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Friday, July 4
Friday Fun Link - The WTF World of Wikipedia
by
Jason
on Fri 04 Jul 2008 05:00 PM CST
A pretty revealing list comparing word counts for various topics on Wikipedia:
 Call of Duty WWII Video Game (13 069 words) vs. World War II (11 884 words) Pokemon (5 721) vs. Poker (1 857 words) Superman (10 641) vs. Human (10 385)...and wait until you see the final result - God vs. Knuckles (of Sonic the Hedgehog fame). Yikes! Friday, June 20
Friday Fun Link - The Last Lecture (June 20, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 20 Jun 2008 11:57 PM CST
I think I first heard about "The Last Lecture" via a book request we got at the library. The Amazon page for the book has more info including a couple video clips explaining the background and significance of this particular Last Lecture.
A bit more searching revealed that the full video of the original Last Lecture presentation at Carnegie-Mellon University is on YouTube (of course). It's an hour long clip but if you watch the first couple minutes, there's a good chance you'll want to watch the whole thing. Friday, May 30
Friday Fun Link - Flickr Tag Galaxy (May 30, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 30 May 2008 11:49 PM CST
Continuing last week's theme of Jason finding extremely exciting, anything that presents typical linear information in a cool, revolving circular format, I present to you: Tag Galaxy
(via Reddit) Friday, May 23
Friday Fun Link - Spectra Visual Newsreader (and Some Thoughts on Some Other, More World-Changing Future Technologies) (May 23, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 23 May 2008 11:39 PM CST
Spectra is a new visual news reader from MSNBC. I haven't played around with it much but it looks cool, mostly because the news spins in a circle instead of the old-fashioned columnar approach. Whoo-hooo!
On a much broader scale, I've recently come across a couple lists predicting of technologies that will change the world put together by groups that know a thing or two about cutting-edge technology. IBM has posted their second annual "Five in Five" list and MIT's "Technology Review" journal has posted their list of "10 Emerging Technologies for 2008". What's especially cool about the MIT list is that you can click to past lists going back to 2001 (excepting 2002 when their super-secret crystal ball technology apparently broke down) to see if their predictions have come true yet or not. Here's the 2001 list and I won't be so presumptuous as to pretend I have a clue as to where the world is at with most of these (or even what some of them mean!). Brain-Machine Interface Flexible Transistors Data Mining Digital Rights Management Biometrics Natural Language Processing Microphotonics Untangling Code Robot Design Microfluidics But some, like data mining and DRM are definitely ones people involved in the information world are struggling with now. One final thought...my own bold prediction for the future. At some point in the very near or not so near future, people will begin to wear a small recording device that constantly captures the video and audio of every moment of their lives. This will be stored by some sort of advanced system (think Google on crack - voice recognition, natural language processing, high level artificial intelligence) that allows people to search for pretty much any type of information about their lives instantaneously: "what did I have for lunch in that cafe in Montreal in 2009?", "where did I leave my sunglasses?", "how much have I spent on gas in the last 12 months?" I recently heard about U of T engineering prof Steve Mann during Michael Ridley's presentation at the SLA conference and he's been on this path for, oh, almost thirty years already. I also came across an article (which I didn't bookmark and can't find now but maybe it was in Wired?) about somebody else who was doing something similar - wearing a computer that could OCR things he looked at like his hotel and flight reservation then transfer it into a database for easy retrieval later. I think there was also a web site that performed this function for him or that was trying to do something similar for people mentioned in the article but again, can't remember the name of it. Not keyhole.com but maybe something like that? [Edit: Found it. Twine.com] Oh, and I'll also predict that the natural reluctance people feel towards this privacy-destroying, possibly society-altering device will be no different than the acceptance rate for any other new invention. [2008-06-29 - Edit #2 - I don't think Twine was what I was thinking of. Here's the article from Salon about someone using a technology called Evernote that I think was what I was looking for originally. And while I'm adding stuff, here's a story about how new technologies will eventually allow us to add 1 TB of data on a thumbdrive. Doesn't this sound exactly like I what I'm talking about: ""All the current limitations in portable electronic storage could go away. You could record video of every event in your life and store it."] Friday, May 16
Friday Fun Link - 13 Rule Breaking Films (May 16, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 16 May 2008 11:23 PM CST
"For all the creativity and innovation that goes into making (some)
Hollywood films, there are also a lot of ideas that get recycled time
and time again. I’m not referring to stock characters or the sequalitis
that hits multiplexes every summer. I’m talking about the basic
building blocks of storytelling that are ingrained in the movie-going
experience.
