#technology (171 links)
- No assembler required economist.com
COMPUTING has always been a youngster’s game. The founders of Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft were in their teens or 20s when they started the businesses…
- Tech's tunnel vision (Phil Gyford’s website) gyford.com
Trying to imagine a tech conference that would embody an alternative viewpoint — a more “socialist / social democratic” alternative — actually seems like a good way in. I don’t have to imagine a whole new society and economic model, but only try to imagine what kinds of topics might be talked about at a conference along those lines. Some topics I quickly wrote down...
- Tech for the Parent Who Didn't Want to Use Tech theatlantic.com
This is really good.
- Our Comrade The Electron - Webstock Conference Talk static.pinboard.in
I'm not saying we can't have the fun next-generation Internet, where everyone wears stupid goggles and has profound conversations with their refrigerator. I'm just saying we can't slap it together like we've been doing so far and expect everything to work itself out.
The good news is, it's a design problem! You're all designers here - we can make it fun! We can build an Internet that's distributed, resilient, irritating to governments everywhere, and free in the best sense of the word, like we dreamed of in the 90's. But it will take effort and determination. It will mean scrapping permanent mass surveillance as a business model, which is going to hurt. It will mean pushing laws through a sclerotic legal system. There will have to be some nagging.
- The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic theatlantic.com
Worth it. Overdue. Helps explain noticeable burn-out type feelings. "There are organizing principles for what is considered a "good" idea. These ideas are supposed to be the right size and shape. There is a default spreadsheet that we expect ideas to fit onto. But maybe it's time that changed."
Via blech.
- Be Thoughtful (A Gifting Guide For Humans) | The Wirecutter thewirecutter.com
- Instagram Engineering • What Powers Instagram: Hundreds of Instances, Dozens of Technologies instagram-engineering.tumblr.com
- SUPERINTEND superintend.typepad.com
- Plain English Nuclear: Yet another Japan reactor post plainenglishnuclear.blogspot.com
That's better.
Via kevan.
- Seth's Blog: Bring me stuff that's dead, please sethgodin.typepad.com
The drive-by technorati are well-informed, curious and always probing. They're also hiding... hiding from the real work of creating work that matters, connections with impact and art that lasts. I love to hear about the next big thing, but I'm far more interested in what you're doing with the old big thing.
- Scripting News: WikiLeaks on the run scripting.com
Politicians should be aware that these are the stakes. They either get used operating in the open, where the people they're governing are in on everything they do, or they go totalitarian, around the globe, now.
- It Will Be Awesome if They Don't Screw it Up: 3D Printing... | Public Knowledge publicknowledge.org
This white paper, It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology, examines how intellectual property (IP) law impacts the rapidly maturing technology of 3D printing, and how incumbents who feel threatened by its growth might try to use IP law to stop it.
Via tomtaylor.
"Content management remains an unsolved problem. Untold billions of dollars (and hours) have been spent building commercial, open source, and custom content management systems since the first Web page was pushed to a Web server using FTP, and yet they all still suck." High five!
Much more beyond this quote... "When you actually need to travel, your personal devices will keep you on track. For example something the “JITwatch“, or that iPhone app that triggers an alarm when GPS indicates you’re within a particular distance from your destination."... but everything has been done already.
Via infovore.
- What Happened to Yahoo paulgraham.com
"So which companies need to have a hacker-centric culture? Which companies are "in the software business" in this respect? As Yahoo discovered, the area covered by this rule is bigger than most people realize. The answer is: any company that needs to have good software."
If Pattern Recognition was about the immediate psychic aftermath of 9-11, and Spook Country about the deep end of the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq, I could say that Zero History is about the global financial crisis as some sort of nodal event, but that must be true of any 2010 novel with ambitions on the 2010 zeitgeist. But all three of these novels are also about that dawning recognition that the future, be it capital-T Tomorrow or just tomorrow, Friday, just means more stuff, however peculiar and unexpected. A new quotidian. Somebody’s future, somebody else’s past.
- Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research slideshare.net
- The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery - Microsoft Research research.microsoft.com
"The collection of essays expands on the vision of pioneering computer scientist Jim Gray for a new, fourth paradigm of discovery based on data-intensive science and offers insights into how it can be fully realized." Free book from Microsoft Research.
- 8 Lessons From the Creativity and Technology Conference - Advertising Age - Digital adage.com · Archived on
"Bring tech-heads into creative conversations early to color communication ideas with what's possible in web development." But don't call them tech-heads.
