Is thing-a-day 2!
Get over the winter blues and commit to creating something every day in February. I’m going to do it. It’s just what I need to force me into some mindless creativity for a month.
Inspired by a an idea by Ze Frank, so how could it be wrong? Read all about it…
If I didn’t have Twitter I wouldn’t have had these nuggets delivered to me. Two of the most important things I’ve read in some time…
You can’t say that Twitter’s useless now. This proves it.
I hope Russell and Hugh don’t mind me posting these, I figured that they’re out in the public Twittersphere (or whatever it’s called).
If you’ve not come across photojojo and you use a digital camera a big chunk of your life is missing.
They deliver some of my favourite online content. So I did an odd thing this morning, I switched from using their RSS feed to getting their email newsletter. I know that might sound perverse to many of you, but my RSS is now more hectic than my email and I quite often don’t check it so much or so deeply.
Anyway, ofter signing up for the newsletter. This is the screen you get:
Whether you love or loathe their slacker-speak, that’s neither here nor there. What they’ve done is pick something that you might be up for doing next to help them out. Adding the site to del.icio.us. But IT”S JUST ONE THING!
They’re not saying, add it to digg, add it to mag.nol.ia, or newswhackka, or whatever. It’s a very simple ask. And I found myself just doing it. I’m almost certain that if there’d been a huge array of links I’d have not bothered.
Keep it simple.
That reminds me, I meant to write a post in praise of an excellent book I read on holiday: The Paradox of Choice – Why Less is More
OK, I can bitch about circular loading devices. But I swear now that bars are no bloody better.
I’m trying to archive off a whole chunk of my iTunes library that I don’t like so much. And it’s taking hours and hours to do it. But what’s really bugging me is that iTunes is showing me a bar.
An X of Y measurement. Like so…
So I thinks to myself, looks about 20% of the way there, but then I look again and I see this:
The number of tracks is going up. But so is the total. So everything is moving.
Well let me tell you I could have wept.
I still might.
Nik’s written a piece on why he likes the Webbys over here.
I like the Webbys too. For me they’re the awards that get closest to recognising the important things online (in the English speaking parts of the interwebs anyway). It tends to recognise things for what they are, not what they look like.
Anyway, inspired by Nik’s runthrough of winners I went back and had a a look at 1997’s winners (Webbys 1.0) and I was totally shocked when I started to try and visit them.
It felt like most of them had gone!!!
So I did a very quick lookup of what’s left in all of the categories and it’s as follows:
I started to draw all kinds of spurious conclusions about why Money, Science, Film and Health are all still there (because they’re connected to big money and/or boffins). And why music, politics and sport did the worst (because they’re fickle, fast-moving industries run by a bunch of charlatans). But then I realised I was talking nonsense. There’s all kinds of reasons why these sites have gone missing in action.
For me it’s a really big shame that 47% of the best websites in the world from 10 years ago aren’t there any more. Thank goodness for the Wayback machine and its ability to teleport us back in time (mostly)…
Here’s the ones that are still alive…
(The ones that I’ve marked with a * are the ones that I love because the sites still really smell of 1997. The ones with two ** are the ones that make me really nostalgic for the days that I could do web design. The rest of them feel like they’ve moved on a bit…)
Art
http://www.entropy8.com/
* http://www.adaweb.com/
Books and Magazines
http://www.salon.com
* http://www.desires.com
* http://www.suck.com/
Broadband
Games
Home
** http://www.toiletology.com/
http://info.eb.com/
Health
http://www.acupuncture.com/
http://www.planetout.com/
http://www.reutershealth.com/
http://www.prevention.com
Money
http://www.adbusters.org
http://www.cnnfn.com
http://www.edmunds.com
http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune
http://www.fool.com
Film
http://www.eonline.com
http://www.film.com
http://www.imdb.com
http://www.mrshowbiz.com
Music
http://www.musiccentral.msn.com
http://www.sonicnet.com (sort of works, but not really)
Politics
Science
** http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/archnet
http://www.sciam.com
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu
http://www.discovery.com
http://www.exploratorium.edu
Sport(s)
http://www.skinet.com
Television
http://www.edrive.com
http://www.pbs.org
http://www.ultimatetv.com/
Travel
* http://route66.netvision.be
http://www.travelocity.com
** http://www.travlang.com
Weird
** http://www.panix.com/~clocke/EGR
http://www.theonion.com
So if you’ve made a nice website or know someone that has, enter The Webbys (closing date for this year is 25th Jan). And keep your website alive. Forever.
