February 2008
188 posts
This could take a while
Well, this blog is set up and I am just adding all the widgets I want in the sidebar. I can’t work out how to merge my old Wired Gecko database with the new blog’s database (no, there was little planning before I just went and changed everything) so as soon as I figure that out, I will set up the new blog and publish its details. If anyone knows how to either combine MySQL databases...
9 tags
Um ... in typical me fashion ...
Ok, I have done an impulsive thing again without properly planning for it. As you will have noticed, Wired Gecko has become my guinea pig yet again and has changed quite fundamentally. This blog has become my tumblelog and will feature bits and pieces I find on the Web or in my feeds which I like to share with you all. The longer form blog will hopefully merge with my Jacobson Attorneys law blog...
BBC NEWS | Africa | Odinga pledges to rebuild... →
What an interesting compromise and one that seems to make a lot of sense. I wonder how much executive authority the president retains?
NASA's Lunar Lowrider →
: Photo: NASA NASA plans to build a lunar outpost by 2020. Though psychologists wonder how moonbase inhabitants will handle the isolation and homesickness, the rest of us want to know: What are…
Robin Williams Saves the Day at TED When Tech... →
You know your conference has hit the big time when Robin Williams steps up from the audience to fill the dead air during an embarrassing, show-stopping technical glitch. The actor-comedian…
NASA's Lunar Lowrider →
The Chariot is NASA’s radically new design for a lunar rover. No doors, no windows and no seats — and each of its six wheels has independent steering.
…
How to 'Google Bomb' an Enemy →
Got a bone to pick with an internet adversary? Peeved at a scofflaw organization or a shady political figure? Get revenge in proper geek fashion by crafting a Google bomb.
Robin Williams' Impromptu Riff Fills Dead Air at... →
At the TED conference in Monterey, an unexpected technical glitch almost led to an embarrassing spot of silence — until comedian Robin Williams stood up from the audience and entertained the crowd…
Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs →
Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room writes,
The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read. At least one senior Air Force official calls the squeeze so…
Desiree Palmen's photos of camouflaged people →
Rotterdam-based artist Desiree Palmen creates incredible photographs of highly camouflaged people. The following is from her artist statement for a 2002 gallery show titled…
Nuclear reset for .Mac syncing →
How-To: Truly reset your .Mac sync data [Ars Technica] I never have trouble finding company when it comes to whining about the reliability of .Mac syncing. It’s surely not fair to lay all of…
Vosotros -- CC friendly label -- first anniversary... →
The Creative Commons blog has a great interview with John Gillilan, one of my former students, about his Creative Commons-friendly record label vosotros. John’s come up with a ton of very…
L Ron Hubbard plagiarized Scientology →
Evidence that L. Rob Hubbard plagiarised Scientology from a 1934 German book called “Scientologie.” The text seems to map to various hoo-haw from the cult’s official doctrine, too. Link (…
JotSpot re-emerges as Google Sites →
The JotSpot hosted wiki service will be reborn Thursday as Google Sites, a new piece of the Google Apps hosted collaboration and communication suites.
Mars on Earth →
The Mars Society Desert Research Station is a facility near Hanksville, Utah where researchers pretend they’re living on Mars. When researchers leave the facility to collect…
‘Coconuts’ leave ‘Blacks only’ meeting →
I have two issues with this:
1. A meeting was held with Jacob Zuma and the Forum of Black Journalists. All white journalists were asked to leave the meeting.
2. When 2 non-white journalists…
PayPal: Steer clear of Safari - Yahoo! News →
PayPal: Steer clear of Safari
(Macworld.com)
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Macworld.com - If you’re using Apple’s Safari browser, PayPal has some advice for you: Drop it, at least if you want to avoid online fraud.
Changes loom for ICASA law →
The law governing ICASA may be amended to exclude the minister from being part of the councillor appointment process.
“In October 2006, Google acquired JotSpot, a hosted wiki platform for building...”
– JotSpot reincarnated as Google Sites | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com
What made me cry: Microsoft’s World Wide... →
Shared 31 times Tagged Microsoft (874) World Wide Telescope (2)
Lots of people are asking me questions about what made me cry at Microsoft a few weeks ago.
