- technology
- learning
- it's a small world after all
David Carr on our automated solipsism and technology’s (failed) attempts on giving us what we want before we know we want it.
This is a topic that crosses my mind at least once a week; the balance between building a work that enables exploration and challenges people to try new things and one that spoon feeds them content and perspectives based on their own preferences and habits…
- typography
- that shit kray
Si Daniels, Lead Program Manager for fonts at Microsoft, reviews Apple Color Emoji for Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces of 2011.
- Whiskey
- Technology
- Liquor & iPads
Proof by Zeus Jones. An iPad optimized web app that turns whiskey tasting into a group game. Though the app is a little wonky to navigate, the combination of the Spartan Felton-esque interface and the analog quality of the tasting kits hits the mark quite well.
- maps
- legend
- toolkit
Conventional Signs used in the Ordnance Survey
- whaling
- history
- America
- the sea
- entrepreneurship
D. Graham Burnett, Historian, on the global success of Americans in the whaling industry and the relentless determination to go ever further. From the PBS documentary series, American Experience: Into the Deep, American Whaling and the World.
I just discovered the series on Hulu and they are really wonderful. I was seriously missing something like this.
- maps
- street view
- hours of fun
Street View Stereograph is a delightful Google Street View API app. Create amazing mini-planets!
- history
- culture
- retronaut
In a piece on Vanity Fair, Kurt Anderson makes a case that American culture has been stuck on repeat without the kind of radical change we have seen in almost any other 20 year period in the past century.
While I agree that we have become a popular culture bent on nostalgia and the remix, I think a lot of it has to do with the internet has done to our perception of time, or as Anderson puts it “… the very idea of datedness has the the power it possessed during most of our lifetimes.”
- history
- timelines
Frontiers through the Ages
dbreunig:
- Water, 1400
- Land, 1840
- Gold, 1850
- Wire, 1880
- Air, 1900
- Celluloid, 1920
- Plastic, 1950
- Space, 1960
- Silicon, 1980
- Networks, 1990
- Data, 2000
- cities
- data-tracking
- travel
My Year in Cities, 2011
San Francisco, CA
New York, NY
Washington, DC
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Seattle, WA
Providence, RI
San Diego, CA
St. Louis, MO
Montréal, QC, Canada
Middletown, RI
Champaign, IL
Los Angeles, CA
Squaw Valley, CA
Chicago, IL
110 nights were spent away from home (San Francisco).
One or more night was spent in each city. Ordered from most time to least. Last year’s list is here.
dbreunig:
So says the NYTimes:
“The hang-ups of spending your hard-earned cash are so far removed from your life when you’ve had a bottle of wine,” Mr. Tansey said in an e-mail. The New Zealand trip was terrific, he said. But a pair of $3 sunglasses on eBay “turned out to be horrible fakes, with $17 of postage that I obviously didn’t see with beer goggles.”
Ah, modern life.
- work
- hustlin'
- 21st century problems
Tony Schwartz on HBR presenting how we are slowly pushing ourselves harder and more relentlessly to do more without taking account of the costs we are incurring. Another related HBR essay worth checking out is Daniel Gulati’s piece on how Facebook’s culture of comparison is making us miserable.
via Adam Nathan
- art
- prada
- apple
- iPod
- 10 years later
- damn
Progress, 2001-2011.
(Source: arainert)
- Sydney
- Travel
- Tourism
- Kangaroos
- Australian for Beer
Sydney, Quick Impressions
- Sydney, as a destination unto itself, is not worth the 14-hour plane ride (at least for me). It has this odd feeling of a generic American city with even less history than the U.S.A. That being said, the Asian food is amazing, the weather is perfect (in November at least), and the wildlife is beyond comparison (see above and below).
- Nearly everything is priced as if the entire city were an NFL concession stand. $7.50 beers and $18.00 burgers are the norm.
- As Australia is a Commonwealth country (and like all good subjects of the Crown) Aussies drive on left side of the road. While this took a little getting used to when crossing the street, it never seemed to sync with pedestrians. It wasn’t just me either; in the throngs of Sydney’s CBD people couldn’t make up their mind as to which to pass.
- Big Surprise: no one drinks Fosters. It is Australian for nothing. We did see one Outback Steakhouse off the highway though!
- The currency is some of the most beautiful and well-designed I have ever seen. And it is waterproof — perfect for trips to Bondi or the Great Barrier Reef!
- The animals. Wow. Not exactly news but the wildlife (even in the city: flying foxes, kookaburras, and Ibises abound) was the real draw for me.
- The Blue Mountains are like the Grand Canyon but full of trees. Worth the short drive.
- Australian Beers: A-
Australian Wines: C
- If you go:
Eat at Spice I AM, Harry’s Cafe De Wheels, and Red Chili Sichaun. Drink at the Lord Nelson Brewery, Sticky Bar, Shady Pines Saloon, and Cafe Lounge. Visit Featherdale Wildlife Park, Royal Botanic Gardens, Darlinghurst, Coogee Beach, and Port Jackson (go sailing or take a ride on a ferry!). Fly Qantas (on an A380).
- green wash
- hotels
- showergate
- H2No
Design Observer’s Rob Walker on Starwood Hotel’s Heavenly® dual-shower head.
Update: After running a search, I found a bit too similar article on the shower heads over on treehugger from a few months ago… tsk tsk