thanks jon, you know i like it rad ...

Mark Boulton has (finally!) announced a release date for his long-awaited book abut web design: A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web : Feb 2nd 2009. The good news is that, for the impatient, a sample PDF is available. As you'd expect, it's looking very nice.

We’ve been banging on about iPhone applications for a while ago, and in last week’s issue of the Music Ally Report, we covered some of the ways iPhone apps are coming onto the music industry’s radar. But which apps are we actually using on our iPhones, hmm? We thought we should tell you. So, here’s a dozen of the best iPhone music apps, complete with links to buy them. 1. Guitar Rock Tour (£4.99 - ...

In trying to understand something like “Track,” I find that as a new angle is uncovered I need to make note of it before it slips back into the aether. Part of understanding is explaining something to yourself, and then trying to explain it to someone else. It’s turning a shard of a mental image into a story. Understanding the signal-to-noise ratio in that transmission is one measure of success. Sometimes a transmission can carry ...

Managing pests like flies in the kitchen has been a challenge for more than one eco-minded housekeeper. If you have a fruit bowl, at some point you will likely have fruit flies buzzing around your kitchen. The flies are harmless but, frankly, watching them land on your beautiful farmer’s market finds can be a minor bummer. The Insect Eating Garden from Gifts that Bloom is a Venus fly trap that makes a meal out of ...

I don’t like gardening much but I would definitely like a gadget that could help me analyze a gardens’ condition and tell me whether it is suitable for planting flowers and other plants. With EasyBloom you can just sit back and let the gadget do all the analysis for you. You have to put the EasyBloom at a place in your garden where you wish to plant a pod or a flower and keep it ...

译者：看门的人肉搜索引擎？牛！ 《卫报》Alice Xin Liu， 2008年11月2日 希望从网上收集有关中国内情的西方人应该小心谨慎。最好的材料都是用中文写的。 目前，中国约有2亿5千3百万网民，是世界上互联网上网人数最多的国家。在这些网民中，70％的人年龄在30岁以下。尽管网民人数只占中国总人口的19％，但是西方记者、学者，甚至是公关公司都喜欢查看中国的网上论坛，寻找中国网民对时事到股市等各种事情的评论和反应。 但是，“网民们”对这些问题了解多少呢？他们真的有深刻见解的观点吗？仅仅因为中国的年轻人可以上网，并不能说明他们可以得到能够做出决定性的判断和评价所需要的信息。还有一种危险，那就是中国的论坛上的评论将会被当作是自由思想或自激。事实上，那些评论显示的都是反面的东西。在一定程度上，由于所谓的“中国大防火墙”的原因，中国的网民陷入了一种羊群心态。 举一个中国著名网站为例：王小峰的“不许联想”（WangXiaofeng.net），该网站是以记者兼博主的名字命名的。王主动地阻止访客在他的博客上做评论。估计他是不想让其网站变得杂乱无章，但是他也知道评论者通常是说不出什么有意义的话的。中国互联网上的评论通常都是一个字，或者很简短，很少有发人深思的。通常，它们只是一个“顶”字（意为支持该贴），或者一个“牛！”（棒极了）。在西方人的博客上，也有很多浅薄的评论，但是，反映各种不同观点的评论还是占多数。 证明这种愚昧的好方法，就是近期风行中国的一种怪诞现象：“人肉搜索引擎”。这指的是一群网络暴民在网上追捕现实生活的人，然后辱骂他们并公开这些受害者的隐私资料。2007年，北京市民王菲的妻子姜岩发现其丈夫有婚外情后，从她居住的公寓窗口跳楼身亡，并在身后留下了她的博客。这份“死亡博客”的内容被网上快速转贴。接着，姜岩的一位亲戚建立了另外一个网站：“北飞的候鸟”，决心要为姜岩讨回“公道”。许多网民在阅读了从那个网站转载的帖子后，都激烈地辱骂王菲。然后，他们搜索王菲的家庭住址和其它私人资料，而且在现实生活中继续这种骚扰。王后来将那些扩散有关“死亡博客”的帖子的门户网站告上了法庭。 在中国，这种暴民行为一次又一次地在网上发生，这说明了其网民是多么容易被引导。任何人都可以成为目标。今年3月西藏骚乱之后发生的反对外国媒体的狂怒就是一个例子。 幸运的是，人肉搜索还未造成真正严重伤害。但是，那些专事人肉搜索的人所做的愚蠢之事不应该被忽视，也不应该被原谅。 中文博客的博主通常了解更多的信息，也得到更为广泛的阅读，所以其博客通常更加理智。很多人都不是理智地进行评论。但是在中国，人们的观点很容易陷入极端和辱骂，因为人们害怕被大众或政府挑出来当替罪羊。在浩瀚的似乎是相同的观点中，还是可以找到很多独立的和考虑周全的观点。对外国观察家来说，难题在于这些观点都是中文，得进行翻译。但是，这样做是完全值得的。添加评论

Des heures de queue dans certains Etats qui autorisaient le vote en avance: 6, 8, 10 heures de queue! Les images à la télévision sont atterrantes. Comment est-ce possible? Comment dans un pays développé et qui se veut aussi sophistiqué qu'aux Etats-Unis, peut on faire des heures de queue pour voter? Comment après le scandale du re-comptage il y a 8 ans en Floride, les Etats-Unis ont tant de mal à mettre au point un ...

Brian Eno, the father of ambient music and one of the greatest musical minds of our time, has just teamed up with musician/programmer Peter Chilvers to create one of the coolest, most unique iPhone apps to hit the App Store yet. Called Bloom, it's "part instrument, part composition and part artwork." It's also a must-get. Unlike most music-creation apps, it doesn't take an existing musical instrument and cram it awkwardly into the iPhone's interface. Instead, ...

Filed under: Audio, Fun, Games, iPhoneBrian Eno is one of my favorite composers, so I was thrilled to hear that he was releasing a new composition tool for the iPhone. It's called Bloom, and it lets you generate, play and visualize ambient music. It's hard to explain how this works, but you basically tap the screen in different places to generate sounds. The sounds you play repeat periodically to form a composition. Because the notes ...