- Why I Am Disappointed with Nature Communications (Cameron Neylon) — fascinating to learn what you can’t do with “non-commercial”-licensed science research: using a paper for commercially funded research even within a university, using the content of paper to support a grant application, using the paper to judge a patent application, using a paper to assess the viability of a business idea.
- The iState of the Union (Slate) — humorous take on the State of the Union address, as given by Steve Jobs.
- Five Obstacles for Synthetic Biology — a reminder that biology is bloody hard, natural or synthetic. “There are very few molecular operations that you understand in the way that you understand a wrench or a screwdriver or a transistor,” says Rob Carlson, a principal at the engineering, consulting and design company Biodesic in Seattle, Washington. And the difficulties multiply as the networks get larger, limiting the ability to design more complex systems. A 2009 review showed that although the number of published synthetic biological circuits has risen over the past few years, the complexity of those circuits — or the number of regulatory parts they use — has begun to flatten out. (via Sciblogs)
- UK Government to Set Up Own Cloud (Guardian) — will build a dozen data centres (each costing £250m) and push for open source on central and local government computers, eventually resulting in thin clients and “shared utilities”. (via jasonwyran on Twitter)
"fun" entries
Tethering the iPad, in Perspective
"I am from the future. I bring you grave news. Humanity lies at a crossroads. Alas, in my time people did not choose wisely. We let our differences drive us apart, we neglected science and technology, and we lost far too many to war and plague before we realised the errors of our ways. I bring you hope in the…
Four short links: 27 January 2010
Science Publishing, iState of the Union, Synthetic Bio Obstacles, UK Government Cloud
Four short links: 24 December 2009
Minds for Sale, Heat Death of the Web, Handheld Wireless Magazines, Joking Computers
- Jonathan Zittrain on “Minds for Sale” — video of a presentation he gave at the Computer History Museum about crowdsourcing. In the words of one attendee, Zittrain focuses on the potential alienation and opportunities for abuse that can arise with the growth of distributed online production. He also contemplates the thin line that separates exploitation from volunteering in the context of online communities and collaboration. Video embedded below.
- Anatomy of a Bad Search Result — Physicists tell us that the 2nd law of Thermodynamics predicts that eventually everything in the universe will be the same temperature, the way a hot bath in a cold room ends up being a lukewarm bath in a lukewarm room. The web is entering its own heat death as SEO scum build fake sites with stolen content from elsewhere on the web. If this continues, we won’t be able to find good content for all the bullshit. The key is to have enough dishwaster-related text to look like it’s a blog about dishwashers, while also having enough text diversity to avoid being detected by Google as duplicative or automatically generated content. So who created this fake blog? It could have been Consumersearch, or a “black hat” SEO consultant, or someone in an affiliate program that Consumersearch doesn’t even know. I’m not trying to imply that Consumersearch did anything wrong. The problem is systematic. When you have a multibillion dollar economy built around keywords and links, the ultimate “products” optimize for just that: keywords and links. The incentive to create quality content diminishes.
- Magplus — gorgeous prototyping for how magazines might work on new handheld devices.
- Glasgow’s Joking Computer — The Glasgow Science Centre in Scotland is exhibiting a computer that makes up jokes using its database of simple language rules and a large vocabulary. It’s doing better than most 8 year old children. In fact, if we were perfectly honest, most adults can’t pun to save themselves. Q: What do you call a shout with a window? A: A computer scream. (via Physorg News)
Four short links: 15 December 2009
Open Source Imagery Analysis, GPL Lawsuits, Small World, Regina v Internet
- Opticks — Opticks is an expandable remote sensing and imagery analysis software platform that is free and open source. Hugely extensible system. (via geowanking)
- Best Buy, Samsung, And Westinghouse Named In SFLC Suit Today (Linux Weekly News) — the Software Freedom Law Center is suing them for selling GPL-derived products without offering the source. They’ve been unresponsive when contacted outside the legal system.
- Twitter Helps Reunite Owner with Camera — Kiwi blogger saw camera fall from car in front of him, posted a picture from the camera to his blog and asked “anyone recognize someone from this picture?”. How long do you think it took to get a hit? I love that New Zealand is a village with a seat at the UN.
- R vs The Internet — seminar held in New Zealand about the effects of the online world on law, including matters of suppression and contempt. See session notes from TechLiberty and video of the sessions from R2.
