Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] CNN’s telepresence debut (see how it works here, see what’s been done before CNN here)
• [Health] First complete cancer genome sequenced
• [Politics] What Happens when Countries Go Bankrupt?
• [Economy] 100,000 Chinese Factories Closing: Orders Off; Regulations Up
  
• [Man-made] Brain-only Computer Interfaces Becoming Reality (can’t wait till it gets mainstream)
• [Psychology] Think graphic design doesn’t matter? (an important point)

ENTERTAINMENT

• 9 of the Most Bizarre Animal Defense Mechanisms
• The Top Ten Reasons iTunes Sucks (bless you, Scott Gilbertson!)
• Unruly Children To Be Punished With ‘Innovative’ Foot Massages (too WTF not to post here)
• Russian Basso Profondo: The Lowest Voices (unearthly)
• A Flood collapses road in a few minutes
• TIME’s Best Inventions of 2008 (worth checking out for the diversity of inventions alone)
  

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to true pressure. It comes with added bonus sometimes…

My congrats to the man, but I refuse to make a big deal out of it. Hearing and reading about people who say they couldn’t believe a non-caucasian person would ever become president of a western nation makes me feel friggin shocked above all. Then sad…because for a split second I realize how right all these people actually were. Then happy…because we were all proven wrong. Then sad again…because its almost 2009 and we’re all applauding something that’s way over due…

(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

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Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Some much needed improvements (Watch Seth Godin’s video below to get a better idea of what I mean)
• [Eco] Should They be Generation E?
• [Nature] When under attack, plants can signal microbial friends for help (amazing stuff)
  
• [Man-made] 3D Virtual Heart So Real Doctors’ Own Hearts Go Pitter Patter
• [Man-made] Seth Godin’s Tribes (great presentation on video…I really can’t describe in words how much I feel exactly, EXACTLY(!!!!!!!!!!!!!)  like Seth on this one:). Of all the futurists, he is easily the most pragmatic one!)
• [Sociology] [Psychology] Does the use of hand gestures slow language learning? (I drool over this type of empirical research data)

ENTERTAINMENT

• Not Photoshopped: Li Wei’s Astounding Action Art
• Dolls and Toys that Creep us Out
• That’s Worlds Highest Bungee Jump @ Helicopter @ 500m/1640ft
• Tuttuki Bako (after seeing the video…spechless!)
• When Robot Programmers get bored
• Improv Everywhere Creates Epic Balloon Battles Using MP3 Players (IE still rocks)

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to PBwiki. I’ve tried a couple of online wiki’s, and this one’s price-performance (for personal use, cost-zero!) is by far the best I’ve seen and used thus far. The interface is incredibly slick and easy to use and is a big time-saver. They also put strong emphasis on back-up (which you can also manually download onto your pc) and guarantee that loss of data will not occur on their watch (how much that can be trusted is of course up to you). What’s also pretty sweet is the ability to invite guests and have them look only at a particular page of your wiki and not the whole thing (so personal info and to-do lists of celebrity hotties are safe from prying eyes). Other cool features: RSS (comes in handy if/when many users update pages), downloading pages as .pdf’s, interface flexibility…

My personal thought is that every single company (even a one-man band) MUST have a personal wiki (or anything that allows fluid and user-friendly knowledge-transfer that will be put to good use) to handle the abundance of info they deal with.

One of those things that simply make my life so much easier and better! Simply a must:) For more on IT that I think is really practical and useful, click here.

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

For more random stuff subscribe to Geekofriendly.

It seems I’ve come across my first obstacle…

It was merely a week ago that I vigorously promoted Cradle to Cradle, and with it its founding father William McDonough (a household name in this blog), whom I’ve admired and respected since the first time I saw his inspirational TED Talk…it was him who convinced me that the Next Industrial Revolution is just around the corner, it was him who showed me that a great idea has answers and solutions to more than just one question or problem (an incredible and rare feat in every respect), and it was him who truly made me realize that a mindset like his is far more potent and productive than most dare dream of.

On a side-note, it was him who singlehandedly made me strive for the same causes…

That is why it saddens me deeply to have read the following article yesterday.

Arrogance, deception, hubris, voracity …need I go on?!

As it turns out (if the article stands on firm ground, that is), Mr. McDonough is his own worst enemy, meaning that his own actions have – on more than one occasion-  cost him business deals, potentially impressive credentials/references/networking and worst of all, have set him back from his goal to ‘cradelise’ the world for the better.

I leave you with the lengthy article, which you can find here (Diigoed), I am still slightly shaken-up and have a hard time coping with the conception that the man I look up to (notice the present tense) just might have some very serious problems of his own. There’s a saying you should never meet your heroes (for these very reasons, I suppose) and I’ve always considered it healthy advice. So how should this man therefore be worth my attention and respect? Well, because I still want to pursue a life where sustainability is obtained, controlled and in the end sustained, to the point of hopefully eradicating bad design and replacing it with good intent. Bill McDonough gave birth to that pursuit of mine.

