FriendDA: NDAs for the real world. Key element to it:
I possess a bright idea that I am choosing to disclose to you, The Advisor, with the mutual understanding that you are my friend and that you will not screw me.
Links
Ubiquity
I recently got clued into a new system being developed by the folks over at Mozilla called Ubiquity. The short of it is that they’re trying to create a method to allow the web to function more seamlessly using natural language. Ubiquity in Depth explains a bit more about the logic and reasoning and path forward for the tool. Should be very interesting to see where it goes.
War on Photography
War on Photography: Quite possibly one of the most enraging sites I’ve read in a good long while. It documents reports of photographers being harassed for no reason by police, security guards, and even random passersby. If you’re remotely interested in photography or first amendment rights (or, heaven forfend, both), it’s a quick way to raise your blood pressure about 30 points.
Patchwork Internet
Warren Ellis on the patchwork years of the internet. Interesting reading, and mirrors a lot of what I’ve been thinking and talking about.
Moo Cards
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned them before, but their recent announcement for Moo Business Cards prompted me to call them out again. Each card can be customized, and allows for a wealth of photographic and other artistic material to be added and given away. Given the high quality, full-bleed custom work that is done, the pricing is really pretty good. Definitely worth checking out if you need some business cards done and want to do something a little different. MOO’s Website
WiiFit's Role on Game Design
What Activities That Can Be Turned Into Games? over at Lost Garden. Fascinating article, discussing the role of things like the WiiFit on expanding the horizons of game design in society.
The harbinger of game’s ascendancy to all aspect of the modern life is not some piece of evocative art or Citizen Kane-a-like. Instead, our future appears in the form of a glorified bathroom scale. Still, if we can improve people’s lives with a bathroom scale, just imagine how games can transform the rest of our world. (Danc at Lost Garden)
DailyLit
DailyLit is a system to receive books to read in small chunks via email or RSS. The basic idea is that as part of our day to day lives, we find it hard to find time to sit down and read, but we can usually find time to spend 5 minutes reading an email or post. So with that in mind, the folks at DailyLit took a bunch of books from public domain and creative commons licenses, and broke them into manageable parts, and allow you to receive these parts via email or RSS. They’re also experimenting with using Twitter, which is how I first heard about them. Very slick!
Detroit Book Depository
The deteriorating remains of the Detroit Book Depository. Jessica showed me this the other day, thought I’d share, as it’s really pretty impressive. The short version of the story is that they used to use a warehouse system for school books and materials, until a fire broke out, and decimated the building. Due to insurance settlements, they were never allowed to salvage from the building, and it was all left to rot.
reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that uses text that OCR scanning technology couldn’t translate as the random text:
But if a computer can’t read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here’s how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct. (reCAPTCHA Website)
Truly, we live in the future.
I’m now using this system for user registrations (which are required to leave comments). So go register, and help read books!
Microformats
This really deserves a fuller posting than this, but the gist of it: Microformats are a way to make your data more machine-friendly, related to (but separate from) the Semantic Web movement. There are several microformats out and seeing use, including hCard and hCalendar. Several more microformats are currently in draft form, such as hReview, and hResume. What’s really nice about this is that it makes your content readable for both humans and machines, and their extensive use of classes allows a built-in versatility in layout via CSS.
Of course, the drawback is that it’s more cruft to try and remember to implement. The folks spearheading the movement seem to understand this, though, and most of the drafts and specifications have online creators that you can use, and several plugins for popular blogging applications (like WordPress) are in development. I just used the hResume Creator to create a basic resume which I’ve posted here.