frivolous motion

Hulu iPhone App “Badass?” I Doubt it.

2009-04-22T01:46:00.003-04:00

I love Hulu, that’s no secret.

And I’ve been antsy for Hulu access on my iPhone for a long time (since I started using Hulu, in fact), but I just can’t bring myself to get excited for the (allegedly) forthcoming Hulu app for iPhone. The main drawback of Hulu, for me, is that it’s all but tied to your desktop or laptop machine (Boxee and related hacks notwithstanding). If your connection dies or you travel somewhere without Wi-Fi, Hulu (like all cloud services) is just a pie in the sky.

“Hulu would be perfect,” I’d say, “if only I could download shows in my queue to watch on my iPhone while I commute to work on the subway.” Until Hulu does that, I’ve no choice but to purchase TV and video content from the iTunes Store and sync it to my iPhone (one could also go the less savory direction of downloading illegal torrents and converting them to iPod-compatible video files).

Ad-supported downloadable video is what I’m looking for. And I would probably be willing to entertain a nominal monthly fee for the privilege.

But an iPhone app - however “badass” it purports to be - that merely provides the ability to stream relatively-low-quality video over 3G or Wi-Fi connections that can in nearly all instances be found in just slightly-lower-quality on the native YouTube application, is just not all that interesting to me.

You Got Ripped Off By Your Web Designer

2009-04-05T17:36:00.005-04:00

No matter how little you paid, you paid too much.

Non-profit organizations and governmental agencies are easy targets for evil web designers who spend more time with their own promotion and SEO than actually designing, and whose sites end up being a mess of templated code from some out-of-the-box Site Builder, fail to pass any sort of smell test for W3C validation or accessibility guidelines, display like crap on all but the oldest browsers, and pretty much suck the life out of anyone unfortunate enough to stumble on them.

Below are 5 organizations whose websites are not worth any price they may have paid, and in fact may be losing them money and hurting their reputation. I feel bad for them. And angry at the douchebags who got paid to create them.

If you’re a designer/developer with a heart, consider searching out one of these (or similar) entities once a year and offer your services on a charity basis. It’s truly some of the most edifying work out there.

United States Department of the Treasury
Take a look at that lefthand nav! And the bulleted lists in the righthand sidebar! And the way the content section explodes out the right side of the container!

Nye Communities Coalition
Nothing really to say about this one except “Scales?!!”

ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training
Seems fine if your browser window is tiny, awful when it’s stretched wider, and when you realize the navigation is in the Selection box at the bottom of the page, you’ll flip and consider trying to find application information on the site of its sister school in Russia, even if you don’t know the language!

Metropolitan Transportation Authority
(Perhaps the best of the worst on this page, but awful compared with other transit orgs, and with enough animated GIFs to screw in a lightbulb.

Pahrump Valley Times
Local Newspaper sites: terrible across the board. Maybe the saddest on this list, as they represent (for me) the direction traditional journalism should head to keep itself from dying off completely.

Free Blog Template: The Second Thing Returns

2009-04-03T01:11:00.001-04:00

In December of 2007, I released a free Blogger blog template called “The Second Thing” that ended up getting picked up by a bunch of template sites, and downloaded by a ton of bloggers, and there’s some truly awesome stuff happening within the soft, green walls of this XHTML and CSS monster.

But one request I received more than anything else was this: “Can you release a version without the Il Primo and Il Secondo headers?”

Well it took awhile, but here it is, in all its glory, “The Second Thing Returns Free Blogger Template”

(Looks just like this, except without the headings.)

Please feel free to download the XML file (which you’ll then use on your blog by unzipping it to your desktop, and then from your Blogger dashboard click on Template > Edit HTML > Browse for the file on your computer > Upload), share it with your friends, and edit it to your heart’s content. All I ask in return is that you link back to this post and share your work with everyone in the comments.

Questions? Comments? Problems?
Leave a comment below or email me.

