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The height of consumerism — a hot dog toaster!
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Really cool to see a tech/web conference happening in Africa. Personally not a fan of Joburg, but very happy to see this happening in SA
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“Most of the leading websites around the world are failing to provide the most basic accessibility standards for people with disabilities.”
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UserFriendly prediction for 2007 is spot on and hilarious!
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This looks really really cool. It’s great to see even a (relatively) small company like Fog Creek invest so much in its people.
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Michael’s written a great smackdown of the “kids these days, so rude” attitude. Personally I think he’s right — the more readership you have, the greater the statistical probability that you have some assholes.
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What a random little list!
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“The 5 steps of how a story spreads”
Quite insightful. -
Tom’s right — this is the scariest advert EVER.
This latest comic graph over at indexed is absolute genius:
I just noticed Kottke’s year in cities post and figured that’s as good a way to sum up my year as anything. A lot of it seems a bit of a blur and I think a lot of that is down to the travel … and of course the wedding.
So here’s my list of cities I visited in 2006:
ABROAD:
- Brussels, Belgium
- Houston, TX, USA
- Austin, TX, USA
- Chicago, IL, USA
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Dublin, Ireland
- Bucharest, Romania
- Warsaw, Poland
- Cincinnati, OH, USA
I also almost went to Russia, but let’s just say things got … lost and complicated.
UK:
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear
- Market Bosworth, Leicestershire
- Bristol, Somerset
- Bath, Avon
- Weybridge, Surrey
- Woking, Surrey
- London
- Leeds, Yorkshire
- Tiverton, Devon
Unfortunately I didn’t get to make it home this year, although we’re hoping to make it back to South Africa in 2007.
Via Ping, I just discovered Kiva which seems an absolutely FANTASTIC idea to me. It’s an enabling site, allowing anyone in the world to provide small loans to specific entrepreneurs — the long tail of banking.
There are two reasons that I think this is fantastic: Firstly, it’s a LOAN. The entrepreneurs pay the money back, although obviously there is some risk that if their venture fails you won’t get your cash back. However, you can part-fund a loan and so it’s pretty easy to balance your risk by offering small loans to a number of people. Secondly, it’s NOT charity. Many people in developing countries are doing OK for themselves — they don’t need charity, but can benefit hugely from a no-interest loan. And if it’s money that first-worlders could happily give away, then everyone benefits.
Non-consumerist presents are all the rage this Xmas — from Alpaca packages to Terrapasses. I just wanted to encourage people to think about this option too — after all, at the end of the day it costs you nothing!
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Absolutely WONDERFUL tutorial from Simon about why & how to use OpenID. He’s followed up with an excellent screencast too.
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Nice rundown of ten seriously useful APIs
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Nat’s written a great article describing how and why to perform simple usability testing. The real gold, however, is in her little tips and tricks for getting testers to loosen up and flow with the process — I particularly like the stapler trick!
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Every time I forget a password and the site emails me the original password, I have exactly the same thoughts!
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“See - people who work with word processors and spreadsheets have rights too! And they could benefit dramatically from much better collaboration.”
Mark nails it again - a great challenge for OSS to attack -
“Geeks aren’t interested in politics because government doesn’t double its efficiency and speed once every 18 months”
Great geeky Xmas cracker mottos from Stuart -
Cute little quiz. I scored 20% and am not sure whether that worries me or not!h
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“But we’re leaving a lot of folks behind. And I’m not just talking about the digital divide that separates the Internet haves from the have-nots. Even among the haves, the ideas and tools and methods that some of us take for granted haven’t really put down roots in the mainstream.”
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“The holiday season is supposed to be a time for families to make memories together. When my kids are grown, they’ll remember waking up every December morning and finding the murdered corpse of a six inch shepherd by the piano.”
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“I don’t even know the seller’s name, but I take some comfort in the fact that if I ever need to buy drugs or a gun or a Playstation 3, I already know the routine.”
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“91% of the people who came to the permalink for yesterday’s post visited WordPress.com to see the new design. Online advertising is usually thrilled to get a 1-2% clickthrough rate.”
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“Q. How many cartoonists does it take to change a light bulb? A. More than the number living in my house.”
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A plethora of oldskool
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“And, obviously, we have rough hands, from constantly tinkering with our motorbikes - certainly no good for nappy changing.”
ROTFL!! I have to say I am also feeling a sort of vicious satisfaction at Mary Cheney’s pregnancy… -
“Data visualization can be funny.”
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Definitely the find of the day — check it out
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I love this kind of idea — it makes saving unconscious. Abbey has a similar option where you can clear away any balance left in your current account at the end of the month into a savings account.
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If I didn’t know better, I’d think that the UN had just suggested that something like Microsoft Passport would make us all SAFER
I’ve been in Cincinnati all week, getting to grips with the new job. I arrived Sunday, after a fairly eventful flight from Newcastle to Gatwick, a flat-out run across the airport to catch my Delta connection and a rather luxurious onward flight to Cincinnati.
Cincinnati is interesting. It’s certainly the coldest place I’ve ever been — not that hard for a South African though, admittedly 
I wished for snow and I got it, to the chagrin of some of my colleagues who ended up stuck on the highway coming into town in the week. I’m glad to have seen some proper cold weather though — all the Xmas imagery is a lot more at home in this weather than in the 30-40 degrees Celsius that I was used to as a child.
I’m in awe, as usual, at the sheer SCALE of the US. Buildings are huge, roads are wide, cars are tanks, meal portions are gigantic, etc. Apart from the weather, I’m finding Cinci to be quite similar to the other parts of the US I’ve visited in the past (i.e. Texas and California). The strangest thing for me though is how FAMILIAR some of it feels. I suppose South Africa and America have a lot in common at the end of the day — European settlement happened at a similar time, both are still relatively young countries, there’s an abundance of space and history is relatively scarce (compared to the UK at least — I’ve been in numerous churches older than my home country there!).
Also, did I mention I love being in a country where they know what to do with a decent bit of meat? I’ve had some AMAZING steak since I arrived (most notably at McCormack & Schmick’s which lived up to its reputation for seafood with the calamari starter, but totally reminded me how wonderful strip steak can be) and last night had the best ribs I have eaten in a long, long time at the original Montgomery Inn. This was after my very first visit to an Apple Store. Suffice it to say, it was very very cool.
Tonight I’m flying down to Austin to spend time with some of my favourite people, chill out and hopefully partake of some Texas BBQ, continuing my Magical Mystery Meat Tour of America(TM).
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Really interesting and entertaining account of eating live food — drunken shrimp and lobster sashimi in this case. Not quite as hilarious as Simon squeaking like a girl, but still good
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Very cool video — they should do more stuff like this in schools to keep interest in Science up!
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The UnSuggester shows you what books you are LEAST likely to want, given a book that you already own/appreciate. I love the results I got here by typing in Neil Gaiman’s “Good Omens”
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This is the face of true middle England acceptance. Doesn’t it just give you the warm fuzzies?
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Interested to see how this plays out — especially as my bags got lost on the way over to the US yesterday!
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What I find MOST interesting about these developments in my home country is that legislation is very much leading social change. Growing up in SA, I faced a LOT of open discrimination. But the country has taken a stand — the constitution says discriminat
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“South Africa, among the worst-affected nations, has announced a plan aiming to halve the infection rate by 2011 and to boost the use of antiretrovirals.”
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“It found evidence of hate crime and discrimination against people with HIV, which was driving some into poverty and isolation.”
If cancer sufferers were treated the same way as those with HIV, everyone would be up in arms -
Rather scary account of social engineering security breach in a bank.
