April 2008
38 posts
Watchlivejamie: This is very funny video from the 50s that illustrates the influence that a group behavior has on an individual. I dig this big time! Anyone ever read Robert Cialdini’s book, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”? Quick, great read.
Watchvia Amanda Gravel
Follow back, y'all
Follow-spam: when someone follows you on a social network, without regard for the value of your content, in hopes that you will view their content (bringing them value), or in hopes that you follow back robotically, increasing their page rank and/or popularity. I receive follow-spam in two places, here on Tumblr and on Twitter, and I have a mechanism for dealing with it: the tried & true...
“Do you remember in elementary school, when growing up meant unraveling the...”
– Colin Snyder
Ideas
nrbd: I always have ideas. About everything. I’m constantly - literally - either coming up with new ones or working on developing existing ones. […] I struggle with how to best use my time. Because my brain is contantly running, most of my projects never end up finished because I jump over to a new one or an old one that has re-sparked my fancy. Does anyone else have this problem? How do...
Eff Ough.
The letter combination “ough” has nine different possible pronunciations. This sentence contains them all: ”A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful plough man strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.” … Aoughsome. via saramcpherson via mills
The Adventures of Autocamp 2000 →
I’m a gamer & a programmer, and this articles cracks me up so much I can barely stand it. Fun read.
FriendFeed & Socialthing: I don't get it
I’m a user (as in registered, not active) of both FriendFeed and Socialthing, and I’m going to fully admit that I don’t get it, even though my kindergarten teacher used to call me bright. Was she just being polite to my mother? FriendFeed aggregates all of your friends activities into one massive stream. Friends can be FriendFeed users, or they can be ‘virtual’, which...
Dana-Farber won't see my money again.
I have respect for their causes, and they do a great service, but I won’t be sending them any charitable contributions ever again. Why? Because after sponsoring a friend’s charity cause, they have inundated me with emails for various campaigns, and their unsubscribe option conveniently “doesn’t work”. So all the goodwill my friend brought to one of their charities,...
How much emotion do you put on the web?
I’ve been doing some thinking about my personal interactions, both online and off. I’m not a private person by nature, I tend to share quite a bit if asked. On the other hand, I do a fair bit of self censoring on the web. In particular, I try to present myself as unwaveringly optimistic (which isn’t so bad, I’m optimistic by nature). However, that does make my online-self...
Coders are destroying search!
Don’t google Python if you’re looking for snakes. Wanna know what bears do in the winter? Couldn’t tell you, Hibernate isn’t it. What’s your favorite fruit? Can’t be an Apple, they make a Leopard. Are you a science student trying to research an Eclipse? Let’s hope your teacher enjoys Java (no, not a beverage) What else have coders done to complicate...
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering...”
– Laozi
Tumblr Community FTW
Earlier today I posted Free Idea #3, which was about two things: first, that it’d be great if Tumblr encouraged a reading workflow that exposed you to the custom styles of the tumblogs you followed, and second, that RSS readers in general would be better if they loaded the entry links in full-browser glory. Today is my lucky day! (Yours too, unless you started working on those ideas right...
Google App Engine ported to Amazon's EC2 →
This is cool! I spent time digging into Google App Engine this weekend so I could get a better sense of who it’s for, and what it’s intended for hosting. The Internet speculated a port to EC2 was possible, and I’m glad it’s been proven so quickly. This now sets the appropriate stage for how & why the App Engine will be used, it’s a social question not a...
Free Idea #3
Tumblr is at odds with itself: it encourages site customization, but the dashboard encourages a workflow which nullifies any of that effort. The problem is broader: I consume most sites through my RSS reader, which has the same effect. I can easily imagine an RSS reader that has news items on the left, and a browser view on the right. While I speed through my RSS entries, the corresponding page is...
Truncate your RSS? Fine, I won't read your blog.
