the tweney review

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from July 24th through July 30th:

• A Celebration Of The Life, Songs And Stories Of U. Utah Phillips | Laughing Squid - Friday night event at Ashkenaz
• Fashion world stunned by Vogue for black models | Life and style | The Observer - “Excited” would be a better word than “stunned”
• TheYellowDailyNews » Obama Elected Leader of Israel, Germany and England - The Illinois senator, in England to try to shore up the white vote at home, was also elected Germany?s chancellor and Israel?s prime minister as part of his weeklong, overseas whistle-stop tour to demonstrate his allure worldwide.
• Caring for Your Introvert - just shush
• Photographer to the Tsar: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii - The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii PhotographicRecord Recreated (A Library of Congress Exhibition) - Amazing color photos of pre-World War I Russia
• Idyllic boyhood memories: summertime and the Fun Float - Boing Boing Gadgets - John Brownlee is a fucking genius.
• Episode 126: Yahoo & Carl Icahn Settle, TV Prices Plummeting, 3G iPhone Perturbance, PS3 Sales Surge… - Cranky Geeks - My appearance on Cranky Geeks yesterday

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from July 20th through July 23rd:

• NASA’s Best Photos: You Make the Call | Wired Science from Wired.com - Vote on NASA’s most iconic images, from 5 decades of space exploration
• Our Electric Future ? The American, A Magazine of Ideas - Intel’s Andy Grove argues that we need to switch as much of our energy consumption as possible to electricity
• Brainstorm survey: what tech leaders want - Jul. 11, 2008 - “I reject the very question as profoundly stupid.” - Grady Booch, IBM fellow, when asked about the most exciting tech innovation of the past year. Now *that’s* a response
• Lyall Watson, 69, Scientific Polymath and Explorer - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com - In an effort to tame him and his rambunctious friends, [Watson]?s grandmother drove the lot of them to a beach shack … with a month?s provisions and instructions to fend for themselves. The tribe prospered, and the exercise was repeated every summer
• Gadget Lab Videoblog: Our First Look at the Openmoko Neo FreeRunner | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - Jose and I take a first look at the world’s first completely open-source, Linux-based cellphone
• Leisure Travel Bags :: One Bag - bags for minimalist travel

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from July 13th through July 18th:

• FORTUNE Brainstorm: TECH - Agenda - Lots of very important people here
• Face of the Future - Upload a picture of yourself and see what you’d look like in the future, or as a different race, or as painted by various artists. Most are hideous, though I like myself as a Modigliani
• Prioritizing Software Requirements with Kano Analysis ? Pragmatic Marketing - Noriaki Kano’s idea: the most successful products don’t just meet users’ needs, they “surprise and delight” them. We followed this principle in creating copy at Mobile PC mag
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Taking the Wii to the next level - Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata: “We really want to keep surprising people,” he said, then added: “It’s not easy at all.”
• Rising Gas Prices Could Cure Obesity | Autopia from Wired.com - That’s because we’d all be walking and biking more.
• Gadget Lab Videoblog: Hands-On With the iPhone 3G | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - joe Brown and I discuss the new iPhone

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from July 11th through July 12th:

• First Look: iPhone 3G Fires on (Almost) Every Cylinder | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - A solid upgrade, but most of the value is in the software
• More Cowbell on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - News reports suggest that this photograph of the recent Iranian missile test may have been slightly altered.
• Wired Video: Sex, Slowdowns and Scoble on the iPhone Line | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - In this video I interview people waiting in line to buy an iPhone 3G, at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco
• Network Glitches, Delays Mar iPhone 3G’s Debut | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - Report from the Apple store in San Francisco
• How to Get the iPhone 2.0 Upgrade Right Now - For Free | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - early adopters’ delight — everyone else beware
• Eager Customer Snags First Place in iPhone Line | Gadget Lab from Wired.com - Dale Larson was the first — and only — person waiting in line outside the San Francisco Apple store last night.

The Sundance Channel has a show called “Big Ideas for a Small Planet.” Awhile back they interviewed me for that show, and now it appears that the episode — which is about “green gadgets” — is out.

It’s a $2 purchase in iTunes. It seems that they also put me in the free, 30-second preview that you can view in iTunes without actually purchasing the show. I’m saying something serious like “you never know where the next big idea is going to come from, so something that seems wacky today might turn into a really effective energy source.” That’s right after they show a person in a butterfly costume hopping along a series of electricity-generating tiles.

Maybe I have a future as a straight man?

Here’s the link to get the episode in iTunes: Big Ideas for a Small Planet - Gadgets

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from July 8th through July 10th:

• There Must Be 50 Ways to Leave Your Twitter | Evil Genius Chronicles - Notes on how to move yourself off Twitter and onto FriendFeed
• Media Standards Trust | Transparency Initiative - Tim Berners Lee and others, backed by Knight News Challenge money, are working on some plan to let readers of digital journalism know more about stories’ sourcing
• Denver singer opts for black national anthem lyrics over ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ - Los Angeles Times - Hell yes! This really ought to be the national anthem anyway
• Technology Review: Founding Father - Georges Doriot, the man who invented venture capital in the U.S.
• Nanotubes Hold Promise for Next-Generation Computing - Two new research papers advance nanotube tech and bring it closer to practical applications in silicon circuitry.
• Knuth versus Email - ‘I don’t even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.’ — Eco. ‘it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime.’ — Knuth
• Check Yourself for Genetic Abnormalities - Wired How-To Wiki - How to do DNA testing. Two easy ways, one hard way. Most of the copy by Aaron Rowe

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from July 2nd through July 3rd:

• How To Build A Web App in Four Days For $10,000 (Say Hello To Matt) -
• Oil climbs peak, economies plumb depressions and the future will not imitate the past | GreenTech Pastures | ZDNet.com - Gloomy headline, but interesting graf: following peak oil, natural gas and coal will also peak, leading to a total energy peak around 2025, the authors argue
• Deadspin: Someone Hates You Online. Try Not To Be Offended. - When you hear old-school folks like Bob Costas talk about how “meaner” everyone has gotten online, it’s clear they’re missing the point. It’s not that people have suddenly become cruel toward you; it’s just that you can hear them now.
• How to Import Your Twitter Contacts to Friend Feed « // Internet Duct Tape - “duct tape” is right — this is a Windows program that has a text-only interface
• Crystal Springs Dam During Construction. - The dam a few miles above my house, built in 1890

These are a few sites I thought were interesting from June 30th through July 1st:

• How to See 93 Million Miles: Plan a Trip to a Total Solar Eclipse - Amazing piece on eclipses, with tips on how to see one yourself. Author claims that an eclipse gives you a sense of “depth perception” stretching over 93 million miles
• Quantum computing breakthrough arises from unknown molecule - strange molecule with an electron “spread across both ends”
• IBM Research | Donald S. Bethune - coinventor, with Sumio Ijima, of carbon nanotubes
• Electronics with carbon nanotubes - physicsworld.com - short summary of the significance of nanotubes to electronics
• one hundred push ups - 6-week program to pump! you! up!
• National Association of Science Writers - A useful association to join, other science writers have told me.
• No, Mr Kelly, I’m afraid the internet is not as clever as a single (human) brain | Technology | guardian.co.uk - To compare a synapse to a hyperlink ‘feels like lese majeste.’