National Geographic is known for their images. Somehow they manage to corral the best natural photographers in to one place, so it was no surprise to me when every image that sprung up in their International Photography Contest set was as good as the last. This might be the best way to supplement your Commons addiction.
Pictured above is a portrait of Charles Darwin and, beside it, a version that I made on my computer. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that my computer made it for me; the picture on the right was evolved using a program written by artist/scientist Steve DiPaola. The program is part of his research into computer creativity, which is, as the name implies, an effort to make computers creative. Evolving Darwin’s Gaze is described in an excellent set of videos, and also on its website, where you can evolve your own set of portraits.
Just a quick update on the whole iPhone jailbreak thing. This is my current lockscreen on my phone. As you can see there’s weather, an agenda, and the number of new emails. You can also configure this to show number of missed calls and new SMS. The program is called Lockscreen Info and is available on Cydia. Winterboard is required to theme as you wish (including my minimal unlock swipe), and there are various programs that allow you to remove your clock (I’m using Clock Hide). Additionally, check out Popup Blocker, which can remove the redundant “missed calls” popup.
Hopefully this will at least help smooth over those who are gripped over no Android on Bell’s new network (Adam). Keeping things just that much more customizable.
Yeah, that’s right, over 1/20th of worldwide internet traffic is from google’s servers, according to this NYT article and 256 exabytes of data.
I hope all you in the white north had an excellent Thanksgiving (I know I did). While everyone else was stuffing their faces in what can only be called splendor, geohot (George Hotz) was releasing blackra1n. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time coming.
My biggest gripe with the iPhone is the inability to set custom sms sounds. Not only is this possible on all but the cheapest phones, but due to the popularity of iPhones it only takes 8 people before 2 of you HAVE to have the same sound, quite confusing. My phone is now back and talking to me, just as my old one did.
Since the thing is now jailbroken, why not add a few more beneficial hacks to make the phone even greater? Here’s what I’m running:
5 Icon Dock: Allows for 5 icons on your dock, I have sms, phone, safari, mail and iPod.
QuickReply: Reply to sms messages without leaving your current app. Super convenient, you can also reply from your lock screen by double tapping the sms notification.
SBSettings: Quick access to your bluetooth, wifi, brightness, edge, 3g and running applications without leaving your current app. Also allows you to hide applications from the home screen. I never use stocks, compass, voice memos, stocks or iTunes, so it frees up quite a bit of real estate. You can still find these applications by searching with spotlight.
Installous: Might be unethical, but you can install hacked applications with this. Meaning the $100 tomtom app from the app store? Free. My phone is filled with stolen music already, so why not applications (and it’s still legal in Canada for now)?
statusnotifier: Allows for status of the phone to be placed in the top bar. Quick checks for email without unlocking the phone is now possible.
Sure, the GNP is important and all, but facebook can now “prove” Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year (followed by Christmas then New Year’s Eve). By using people’s status updates, facebook has been able to rate the “Gross National Happiness” (for the USA at least). They pick out certain words that are attributed to being positive (eg. “happy,” “yay” and “awesome”), and those that are attributed to be negative (eg. “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic”) and plot their use. Weird use of facebook to say the least, but interesting concept of national feelings.
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I could probably make individual posts about each and every entry on this website, but in the interest of saving time, I’ll point you right to the source.
Need questions that are not directly google-able? Ask the hive mind! Website vark.com and corresponding iPhone application let’s you easily pose tagged questions to the numerous people already using the service. I had a question about CERN which I couldn’t find out online easily (how deep was the LHC, and how did it go below private property legally) and within 15 minutes I had a response, perfect! If you’re using it on your iPhone you can even get Push notifications so that you’ll instantly be notified when your questions have been answered. If you’re feeling philanthropic you can answer other’s questions that you know.
This service is perfect for those times when you’re looking for a quick response to a question that just can’t be found easily in the depths of the interwebs.
From the annals* of the design-blog-web comes this design from Kim Yong seong. It never made it further than prototype, but shows the kind of cool design possibilities that we lost when music players stopped having moving parts.
