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- Quantum computer works best switched off And I quote: “A non-running computer produces fewer errors,” says Hosten. Nice. Really really nice. Also funny.
- Clooney hits out at ‘traitor’ tag I saw Good Night and Good Luck the other day. The film was reasonable, but the sentiments of the people depicted it in were much more impressive – particularly since we think of the 50s as so constrained. In some ways things are worse today.
- Kottke reports on the year since he appealed to open up his site to micropatrons It’s an interesting reaction from him, but the conclusion is a bit disappointing – that he hasn’t found it personally sustainable and isn’t going to continue with the model. Shame.
- Google Maps meets World of Warcraft Cal showed this to me and it rocks. Tiny captures of the minimap in WoW joined together to create a huge browsable, explorable map. Just wish it was more easily annotatable.
- Jakob Neilson’s recommendations on URL in 1999 were pretty good even though he forecast that they would disappear within five years… As it happens, I think URLs are becoming more important if anything – as people start to understand how fundamental they are to giving your site or service all the benefits of being truly native to the web…
- Mike Schinkel’s piece last year on well-Designed URLs This was one of the pieces that I’ve used as a source recently, although I’m not sure I agree with the idea of recommending alternative short URLs for print. Otherwise, pretty great stuff…
- For Many AJAX is Not Degrading, But it Must Thomas Vander Wal writes about the perils of Ajax not degrading and breaking sites and services in anything but the most common – and often non-standard – browsers…
- “World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things” argues that the game encourages people to believe that hard work trumps ability and that people are more productive when they work together… I’m at a loss to see why this is wrong, to be honest. I agree with bits of the article – certainly ‘being alone together’ is a core part of the experience – but i can’t help thinking that those of us who play mostly alone feel the costs are reasonable
- EU & US World of Warcraft and how to play on both The thing I probably dislike most about World of Warcraft is that I can’t play with friends in the US, specifically Cal. I’m not sure I’m really up for maintaining two World of Warcraft accounts but I’m certainly interested…
- My newish boss has just started a weblog We’re going to have to loosen him up a little, but so far it’s pretty interesting stuff and relevant stuff.
- Brad Pitt is a chameleon… This is actually a little creepy – Brad Pitt seems to completely change his look to resemble the person he’s going out with / married to. This must be why all my dates are with fat, old people. Dammit.
- Super Fantastic Clothing Company sells a range of medium-cool t-shirts I’ve got my eye on “Why aren’t we friends on MySpace” and “I {heart} Ryan Atwood”
- High Priority toolbar widget for OSX handles to-do items… Haven’t had much of a play with it so far, but I like the idea and I’ve paid the $6 to use it directly. I may actually need to start using to do lists more often…
- How to give Oral Sex to Bloggers in Return for PR Favors (by Jeremy Zawodny) PR aimed at webloggers increases every day. I normally tell people that if they want to send me free stuff, they’re more than welcome, but that I will on principle not write about it. That gets rid of most of ’em…
- Mike Butcher reports on the state of innovation and Web 2.0 in the UK at the moment He’s asking all the right questions as well as pointing out the radical disjunct between the Future of Web Apps event and the Second Chance Tuesday crew. Got a few of the BBC and Yahoo details wrong, but nothing crippling…
- Tristan Ferne posts some radio signatures he’s taken of the major BBC radio stations Wonderful, lyrical, evocative little samples of all the programmes on a BBC radio network are spliced together and cross-faded automatically. I have no idea what you’d use it for, but it’s pretty sweet. Radio 4’s my favourite. Radio 2 just plays Coldplay.
- “Generation Church ‚òÜ Taking the Reality of God to This Generation” Pretty much loving the star in the title bar, and the general CSS-elegance and stunning textural design of this site. Obviously I’m pretty much ignoring the specious religious rubbish that’s written all over it, but hey…
- I‚Äôm Your Biggest Fan, by Christopher Monks “There are many reason to pepper a celebrity with fan mail: admiration, a sense of kinship, obsession, even boredom. Any are acceptable, all are believable, until you try to explain your motives to others.” Unfortunately true.
- Carson Workshops have a whole bunch of photos from the recent Future of Web Apps event up on their Flickr account And looking at them, I’m terrified by how exhausted and fried I look in every single photo of me. It’s like I’ve been replaced by some freakish semi-dead lych…
- Photoshopblog.net has a tutorial in which flesh is branded… It’s quite gross, a little sexy and highly informative! What’s not to like? I mean, really. Seriously. What’s not to like?!
- Jake Gyllenhaal rides into film A-list “Jake Gyllenhaal’s Bafta win is one of the highest recognition to date for a young actor who has managed to mix acclaimed offbeat work with mainstream offerings.”
- 37 Signals release Campfire – providing ‘simple group chat for business’ As with many of the more recent 37 Signals products, I’m a bit at a loss as to whether it’s really worth the money that they charge for it. It seems nice enough for a chat app. Um.
- Second Chance Tuesday aims to replicate all the mistakes of the last dot.com boom in London Some ways to fuck up a good thing: don’t trust the people who build things, be parochial in your thinking, look for short-term gain rather than building something with a future, don’t care about quality, take lots of drugs. Please let’s make boom two less tedious and obvious than boom one? Maybe this time we can make something lasting?
- From a month ago: Warner Brothers announce they’re going to sell movies online I’m really interested in this whole selling TV and movies stuff online after my time at the BBC – mainly wondering why the BBC isn’t working with these players to find a space for public sector distribution…
- ‘Sleeping on it’ best for complex decisions – this may be more true of me than other people… ‚ÄúAt some point in our evolution, we started to make decisions consciously, and we‚Äôre not very good at it. We should learn to let our unconscious handle the complicated things”
- Current state of the art in graphic design for the web… Mm. Rounded corners. Gradient fills. Anti-aliased text. I’d put money on them all emerging from use of Macs, but that’s just me…
- Are we held hostage by Yahoo’s acquisitions? It’s always worth remembering that most acquisitions come at the point where sites are growing pretty rapidly and that scaling is a difficult and time consuming business…
- Fun with LED Throwies In which Jones buys Webb a DIY Throwies kit and we assemble them in a bar and then throw them at metal things, and they don’t stick. Later Jones puts one in his mouth and I stick one up my nose (not shown)…
- Matt Patterson’s albums of the year for 2005 Some good choices in his selection, many of which I also recommend wholeheartedly…
- New London Architecture “Prefabulous London shows that a modern approach to prefabricated construction is flourishing in the capital with a new generation of designers and manufacturers building on the pioneering work of organisations such as the Peabody Trust.”
- Valleywag Hotties semi-finals: Jeff Weiner vs. Ben Trott The biggest debate coursing through Silicon Valley at the moment. Who would you rather nail? My boss’ boss or that guy that did Typepad with Mena?
- Multi-Touch Interaction Research Interesting looking touch-based interface that reminds me a lot of the map display that people were showing off at last year’s ETech…
- It’s official! Google buys Measuremap! I’ve chatted to Veen a few times over the last few months but still this is a surprise. It’s a lovely piece of work, which I imagine will fit Blogger very well. And I’m looking forward to hearing about Google’s culture and swapping notes…
- LED Throwies! A fun way of playing with LED lights, magnets and batteries! With only a 75% chance of being making something that’s bound to poison small animals and children!
- I’m a URL fetishist Patrick takes one of my rather poor in-talk jokes a little too literally. Still, now I quite want it on a T-shirt…