You Suck At Email Advertising

2009-03-31T11:21:00.004-04:00

Dear Companies trying to capitalize on a large user base by selling dedicated email blasts to advertisers of related work,

When you send an email offer to your list with a subject line like the following “Save up to 50% on New Broadway Show!” and then fail to include either a banner from your site, your site’s name, or - most importantly - an unsubscribe link anywhere in the body of the email, you have just done a very bad thing.

Not only is it illegal to not include an unsubscribe link, but you have also just caused extreme damage to the brand/product that has paid you to advertise.

Now this “New Broadway Show” (and the poor unsuspecting ad agency who may have put their name and link down at the bottom) is seen as sending unsolicited email with no clear way to opt-out. This email will be marked as spam (even though the recipients did actually opt in to this list), and the ad agency and the show will be hit with a barrage of really pissed of patrons with email subject lines such as “Take Me Off Your Fucking List!,” and “OMFG, Do Not Want!”

Conversion rates will plummet, goodwill towards the advertiser will evaporate (negative word of mouth can kill), the ad agency will be seen as evil spammers, and you - the true culprit in this heinous crime - will emerge scot-free.

Scot-free, that is, until the ad agency writes apologetic emails to the offended patrons explaining that you alone are responsible for such a reprehensible act, that they strongly disagree with the way the campaign was handled, and will never, ever advertise with you again. For any of their clients. Ever.

Live Updating Twitter Search On Your Site

2009-03-28T22:51:00.005-04:00

For a client, I went looking for a nice solution to display a live-updating Twitter Search stream on a website. After trying out countless PHP, iframe, javascript, and Flash solutions, I stumbled upon Juitter, and that’s what I’m using.

Here’s why:

Juitter is a jQuery plugin, and since I was already using jQuery to add various other functionality to the site, it was a perfect fit.
The live updating has a really nice, subtle animation effect that doesn’t distract too much from reading, and it’s possible to set the reset time yourself.
Juitter is highly customizable. You can search multiple terms, usernames, or specific languages, decide whether or not to display avatars, style the entire thing with CSS, and your users can even customize the stream by clicking hash (#) tags.

So, anyway, Juitter is pretty great, brainlessly simple to get up-and-running, and is just what I was looking for.

But I wouldn’t be writing this post if everything ended there. Nope. The fun part is what happened when my client’s audience figured out that whatever they Tweeted showed up on the official website: a few bad apples started Tweeting seriously offensive and hateful stuff. With words like Hitler and bleeding anus and the like. Not good.

I’m far from the censoring type. Believe me. But I recognize a potentially serious problem when I see one, and I’m sensitive to the fears of brand managers and business owners when it comes to the Wild West of social media integration, so I immediately tried to figure out a way to filter the search results by Twitter username.

My first thought was to contact the developer, Rodrigo Fante, with the request. I’m far from a javascript guru - though I can find my way around pre-written code pretty well - so I though the best shot would be to see if he were planning on adding this functionality to a forthcoming release. Turns out he is. Which is great, but didn’t really solve my problem. People were being crazy now, so I had to figure something out.

After a few minutes of reading through the code to get a sense of how it worked, I said, Hey, what if I were able to give each list item an additional class based on the username, and then use the CSS file to hide all list items written by “Known Offenders”?

A couple more minutes of tinkering and BAM. Solved it.

Here’s what do to to block a user with the Juitter jQuery plugin:

In line 125 of jquery.juitter.js, you’ll see this:

.attr('class', 'twittLI')

Change it to this:

.attr('class', 'twittLI' + ' ' + item.from_user)

Then, in your stylesheet, add the following bit of code (replace knownoffender with the username you’d like to ban):

.knownoffender, .knownoffender2 {display:none !important;}

And you’re all set!

