- Nest Learning Thermostat — learns how long it takes your house to adjust temperature, so can tell you not just “it’s 55 now” but “it’ll be 65 in 16 minutes”. Looks gorgeous as well as being a good example of embedded intelligence. Data really does make everything better.
- lamernews (Github) — an implementation of a Reddit / Hacker News style news web site written using Ruby, Sinatra, Redis and jQuery.
- Information is Cheap, Meaning is Expensive — interview with George Dyson. That quote is a wonderful summary of why data is important. But George also says: The danger is not that machines are advancing. The danger is that we are losing our intelligence if we rely on computers instead of our own minds. On a fundamental level, we have to ask ourselves: Do we need human intelligence? And what happens if we fail to exercise it? (via Mathew Ingram)
- Cubelets, Littlebits, and Others (Russell Davies) — he’s been playing with some sweet hardware kits. It’s not new and surprising behaviour in a toy and it’s not unbuildable with Lego or Mecanno. But there’s something different and good about being able to do it so quickly, roughly and spontaneously – throwing bits together and getting behaviour out. Not following instructions or typing laboriously. That ease makes it magical and educational – you start to understand the functions of things as a builder not a thinker. (Slightly, you know, slightly – at a lego level, not at a 5-year engineering degree level, but it’s a start.)
ENTRIES TAGGED "social"
Privacy, contexts and Girls Around Me
Problems arise when data is taken out of social contexts.
The application of user data is pushing at the edges of cultural norms. That can be a positive, but finding "the line" requires adherence to a few simple and clear guidelines.
The privacy arc
How do we build satisfying connections back into our lives without the superficiality of automated sharing?
We're at a point in privacy's evolution where sanitized tech solutions are clumsily attempting to introduce (or reintroduce) human connections into our experiences.
The end of social
When you take the friction out of sharing, you also remove the value.
If you want to tell me what you listen to, I care. But if sharing is nothing more than a social application feed that's constantly updated without your volition, then it's just another form of spam.
Four short links: 25 October 2011
Smart Thermostat, Lamer News, Expensive Meaning, and Hardware Kits
Top Stories: August 1-5, 2011
Our fragile modern systems, the G+ Effect, and science gets democratized.
This week on O'Reilly: The fragility of our modern systems was made clear to Tim O'Reilly during a recent trip, Jonathan Reichental defined the G+ Effect, and we learned what can happen when the barriers to scientific exploration come down.
How online bookstores should get social
A social layer on book sites would help readers, retailers and publishers.
What if you could take the social aspects of brick-and-mortar bookstores and blend them with the convenience of online sales? Joe Wikert explains how an online social layer would benefit everyone involved in the publishing chain.
The good, the bad, and the ugly of Google Plus
Of all the Google social efforts, Plus has the best chance of making something great.
Google has been dinged for being engineer-driven and not having the design sense of Apple or the agility of Facebook. Plus represents a significant change in how they approach and release product, so it's worth stepping back to see how it stacks up.
The future of technology and its impact on work
O'Reilly CIO Jonathan Reichental on how tech will shape the workforce.
In this presentation, O'Reilly CIO Jonathan Reichental discusses a range of future technology trends and what it will mean for work and the workforce.
2011 Watchlist: 6 themes to track
Data will be in the driver's seat, social tools will become ubiquitous, and the meaning of privacy will be debated.
Mike Loukides says Hadoop, real-time data, the rise of the GPU, the return of P2P, social ubiquity and a new definition for privacy will all play important roles in 2011.
Four short links: 31 December 2010
Statistics, Tech Writing, Shared Spaces, and Delicious Exodus
- The Joy of Stats — Hans Rosling’s BBC documentary on statistics, available to watch online.
- Best Tech Writing of 2010 — I need a mass “add these to Instapaper” button. (via Hacker News)
- Google Shared Spaces: Why We Made It (Pamela Fox) — came out of what people were trying to do with Google Wave.
- The Great Delicious Exodus — traffic graph as experienced by pinboard.
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