Bryce's shared items in Google Reader

Creating Time to Innovate

2011-06-10T05:36:41Z

During the past few years I've noticed a curious paradox heading its ugly rear among business leaders tooting the horn for innovation.

On one hand they want the rank and file to step up to the plate and own the effort to innovate.

On the other hand, they are unwilling to grant the people they are exhorting any more TIME to innovate.

Somehow, magically, they expect aspiring innovators to not only generate game-changing ideas in their spare time, but do all the research, data collection, business case building, piloting, project management, idea development, testing, report generation, and troubleshooting in between their other assignments.

Tooth fairy alert!

This is not the way it happens, folks! Not only is this approach unreasonable, it's unfair, unbalanced, and unworkable.

SproutRobot Tells You When to Plant for a Bountiful Garden [Gardening]

2010-07-10T20:00:00Z

Whether you're new to gardening or you'd like a nice reminder system, SproutRobot will build a custom planting schedule based on your zip code so you always know what to plant and when.

Plug in your zip code to SproutRobot and it will generate a sample planting guide for the next few months. If you like what you see you can sign up for their tiered service. The free tier entails automatic emails at the appropriate planting times for your garden crops, you take care of purchasing the seeds. The SproutRobot Plus system ranges from $19.99 to $59.99 per year and entails a hand-checked planting calendar along with a variety of seeds for your planting schedule and climate.

While you're considering their suggested planting list against the space you have you'll want to check out how to pick high-return vegetables and our guide to keeping your garden pest-free without harsh chemicals. Have a favorite garden resource to share? Let's hear about it in the comments.

SproutRobot [via MakeUseOf]

HomePipe Streams Music from Your PC to Your Smartphone [Downlaods]

2010-06-04T00:00:00Z

Windows/Mac and iPhone/Android: We've mentioned some of the best ways to stream media to your gadgets, and HomePipe is a great new addition to the club. It streams music, video and other files straight to your device for free with minimal setup.

Google is planning to bring iTunes streaming to Android after their acquisition of previously mentioned Simplify Media, but that doesn't mean you can't start streaming before that happens. HomePipe is a download for both your computer and your mobile device (available in the App Store/Android Market) that allows the two to communicate with one another. It requires a free account which is quick and easy to set up, and doesn't require you to upload your files to a separate server—you can just access any files on your computer right from the HomePipe app. It's basically just a file browser that connects to your drive at home and can stream music and video, view photos, and open up pretty much any other file you have on your computer.

While the app is free and easy to set up, it isn't without its drawbacks. The most noticeable annoyance I found was that once streaming media, you couldn't exit the app or the media would stop. This isn't so much of a problem for iPhone users, where this is normal behavior for apps (at least for now), but Android users will probably be disappointed by this fact. Previously mentioned Subsonic is the clear competitor in the media-streaming realm, and while it is quite a bit more feature-filled, it's also much more complicated. If you just need a quick way to listen to a bit of music on your home computer (or just access files), HomePipe is probably the easiest way to go. HomePipe is still in beta, too, so it's likely they'll improve upon it in the near future.

Note: HomePipe has been reporting a few issues today, so if you experience some delays in account creation or streaming, wait a little while and try again. I personally got my confirmation email very quickly, and was able to stream music right away with just a few seconds of buffering, but just keep in mind that there are some issues and they're being worked out.

HomePipe [via Phandroid]

Video: Iron Baby!

2010-05-27T15:42:15Z

If this doesn't make you grin, I don't know what would:

Apparent fatherhood/VFX rockstar Patrick Boivin makes my cheap-n'-cheerful parental Photoshoppery seem so anemic, but I love the work nonetheless. [Via Jim Geduldick]

Happiness Is Earning $60,000 A Year?

2010-05-26T10:00:19Z

Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman performed a TED Talk this year about how as humans our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. Basically, he says that our memories of experiences differ from what really happened during the experience itself.

But what ended up being the catchy soundbite was in the Q&A session after his talk, where he tells us that while millions of dollars won’t buy you happiness, a job that pays $60,000 a year might help. This is based on a survey of 600,000 Americans:

“Below 60,000 dollars a year, people are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line. I mean I’ve rarely seen lines so flat.”

