Syntactic Bay Leaves

Who spends the most years in retirement?

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:25:25 GMT

In the United States the averages years in retirement is 10 years for men and 16 years for women (mostly because men typically die earlier) - among the least in the world.

Nice data vis

Educational building blocks: how Minecraft is used in classrooms

Sun, 03 Apr 2011 23:00:11 GMT

Minecraft may be an addictive, open-ended game, but as one New York computer teacher learned, it can also be a very effective teaching tool. How a game teaches children to deal with "territorial disputes," sharing resources, and exploring fragile environments.

What a cool idea. I'd love to watch a lesson in progress.

Save your Cleverness - Miguel de Icaza

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 03:23:55 GMT

Too many people over-engineer their software to the point that you can no longer see what the software was supposed to do.

Save your cleverness, you hipster hackers.

Amazon Beats Apple And Google To Cloud-Based Music Storage/Streaming

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:39:16 GMT

Well, the rumors were true. Not only is Amazon entering the

Dear Apple: buy Dropbox already!

camelcamelcamel

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:06:29 GMT

Amazon price tracker

Pretty cool site. Lets you see Amazon products whose price dropped the most. Looking forward to seeing them calculate the Amazon Consumer Price Index to measure inflation.

Arab spring: Rock Band-like timeline of Middle East protests

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:11:13 GMT

Ever since a man in Tunisia burnt himself to death in December 2010 in protest at his treatment by police, pro-democracy rebellions have erupted across the Middle East. Our interactive timeline traces…

Finally you're speaking my language.

Seth's Blog: Are you making something?

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:36:43 GMT

Simple but bold: Only use your computer for work. Real work. The work of making something. Have a second device, perhaps an iPad, and use it for games, web commenting, online shopping, networking... anything that doesn't directly create valued output

The best use case I've seen for the iPad.

HTML5 Presentation: Speech input

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 03:09:27 GMT

<input type="text" x-webkit-speech="">

Decent text to speech, though you have to speak slowly.

Graylog2

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:15:30 GMT

Free open source self-hosted log management and exception tracking

I am digging you, graylog2. Listens for syslog messages, writes to a capped mongo collection and serves them back up via a nice Rails app, with search/filtering/live tail. Nibbling away at Splunk's lunch.

PhiloGL - Real time color 3D histogram

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:22:44 GMT

Visualize frame by frame color decomposition of the Shrek trailer.

It amazes me that this level of pixel control is available to the browser these days, in idiomatic Javascript no less. PhiloGL is the open source framework that powers this demo, and is written by the guy who did the Javascript InfoVis Toolkit. Looking forward to seeing where this project goes.

(via @philogb)

Visual Evidence: Why Movies Are Getting Worse

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:16:36 GMT

We looked at the 20 most popular movies each year, for the past 20 years. The key, we think, is to look for movies that some love and some hate, which is the likely profile of a bad movie that's "safely" manufactured for an existing fanbase. In other words, movies that are polarizing.

Pretty cool data vis.

Disqus: Scaling the World’s Largest Django Application

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:21:21 GMT

Disqus, one of the largest Django applications in the world, will explain how they deal with scaling complexities in a small startup.

Pretty meaty architecture talk. It's nice to see that they've made the standard Django/pgsql combo scale without having to get too exotic. Interesting mention of wsgi middleware to ship performance data to ganglia.

Groupon Appears to Be Gearing Up for China Market - WSJ.com

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:22:30 GMT

Online deals website Groupon appears to be making preparations to launch operations in China, a move that could shake up the market for group buying.

Yet another arrogant American company that thinks they can just waltz into China and flourish. I wish Groupon were public already so that I could short them.

The Master of Online Mayhem - Forbes.com

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:04:39 GMT

Gabe Newell is the next billionaire in videogames--and he's changing the economics of the industry.

"Newell says that, per employee, Valve is more profitable than Google and Apple." Wow, that's amazing. Talk about high talent density. Also check out Gabe Newell talking about Value's business with a class of high school students. Comes off as a really smart, down to earth guy. I love the "tax your community's trolls with annoying ads, and reward your power users with free stuff" tactic. Price discrimination for the info economy.

Google social search in the wild

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 16:30:22 GMT

Yes! Google social search! This is extremely useful to me.

I just spotted Google's social search in the wild, and I love it. Just enough info tell you, "Yes, your friend likes this search result enough to share it, so you'll probably like it too." It has the additional effect of forcing you to be more cautious about who you "friend" so that your searches don't become a sea of PR spam.

From Transportation to Pixels

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:55:09 GMT

We don’t need to make an eBook look like a book for people to understand how to use it. The book isn’t the cover and binding, it’s the images and the text that make the story. With an increasing amount of digital content, we don’t have a good metaphor to render anymore - just information, text and images. What do you make a UI look like when it’s just information? That’s where we go next.

Design principles and philosophy behind Windows Phone 7's Metro UI. I love this:

Finally, we believe in honesty in design. A user interface is created of pixels, so in Metro we try to avoid using the skeumorphic shading and glossiness used in some UI’s that try to mimic real world materials and objects.

In direct contrast with iOS's "make apps look like real world things" design principle.

Siri - The Personal Assistant on your Phone

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 04:43:45 GMT

Siri is a virtual personal assistant on your phone. You ask Siri in your own voice, and it helps you get things done when you're on the go.

Watson for your iPhone? Now we're just being lazy.

Shanghai, Sim City style - Baidu Maps

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 14:04:06 GMT

浏览地图、搜索地点、查询公交驾车线路，您的出行指南、生活助手。

Whoa, this is awesome. I want a Sim City-ized version of Manhattan! So that I can build 10 police stations and nuclear power plant around Time Square then send a Godzilla monster to destroy it.

Viewdle - Photo and Video Face Tagging on Vimeo

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 13:51:36 GMT

Viewdle (http://www.viewdle.com) is the easiest way to tag & share photos and videos on your mobile phone or desktop. Viewdle specializes in facial recognition technology - we recognize and tag the people you record in photos and videos. This video...

Pretty cool AR proof of concept. Now you won't even need to talk to people when you're out and about!

(via ReadWriteWeb via @memo666)

Kinect and Windows Phone 7 integration

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 03:00:36 GMT

Microsoft demonstrates Kinect and Windows Phone 7 integration - WinRumors.com

Even though this is probably just a smoke and mirrors tech demo, I like the way Microsoft is thinking, combing the two coolest things they've made, in the Kinect and WP7. More integration please!