I wonder if this is what Sir Tim Berners-Lee expected to happen:
Happy invoicing!
- How Shazam Works - "There is a cool service called Shazam, which take a short sample of music, and identifies the song. There are couple ways to use it, but one of the more convenient is to install their free app onto an iPhone. Just hit the 'tag now' button, hold the phone’s mic up to a speaker, and it will usually identify the song and provide artist information, as well as a link to purchase the album." Nice summary of how it works by Bryan Jacobs, with a link to the PDF of a paper by one of Shazam's developers for those who want the nitty-gritty.
- The Reverse Geocache™ Puzzle Box - "Early this summer, the friend who first introduced me to Arduino amazed us with the news that he was moving to France to get married. Once I recovered from the surprise, it occurred to me that putting together some sort of Arduino-based wedding present might be a uniquely fitting thanks for his years of friendship... I finally settled on building the device I describe here: a puzzle box that won’t open until it is taken to a certain location." Cool hardware project by Mikal Hart; follow his links to read several followups on the original story.
- How to Run a Meeting - "A meeting has two critical components: an agenda and a referee. Let’s start with the obvious — the agenda. The agenda answers the question everyone is wondering as they sit down: how do I get out of this meeting so I can actually work?" Useful advice from Michael Lopp, author of Managing Humans and Being Geek.
- Non-obvious solutions - "This site shows common tasks and the uncommon (but superior) ways of doing them." Perfect for those days when you really, really need a new way of taking your t-shirt off or eating a chicken wing.
- When a deaf man has Tourette’s - "I recently came across a fascinating case study... [concerning] a 29-year-old man who had been deaf since infancy. We’ll call him Signing Sal. Sal, as it happens, also had Tourette’s. In most people, coprolalia involves randomly blurting out obscenities. Sal, however, wasn’t shouting out obscenities—he was signing them." The fact that Tourette's causes obscene outbursts in non-vocal communication has interesting implications for understanding the condition.
- The Man Who Would Fall to Earth - "From 120,000 feet, Felix Baumgartner will step from a sealed capsule and drop 23 miles. In 35 seconds, he will become the first human to free-fall through the sound barrier. What happens after that, nobody knows..." The jump is supposedly still scheduled for this year, but no definite date has yet been announced.
- The Periodic Table of Videos - "Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one." Neat collection from the University of Nottingham, still receiving regular updates.
- A Hacker Games the Hotel - "A vulnerability in many hotel television infrared systems can allow a hacker to obtain guests' names and their room numbers from the billing system... It can also let someone read the e-mail of guests who use web mail through the TV, putting business travelers at risk of corporate espionage. And it can allow an intruder to add or delete charges on a hotel guest's bill or watch pornographic films and other premium content on their hotel TV without paying for it." The article is from 2005, but those of you who regularly stay in hotels might wonder how often their systems are updated.
- The Unseen Sea - "A collection of time lapses I took around the San Francisco Bay Area roughly shot over the period of one year." Amazing videos of fog, clouds, and cityscapes from Simon Christen. Watch it in full-screen HD with the lights down low and your headphones on:
- Passive-Aggressive Notes - "funny (if not necessarily 'passive-aggressive') notes from pissed-off people" - and not just notes:
Happy invoicing!
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