Solve Puzzles to Help Out Scientists [Friday Fun] (54)
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Jason Fitzpatrick (146)
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Lifehacker (310)
3 days, 3 hours
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Windows/Linux/Mac OS X: If you have ever donated your computer's idle cycles to a charitable project, Foldit will be right up your alley. After installing the game you are given protein samples to untangle. On the surface it appears as though you are trying to solve a puzzle of tangled cords, but your solutions are much more valuable: The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so ...
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Serrenity said:
This is cool....I might have to try it
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Aaron H. said:
Here is an online puzzle obsession that can make the world better. Just FYI.
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PoPPaP said:
Interesting...
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Kraki said:
@M: yeah, this program already did something in your computer's spare time, but now this is interactive. your solving the puzzle actually helps them unfold actual protein chains
The Web’s Simplest Weather Forecast (32)
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Pete Cashmore (23)
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Mashable! (125)
3 days, 15 hours
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We told you Umbrella Today is the simplest weather site ever made. We were wrong. Now that ingenious idea - entering a zip code to find out whether you’ll need an umbrella today - has been one-upped. Or, one-downed. going to rain is a new site that takes the concept into the realm of extreme simplicity. No blue background. No colored text. Not even so much as a capital letter. And zip codes? Don’t need ...
Life Flow Chart: Community Authored Flowcharts (10)
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information aesthetics (6)
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Life Flowcharts [lifeflowcharts.com] is a community-authored flowchart based on the topic of how to live one's life. The system is based on Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) / Vector Markup Language (VML), and programmed within the Google App Engine. Users authenticated by Google can add, reconnect or reorder children boxes, or comment on, and vote on, individual decision boxes. Thnkx Zeno.
The old hero of Gettysburg (9)
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jason@kottke.org (12)
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kottke.org (12)
5 days, 3 hours
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1863 photo of John L. Burns, War of 1812 veteran and sharpshooter in the Battle of Gettysburg. Burns, born ca. 1793, was a 70-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 when he was wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg, having volunteered his services as a sharpshooter to the Federal Army. He died of pneumonia in 1872. And from the comments: Mr Burns' flintlock is at half-cock with the frizzen down, ready to ready to fire. ...
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Matt said:
Truly the definition of an "old war dog."
Photo retouching for beginners (3)
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JD Lasica (3)
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Social Media (3)
5 days, 8 hours
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On Tuesday I listened to NPR's segment on how regular folks are using Photoshop to alter photos and remove people from their personal picture albums. Fair enough, this is hobbyist photography, not photojournalism. Alas, the NPR blog about this offers no link to the actual audio segment or podcast. But it does offer links to these tips on how to alter your photos: • Deziner Folio: Wonderful tutorial here: Portrait retouching for beginners. • The ...
Handbrake Still the Best DVD Converter, Now Handles Any Video Format (11)
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Scott Gilbertson (0)
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webmonkey (0)
5 days, 16 hours
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HandBrake, our favorite way to convert DVDs to iPod-ready video formats, has released a major upgrade that adds support for just about any video source format, not just DVDs. The new features come courtesy of the libavcodec and libavformat libraries, which are borrowed from the ffmpeg project. If all that sounds too geeky for you, here’s the short version: Handbrake can now convert just about any video format into something that’s ready to load on ...
12 Great Tales of De-Friending (43)
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David Spark (0)
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Mashable! (125)
6 days, 2 hours
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David Spark (@dspark) is a veteran tech journalist and the founder of Spark Media Solutions, a storytelling production company. De-friending has always been awkward. Social networks offer one click “remove a friend” options, but it still doesn’t make the decision any easier. What follows is a collection of stories about de-friending. In summary, what I discovered is that everyone approaches their social network differently and it’s impossible to communicate all those nuances when you choose ...
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Jason said:
Some of these are pretty funny, and I've used more than one or two...
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Loyolny said:
O socialach raz jeszcze...
Online Video Not Killing TV, Says Nielsen (23)
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Sarah Perez (19)
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ReadWriteWeb (103)
6 days, 4 hours
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Earlier this month, we heard how online video was cannibalizing TV consumption, thanks to data coming out of an IBM study that polled people across six different countries worldwide. The study showed that 36% of people watched "significantly less" TV as a result of their online video viewing. This week, however, a report from Nielsen contradicts that study. Their "A2/M2 Three Screen Report" released yesterday shows that TV viewership isn't declining at all...in fact, it's ...
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Cast42 said:
TV Execs, Remember: All Three Screens Are Doing Well
Homeless Nation Gives a Digital Place to The Displaced (8)
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chrisbrogan (37)
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chrisbrogan.com (27)
1 week
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It’s going to be a strange year for people, and some folks who never thought they’d find themselves homeless might be in that boat. With all the various economic storms in the air, I’m sure it will not be unheard of that you or I will know someone who is forced into homelessness. It’s great to see a service like Montreal-based Homeless Nation that gives services, voice, and a sense of digital place for people ...