"Partners have little or no incentive even to investigate non-fee-producing options. Therefore, open source or lower cost, more out-of-the-box CMS solutions are rarely if ever offered as possible solutions. In fact, my experience found that more times than not, the Big 5 partner already knew exactly which CMS solution she was going to pitch before she walked through the client’s door. This was something that never ceased to amaze me, but the lesson here is to beware of software recommendations from any Big 5 firm." No shit.
Via alastc.
- Charlie's Diary: Jeff Bezos Eats Kittens antipope.org
Today's big news is that Amazon are going to start selling Kindle ebook readers world-wide. Let me explain why I think this is very bad news for writers.
- TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit interorbital.com
A TubeSat is designed to function as a Basic Satellite Bus or as a simple stand-alone satellite. Each TubeSat kit includes the satellite's structural components, safety hardware, solar panels, batteries, power management hardware and software, transceiver, antennas, microcomputer, and the required programming tools. With these components alone, the builder can construct a satellite that puts out enough power to be picked up on the ground by a hand-held amateur radio receiver.
- h+ Magazine hplusmagazine.com
Covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing - and will change - human beings in fundamental ways.
Via paul.irish.
The procession of technological discoveries is inevitable. When the conditions are right — when the necessary web of supporting technology needed for every invention is established — then the next adjacent technological step will emerge as if on cue. If inventor X does not produce it, inventor Y will.
- Toy Chest (Online or Downloadable Tools for Building Projects) - UCSB English Department Knowledge Base wiki.english.ucsb.edu
""Toy Chest" collects online or downloadable software tools/thinking toys that humanities students and others without programming skills (but with basic computer and Internet literacy) can use to create interesting projects."
- WebHome < Main < Reprap reprap.org
"Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself." Want.
#design #tools #hacks #technology #hardware #prototyping #diy #electronics #engineering#fabrication#reprap Via alastc.
- tweenbots | kacie kinzer tweenbots.com
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
What does this site do? It keeps track of predictions of the future by public figures.
"Wired, [Albert Read] suggests, may not really be a tech magazine at all. "It's a magazine about innovation and the future, and should not be narrowly confined to technology in people's minds," he says. "You read Wired if you see yourself as a forward thinker or an early adopter." I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
Via blech.
- I, A Bee randallrothenberg.com
Those individuals carry at least one non-traditional title. To the advertising creative partnership that traditionally has teamed a copywriter and an art director, a third member must be added: the creative technologist.
Via russelldavies.
- Shapeways | passionate about creating shapeways.com
We want to be a fun, inspiring place where you make your own 3D designs come to life using 3D printing.
Via peter.costello.
"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." Must read.
- MySpace Music Puts The Industry On The Right Track techcrunch.com
"So why is the experience just an 8/10? For now only U.S. users can access the new music content [...] there’s lots of work to do on the product itself. There’s no way to share public playlists, for example. And unlike iMeem, MySpace Music doesn’t yet offer the ability to embed the music player into other sites. Also, my browser crashed repeatedly tonight while I was testing the service." 8/10? Talk about ratings inflation.
- Advanced Beauty advancedbeauty.org
A global firm of designers, engineers, planners and business consultants.
- ongoing · Multi-Inflection-Point Alert tbray.org
We’re simultaneously at inflection points in programming languages and databases and network programming and processor architectures and Web development and IT business models and desktop environments. Did I miss anything?
- We need a Wikipedia for data - Bret Taylor's blog bret.appspot.com
I think we should create a Wikipedia for data: a global database for all of these important data sources to which we all contribute and that anyone can use.
- With friends like these ... guardian.co.uk
Facebook has 59 million users [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
To keep the enormous swarm of data produced when a picture is “born digital” — that is, produced using all-electronic processes, rather than relying wholly or partially on film — pushes the cost of preservation to $208,569 a year
Those of us older than 25 can't imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it's hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it.
"The loudness war, what many audiophiles refer to as an assault on music (and ears), has been an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades and has garnered more attention in recent years as CDs have pushed the limits of loudnes
There is also a crucial viral component - when a friend adds an application, it is noted in their news stream on their profile. Clicking on the item brings you to the app, where you can add and/or interact with it yourself.
Exists to help promote social networking, knowledge generation and sharing, co-creation and the harnessing of collective intelligence within organisations and communities.
- Achieving emptiness with "Bit Literacy" - (37signals) 37signals.com
In an age of infinite bits, time and attention are the scarce resources. The solution is to constantly manage your bits with the goal of reaching an “empty” state.