Interesting sites that would otherwise get lost in my bookmarks folder.
Tags: Futurism, HCI, Ubiquitous Computing, Video
I have a history of using an organizational system for about six months, then getting frustrated and giving up on it. This is usually compounded by my preference for software organizers over paper; I have to deal with technological obsolescence as well. And in my experience, moving from one piece of organizational software to another is just as much of a pain as manually copying out a physical organizer.
Late last year, I told myself that if there were no better options, I would write my own organizer. Failing that I would go back to paper, and just cope. And it’s getting to be about that time.
So without further ado, here’s a list of the organizational services I have found, and really should take a close look at:
Pretty much all of these systems are web based. This doesn’t bother me as much as it used to; I almost always have my phone and it’s ludicrously oversized data plan with me. Some of them already have helper programs for my phone. And many of them are geek friendly, and have exposed APIs as well as calendar and RSS feeds.
One thing that gives me pause is each of these services may disappear at any moment. In fact, that happened to I Want Sandy when its developer was bought by Twitter.
Tags: Frustration, Organization
Exporting the past into the future:
Focusing on (a) nothing more granular than cities-as-place and days-as-time and (b) broadcasting future intention, we could find a valuable location-based service for a certain audience – surfacing coincidence for frequent travelers.
…
Point (b) though, still has me thinking that sharing your precise whereabouts – where you are right now, has limited value.
(via Short Sharp Science, via Nora3000)
Tags: Futurism, Interface, Locative Services, Ubiquitous Computing
Tags: Erin McKean, Lexicography, TED, TED Talk, Video, Writing
Here at Ars Electronica is where we did an unscientific qualitative test of the criteria devised to define New/Interactive Media Art. Now we deliver to you the conclusive results, and do so in the spirit of the David Letterman Top-10 Countdown, only with a Top-15 rather than 10, cause we found 15 things.
Parallax turns a selected element into a ‘window’, or viewport, and all its children into absolutely positioned layers that can be seen through the viewport. These layers move in response to the mouse, and, depending on their dimensions (and options for layer initialisation), they move by different amounts, in a parallaxy kind of way.
Tags: Internet, JavaScript, Media, Web
Strunk had been born in 1869. That is, he was old enough to read the news when General Custer led his men to massacre at the Little Big Horn. Strunk was a grownup with a Ph.D. when Dracula was first published. By the time White was his student and had to buy the privately published precursor of what would become Strunk & White, the professor had reached the age of 50. It was 1919.
Language Log: Don’t put up with usage abuse
The reason the question can even arise at all is partly that Strunk and White fail to make that connection. The Elements of Style offers prejudiced pronouncements on a rather small number of topics, frequently unsupported, and unsupportable, by evidence. It simply isn’t true that the constructions they instruct you not to use are not used by good writers.
Tags: Writing