If I told you “a telescope”…
Beware of Freeconomics
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Shared 22 times Tagged Trends (177)
A few weeks ago we published a piece on this blog entitled The Danger of Free, in which we discussed the rise of free - a marketing strategy where…
A Look at Social Network Popularity Around the... →
Shared 21 times Tagged mashable (407)
The map above is a neat find by the Le Monde newspaper in France, originally created by the research firm Datamonitor. What it’s showing is…
Add Chat to Your Webspace with Google Talk... →
Shared 20 times Tagged Chat (65) Google Talk (34) Im (51) Instant Messaging (39)
Google Talk has released a new chatback feature allowing people visiting your blog, online…
Electricty saving winning print ad →
Ta da - the winner of The Times Young Creatives Competition held at Design Indaba has been announced…and here’s the winning ad. No T&A, no unnecessary stunts, no excessive Photoshop…
How important is money? →
I read a very interesting blog post by Paul Buchheit titled Is there more to life than money? which got me thinking about whether money directly relates to happiness.
Paul is an ex-Googler who…
MTN drops international rates →
Customers can expect to pay up to 60% less for calls to international destinations.
German Court Affirms Computer Privacy as a... →
Surveillance of personal computers by law enforcement is a violation of the country’s constitution, justices rule, although spying will be allowed in exceptional cases.
…
Reactions to the new Backpack from around the web →
The recent Backpack update has been a huge success. Here’s a look at the first 24 hours of the updated app’s signups, upgrades, and financial performance. And here’s some of the blogosphere’s reaction to the new Backpack… Web Worker Daily: Equipping your Virtual Office with a Multiuser Backpack
Backpack, 37signals lightweight online information organizer has just...
Our secret sauce →
Posted by Hal Varian, Chief Economist I was recently a guest columnist on the Freakonomics Blog. There were several interesting questions from the readers, but one was quite striking:
“How can we explain the fairly entrenched position of Google, even though the differences in search algorithms are now only recognizable at the margins? Is there some hidden network effect that makes it better...
Word Of Tweet Marketing →
Twitter, for those of you haven’t heard, is an online communication system where users broadcast their thoughts, feelings, rants, and rambles to the world. Or more precisely, to a subset of the world that wants to listen, and to anybody who stumbles upon such a result in Google. You can follow my tweets if you like; I’m danielpunkass on the service.
Twitter is an amazingly successful service in...
Lilliputland →
I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be like Gulliver, King Kong or Godzilla… Photos from Bobasonic, danorbit, dr. motte.
A renewed wish for open document standards →
Posted by Zaheda Bhorat, Open Source Programs Manager The subject of open document standards grows in importance not only for the technically- minded, but for anyone who uses a computer to work on editable documents. Across the board, standards are crucial. They ensure that the devices and technology you use today will continue to work tomorrow, that your DVDs will play in your player, that your...
A Closer Look at LinkedIn Privacy →
There is lot of information available on the internet. Some of this information may be generated
through your LinkedIn profile. We have provided you with tools which enable you to control your LinkedIn information. Below are a few tips on how to control your data and establish the desired level of privacy with your profile. To start, log into your account and go to your Account and Settings and...
The Company-Customer Pact →
A few weeks ago, we attended a summit put together by our friends over at Get Satisfaction and they launched something they call the Company-Customer Pact. As they put it:
This pact is a call for shared responsibility between companies & customers — one that promises that both sides will hold up their end of the bargain to change the game. The document provides a way to opt into a set of...
37signals Featured in Wired (March 2008 issue) →
The Brash Boys at 37signals Will Tell You: Keep It Simple, Stupid is a four-page article in the March 2008 issue of Wired Magazine about 37signals. It should be on the newsstands this week. [Hansson] and his partners at software developer 37signals have backed up the big talk. Rails has continued its run of popularity; over the years, tens of thousands of programmers have used it to create...
Undocumented Emoticons in Gmail Chat
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Shared 35 times Tagged Gmail (156)
Emoticons are a simple way to disambiguate text messages and to add a human touch using a minimum amount of characters. While Gmail Chat supports many emoticons, the full lists of emoticons that can be used is much bigger. TKHere tried various combinations and found some undocumented emoticons in Gmail Chat: In the screenshot above, you can see a diabolic...
Fuck you RealNet →
You owe me a carwash…!
Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples
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Shared 22 times Tagged design (530) Design Showcase (10) ideas (74) Menus (3) Navigation (25)
Navigation is the most significant element in web design. Since web-layouts don’t have any physical representation a user can stick to, consistent navigation menu is one of the few design elements which provide users with some sense of orientation and guide them through the site. Users should be able...
Chat With Your Site's Visitors Using Google Talk
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Shared 40 times Tagged Google Talk (28)
Google Talk’s gadget was a nice addition, but you couldn’t use it to chat with unknown people or with the visitors of the site, like in Meebo Me. Now you can do that using the new chatback badges. You only need to add some code to your site and anyone could click on the generated badge to chat with you. “A Google Talk chatback badge...
An easy way to add new features to Google
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Shared 20 times Tagged Google/SEO (17) How To (306)
Have you ever wanted to add a new feature to Google’s search results? There’s a really nice way to do it right now. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, it’s called a Subscribed Link, and it lets you “create custom search results that users can add to their Google search pages. You can display links to your services for your...
10 Recommended Recommendation Engines
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Shared 24 times Tagged Products (147)
Alex Iskold just posted Rethinking Recommendation Engines, a product type that we here at ReadWriteWeb have explored a lot over the past year or so. In this follow-up post, we present 10 recommendation engines that we like. And we don’t include the obvious ones, such as Amazon, Netflix, last.fm, Pandora. So it’s not a ‘top 10’,...
Why Google Buys Companies
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Shared 32 times Tagged google (1246) Internet (955) Search (287) Technology (886)
Watching Google from the outside – with the limited information that offers – it seems they buy companies mainly to get more:
Data. Like articles, meta data, digital archives, photographs.
Users. Or in more general terms, customers or market share.
Technology. Mostly, that’s software, like web or desktop...
6 Adobe AIR Apps to Check Out →
Adobe’s AIR platform allows developers to create web applications that run on your desktop without the need of a web browser. Now that AIR has dropped the beta tag (see our previous coverage), it’s time to look at some of the AIR apps you can use today. And if you want to know why we here at Read Write Web are so excited about AIR, read more of our analysis about the platform to get...
Manage Your Online Reputation [Feature]
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Shared 20 times Tagged feature (259) google (1245) Online identity (4) People Search (7) Reputation (7) Self marketing (4) Top (717) Web reputation (4)
Are you happy with the results people get back when they Google your name? If not, there are easy ways to monitor and guide what information is published about you online. Two years ago we covered how to have a say in what Google says about...
TED talks debut in-flight on Virgin America this... →
Next time you fly Virgin America to (ahem) catch up on the latest episodes of Boing Boing tv, you may also want to check out video from TED Talks, which will debut in-flight throughout the fleet, starting this Friday.
The TED Talks channel will premier on Virgin America flights in March and will feature some of the most compelling and groundbreaking thinkers of our time – including former...
Nicholas Sarkozy is a beast →
Not only is the French president the step-father of Mick Jagger’s bastard (which means he gets regular schtoepage out of his wife, former model Carla Bruni), but he’s also a belligerent drunk, as evidenced in these priceless YouTube clips:
Here he is arriving at a press conference at last year’s G8 summit after a boozy lunch with Vladimir Putin. What a naughty little Frenchy! You sort of...
TWiT 133 with Jonathan Coulton and "Rock Bad" →
TWiT 133: Jonathan Coulton - Functional And Elegant Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jonathan Coulton, Merlin Mann, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, and Tom Merritt Jonathan Coulton and niche broadcasting, HD DVD finally kaput, YouTube goes down, frozen RAM and more. Here’s a free, direct MP3 download of TWiT 133. Man, I really loved this episode. Jonathan Coulton’s music and performances are inspiring in...
India yoga festival posters →
Here are some fun posters and a TV commercial for the 15th International Pondicherry Yoga Festival, held last month. Link
Incredible human dissection photos on Flickr →
The Stanford University Medical Center’s Bassett Collection consists of more than 1500 gorgeous photographs of human dissection from the middle of the last century. Stanford anatomy professor David Bassett was considered a master of dissection and his photographs are still used widely in anatomy textbooks. Now, the gorgeous annotated dissection photos are making their way online. The...