Still enjoy this 15 minutes:
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we’re not as rational as we think when we make decisions.
Video here: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html
Here is a quick and easy way to make your html/css look good on an old iphone/ipod touch AND a new retina display iphone 4. Just try the following:
1) Add the proper meta tag into the html’s header. This version also locks the scale:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0,
maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no">
2) Add references to images where you want them in high-res, retina 2x. Note, the -webkit-background-size is the same as the original
#someDiv {
background-image: url(images/myImage.png);
width: 480px;
height: 140px;
}
// now replace that div's image with the 2x iphone 4 version:
@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
#someDiv { background-image: url(images/myImage@2x.png);
-webkit-background-size: 480px 140px;
//note: the actual image is 960x280
}
Interesting essay by Milton Glaser reflecting on his over 20 years as a designer. Check it out in detail here: http://www.miltonglaser.com/pages/milton/essays/es3.html
The nytimes has an interesting op/ed by Sean Kelly, chair of the department of philosophy at Harvard University, Navigating Past Nihilism. “Melville hoped for a life that steers happily between two dangers: nihilism and fanaticism.”
At his site ( http://allthingsshiningbook.wordpress.com ), he has a couple of interesting posts in particular the post on Preachers who don’t believe. Good stuff.
I’m done with lame file sync programs. I am always jumping around between a number of computers and need the latest files while not online and synced to cloud storage.
Rsync works great, is free, and is already installed on all macs.
Just open a shell and type: rsync –help
or
rsync -avx –progress –human-readable [source] [dest]
Learn more here:
rsync: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync
There’s even an awesome logo here: http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/
Tom & I recorded this cover yesterday in the living room. Dan Auerbach rocks. Check it out on youtube
Privacy matters.
As you know, I love apple products, but according to apple’s new privacy policy, this is very facebooky…
“To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.”
Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2010/06/21/21venturebeat-apple-already-knows-where-you-are-all-the-ti-31273.html
“Singularity University (SU) is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges. With the support of a broad range of leaders in academia, business and government, SU hopes to stimulate groundbreaking, disruptive thinking and solutions aimed at solving some of the planet’s most pressing challenges. SU is based at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley.”
Very cool indeed – check it out here: http://singularityu.org/
Matt McKeon a developer with the Visual Communication Lab at IBM Research’sCenter for Social Software has this interesting post:
“The data for this chart was derived from my interpretation of the Facebook Terms of Service over the years, along with my personal memories of the default privacy settings for different classes of personal data. The population sizes are statistics from Google, the Facebook Data Team, and wild guesses based on what seemed reasonable to me.”