Every once in a while, though, a film comes along that takes an assumption about how American movies are supposed to be made and changes it, sometimes resulting in something truly memorable. Producers who want to make a film that breaks one of the unwritten rules of motion pictures risk a lot – studios might not want to fund the film, theaters might not show it, audiences might not respond to it. The reward for taking the chance, though, is recognition for being a really interesting experiment, or, in some cases, taking your place among the greatest films ever made." GLI Press: Review: 13 Rule-Breaking Films Friday, May 9
Friday Fun Link - TimeTube: YouTube Timelines Mashup (May 9, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 09 May 2008 09:46 PM CST
TimeTube is a site that creates a timeline of YouTube videos based on any keyword you enter and sorted based on the date they were added. You can also
view the results in a couple other modes - "list view", "flipbook" and
"map view" for videos that have been tagged with a location.
They have some samples of how this works best - things like major news stories that develop over time. For example, you can see a timeline of Barack Obama videos from when he first came to national prominence on through the Democratic primary right up until his most recent speech. It's not just for news stories - trying pretty much any keyword can provide interesting results. I've tried "Saskatchewan" and "Library 2.0" so far although, for these types of searches, it's probably just as easy to look at YouTube's "Sort by Date Added" feature. One other major shortcoming of the site, evidenced by the lack of links for my sample timelines above - you can't link directly to a TimeTube that you've created. Still, a very cool mash-up that has a lot of potential, especially as YouTube continues to gain content about all manner of subjects over time. (via Reddit) [2008-05-11 - TechCrunch has a good summary of the site's good and bad points as well.] Saturday, May 3
Friday Fun Link - What Happens When George Clooney Googles "George Clooney" (May 3, 2008)
by
Jason
on Sat 03 May 2008 07:42 AM CST
If you're like me, you spend all your time wondering "What's it like to be a celebrity in today's day and age with your name splashed all over, not just TV, print and other traditional media, but on literally millions of sites across the Internet, large and small?" Also, "what does George Clooney think of 2Girls1Cup?"
Esquire magazine asked George Clooney these exact questions. (Warning: the second last link is to Wikipedia which has nothing but a brief description of the video's contents. It may still give you nightmares.) Friday, April 25
Friday Fun Link - Book-Beer Pairings (April 25, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 25 Apr 2008 11:42 PM CST
Book beer pairings sees authors suggesting brews that are best enjoyed with their work. What brews go with your favourite books - a very important question for the ages.
In semi-related news, the next "Books to Beers and Stacks to Snacks" social gathering will happen following the final day of the SLA conference, Saturday May 3 at 5pm at the Cathedral Village Free House in Regina. Endnote speaker, Jessamyn West, is planning to attend so why not drop by if you're already taking in the conference and/or a MetaFilter member? Friday, April 18
Friday Fun Link - Ten Whatchamacallits and Their Real Names (April 18, 2008)
by
Jason
on Fri 18 Apr 2008 10:09 PM CST
How many of the following do you know?
Aglet. Bollard. Dingbat. Ferrule. Keeper. Kerf. Punt (or kick). Philtrum. Phosphenes. Tragus. I knew exactly one and somewhat unsurprisingly, it was "dingbat".  (As an aside, there is a book called "The Joy of Lex" that was one of my absolute favourites as a kid. If you're a fan of words and language and linguistics, I highly recommend it and it's sequel, "More Joy of Lex")Ten Whatchamacallits And Their Real Names - The List Universe [Edit: I can't believe I used the wrong "its" in that last line, especially in a post about language! I know the rules for (most of) the typical grammar mistakes - honest - but frequently find that my brain and hands don't always keep up to each other when typing.] |
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