“Clearly… money does not buy you experiential happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery,” he said. But the real trick, Kahneman said, is to spend time with people you like.

I found this talk through the GatesVP blog, who offers this analysis:

In most parts of the US you already have access to a very good and healthy life at 60k. You’ve pretty much covered everything commonly deemed as a necessity and you probably have some money left over for “entertainment”. So the jump to 90k really just gives you a little more “entertainment” and maybe some bigger stuff, but that’s it.

And if you’re the type who’s not happy with being in the top 20%, then how much further do you need to go? Top 10%? Top 5%?

Really, 60k for one job is far enough “ahead of the game” to keep happy those that can be kept happy. And that’s probably why this is true.

According to the 2008 US Census, making 60k a year is in the top 20%. I pretty much agree, especially with the idea that humans are creatures of comparison. As long as we’re doing a little bit better than our neighbors, then we tend to be happy. What do you think?

You can view the entire TED Talk below. The Q&A session starts at about 17:15, and a transcript is available on the right sidebar here.

Simulated swimming pool with room inside

2010-05-03T03:00:00Z

Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich created this installation, simply called The Swimming Pool, for The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. A 10cm layer of water over a piece of glass separates above from below. It must be a pretty serious piece of glass; some back-of-the-envelope math based on the published dimensions gives 1,100 kg (2400 lbs) of water that it has to support. Plus its own weight. [via Dude Craft]

More:
Shattering door by Leandro Erlich

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Quantum teleportation achieved over ten miles of free space

2010-05-19T11:40:00Z

Quantum teleportation has achieved a new milestone or, should we say, a new ten-milestone: scientists have recently had success teleporting information between photons over a free space distance of nearly ten miles, an unprecedented length. The researchers who have accomplished this feat note that this brings us closer to communicating information without needing a traditional signal, and that the ten miles they have reached could span the distance between the surface of the earth and space.

As we've explained before, "quantum teleportation" is quite different from how many people imagine teleportation to work. Rather than picking one thing up and placing it somewhere else, quantum teleportation involves entangling two things, like photons or ions, so their states are dependent on one another and each can be affected by the measurement of the other's state.

When one of the items is sent a distance away, entanglement ensures that changing the state of one causes the other to change as well, allowing the teleportation of quantum information, if not matter. However, the distance particles can be from each other has been limited so far to a number of meters.

Teleportation over distances of a few hundred meters has previously only been accomplished with the photons traveling in fiber channels to help preserve their state. In this particular experiment, researchers maximally entangled two photons using both spatial and polarization modes and sent the one with higher energy through a ten-mile-long free space channel. They found that the distant photon was still able to respond to changes in state of the photon they held onto even at this unprecedented distance.

However, the long-distance teleportation of a photon is only a small step towards developing applications for the procedure. While photons are good at transmitting information, they are not as good as ions at allowing manipulation, an advancement we'd need for encryption. Researchers were also able to maintain the fidelity of the long-distance teleportation at 89 percent— decent enough for information, but still dangerous for the whole-body human teleportation that we're all looking forward to.

Science, 2010. DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2010.87 (About DOIs).

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Introducing the Google Font API & Google Font Directory

2010-05-19T17:05:00Z

Today we are excited to announce a collection of high quality open source web fonts in the Google Font Directory, and the Google Font API to make them available to everybody on the web. For a long time, the web has lagged print and even other electronic media in typographic sophistication. To enjoy the visual richness of diverse fonts, webmasters have resorted to workarounds such as baking text into images. Thanks to browser support for web fonts, this is rapidly changing. Web fonts, enabled by the CSS3 @font-face standard, are hosted in the cloud and sent to browsers as needed.

Google has been working with a number of talented font designers to produce a varied collection of high quality open source fonts for the Google Font Directory. With the Google Font API, using these fonts on your web page is almost as easy as using the standard set of so-called “web-safe” fonts that come installed on most computers.

The Google Font API provides a simple, cross-browser method for using any font in the Google Font Directory on your web page. The fonts have all the advantages of normal text: in addition to being richer visually, text styled in web fonts is still searchable, scales crisply when zoomed, and is accessible to users using screen readers.

