January 2011
22 posts
The Dangers of OAuth →
I’ve been thinking a lot about OAuth lately (for the uninitiated that’s the protocol used for all those sign in with Twitter and Facebook things that sends you back to the site to sign in and say you give this application permission to use your data). This is a huge step in the right direction (away from every site asking for the password you use on every other site), but the popular...
The Virus and the Hobbyist →
William Gibson is about as good as anyone at predicting (and shaping) the future. So naturally, when he admits he got something very wrong it’s pretty interesting. In this case he’s talking about viruses and how rather than traditionally being tools of states (stuxnet is the impetus for the editorial), they’ve been tools of hobbyists:
Virus-writers seemed, at least at first, to...
Still On Infographics →
I updated the original post to mention this, but thought it deserved an entry of its own. Yesterday I was digging through my spam comments (to any of you that have tried to leave a comment around here recently and run into trouble, my apologies), while in there I came across a comment from Matt Haughey, the man behind Metafilter (whose infographic originally inspired the post). Anyway, Matt...
Doozers Do →
Don’t ask me why, exactly, but I was looking up Fraggle Rock on Wikipedia and came across the reason Doozers (the little green guys in the hard hats) are constantly building. Turns out the they need to do it to survive, and therefore the Fraggles eating their construction is not a menace but a lifesaver (which also accounts for the line in the first episode of the series - which I just...
Laws of Media →
Was just reading an essay by McLuhan that was released in more complete form as a book in the early 90s called “Laws of Media.” In it McLuhan presents the four basic questions for examining any medium:
a) What does it enhance?
b) What does it obsolesce?
c) What does it retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
d) What does it flip into when pushed to the limits of its potential?
...
likemind Friday →
I’ve been pretty terrible about keeping up with likemind. So bad in fact, that maybe I should quickly explain what it is for the uninitiated: likemind is a global coffee morning started by myself and Piers from PSFK. All over the world people come out for early coffee on the 3rd Friday of the month. No agenda or moderator, just conversation. Anyway, I’m going to try and get things...
Curator? Really? →
I am a bit of a stickler for words. Not like some people, who are super serious about it, but I get very annoyed when people throw words around carelessly. Innovation is a good one and I get in arguments every other day about whether “intent” in relation to web economics and marketing means what people mean it to mean (most of the time it doesn’t). The newest one is curation....
“One of these quarterbacks will hold the trophy named for Pope Chicago Bear I,...”
– Cutler and Rodgers are the Sunday Story - Da’ Bears Blog
Stuxnet →
Pretty crazy article from this weekend’s New York Times on a worm called Stuxnet that the Israeli government may or may not have created to take out Iranian nuclear facilities:
The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program...
Single Spaced →
Having had this argument a few times, it makes me very happy to read Slate’s takedown of double-spacing after sentences:
Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the...
“I doubt Beagle Vick’s ability to come to Chicago in the middle of January and be...”
– It makes me very happy that Jeff continually taunts Michael Vick by giving him dog first names. No matter how good he may be at football, and whether or not he went to prison and did his time, no one should be allowed to forget what that guy did.
The Three Potential Opponents: Volume One - Da’...
“I doubt Beagle Vick’s ability to come to Chicago in the middle of January...”
– It makes me very happy that Jeff continually taunts Michael Vick by giving him dog first names. No matter how good he may be at football, and whether or not he went to prison and did his time, no one should be allowed to forget what that guy did.
The Three Potential Opponents: Volume One -...
On Infographics →
I’m about to take a fairly unpopular (and probably self-contradictory) stance: I think infographics have jumped the shark.
I’m not talking about any particular piece of data visualization, though
East Side →
A very interesting hypothesis on why the east side of cities are often poorer (which I can’t say I’d notice, but I’ll take their word for it):
The reason for this is that in much of the northern hemisphere, the prevailing winds are westerlies - blowing from west to east. The massive, unchecked pollution from these early industries would therefore drift eastward, making the air...
