beatnic - just wondering

I’m still pondering this one…

Springcleaning his blog Tom Loosemore found this pdf document outlining what he thought were the key components for a successful online community when he applied for a job with Microsoft in 1996. Everything you need to know distilled in to one side of paper. He was offered the job but didn’t fancy the commute to Reading!

“Hive, hive, hive. Self-Organise.”

A piece in today’s Guardian Online lists some of the web’s top search engines as a “new search war breaks out”

I’ve set them up below for easy access.

The groupings are taken from the paper version of the Guardian. (One or two missing from the original list until I have time to get them to work)

Thanks to Claire for alerting me to The 48 Laws of Power

Remind you of anyone in power anywhere?

“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”

Frank Lloyd Wright, US Architect, 1867-1959

Many everyday designs in use in the synthetic world are like moments of harmony during a turbulent but ultimately constructive relationship.

In between these moments you find form following function and function following form, and sometimes they’ll be battling it out between each other.

Here in the chaos it’s disturbing, disruptive and exciting. You can never quite be sure whether or when you’ll reach the next stage or what it’ll feel like when you get there. It’s where ideas and creativity happen.

In between the chaos are the zen-like places of simplicity where the noise has been reduced to silence, stepping off points in the development process, where you could remain forever, or rest for a while, contemplate, and then jump back on again towards the next level.

I’m not sure where the end-point in this journey towards simplicity is. I guess we might turn to nature for some answers.

The stability in Wright’s union of form and function can only ever be temporary.

Perhaps this is what makes us able to appreciate, understand and care about the beauty in the simplest design.

Pioneer of gonzo journalism shoots himself

Lots of tributes here

I was just wondering what Will Self is thinking

Flickr Graph is a brilliant use of the Flickr API

concept
Flickr Graph is an application that explores the social relationships inside flickr.com. It makes use of the classic attraction-repulsion algorithm for graphs. Start exploring your contacts by entering your flickr username or the email address you used to register there

Designed and built by Marcos Weskamp

Tactile and addictive

Just came across this nifty gizmo called What the font?! - nice idea, very easy to use, and it works pretty well

If you want to know what font someone’s used for, say, an advertisement, a book, an album cover… take a picture of some of the text and upload it to the site.

It will then scan the words in the image and ask you to confirm it’s recognised the letters correctly before giving you the name of the font used, or the closest matches.

I tried a couple. Not surprisingly it’s not too tolerant of fuzziness, so a good sharp image helps.

This slighly blurry word was narrowed down to five fonts, I’m settling on Compacta EF Light.

This reminded me of Shazam the mobile phone service where you can phone a number from a club and it’ll text back to you the details of the track that’s playing (I haven’t tried it, but hear it works OK).

“Big Ben” illuminated with London 2012 Olympic bid logo

On my cycle journey home from work this evening

When I search Google for tat gallery…

…and it says “Did you mean tate gallery?”

I’d like to tell it “No”

Chip and PIN as a method of payment has been in the UK for a couple of months now, and according to all the major card companies is the most secure system so far.

According to this info on UK government website crimereduction.gov.uk, the initiative is costing £1.1billion. This to combat plastic fraud which in 2002 cost £424.6million in the UK.

Since 1st January stores not using chip and PIN get less protection and insurance against fraud. This was used as the “incentive” to buy in early.

So what’s it like to use?

Not a great user experience for me so far. And canvassing opinion in a quick straw poll friends agree.

It wouldn’t take a lot to improve it. Train staff better. Make it easier for customers to use, no awkward leaning over the sweet rack on the sales counter…

I was just wondering why we don’t seem to have benefitted from what other countries have learnt.

Compared to France, where they’ve used chip and PIN for years, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. There the “PIN pads” usually have hoods which cover your hand enough so that others can’t see what your PIN is.

Here in the UK all the machines I’ve used so far are more like overweight pocket calculators.

They’re rarely on long enough leads, so you find yourself punching numbers in to the thing while it’s dangling in mid-air or being held by the sales assistant or waiter, many of whom seem bewildered by the new technology themselves.

I make a point of covering my number punching hand with my other hand but for some reason it all feels quite self-conscious, even though that’s what all the advice says.