Getting started using the Google Font API is easy. Just add a couple lines of HTML:

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

body { font-family: 'Tangerine', serif; }

The Google Font API hides a lot of complexity behind the scenes. Google’s serving infrastructure takes care of converting the font into a format compatible with any modern browser (including Internet Explorer 6 and up), sends just the styles and weights you select, and the font files and CSS are tuned and optimized for web serving. For example, cache headers are set to maximize the likelihood that the fonts will be served from the browser’s cache with no need for a network roundtrip, even when the same font is linked from different websites.

These fonts also work well with CSS3 and HTML5 styling, including drop shadows, rotation, etc. In addition, selecting these fonts in your CSS works just the same as for locally installed fonts, facilitating clean separation of content and presentation.

The fonts in the Google Font Directory come from a diverse array of designers, including open source developers and highly regarded type designers, and also include the highly acclaimed Droid Sans and Droid Serif fonts, designed by Ascender Corporation as a custom font for Android. We invite you to browse through the directory and get to know the fonts and designers better. Since all the fonts are open source, you can use them any way you like. We also have a separate project hosted on Google Code for downloading the original font files. Since they’re open source, they can be used for just about any purpose, including for print.

We’re hoping designers will contribute many more fonts in coming months to the Google Font Directory. If you’re a designer and are interested in contributing your font, get in touch with us by completing this form.

To showcase the Google Font API, Smashing Magazine has relaunched their site using the open source Droid font hosted by Google. We’re excited about the potential for integrating the Google Font API into many types of publications and web applications. For example, the new themes for Google Spreadsheet forms are a great example of a rich visual experience using web fonts.

This is just the beginning for web fonts. Today, we’re only supporting Western European languages (Latin-1), and we expect to support a number of diverse languages shortly.

By Raph Levien & David Kuettel, Google Font API team

Sculptris v1.0

2010-05-22T11:12:51Z

DrPetter has released version 1.0 of Sculptris, his free 3d modelling tool! This release lets you to paint color, textures, and bump maps right onto the model. Time to play!

Hydrofloors Pools with Movable Floors

2010-03-03T04:32:22Z

Hydrofloors Pools with Movable Floors

Hydrofloors are only like the coolest thing ever invented. They are specially designed pools with movable floors. When you’re using your pool it’s just like a normal pool. But when you are done swimming or aquacising, you press a button and the pool’s floor slowly raises up while the water slips underneath the floor. Pimpin! Eventually the pool’s floor reaches the top and you are left with a large flat area you can use for recreation, dining, parties or any other dry land event you want.

Another press of the button and the floor sinks back down slowly to reveal your already water-filled pool. You can also stop the floor at any point which means you can make the pool as shallow or deep as you want. Having a kid’s party? Just set it for shallow kiddie pool depth. Be sure to throw a few extra chlorine tablets in the pool cleaning mechanism though, you know how kids are.

via gizmodo

Get your Jetpack soon!

2010-03-08T22:13:16Z

it’s been a while since we covered designer Glenn Martin’s super fan pack, which I suppose is, for lack of a better word, a jetpack. Granted, it looks more like the flying pack seen by Quest Aerospace in the first Spider-man movie rather than the jetpack in the Rocketeer, but it can get you off the ground, and quite safely, too.

I believe that I reported last year that these packs were $250,000 each, but that was actually wrong. One of the people on the Martin Jetpack team sent me a comment that the jetpacks were actually 100,000 USD. There is a video after the jump if you want to see more about it.

I believe that only ten jetpacks were produced last year, and I can only imagine that celebrities who have more money than they should could be the only ones that could afford them. A recent update by the Telegraph has revealed that the Martin Aircraft Company is teaming up with an unnamed international aircraft company to make 500 jetpacks a year, for a lower cost of $75,000 each.

Yes, it is a high price, but here’s what you get. First of all, it runs on premium gas, which is much cheaper than jet fuel. Second, it has a 30 mile range at 60 mph with a 8000 foot ceiling. Third, no pilot’s license is required. Fourth, it has a low altitude ballistic parachute, in case you are worried about safety.

