of probably all-time favourite book Slaughterhouse Five, has died. Gutted.
- The Guardian has a rather better obituary for Kurt Vonnegut
- The Johari window allows other people to describe you and matches that with how you describe yourself… This is my Johari window. Choose some words that you think describe me (don’t be too unpleasant, please) and it’ll help me get a better sense of myself. If I take it seriously. Which I hopefully won’t.
- EMI songs are to be sold on iTunes without DRM and at a higher bit rate for a bit extra cash… Now this is a significant step in the right direction and I have to confess a surprise! We’re all agreed that DRM is a clumsy and often inadequate experience, but normally it’s been the rights holders forcing it. Stunning news.
- Matt Webb performs his latest opus at ETech 2007… I imagine a form of viral consciousness that finds a sympathic mind on earth, and then seeks to propogate itself through the conference circuit via slides, strategic pauses and enforcing hand gestures…
- Qbesq – sort of like a little Spirograph for your personal computron… Fun little Flash widget with very little else to say for it than the fact that it’s highly entertaining and kind of pretty…
- There’s a sort of interesting article on BBC News about Global Warming and Al Gore… I’m a bit puzzled by the responsibility of organisations like the BBC to report on ‘critics’ who disagree with the overwhelming climate change consensus. If it was a gay issue that I felt strongly about, I might feel differently I suppose…
- I’m totally excited about Doctor Who Series Three, and more excited still to hear that there’s going to be a series four… It’s actually terrifying how many people in the UK watch Doctor Who. Pretty much all my peers in the industry and their significant others are bubbling over with excitement and anticipation…
- There’s a fascinating article on BBC News about the world’s longest tunnel being built to bridge the Alps… The villages and towns up in the Alps are both delighted and worried. They’ll get less freight passing through their towns, but also fewer tourists. There may also be a station underground connected to the surface by the world’s longest elevator.
- MacInstruct has some interesting hints and tips about using your Apple iRemote… I’ve talked briefly before about the car alarm like set-up you can pull together using the iRemote. These tutorials also show you how to pair your remote to your computer…
- Twitterholic lists the people who have the most followers, favourites, friends and posts on Twitter Wow. I know all these people. Well most of em, anyway. We need to go outside more.
- The Efficient Mac User suggests 11 ways to clean up your computer… None of them are as world transforming as the one about Mail from a while back, but they have their uses…
- Blisterpack packaging allows you to create your own flavours of fizzy drink. And add caffeine if you want… Saw this and thought of Webb immediately. What a lovely / strange / pretty idea.
- The segway of skateboards? Lovely piece of video of a Segway-like motorised skateboard that someone from my home town of Norwich has developed. Very interesting indeed.
- Darth Vader expresses today’s mood very very well indeed… There’s a whole series of Star Wars characters on Twitter. Chewbacca’s my favourite. Thanks to Paul for pointing it all out…