I know these kind of circular ‘loading’ devices are very trendy.
But they should only be used when the delay is likely to be a couple of seconds maximum. They are absolutely shit at everything else.
I’ve just been faced with a screen which I know is trying to download some HD video, and I’ve got absolutely no idea how long I need to sit there for. At least a really untrendy horizontal loading bar or percentage indicator would let me know whether I’ve got time to make a cup of tea…
I know I shouldn’t get upset by this kind of thing. But I do.
Well it made me chuckle anyway. I found the error by typing in a bad URL at the MacRumours site.
This article from the Guardian seemed to be the most visible thing on the Internet round these parts yesterday: With friends like these… by Tom Hodgkinson
Facebook has 59 million users – and 2 million new ones join each week. But you won’t catch Tom Hodgkinson volunteering his personal information – not now that he knows the politics of the people behind the social networking site
I got sent it a few times by different people. And I read it and and was shocked and outraged.
Forget religion being the opium of the masses, Facebook is the CIA owned crack-cocaine of the masses! We’ve all been duped. It’s a soul-harvesting machine designed to harness the creativity and friendships of the whole world and funnel it for the forces of darkness and oppression.
Or something like that.
Anyway I was all set to shut down my Facebook account and rush to the land of hope, goodness and light, but then I had a couple of thoughts…
But that’s not to say I wouldn’t advise getting out of Facebook right now if you are:
So I’m staying in Facebook, in a limited way. For now.
I still don’t like it all that much though.
Wow. This 3d flash video (using papervision) is simply stunning. I predict a lot of this technique being over-used a lot in the next year.
But it’s perhaps a glimpse of what Google’s street level mapping might become in the not too distant.
Thanks to Mattias at Poke for the link.
Following on from last year’s ‘Speak Like a Pirate Day’. I’m proposing that the world embark upon a ‘Write Like an Email Scammer Day’.
I was motivated to propose this course of action resulting from a recently inbounded email communication from my orphan and esteemed friend Miss Mary Johnston. Of particular noteworthiness from the aforementioned I markedly refer to the below:
Hello Dear Chosen one,
Please excuse me for all the inconveniences my mail could cause you. I have the pleasure to expose to you my predicaments.Please even if we never knew before, I believe firmly that on the basis of the right of humanitarian assistance that a real confidence and love can arise from our communication and also a real partnership between us.
Henceforth and furthermore:
Today my major concern is to move out this sum outside here. Given that I am the only child and I have seriously suffered from the ragging and the harassments on behalf of the political opponents of my Father.
It is in this prospect that I contact you. Because of the political war and the hostilities in this country I seriously wish to leave from here and live the rest of my life in a more peaceful and politically more stable and quiet country.
Her electronic mail terminates as such:
I would like to count on your human, virtuous and professional qualities to actualise this project. I look forward to receive your urgent responds.
Thanks for your care and may God bless you for your kind heart to hear the cry of an orphan
The details of the impressive sums of finance to which she refers for have been found necessary for removal resulting from safety sake and to avoid the greed exemplified by the enemies of her forefathers and those reading this website.
By joining me in ‘write like an email scammer day’ you will eligible to receive untold fortunes and grate happinesses in your futures. A proposed day of action is suggested as being 6th February 2008 (THE sixth of FEBRUARY, Two thousand AND eight).
Your loyal friend and compatriate.
Mr Iain Tait
(Image borrowed from the excellent book Cry For Help which has a collection of wonderful scam emails with lovely illustrations to match)