Tumbclio

explore-blog: Happy birthday, Miles Davis! The jazz legend...

Sat, 26 May 2012 09:38:45 -0500

Happy birthday, Miles Davis! The jazz legend would have been 85 today – celebrate with this minimalist illustrated portrait by artist Jorge Arevalo.

How an iPad Speeds Reporting from NASCAR's Pit Row

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:24:39 -0500

How an iPad Speeds Reporting from NASCAR's Pit Row:

Mac Rumors:

When the iPad was released in 2010, Burns instantly saw the potential. He could digitize his notepads, drop the pen and paper, and carry all his reference material with him to every race. After addressing concerns about size; durability; using it outside in the bright summer sun; and, perhaps most importantly, which apps to use; Burns arrived at his perfect setup:

Facebook could be looking to buy Opera browser

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:19:56 -0500

Facebook could be looking to buy Opera browser:

Engadget:

The latest rumor, from Pocket Lint, says Facebook is looking to buy the Opera browser as part of its larger effort to compete against Google, Mozilla and other internet mammoths. According to a source at Opera Software who spoke with Pocket Lint, the company is shopping around for potential buyers and has even imposed a hiring freeze. While it’s not too hard to believe that Facebook is readying its horse to enter the browser race, this rumor is just that: a rumor. But given the social network’s tendency to whip out new features at warp speed, we should have something more solid than speculation soon — if the Opera purchase story has any legs, that is.

FCC Chairman Says It’s Okay to Be Charged for the Amount of Broadband You Use

Thu, 24 May 2012 17:33:52 -0500

FCC Chairman Says It’s Okay to Be Charged for the Amount of Broadband You Use:

wilwheaton:

Mr. Genachowski said tiered pricing, will “increase consumer choice and competition” and yield in “lower prices for people who consume less broadband.” Although, as Electronista notes, “he did not clarify what mechanism would drive prices down.”

Public interest groups have decried the potential impact broadband data caps will have on the market and innovation, not to mention the biases baked in the plans. Comcast, for example, counts Netflix video into its data plan, but lets its own XFinity service stream away.

…“increase consumer choice and competition”… yeah, that’s exactly what will happen. I mean, except for how that’s not what’s going to happen, at all.

The American West, 150 Years Ago

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:24:49 -0500

The American West, 150 Years Ago:

The Atlantic:

In the 1860s and 70s, photographer Timothy O’Sullivan created some of the best-known images in American History. After covering the U.S. Civil War, (many of his photos appear in this earlier series), O’Sullivan joined a number of expeditions organized by the federal government to help document the new frontiers in the American West. The teams were comprised of soldiers, scientists, artists, and photographers, and tasked with discovering the best ways to take advantage of the region’s untapped natural resources. O’Sullivan brought an amazing eye and work ethic, composing photographs that evoked the vastness of the West. He also documented the Native American population as well as the pioneers who were already altering the landscape. Above all, O’Sullivan captured — for the first time on film — the natural beauty of the American West in a way that would later influence Ansel Adams and thousands more photographers to come.

The Future of Scholarship: Easier, Harder, and With More Charlatans

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:12:13 -0500

The Future of Scholarship: Easier, Harder, and With More Charlatans:

Alan Jacobs:

It’s at least possible that in this new knowledge environment we’ll be able to take more of the research as a given — not all of it, but more of it — and will demand from researchers some of the literary virtues: lucidity of style, subtlety of argument, liveliness of narrative. Maybe when readers will make it clear that they know how easy it is to multiply sources, writers will cease to try to impress through numbers of footnotes.

pacalin: How neat are these. herochan: Silhouette Super...

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:26:55 -0500

pacalin:

How neat are these.

herochan:

Silhouette Super Kids

Created by Andy Fairhurst

"As one of the folks who worked on the old Gmail design for a long time, I feel a bit like a father..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:21:39 -0500

“As one of the folks who worked on the old Gmail design for a long time, I feel a bit like a father watching his daughter get a lower back tattoo.”