HD Video Sharing: Best Solutions To Publish High Definition Videos - Sharewood Guide (7)
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Andre Deutmeyer (1)
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Robin Good's Latest News (2)
1 week
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Looking for a solution that allows you to share high definition video with your friends or others? Tired of the restrictions that YouTube places on the quality, size, and length of the videos that you upload? In today’s Sharewood Guide, I will be reviewing eleven high definition video sharing and publishing platforms so that you can choose the YouTube alternative that best suits your HD video publishing needs. Photo credit: ray222 YouTube is the 800 ...
Text Tag. (1)
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Gerard (2)
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The Generator Blog (0)
1 week
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Text Tag is for generating a little tag graphic with text on it. After you make your tag, you can download it to your computer or save it to Flickr or ImageShack with a single click. To get different sized words, try breaking up your text in different places.(thanks Zack)[ Text Tag ]
Facebook’s Project Palantir: Beautiful Visualization Of People Connecting (96)
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Michael Arrington (192)
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TechCrunch (312)
1 week, 1 day
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A group of Facebook engineers - Jack Lindamood, Kevin Der and Dan Weatherford - have created a small project called Palantir at a Facebook Hackathon event. The project is named after The palantír of Orthanc, a crystal ball-like object from The Lord Of The Rings (yep, they’re nerds). Anyway, it’s a video of the earth showing Facebook activity visually and geographically. One view shows activity as dots of light that flow upward. Another view shows ...
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Chris said:
Very cool visualization of Facebook users' actions. For most people, no real practical value as it is. But, I could see this as a great time waster if it could be limited to individual's networks.
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db said:
To me, it's stuff like this that is modern art.
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Nate said:
Or maybe it's derived from Palantir Tech's name for their financial analysis and trend visualization software?
Happy People Watch Less TV, Study Shows [Happiness] (69)
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Gina Trapani (25)
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Lifehacker (310)
1 week, 2 days
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Researchers at the University of Maryland found the one activity unhappy people do more than happy people is watch TV. The New York Times reports: "We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. [John] Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. ...
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Chad said:
The operative word is "activity". Watching TV is inactivity.
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Kamath ॐ said:
I get it. Seriously. Now, STFU.
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Alex Dang said:
This is true for me. When I'm happier, I tend to watch less TV b/c I'm doing other happier activities.
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Josh said:
It's true, I usually only watch 3 shows a week Heros, Mythbusters, and TUF. But when I'm depressed or down i the dumps I find myself surfing the OnDemand to find more TV to arificially connect with.
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Andy said:
Oh dear, I can't be doing very well
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yooper1019 said:
Makes sense. Most of the people I see on house calls look pretty miserable too.
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Todd Albertson said:
I wonder if watching more TV makes you more depressed (which I'm sure is true) or whether depressed people watch more TV.
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timlauer said:
Good to know....
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Rob said:
My wife and I probably watch less than five hours of TV a week and I'd say we are pretty happy in general. I am on the web a lot though - I wonder how happy those people are?
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kevinpshan said:
I guess I'm very unhappy.
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Darnell Clayton said:
Is this the answer to true happiness?
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Rolf Schewe said:
I hardly watch TV anymore. All you see is voyeurism. Watching how other people live or suffer for that matter. Faux reality shows.
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NEEKers said:
I don't think this is true. What's happy anyways? They might not really be happy.
● Best Esquire stories (27)
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jason@kottke.org (12)
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kottke.org (12)
1 week, 3 days
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In celebration of its semisesquicentennial1, Esquire magazine shares the seven greatest stories ever told in the pages of their magazine and has published them online in their entirety. (See also Esquire's 70 greatest sentences.) Get a load of these initial paragraphs. The School by C.J. Chivers: Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed ...
Sell Benefits Not Features (47)
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chrisbrogan (37)
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chrisbrogan.com (27)
1 week, 3 days
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Twitter isn’t amazing. The ability to connect to many voices in a collaborative way is amazing. Facebook isn’t the future. Having mutual social environments that permit deeper understanding of each other’s interest is the future. It’s important that we learn how to talk in terms of benefits and not the features. This was an old sales lesson that I learned from Jason Chudnofsky, the CEO at Pulvermedia. He had a course that he’d been teaching ...
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Citizen Marketer said:
great reminder that we should be leading with the solution, not the tool or tactic mr. brogan.
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Brad Coy said:
"Far too often, I hear social media enthusiasts talking about the software from the perspective of its features, but we’ve already proven that features don’t trump benefits. Twitter has fewer features than Pownce and Jaiku, and yet, we’re all on Twitter." Amen!
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Scott Dodds (Lithium) said:
We can't hear this kind of thing enough. Wondering if there is biological reason why we get distracted by features.
Living and Learning with New Media: Findings from a 3-year Ethnographic Study of Digital Youth (26)
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zephoria (4)
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apophenia (4)
1 week, 3 days
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For the last three years, I've been a part of a team of researchers at Berkeley and USC focused on digital youth practices. This project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, brought together 28 different researchers (led by Mimi Ito and my now deceased advisor Peter Lyman) to examine different aspects of American youth life. As many of you know, I focused on normative teen practices and the ways in which teens engaged in networked publics. ...
