DefinitiveInk

Our Little Dictator

Our Little Dictator

Happy Halloween

links for 2007-10-31

• FreeRice
  Fantastic vocabulary building site that donates ten grains of ric for every word you get correct. If you look at the totals per day it is really scaling.
  (tags: trends education games activism)
• Web Marketing to a Segment Too Big to Be a Niche
  very interesting looking site aimed at the 50 million plus disabled in the US
  (tags: social_media advertising)
• Flying Cart - Create an online store that promotes itself! eCommerce Web Site Development
  A colleague at iVillage started this storefront company and is now leaving to run it. Looks like nice easy to open e-commerce with some social elements.
  (tags: shopping startup)
• Disqus Joins The Battle For Your Blog’s Comments
  Several startups vying to replace the comments functions on MT, Wordpress, etc. Soc nets, etc
  (tags: social_media blogging)
• Brijit - Great content in 100 words or less
  A site that abridges articles from the New Yorker, The Economist. I was going to start something a few years ago in newsletter form that did something like this. Wanted to give people the ability to seem brighter than they were at cocktail parties. Need to think about whether I would seek this site out. Still think I'd prefer a newsletter digest.
  (tags: blogging business journalism)
• Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times
  I like the name Open Social
  (tags: social_media facebook google)

Imbibe heartily

My good friend Dave Wondrich, who happens to be one of the foremost cocktail experts (hence a reason he is a good friend) and a Professor in both the senses of the word,  has a fantastic new book out next week called Imbibe. It is a combination of a history of a amazing age and a guide to recreating authentic cocktails that pulls from and enhances the work of the original Professor of the bar Jerry Thomas. The author of the first cocktail book and a keen member of the sporting life Thomas lived and worked in NY, SF, Virgina City, and spots in between. The book covers the gold rush,  the reasons for Georgia having peaches, and  interesting tales of the sporting life. The cocktail part enables you to adopt measures, make syrups and bitters, flaming drinks, punches (I can attest to their potency and find myself thankful that the Navy no longer presses people) and generally travel back in time to great cocktails which you will be happy to imbibe.  And since glasses were smaller back then you can have more of them.

links for 2007-10-30

• Apple Retail Store - One to One
  Apple is offering 52 weeks of personal computer instruction for $99 a year. Several older people I know are now using this. One is now e-mailing thus freeing her son from faxing her messages, another is now on DSL and toting a laptop. Pretty fantastic stuff.  UPDATE : as they get more adept the usual mix of petitions and alert mails they send is now likely to be augmented by Jib Jab and You Tube videos, so I may have to reconsider. 
• ClickZ: Green Up Your E-mail

links for 2007-10-29

• Man who had sex with bike in court - Telegraph
  "The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex."...He is not the first man to be convicted of a sexual offence involving an inanimate object, however...Karl Watkins, an electrician, was jailed for having sex with pavement." (tags: news cycling)
• Twitter / mattb2518 - Man blogs the birth of his child
  I think B would have killed me if I had tried anything like this. Also I was so involved that unless I dictated it I couldn't have kept up. Is this cool? or just over the line? (tags: blogging)
• How to Build A Successful App on Facebook, Guaranteed! - The Unofficial Facebook Blog
  translate apps and this nugget - "go through a bookstore and look at the covers of every magazine. If any of the demographics being targeted by the magazines aren’t currently served (or are underserved) on Facebook, go build an application that targets this niche." (tags: facebook applications)
• Concerts and Thoroughbreds
  My friend Adam twittering the Breeder's Cup and uploading video of his handicapping choices and horses to YouTube. Great stuff. (tags: blogging horse_racing)
• LifeRemix | Great writing about great lives
  interesting mini-network of blogs - the happiness project, and investing site, all people thinking about how to live better lives. (tags: aggregator blogs happiness green_living guide)
• Al Gore's Current: Re-defining TV Watching Using the Web
  (tags: newmedia internet SocialSoftware technology trends)

links for 2007-10-25

• Social Site Rankings (September, 2007)
  (tags: socialnetworking)
• Top 10 Bootstrapping Tips

Tastebook and Booktailor

In this day and age when many older things seem new again, the announcement that CondeNast has invested in a company called Tastebook, which enables users to create custom cookbooks took me back to a now defunct company called Booktailor which enabled users to create custom travel guides in 2000. That company funded by Bertelsmann and then shut down.

links for 2007-10-24

• Chinese luxury market -- all smoke and mirrors? - Boing Boing
  The word and idea of Luxury has lost much of its meaning.

links for 2007-10-23

• Five Easy Ways to Go Organic - Well - New York Times Blog
  (tags: environment baby)
• blog about the thinking behind a really lovely last.fm listening graph
  avc.blogs.com has a graph of his last.fm music choices for the past year. It appears in a beautiful audiowave like graph. This is a link to the blog of the programmer behind it. nice thoughts on data visualization
  (tags: visualization research music)

links for 2007-10-21

• The Right-Wing Facebook | Rudy Giuliani
  Funny parody- too bad they didn't actually build this into facebook as an app.
  (tags: facebook politics)
• Spoke POV - Persistence of Vision Toy with Kit
  (tags: cycling DIY opensource)
• SpokePOV Kit [v1.1] - $37.50 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
  needed to make the custom spoke display.
  (tags: cycling DIY)

links for 2007-10-20

• Curbed: Vegas on the Hudson Vote Delayed, Again
  Go Rich, Fred and team. Nice to see local residents making a difference.
• Pogues Imponderables - Pogue’s Posts - Technology - New York Times Blog
  Good questions. A younger Andy Rooney. via Kottke
  (tags: internet technology lists)
• Web 2.0: Meeker Outlines Online Growth Trends, While Emphasizing Recession Fears
• Social Maps Site Platial Acquires Frappr

Wildlife found on our deck this morning.