It’s not a terribly elegant fix, but it more than gets the job done. Please don’t abuse the power, though. And if/when Rodrigo updates Juitter to include this functionality, I’ll update this post with what will surely be a more powerful method.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments. And happy Twittering!

Can You Feel The Nostalgia Tonight?

2009-03-27T08:44:00.003-04:00

Elton John’s “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” played in my iTunes library last night.

I haven’t heard this song in years.

It’s been nearly 15 years since Disney’s “The Lion King” was released.

And what I want to say about it is probably the reverse of what you’re thinking.

Most people yearn for what they say was the simpler, gentler, safer, time of “X years ago.” They say the world is getting worse, America is getting worse, that it’s harder and harder to get up in the morning and push through the day, harder to see why it matters.

But for some reason I don’t see this. I hear the lyrics of the song and it still resonates:

Can you feel the love tonight?

The peace the evening brings

The world, for once, in perfect harmony

With all its living things

Times are tough, I know, but there's so much to be thankful for. So many incredible things - even just in the world of technology - that are bringing people closer together in a way never before possible.

Facebook lets you connect with old next door neighbors (people your parents' age!) and your middle school best friend's Mom (you know, the awesome one who made you Taquitos and Pizza Pockets?)
Twitter connects people 24 hours a day over trivia, thoughts, feelings, opinions - everything uncensored, unfiltered, in real time. The Beat Poets would have killed for something like this.
The next version of iPhone software has the real potential to save lives (think the diabetes software/peripherals demoed a couple weeks ago) and connect people around common interests. You can play games together, collaborate on a finger painting masterpiece, share photos, videos, voice notes.
You can read books on portable devices. Start reading on your Kindle in bed, pick up where you left off on your iPhone during lunch, and if you lose interest or finish, a new book is a couple taps or clicks away. You no longer have to drive to the bookstore or wait a few days for something to arrive in the mail. New universes are seconds from being born.
Five years ago, you taught your mom how to use email. Now you're showing her how to manage a site using a custom installation of Wordpress, and set up a Facebook Page to connect with her church congregation and share news, events, and thoughts for the day. For goodness sake, your grandparents even have email and Blackberries now.
The President of the United States communicates with regular people, has a video podcast, takes questions from website visitors, and doesn't let the only message we hear be something filtered through a partisan media.

There's so much more than just that, but essentially what I'm saying is that things are oftentimes more awesome than they seem on the surface. Even in an age of economic and social turmoil, there are amazing innovations, and people and companies are doing amazing things that are bringing us closer and closer together.

There's peace and stillness to be found amidst all the noise and distractions.

"There's a calm surrender to the rush of day" lurking beneath the surface, if you're willing to scratch it.

Google Thinks It Will Harm Your Computer

2009-01-31T09:44:00.007-05:00

“This Site May Harm Your Computer”...?

Nope, your eyes aren’t deceiving you - Google seems to think that every one of its sites (and those of every other search I performed this morning: NY Times, Twitter, dog, Amazon, etc.) will harm your computer.

A weird bug, for sure, and one that completely and utterly disables all functionality of Google, because you can’t click the link to visit the page!

This is what you get instead:

So weird, Google. Somebody flipped the wrong switch somewhere...

Happy Holidays From Art Meets Commerce

2008-12-16T18:41:00.005-05:00

YouTube Link

My place of employment put together a pretty cool holiday video (of which I am a star, naturally).

Check it out, rate it on YouTube (5 stars, perhaps?), subscribe to our videos because we’ve got a great new Video Manager on our staff and will be pumping out some awesome stuff in the New Year, and, most of all, have a happy, healthy, helluva holiday season.

Cheers!

iPhone Christmas Wallpaper - With Helvetica!

2008-12-01T00:31:00.003-05:00

Right click, "Save Image As..." to download, and save the image in a folder that you sync to your phone (check your iTunes sync settings).

If you're on an iPhone, tap on the image and hold down your finger for a few seconds. Then, click "Save Image," and select the wallpaper from within the Settings app.

