8
POPSTasty tasty electronics Some of the folks I collaborate with at NYCResistor have been making some awesome electronic inspired pastries. We had cupcakes the other day and now there was a full sized cake. Awesome!
15
POPSDollars for Oil is now Euros for Oil The opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse (which coincidentally happened to be delayed by a bunch of internet cables being severed underwater) trades in Euros. That means that the world no longer has to get dollars first to buy oil, and could continue to have a drastic effect on the value of the dollar.
4
POPSHousing troubles go global The boom went around the world, it's no surprise that the bubble is following it. What surprises me is that it seems to catch everyone off-guard.
10
POPSGrains Gone Wild With food prices rising quickly and a grain crisis looming, the end of cheap food may indeed be here. From a personal point of view, I know several people near the poverty line who are really feeling the pinch now between oil prices (gas, heating oil, etc) and rising food prices.
6
POPSOutstanding interview with Steve Jobs Fortune's got an incredible interview with Apple's Steve Jobs in this month's issue. Each page had something clipworthy, so I've just grabbed from the first. The source is well worth reading through.
8
POPSDramatic Lemur Forget Dramatic Hampster - this little guy has REALLY got dramatic down pat!
4
POPSTexter - fast abbreviation substitution If you find yourself answering many emails the same way, or need to paste in a complex bit of HTML over and over, this could be extremely helpful. {{Communicatrix}} also suggested that I look at TextExpander for the same function on Mac
0
POPSFinal Fantasy 13 Trailer I can't believe how amazing this looks. If this is the actual gameplay, this may be the first real reason to own a PS3
4
POPSFacebook CEO - Major overhaul of App platform coming From everything I've heard so far (mostly from scoble's Qik videos from Davos and this post, but also a few other rumbings), Facebook is working hard to make the App platform less spammy, and to enable developers to build deeper, more powerful apps which really extend Facebook's functionality. If they really go the "google androiod" route with this, and allow developers to build apps which users can swap out (think superwall, but actually in place of the stock "wall" app) this could shape up to be a great year for FB. It's also good to hear Robert echo some of the things that I felt when meeting Mark - he's an extremely humble, shy, interesting person, who's genuinely geeking out about this stuff at work every day. With someone that passionate about the future of the net and what they're building at FB, I'm pretty confident that good things are yet to come.
5
POPSWik.is - free wiki hosting + google integration I'm checking out free wiki hosting services, and will definitely have to give this one a look. I love mediawiki and would just host that myself, but I've seen far too many wikis crumble in the face of massive spam attacks. A hosted solution means someone else is working on the spam problem as well.
0
POPSRowling sues H.P. Lexicon, and why she's wrong. This is an excellent piece from slate that sums up in one sentence why J.K. will lose this lawsuit. "She has confused the adaptations of a work, which she does own, with discussion of her work, which she doesn't." That says it all. Allowing copyright and trademark concerns to silence discussion of a literary work (or any element of our culture) would be a disaster for free speech. As Ron once said, "She needs to sort out her priorities."
2
POPSHow to check Iowa Caucus results I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this. I'm definitely not as educated as I should be about it, but it seems that It's a shame that in these days of ubiquitous connectivity and mass media we still rely on an antiquated primary system to decide who gets to run.
4
POPSPersonal nuclear reactors? These things are hot! I'm still not sure if these things are real or not - I'm going to have to do a bit more research. If they are safe, economical, and at least environmentally justifiable, it could make for an interesting few decades.
2
POPSParallels or VMWare for Win on Mac? I purchased parallels so that I can test our sites in IE here on my mac, and soon after VMWare began to get great hype. I'm still really happy with how quick it is to start a virtual install of XP here and dive into testing.
6
POPSApple shuts down Think Secret?! Wow - I'm a pretty big Apple fan, and I agree that some of the news that has been leaked has been a little overboard lately, but this seems crazy. ThinkSecret was a source where people salivated over even flimsy details promising new shiny gadgets to buy from Apple, and probably did more for them than any "I'm a mac" spot ever could. Now Apple themselves have sued them out of existence. Boneheads.
2
POPS"Clean Coal" coming to Illinois I don't mean to be the eternal skeptic, but as I understand it, all of these "clean burning" technologies only really work when they're running at 100% efficiency, which they rarely do in practice. Other than that, the pollution and environmental destruction that would be caused by the return of coal as a major energy source has to be factored in alongside the emissions that are (or aren't) released when you burn the stuff. As a peak-oil backup plan, maybe, but I don't think we can consider "clean coal" an environmental panacea by any means.
8
POPSThe Wii whips the competition From the moment I heard Shigeru Miyamoto describe the concept behind the Wii (then codenamed Revolution) I knew they'd have a hit on their hands if they got it right. I got mine last Christmas, and they're still selling so fast Nintendo can't keep them on shelves - it's an amazing system, and they're redefining the whole market by creating a new class of "casual gamers". My parents, in-laws, and even my grandmother have played and love the Wii.
4
POPSGoogle to compete with Wikipedia? Very interesting. By highlighting the author of an article, or "knol", there's a clear and compelling reason to contribute articles of value. Google's internal Knol likely creates a meritocracy, where it's important and valuable to be the person who wrote the authoritative knol on a specific technical topic. Compared with Wikipedia, where most contributions are fueled by a altruistic need to create or improve articles, I can see the motives for this, but it also seems as though this would create lots of stale pages, jockeying for 'authoritative' position, and generally stifle collaboration. Interesting - but I don't think it's a wikipedia killer.
47
POPSSteal my content, please!
I completely agree with Scoble on this one, although I can understand why people who make their living directly from their creations have a hard time letting go of the fear of giving away at least some of the rights to their content. Cory Doctorow began releasing all of his literary work under creative commons licenses years ago, allowing people to freely download and distribute his work under some light provisos. I downloaded and read "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" on my palm pilot, freely and legally, and was hooked. Because of that, I've read a huge amount of his writing, become a mammoth fan, and will likely purchase every book he publishes. I've also published everything I've written, shot, and produced under a similar license. While that certainly hasn't brought me traditional commercial success, it has definitely accelerated serendipity countless times for me, and if you trace out the effects of those 'lucky' events, it's helped shape both my career and life.
11
POPSMortage meltdown - the real story is fraud. Wow. Thanks to Christopher S. Penn for pointing this one out to me. He's got an insiders knowledge of the lending industry (he runs the Financial Aid podcast) and incredible insights on his blog. Subscribe to him if you're at all interested in what's going on in this crazy market.
8
POPSFacebook backtracks on Beacon I wish this had been opt-in from the start, but I'm glad to see Facebook changing their program to make it less intrusive. I definitely don't want Christmas gifts ruined because someone can see what I purchased on a non-facebook site.
1
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