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Entries for April 2004
Collected icons for arrows, printing, comments, permalinks, email, etc.
Collected icons for arrows, printing, comments, permalinks, email, etc..
New tech distills a 3 hr baseball game
New tech distills a 3 hr baseball game into 8 minutes of pure hitting, running, fielding action.
Me and Typhoid Mary
Sam Arbesman has written up an initial analysis (PDF file) of the results of the Memespread Project. In discussing the spread of memes, it’s common practice to utilize familiar biological terms: viral, epidemic, contagious, incubation, etc. My favorite quote of the article along those lines is “Jason Kottke is an informational equivalent of Typhoid Mary”. Heh. But in this case, MetaFilter turned out more Mary than I:
What seemed most interesting is that the largest spike occurred 10 hours into the experiment, and was due to the website MetaFilter (http://www.metafilter.com). The spread of the meme to this collaborative blog seemed to help give the epidemic another wave of spreading (as can be seen in Figure 5 and Figure 1).
Because of its greater traffic, MeFi exposed more people to the meme than did kottke.org. And I suspect that due to the different audiences of the two sites, the meme was probably also more virulent among MeFi readers than kottke.org readers; that is, MeFi readers were more likely to infect others with the meme than were those of kottke.org.
It would be interesting to run this experiment again under slightly different conditions. Maybe seed a bigger node in the network (MeFi instead of kottke.org). Or seed 50 sites at the same time, each with a different meme marked with a distinct tracking code (e.g. www.example.com/?id=47) and see how each one spreads. Maybe the memes could be mutable; creating a new strain would be as easy as adding a couple digits to the tracking ID.
File format searching
Andy notes that Google is now indexing Flash files. Search for “skip intro” to try it out. Upon seeing this, the gray-bearded conspiracy theorist in me wondered if Google was unfairly promoting the Flash format over Adobe’s competing SVG format in order to crush Adobe into dust. I needn’t have worried…you can search Google for SVG files just fine (because they’re text files).
Of course, you can search Google for all kinds of filetypes, text and otherwise: .rdf (RSS, FOAF, etc.), .xml (RSS, Atom, etc.), .torrent (BitTorrent), .aspx (.NET), .php (PHP), .csv (comma-delimited data file), .vcf (vCard…look, global address book made easy!), etc.
Apple announces new version of iTunes
Apple announces new version of iTunes. iMix and Party Shuffle look interesting.
Restaurant Magazine names French Laundry world’s best restaurant for 2004
Restaurant Magazine names French Laundry world’s best restaurant for 2004. French Laundry is set to reopen on May 15th.
Yahoo! UK runs a Fark-like site called The Office Attachments
Yahoo! UK runs a Fark-like site called The Office Attachments. Weird.
Paintings by Teresa Margolles made by dipping
Paintings by Teresa Margolles made by dipping paper “into the water used to clean human corpses after autopsies”. Part of her ”Muerte Sin Fin” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt.
Teacher and Meteorologist to Blog Week of
Teacher and Meteorologist to Blog Week of Storm Chasing in Tornado Alley. Behold, tornadoblogging is born.
Push! Kiss your browser goodbye: The radical
Push! Kiss your browser goodbye: The radical future of media beyond the Web. The original much-maligned article by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly from the March 1997 Wired.
An interactive look at the design and
An interactive look at the design and security features of the new US $50 bill.
Gary Wolf on The Return of Push
Gary Wolf on The Return of Push. Nothing’s being “pushed”, but the customization and personalization stuff was right on.
How To Hack Your Head, a buyer’s
How To Hack Your Head, a buyer’s guide to recreational brain scanning.
Benetton debuts new Kurt Anderson-helmed Colors today
Benetton debuts new Kurt Anderson-helmed Colors today.
reBlogging
For the next week or so, I’ll be editing Eyebeam’s reBlog, “a community site focused on art, technology, and culture”. reBlog filters the filterers, with the reBlogger distilling information from many incoming feeds (by bloggers, Eyebeam artists, newspapers, etc.) into a single feed packed with art/tech/culture goodness for the Eyebeam community to consume.
