magpie's shiny things

For those of you fol­low­ing the Iran protests:

pre­serv­ing the infrastructure.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/twitter-reschedules.html

basic wartime jour­nal­ism pro­to­cols explained for twit­ter users and
blog read­ers. (Original site has been slash-dotted, excerpt at
boing-boing)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/cyberwar-guide-for‑i.html

call for hack­ing Iranian gov­’t sites (eth­i­cal­ly ques­tion­able to flat
out wrong IMO) Tons of good links in the wired article.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/activists-launch-hack-attacks-on-tehran-regime/

Today’s Design Links:

Lovely retro adver­tis­ing for Coca-Cola
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/06/15/coca-cola-cupping-ma.html

Another drink relat­ed design. Perfect for when the work­bench gets too
crowd­ed for your beer.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/kim_hyunbeens_drinklip_for_desks_with_little_real_estate_13775.asp

First link from the “real” world. La-z-boy goes green. (Dang that’s ugly)
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/green_furniture_award_goes_tothe_lazboy_13766.asp

Second link from the “real” world. Did GM kill the wrong mark?
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/06/general-motors‑4/

Adventure, Curiosity, Time Wasting, and maybe Educational:

Just launched by Dylan Thuras and Joshua Foer. Atlas Obscura is a
won­der cab­i­net on the inter­net. User gen­er­at­ed con­tent that is worth
seeing.(Occasional serv­er slow-downs. Warning colos­sal time sink.)
http://atlasobscura.com/

Dylan Thuras pre­vi­ous project, Curious Expeditions is equal­ly fascinating
http://curiousexpeditions.org/

Four for Tech-Geek crowd:

Carl Linnaeus invent­ed the index card. It’s impor­tant, really.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616080137.htm

Obama is work­ing to fix Read ID but not the way it should be fixed.
(By trash­ing the idea altogether)
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/obama-administration-aims-to-fix-broken-real-id-act.ars

Experts call for Google to force use of https rather than http at all
times for it’s cloud apps. Oops, I nev­er remem­ber to force https when
I’m on-line at Starbucks.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/google_ssl/

Tablet net­book? I leave it to the net­book fans to dis­sect and debate.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/16/asus-t91-tablet-netbook-to-hit-us-retailers-soon/

Video Links:

Tom Brokaw from Comdex 1994. Weird — they don’t get much wrong.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67945/late-night-with-jimmy-fallon-tom-brokaws-early-reports-about-the-internet

I love post-it notes. I love stop-motion ani­ma­tion. Swoon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpWM0FNPZSs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mentalfloss.com%2Fblogs%2Farchives%2F26442&feature=player_embedded

Making of video as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArJYvaCCB3c&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mentalfloss.com%2Fblogs%2Farchives%2F26442&feature=player_embedded

I haven’t had time to watch all of this yet. But ‑OMG- all that
Bollywood good­ness in one place!
http://www.motherjones.com/riff/2009/06/video-bollywood-beginners

More on Thursday,

Interesting Things Links:

More women who like being on the road, recre­at­ing an his­toric road
trip. It’s a bit slick but an inter­est­ing attempt.
http://aliceramsey.org/

New research on the math­e­mat­ics behind the “social web” and tagging:
(esp for info geeks)
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/06/tagging.ars

A train­able advice engine.
http://www.hunch.com/tour/
Write up on what, why, and who here:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/15/hunch-machine-learni.html

Play with it an let me know what you think.

Art and Design Links:

Lego art:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/06/11/lego-voyage-dans-la.html

A lit­tle creepy, very dreamy:
http://sleepmachine.tumblr.com/post/123617216/venusflytrap-technohell

Tech  and Gadget Links:

New faster SD cards for high resolution/high speed shoot­ing. (Probably
good for the new video cam­eras.) Not here in the US yet. I’ll put them
on the watch­list and let you all know when I see them.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/15/panasonic-announces-class-10-sdhc-cards/

The killer phone app Loyalty card hold­er. I have a key chain weighed
down with the damn things. Too bad it does­n’t real­ly work. (See
comments)
http://consumerist.com/5278161/

WTF Links:

There’s an expla­na­tion in the com­ments — just ignore it.
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011366.html#011366

NB for the next cou­ple of months there will be morn­ing link­age Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Wednesday a, if it hap­pens at all, will
be afternoons.

It’s nice to be back wast­ing y’al­l’s time.

And we were all snick­er­ing at the park­ing cops on segways…
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/any-cop-is-robocop-with-an-electric-police-trike/

A gallery of the cov­ers of the jour­nal Advanced Materials. Click to
embiggen. Read the issue sum­maries to dis­cov­er that you know
absolute­ly nothing.
http://www.wiley-vch.de/publish/en/journals/alphabeticIndex/2089/?jURL=http://www.wiley-vch.de:80/vch/journals/2089/cover/index2009.html

Sometimes the answer to nasty mate­ri­als is not to dis­pose of them but
to reuse them. I say it’s more than sort of sustainable.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sortof_sustainable_flooring_vinyl_yes_vinyl_composition_tile_13468.asp

A good sum­ma­ry of the chaos in Guatemala caused by the death of lawyer
Rodrigo Rosenberg. Social medi­a’s role in this cri­sis is big. (I hate
the term social media.)
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/12/guatemala-slain-lawy.html