So, with 10 jetpacks last year, 500 in the next year, that means Martin has increased its jetpack inventory by 50 times. If it keeps this up, it will take four years to have 3,125,000,000 jet packs, which is enough for about half the planet. So are we looking at an era where everyone will be flying around in a jetpack soon? One can only hope.

Source

Introducing Foolish Gadgets because not all gadgets are cool
[ Get your Jetpack soon! copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Guess What? Purell Doesn’t Work

2010-03-08T16:08:59Z

Hi Readers: Time to quit pickling our kids in Purell. That’s not just MY conclusion, or even just the conclusion of Slate writer Darshak Sanghavi in this TERRIFIC piece, “How To Sell Germ Warfare.” No, it’s the conclusion of scientists who were surprised that giving free hand sanitizers (and, in one case, even Clorox Wipes) to families and schools failed to cut down on respiratory infections.

That’s because the flu, for one, spreads mostly via tiny droplets in the air. (ACHOO!!!) So touching things is only one way to catch it. Breathing — that gosh darn thing we keep doing — is the other. Moreover, the article notes, kids touch their mouth or nose on average once every three minutes. So unless we Purell ‘em 20 times an hour (which I’m sure some folks are considering), all bets are off. But not all germs.

This is not to say phooey (or achoo-ey) on basic hygiene. But phooey on obsessive hygiene, especially when it seems so profit-driven. — Lenore

Now, I Definitely Want A Job In Government

2010-03-08T17:17:00Z

Study this USA Today chart and cry:

According to USA Today:

“Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.”

And let’s just add insult to injury:

“These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”

So now when you put your kids to bed and they tell you that when they grow up they want to be a doctor and a veterinarian, your answer should be: “Honey, these are all great choices, but what you really want to be is a bureaucrat.”

Here and here are more arguments to convince your little ones.

RunKeeper Free

2009-11-18T05:00:00Z

The App of the Day for Wednesday, November 18th is RunKeeper Free.

RunKeeper uses the GPS technology found in the iPhone 3G/3GS to track your fitness activity, giving you comparable results to an expensive GPS watch at a fraction of the cost. Now, you can also enter your activities manually, including your treadmill runs too! The intuitive and easy-to-use interface of the app makes it easy to track how far you went, how long it took, what your pace/speed was, how many calories you burned, and the path you traveled on a map. Once your activity is completed, the data is synced to the RunKeeper website (www.runkeeper.com) where you can view a history of all of your activities, and cumulative totals of all of your vital stats. You can also share your progress with friends by posting your activities to Facebook and Twitter, and creating a profile page that allows people to view all of your public activities.

Why You Should Always Be Careful While Using a Forklift [Oops]

2009-11-02T17:42:52Z

In this video, a hapless Russian warehouse worker destroys about $250,000 of precious, precious vodka in about 3 seconds (he escaped unscathed). Insert Yakov Smirnoff joke here. [English Russia via The Daily What]

Make Cookies in 90 Seconds with Your Waffle Iron [MacGyver Tip]

2009-11-06T18:30:00Z

Baking cookies in your oven is fine and all, but if you want to turn out some tasty cookies in a very short time, consider turning to your trusty waffle iron. Turns out you're only 90 seconds away from crispy, chewy, cookie-goodness.

Photo by Fine Living & Martha Stewart

Although your oven will still have its place for making large batches of cookies, using your waffle iron can bake up a cookie in just 90 seconds. It's the perfect solution for previously prepared dough when you just need a quick sugar fix instead of an entire pan hanging around the house to tempt you.

It's a simple process of heating your waffle iron (no matter what shape or size it might be) on high and coating it with a non-stick spray. Using a small cookie scoop or tablespoon, spoon batter into each section of your waffle iron. This will ensure even baking and that all your cookies will finish at the same time. All that's left is to remove them from the heat and chow down!

We ran across the idea on food weblog The Kitchn, and after a little more searching found two tested and approved recipes to try your hand at—one from Martha Stewart and the other from recipe weblog Fine Cooking. If you'd like to see the process in action, you can head over to Martha Stewart for a short video (with a slow load time) to see them made before you go all MacGyver meets Cookie Monster on your own. If you've tried this method before, let's hear how it worked out for you in the comments.

