silencematters

Every problem in life should be approached under the assumption that the solution is this easy. The real work is letting yourself see the solution.

I love it when you come across an analogy, or you see a movie and it seems to color the way you see aspects of the world for days to come. That is just what happened when I read the start of this post by James Bennett.

There’s an old joke, so old that I don’t even know for certain where it originated, that’s often used to explain why big corporations do things the way they do. It involves some monkeys, a cage, a banana and a fire hose.

You have to read the whole first part of the post. It applies to everyone. The rest talks about the release of Python 3.0 - and I have to say, I have never been inclined to learn Python, or really even look into it until now - until someone has taken the care to present it in a smart way. Even if I never do anything with Python, I am now more inclined to think of it in favorable terms.

Also, the post generally highlights the work of competent people, and the world needs more of those. Great Work!

Start by reading Derek Powazek’s post on the ethics of online advertising. It quickly explains the story of a video that went viral, an then later was found to of been made by an advertising firm.

We all appreciate a good hoax from time to times, but being duped by someone with an agenda solely for the good of a brand, not only sets up a betrayal of trust, but adds very little depth to the brand itself.

“One thing pretending to be another is always a betrayal of trust. If these brands really want to engage communities online, they’re going to have to learn how to stop lying to us and start interacting honestly with us.” - (Derek Powazek)

There is no doubt that this is exciting and we all want to be in on the experience of figuring out where this came from, but when the joke is over, we are not left with anything meaningful to speak of, and someone put their time into this. It’s flat, depthless, and plain boring. Moving on to something else.

I completely agree with Jason Fried in that The Drudge Report is one of the most timeless designs on the web. To hell with all the design purists out there! The key point of the Drudge design is that is is lacking style, and 99% of the time, style gets in the way of information. Even if you go so far as to say that Drudge’s lack of style is his style, you have to acknowledge the fact that it works really well for both the content and the reader.

The Drudge Report is exactly the same as it was back in ‘96 when I wrote a report in my high-school English class on The Future of News on the World Wide Web. In fact, I do believe the quality of the content was just as pedestrian as it is today - which by the way, the design compliments very well.

“The site feels like a chaotic newsroom with the cutting room floor exposed. I think that’s part of the excitement — and good design.” - (link)

I was asked recently if I could think of a successful blog or site that purely existed on the web, and wasn’t tied to another medium. The first example that came to mind is Drudge.

Thanks to Jason for the well written piece.

“In Line for the Newspaper” - Photo by silencematters

On the day after Barack Obama was elected President, people began lining up out side the New York Times in hopes to get a copy of the actual newspaper. As Khoi noted, Print’s Not Dead. As Brian Stelter posted, that they are printing and additional 50,000 copies for the late run for the P.M. rush.

More photos from Nedward.

Possibly one of the most amazing works I have ever seen. This is bound to spawn a whole world of creativity online and film. I love it!

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

“The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries . All action takes place around NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley, to recordings of space scientists describing their discoveries . Actual VLF audio recordings control the evolution of the fields as they delve into our inaudible surroundings, revealing recurrent ‘whistlers’ produced by fleeting electrons . Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?”

semiconductorfilms.com

Yes, occasionally I order from Fresh Direct. I say this with a about 38% guilt, as do most of my friends and colleagues who also admit to ordering from them, either regularly or from time to time. The biggest issue that everyone has with them is that they deliver the food with a ridiculous amount of packaging. (more…)

“Walrus” - Photo by silencematters

Ayveq (EYE’-vek), the lovable walrus at the New York City Aquarium has died suddenly, after being ill for the past few weeks. A number of Brooklyn Blogs are mourning the death today. He will be missed.

• More photos of Ayveq from my flickr.
• The Brooklyn Paper has more information on Ayvek’s untimely death.
• What other bloggers are saying…

“Do not lean on door” - NYC MTA

Have you seen this?

If you ride the N line, you may have noticed that the “Do not lean on door” sign seems to have been cut to pieces before going into mass production. (more…)

Amazing -

1000 Words is an online magazine dedicated to highlighting the best work being produced internationally in photography today.

When things get really bad…
How can the Yahoo mess teach us about the ethics and standards of running online companies, communities and social spaces where not only people, but employees have a great deal of ownership in the product, not just the bottom line?

There has been a fantastic amount of discussion, reflection, surrounding the death of Tim Russert, and how it was covered in the media and on blogs. The aspect that moves me the most, is listening to people talk about how amazingly transparent and touching it was to watch the the whole thing unfold across the web and TV, simultaneously. It is a rare to see the “media” and even blogs, let their human side take the stage with the reporting and the overview. This human factor comes as a result of the speed at which it is possible to publish and consume thoughts. This is leaving little time for reflection - and that is ok. We are engaging in that process as participants. It is these types of public instances that are teaching people - especially people who arent used to taking part in the online experience - how to participate and think of the web as a living community.