If you’re post­ing video to one of the video shar­ing sites you might
want to have a look at Markus Weiland’s review of their
ownership/copyright/privacy poli­cies. (Do they own your video?) Anyone
know of a sim­i­lar overview of the terms of use for the pho­to sharing
sites?
http://advancingusability.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/owned-legal-terms-of-video-hosting-services-compared/

For WordPress users a col­lec­tion of hacks tak­ing advan­tage of custom
fields. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the first one — post expi­ra­tion dates. (I
have not had time nor incli­na­tion to look care­ful­ly at all the code.
Use at your own risk.)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/13/10-custom-fields-hacks-for-wordpress/

Distributed trans­la­tion efforts for TED talks. There’s also supposed
to be a new trick in the tran­scripts. Select a bit of text and go
direct­ly to that por­tion of the video. Haven’t found it yet. Will
advise.
http://blog.ted.com/2009/05/ted_open_trans.php

Neil Giaman reminds us that we do not own the right to an author’s
future out­put just because we bought the first book in a series. Some
days he just makes me nod my head and smile.
http://blog.ted.com/2009/05/ted_open_trans.php

Unintended coin­ci­dence. Tomorrow I leave to cross the coun­try. May
14th also marks the 205th anniver­sary of the begin­ning of Lewis and
Clark’s cross coun­try trek.
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14940

Zen image of the day.
http://sleepmachine.tumblr.com/post/106996448/plasticdreams-tumbleg-kiri2-muibrog

This is like­ly to be the last Morning Linkage until I return from the road.
Occasional trip reports to WL or fol­low along dai­ly with words and pic­tures on:
http://shoes.blackdogandmagpie.net

A sil­ly to start. 69 Love Song Illustrated. Just what it says. All by
dif­fer­ent artists. They haven’t got the full 69 yet and a the quality
varies but this one is hap­py sil­ly. (Mildly NSFW due to hazy nakedness
and furries)
http://howfuckingromantic.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/lets-pretend-were-bunny-rabbits/

Douglas Bowman’s depar­ture from his post as head design­er for Google
has freed him to say a lot about how Google works. In this NYT article
he again dis­cuss­es the data vs. design divide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/business/10ping.html?_r=1

How the smart guys at UCSB hijacked a bot­net. This is the best I’ve
been able to find on it. Details of how the bot­net worked are light.
(I real­ly don’t care about the user data they found. There’s nothing
new.) I’ll keep look­ing for some­thing more in depth.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/252353/hijacked-botnet-exposes-startling-online-habits.html

Charmingly British head-to-head test between a net­book (Asus) and an
iPhone. Which is eas­i­er to type on? In a Rally car? At full goose bozo
speeds?
http://news.cnet.com/8301–17938_105-10230160–1.html

Cory Doctorow’s review of Daniel Pinkwater’s new chil­dren’s book.
Pinkwater like Gaiman writes chil­dren’s books that make grown-ups
hap­py too.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/11/pinkwaters-neddiad‑a.html

Pretty. Shiny. Nostalgic (for some of you) and pos­si­bly the coolest
bike name *ever*.
http://www.bikeexif.com/hodaka-combat-wombat

I still hate monday.
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/05/11/funny-pictures-the-monday/

more tomor­row,

The Design Edition

Starting with a cou­ple of fur­ni­ture designs.

With a welder and some scrap from out behind the barn we could make up
a cou­ple of these lawn chairs. Not sure I want to sit on one. Humor in
design is good.
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/sitting_on_the_fence_13389.asp

And anoth­er report­ed by Core77. Proving that lack of humor in design
think­ing is what makes the rest of think design­ers are pretentious
idiots. From the pull quote: “…struc­tur­al nar­ra­tive of planned
imper­fec­tions…”  WTF?
http://www.core77.com/blog/ny_design_week_09/ny_design_week_09_preview_divis_table_from_mike_and_maaike_13414.asp

Two on the design process.

Flikr set of pho­tos and sketch­es show­ing high­lights of Andy Logan
design­ing the TurboChef DWO oven. (Do Want)
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=243760&set_id=269978

NTY on-line about Steven M. Johnson. Characterized as R. Crumb meets
Buckmister Fuller. You can just look at the pix (tons) but the article
is well worth the 15 min. read. (Discuss)
http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/searching-for-value-in-ludicrous-ideas/

A quick report on a sweet lit­tle ad cam­paign to stop trash­ing the ocean.
http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2009/05/the-most-dangerous-species-in-the-mediterranean/

Information Architect and Designer want­ed by the State of Oregon to
work on the unholy mess that is the elec­tion process. Not the voting
machines/techniques but all the sur­round­ing media. Voters pamphlets,
polling place sig­nage, PSAs etc.  Good t see some recog­ni­tion of the
role of IA and design in pub­lic dis­course. (See also the book Nudge -
Jim H read­ing first.)
http://www.coroflot.com/public/job_details.asp?job_id=22721

Ob Moto Content:

Nice mod of a stan­dard. (Don’t like Sucker Punch Sally’s oth­er work
much but this is rockin’) <begin rant> And for gawks sake this is 00s
do not build URLs with spe­cial char­ac­ters in them <end rant>
http://www.bikeexif.com/sucker-punch-sally%E2%80%99s-fender-triumph

Another nice port­fo­lio of bike draw­ings and mockups.
http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?individual_id=75848&set_id=20281

more Monday
have a great week­end folks