Banning the Bomb

Good idea in theory, but...

Experts doubt plan to block bomb recipes on Web

A European Union proposal to stop people from accessing bomb-making instructions online is fraught with technical difficulties, if not downright unworkable, Internet practitioners say.

"I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector...on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like 'bomb,' 'kill,' 'genocide' or 'terrorism,'" Frattini told Reuters in an interview earlier this month.

Rotten Neighbors

Stumbled onto this via Lifehacker and think it's an absolutely brilliant idea for a GMaps Mashup:

Rotten Neighbor

Not sure how accurately it's being used, but there's a grain of truth to every story, and a lot of these are hilarious.

If only LinkedIn had a similar feature for "reviewing" the unemployable...

Language Barrier At Risk

Interesting article on how the world's languages are fading away. Not sure if I'm more amazed at how many there are (were?), or how many are at risk. Both numbers are bigger than I expected.

Study finds languages quickly dying out

Half of the world's 7,000 languages are expected to disappear before the end of the century.

"We are seeing in front of our eyes the erosion of the human knowledge base."

Dial Directions

Dial Directions

Interesting new directions-by-phone service with a "why didn't I think of that" phone number.

Downsides are the fact that it's voice recognition and uses MapQuest for the actual directions, but reviews are positive and it uses some familiar tricks and tenants based on this WSJ review:

"It's smart enough to ask you if you know how to get to the highway, thus saving you from reading directions you already know."

"Symbols help to shorten the messages, like using "L @ Maryland Ave. SW" to tell a user to turn left at Maryland Avenue Southwest."

"While the mobile versions of these services are improving, the user interface of a cellphone isn't ideal for inputting addresses and extracting directions. Even smart phones with larger screens and full keyboards can be hampered by slow Internet speeds."

Visualizing Search Results

There's quite a few of these alternative search engines now ...quite a lot more than I imagined, actually.

This is an interesting collection of visually based search engines - The crystal one is particularly strange but ingenious somehow at the same time.

Heres a pic of a crystal visual search engine result.

25! :)

Happy Birthday, Smiley

Sept. 19, 1982
"I propose the following character for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways," Fahlman wrote. "Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-( "

And my favorite quote from the article:

"Good writers should have no need to explicitly label their humorous comments."

Steve's First Letter

Now we know where Steve Jobs learned his PR style:

Courtesy of www.geekculture.com

10!

Google, at age 10
On September 15, 1997 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two 24 year-old Stanford University students, registered the domain name of "google.com."

WikiRage

Sort of a Google Zeitgeist for Wikipedia based on edit activity.

WikiRage

(via LifeHacker)

Google In The News

Google Founders’ Ultimate Perk: A NASA Runway
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/technology/13google.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The famous founders seem to have acquired landing rights to a runway that NO other civilian planes can land at, and are only a few miles away from Google's headquarters. The articles says that NASA gets to run scientific missions on their planes, and thus the allowance. Hmmm, I want to see the results of those experiments.

In other Google news, it seems that some confidential Google plans to compete with FaceBook were leaked.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/09/video-leak-goog.html

They're allying some of their platform around the Google Reader. I haven't used the reader yet, but I may have to. And some interesting learnings at the bottom of the article:

• Two thirds of all RSS feeds only have one subscriber
• Google prioritizes more popular feeds polling every hour for updates, while the two thirds mentioned above are polled every 3 hours.
• The Google Reader back-end stores a staggering 10 terebytes of data from 8 million feeds

And of course, there's the Moon Prize they announced. I was at the first prize, so I'll definitely try to be at this one, if someone enters.

Daylight!

Things that make me happy:

MTurk + GEarth = Search and Rescue

Amazon is using their Mechanical Turk service to assist in the search and rescue for missing aviator Steve Fossett.

Got this email from Amazon:


Details of the task to perform are available here:

Steve Fossett Missing: Help find him by searching satellite imagery

I hadn't heard of it before, but TechCrunch has a story on how Amazon did something similar when Jim Gray was lost at sea.

Very interesting and noble use of crowd sourcing.

