Category Archives: Uncategorized

by eubie

Boing Boing — favorites from the past

by eubie

KK Lifestream — favorites from the past

The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World

Awesome Musical Tapes From Africa

Tips for Conference Bloggers

Playing Digital Games Together

One of my biggest surprises as a parent has been to see how often video games and computer games turned into social events. I had been led by many media reports to believe that playing video games was an anti-social act. So when our kids turned player age, I  was expecting to see them hide away while playing games. Sure, that does happen, but more often their choice is to play games — whether video, computer, or with balls outside — with their friends.

Downtailing

In a November 10, 2006 blog posting Carr postulated that blogs were headed down to further obscurity rather than up to the floodlights of fame.  He wrote: “Back in October 2004, there were three blogs in the Technorati top 10. Last year, there was one. Today, there are zero. Defining the short head more broadly, as the top 100 sites, provides an even starker picture of the rapid downtailing of blogs.”

Subterranean Tutoring

For more extreme nerdiness like this fuse-blowing, eyes-popping, brain-frying backyard craziness, check out this Australian mate’s website. Gigantic tesla coils are just the start of it. He’s got a dozen other outrageously neato basement experiments going.

The Tools of Cool Tools

Eight years ago Cool Tools started out as short email messages containing my personal recommendations for cool stuff. I occasionally emailed these quick raves to a very small circle of friends. Several of my friends asked me to add their friends to my list. Soon there were several hundred readers. In the winter of 2000 I published 90 or so of my tool reviews in an issue of Whole Earth Review. This was not much of a surprise since I used to edit the magazine, and the reviews were clearly written in Whole Earth style — short, always positive, useful. I kept reviewing a tool or book when I thought of it, but after several years of adding folks to the list (which is still going) it occurred to me that with a small amount of extra work I might as well post my recommendations on a blog. On April 17, 2003, five years ago, I posted the first review on this site. (It was the Utili-Key, a sharp blade built into a key, a tool I continue to use and get past airport security.)

Affluence is Good

For the past 30 years the conventional wisdom has been that once a person achieves a minimal standard of living, more money does not bring more happiness. If you live below a certain income threshold, increased money makes a difference, but after that, it doesn’t buy happiness. That was the conclusion of a now-classic study by Richard Easterlin in 1974.

However a recent paper disputes that conclusion and shows that worldwide, afflluence brings increased satisfaction. The New York Times produced a fine graph, along with a good article, “Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All,” illustrating this new thesis.  Richard Easterlin would like to see better data for individual countries over time, but it does seem like affluence breeds satisfaction.

Self-Generating Money vs. Productive Wealth

Movage

Digital continuity is a real problem. Digital information is very easy to copy within short periods of time, but very difficult to copy over long periods of time. That is, it is very easy to make lots of copies now, but very difficult to get the data to copy over a century.

Amish Hackers

The Amish have the undeserved reputation of being luddites, of people who refuse to employ new technology. It’s well known the strictest of them don’t use electricity, or automobiles, but rather farm with manual tools and ride in a horse and buggy.  In any debate about the merits of embracing new technology, the Amish stand out as offering an honorable alternative of refusal. Yet Amish lives are anything but anti-technological. In fact on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it-yourselfers and surprisingly pro technology.

The Sudden Appearance of Technology

This cool tool graphs the frequency of words used in US State of Union address since 1790. You enter two different words and this website races them (thus speech wars) in chart form to see which term is more common.


by eubie

Smarterware — favorites from the past

Gmail Priority Inbox Puts Important Messages First
On Google Wave and “Failed” Experiments
Google Apps vs. Google Accounts Parity Coming
What Private Facebook Information Your Friends Can Publish
TWiG Live from SXSW
Google, Gmail, and Google Apps Accounts Explained
Control Your Email Inbox with Three Folders
Google Wave Versus the Rest, Feature by Feature
About That Google Server Breach

Douglas Rushkoff floats the idea that Google’s China announcement is a smokescreen for the fact that their servers got hacked–which means your data isn’t safe in the cloud. A serious and well-publicized security breach would be a crushing setback in Google’s cloud apps business. Was the China surveillance and Gmail break-in it, and we just missed it amidst all the cheering? The question mark at the end of his headline makes me think that Rushkoff’s unconvinced about his own thesis; still, it’s an interesting theory.

Update Your Google Account Password Recovery Options

Adopt a Freelancer’s Mindset (Even If You’re a Nine-to-Fiver)
Programmer 101: Teach Yourself How to Code
My New Book: The Complete Guide to Google Wave
How to SMS with Google Voice from Any Mobile Phone
The Google Wave Highlight Reel
On Archiving, Curating, and Republishing Public Twitter Conversations

Frequently Asked Questions About Google Wave

Google Wave 2009 Year-End Screencast

by eubie

Cool Tools — favorites posts from the past

Access All Areas

This book is packed solid with great practical advice on how to explore this unexplored realm. Every page has something I didn’t know about gaining access, staying safe, and discovering new paths in the urban wilds. While this activity is generally considered illegal, the respect for the buildings, and the owners, nurtured in this guide is impressive.