Truncating your blog’s content in your RSS feed is dumb & aggravating. I appreciate that as an author, you are looking to monetize your site & can only do so by actually driving traffic to it, and while I support your war, you’ve made a tactical error if you think truncation will help. It won’t. What it does do is cause any number of your readers to skip past whatever...
twitter chat
aaronwhite: Blockbuster trying to buy Circuit City? Why?
jimmurphy: To get the hell out of the video rental biz, I guess.
aaronwhite: two losers make a winner?
jimmurphy: Yahoo, MS and AOL seem to think so. 
WatchZombie + Robots is like Peanut Butter & Jelly. Thanks to Larrison Gomez for his unique view of the world!
I just left fingerprints in Tom Brady's R8
My day got off to a good start: 75 degree weather in Boston, and met a few more interesting entrepreneurs at Open Coffee in Central Square. Unfortunately, when I left to meet my friend Adam for lunch, I noticed my car was missing; Towed! (I’ll spare the details, but know that the city of Cambridge will be hearing from me) Despite that, I enjoyed a nice walk & lunch in Kendall Square...
“As open source takes hold — in the form of software, platforms and even the...”
– Om Malik (via artistspaid) (via fred-wilson)
Thanks to all!
Today, I turned three-to-the-third! (27) Thanks to all my friends, family & well wishers! Boston may not be warm, but it’s plenty sunny :)
Google App Engine: Exciting & Slimy?
I’m excited by the Google App Engine. Creative developers should ultimately be able to focus on exactly one thing, and one thing alone: providing unique value. All the boilerplate infrastructure that goes into web app development is not only time-wasting, but soul-crushing. To the extent that Google App Engine manages to free developers from the laborious, arcane and erratic work that is...
Flrtng
thakker: flrtng. v (present participle). Flirting via any one of the many “Web 2.0” online social applications characterized by vowel-stripped names (e.g., see tumblr, flickr, etc). Note: I checked — flrtng.com is not available. My buddy Aaron just grabbed flrtng.net. If you’ve got ideas, I’m sure he’d love to hear ‘em. It’s true, I would.
Ten Thousand Cents →
joelaz: 10,000 people around the world were each paid $0.01 to draw a section of a $100 bill, not knowing that they were working together to create a piece of art. Powered by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
reCAPTCHA: Stop Spam, Read Books →
reCAPTCHA is one of the coolest things that I didn’t know about until today (I’m sure there is more). They provide a free captcha service to any website that needs it. What does reCAPTCHA get in return? Each captcha that is entered by your users helps digitize pre-digital-age books. So when OCR fails, the word is farmed out as a captcha to participating sites! Win-win = highest form...
WatchLast week I attended an event called “Drinking & Drawing”. I contributed 16 frames of animation to a collaborative short (my frames: the bubbles moving upwards, as well as the space-suit-samurai kicking the dragon & turning into a bird). Tons of fun!
My brother’s band, The Informant, just...
“I finally learned the difference between a model and a supermodel. It’s...”
– Nathan W Burke & his mysterious friend, RR
Social Media Investments (no, not monetary)
Pamela Seiple (aka pamelump) makes some great points about the value of using Twitter. In my experience, much of the hesitation people feel when deciding whether or not to use a social website, like Twitter, sounds like “It’s not for me” and really means “the barrier I perceive to extracting value is too high”. If everyone could immediately achieve the benefits...
Watchthakker: Did you ever wonder what the Pythagorean Theorem really means? This animation was really easy to make. This animation is totally sweet!
WatchAnybody else excited for tomorrow?
WatchI call this “My Favorite Dream”, it’s a great little animation I put together with the help of a few friends. Thought you mind find it interesting…
PSA: Opportunity only works when you're open to...
When opportunity knocks, it’s usually a quiet tap. The onus is on you to open the door, and see if it’s right for you, or if you’d rather pass. Those that don’t take the time to look, that aren’t curious, or are steered away by superficial details, doom themselves to miss the truly special. I’ll provide specific details motivating this PSA in the comments....