A Fast Way to Bake Cookies: Use a Waffle Iron [The Kitchn]

Google Maps Navigation Brings Slick Turn-by-Turn GPS to Android [Directions]

2009-10-28T14:45:00Z

With Android 2.0 just around the corner, Google's pushed out an enticement for those considering making the smartphone switch: a dedicated turn-by-turn GPS application, hooked up to Google Maps, aware of traffic, and powered by plain English voice commands.

Google points out a few unique features of its super-upgraded Google Maps, arriving first on Verizon's Droid (which premieres Nov. 6 at $199 with a two-year Verizon Wireless contract) and then on any phone that gets the 2.0 Android update and has the "with Google" branding. The big ones are plain English voice and text search ("Navigate to Burger King on Main Street," or even "Navigate to the museum with the 'Body Worlds' exhibit in Buffalo"), inclusion of traffic information gleaned from other Maps users, and a Street View image of your destination. It also searches along your route, so asking it to find a Jiffy Lube while you're road tripping won't make you break out the compass or take you far off your itinerary.

Some of those features aren't just unique to a phone GPS app—they're unavailable on a number of dedicated GPS navigation devices. Those of us who've been watching Google slowly add in Maps features, and its competitors do likewise, have been wondering when this shoe would drop, and it's neat to see what it finally looks like. In other words, Adam totally called it.

Check out video demonstrations of each feature at Google Maps Navigation's home page below, and Google's own blog post about it below that. And tell us if a seriously buffed-out Google Maps navigation tool makes you think twice about an Android phone in the comments.

Google Maps Navigation on your mobile phone [Google]
Announcing Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 [Official Google Mobile Blog]

Google Voice Offers Voicemail Without Changing Your Number [Google Voice]

2009-10-27T04:01:00Z

Want in on Google Voice's web-based, transcribed, custom-greeted voicemail, but you're not quite ready to adopt a new number? Starting tonight, Voice users can choose to keep their number and still get Google's upgraded voicemail features.

You'll still need a Google Voice invitation to get started, which you can request for yourself or beg a friend for. Once you're in, you can choose to either pick up a new number for the full Voice service—voicemail, SMS, selective call forwarding, and more—or keep your number and walk through Google's forwarding setup for your cellphone, in what the search giant is branding as "Google Voicemail."

Your voicemail will be routed to Google's servers, transcribed and sent to you by SMS or email, if you'd like, and accessible from your Voice web page (or playable in Gmail). It's a similar offering to what services like YouMail have been offering for some time for phones of all kinds, but with seemingly unlimited transcription and storage space. You'll also be able to set up custom greetings for each caller to your voicemail.

Google touts those features, and their concept of helping you keep your voicemail consistent between carriers, in this just-released video:

Does voicemail alone and the promise of being able to keep your number tempt you toward Google Voice—if you're able to track down an invite? Tell us what you think of Google's new pitch for your phone traffic in the comments.

Google Voice with your existing number [Google Voice Blog]

Livebrush Makes Design Creation Simple [Downloads]

2009-10-24T20:00:00Z

Adobe Air: If you're looking to put a flourish or two on an invitation, business card, or web page, Livebrush makes it super simple to create your own designs without purchasing advanced vector-based software.

Using Livebrush is as simple as swirling your mouse about. If you want to get more nuanced you can—the examples on their site show some really detailed image results. For adding just a bit of visual interest to the sidebar of your blog or the edge of your stationary, however, Livebrush is easy to pick up and play with.

You can choose from different styles, fine-tuning your brush behavior and weight as you go. Livebrush supports layers and you can export the final product as a PNG file. Upgrading to the Pro version for $10 unlocks additional features like the ability to export vectors. Check out the video below to see Livebrush in action:

If you have a favorite resource or tool for adding flourishes and decorations to your design work, let's hear about it in the comments.

Livebrush [via Digital Inspiration]

Nominate Walkable Spaces for the Street View Trike [Street View]

2009-10-16T13:30:00Z

Google's Street View cars can't drive everywhere, and especially through some of the most interesting walkable destinations around. One engineer came up with a solution in the form of a Street View Trike, a bike with an image capture trailer attached. Check out a few of the places captured for virtual tours so far, like Legoland California, and nominate other walkable spots for the trike to capture. [Official Google Blog]