DefinitiveInk

2nd life property values

I followed an article about real life housing prices to this article about Second Life's economy facing serious issues. Same issues as real life but hugely leveraged and now probably exacerbated by the fact that they are illiquid given that not as many virtual people are there as Wired kindly shares with us in an excellent article. About time!

Map stats from the NYT

The NYT has a great article on the rise of maps made with web tools. A really nice overview with some interesting stats. There is a lot of mapping going on.

• 40,000 maps made on Platial
• 50,000 Google Map mashups
• 1,000,000 MSN Collection maps
• 1,300,000 Garmin maps of hikes, trails, rides
• 4,000,000 Google MyMap maps
• 25,000,000 Flickr Geo-tagged photos

Treehugger basics - articles on things that matter

Green Basics: Ethanol (TreeHugger)

Read Write Web on Cloning Web 2.0: A Look at Copycat Applications

Cloning Web 2.0: A Look at Copycat Applications

A cat that predicts death and a redesign

Oscar the rescue cat can predict when nursing home staff will die. "Scientists remain uncertain whether there is any predictive basis for Oscar's talent, or if there are other factors at work, for example, an attraction to the warm blankets often placed on seriously ill residents."

Found on The Guardian while poking around after reading this post about their redesign.

Odds and ends

How I ate while pregnant -- megnut.com(Via kottke.org also a really interesting speculative about UPS failing to deliver Harry Potter and possibly covering their tracks. We just had a similar incident with a package from the post office.)

A friend sent this link to a video on babble.com about a couple just waiting to have a baby. Odd time right now.

Green google map mashup "Walk Score, which "uses a patent-pending algorithm to calculate the walkability of an address". (via treehugger

Tacoda to AOL very interesting

NYT article about moving to Shanghai

odds and ends

Susan Mernit's 10 things we can learn from Facebook
Read Write Web's Pageflakes and netvibes take on social networks

While listening to Laurie Anderson read at the Doc Pomus tribute in Prospect Parkon Saturday night I wondered for a moment, what it would sound like if Laurie Anderson read the unabridged Harry Potter instead of Jim Dale.

More Harry  Potter factoids. This morning on my subway car 17% of the adults on the car were reading the new Potter book. This stayed eerily consistant as people left new ones got on and pulled out the book.

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A good motto

On the wall of Kiehl's is the following motto. A great way of thinking.

"A worthwhile firm must have a purpose for its existence. Not only the everyday work-a-day purpose to earn a just profit, but beyond that, to improve in some way the quality of the community to which it is committed. Each firm-as should each person-contributes to those around it; and by dint of its day-to-day efforts, the message it thereby imparts is a revelation of the quality standard at which its life's work is conducted.”

What's your boss reading?

C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success - New York Times"

(Via techmeme.)

There's more to Potter than the plot

Caught me.

Spoiler alert! There's more to Potter than the plot

It is one of the clearest differences between academic and mass-media criticism these days: Only academics are still allowed the privilege of assuming that when a work of art is under review, all of it is under review. True, critics who seem to think reviewing is simply delivering a plot synopsis with stylistic flourish are a pesky breed, and there are simple ways for writers to discuss plot developments vaguely enough that those in the know will understand while those who don't want to know won't. Still, if you really insist on approaching every book or movie as a plot virgin, the simple answer is don't read reviews. Or, in the case of the Harry Potter fans, quit Googling "Potter spoiler." The spoiler alerts remind me of those warnings on Styrofoam coffee cups: Caution - contents may be hot.

LittleDeviant.com

A large Scion microsite/game with some arcade games, lovely dark imagery, and a creepy voice-over. Really fun for an advertorial. Hmm, perhaps a Scion is would fit the Romack baby.

...if you are a believer in conspiracies

A former Reagan aide warns of an upcoming "police state"
Rogue Presidency post in Talking Points Memo

"Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration's stance "astonishing."

"That's a breathtakingly broad view of the president's role in this system of separation of powers," Rozell said. "What this statement is saying is the president's claim of executive privilege trumps all."

Water Hammers and other things beneath our feet

We started wondering what steam pipes do and what causes them to explode so I turned to Kate Ascher's great book The Works: Anatomy of a City. It has a section on steam pipes and how they heat midtown buildings with wonderful illustrations. Sadly they aren't online on Amazon but you can read about the book andsee the table of contents. I think the explosion was caused by something called a>water hammer which she explains but the on it too. The book is one of my favorites. It reminds me of the David Macaulay books I had growing up. In fact a close relation of The Works is his book, Underground. Ascher covers so much more than what is under our feet though, spans of bridges, airports and pretty much every other system the city has. During the next blackout I look forward to lighting a candle and reading about why I'm in the dark.

creators who are also users

AVC has a post on why Facebook shouldn't sell and how we can expect them to go public in the next year or two. I like the post but love this quote:

"But selling the Company would be a huge mistake. First and foremost for the users. Any buyer will screw up Facebook. It's greatness comes from the fact that the people who run the company live inside the service, they built if for themselves and it works because of that. They have their pulse on the community and they are not likely to screw it up too badly."

micro persuasion on the next evolution of blogging

Steve Rubel muses on twitter, tumbler, iphones and mobile enabling shorter more frequent posts and why we all love widgets.

Enterprise social bookmarking

On PaidContent I read today that ConnectBeam, an enterprise social bookmarking product has raised some money but even more interesting to me is the fact that when I visited their site and clicked on Demo it took me to a really good video demo that they had posted on YouTube. Below is the CEO walking you through their product.

YouTube Find - Bonnie Raitt fron the 1979 No Nukes Concert at MSG

The first concert I ever went to was the No Nukes Concert at MSG in 1979. I've been thinking about this concert lately and just found this video on You Tube of Bonnie Raitt. The concert was produced by David Fenton who now has one of the leading cause related PR companies. 

google reader + facebook app

delicious meets facebook Scoble on a possible digg killer but reading his description made me think of how i use delicious to keep track and share links. (see joshuamack.com)

Quote from Barbara Boxer

"I've always said that you need to keep it on the table, and you need to look at these things, because now people are dying because of this administration. That's the truth. And they won't change course. They are ignoring the Congress. They keep signing these signing statements which mean that he's decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we've ever come to a dictatorship. When you have a situation where Congress is stepped on, that means the American people are stepped on." - Barbara Boxer in a interview yesterday.