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February 2007

February 27, 2007

links for 2007-02-27

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February 26, 2007

What the hell, old school bloggers?

On some random blog, I found a link to this book "Founders at Work", a book interviewing the founders of tech companies. The person mentioned Caterina talks about Flickr in it, among big famous 70s and 80s software geniuses so I ordered it thinking it'd be a history book about a bunch of classic Silicon Valley companies with maybe a recent one like Flickr thrown in there.

It just showed up and I can't believe how many recent companies are in it (del.icio.us, Blogger, Six Apart, 37Signals, etc) but I didn't hear about this book from any of the long-term bloggers that are part of it. C'mon Ev, Mena, Jason, and others! I read your blogs daily, and would have ordered this book weeks ago if I knew it existed.

Posted at 12:00 AM in amazon, blogging, books, internet | | Comments (3)

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Friends of CC score big at the Oscars



Florian and Lara, originally uploaded by mathowie.

Lessig noted this last month, but there were two friends of Creative Commons at the Oscars tonight and I'm happy to see they both won (best documentary, best foreign film). Above is a shot of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and his daughter that I took when they visited the Creative Commons offices in 2004. It was nice to see Christiane again, sitting next to him in the crowd.

Posted at 12:00 AM in creativecommons, film |

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February 24, 2007

links for 2007-02-24

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Diverse means a lot of things

In the course of two posts, Anil completely nails the problem of gender (and other) biases in the web industry. When I think back to the most interesting talks over the past 3-4 years, it was always from someone outside the norm, something that could bring a fresh perspective instead of the same tired "here's another CSS trick you might not know!" presentation. It was often a woman (like Linda Stone, danah boyd, Caterina Fake, and Amy Jo Kim, all of whom I've seen give kickass presentations before) but always about something new.

But to be clear, it's not just a gender issue -- gender is just one part of it. It's about expanding your vision, hearing from voices you haven't before, and learning something new. That's not just happy hippie rainbow talk either, it makes perfect business sense to go after the market you don't have, not merely the one you already got because the people you don't know how to reach are often orders of magnitude larger than your current audience. I'm reminded of the other day a teen emailed me saying that MetaFilter didn't fully function on Opera Mini, which was their only interface to the web. I never even thought about teens or phone browsers when I designed it, and I know I'm missing out on a lot of potential contributors because of it.

When I think back to the biggest breakthrough talks of the past few years, stuff like Guy Kawasaki's talking to teens always went over huge. Blogging While Black opens some eyes and ears to something you've never known about. danah boyd's regular talks on teens, community, and identity are loaded with new findings. Every time I've witnessed one of these talks, I've learned something new and most everyone in the crowd was blown away by perspectives they hadn't even thought of before.

After seven years of regularly attending technology conferences, last year I reached the point of burnout and only went to two (Etech and Webvisions). This year I'll again be attending just a couple events but this time with an eye towards diversity in topics. Things like last year's IDEA conference give me hope (something I missed and wished I attended but thankfully they podcast the talks). A place where artists, librarians, anthropologists, park rangers, programmers, and sci-fi writers gather to discuss their experiences and the world going forward is going to offer a lot more new information to me than the run-of-the-mill tech gathering.

Posted at 12:00 AM in conferences, culture, ideas | | Comments (3)

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February 22, 2007

links for 2007-02-22

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February 20, 2007

links for 2007-02-20

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February 19, 2007

links for 2007-02-19

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February 18, 2007

links for 2007-02-18

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February 16, 2007

links for 2007-02-16

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February 14, 2007

A Proper Churchill Nap

"You must sleep some time between lunch and dinner, and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That’s what I always do. Don’t think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That’s a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one-well, at least one and a half, I'm sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities."
-- Winston Churchill

Posted at 12:00 AM in ideas, quotes | | Comments (3)

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links for 2007-02-14

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February 13, 2007

links for 2007-02-13

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February 12, 2007

links for 2007-02-12

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February 10, 2007

Comment of the day week year from the SF Chronicle

"The company will be investing in more portable heaters, he said, because it's important for his hog-tied and horsewhipped actors to be comfortable."
-- Protesters surround building in Mission where Kink.com says 3 videos were made

Posted at 12:00 AM in comedy |

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February 09, 2007

links for 2007-02-09

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February 07, 2007

links for 2007-02-07

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February 06, 2007

LED lightbulbs: not ready for primetime

The other day, I mentioned this link to an online store selling LED bulbs. LEDs have long been heralded as the next great thing in decreasing home energy consumption, pulling down a fraction of the energy even efficient compact fluorescents use. Plus, they can last for a decade or more. The only downside is the price.

Except, they completely suck in terms of light.

Now, I remember using early compact fluorescent bulbs ten years ago. They were bulky, expensive, made noise, and cast a weird bluish glow on everything. But they matured to the point where everyone is starting to convert their home fixtures to it. As long as you get them with the right color temp (anything less than 3200K), they'll look like your normal bulbs but use 1/4 the energy and last much longer.

LED bulbs are about where CFL bulbs were ten years ago. I paid $125 for a variety pack of bulbs from C.Crane and I noticed their main LED bulb page only explained the bulb's brightness in terms of Lumens, with no equivalent to normal incandescents. CFL bulbs usually say right on them that a 13w bulb will act like a 60watt bulb.

In my short time testing out the variety pack, the most light I could get from the brightest bulb was probably on par with a small nightlight or 25 watt bedside lamp bulb. The color is definitely blue and the light is dim. There's no way on earth these bulbs are worth running out and spending $30+ per bulb on. What's weird is that my LED flashlights are very bright on small batteries but these are just terrible on unlimited home power.

Maybe in five years or so the technology will mature, but at the moment, save your money and stick with CFL bulbs instead.

Posted at 12:00 AM in do not buy, home, led bulbs |

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links for 2007-02-06

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February 05, 2007

links for 2007-02-05

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February 04, 2007

Help Find Jim Gray

Whoa: All Things Distributed: Help Find Jim Gray

Amazon is doing what they can to help find a missing sailor (computer scientist Jim Gray) using a combo of satellite photography flights they've taken and their Mechanical Turk system to let volunteers check the photos. This is an even better version of the idea I proposed a couple months ago, since it spreads the work out nicely to volunteers. I sure hope it pays off.

Posted at 12:00 AM in amazon, ideas | | Comments (1)

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February 03, 2007

links for 2007-02-03

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February 02, 2007

Poll the Audience: A couple Wii questions

1. Is there a RSS feed of new Wii games? I looked around Amazon and maybe there's a feed for this new and future Wii releases page but it doesn't seem to be sorted by release date. Is there something better out there?

2. The News channel has a great interface that also reminds me of Pointcast. This is stupid, but I love the wacky text resizer. Has anyone recreated it in js for the web?

Posted at 12:00 AM in gaming, wii | | Comments (5)

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links for 2007-02-02

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February 01, 2007

links for 2007-02-01

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Hi, I'm Matt Haughey and this is my blog. I created MetaFilter, co-created Fuelly, started many other sites. I also ride and race bikes. I am battling a benign brain tumor currently but I'm winning. Some kind strangers wrote some nice things about my life at Wikipedia. You can always contact me via email at matt@haughey.com or give me a ring at (503) 465-4522.

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