More great Helvetica wallpapers here (not iPhone optimized, but still festively cool).

The New Pepsi Logo Looks Like Ass (Literally!)

2008-10-25T21:47:00.005-04:00

’Nuff Said...

More info here on Brand New.

You’re Thinking Like A Marketer, Not A Customer

2008-06-05T22:49:00.010-04:00

If you’re running a site to promote something (a product, an event, a way-of-life), and you’re doing so not simply out of the goodness of your heart,* but for financial gain, chances are you’re doing it totally wrong.

And if you are doing it wrong (and you probably are, trust me), then you’re losing money, losing audience, and losing sight of what makes your product/event/philosophy remarkable.

Nine times out of ten, the big problem is that you’re thinking from the point of view of a Marketer rather than as a customer. It’s nothing new to say this, of course, but I wonder if you could recognize it when you see it.

This is one of the biggest signs, and it turns people away before they’ve even had time to figure out where they are:

A homepage that screams “Buy This Now!,” instead of posing a polite, quiet, “How can I help you find what you’re looking for?” or even, “Hi! How are you today? Please feel free to take a look around and let me know if you have any questions.”

There’s a reason that brick-and-mortar salespeople** and cashiers and waitstaff and receptionists and pretty much everyone else use polite language like that above. They are there to serve you and assist you in paying for what you want to buy, not shove the Bison Burger Special down your throat.

Consider this bit of analogy:

It is raining. Hard. You don’t have an umbrella, but need to walk another twenty blocks down Fifth Avenue to get to your job interview. Crossing 36th Street, you glimpse a rack of umbrellas inside a store you’ve never shopped in before, a place called Jerry’s Stuff On Fifth. Sweet. Salvation. You open the door. *Ringaling!* You step inside, casually scanning the room from side to side to locate the rack of umbrellas you had noticed through the window, as you shake off a little of the rainwater and try to calm your breath. Without warning, you are ambushed by sales associates on either side, yelling and arm-waving and shoving Plastic Thermoses in front of your face.

“$9.95! Two for $15!!! Tell A Friend!!! Buy Now! Buy Now! $9.95! Two for $15! Only today! Special Special!”

You try to speak: “But...but...I just want an um—”

“Thermos Special! Buy Today! $9.95! Two for $15!”

If you don’t go running back out into the thunderstorm after enduring that, then I’ll eat my shorts. (Oh wait, I already did that.)

Make sense yet?

Here’s a translation of my little allegory:

Rain = Google

Umbrella = Search Query

Jerry’s Stuff On Fifth = Your Website

Plastic Thermoses Salespeople Of Doom = Bullshit Links and Flashing Banners and Fancy Rollovers and Embedded Commercials and BUY NOW MOTHERFUCKER Buttons that have absolutely, positively, NOTHING to do with what your customers want because you haven’t even bothered to ask them.

Any questions?

----
*Of course, even people doing stuff out of the goodness of their hearts routinely make the same mistakes. But the stakes are frequently higher when money gets involved, and for some reason, folks working for-profit tend to approach things with a much higher dose of ego, self-deception, and propensity for outright lying and other unethical behaviors that basically define “Marketers.” (Sub-note: marketers are not intrinsically evil. Marketers (capital M) are.) Go Back Up

**I am aware that a lot of salespeople are assholes. These are not the ones I am referring to. Have you stopped to think that your site acts like the very worst of the worst Timeshare salespeople? Go Back Up

What CMS Do You Use?

2008-05-29T23:58:00.004-04:00

It might be one of the oldest questions on the web (surely the topic of some long-running flame wars), but I’m curious, so I’m asking: What Content Management System do you use?

Some backstory: I’ve recently begun working at a New York-based web design and Internet marketing firm as their all-around design/development guy, and a big part of what I’m bringing to the company is expertise outside of Flash-based development (which is really common in the industry for which my company does work), and some really old-school Dreamweaver-generated table-based designs.

