July 2010
21 posts
Geography
"My friend's got a place in New York".
"Ah cool, which part?"
"Jersey".
“[London] does not believe that there exists at present sufficient legal basis...”
– British U.N. delegate Nicola Freedman regarding United Nations Resolution A/64/L.63/Rev.1, the Human Right to Water. The United States also offered its own weasely and pathetic explanation in legalese as to why they don’t see water and sanitation as a human right.
(via...
“Rule of thumb: being first helps in the short run. Being a little more right...”
– Seth Godin
“I suspect many of the services I will work with over my career will be...”
– Andrew Parker on Paul Graham’s “addiction” post.
“The digital economy is huge and creating lots of new types of university...”
– Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK.
I of course agree that training for roles in the digital economy is vital. The problem seems to be making sure this training is grounded skills employers actually want, rather than trying to make it into a pseudo-academic exercise, which often...
“We cannot say that we can give tacit approval to any and all the activities...”
– Nintendo Doesn’t Want To Criminalize Obsessed Fans
HEAR THAT, MUSIC INDUSTRY?
2 tags
Stock market investing in a nutshell... →
(via lbrphoto)
2 tags
Facebook to close its Gift Shop →
Probably to make way for the introduction of Facebook credits to be used by third party developers. Facebook made $40m~ year from virtual gifts, but I guess they think that pales in comparison to the likely income from social games and 3rd party gift stores.
Such 3rd party apps will likely be benefited (more users, keener investors) by one of their biggest competitors leaving the market, and...
“You see that massive pile of patents Microsoft has been accumulating? What makes...”
– Doublethink: Hey, people dancing on Microsoft’s grave, be afraid
Z-Vex Fuzz Probe →
I love the copy describing this guitar pedal. Better than the usual “you too can be a god of rawwwk” nonsense that often accompanies such items.
“Congratulations. You must be insane. Even I don’t get how to use this pedal”.
2 tags
"Get a different independent magazine each month". →
I love Stack’s indie magazine subscription model. Are there any businesses doing similar with other products? eg. I know there are wine of the month clubs, but how about for more esoteric/geeky goods?
“We had a huge launch party on campus and I bet that party cost more than the...”
– A Microsoft employee talking about the Kin.
“Even the stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act. And I’d...”
– Clay Shirky
“For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another...”
– The Bulwer-Lytton award is given annually for the worst first sentence of a novel. Contestants craft deliberately bad opening lines. Molly Ringle took the 2010 prize with this gem.
Deamer's first rule of dining out
The quality of a restaurant’s food is directly correlated to the professionalism of the “business as usual” signs above the door when there are roadworks or renovations going on.
June 2010
43 posts
Are any Tumblr-hosted sites listed on Google News?
I’m thinking about the distinction between “blogs” and “news sites”. It’s 2005.
Sites that ban you from linking to them. Still. In... →
The Royal Mail story about needing a licence (on paper!) to link is especially funny.
I would link to every one of the sites listed here if I could be bothered. And if the original writer hadn’t done it for me :-)
Sarbanes-Oxley Audit Board Provision Is Struck... →
Sarabanes-Oxley is a big-deal piece of corporate governance legislation introduced in the wake of the Enron scandal.
I’m no accountant, but I get the feeling there might be a bit of a fuss over this.
Update: It’s apparently less of a big deal than I guessed, but still interesting :-p
topherchris:
Moby ft. Gwen Stefani — Southside
...
2 tags
“Joy Divison. Postpunk’s answer to Pink Floyd. Bloated, boring, pompous and...”
– Feasting On Roadkill. Discuss.
A Reading List For the Self-Taught Computer... →
Mostly well over my head, but interesting in expanding my “known unknowns”, as it were.
“Take some normal people, where by ‘normal’ I mean people who have...”
– John Gruber
“Fun fact: since 1983, Frenchies have been able to retire at the youthful age of...”
– Hamilton Nolan, Gawker (via unsolicitedanalysis)
95% of France’s GDP is the direct result of Camus and Sartre (NB. may be a lie).
“The client sent an email campaign to a list of 74,000 customers with every link...”
– I’m not normally a fan of Clients From Hell, but that’s funny.
“Today, eBay is a juggernaut of the Internet economy, so it’s hard to remember...”
– Virtual Goods Insider
eBay was founded in 1995. So which ideas that sound crazy today will be de facto standards in 2025?
“While it was a cute and clever name, it had issues around copyright and...”
– Marissa Mayer on Google Product Search’s original name, “Froogle”.
Click through for the full post, but this sums it up:
It just seems the things that people are most excited about on the internet today are sort of like this anti-cocaine commercial: “I do coke so I can work longer, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke, so I can work longer, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke so I can work longer, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke…”
“Stuff is overrated if you like to move around. Don’t buy that TV,...”
– Reddit: what is one life lesson you learned the hard way?
I support this message.
“In my experience, when crackpots look at physics, they go after one of two...”
– Good Math, Bad Math
Here are some screenshots of LWG’s “Picasso: Peace + Freedom” app, out on Monday in association with the current Tate Liverpool exhibition of the same name.
It’s the first time we’ve made one of our virtual gifts available as a standalone app outside of the main “gift store”, so we’re really excited to see what people think!
“Any technology with the word ‘reality’ appended is always rubbish.”
– Augmented Reality: is it a Bit Rubbish? (via iamdanw)
5 Extremely Powerful Ways for Bands to Use... →
david-noel:
Have friends playing in bands that never heard of SoundCloud or are not sure how they can use it? Then this post will let them deep-dive into the wonderful world of The Cloud.
I especially like the “BandPage for Facebook” one. Seriously now, is there really any need for Myspace left?
How I listen to music
1. Think of hilarious genre.
2. Think “surely that can’t exist”.
3. Check Wikipedia to find it actually does exist.
4. Find out main proponents of said genre.
5. Stick said proponents’ names into Spotify.
6. Enjoy/cringe.
1 tag
http://twitter.com/PicassoNews →
Fun Twitter account I’m running for an LWG project.
“There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I’d like my...”
– BP CEO Tony Hayward on the oil spill that killed 11 people.