(via: TreeHugger)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Revealed: The Internet’s Biggest Security Hole (old but effing relevant nonetheless!!!)
• [IT] Why is almost half of Google in beta? & Google Patent Could Kill Off Cellphone Contracts
• [Nano] Carbon Nanotube Manufacturing Breakthrough Could Mean Bye-Bye Steel
• [Health] TED Talks - James Nachtwey: Use my photographs to stop the worldwide XDR-TB epidemic (this year’s TED prize winner)
• [Astronomy] Where Do Satellites Go When They Die? (crazy stuff!)
• [Psychology] Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people

ENTERTAINMENT

• Show Me Your Genitals 2: E=MC Vagina (the sequel to that retarded yet somehow much needed song about female genitals:P)
• Man Uses Remote Desktop to Catch Laptop Thief, Watch Porn Remotely
• The Coolest Fruit On Earth (gollum wants the precious!)
• Stressed Plants Produce Aspirin-Like Substance
• Riding the Caspian Sea Monster (great stuff about ekranoplans…Exactly!)
• An Engineer’s Guide to Cats

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to recession.Thank FSM it’s only hitting the U.S. Oh wait…
Personally lovin’ it, cos:

• people thought they knew what was going wrong, but luckily nobody gave a fuck because they knew better. And boy were they right!
• everybody (except idiots) knows that 700,000,000,000 is a nice, strong, round number (…doh!) and the U.S. government knows why they had to pass the bill to get the cash. (from 6:40 on)
• 7 is also the number of years the U.S. has been out of the spotlight since their last great global contribution started, so it was about time they got back into the news. This time they really outdid themselves, put their heads together and brought something even more positive to the table. God bless America.
• recession is the easiest and cheapest dieting regime there is…by far!!!
• women are clueless when it comes to economics, so nobody ever cares what they have to say
• we finally get to have our very own modern up-to-date economic bedtime story of the 21st century. Nighty night, sleep tight, don’t let the recession bugs bite.

TO BE CONTINUED…? Naaah, this’ll be over before McCain becomes prez and Palin proves dinosaurs were put on Earth to test our faith to FSM. Santa’s gonna bring mighty nice gifts this Christmas, so I’d start spending bigtime if I were you!

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [Nano] Faster, Cheaper DNA Sequencing
• [Future] ‘Pre-crime’ detector shows promise (Minority Report, take two!)
• [Nature] An Arctic Sea “Foaming” with Methane: What Now? (the most disturbing thing I’ve read in a while!!! More here)
• [Man-made] Scientists Develop Plastic-Producing Bacteria
• [Astronomy] TED Talks – Peter Diamandis: Taking the next giant leap in space
• [Psychology] [Politics] Massively-Multiplayer Decepticon (yeah, and elephants can fly in mid-air air:P)

ENTERTAINMENT

• The Evolution of Mobile Phones 1985 – Today
• Record-Breaking Tower Tilts More Than Pisa
• Test your color IQ (I got an 8 out of a 100)
• The mating habits of the water shrew
• Rubik’s Mirror Blocks: The Cube Taken To New Dimensions of Trickiness
• The Great Dog Escape (you’ve gotta see it to believe it…and turn off the annoying music:P)

WEEKLY TRIBUTE

A small tribute to Google. As much as they’ve been receiving some bad PR lately, they’re my personal choice of email, calendar, news aggregator, homepage, freeware 3D modeling, and I better stop before I sound like a really bad salesperson!

Also, they’ve

• recently celebrated their 10′th birthday
• unveiled the open-source mobile OS Android, which will hopefully be a match to the iPhone’s V.I.P.-ish politics!!!
• launched Google Moderator, Project 10^100, an energy modeling plug-in for SketchUp, and are constantly improving and inventing
• begun lobbying to open up unused broadcast spectrum, which we’ll probably hear more of in the near future
• seriously started considering of deploying their supercomputers out to sea or finding alternatives to lower their costs
• and are pretty much in-our-face whenever we use the net. Free of charge!

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Mash-up makers move into the mainstream (Mashup – the philosophy of mixing the best of (at least) two worlds!…Ubiquity anyone?)
• [IT] Google Launches Audio Indexing (like effing finally! It’s still got a long way to go, tho)
• [Future] Can PRT, or Podcars, Replace the Automobile? (perhaps a Minority Report-ish trend coming our way)
• [Economy] A Conversation with Yvon Chouinard (this guy sure knows how to treat his employees)
• [Man-made] Getting Electricity From Outer Space
• [Psychology] Software spots the spin in political speeches (or how we all better learn to be truthful)

ENTERTAINMENT

• The Grinch: Human Slingshot For Snow and Surfboarding (W…T…F…)
• Zoom into Concrete (also zoom into other materials)
• In a Tangle of Young Lips, a New Sex Rebellion is Brewing in Chile
• Mini Rooftop NYC + HWKN (looks like a blast on a Friday night)
• The short – but eventful – life of Ike (hey, if it’s nature fucking with us it’s entertainment!)
• Drum and bass (as one comment says: buy this guy some drums!)