I’m there to push CSS, standards-based stuff, flexibility, and implement solutions that push the industry forward in terms of accessibility, usability, and efficiency. It’s an uphill climb, to be sure (can you climb downwardly?), but one that is fulfilling, and for which noticeable progress is already being made. In a way, I’m as much a consultant as a site-builder, and that suits me just fine.

Now, one thing I’ve been trying to figure out is how best to approach issues of content management for our clients, particularly new ones.

The way I see it, there are several different possibilities:

Having the client (or content manager) purchase and use commercial CMS software like Adobe Contribute or Dreamweaver.
Purchasing and installing a web-based CMS (something PHP-y, ideally, since I’m capable with that).
Using Wordpress, Drupal, or similar open-source Content Management Systems.
Building a custom CMS from the ground up.
Implementing services like the new CushyCMS, which is a totally hosted content management service that now offers a premium version for designers that allows you to create a branded CMS and bill clients monthly, if desired.
Award all clients a complimentary copy of HTML For Dummies upon completion of their site and change the office phone numbers.

A few of my thoughts on the above possibilities, and then I’d love love love your input and suggestions:

I’m inclined to hate Dreamweaver and Contribute (I think they violate my religion, perhaps). And I think there’s a great deal to be said about the ability to update one’s site from anywhere with an internet connection - without having to install expensive software.
Non-free web-based CMSes: I know they exist, but I don’t know which ones are good. Why use these rather than their free counterparts?
I’ve used Wordpress in the (recent) past for client sites, and I like it enough, but it doesn’t seem meant to handle “real websites.” I don’t mean this as an attack on its particular technical merits (though the Digg crowd surely does), but merely as a comment on what I gather to be its “software worldview,” if I may coin a phrase with only 283 results in Google.
I have yet to use Drupal, though I’ve been researching it, and it seems viable.
We don’t have the capabilities in-house to develop custom Content Management Systems aside from very exceptional cases for which we can have a pretty cool Rails developer to put something together for us, so that’s pretty much out, and beyond the financial abilities of most of our clients, besides.
And CushyCMS intrigues me, and seems really great for smaller clients, but the idea of relying on third-party hosting scares me a little. How do you tell your clients, “There’s nothing we can do about it?”

Ultimately, I’m curious to hear what you use, what makes it awesome (or makes it suck), and what you know about the different options out there for folks looking to build some seriously cool sites, and spread some seriously decent standards-compliance at the same time.

Let me know in the comments!

The 2008 Gmail Appeal

2008-04-09T02:47:00.002-04:00

Email Standards Project - Gmail Grimaces from Mathew Patterson on Vimeo.

More on the Email Standards Project (from me).

Kentucky GRILLED Chicken?

2008-03-24T11:12:00.002-04:00

Are you kidding me?

This is Dunkin Donuts all over again

Poor Bunnies

2008-03-24T01:04:00.003-04:00

Don’t miss this beautiful video, perfect for moments of post-Easter reflection and solemnity.

5 Things To Think About

2008-03-24T00:32:00.004-04:00

1. Are there more days between today and your next birthday, or today and your last birthday? If the former, be happy, your birthday is coming up! (Like mine! Woo hoo!) If the latter, what the heck happened to all those awesome toys that you wanted so badly?

2. How many books are you in the middle of reading? If 0, get thee to Amazon! If 1-2, why are you spending so much time watching American Idol and enduring some excruciatingly awful mellismatic atrocities, when you could be enduring some excruciatingly bad examples of critical thought or science fiction writing? If 3 or more, take your bookmarks out of all three, go buy a John Grisham novel and read that this afternoon. Don’t stop reading until you know if it was the Assistant District Attorney or the 9th Circuit Judge.

