January 2010
40 posts
“The larger lesson of the recent crisis is sobering. Modern, advanced democracies...”
– Samuelson, arguing that we need more, smaller economic downturns. (via newsweek)
Name the World's Most Evil Company →
Selling Intimacy
kickstarter:
“What you can sell — what you better be able to sell — is intimacy. It’s interactions in public. Souvenirs. Limited things of value. Experiences. Memories. People will pay for those things, IF: your art is actually great and if you make it possible for them to buy them.”
— Seth Godin in an interview with Derek Sivers
I spent the past week at Midem, a music conference in Cannes,...
Change in Zimbabwe
An honest interview with Zimbabwe’s finance minister Tendai Biti in the last issue of Monocle. When he arrived at his post inflation was at 500bn per cent, now it’s at -1 per cent.
Has anything suprised you about the job so far?
It’s a mad house. It’s a real mad house. I ran an extremely busy law practice but it’s nothing compared to this. It’s like...
“It is SO SIMPLE. It is basically a highly responsive capacitative piece of glass...”
– Stephen Fry
Best quote I’ve read about that iPad thingy.
“I suspect one aspect of this is the way web and mobile stuff lowers so many...”
– Russell Davies
“I am currently in Port Au Prince with the Fairfax County Urban Search &...”
– From the Open Street Map Wiki
(Via Pelle)
1 tag
“When one of Proteus’s pills is taken, stomach fluids activate the edible...”
– Potential encapsulated - Economist
Come again?
Haiti Six Days Later - The Big Picture →
WatchDomestic Robotics. My friend David just got himself a domestic robot, or vacuum cleaner as you might call it.
“Twitter is indeed a very important component of the real-time Web. However, what...”
– Amit Sengal - How Google Rank Tweets
“An idea is gold only if you name it.”
– Austin Kleon, cf. Brian Eno: “Giving something a name can be just the same as inventing it. By naming something you create a difference. You say that this is now real. Names are very important.” [via and] (via bobulate)
“Apes will always need to groom each other, and Twitter is great for that. So...”
– Anil Dash
“The right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended.”
– Rowan Atkinson (surprisingly) on the attack of the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard
“Scenius, a neoligism from Brian Eno—the genius that emerges from a certain...”
– @caterina
“Inspiration for the sex robot sprang from the September 11, 2001 attacks....”
– Douglas Hines, creator of Roxxxy ”The world’s first and highest quality sex robot doll”.
Inspiration is everywhere. Apparently…
WatchAugmented Reality Architecture
“Howard was not the first to point out, that method can only deal with one or two...”
– Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Pollan’s comment made me think of my recent rants about web metrics - it’s the exact same thing. We focus so much on what we CAN measure, we forget that they’re probably not everything we SHOULD or WANT TO measure. We’re focused on the “couple of variables”...
“‘fun’ is a word with a lot of bad connotations for me.”
– Hater comment of -09
via Khoi
“If you are going to write, say, fantasy - stop reading fantasy. You’ve...”
– Terry Pratchett (Allegedly)
(Via)
“The greatest danger is that you forget what amazed and excited you about your...”
– Bill Bryson
(Via)
“I like to make guesses and just write them down. Where do I think…? A lot of...”
– Bud Caddell in this (highly recommended) interview
Interesting. Have to do this more.
“There hasn’t been this much hype about a tablet since Moses came down from the...”
– David Carr - A Savior in the Form of a Tablet
(via @quikness)
Physical tagging
Haarlem Oost is a branch library in the Netherlands that wanted to encourage visitors to add tags […] to the books they read. […] To do this, the library didn’t create a complicated computer system or send people online. Instead, they installed more book drops and return shelves, labeled with different descriptors like “boring,” “great for kids,” “funny,” etc.
Read more about the project and...
“In 2002 the average Japanese mobile user spoke on it for 181 minutes each month,...”
– The Economist has a good article on mobile usage
“And then you ask Swedes about their future and so forth, and they’re like:...”
– Bruce Sterling in his annual State of the World on the WELL
1 tag
Printing life
In development for the past eight years, the printer is similar to a conventional ink jet, but with a custom-built nozzle designed to print patterns more accurately. The machine prints in bio-ink, solutions of hormones that alter cell behavior, to create a blueprint for cells to grow and differentiate into the various types that scientists want to create, according to Dr. Julie A. Phillippi....