This morning we found a dead bird on our deck. My immediate thought was to call 311 where I was told that if I wanted to file a "complaint" about a possible case of West Nile virus, it would take two business days. I was also given instructions on how to dispose of the bird. I chose the latter, but as I was putting it into the garbage bag it turned over and had the most extraordinary beak. Immediately we got out the Sibley and I (in retrospect ignoring the sizing info) identified it as something like a Hudsonian Godwit or a Bristle-Thighed Curlew.  Armed with that exciting info we decided to call the Prospect Park Audubon Center who asked us to send these photos to their Chief Naturalist. He identified it as an American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), an upland shorebird (basically a sandpiper that is adapted for a forest habitat).  They migrate overland and sadly are particularly prone to colliding with windows. Poor bird.

Friday cat bobcat (crossing a road in Redding, CT.) blogging

links for 2007-10-19

• Francine Whitney - a blog with daily lyrics to old songs
  My friend Francine has started posting lyrics and the backstory of old songs. For anyone who listens to Danny Stiles on NPR this is a blog for you. today she features "Going to sit right down and write myself a letter..." wish she would add mp3s
  (tags: music)
• Anil Dash: Gawker Reckoning
  Thanks David
  (tags: blogging)
• Will Social Features Make Email Sexy Again? - WSJ.com
  yahoo e-mail at 250 million users, "the largest dormant social network..."
  (tags: facebook socialnetworking e-mail)
• Wheelgirl: Make a $5 Be Seen Solar Bike Light in Your Kitchen
  (tags: cycling environment green_living)
• eBay Neighborhoods - Cycling
  have you all checked out e-bay's social network? some very nice things going on. I like the neighborhood signs, division of posts.
  (tags: e-bay socialnetworking)
• eBay: Here Come the Neighborhoods « GigaOM
  "eBay Neighborhoods is, really, a social network powered by commodity fetishism, a development that might horrify the critical theory scholars but is in fact a natural outgrowth of what eBay has been doing all along. At its peak, eBay was more than an auc
  (tags: eBay socialnetworking)

cycling dream - polyvore (nice app)

links for 2007-10-18

• 10 Questions
  Community selects 10 questions to ask a Presidential Candidate.
  (tags: politics technology)
• [Web2Summit]: Jonathan Zittrain, Contrarian ... and Worried
  "Zittrain ... that Facebook is a closed system a la Compuserve, and he walked through some of the more onerous aspects of Facebook's terms of service....Microsoft's approach to its developers seems, in comparison, remarkably open. He also called on a vari
  (tags: facebook social_media socialnetworking business)
• Ballistic Nylon Clarks
  Yes Clarks the shoes in a cool Japanese version
  (tags: fashion)
• RSS Best Practices Profile
  (tags: programming guide)

links for 2007-10-16

• DailyLit: Read books by email and RSS.
  (tags: feeds publishing)
• Howstuffworks "Discovery Communications to Acquire Top Knowledge Web Site HowStuffWorks.com"
  (tags: business media reference)

"I look like an Orthodox Hamburglar..."

Shalom Auslander wrote a very funny essay about  the experience of wearing a Thom Browne. suit as an assignment. It appeared in the past weekend's NYT Magazine about wealth and NYC. Thom Browne. is also responsible for the Black Fleece line at Brooks Brothers which Auslander should try next as I'd love his take on wearing a cape and knickers. Other must reads in that issue are Daphne Merkin's essay in the back and James Traub's Measures of Wealth. 

links for 2007-10-15

• Nineteeneightyfouria: Shepard Fairey Interview
  Shepard Fairey one of the godfathers of the modern urban art scene and creator of the Obey Andre the Giant figure which can be found all over the world, gives an interview to Coolhunting
  (tags: art)
• Those Key Early Employees
  post on the importance of the first employees of start-ups. they set the tone.
  (tags: business)
• New York Times Puts Reader Comments on Main Page - Good Idea?
  IMHO no. I think the addition of comments is a nice idea but would rather see the # of comments appear on the articles. Really didn't like the appearance of an idiotic comment right below the Headline that Gore had won the Nobel Prize. Gave a Fox like sla
  (tags: journalism news community)
• Interview: Henry Copeland, CEO, Founder of BlogAds: To Make Money At Blogging, Rein In Comments
  Speaking of comments...
  (tags: community blogging)

links for 2007-10-13

• Naomi Wolf: American Tears - Politics on The Huffington Post
  (tags: politics history)