3. When is the last time you made yourself your favorite dinner from childhood? If your answer is “more than a month,” you either need to go visit your parents, or stop ordering Chinese food every night. However, if your favorite meal consisted of 15 scoops of Neapolitan ice cream, hot fudge, nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry all piled on top of a “Big Foot” pizza from Little Caesars - go another 10 months, at least, before indulging in that awesome creation. (Let me know yours in the comments!).

4. Why do you spend the last hour of every night watching videos on YouTube instead of going to bed “early” for once? I don’t have much insight on this, as I am trying to figure it out for myself...

5. How long has it been since you last listened to the opinion of someone with whom you strongly disagree and didn’t attempt to argue back? Try listening without judging. Show the person that you respect him/her as a human being. That you care about what s/he has to say. This person probably already knows you disagree, but will be startled and shaken by your genuine attempt at understanding. You’ll probably learn something, too.

Fucked By Free

2008-03-21T21:21:00.001-04:00

Subtitled: Kicking Yourself Ain’t Worth The Knee Strain

Backstory: Back in November, “Web2.0 Blog of Blogs,” Mashable held a teensy little design contest to avoid paying a fair market price on a look for a t-shirt (snicker). The prize: An iPhone and some other boringish stuff. But mostly, the reward would come from the glory obtained by rising to the top of the community-generated content heap, and being deservedly recognized by the A-list crowd for one’s mad skillz. This was one of those half-assed design competitions that didn’t even include the usual “all intellectual property rights are hereby relinquished and exclusive commercial rights granted to [Company] upon submission of design work” disclaimer. Nope, just a super-casual, super-laid-back, “meh” of a contest.

And it ended up getting some pretty nice entries. The winning design - a cute little potato (get it? Mashable?) - is really polished, and a few of the others are remarkably wearable.

Naturally, I entered this contest (otherwise, why blog about it?). I couldn’t sleep, had read practically everything remotely interesting that had been posted to the internet that day, and decided - what the heck! - to fire up Adobe Illustrator to design a couple shirts.

This was 2:00 a.m., mind you.

At 3:00 (a mere 4 hours before I was to get ready for another grueling Monday at my former job), I submitted my designs. All 15 of them.

I went with a pretty tried-and-true form for all the designs: clever, slightly off-color slogan, centered on the shirt - and a simple, but cool giant M! on the back. Totally original, I know. Still - they felt appropriate to the Mashable brand, and I quite like a couple of the slogans I came up with (particularly the “Mashable is sexy in Helvetica, too.” shirt, which is the only one with a different layout, and not set in Myriad Pro.). But would I win? Nah. Never would’ve expected to. I contributed the designs partly as an embrace of the culture of free, partly out of boredom, and partly out of some insomniacical mania.

You see, growing up I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. And in my waking hours - especially those spent in high school and college - I found that I was drawn to extreme amounts of repetition and, in this, creativity. One night, I somehow managed to write 30 pages (single-spaced) of statements that began with the words “Staying up to...” Get the picture?

OK, now, fast-forward to today.

Mashable has opened a cool, new t-shirt shop using Zazzle.com (Zaz-what?!) that contains “40 different designs to choose from to show your love for all things Mashable, including submissions from our t-shirt design contest.”

“Sweet,” thought I, “Maybe they used one of mine.”

Well, yeah. Actually 12.

Twelve of the forty designs are mine. Take a look:

Oh, but wait!

These aren‘t my designs at all! What in God’s name is Arial Rounded doing in the place of Myriad Pro in some of them? I cry foul! Sure, Arial Rounded is oh-so-typically Web 2.0, but come on, guys. Eww. But yes, all of those corny slogans are mine.

OK, now what’s my point? Am I looking to be compensated for my grievances? No, no, no. Nor am I trying to bash Mashable for their behavior.

What I am doing is trying to provide a tiny bit of caveat emptor to folks who might decide to enter similar contests in the future. Rules are important. Rights are important. Your creative work is important and has value. And if you wish to give it up, you should do so willingly, knowingly, and with a clear understanding of what it means to relinquish control of your intellectual property without fair compensation.

