Adaptive Path's advocacy program (2)
share
digg
by
jason@kottke.org (485)
on
kottke.org (545)
6 days, 20 hours
ago
permalink
I mentioned Adaptive Path's employee advocacy system in my post the other day about alternative middle management strategies. Peter Merholz has written a little more about it on the AP blog today. (link)
Computer paint gun draws Mona Lisa (9)
share
digg
by
jason@kottke.org (485)
on
kottke.org (545)
6 days, 22 hours
ago
permalink
In order to explain serial computation vs. parallel computation, the Mythbusters guys pit two paintball guns against each other in a art contest...one shoots one ball at a time and the other very much doesn't. (thx, steve) (link)
-
Jacob W said:
This is pretty awesome.
Bathroom Art (3)
share
digg
by
robyn (0)
on
Dinosaurs and Robots (12)
1 week
ago
permalink
Illustrator Christoph Niemann writes a blog for The New York Times. In it, he describes the process of renovating his family's new home in Berlin. He says,I took this as an opportunity to realize one of my old artistic dreams: designing the bathroom with pixel drawings made of classic 4-by-4 inch colored tiles.He and his wife searched for the perfect works to reconstruct, out of tile, in their bathroom. Like the above Hockney, which they ...
As interesting at middle management for Kottke. (52)
share
digg
by
jason@kottke.org (485)
on
kottke.org (545)
1 week, 1 day
ago
permalink
Joel Spolsky, popular tech writer and founder of Fog Creek Software, has an article in the September 2008 issue of Inc. called How Hard Could It Be: How I Learned to Love Middle Managers. In it, Spolsky details how he came to the idea of building a small company where middle management was unnecessary. He took particular inspiration from an article he read about a GE plant. It was about a General Electric plant in ...
-
Tim said:
Interesting post. Kottke missed the fact that Grey Dog passes management of the restaurant onto the customers as well. "Waiters" bring the food out and bus it, but patrons do practically every other task including procuring silverware/napkins, filling water glasses, getting condiments, etc... I suppose it does work and the food is good, but it's certainly not a traditional restaurant experience from the perspective of a patron.
-
Ryan said:
Different ways to manage a company. Avoid Middle management/use if sparingly
Danielle Crittenden: Michelle Obama: Democrats Roll Out the OS X Leopard of First Ladies (4)
share
digg
by
Danielle Crittenden (0)
on
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com (236)
1 week, 2 days
ago
permalink
Last night I thought sleepily: If Michelle Obama is going to speak to the women of America, she better darn well do it before 10 p.m. [ET]. As 10 p.m. came and went, I grappled for the remote and was about to turn off the television when her bio video began to air. Okay, maybe I could last a few more minutes, see the top of the speech, get the feel of it, and go ...
Fake following (60)
share
digg
by
jason@kottke.org (485)
on
kottke.org (545)
1 week, 3 days
ago
permalink
This is a little bit genius. One of the new features of FriendFeed (a Twitter-like thingie) is "fake following". That means you can friend someone but you don't see their updates. That way, it appears that you're paying attention to them when you're really not. Just like everyone does all the time in real life to maintain their sanity. Rex calls it "most important feature in the history of social networks" and I'm inclined to ...
-
gautamg said:
attention is the new currency. Preserve it.
-
Matt said:
Interesting feature... I don't have any friends I'd want to fake follow, but it's good to know it's there. I haven't been using friendfeed as much recently, anyway.
-
jschultz said:
ha!
-
puthali said:
lol, didn't know friendfeed had tht...
-
Josh Bancroft said:
LOL I hadn't seen this yet. :-)
-
Carrie Jaeger said:
Hilarious!
-
Herschell / Special*Dark said:
Now you can be as fake on social networks as you were in high school : p
-
janequigley said:
This is fantastic. And much more honest...
-
Yan said:
web 2.0 comes of age!
-
HacKnight said:
I'm a fan of friendfeed. I'm sure if I used it more often and had any more than 0 friends I would enjoy this option.
-
tosh said:
thats actually a pretty good idea
Downhill Skateboarding (7)
share
digg
on
Cool Tools (123)
1 week, 3 days
ago
permalink
Downhill skating is like surfing; carving back and forth on long downhills. Note: you guys who skated as kids and have quit. The technology is way advanced these days. Decks, trucks, wheels, designs. It's a different skating world. If you've ever skated, you've got the motor skills (due to "muscle memory"), and you'll be surprised at how much fun you can have skating downhill with today's boards. Here are three unique skateboards meant for downhill, ...