- drklahn on Metafilter (via merlin)

Why Silicon Valley needs humanities PhDs

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:05:43 -0500

Why Silicon Valley needs humanities PhDs:

Vivek Wadhwa:

I believe humanity majors make the best project managers, the best product managers, and, ultimately, the most visionary technology leaders. The reason is simple. Technologists and engineers focus on features and too often get wrapped up in elements that may be cool for geeks but are useless for most people. In contrast, humanities majors can more easily focus on people and how they interact with technology. A history major who has studied the Enlightment or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire may be more likely to understand the human elements of technology and how ease of use and design can be the difference between an interesting historical footnote and a world-changing technology. A psychologist is more likely to know how to motivate people or to understand what users want.

parislemon: fuckyeahmovieposters: There Will Be Blood by Duke...

Thu, 17 May 2012 06:57:49 -0500

parislemon:

fuckyeahmovieposters:

There Will Be Blood by Duke Dastardly

As good as this movie is, I now feel like it’s somehow underrated.

I can’t think of any more human activity than conducting...

Wed, 16 May 2012 21:34:35 -0500

I can’t think of any more human activity than conducting science experiments. Think about it — what do kids do? … They’re turning over rocks, they’re plucking petals off a rose — they’re exploring their environment through experimentation. That’s what we do as human beings, and we do that more thoroughly and better than any other species on Earth that we have yet encountered… We explore our environment more than we are compelled to utter poetry when we’re toddlers — we start doing that later. Before that happens, every child is a scientist. And so when I think of science, I think of a truly human activity — something fundamental to our DNA, something that drives curiosity.

Neil deGrasse Tyson: Science is in Our DNA (by bigthink)

explore-blog: Jonathan Harris on social media as “routing...

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:47:49 -0500

explore-blog:

Jonathan Harris on social media as “routing devices for human attention… providing our species with a common nervous system.”

clippings: (via MacSparky)

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:37:11 -0500

clippings:

(via MacSparky)

Photo

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:06:05 -0500

lifeandcode: tur-nr: That’s how its done!! always...

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:22:43 -0500

lifeandcode:

tur-nr:

That’s how its done!!

always reblog

That can of Red Bull perched on the MacBook Air is making me nervous.

lifeandcode: cote: Just in case you forgot. And: steak...

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:38:34 -0500

lifeandcode:

cote:

Just in case you forgot. And: steak knives.

Seems legit.

Small App Developer, Welcome To Your Hell

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:01:01 -0500

Small App Developer, Welcome To Your Hell:

parislemon:

Kim-Mai Cutler caught up with Hong Kong mobile app developer Animoca and notes that they test against 400 different Android devices. And they’d do even more — but many are no longer for sale.

Just look at the picture.

Cutler:

But imagine the long-tail of developers! Imagine the people who make the roughly 500,000 apps in the Google Play store. Total nightmare.

Right, for a big app house, this is very annoying, but doable. For a small team of app developers, this is impossible. Many pick the top 3 to 5 Android phones and stick to those when it comes to testing. Unfortunately, there are so many quirks across devices that it leads to a shit ton of bugs or full-on incompatibility.

“Total nightmare” is too kind. It’s total hell.

Photo

Fri, 11 May 2012 20:52:55 -0500

Congress Should Grill the FCC Over Redacted Google Wi-Fi Snooping Report

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:43:42 -0500

Congress Should Grill the FCC Over Redacted Google Wi-Fi Snooping Report:

Chris Soghoian, for Wired:

However, even if the FCC lacked the legal authority punish Google, nothing prevented the agency from alerting the public, the media, and Congress to the full extent of Google’s sins. Instead, the agency opted to keep the public in the dark.

The FCC has yet to reveal the reasons why it opted to so heavily redact the most damning portions of the Google WiFi report. Congress should not wait for the FCC to volunteer an explanation. It should demand answers.

Digital data: Bit rot | The Economist

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:40:37 -0500

Digital data: Bit rot | The Economist:

The Economist:

PICTURE yourself as a historian in 2035, trying to make sense of this year’s American election campaign. Many of the websites and blogs now abuzz with news and comment will have long since perished. Data stored electronically decays. Many floppy disks from the early digital age are already unreadable. If you are lucky, copies of campaign material, and of e-mails and other materials (including declassified official documents), will be available in public libraries.

But will you be able to read them? Already, NASA has lost data from some of its earliest missions to the moon because the machines used to read the tapes were scrapped and cannot be rebuilt. A wise librarian will wish to keep in working order a few antique computers that can read such ancient technologies as CDs and USB thumb-drives. But even that may not be enough. Computer files are not worth anything without software to open them.