In my case, this means I have to watch as Mashable launches an online store from which they stand to make thousands of dollars in profit doing little more than leveraging their (deservedly-strong) brand, with an inventory of products created at no cost to them. Brilliant for Mashable. Shitty for the ladies and gents who did the hard work designing the shirts. Shitty especially, for me, upon realizing that fully 30% of their catalog is work I produced, and for which I received not even a mere hyperlink to my blog. I was credited for my designs on the Flickr pool, but not linked. Meh.

Certainly, all of this would have been nice: a link, share of the revenue, free copies of my shirts, a free iPhone to supplement mine which is looking a little sad after doing some pavement surfing a couple months ago, fame and glory. But I’m not asking for any of that. And I am surely not asking that Mashable remove my designs from their store. A part of me thinks that it is seriously awesome that my work is being sold by one of the biggest blogs on the web.

All I want is for a few of you out there - in situations similar in some degree to mine - to be careful. Free is a business model. Which means thinking long and hard about how choosing it benefits you, benefits your intended market/audience and benefits the world.

Looking back, I still would’ve made the same choice, even if the moment of “sticker shock” was profoundly unsettling.

Oh, I nearly forgot: here is the store.

Racial Infographic Whimsy

2008-03-03T23:19:00.002-05:00

Or is it Infographical Racial Whimsy? Whimsical Infographic Racism?

Another stellar infographic from the New York Times, though this one scores major points for illustrating a concept (The Words We Use to Talk About Race), rather than empirical data.

Encyclopedia Of Life

2008-03-02T22:46:00.006-05:00

Easily one of the most exciting new sites to launch recently (along with 23 & Me, which I’ll get around to writing about one of these days) is Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org). Hold on, no cutesy Web 2.0-style name? Nope. This site is business. Beautiful, inspirational, important business.

In their own words:

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious, even audacious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species—that provide the entry points to this vast array of knowledge. The entry-point for each site is a species page suitable for the general public, but with several linked pages aimed at more specialized users. The sites sparkle with text and images that are enticing to everyone, as well as providing deep links to specific data.
The EOL dynamically synthesizes biodiversity knowledge about all known species, including their taxonomy, geographic distribution, collections, genetics, evolutionary history, morphology, behavior, ecological relationships, and importance for human well being, and distribute this information through the Internet. It serves as a primary resource for a wide audience that includes scientists, natural resource managers, conservationists, teachers, and students around the world. We believe that the EOL's encompassing scope and innovation will have a major global impact in facilitating biodiversity research, conservation, and education.
The EOL staff is made up of scientists and non-scientists working from museums and research institutions around the world. We currently have 20 full time employees, but as this project grows, so will the EOL family.

In my own words:

Wow.

Here’s a screengrab of one of the species pages:

I truly love the web design work here. The site is clean and sophisticated without being boring or overly dense, like one might imagine an encyclopedia page to be (particularly if Wikipedia is used as an example). And the “Detail” slider, which lets you adjust the amount of information displayed about the species, is one of the coolest new interface elements I’ve seen on a site.

There’s way to much to say about the Encyclopedia of Life project, so I’ll leave it to the folks involved to do so in video form. Please do watch the two videos below, check out some of the exemplar pages, which show the fullness of the entries that will one day exist for all species on Earth, and imagine this resource 5, 10, or 25 years from now.

EOL Video 1

EOL Video 2

Free Barack Obama Desktop Wallpaper

2008-02-25T21:45:00.003-05:00

Download this free Barack Obama desktop wallpaper in all its 1920x1200 pixel glory and save the world with a single click!

Did You Buy HD-DVD? Sell! Sell! Sell!

