Jason Clarke

RescueTime Blog explains why your focus is under attack by Facebook’s latest redesign

Jason — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:11:19 +0000

Let’s take a use-case example:

Ashley is an average looking 16 year-old high school girl. She hangs out with the nerdy crowd. Her interests include reading. Her favorite music is the Jonas Brothers. She’s having trouble getting over that nerd hump–and the fact that she still likes the Jonas Brothers.

Ashley has 246 friends. Not much for a teen her age. Her average time spent on Facebook outweighs others’ at 2 hours/day.

Ashley clicks on Stacy’s profile an average of ten times a day. Ashley knows Stacy through friends.

Stacy is a popular girl and hangs with the popular crowd. Stacy has 1,200 friends and her wall is always flooded with funny recollections of the previous day and photos–photo’s in which Ashley constantly browses. In Stacy’s profile, it shows that Stacy loves the band Greenday, and Stacy likes “rocking out.”

Guess what types of ads Ashley (the geeky girl that loves Jonas Brothers) will see?

Greenday ads (the band that Stacy, the popular girl, absolutely loves)

Facebook has the potential to carry this out.

via blog.rescuetime.com

The opportunity for pure evil to be done with the information Facebook aggregates is enormous, and the fact that they don’t protect their users from Facebook application developers shows they really don’t have their user’s interests at heart.

Facebook may well be the big corporate overlord we should be fearing, but we just haven’t seen it yet, and it may already be too late.

Have a nice day!

Andy Griffiths Show theme song mashed up with Beyonce’s Single Ladies: weirdly compelling

Jason — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:57:08 +0000

Predictably Irrational discovers what boyfriends and girlfriends search for on Google

Jason — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:02:33 +0000

This shows Google’s remarkable power as a source of data on a range of human behaviors, emotions, and opinions. It gives us insights into what people might care the most about concerning a given topic.

via predictablyirrational.com

1. Yikes.
2. There’s a Predictably Irrational blog? Awesome!

Fraser Speirs: The reaction to the iPad represents Future Shock

Jason — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:03:11 +0000

Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done.

If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people’s perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn’t a price worth paying to have a computer that isn’t frightening anymore.

via speirs.org

This article by Fraser Speirs sums up my thoughts on the iPad very well. Basically, this is the “computing made simple” holy grail we’ve been waiting for, and most people tech people are too blind to see it.

Vancouver City

Jason — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 02:36:07 +0000

Check out this YouTube video titled Vancouver City that shows Vancouver like you’ve never seen it.

Before and After: Jimmy Page

Jason — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:29:51 +0000

Before

After

via tsutpen.blogspot.com

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – By Randall Munroe

Jason — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:49:51 +0000

via xkcd.com

Man, us Mac users can be so smug.

Things a cowboy may or may not do, according to “Wanted, Dead or Alive”

Jason — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:58:25 +0000

BETTER OFF TED uncensored clips

Jason — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 07:03:53 +0000

Uncensored doesn’t begin to describe the vulgarity of these clips from the sitcom BETTER OFF TED. The scuttlebutt is that BOT is on the bubble not to be renewed for next year, so the producers are looking to drum up some attention for the show. It’s hard to imagine they taped these lines for any real reason – I suppose they might be planning on doing a show where they censor almost everything coming out of the character’s mouths, but when you hear what they’re saying, yikes. More likely this is a publicity stunt, but it’s still freaking hilarious to see straight-laced characters speaking these vile lines of dialogue.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

[via Ken Levine]

Venn diagram: hers & his foods

Jason — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:30:26 +0000

This Too Shall Pass

Jason — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:05:08 +0000

This song is the kind of ear candy that puts a smile on your face and gets stuck in your head, in a good way. And OK GO hit the ball out of the park with another fantastic concept video. I dare you to watch this video and not smile.

I tried to embed the video in this post, but embedding is disabled unfortunately.

[via @swirlee]

The funniest commercial I don’t remember seeing

Jason — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:00:48 +0000

This is a Nutrigrain commercial from at least four years ago (it was posted on Google Video four years ago, anyway), that will have you walking around saying “I Feel Great” and weirding out your friends.

Someone figured out how to make a playable piano on YouTube using hotzones

Jason — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:10:31 +0000

There’s really no use to this other than as a curiosity, but it’s still damn cool when someone figures out to take something (in this example, a video playing site), and turn it into something else (a usable piano). Make sure you wait until the entire video has loaded before you try to play it.

[via Gizmodo]

What is a browser?

Jason — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:00:24 +0000

Do you know what a browser is? If so, you’re doing better than 92% of the people Google interviewed in Times Square.

Guy gets crowd at locked down Newark airport to sing Hey Jude

Jason — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:11:22 +0000

This is a fun little clip of a crowd of strangers singing the end of Hey Jude together while their terminal is in lockdown at Newark airport. Gotta love people that can pull this sort of thing off.

