Four short links: 2 February 2012

Build a Button, CMU iPad Course, Materials Conference, and Facebook IPO

Beautiful Buttons for Bootstrap -- cute little button creator, with sliders for hue, saturation, and "puffiness".
CMU iPad Course -- iTunes U has the video lectures for a CMU intro to iPad programming.
Inspiring Matter -- the conference aims to bring together designers, scientists, artists and humanities people working with materials research and innovation to talk about how they work cross- or trans-disciplinarily, the challenges and tools they've found for working collaboratively, and the ways they find inspiration in their work with materials. London, April 2-3.
Facebook's S-1 Filing (SEC) -- the Internets are now full of insights into Facebook's business, for example Lance Wiggs's observation that Facebook's daily user growth is slowing. While 6-10% growth per quarter feels like a lot when annualized, it is getting close to being a normal company. Facebook is running out of target market, and especially target market with pockets deep enough to be monetised. But I think that's the last piece of Facebook IPO analysis that I'll link to. Tech Giant IPOs are like Royal Weddings: the people act nice but you know it's a seething roiling pit of hate, greed, money, and desperation that goes on a bit too long so by the end you just want to put an angry chili-covered porcupine in everyone's anus and set them all on fire. But perhaps I'm jaded.

Justing [ 2 February 2012 04:22 AM]

Did you mean to say that last bit out loud? It's pretty awesome, actually.

Matthew [ 2 February 2012 07:29 AM]

Concerning Facebook's growth, they don't have me or my inlays as members, so I suppose they could grow to include us. Unfortunately, I have no interest in joining Facebook. So, I'm guessing most people who actually want to use Facebook are already using it. And from what I hear, people seem to like it about as much as people used to like AOL - not much, but they don't know what else to use to contact their friends or post photos...

John [ 2 February 2012 07:50 AM]

"... are like Royal Weddings: the people act nice but you know it's a seething roiling pit of hate, greed, money, and desperation..."

No defender of royalty, but you know this, how?

punkish [ 2 February 2012 08:39 AM]

"... just want to put an angry chili-covered porcupine in everyone's anus and set them all on fire."

Poor porkies... what did they ever do to you Gnat?

hmijail [ 2 February 2012 09:13 AM]

Set who on fire? the chili porcupines, or the carriers?

BTE [ 2 February 2012 12:15 PM]

That last part was great. Kinda reminds me of how I feel when watching the current Republican Party debates. Nothing would make me happier than the look on Mitt Romney's face while he has a flaming porcupine stuck up his ass :-)

Mark Dominus [ 2 February 2012 02:24 PM]

Hi, Nat! I think when you said "anus" you meant "rectum".

Hope this helps!

Gwen Jenkins [ 2 February 2012 03:11 PM]

Not if he wants to set it on fire later.

Andrew Fallows [ 2 February 2012 07:24 PM]

The fact that Tim O'Reilly linked me to this is pretty solid proof that the O'Reilly Radar is an excellent environment for the expression of ideas.

Fritz [ 3 February 2012 08:56 AM]

Flaming Chili-Porcupine Anuses....Sounds like a great Zynga game!!!

Best Radar entry...EVER!

Sarah Kolb [ 7 February 2012 07:49 AM]

Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing a link to the button creator -- just what we need! Thanks!!