Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

- Jack Kerouac

Via explore

The numbers are pretty amazing.  More than 1 million messages (and counting!) were sent to Congress today via the EFF action center. More than 4.5 million people signed Google’s petition registering their opposition to the bills. And that’s just the beginning. Many lawmakers abandoned the legislation (at least 13 senators today alone!) and we expect to see more defections as a result of today’s protests.

Below are screenshots I took last night of some sites that went black to protest, including Wikipedia, Google, WordPress, BoingBoing.

UPDATE: from the non-profit, Fight for the Future via email:

Today was nuts, right?

Google launched a petition. Wikipedia voted to shut itself off. Senators’ websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them. NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.

You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before. Tech companies and users teamed up. Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms. The free network defended itself. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.

The really crazy part? We might even win.

Approaching Monday’s crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA. Last week there were 5. And it just takes just 41 solid “no” votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate. What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.

But don’t trust predictions. The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass. Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don’t understand why–so they’re easily duped by superficial changes. The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical. Here are two things to think about:

1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week. Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators’ offices, until they vote “no” on cloture. If your site participated today, consider running a “Call the Senate” link all next week.

2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators’ district offices. We don’t have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we’re too exhausted! any takers?). So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote “no” on cloture. These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.

Send Instagram photos to Billabong to donate $1 to SurfAid for each photo. You can see six of my photos in the first two rows. Get involved at the Life is Better site.

This is emoji writ large. The Fühl-o-meter/Public Face is an interactive art installation that calibrates the mood of the city in which it has been erected with a monumental illuminated Smiley. The work of artists Richard Wilhelmer, Julius von Bismarck, and Benjamin Maus, the urban emoticon accurately communicates its host city’s gefühlszustand according to “mood data” obtained using integrated software which analyzes photos of the faces of passing pedestrians and processes emotions out of them. Mechanical armatures modulate the face’s expression in real-time, making it appear by turns happy, sad, or apathetic with corresponding gestures (smiley, frown, and blank). The Public Face was installed on top of a lighthouse on Lindau Island last year, but we hope that it’s rebooted and sent to other cities around the world. Not that it would prove especially insightful, given that most cities are downright miserable. Here’s to the perpetually blank stare of Williamsburg!

Via Architizer

Raspberry Pi is a new credit card-sized computer designed specifically to teach computer programming to students. The device is the brainchild of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a U.K. charity that “exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level” and wants “to put the fun back into learning computing.” The device is set to make its debut in December and will cost a mere $25 each.

Via Good

Connect real life tasks/objects to the internet. Like IRL @ifttt.

Want to hook up things to the Web? Maybe you want to get a tweet when your laundry’s done, or get an email when the basement floods while you’re on vacation. Even if you’re good with electronics and programming, these are involved projects. Instead of worrying about wiring or networking code, you can focus on your idea.

Twine is the simplest possible way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing. A durable 2.5″ square provides WiFi connectivity, internal and external sensors, and two AAA batteries that keep it running for months. A simple web app allows to you quickly set up your Twine with human-friendly rules — no programming needed. And if you’re more adventurous, you can connect your own sensors and use HTTP to have Twine send data to your own app.

Twine lets you create Internet-connected systems and objects anywhere you have WiFi. Compact, low-power hardware and real-time web software work together to make networked physical computing simple and versatile.

Back this project on Kickstarter.

Kare’s work gave the Mac a visual lexicon that was universally inviting and intuitive. Instead of thinking of each image as a tiny illustration of a real object, she aimed to design icons that were as instantly comprehensible as traffic signs.

There was an ineffably disarming and safe quality about her designs. Like their self-effacing creator — who still makes a point of surfing in the ocean several mornings a week — they radiated good vibes. To creative innovators in the ’80s who didn’t see themselves as computer geeks, Kare’s icons said: Stop stressing out about technology. Go ahead, dive in!

Via The Sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist Who Gave Computing a Human Face

Love her work and seeing the grid sketches. A fellow surfer too!

While I still use the app, I haven’t visited the Foursquare site recently. They’ve made some changes and one that works well is the logged-in view of the home page which shows you locations near you that friends have visited and recommended.