"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." "Like I always say, there's no 'I' in "team". There is a 'me', though, if you jumble it up." We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do. Wisdom - that part of knowledge that isn't only true, but also happens to be helpful. Wisdom speaks softly... Thereafter the volume increases proportionate to the level of ignorance A punctured bicycle
On a hillside desolate
Will nature make a man of me yet? All designed objects are propaganda for a certain way of life. Sometimes we need to stop analysing the past, stop planning the future, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we want, and just see what happens. We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." --Napoleon Bonaparte The best designed clothes: invite being removed but reward being kept on. It's that you just can't take the effect and make it the cause | Daylight savings time was introduced to save energy, but it turns out it actually does the opposite. The economist Matthew Kotchen looked at how the 2006 switch to daylight savings time in certain Indiana counties affected electricity use: The result of the study showed that electricity use went up in the counties adopting daylight saving time in 2006, costing $8.6 million more in household electricity bills. The conclusion reached by Kotchen and Grant was that while the lighting costs were reduced in the afternoons by daylight saving, the greater heating costs in the mornings, and more use of [ continue reading Daylight Savings and Energy Wastings ] What do Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Redpoint Ventures have in common? Besides being tier one venture capitalists, at least one thing: They are all fighting furiously to be the lead investor in Foursquare’s next venture round. All that competition is driving the valuation massively upwards, too. A couple of weeks ago we’d heard that the deal would likely be closed at around a $50 million valuation. Today we’ve confirmed that the final price will likely be $60 million – $70 million. They’re raising around $10 million, which means when it’s all over Foursquare will [ continue reading Four VC Firms Battle For Foursquare, Valuation Goes Stratospheric ] Back in January 2009, as Vodafone was preparing to close a £20 million ($30 million) deal to buy Swedish mapmaker Wayfinder, it was seen as a bold move from a carrier intent on entering the apparently lucrative market for location based services. Fast forward to the present day — past the bit where free Google Maps Navigation destroyed TomTom and Garmin share prices, and past the introduction of free turn-by-turn navigation to Nokia’s Ovi Maps — and you’ll find Wayfinder gently sobbing into a handkerchief as it permanently closes up its doors. Vodafone’s Anna Cloke gives us the reason for [ continue reading Vodafone’s Wayfinder is first victim of free smartphone navigation services ] Google posts “by bike” instructions on Googlemaps! Original Tweet: THEY say. When can I do Broadway Market to Dover, Stoke Newington to Putsborough or Sharrow to Paris? Still not showing up on the iPhone for London. I suppose my impatience is showing. There won’t be a party going on over at Garmin and Tom Tom as this gets rolled out.. Loopt continues to ramp up its focus on location-based deals. The pioneer of the mobile social network is launching a new app called LooptCard, which lets mobile consumers tap into offers, coupons and discounts by checking-in to spots. Today, Loopt is partnering with deals site Mobile Spinach to offer users deals and coupons for local merchants via the Loopt App. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» TechCrunch Loopt Partners With Mobile Spinach To Offer Location-Based Deals: .) [ continue reading Loopt Partners With Mobile Spinach To Offer Location-Based Deals ] A decade ago most of us were using AltaVista or something similar for search. No one was really complaining very much about the huge amount of spam and other noise that cluttered the results because we didn’t know there was a better way. Then Google came along with Page Rank, and had a profound effect on the quality of Internet search. Suddenly (and it really was that sudden), we couldn’t imagine going back to AltaVista and searching pages of results for the thing that Google gave us immediately. For a good history of search, get John Battelle’s book [ continue reading Social Today Feels Like Search A Decade Ago: Lots Of Noise And Lots Of Spam ] So the mad dad with check-in fever may suddenly have a point? Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence, on the location-based social network Loopt, a source with knowledge of the talks tells us. Generally speaking, due diligence of this kind is only performed when a company is in acquisition or fundraising talks. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» TechCrunch Facebook Checks-In On Loopt: .) As everyone knows, Garmin and TomTom have their backs against the ropes in a fight to remain relevant in an age of free GPS turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones (thanks Google and Nokia). While dedicated personal navigators are almost always superior to their converged competition, the gap has certainly narrowed such that it’s become difficult to justify another device when an increasing number of people already carry a fine navigation device in their pockets. But that’s just gut instinct talking, where’s the hard evidence? Certainly not speculative stock prices. A good place to start is in forward-looking financial statements like the [ continue reading Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope ] I had no idea how many outdoor scenes on TV shows are shot on a green screen. Here’s a reel with several before and after examples. (via that’s how it happened) Tags: TV video (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» kottke.org Green screened: .) Mapa de Pueblos AbandonadosThis Google Map shows the locations of abandoned towns and villages in Spain. The red map markers indicate locations that have full descriptions and links to articles on the site’s blog.If you click on a a map marker the information window includes a zoom in button. When viewing the map it is interesting to switch to satellite view and zoom in on the abandoned town. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE »» http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss Google Map of Abandoned Spanish Towns: .) GeocodedArt GeocodedArt is a new website that is busy mapping the world’s fine art paintings. The geocodedArt database contains over 1,000 images of identifiable places all over the world. The images are organized and displayed using Google Maps and Bing Maps and are cross-indexed by artist. It is possible to search the database by artist name, painting name or by location. This is a great way of exploring the world’s art. Hint – I’d really like a mobile phone application of this to show you paintings of views that are near your current location. Also See Paintmap – [ continue reading Google Map of the World’s Art ] I’m turning the blog over today to CEO Stephen Randall for a special guest post on our integration with one of our favorite new services, Foursquare. Why Location-Based Services are Important for Place-Based Screens ] Like a chameleon, architecture can mimic any natural landscape it sits on. From a Swiss alp, to the British cliffs, to a nearby glacier, to Mexican basalt rock, to a volcano – such as the Renzo Piano Building Workshop has designed for the periphery of Naples. It’s as real estate agents say: context is everything. Whereas iconography usually means a shrinking or blowing-up of an image to fit the scale of the architecture, this enormous building (a shopping mall) has actually the size of a small volcano. This ‘crater’ has a diameter of 150 [ continue reading Volcano, by Piano ] Minimum interaction is required during use. Sleek graphics and smart optics are completely non-obtrusive to front and peripheral vision. Much like the dashboard of a car, the Transcend winter goggles display provides you with an overview of performance enhancing data when you choose to see it. The goggles come equipped with USB charging and data transfer capability to upload all your data and statistics to the included tracking software so you can analyze and share it with friends. Read more: http://www.thegearcaster.com/the_gearcaster/#ixzz0exU4bhlv Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Share Alike the GearCaster. [ continue reading kit like it was meant to be! ] So why is it any different than what Foursquare, Gowalla, and most recently, Yelp, are doing with location-based deals? It would seem that Loopt is trying to convince venues to use their system by offering the most customizable deals to give away. For example, certain deals are only unlocked if you do certain tasks, such as check-in at a certain time of day. This could be enticing to venues because while something like a coffee shop may be busy in the morning, it may be dead in the afternoon, and may want a way to pull in more traffic [ continue reading Loopt To Start Pushing Check-In Specials Hard Using A New App And Facebook ] This article is part of The GOOD Guide to Slowing Down, from GOOD Issue 18. Read more of the guide here. Easy ways to unplug your gadgets and your life Perhaps you’ve heard: Texting while driving can kill you. If you ask us, staying too connected behind your desk can be dangerous, as well. In recent studies, single-taskers have outperformed those who take on many tasks at a time, suggesting that multitaskers are less efficient, have heavier workloads, and set themselves up for elevated stress and its related problems, like weight gain, sleep loss, and elevated blood pressure. [ continue reading Step Away from the Smartphone ] Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But Foursquare doesn’t seem too tickled by Yelp’s newest feature. On Friday, Yelp fired a major shot across the bow of the location-based services with the launch of the latest version of its iPhone app. The app’s big new feature is the ability to check-in at venues in cities, which is of course exactly what Foursquare is built around. But plenty of other services also have that feature such as Gowalla and now Loopt. What Foursquare doesn’t seem too happy about is Yelp’s check-in leader board, specifically. A couple days ago, Foursquare [ continue reading Foursquare Not Flattered By Yelp Check-Ins ] OUseful gCalMap Mashup ToolWould you like to view your upcoming Google Calendar entries on Google Maps? OUseful has a really neat tool that can generate the code to embed a Google Calendar alongside a Google Map. To use the tool all you have to do