One of my duties as editor is to seek out new sources of information for the site. If you look at the reBlog sidebar under “feeds”, there are currently about 60 sources from which to choose stories. Are there any feeds you’d like to see on the list? IMO, an ideal feed would contain items about at least two of the reBlog topics of interest (art, tech, culture). Send your suggestions to [email protected]. Thanks for your suggestions.
Some ideas for customizing the outside of your iBook
Some ideas for customizing the outside of your iBook. Niche business alert: will rich hipsters pay for custom designed iBook exteriors?
The realest real
So, I’m writing a script for a reality show. In it, a team of fit-but-insecure aspiring actors and models (plus one nerdy, self-confident Asian college student) work together to restore and pimp out a 1974 Winnebago motor home, inside and out, over the course of several weeks. The team will be coached by a custom car aficionado from Southern California and five homosexual gentleman, learning from them not only how to weld, but how to make their bead profiles all they can be.
During the restoration process, the team will be judged and heckled by a panel comprised of Debbie Gibson, Warren Buffett, and a weekly guest panelist of C-list status. Each week, viewers will vote on which judge they liked the least using their cell phones. That judge will have to take a whipped cream shower with Dom DeLuise and marry a random member of the studio audience. The audience member gets $1,000,000 and a phone call to a friend. That friend will choose one of the team members to be “fired” from the show. On the final episode, the last remaining team member wins the Winnebago, drives it across the country with Tara Reid and Brittany Murphy to NY to start their new job at Orange County Choppers. At some point, someone will eat a handful of live earthworms.
It can’t miss.
Jerry Orbach shoots his last scenes for Law and Order
Jerry Orbach shoots his last scenes for Law and Order. Farewell, Lennie.
The Queen Mary 2 and the QE2 are
The Queen Mary 2 and the QE2 are expected to steam out of NY Harbor together on Sunday night.
Gender differences and performance in competitive environments
Gender differences and performance in competitive environments.
Sushi restaurants as economic indicators
Tyler Cowen, economist and co-proprietor of the excellent Marginal Revolution, recently gave a talk to the International Association of Culinary Professionals and offered some food-related investment advice:
If sushi restaurants are new to a country, and are succeeding, buy shares in the stocks of that country. Raw fish, of course, can be toxic. Quality can be hard to monitor with the naked eye. Sushi consumption is a sign that people are starting to trust each other.
Nice.
New logo for TypePad
New logo for TypePad. I don’t think this is an improvement. Pac-Man on a string?
Adam Greenfield takes a crack at redesigning the 1040 tax form
Adam Greenfield takes a crack at redesigning the 1040 tax form. Where’s the Comic Sans?!?
SounderCover adds background noise to your cell
SounderCover adds background noise to your cell phone calls, providing you with “hang up” alibis. I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. There’s a circus parade going by…
US quietly releases Saddam interrogation logs on
US quietly releases Saddam interrogation logs on obscure Internet humor site.
Wrap rage - “Extreme anger caused by
Wrap rage - “Extreme anger caused by product packaging that is difficult to open or manipulate”. To open a recent DVD purchase, I had to go through a layer of shrink-wrapped plastic, three “security” stickers, and these little plastic tabs they’re putting on DVD cases now. Rage!
Redesigning the 1040 tax form
Redesigning the 1040 tax form. But TurboTax has already redesigned tax forms to the point where they’re unnecessary for taxpayers.
Everything is broken
Email is broken. Google is broken. RSS is broken. Comments are broken. Trackback is broken. Instant messaging is broken. Social networking is broken. Usenet is broken. IPv4 is broken. DNS is broken.
And yet, people seem to be getting lots of things done on the Internet these days. Curious, that.
Big upgrade for NetNewsWire coming soon
Big upgrade for NetNewsWire coming soon. All the newsreaders seem to be iterating towards genuine usefulness. Smart lists/feeds/albums/folders for President!
Look at the Webby Awards getting more and more irrelevant
Look at the Webby Awards getting more and more irrelevant.
Socials & More