Archive for August, 2008
The 2008 US box office visualised
Aug 29th
A nice week-by-week visualisation of the US box office takings throughout 2008. It gives you a good sense of how quickly many films drop off the radar, and also of the size of the gap between successful movies and (comparative) flops.
As you scroll along to the right, for example, you’ll find yourself thinking that Iron Man looks pretty impressive. Then you’ll get to The Dark Knight…
links for 2008-08-29
Aug 29th
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I agree with Stan Schroeder (writing for Mashable) here, the idea of a Facebook movie made me check that it wasn't April 1st when I saw it on the BBC site earlier today. It's particularly stupid that the person apparently tasked with writing it openly admits to knowing nothing about it.
links for 2008-08-28
Aug 28th
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Hilarious story about a man who found that his banking password, "Lloyds is pants", was changed to "no its not" without his knowledge, and his attempts to get it changed back. Needless to say, he had the last laugh…
RocketDock – Close but no cigar
Aug 28th
RocketDock is a nice idea. Billed as a “peace offering” from the Mac community to Windows users, it’s a recreation of the OS X dock – the customisable ribbon of icons allowing quick access to files, folders, applications and URLs.
I’ve just installed it on my Windows XP machine and for the first five minutes or so I found myself warming to it. You might think it’s a needless duplication of the Quick Launch section of the Windows taskbar, but it’s not. There’s a lot of scope for customisation of icons and actions, and the ability to position it anywhere you’d like on the screen is a useful one.
However, once I’d removed most of the default icons and added several of my own, I encountered some strange behaviours. Dragging shortcuts to the dock, which had earlier on resulted in their appearing as icons, no longer worked. However, after a failed drag, a blank space appeared on the ribbon which did nothing and made the interface harder to use.
Mucking about with RocketDock’s settings, removing some more icons and even restarting the application didn’t help matters. It seems to have decided that the set of icons in there is definitive, and is no longer willing to countenance even the idea of change. Bit of a prima donna if you ask me. Fail!
links for 2008-08-26
Aug 26th
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Mapping out history's greatest journeys, from Magellan to Lindbergh
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An old article—and no doubt familiar if you read the Onion back in the dotcom years—but one worth reading again now that we're in the final few months of the Bush administration. Uncannily prescient satire from back in January 2001.
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Interesting article and thread on the idea of web agencies using their skills and downtime to build small-scale sites and web-apps. It's certainly a better way to use downtime than playing World of Warcraft, if you ask me
links for 2008-08-25
Aug 25th
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A Flash-based timeline depicting the migrations from Africa that led to humankind's propagation. A low point was the aftermath of Mount Toba's eruption in 74,000 BC during which the human population dropped to around 10,000
links for 2008-08-20
Aug 20th
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Review of the Museum of Jurassic Technology – a kind of modern-day Cabinet of Curiosities – in Los Angeles
links for 2008-08-19
Aug 19th
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The National Science Foundation's interactive quasi-timeline on the birth of the internet, from the development of ARPANET in the 1960s, the first email sent in the 1970s ("LOLZORZ", it said) and right up to the "web 2.0" of today. …No mention of Goatse
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An experimental site which tries to visualise debates as colour coded 'maps' with several layers of recursion. Topics include, "can computers think?", "Iranian nuclear programme" and a map of Hamlet's existential dilemma, "to be or not to be?"
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Is the convention for left hand navigation on its way out? Flow Interactive thinks it might be.
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Roughly a decade too late, the BBC is now experimenting with in-line links to external sources in its news articles. This adoption of one of the most basic features of hypertext is sadly flawed, however, relying mainly on popups and overlays
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BT has published some research, looking at shoppers who use mobile internet to make purchase decisions while out and about. But this article is basically a rewritten press release – where's the source?
