A weblog written in Esperanto.link » tags: [weird] posted via Wists: permamark
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The guy pictured was outside my door this morning with a bizarre looking Rube Goldberg (Heath Robinson) contraption. Apparently the machine is designed for 'sewer fishing'. According to its owner "these covers lead to drains that go way down, there's stuff from the 17th century down there". Eeeew.link » tags: [weird] posted via Wists: permamark
If oil hits $3 a gallon, people will demand that the government focus on domestic problems and the economy. It will be a sublime irony if Bush's popularity slumps because of oil prices and not because of the Iraq war, since the Iraq war was an attempt to keep cheap oil flowing if the Saudi supply was in danger. But because other reasons were used to galvanize supprt for the Iraq war the government is now in a curious position of having to continue to fudge the WMD issue and not reap the benefits of the emerging reality. link » tags: [peakoil] posted via Wists: permamark
Ed Sim writes: "One of the ways we like to invest is by talking with the buyers in the market, the CIOs and CSOs, and understanding what their pain points are, what solutions they are evaluating, and how open they are to working with early stage companies." I'd like to see an enterprise knowledge network where CIO's spelled out their problems to invited software providers. A forum where high level problems are thrown out there as individual problems rather than lengthy RFPs. The obvious problems of confidentiality are mitigated if there is no immediate agenda and the posts are initially anonymous. I.e. both sides are invite only and problems are posted anonymously. The identity of the poster is revealed to people offering suggestions/solutions if the poster wants them to follow up. Too much of the enterprise arena is still hamstrung by a lack of transparency and reliance on anachronistic ways…
Adam Michela is cooking up a new project which will take some of the UI developments from Ajax, the goodness of Rails, 43things style serendipitous networking and weblog style publishing to create a new way to look at travel. Knowing Adam, it will surely rock.link » tags: [tools] permamark in: Wists
Independant: “As MPs vote on whether to go ahead with a Bill that could outlaw religious jokes, we celebrate comedy’s finest at their blasphemous best” I always think that a society’s toleration of jokes about anything, is a fine sign of its level of being benign. My favorite is the Emo Philips one: “I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: ‘Stop. Don’t do it.’ ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ he asked. ‘Well, there’s so much to live for!’ ‘Like what?’ ‘Are you religious?’ He said: ‘Yes.’ I said. ‘Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?’ ‘Christian.’ ‘Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?’ ‘Protestant.’ ‘Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?’ ‘Baptist.’ ‘Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?’ ‘Baptist Church of God.’ ‘Me too. Are…
My favorite thing about the new Technorati is that it now differentiates between links to a blog from an actual post and persistent links from a Blogroll or sidebar. Would be interesting to see the top 100 blogs ranked separately by number of posts and number of sidebar links.link » tags: [tools] [news] permamark in: Wists
Of 1000 children aged between 13 and 16, not a single one could name a living scientist. Some answers offered up included Madonna and Chemical Ali. Guardian Unlimited | Life | Only dead scientists are known to teens
The Register reports that it will ship in the UK this fall. I’m not particularly a gadget freak, or an early adopter, but damn I want a WiFi cellphone combo, since although the US is very good for most services, its cellphone services suck. Will the Universal work in the US?link » tags: [gadgets] [wishlist] permamark in: Wists
Reading through accounts of Christian protests of Harry Potter came upon this classic: “Maine: A group of Christians in Lewiston, ME, the Jesus Party had planned to hold a book burning in a local park on 2001-NOV-15. However, they were denied a fire permit by the Fire Department. So they held a “book cutting” instead. “ The Harry Potter books: Charming stories or demonic plot?
In response to China and Iran's censorship of bloggers, have done a quick logo for Bloggers Without Borders to post on weblogs. It has no anti-aliasing, using only black lines and a transparent background, so should place on most sites without dithering problems. The font is Kottke’s Silkscreen, which seemed appropriate. The icon shows an arrow bursting out of a box, to symbolize free speech using an image which is often used to indicate opening a link in a new window. link » tags: [blogs] [censorship] permamark in: Wists [Update: as Sean points out, I am a moron. The whole Bloggers without borders thing has been done – and I didn’t even Google it before pontificating.]
“Umbria Communications of Boulder has developed a Web crawler that monitors hundreds of thousands of blogs, turning the information from them, via natural language algorithms, into marketing data that is potentially much more reliable than traditional tools such as focus groups.” The results: Most mentioned non alcoholic beverage: Starbucks coffee Most mentioned fast food: McDonalds Most mentioned female celebs: Britney Spears, Paris hilton etc. Well there’s a surprise. Blog software tracks consumer preferences