Welcome to another addition of TGIF. I hope that you have all had a great week, and that it hasn’t rained as much as it has here in Sydney. Valentines day is tomorrow (Ozzy time) and I hope that you have all prepared something nice for the one you love and sometimes get irritated with. If you don’t have such a person then buy yourself something nice instead 
Without further ado…
Stuff I really liked this week…
I love the Poken 
device which is like a keyring and you touch someone else’s poken and all your social network info and so is transfered. next time you go online, you’re connected! There’s a Google tech talk on that.
Nicholas Carr released his new book called “The big switch: rewiring the world from Edison to Google“. It’s all about shifting to cloud computing.
BeFunky which allows you to upload photos and turn them into very funky art work. It also plugs into Facebook, Flickr and others.
Scott Brinkers’ “Top 10 reasons why the semantic web is a lot like love” – excellent stuff.
Quotes:
A designer knows he’s achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. (A. de Saint-Exupery)
Any noun can be verbed. (A. Perlis)
Vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not their end. (K. Gibran)
Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment. (F. Brooks)
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. (H. H. Williams)
Facts:
There are more than 1000 chemicals in every cup of coffee.
Repetition is the secret to accessing the unconscious mind of people.
Most purchasing decisions are made in the unconscious.
The original name of Bank of America was Bank of Italy
On average women say 7,000 words per day. Men manage just over 2000.
The Poken thing is a great idea, not seen them until now but definitely a cool little gadget, problem is it doesn’t have value unless it’s really popular
I had to laugh at the love/semantic web link too, I kinda think the points could be describing SEO too!
Also really like the Brooks quote.
Hi Craig,
I agree with you about the Poken thing, wouldn’t it be cool if the technology could be ported to your USB key instead for example, or adapted to your phone? You’re right the love/semantic web thing can be applied to SEO – nice comment!
There’s a lot of stuff over on language log about gender differences in communication events per day. The 7000:2000 ratio is pretty much debunked.
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=001269089414569134552%3Aqvjtfauf7ou&ie=UTF-8&q=women+speak+more+than+men&sa=Search
The facts of the week are always open for destruction and aren’t picked out from the most authoritative resources every time! Thanks Jason for that link, very interesting.
Sorry if my comment came off as a bit curt.. Can I blame it on low blood to caffeine levels?
It’s a difficult problem, though, because that 7:2 ratio was reported a lot in the media and still sits around un-retracted on many news sources. Not even all news sources agree it should be retracted. That goes for a lot of news stories, like the story about how a Google search supposedly equals the carbon emissions from boiling a half-kettle of tea. That was debunked by Google, and yet news outlets are still reporting it as if it were fact.
A tool that places news stories in time so that they tell a coherent story without overwhelming you with information would be awesome. Any idea if anything like that exists yet?
Oh no Jason, don’t worry it’s good to have people put to right these facts, that’s part of the reason they’re there. I remember reading about this on language log too, I should add it to my blog roll actually! Giving a different point of view is valuable! Keep ‘em coming!
Very interesting this Blog. Congratulations!
Att,
Marcelo
Thank you Marcelo! I like yours too, I’m going to have an international section on my blogroll, yours will be added.