Blurb * Lulu

Having tried most of the services available and created dozens of books, I’m ready to recommend the best services to use. My advice is slightly complicated, because the success of book making and book publishing pivots around your aims.

To turn a text manuscript into a regular book, either softcover or hard, I recommend Lulu. Their website has a very thorough step-by-step process which will enable you to make a book with the least amount of money.

Fiskars PowerGear Bypass Pruner

As you squeeze, the bottom handle rolls slightly and this motion leverages the power in the scissor cut. I find I can now tackle stuff that ordinarily I would have had to run back to get the larger pruners for.

GustBuster Umbrella

The GustBuster is a cool-looking, lightning resistant umbrella with a patented system of vents that is, the manufacturer claims, “wind tunnel certified to 55+ mph.”

Lighten Up!

“Ultralight” even has a definition now: it’s when your pack and everything in it (except consumables such as water and food) weighs 10 pounds or less. Backpacking becomes a jaunt instead of a slog, and that liberates the whole experience.

Nesco Food Dehydrator

The Nesco Food Dehydrator is a simple, affordable, and well-built tool for drying foods quickly and thoroughly. Though not an every day use item for most people, when it is needed it becomes absolutely essential.

NOLS Thelma Fly

I first used a Thelma fly in Yellowstone in January of ’84 and have used this extraordinarily versatile piece of camping gear in many situations since then. They are manufactured by NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School). I rarely take a tent when I go camping, and instead just take the fly. I use it for car-camping, backpacking, or even just for shade at the beach. Unlike many flys, this one is large, 13′ long x 9’2″ wide, and well designed in that it has many guying points, crucial for keeping out the weather when things get a little dicey. It sleeps three easily with lots of gear.

The Daily Plate

The Daily Plate at Livestrong.com does for dieting what Quicken did for my checking account. I have been using it to log my food and exercise for the last three or four months. Basically, you type in what you eat, and it searches for a match, gives you the calories and nutrients and adds it to your daily and weekly totals.

CreateSpace

CreateSpace.com is the self-publishing arm of Amazon, providing a service that makes it easy for an individual to self-publish books, CDs, and DVDs. I’ve used CreatSpace for books and highly recommend it.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten, two guys who sell biz books, seem to have read all of the ones in print, and they have done the world a favor by selecting the 100 best business books ever, and then packing summaries of them all into one meta-book. If all you want is their list, you can go to their website and check it out.

Oxfam America Unwrapped

my Cool Tool for the holidays is Oxfam’s Unwrapped project: I buy a gift in someone’s name, they get a card, I get a tax deduction, and someone in a developing country gets a goat, some chickens, a school desk and chair, some text books, or something else they really need.

Vacation Rentals By Owner

VRBO.com is an excellent means of finding reasonably priced accommodations, in the U.S. and abroad, that are often larger and more comfortable than hotel rooms, at a lower price.

Scottevest Hidden Cargo Pants

The Hidden Cargo Pants are more formal than the Ultimate Cargos, or 5.11 Tactical Pants. The Hidden Cargos feel more like dress pants. The main difference between the Ultimate and Hidden is that the Ultimate have a rougher fabric, cargo pockets, and zip-off lower legs. The main pocket suspension is the same.

Geocaching Tools

Trangia 25-7 UL/HA

Littlbug Stove

Bessey Ratcheting Spring Clamps

Specialty Bottle

— This retailer sells all sorts of glass, plastic and tin containers at extremely low prices.

Personal Safety Emergency Pack

If you’re camping or hiking in a group, you can’t go wrong with the previously-reviewed Adventure Medical Kit. But if you’re a citygoing 9-5’er (read: not a search-and-rescuer), the Red Cross’ personal safety kit packs many of the basics — whistle, blanket, face mask, glow stick, poncho, germ wipes and first-aid kit — for a price that’s more or less unbeatable.

Sounds Oasis

Free topo maps

The easiest way is to download a free nifty app for Google Earth, called the Topographical Overlay, that will add a KMZ “layer” of official US topo maps on Google Earth.

Gratitude Loop

Ten minutes before you’re due to start, while everyone is finding their seats, run the presentation. It’ll cycle 5 or 10 times before you start speaking. When you get up, start your presentation and just dive into the meaty stuff.

Every single person you feature will be famous! “Hey, I saw you in that loop!”

The Personal MBA

Josh Kaufman has put together an excellent and very hefty reading list which forms the core of his PMBA course. It is downloadable as a free PDF. The recommended readings are wide, deep, holistic, and very good. You could purchase all of these easily available books for $500, and if you combine study of them with actually trying stuff, you’ll be far ahead in the business game.

Rails-to-Trails

Every year 2,000 miles of railways in the US are abandoned. So far, about half of the 300,000 miles railways built by 1916 (the railroad peak) have been taken out of service. Some 13,000 of those miles have been repurposed into bike/hike trails.