is insert a calendar ID (the tool explains where you can get the code) and the gCalMap Mashup tool will generate the html code that you can cut and paste into a website or blog. One of the beautiful things about this tool is that you don’t have to embed a calendar of your [ continue reading Google Calendar & Google Maps ] I’ve just discovered a fantastic application on the BBCs website thats been there since 15 December. They have plotted all the road deaths in the UK from 1999 to 2008 and placed them on a map. You can even search for your police force and get figures. It also breaks the figures down by sex and how the person was travelling at the time. You can, if interested, also get age groups and times of deaths. Here are the total number of road deaths caused in Britain each year: In 1999 there where 3,423 deaths on our roads. [ continue reading Death on Britain’s roads. 32,298 in 10yrs ] Climbing and cycling rendezvous? “PlancastPlancast is a service for sharing your upcoming plans with friends. Using Plancast you can easily arrange an event, meeting or gathering at a specific location and then share the information with friends. Plancast uses Google Maps to show the location of your plans. In fact the site has a great auto-suggest tool that loads a thumbnail Google Map of your location as you type the address. You can create a plan or event on Plancast by signing in with your Twitter or Facebook account. Plancast even automatically imports your Facebook events. Once you have [ continue reading Arrange an Event with Google Maps ] According to a new patent that was just granted to Google, the company could soon extend the reach of its advertising program in Google Maps to Street View. This patent, which was originally filed on July 7, 2008, describes a new system for promoting ads in online mapping applications. In this patent, Google describes how it plans to identify buildings, posters, signs and billboards in these images and give advertisers the ability to replace these images with more up-to-date ads. In addition, Google also seems to [ continue reading Google Plans to Upgrade Old Billboards in Street View ] “Switch MapsOne of the most popular posts on Google Maps Mania last year was a review of Map Channel’s Dual Maps. Dual Maps is a map creation tool that allows anybody to make an embeddable map that includes a Google Map, a Google Maps Street View and a Virtual Earth Bird’s Eye view of the same location. Now Map Channels have released Switch Maps. Switch Maps allow you to create a map that contains Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View, Bing Maps, Bing Maps Bird’s Eye View, Open Street Map and Yahoo Maps. Creating a map is very easy. [ continue reading Google Maps Plus Some ] “ An artist uses a freeway as his canvas, all in the name of public good The freeway sign arrived in Los Angeles five days after I did. It appeared out of nowhere, a valiant attempt by one of its citizens to help drivers make sense of their city, just as I appeared in a silver Subaru, valiantly attempting to make sense of what were apparently not called ‘highways’ but ‘freeways.’ Not that you should ever refer to them that way, I was constantly reminded. ‘Just say the number,’ a friend sighed—the route number, which I kept forgetting should [ continue reading The Fake Freeway Sign that Became a Real Public Service ] “The average American is both overweight and spends more than 100 hours per year commuting, that vast majority of those hours being spent in a car. Are those numbers correlated? Could we help reduce our societal weight gain by encouraging more commutes by bike or foot? Our latest Transparency is a look at the number of active commutes in several countries, as compared to those countries obesity rates.” I Love Charts – “The average American is both overweight and…. The government is planning to give anyone free access to postcode data. The move will be made as part of its commitment to make more use of technology and the web to transform official services. Currently organisations that want access to datasets that tie [ continue reading Postcode data to be free in 2010 ] Ever wondered if there was a volcano under your home? Well, now you can find out by using the British Geological Survey’s (BGS) new OpenGeoscience portal. It allows the public to study all the UK’s rocks on a simple Google map, down to a [ continue reading British geology maps now free to explore on website ] | Shirdi Sai Baba: "Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary, does it improve upon the silence?" Well known fact that any kiss where one or other party is in control of heavy machinery doesn't count for quality assessment purposes. There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. The honest heart that's free frae a' intended fraud or guile. However fortune kick the ba', Has ay some cause to smile. Life consists in replacing one worry with another, and one desire with the next, what the Buddhists call ‘grasping’ or upādāna in Sanskrit "Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future." "Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." A wrong decision isn't forever; it can be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved. heavy words thrown lightly And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” |
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