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Send your name to Mars. NASA will put your name on Mars for free. No catch. But it's a pretty cerebral kind of stunt. Your name will be data-compressed and encoded on a CD-ROM that then gets mailed to Mars. Catch this snazzy marketing line: "Everyone on Earth who has ever dreamed of being an explorer on an alien planet will want to go along for the ride as we explore the surface of Mars" invites Dr. Ed Weiler, Associate Administrator for the Office of Space Science. That's seems like a stretch, but then again, it's a pretty irresistible gimmick. Hats off to the Mars minders.
21:28
Thursday, August 23, 2001
I am fascinated by the image of the wild-n-free communes in the 60s. On the one hand, it seems like such a cool concept. On the other hand, it seems so hopeless, ridiculous, and filthy. I recently rented Easy Rider, which offers an excellent viewpoint from the middle of the era in question. Recently, there were some good articles on Salon about this topic too. Salon.com Life | Curse of the hippie parents. "Sometimes," says the author, "your mind can be so open, your brain falls out."Also in the same mini-section on Salon there were some reviews of books on the same topic. The consensus? These communes were mostly hopeless, ridiculous, and filthy. Communes that work, and they exist, are not wild-n-free.
The relationship between Dionysus and civilized society is captivating. You can't be rid of him, but you can't get too close to him either. It is, by definition almost, the object of desire that cannot be grasped. Check out R. H. Albright's Apollo and Dionysus bookstore for some background reading.
23:21
Wednesday, August 22, 2001
TracerLock is a company that filters the web while you sleep and emails you the results. Very similar to Spyonit.com (which I use on this site and like an awful lot) and somewhat similar to the Opencola.com concept.
18:00
Martin Wattenberg's treemap implementation taken to the Smithsonian: HistoryWired: A few of our favorite things. Very nice, and a glimpse of things to come, I'm sure. This interface is getting heavy press, which is a pretty cool concept in itself.
10:03
Tuesday, August 21, 2001
MIT's ( blogdex ) is now working, and sure enough, they scrape together all the content that's being referenced by blogs around the world. Since the net is a pretty repetitive place, you get an idea very quickly of what's hot right now. Look at the top items on this list. They're all pretty good. When I last looked, my favorite was the faked lunar landing page. They think they're pretty clever, those NASA people, but one look at this page will convince you of the enormous ruse they've got going.
12:18
From Wally. Check out humanclock.com to see what time it is. Why go electronic when you can go human? A nice small humanizing gift for the wired world.
10:02
Monday, August 20, 2001
Learn how David Allen, the Getting Things Done guy, organizes his Palm. David Allen's Gear, Tips, & Tools. This book is sweeping through my company like the stomach flu.
11:08
Sunday, August 19, 2001
Meerkat: An Open Wire Service
21:01
Thursday, August 16, 2001
Here's a message from the inimitable Dave Winer. I think he does a good job with his short pithy description of why blogging is important. DaveNet : Connecting with Blogger.
00:36
Monday, August 06, 2001
There's a list for everything, including how to look like a tiger. Do you have what it takes? Procedures for the North Allegheny Tiger Costume. Helpful hint: When asked, "Who are you really?" remember that you are a real tiger.
21:57
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate
21:39
Go here. Do this. I don't even know who to give credit to, but it's damn good stuff. They appear to be things called "Presents" written by Ellen Pronk. Clever animation, beautiful concepts. Severe time-burner.
21:11
Sunday, August 05, 2001
Spintronics, taking advantage of electron spin in addition to its charge, is in the news again. Here's a good article written from a physicist perspective, and here's the New York Times dressing it up so it's fit to print.
01:49
Friday, August 03, 2001
Soon you will be watched not only by Big Brother, but by ten thousand nosy computers as well. Alarming, but true: connect all those surveillance cameras to some face recognition software and the authorities can know who's where all the time. Read this article in the Washington Post for more: Matching Faces With Mug.