Mickey Mouse bridges the culture war when teaching evolution to evangelical students (19)
share
digg
by
Cory Doctorow (1391)
on
Boing Boing (2758)
1 week, 4 days
ago
permalink
David Campbell managed to slip evolution into the high-school science curriculum in the conservative Florida town where he teaches -- by using images of Mickey Mouse through the years to illustrate the principle: On the projector, Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928, one from his 1940 turn as the impish "Sorcerer's Apprentice," and one of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame. "How," he asked his ...
Lacy steampunk earth-moving machines (5)
share
digg
by
Cory Doctorow (1391)
on
Boing Boing (2758)
1 week, 4 days
ago
permalink
Artist Wim Delvoye's "Gothic" series features a collection of beautiful earth-moving equipment that's been painstakingly laser-cut with ornate, lacy designs. Yummy contrast between delicacy and brute power here. Gothic Work (Thanks, Mathew!)
Bad Dad: Celebrity Baby Names (2)
share
digg
by
Anton Olsen (0)
on
Geekdad (62)
1 week, 4 days
ago
permalink
When Celebrity Naming Goes Bad In this day and age where baby names are getting even more exotic with non-traditional spellings, brand names, and the occasional totally made up name, celebrities are having to stretch their imaginations to come up with fresh and controversial names for their offspring. Hollywire has a rather large roundup of the worst child names in entertainment. My "favorites" are: Pilot Inspektor (with a K?), Calico Dashiell (meow?), Prima [dona] Sellechia, ...
-
Czarski said:
Bad baby naming isn't just limited to celebrities. My Mom says that she went to school with twins named Mac and Ernie McInerny. Oof. Also, I'm not sure which surprises me more: 1) that someone knew the real name of "Puck" from the Real World or 2) that he was included as a "celebrity." I was not surprised that his child's names include "Bogart" and "Peyote."
Kieren Jones Hacks Ikea Hanger to Great Effect (1)
share
digg
by
Mister Jalopy (3)
on
Dinosaurs and Robots (12)
1 week, 5 days
ago
permalink
Photo from MoCo LocoFrom University of Brighton Alumni:Kieren’s exhibition – “Flat-packed re-arranged” - aims to take familiar objects and materials like coat hangers and in true DIY style create new forms and structures. He hopes that this will build a greater understanding of how these objects are produced and help get people back into the lost art of DIY.Photo from University of BrightonThough there are plenty of blog posts on the Internet about Kieren Jones, ...
Simple garden lights made with LEDs an mason jars - Boing Boing (17)
share
digg
by
Mark Frauenfelder (716)
on
Boing Boing (2758)
2 weeks, 1 day
ago
permalink
The Evil Mad Scientists made garden party lights out of LEDs, lithium coin cell batteries, and mason jars. The result is very nice, especially when you consider how easy they are to make. To start with, we need LEDs and lithium coin cells. One each per jar. The best kind of LED for this design is an ultrabright LED with a diffused lens so that the light cast by the LED chip goes in *every ...
Phone sculpture made from raffle tickets (4)
share
digg
Jeremy Mayer Sculptures (3)
share
digg
The Little Boxes of Daly City (2)
share
digg
by
Frauenfelder (7)
on
Dinosaurs and Robots (12)
3 weeks
ago
permalink
In 1962 Malvina Reynolds wrote a song called "Little Boxes," about the small houses built in the hills of Daly City. From Wikipedia:Nancy Reynolds, daughter of Malvina Reynolds, explains: "My mother and father were driving South from San Francisco through Daly City when my mom got the idea for the song. She asked my dad to take the wheel, and she wrote it on the way to the gathering in La Honda where she was ...
Errol Morris on "Photography as a Weapon" (37)
share
digg
by
Mark Frauenfelder (716)
on
Boing Boing (2758)
3 weeks, 2 days
ago
permalink
Documentary film maker Errol Morris has a fascinating piece in the New York Times about "Photography as a Weapon." In it, he interviews Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and expert on digital photographic fraud. Errol Morris: [D]octored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don’t need Photoshop. You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need ...
-
bmcfee said:
I ate at IHOP this morning, and let me tell you, it isn't that far off from chemical munitions.
Another One for the Machine (18)
share
digg
on
The Technium (17)
3 weeks, 3 days
ago
permalink
Computers have mastered chess and checkers, beating the best human players. Nowadays cheap computerized or even online players can beat most ordinary humans. The ancient game of Go, however, has long resisted the efforts by engineers to construct a Go-computer than can beat a human Go master. Some Go fans believed computers would never be able to beat a Go master. The vast combinatorial sums of possible moves are much greater in Go than chess, ...
Tell Congress to rein in DHS travel abuses (10)
share
digg
by
Mark Frauenfelder (716)
on
Boing Boing (2758)
3 weeks, 6 days
ago
permalink
The ACLU has set up a form that makes it easy to tell Congress to overhaul the broken terrorist watch list and to require reasonable suspicion for electronic searches at the border. With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information -- including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history. The ...
