Posts – page 47 of 74

Left brain / Right brain

(via Ads of the World)

Alan Taylor published the winners of the 2011 National Geographic Photo Contest

A torrential monsoon rain in Bhaktapur, Nepal. (© Anuar Patjane)

The Institute for the Future has an exploration of ideas for what they see as the future of science.

Invisibility cloaks. Space hacking. Quantum consciousness. Opensource biology. Empowered with new tools, processes, and skills, scientists will gain new insight into the mysteries surrounding our brains, biology, and the strange matter that makes up our reality. We will develop powerful new instruments for gazing at the farthest reaches of space and descending into the deepest oceans, further illuminating our place in the universe.

Yes, this water based jet pack does let you swim like a dolphin.

via Kottke

David Allen, author of the often cited book Getting Things Done, broke down his system into very simple sections to make it easier to adopt.

He said the key points to GTD are to:

I have not read Getting Things Done yet, but I come across so many of its quotes, maxims, and applications on the web that I expect reading it would feel more like a review session than getting something for the first time.

In a world of surfers, all you can do is work to make the best wave you can. The real revolution is that you get to make waves, not just ride them.

— Seth’s Blog: The extraordinary revolution of media choice

Organizations and individuals face a new field on which to compete. Planning the social aspects of business is now a critical factor for success.

via slideshare

msg:

arig:

Threats–like hurricanes and rectal exams–are only scary until they arrive. Once they’re over, they’re just the basis for funny stories. But, you do nearly always survive them. And, if you didn’t survive? It wasn’t because of a lack of fear. Like I say, the universe doesn’t particularly care whether you’re scared.

These three areas — the domain, the eye/brain, and the implementation — intertwine with each other. A single element may have conflicts in one area or all three at the same time. Much of the work designing interfaces involves teasing apart these conflicts in order to solve the right problem. Is the action correct, but it’s too hard to find? That’s a conflict with the eye/brain. Is the screen clear and simple but it doesn’t show the right information? That’s a conflict with the domain. Does it take too long to get feedback from a common action? That might be an implementation problem.

— Identifying conflicts in a UI design - (Ryan Singer)

Quick 50 Writing Tools [PDF]

You can’t spend all day in an open-sourced, all-sharing, peer-to-peer network and not begin to think that the rest of your world should also operate in the same way.

— The Technology of Global Unrest (kk.org)

Keep it small. Keep it simple. Let it happen.

— Andrew Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmers

I posted something on this before, but I found a pictoral version of the message as well as the text the image is based on.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

Kevin Kelly has some insights on how the new genre of supercuts will work behind the scenes to keep movies and videos fresh by pointing out the absurdity of repeated phrases, camera shots, and situations.

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.

Jerry Seinfeld explains the appeal of Facebook, long before the site existed.

Facebook In ‘90s (Seinfeld) (by chageo1185)

The fallen nature of man is gender-neutral. Some men are pigs, and some women are liars. Current sexual harassment law deals justly and effectively with the former at the cost of allowing the latter to do great harm to innocent men. The presence of both sexes in the workplace makes necessary some combination of laws, policies and customs to regulate sexual behavior on the job. But the principle of heads-she-wins-tails-he-loses does violence to both justice and equality.

— James Taranto, from Sexual Harassment Stories.

The world is full of great tools. With them anything is possible. But the paint brush does not make the painter. The pen does not make the poet.

Tools are inanimate object and are completely useless unless there is someone to use them, to animate them.

And who makes those world-changing tools?

It costs a lot to commute everyday. I’m glad to have a reliable bike.

via Lifehacker

People choose not on the basis of what’s most important, but on what’s easiest to evaluate.

— Easier Is Better Than Better - Smashing Magazine