As a related thought, James Poniewozik on Time.com

“maybe we’ll also stop arbitrarily dividing “real” from “amateur” journalists and simply distinguish good reporting from bad, informed opinion from hot air, information from stenography. Maybe we’ll remember this election as the one when we stopped talking about “the old media” and “the new media” and, simply, met the press.” - (via Romanesko)

There is a post on Publishing 2.0 that is worth reading - What Newspapers Still Don’t Understand About The Web. It talks about how newspaper websites are still talking to a print audience.

“And what’s the root cause problem? The useless article with no real-time data and no links was written for the PRINT newspaper. And the homepage is edited to match what will be important in the PRINT newspaper. And the navigation assumes I think like I do when I’m reading the PRINT newspaper. Want local news? Go to the metro SECTION.”

It is nice to see that the blog ghetto is more favorable and usable than Washington Post:

“Here’s an idea for newspaper website homepages — just a search box and a list of blogs. Seriously. Instead of putting all the web-native content and publishing in the blog ghetto, like NYTimes.com does, why not make that the WHOLE site? (I mean seriously, having a blog section on the website is like having a section in the paper for 14 column inch stories.)”

While he makes a number of good points, I still think there is a great deal of work that needs to be done to encourage, change, shift (enter adjective here) our culture to get their news and updates online. It will gradually happen, give it time… I think most people are still going to turn to TV and radio to get the most current information, and both of those forms still have something that the webs doesnt - a human connection.

John Medina’s Brain Rules -

EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.
SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too.
WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.
ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember.
LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.
SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well.
STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.
SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses.
VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses.
GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different.
EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

(via - Deric Bownds’ MindBlog)

Absolutely remarkable,

He wrote a column that goes well with this video.
Also, more wisdom and daily recipes from Mark.

A long times ago, humans used to store all their knowledge on thin plastic discs.

Photo: NASA

The image of the DVD on the Phoenix Mars Lander is the first image that shows any recognizable human element on Mars, and simultaneously dates ourselves in 2007. The medium is the message in this case.

Am I trying to solve a problem with a formula more complicated than the problem itself?

This originally comes from Thoreau’s Walden (1854), via an opinion piece by Verlyn Klinkenborg published last week titled, The Cost of Smarts..

“ferns and bells” - Photo by silencematters

Juliette and I live right next to the Brookyln Botanic Gardens, and each weekend we try to make it out to see the slowly changing expression of plant life on display.

A few weeks ago, my hard drive on my MacBook crashed, so I have been going through and re-installing all of the firefox plugins that I had, plus a few others I found in the process. It has actually been kind of enjoyable using this as an opportunity to re-think some of the browser plug-ins that I use.

FireBug
Edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. This is essential.

TypeGauge
Type Measuring for Firefox

Foxmarks Bookmarks
Synchronizes your bookmarks between two or more computers running Firefox. Includes a feature to access your bookmarks from any computer.

GrApple
Helping Firefox to look a little better than it does out of the box.

PicLens
This is by far, one of my favorite plug-ins that I use. I originally came across it in this article by John Markoff, and now I can’t live without it. I use this daily to browse images both on Flickr and Google

Page Saver
By far, this is the best way to take a screenshot of a whole web page. Much much faster than Paparazzi, which is also very nicem but uses Safari as the rendering engine.

User Agent Switcher
Perfect for switching your broswer to another user agent. I use it to test out iPhone apps I may be working on.

Web Developer Tool Bar
I used to use this more than I do currently. Firebug now handles most of the features I need on a daily basis. However, I like that I can specify that I can Disable Cache on each load of a page (which I always have set) and that i can turn styles off on any given site. It is still a must have.

GridFox
Adds a customizable grid overlay to any web page. The nice part about this grid solution is that it doesnt rely on code in the web page to function. The only downfall is that it is not easily activated through a key command.

ScribeFire
I am going to give this a try fairly soon. There are far too many links and posts that I could bang out, and most of the time I would like to not have to login to WordPress to do it. I think this might be my answer.

Sxipper
Sxipper accurately fills in forms, manages passwords and your OpenIDs.

HTTPFox
HttpFox monitors and analyzes all incoming and outgoing HTTP traffic between the browser and the web servers.

iMacros for Firefox
There has to be repetitive tasks that I do from time to time where this would come in handy - still havent had a chance to try this out.