Nowhere

Great article on the origins of Lost and the Hollywood saga of the original creator.

Cast Away
Every time ABC runs an episode of its hit TV series Lost, Evanston's Jeffrey Lieber gets an onscreen credit and his bank account gets a nice pop. But the twisting tale of his Hollywood triumph has left Lieber feeling a bit ... well, lost.

Apple Adwords Prank

Man buys Google Adwords ad for "iphone price drop" and a comedy of errors ensues.

DYH isn’t funny?

Also interesting in how it shows the lack of basic fact checking when blogs become common news sources.

Bowling and NLP

A couple of random YouTube videos.

First, the winning entry for a guitar-usage competition. I was (and still am a little) a LEGO fanatic.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gkyeFA8bPeU

Second, part of a show about a British NLP expert. Neuro-linguistic programming is what I'd call a minor form of hypnosis used to manipulate people to your desires.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg

And instead of worrying about what to get someone for a birthday, wouldn't it be nice if they REALLY wanted exactly what you wanted to get them.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=befugtgikMg

Not The Only One...

How I stumbled into this is an odd chain of RSS feeds, blogs, and Googles, but:

Unmatched Sock Wearers Unite

!!!

SMS Turns 15

This article has some neat trivia points and quotes even though it follows the overdone "SMS Speak Is Ruining English" theory. But the fact that our loyal friend the text message is about to turn 15 is borderline amazing.

OMG! TXT MSG turns 15!

Fun Fact:

"The British-based Mobile Data Association dates text messaging to December 1992, when a British engineer sent the message "Merry Christmas" to a colleague from a computer to a mobile handset."

Great Quote:

"There's nothing wrong with flip-flops, worn at the appropriate time in an appropriate way. But soccer players don't wear flip-flops in a game."

360° Light Field Display

A holographic display created using a spinning mirror. Very "Help me Obi-wan Kenobi" sort of feel to it.

Earthquake Lull?

Headline caught my eye, though this quote made me want to post it:

"Nature is very much like a 14-year-old boy; it's sloppy and lazy,"

L.A. in 1,000-year Earthquake Lull

When the hell are we?

So, exactly what time does a guy have to get up to see the lunar eclipse tonight?

SF Gate
For the wide-awake, a partial eclipse will start at 1:51 a.m. Tuesday and become total starting at 2:52 a.m. By 4:22 a.m., the total phase will be over, but then as the moon begins to emerge from Earth's shadow, another partial phase will begin. The eclipse will end at 5:24 a.m., just as the sky lightens at dawn.

Wired
The moon will start getting dimmer around 4am EDT, with peak shadow about an hour and a half later.

SF Examiner
The moon will just after 7:30 p.m. tonight but will not start passing through the weakest part of Earth’s shadow, or penumbra, until 12:52 a.m. Tuesday, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Voice of America
The eclipse will begin at 0851 UTC and end at 1224 UTC.

KSBY
If you want to see the spectacular show, they say it will happen at approximately 1:52 a.m. and end at 4:22 a.m.

National Geographic
The eclipse will be visible in North and South America, Australia, and eastern Asia starting at about 3 a.m. PT on Tuesday...

Chico Enterprise Record
Just before 2 a.m. Tuesday the West Coast will witness an astronomical spectacle...

San Jose Mercury News
If you've got insomnia or the inclination to be awake about 3:37 a.m. - you should be able to see a coppery red hue on a shaded moon.

Canada.com
The partial eclipse begins at 4:51 a.m. ET. The moon edges gradually into Earth's shadow.
Total eclipse begins at 5:52 a.m.

LA Daily News
But the best view will be in the West, where it will be viewable from about 1:30-5:30 a.m.

Ventura County Star
...the total lunar eclipse that will be visible in Southern California in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Aug. 28, from just before 2 a.m. to just shy of 3:30 a.m.

And don't get me started on these next ones. Daylight Time! Daylight Time!

Imperial Valley News
Totality begins at 2:52AM PST, and mid-eclipse occurs at 3:37AM PST.

Orlando Sentinal
The viewing begins shortly before 5 a.m. EST.