- Seeed RePhone — open source and modular phone kit.
- Cyrcle — prototype round phone, designed by women for women. It’s clearly had a bit more thought put into it than the usual “pink it and shrink it” approach … circular to fit in smaller and shaped pockets, and software features strict notification controls: the device would only alert you to messages or updates from an inner circle.
- TensorFlow for Poets (Pete Warden) — I want to show how anyone with a Mac laptop and the ability to use the Terminal can create their own image classifier using TensorFlow, without having to do any coding.
- Finding the Natural Motivation for Change (Pia Waugh) — you can force certain behaviour changes through punishment or reward, but if people aren’t naturally motivated to make the behaviour change themselves then the change will be both unsustainable and minimally implemented. Amen!
"change" entries
Four short links: 1 March 2016
Phone Kit, Circular Phone, TensorFlow Intro, and Change Motivation
Four short links: 26 November 2015
Mozilla Search, Web Dependencies, Systems and Power, and Alphabet Structure
- Firefox Leaves Google’s Money Behind (CNET) — regional deals with other search engine companies, notably Yahoo in the United States, Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia.
- Managing Performance of Third-Party Scripts — in the words of Tammy Everts, A typical web page contains 75+ 3rd-party calls, which means 75+ potential webperf SPOFs.
- How Change Happens — draft of a book with a “systems and power” approach. Consultation period ends December 10, so get in fast if you’re interested. (via Duncan Green)
- More on Alphabet (NY Times blog) — G charging its Alphabet siblings for services like HR, mapping tech, compute, etc. Paging Ronald Coase! Ronald Coase to Finance!
The Falling Man and a center that cannot hold
Decoding "Mad Men's" symbol of overwhelming change.
Doug Hill on how we celebrate exponential technological advance while looking for ways to escape it.
The solutions to our big problems are in the network
"Sustainable Network" author Sarah Sorensen on global connectivity and positive change.
Massive issues around the environment, social change, and worldwide economies feel intractable, but "Sustainable Network" author Sarah Sorensen sees solutions to our biggest problems in something many of use every day: the global communications network.
Disintermediation: The disruption to come for Education 2.0
On the largest of scales, we rarely have the luxury of designing technological systems. Instead, technologies happen to us – our experience of them being ragged, volatile, turbulent and rife with unexpected interactions. Tim’s posts about the emerging internet operating system (here and here) describe a great example of this – the winner of that particular fight being very much…
Hope Art
The Capitol Hill Seattle blog has produced a short video about the surge of Obama art around Seattle. On the street you can find Shepard Fairey's Hope image has been put on garage doors and merged with donuts. It's also being used to advertise for local businesses (as seen in these coffee posters). The other day I heard an…
Do Publishers Have the Stomach for Innovation?
Amid a post on what’s wrong with venture investing, Umair Haque mentions publishing as a risk-averse industry unfriendly to innovation: And so what’s happening isn’t surprising. The dynamics of old boy’s clubs are almost deterministically predictable: they fight tooth and nail against risk, against the radical, against any kind of change to the status quo. They’re great at "monetization" -…