00:31
Article about SF author Vernor Vinge in the New York Times. He was doing cyberspace before cyberspace was cool (i.e. before William Gibson had given it a name). Plus he's a physicist, for whatever that's worth.
00:25
I really like the Jim Leftwich's blog JIMWICh. Take a look at the Frida Kahlo postage stamp he was nice enough to make for the US Postal service: Frida Kahlo American-Style!
00:23
Now this is real progress. Computer-generated maps like real people really draw: Rendering Effective Route Maps: Improving Usability Through Generalization. And it's already in use at MapBlast. Now all we need is anti-aliased maps (why hasn't anyone done that yet?) and we'll really be getting somewhere. [spotted on peterme.com]
00:19
What a shame... the "cool new stuff" weblog Rapidly Changing Face of Computing has gone away. It appears to have been a surprise to author Jeffrey Harrow, based on the publication schedule that he was publishing only a few weeks ago. Compaq must be tightening the old corporate belt. Too bad. We'll miss you, Jeffrey. :-(
00:05
Thursday, August 02, 2001
I like the idea of magazine called Small Times. They must save a bundle on postage. Small Times: News about MEMS, Nanotechnology and Microsystems
16:51
Now a computer can sound just like you: see Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice in the NY Times. I predict one byproduct of all this soul-stealing will be an increased appreciation of intimacy. Or not.
16:49
James Lileks has a great web site and a magnificent eye for collectible retro. Take a look at his American Postcards collection.
00:52
Tuesday, July 31, 2001
XML developer news from XMLhack: by and for the XML community.
02:33
Monday, July 30, 2001
It was only a matter of time before the Media Lab did something with blogs. blogdex is that something. It's a sort of meta-blog zeitgeist filter. Punchline: if it appears on a lot of blogs, it must be cool. It's a good idea, but only just now getting off the ground.
22:29
Monday, July 23, 2001
An interview with Evan Williams of blogger fame appears on WriteTheWeb. A quick peek around the site reveals it to be a fun blog of its own.
00:07
Make A Shorter Link is a clever site that helps you shorten those ridiculously long links to places like Yahoo maps and Amazon books.
00:05
Sunday, July 22, 2001
Fun pictures of bad designs posted by perceptive observer Michael Darnell. The file cabinet handle is one good example of many.
21:50
Saturday, July 21, 2001
Darwin in a test tube: Avida is an artificial life software package from the Digital Life Laboratory at Caltech. Computer simulations are now able to hit "magic thresholds" of complexity that allow them to model something that looks an awful lot like life. We're going to be learning a lot from artificial life in the near future.
22:43
Friday, July 20, 2001
Jorn Barger, of Robot Wisdom fame, has a pet project (he has a bunch of pet projects, actually) called the Internet Timelines Project. I find the concept intriguing. I've often thought about how I would construct a lifeline hypertext construct. It reminds me of David Gelernter's Scopeware concept, where time is the predominant organizing force. Speaking of Gelernter, here is his keynote address (PDF) to the PCExpo in New York, along with a very fond piece by the New York Times (PDF) on the same topic. Interesting stuff.
23:39
This is old news now, but take a look at this Election 2000 map of presidential vote by county. It's pretty enlightening: The Mathematics of a Tie Election. The actual map of interest is partway down the page. It's an almost perfect urban/rural split, with most major population centers going for Gore. As they say on the site: Of the 40 largest metropolitan areas, only Phoenix, Dallas, San Diego, Tampa Bay, Salt Lake City, and Indianapolis went for Bush. Take a close look: not too many Gore votes in Wyoming. You can also see how the rural areas that went for Gore have a strong minority presence. The banks of the Mississippi was solid Gore territory right through the deep south.
22:13
Wednesday, July 18, 2001
I always enjoy a good map, and An Atlas of Cyberspaces is a page full of them. What does the Internet look like? It all depends on where you stand.
18:11
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