From The Register:

Chav burglar collared by webcam

A 19-year-burglar has just begun an 11-month stretch at Her Majesty’s Pleasure after he was captured burgling a house by the owner’s webcam. Fed-up software engineer Duncan Grisby set up the surveillance system following a previous burglary three years before. It recorded deliciously crisp images of Benjamin Park who delighted police immediately identified. Read on and see the pictures…

I’m about to start training for the 2005 Crystal Palace Triathlon which takes place on 29th May.

It’s a half triathlon:

1. 750 metre swim
2. 20km cycle ride
3. 5km run

The cycling and running should be doable, I’m looking for swimming tips though.

Hopefully we’ll go past the dinosaurs…

This is on my bicycle journey to work.

Many happy returns :-)

…context is god!

Now… which categories to put this post in?

:-)

This from razorhead’s blog which I stumbled on the other day and is well worth a read.

There are five types of road crossing in use on UK roads:

1. Refuge: these are the islands in the centre of the road usually demarked by illuminated keep left/right signs which have be battered by cars that managed neither.
2. Zebra: marked by black and white stripes across the road, sometimes accompanied by Belisha Beacons and in 1951 marked the horribly cute reference to animals.
3. PELICAN: he name derives from a pseudo-acronym for ‘Pedestrian Light Controlled’, with the ‘o’ changed to an ‘a’ in deference to the bird. These feature a green or red cross/don’t cross figure on the signal on the opposite side of the road.
4. PUFFIN: these differ from pelican crossing by having the red/green man on the control box where the pedestrian presses the button to cross. There is no ‘blinking-green-man’ phase, but are fitted with extra sub-surface sensors to extend the crossing time if there is high demand or cancel the demand if the pedestrian moves away.
5. Toucan: are similar to puffin crossings but cyclists are also permitted to use them. The name is contrived from ‘Two Can Cross’.
6. Pegasus: similar to a pelican but feature a high mounted button for horse-riders. The red/green man is replaced by a red/green horse.

Four year-old joy rider takes the wheel

From Oddly Enough on the Reuters website:

“What he was doing was jump down, hit the accelerator, and get back up so he could see where he was going,” Hayden said, explaining how someone who was too short to reach the floor pedals was able to drive a car.

Congratulations to British yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur who a few moments ago tonight sailed her boat (the B&Q) in to the history books.

She sets a new solo round the world sailing record of 71 days 14 hours, knocking a day and a half off the previous record set last year by French sailor Francis Joyon.

What an inspirational and mindblowing achievement!

Looks like there’s going to be quite a party in Falmouth when she pitches up :-)

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson who?

You’re on the jury!

Joke heard on this morning’s Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4

They’ve got a point

On lordshiplane.co.uk the following from a book titled East Dulwich by John D Beasley:

In A View of Dulwich, Peckham and Camberwell around 1300 Rosemary Warhurst records that in 1340 there was a hamlet called Est Dilewissh where William Mabuhs, a marshall, sold houses, gardens, arable lands, heath and enclosures to John Leverich. This was near a lane called Grenelane. East Dulwich remained a rural area until the second half of the nineteenth century.

It doesn’t say whether the name East Dulwich comes from Est Dilewissh or simply by being east of Dulwich.

http://www.lordshiplane.co.uk

Marylebone High Street wasabi strength chart with your take away sushi…

1. Japanese Canteen (strongest)
2. Pret a Manger
3. Tesco
4. Waitrose
5. Boots

In today’s Online section in the Guardian there’s a piece by Jim McClellan on the success of Flickr (a photo sharing and organising website). According to co-founder Caterina Fake, in less than a year its membership has already reached 245,000 and grows at a rate of 5-10% a week.

McClellan discusses the possibilities brought about by Flickr and other social software services on the web, many of which use folksonomies - people-generated tags or metadata - including the impact of del.icio.us and technorati amongst others. These sites help us to organise our own experience of the web as well as brining us together with other people around common themes and interests.

What I’ve been wondering is how sustainable these services are once they break in to the mainstream (if they haven’t already done so). I can’t help thinking each will reach a critical mass where there is too much tagged content to cope with to be useful beyond the personal and “closely” social.

In the same way blogs offer a valuable filter on the labyrinthine plethora of information on the internet (and the “blogosphere” itself), services such as del.icio.us and technorati offer a chance to put a filter on the filters.

What happens next? Is someone already inventing the filters’ filters’ filter?

Top search result for Bill Gates this morning on the new MSN Search takes you to… Bill Gates as Mabus