Ok, I’ve been away for a while on a top secret mission but I’m back and just to prove that I can actually post a “Friday links” sometime around Friday I’m posting this one Thursday night. Some of the links may be more than a week old though so your experience may vary.
———Geek Alert————-
I’ve been at a few conferences lately and most of the buzz was around cloud computing in some form or another. While I can see the short-term upside of converting to a pay-for-service business model, architecturally the whole thing scares me.
I’m not the only one, check out what some other MAYAns think about cloud computing with our first link.
————Top Five——————-
1. Are we looking for a silver lining in the wrong cloud?
2. There is no reason to be afraid at all.
3. When (or maybe just before) one of these endeavors kills you (take your pick: riding a segway through a tough neighborhood, doing some extreme unicycling, controlling a robot that is learning how to control us through its irresistible cuteness and seemingly trustworthy, father of science fiction, name, or just plain living past your expiration date), Legacy Locker, is for you! Hmm reminds me a little of an idea we bandied about years ago called Deathcast which would give you a ticker along the bottom of your screen of all the deaths happening right now (hmm thinking about death way too much lately, must buy chocolate), where upon your own death the site would send out all sorts of things like things you always wish you’d said, ways to access secret files, a plug-in for your address book so that it automatically marks people as expired when appropriate, spoilsport stuff, playlists for your funeral, images and movies to share at your wake, favorite drinks to toast you into the next world, and of course time delayed messages from beyond for your loved (or I guess hated) ones over the following decades…well this is a start….
Or maybe it could also have suggestions?
5. Double self-portraits… very nice.
——————-The Rest—————-
Is American still Innovative (or more to my point, will it be in five or ten years if we continue to ignore science and education and art and just plain making, in favor of mindless 24-hour blather masquerading as news)? Apparently I have an opinion.
I think its pretty obvious that America is still innovative, just look at this clip! At least when it comes to you know, important stuff like talking about home pages of websites and such.
A little something for Earth Day…
Who doesn’t like Luigi Colani’s fever dreams of liquid life?
Tweenbots remind me of an adventure we’ve been planning around the office for two wandering robots. The goal would be to hitchhike across America. Both of the robots would try hard to stay more or less together, filming each others exploits, but they’d have to rely on strangers to actually transport them. They’d be “front seat of the car” friendly of course and would be featured in a buddy movie style reality show, filming all the way. We haven’t finalized the technical design but we know that one of them will be called “Pancho.”
Not quite ‘my first dictionary’…
Headhoods, yes that’s exactly what they are, nothing more or less.
It was a dark and silly night…
Nice interview of Dave Eggers…
Hair hats. In case those headhoods and gorilla specs don’t work out.
I’ve always loved unicycles. I remember watching a show when I was a kid called Big Blue Marble (did anyone see that but me?) in which each week featured kids that lived around the world doing something unique or fun (it was one of the early multicultural, world is flattening out, sorta shows with global penpals and a “we are one” sorta vibe). I think that show had a segment on an entire town that rode unicycles. All the kids at the grammar and high school rode everywhere, sports were played on unicycles, teachers rode them through the halls, it was a fever dream of one world, one wheel unity. I went out that summer and tried my best to teach every kid on the block how to ride and got the training period down from a few weeks to an afternoon; hint start at the stairs on your porch, lean forward and pedal fast until you have more bandages on your knees than sense, and always try to get one more foot further and pretty soon you’ll be riding around the block (and tape up the seat because it will get trashed every time it slams to the ground along with your knees).
Ok, long preamble for this link. GM introduced something that was clearly more of a high school science fair reject than a serious proposal for the future, but if you’re truly looking for ways to look sillier than a segway riding millionaire geek, you’ve really got to go for the Encycle.
Then again, just ride. If you didn’t click on this link you missed something simple and wonderful.
Just love this look for animations…
Protect yourself from stupid rules…
A little painful but then again the message still comes through loud and clear.