Four short links: 2 October 2009
Social Media Parasites, Open Government Data, Prime Numbers, Amazon Image Abuse
- I’m Tired of Your Analogue Attitude — hilarious animated clip about social media gurus, made using xtranormal. (via trib on twitter)
- Three Laws of Open Government Data — 1. If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist; 2. If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage; 3. If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower. (also see slide deck)
- Structure and Randomness in the Prime Numbers — paper about some of the fun mathematics around prime numbers. (via Hacker News)
- Abusing Amazon Images — decoding and doing fun things with the Amazon images API. The cool thing (if you want to generate unlikely Amazon images) is that you’re not limited to one use of any of these commands. You can have multiple discounts, multiple shadows, multiple bullets, generating images that Amazon would never have on its site. However, every additional command you add generates another 10% to the image dimensions, adding white space around the image. And that 10% compounds; add a lot of bullets, and you’ll find that you have a small image in a large blank space. (You can use the CR command to cut away the excess, however.) Note also that the commands are interpreted in order, which can have an impact on what overlaps what.
Four short links: 11 September 2009
Healthcare Fellow, Javascript Math, Web PDF Viewer, Tweeting Kegerator
- Healthspottr Fellow — outstanding entrepreneurs will be awarded prizes of up to $250,000 to accelerate their innovative endeavours. Think MacArthur Genius Grant for healthcare. (via Gov 2.0 Summit)
- jsMath — Javascript for embedding Math in web pages. (via Hacker News)
- Google’s Undocumented Embeddable PDF Viewer — Google Docs offers an undocumented feature that lets you embed PDF files and PowerPoint presentations in a web page. The files don’t have to be uploaded to Google Docs, but they need to be available online. (via Waxy)
- Tweeting Kegerator — network connected keg that tells you when it’s about to run out.
Four short links: 1 September 2009
Social Investigative Journalism, Mozilla Service, Gov Data, Video Fun
- Help Me Investigate — find other people who want to investigate the same things you do (“on which streets in my town are the most parking tickets issued?”, “why is there a giant unused TV screen in the downtown of this city?”, “how much does this city council spend on PR?”), work together to resolve it, and leave a record of the answer for others. It’s a different angle on MySociety’s What Do They Know.
- Mozilla Service Week — We believe the Internet should make life better. Join us the week of September 14-21, 2009, as we take action to make a difference in our communities, our world, our Web. (via MySociety)
- Open Government Data: Starting to Judge Results — mall, tangible, steps that turn published government data into cost savings, measurable service improvements, or other concrete goods will “punch above their weight” : not only are they valuable in their own right, but they help favorably disposed civic servants make the case internally for more transparency and disclosure. Beyond aiming for perfection and thinking about the long run, the volunteer community would benefit from seeking low hanging fruit that will prove the concept of open government data and justify further investment.
- Three Frames — small fun. I love that there are still small fun things to do. (via pleaseenjoy on Twitter)
Four short links: 31 August 2009
Digital Textbooks Rock, Diagrammed Sentences, Urban Games, Quirky Food
- CK-12 Textbooks Accepted by State of California — kudos to open textbook non-profit CK-12 for having many of their textbooks okayed for use in classrooms. Their books did better than those from commercial publishers! (via Slashdot)
- Diagrammr — web app to diagram simple sentences. (via brian on delicious)
- Noticings — Noticings is a game of noticing things in cities. Snap a photo of something interesting you happen upon, upload it to Flickr, tag it with ‘noticings’ and geotag it with where it was taken. (via migurski on delicious)
- White Castle Microwavable Frozen Hamburgers — Cal Henderson and Joshua Schachter can be bribed with these after midnight. (via direct observation)
Four short links: 14 August 2009
EPub FTW, SQL Horror, Computer Vision Explained, and A Massive Dump of Twitter Stats
- Page2Pub — harvest wiki content and turn it into EPub and PDF. See also Sony dropping its proprietary format and moving to EPub. Open standards rock. (via oreillylabs on Twitter)
- SQL Pie Chart — an ASCII pie chart, drawn by SQL code. Horrifying and yet inspiring. Compare to PostgreSQL code to produce ASCII Mandelbrot set. (via jdub on Twitter and Simon Willison)
- How SudokuGrab Works — the computer vision techniques behind an iPhone app that solves Sudoku puzzles that you take a photo of. Well explained! These CV techniques are an essential part of the sensor web. (via blackbeltjones on Delicious)
- Twitter by the Numbers — massive dump of charts and stats on Twitter. I love that there’s a section devoted to social media marketers, the Internet’s head lice. (via Kevin Marks on Twitter)
Four short links: 5 Mar 2009
Google Books, conference books, a museum API, and some number silliness that makes me happy.
- Jon Orwant on Google Book Search at TOC — Jon drops info on conversion rates, future plans, mobile, etc. See this post for a roundup of blog-world commentary on the talk.
- Brooklyn Museum Collection API — I’ve linked to this amazing museum work before. Now they have an API. Search collections, fetch items, embed in your sites. (via the announcement)
- Not So Empty Book — a magazine, built from conference content, four editions of of which were published during the brief course of the LIFT conference this year. Brilliant!
- March 5 is the Square Root of Christmas (Ned Batchedler) — maths geekery like this is why I found it difficult to date when I was younger. (I solved the problem by marrying someone who, when I read this post to her, said “oh COOL!”)