WEEKLY TRIBUTE

A small tribute to Diigo. Actually, a BIG-ASS one!!! The only downside is that I haven’t been using this since my first contact with the world wide web. Brings together the best of del.icio.us, social networking, Clipmarks, The Awesome Highlighter, etc, and is simply the best social bookmarking research tool I’ve come across.

One day’s usage and it’s become simply irreplaceable in my book. Hiiiighly recommended:)

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [Eco] Chicken Manure to power 90,000 Homes in the Netherlands!
• [Future] Automated Construction System To Change Face of Home-Building (mental note: it’s fun to be right:P)
• [Nature] [Astronomy] Bill Stone: Journey to the center of the Earth … and beyond! (from caves to cosmos or how this man’s favorite color is definitely black!)
• [Economy] [Politics] When the wind doesn’t blow (ups and downs of wind power)
• [Man-made] [Nature] Top 10 Amazing Physics Videos (physics galore…really fun stuff:))
• [Psychology] Banned Self Hypnosis Video (had to repeat it to get it and just ‘let go’…surprising and impressive)

ENTERTAINMENT

• The Faces Behind The Simpsons
• Gait may be associated with orgasmic ability (forget make-up, ladies! Learn to, khm, walk properly:))
• Rare banned Bush speech
• Insane Stretchable Skin Man
• 70 Amazing Houses from Around the World (great stuff with a lot of effort put into it)
• Racism in the Elevator

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to relevant issues (2) and quality journalism (2).

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Enable Chrome’s Best Features in Firefox
• [Eco] Bike-Sharing Goes Global: 5 Programs You Should Know About
• [Economy] Negative Momentum: Newspaper Ad Revenues Gaining Downhill Speed (Even Online Is Declining)
• [Man-made] Spore (it’s finally out & I hope it lives-up to the hype it’s created in the last two years!)
• [Psychology] Stop Rationalizing and Make Hard Decisions: Learning from Dr. King (short and to the point)
• [Sociology] [Psychology] Why Young Men Delay Adulthood to Stay in “Guyland”

ENTERTAINMENT

• Microsoft Patents Page Up and Page Down
• Scientists get death threats from idiots over possible apocalypse
• Elephant cured of drug addiction (if this ain’t ROFL material, then I’m the Pope so help me FSM)
• Six Degrees of Separation Is Now Three
• Awww…crazy celebrities, drugs are for fridays and saturdays, weekdays it’s botox only!
• R.I.P. movie preview guy

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to conspiracy theories, big brothers, small print, corruption (yeah, this one seems more like a small-fish local matter, but it just might change a thing or two in EU’s policy on arms deals) and Eric Arthur Blair who saw through it all.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain! (Harvey Dent)*

*The best quote I could think of comes from a friggin movie I recently saw…something definitely ain’t right in this spinning dirt-ball we live on

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(via: all the usual and unusual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [IT] Photographs Enhance Video in Absolutely Unbelievable Ways (unbefuckinglievable!)
• [Eco] FreeGreen (or the Napster of green architecture!…and we know how that evolved!!!…a radical new business model that I think can’t be stopped)
• [Future] 10 Futuristic User Interfaces (comments & other links also worth checking)
• [Man-made] Traffic from Space Videos Blow Our Minds, Pants, and Socks
• [Psychology] Four Rules to Understand What Makes People Tick
• [Sociology] [Psychology] Top 5 Most Inspirational Videos on YouTube (already featured the first two, the other 3 are just as great. I’d also add this one;))

ENTERTAINMENT

• Watching mushrooms grow
• The Evolution of Men’s Style: 1933-2008
• Slow Motion Lightning Video is Mindblowing, Will Sell a Thousand Slo-Mo Cameras
• Awkward Rap
• Trailer – Comedian (if you digg stand-up comedy or presentation skills check the movie)
• Little Gordon

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small tribute to contemporary interior (and exterior) design (or Gizmodo:P)

Link: Click | Click | Click | Click | Click

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(via: all the usual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)

Random stuff I found this week (cos I’m too lazy to post everything in separate posts)

USEFUL STUFF

• [Eco] 4 incredible & existing uses of energy harvesting (imo, the only future way to fly)
[Health] Sizing up sunscreen (or why it pays off to check up on the sunscreen you buy)
[Future] Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008 (or why we’re all “looking for the mouse”)
[Economy] [Politics] Patent for a pig (nuff said!!!)
[Psychology] What we say without words
• [Psychology] The urge to end it all (I know I know, it sounds totally morbid and fucked up, but it’s quite the contrary. And future city planners…take notice;))

ENTERTAINMENT

• TV viewers’ average age hits 50
• 10 Things That Are (Almost) Impossible To Do With Your Body
• Convert to water powered cars
• Music using ONLY sounds from Windows XP and 98!
• The science of brain freeze
• Top 10 modern life survival skills

WEEKLY TRIBUTE
A small (?) tribute to erection, male OR female, no exceptions cos FSM knows both are fun! And besides, even Jesus had one.

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(via: all the usual blogs and sites that I’ve got in Google Reader)