Just Passing Through

Explore the pyramids in QTVR

Pretty interesting invention by scientists at Leeds University. It’s synthetic webbing designed to wrap around the heart. It detects when the heart is about to pump and triggers a series of miniature motors to assist, causing the entire web to contract.

Filed under: News, Open Source

It seems the word “tech” is synonymous with cold and stark.  Metals, plastics, glass - they all evoke an ideal that some of us don’t want. Some of us want our devices to be warm, to have some semblance of nature. That feeling transcends deeper since it can affect our moods. The Chute Smartphone is all about the natural, organic, and moody.

Underneath, the Chute is like any other ordinary Smartphone, powerful and functional. The shell however is designed out of bamboo, a high sustainable…

If you don’t have an SVN install to play with next WordPress version (the upcoming 2.5 milestone), someone is here to help. Chris Johnston has set up a WP 2.5 demo site so you can log in the admin area and see what’s changing in there. New colors, new look, new menus, new interface: this version will bring a lot of visual changes in the backend.

Log in with admin / demo as a username / password combination, and play around. Don’t be afraid of breaking thing, everything is reverted to…

A collection of jquery scripts with demos

A detailed tutorial on making a wood-grain texture graphic using Photoshop.

Selected WordPress themes

A web-based video editing tool. Simple functionality, but nice for those that have nothing else

Some good-to-remember css hacks that are good to remember.

OpenDNS protects millions of people a day across hundreds of thousands of schools, businesses and homes as they navigate the Internet. How thoughtful…

Google searches with filter features as GUI

A book-shaped lamp.

All the little things I forget in between

This post is not about the potential Microsoft/Yahoo merger.

Instead, let’s just assume for the moment that Microsoft succeeds in its bid for Yahoo.

What would a Microsoft/Yahoo merger mean for startups in Silicon Valley?

Some smart people whom I respect a great deal believe that a Microsoft/Yahoo merger would be bad for Silicon Valley startups.

Says Bill Burnham, for example: “By swallowing up Yahoo, Microsoft will be removing one of the biggest and most active acquirors of start-ups…

The BBC looks at the topography of other social media sites

Tag areas of your photos and annotate them like Flickr

Taggify is a web widget which allows bloggers and publishers enhance their sites by adding visual tags to any site’s images. Visual tag is a clickable image region tagged with some title, description and link. When visitor moves mouse over such region Taggify shows popup tooltip with interesting content provided by the publisher.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.taggify.net/
License: License Free

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• BoxOver DHTML/Javascript Lightweight Tooltips
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Beloit College has just published its 10th annual “Mindset List,” detailing a list of significant things that have been true for the whole lives of the 1990-born Class of 2011. Here’s my favorite skiffy/Christ-I’m-old bits:

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
12. Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines.
23. Bar codes have always been on everything,…

emletterpress posted a photo:

With heated plate, and hand made paper counter, on 130# Cover. Not the easiest job I ever had to make ready, but the work paid off.

via http://2photo.ru/2007/10/25/international_photography_awards_ipa_2007__arkhitektura.html

tshirts, tanks, hoodies and more included in this list

An outstanding collection of graphic design

via http://journal.byhiroshi.com/2008/01/typography-of-paper-cutting

Illustrations of sea creatures. Great inspiration for radial designs.

Open Culture has posted a list of ed-centric channels on YouTube

Via Mediapost, new research from market research firm BIGresearch:

Regular activities engaged in by viewers during TV commercials:

• 41.2% channel-surf
• 33.5% talk with others in the room or by phone
• 30.2% mentally tune out [I’ve met them]
• 5.5% regularly fully attend to commercials [I haven’t met them]

Rank ordering of activities engaged in by people while “using media”, in order of declining popularity:

• Eating
• Doing housework
• Doing laundry
• Cooking
• Talking on phone

Top…

In my new Guardian column, “Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses,” I argue for a new kind of copyright law, one that mirrors the “folk copyright” that individuals have lived by for decades — the alternative is to try to get kids and fans to participate in the “real” copyright, a system of industrial regulation so complex that it can barely be understood by full-time copyright attorneys.

This is a genuinely radical idea: individuals should hire lawyers to…

In my new Guardian column, “Copyright law should distinguish between commercial and cultural uses,” I argue for a new kind of copyright law, one that mirrors the “folk copyright” that individuals have lived by for decades — the alternative is to try to get kids and fans to participate in the “real” copyright, a system of industrial regulation so complex that it can barely be understood by full-time copyright attorneys.

This is a genuinely radical idea: individuals should hire lawyers to…

via

via

Max Planck Institute researchers have set a new record for photon noise control in a laser beam, creating a laser that has the precision to be used as a gravitational wave detector. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news120489240.html)

World War II era graphic design

Filed under: Fun, Windows, Beta

Pictures from the Library represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restriction