The era of the inbox

Jason — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:37:24 +0000

I wasn’t kidding when I said I plan to be writing more this year. I’m just in the process of launching a new blog called Inbox Era, which will be a site dedicated to helping people learn how to manage all of the digital inboxes in their lives, particularly email and social network inboxes. I’ve always been interested in effective strategies for dealing with large volumes of email, and lately it seems more and more people I know are struggling with how to do this.

If you have a moment, I’d appreciate if you could drop by and have a quick look at Inbox Era. Kick the tires, metaphorically speaking. And let me know if this sounds like something you’re interested in learning more about.

Also, please feel free to send your questions my way. I can’t promise that I can answer them, but I’ll certainly give it a shot. Hopefully we can learn how to handle the era of the inbox together.

I am a New Year’s cliché

Jason — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:12:25 +0000

It’s somewhat cliché to start new things at new years, but at the same time the sense of “fresh start” is very liberating. There are a number of things I’ve been wanting to do, yet have so far been unable to build any momentum on them. You know, basics like getting into shape which would contribute greatly to a lowering of stress and heightening of the ability to enjoy this wonderful life I’ve been blessed with.

To that end I’m going to start counting calories in earnest in the new year, and in February I’ll be joining the Learn to Run group at my local YMCA to train for the Vancouver Sun Run. My wife did it last year, then impressively ran in the challenging Seattle half-marathon in November last year, just 10 months later; from nothing to a half- marathon. I certainly don’t expect to be able to match that accomplishment, but I do think the goal of completing the 10 km Sun Run is reasonable, though scary as hell.

I’ve got other goals for 2010 as well, including more frequently updating this oft-neglected blog, so I think I’ll keep some of them as fodder for later posts.

Here’s to a prosperous and successful 2010 in whatever you endeavour to do! Let’s tackle some stuff that scares the hell out of us and make this year one to remember.

TSN’s Top 10 NHL Plays of the Decade

Jason — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:05:53 +0000

If you're a hockey fan, you're going to watch this YouTube clip of TSN's Top 10 NHL Plays of the Decade. I don't necessarily agree with all of them, but there are a couple on there that I'd never seen before. For example, that Rick Nash goal is ridiculous.

The Known Universe

Jason — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:56:31 +0000

This is amazing and beautiful, and makes me feel very, very small.

Operation “Put Up Christmas Lights” completed successfully. Why did I pick the coldest day of the year so far? #fb

Jason — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:58:02 +0000

via tweetie

Check out Continuity, a brain teaser puzzle game

Jason — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:53:45 +0000

[It's seriously not my night. A second post written for Download Squad that was already done, albeit using a different URL. Time to go to sleep.]

Continuity is a puzzle game where the goal is to retrieve a red key and use it to get out of a red door. But the puzzle isn’t just in figuring out which way to go; you also need to figure out what order to move the screens to so that you can get to where you need to be.

It’s hard to describe, but basically each screen in a level can be independently moved by shifting into a macro mode in the game. You do this by pressing the Shift key on your keyboard. Once in this mode, you can slide the screens around with your arrow keys – there is always an empty space, and pressing in a directly will move a piece into that space. Once you’ve arranged them as you like, press Shift again to go back into game mode.

Not all screens will line up nicely, and even when they do you may find that you can’t move your guy to the next screen. That element can make the game frustratingly difficult in later levels, and you really just end up having to play a game of trial and error. That being said, it’s certainly a good brain teaser.

Follow Twitter Lists in Google Reader using Twitter Lists 2 RSS

Jason — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:24:34 +0000

[Note: When you write for a group blog, there's always a chance that someone else has covered the ground that you are writing about. You have to be very, very careful to check in advance, and usually I am. But sometimes I forget. I wrote this post for Download Squad, but Jay beat me to it by a month.]

Twitter Lists are certainly a neat new feature, but if you find that you would prefer following a Twitter list in an RSS reader like Google Reader, there’s no obvious way to do so. Well, it might not be obvious, but Twitter Lists 2 RSS will do the heavy lifting for you to make it easy to follow a Twitter list in a feed reader.

Unlike Free My Feed which is a general-purpose RSS un-authentication tool, Twitter Lists 2 RSS is very specific: it does one thing, which is to take the URL for a Twitter list page, and turn it into an RSS feed that you can follow in any reader. For example, why not give it a try with the Download Squad blogger list?

Took this picture out my office window yesterday evening with my phone.

Jason — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:25:34 +0000

via tweetie

The Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody

Jason — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:38:53 +0000

What more is there to say?

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosimite Sam, etc. on David Letterman

Jason — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:25:23 +0000

Roger Ebert is on Twitter, and has been pumping out a ton of interesting links. I highly recommend following him. One of his more recent posts links to a clip of Mel Blanc on the David Letterman show.

Those unfamiliar with the name Mel Blanc might recognize some of the characters he voiced: Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Barney Rubble, and the real classics like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Take a few moments to walk down memory lane. His voice talent is incredible, and it turns out he’s a pretty witty guy as well.