2008-02-18T15:53:00.004-05:00

If you, like many in the early-adopter crowd, happened to shell out some hard-earned cash on an HD-DVD player and a small library of compatible movies, you probably feel a little down these days, knowing that your chosen side in the Video Format War 2.0 is dying a quick and painful death to Sony’s Blu-Ray format.

Never fear. I’m here with some soothing ointment and a Band-Aid for your boo-boo.

What’s a frugal techie to do now that she’s burnt a hole in her pockets with little to show other than a machine and some occasionally entertaining but semi-expensive coasters that will take up increasingly non-utilized space in the living room?

Well, she’ll get to eBay, that’s what she’ll do.

There’s still time to sell your HD-DVD player and HD-DVDs for only a slight loss, before the format plummets into the annals of “also ran,” joining such valiant competitors as Betamax, cardboard LPs, and Laser discs.

If you lack a conscience, you can take advantage of the dearth of information about High Definition video that the average eBay consumer has, and make a decent return on your investment. With each day, the value of your HD-DVD purchase decreases, so there’s no better day than today to start an auction, and set a decent “Buy It Now” price ever-so-slightly below the deal you got on Amazon this Christmas.

Sell that Toshiba and that Planet Earth boxed set. Close your eBay account. Leave the country. Save up for a PS3 or other Blu-Ray player. Cry just a little, perhaps.

And in the meantime, you might also try trading your HD-DVDs for a box of Girl Scout cookies, before the value drops below that of a single 75-calorie(!) Tagalong in all its crisp and creamy chocolate and peanut-buttery goodness.

Mmm...anybody know some Girl Scouts in NYC?

Hating Valentine’s Day

2008-02-14T09:01:00.004-05:00

Why does it seem that so many people so loathe Valentine’s Day? Is it only single people who hate this holiday? Doesn’t seem that way. So what explains it? And why is Valentine’s Day singled out among all holidays for such vitriol (especially evident on social networks and blogs)? Every explanation I can think of fails the smell test. So I’m bringing this to you to help answer.

Do you hate Valentine’s Day? If so, why? If not, why do you think other people have such a problem with it (and not other holidays)?

And just for kicks, if you will, what is the most romantic thing you’ve ever done (or experienced)?

iPhone Owners Really, Really Like iPhones

2008-02-13T09:10:00.004-05:00

That is a really, really high percentage of “very satisfied” iPhone owners, so high that I would estimate the overall satisfaction rate to be somewhere in the 90% range. I would love to see the raw numbers - especially the “very dissatisfied” percentages. There is a big difference between “not being very satisfied with Palm,” and “hating Palm with every last breath.”

What kind of phone do you have? And how satisfied are you?

From ChangeWave. Seen on Engadget.

Yahoo Says No.

2008-02-11T09:46:00.000-05:00

This morning, Yahoo officially rejected the proposed buyout by Microsoft, as was rumored last Friday. “Not enough money, Honey.” seems to be the reason, and I can’t help but think that this makes Microsoft look a little silly. The very public, very large, and seemingly hostile offer has exploded in their face. Yahoo plays Hardball. Who woulda thunk it?

Talk has been flying that Yahoo will go to Google for help, or even merge with AOL. The Times is saying that analysts predict Microsoft will scrounge up an additional $5 -12 billion (between seat-cushions) to match Yahoo’s wonderfully confident self-valuation, or take the bid directly to Yahoo shareholders, who will have a hard time turning down cold, hard, Monopoly money.

Interesting and interestinger.

Hulu Invites Up For Grabs

2008-02-08T11:55:00.001-05:00

Who wants one? Who needs one? Leave your email address in the comments (or send me a email) and I’ll hook you up.

Hulu's ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world's premium content when, where and how you want it. We hope to provide you with the web's most comprehensive selection of premium programming across all genres and formats – television shows, feature films, clips, and more. Additionally, we want to give you more choices of when and where you can enjoy your favorite programming, while creating innovative experiences that let you watch and participate in online video in new and exciting ways.