Monday, January 16, 2012
“So do I think a fourteen year old could have pulled it off? I sure think so, but I realize in 2009 it would have taken a very tenacious fourteen year old. But that was 2009. If you’re skeptic about my prediction for the past, how about applying them to today or 2015? How long till the technology that, at the time, precipitated the fastest wealth generation humanity had ever seen, can be replicated by a teenager with next to no budget during summer break? How long till it’s something you write as a pet project while learning to program. Our tools are still getting more powerful, and our collective understanding of software problems is still increasing at a rapid pace. Do you think there’s an upper ceiling for how good we can get at writing software? Are we close?”
A 14-year-old could build 1998’s Google using her Dad’s credit card!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
“Modern society tends to regard itself as somehow better than previous ones, and technological advance reinforces that sense of superiority. But history teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun. Robert Darnton, an historian at Harvard University, who has studied information-sharing networks in pre-revolutionary France, argues that “the marvels of communication technology in the present have produced a false consciousness about the past—even a sense that communication has no history, or had nothing of importance to consider before the days of television and the internet.” Social media are not unprecedented: rather, they are the continuation of a long tradition. Modern digital networks may be able to do it more quickly, but even 500 years ago the sharing of media could play a supporting role in precipitating a revolution. Today’s social-media systems do not just connect us to each other: they also link us to the past.”
Social media in the 16th Century: How Luther went viral | The Economist
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
“The great thing about the web is linking. I don’t care how ugly it looks and how pretty your app is, if I can’t link in and out of your world, it’s not even close to a replacement for the web. It would be as silly as saying that you don’t need oceans because you have a bathtub. How nice your bathtub is. Try building a continent around it if you want to get my point.”
Scripting News: Why apps are not the future
Thursday, December 1, 2011
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
You will never know by Ingvild Østgård
Oh, really like this song. She’s from the same place as the slightly more well-known Madrugada.
shared from exfm
(via yvynyl)
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
“As super cuts become more common — and become part of the cultural vocabulary — I think they will help keep cliches from getting old, and will help creators and the audience perceive recurring patterns in rapid turnaround. They will act as keen proofreaders and critics. At the same time a few super cutters will employ existing footage to create entirely new feature-length works. A few classic experimental films have already been cut from found footage, but we can expect more of these, and better ones.”
The Technium: Supercut Genre
Monday, November 28, 2011
“Of course, I’ve written some free software that runs on many thousands of computers and servers. How many tons of coal are burnt to support laziness or a lack of optimization in my software? What is the coal cost of choosing to write a program in a less efficient, but easier to write, higher-level programming languages like Python or Ruby instead of writing a more efficient version in C?”
Cost of Computing in Coal :: Copyrighteous
The Alfred App
I’ve been using the Alfred App for about a month now and it’s really one of the best desktop apps I’ve tried in a while. I have no idea if it’s widely used, but it has at least improved my productivity quite a bit.
What it does is that it let’s you search anything on your computer and the web, launch apps and do various in-app stuff (if you have the pro version) from a simple search bar. It also works really well with a ton of services, including various Google services such as Maps, Docs and Translate. If you want to do a translation just hit alt + space to bring up the search bar and then type translate and the term you want to translate. It also supports custom search queries. For example I just type “hypem” from wherever I happen to be, and The Hype Machine opens in a new tab. Searching files and folders is also super simple. Just start the query with a space.
The best thing probably, in addition to all the time saved, is that it really cuts down on the number of times one needs to use the mouse and saves some neck and shoulder pain. After a month with the Alfred App it’s going to be really tough to use a desktop again without.
