Category: bookmarks

How things have changed on the digital landscape. Too bad not all the Forrester reports are accessible though.

Stumbled upon this article while searching for the "My Fair Lady" song.
'Generally and statistically speaking, men and women have different and sometimes complementary minds and abilities, just as they have different and sometimes complementary bodies.'

Some nice ones with not so nice ones, but a long list nonetheless. Some engineer oughta do a proper study & find out the exact duration & percentage of the book driving the film. It's bound to be in the 5%-70% range.
P.S. I haven't read the book.

'Yes, our education system needs urgent reform. Yes, we need to relook at our exam system. Yes, we need to ensure that parents do not pressurize children. But in the pursuit of educational reform, we cannot allow standards of excellence to be lowered. India's IITs and IIMs must be applauded for the world-class minds they have thrown up, these are institutions that are respected the world over. Lets not start lampooning Indian engineers by showing them as students who deliver babies with vacuum cleaners. Let's get real about higher education, not engage in an escapist fantasy and convince ourselves that education does not matter. After all, Rancho could be a subversive because he was a genius student. For those who are not geniuses, alas, there are no short cuts.'

Some simple but humorous equations

All the flash animation files to make the movie available for download. Now that's open source movie making.

Definitely not a complete list by any means.

Now that's really putting things in context

The case for showmanship vs invisible action…
"Security theater" refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards.

An interesting bunch of predictions for the rumoured Apple tablet. Let's see how it turns out.

The ideal tool to get the water to the horse. I wonder when someone'll come up with one to make the horse drink it.

'It is impossible to truly learn about our whole Self and grow into more conscious human beings without this kind of internal self-honesty and as Robert Johnson says in the book Owning Your Own Shadow, it takes a great deal of courage.'

Now that's taking things too literally, but still an interesting creation.
'Because old macs never really die… they just continue on as works of art.'

I've played some of them & yes they can be quite addictive

A handy little article to detect fakes. Tips range from observing the lighting to clone tool detectors

Good for reference

An independent movie based on Nintendo's Zelda characters that was available online has been pulled down. Guess which movie is gonna see a spurt in its P2P sharing activity.

A long list at that, but he does have good taste. Gotta grant him that.

Interesting list ranging from the IT industry to general development

Very important milestones ranging from the increased penetration of broadband to flash video becoming the standard courtesy youtube.

Making snowflakes in the lab & capturing time lapse images. Neat!

Yup, a really large handset, but it works.

Can't argue with the findings, but then again laymen could've come up with better insights.

I wonder how it'll work out. I guess some people will post about the event online. Interesting event nonetheless.
'The event is named #socialtrance and is solely for users of facebook and Twitter. Users who take part will be hypnotised and given positive suggestion to improve their lives for the better.'

Handy service if you want to jointly view a video with friends. Wonder what kind of applications this might have. Joint analysis maybe?

'Given its limitations, New Year's resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year. Human routines are stubborn things, which helps explain why 88% of all resolutions end in failure, according to a 2007 survey of over 3,000 people conducted by the British psychologist Richard Wiseman. Bad habits are hard to break—and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once.'

I wonder whether it really works

Chetan Bhagat's side of the credit story for 3 Idiots. It's funny how a name of a city & the likes can stop movies, but none care when author's are not given due credit.

EssayRater is a writing support tool that proofreads your texts and protects you against:
* Plagiarism
* Spelling errors
* Poor word choice
* Poor grammar
* Punctuation mistakes

They're quite detailed

Handy guide on what to do in case you misplace the Canon Software CDs. Just put in the registry keys & run the updaters.

A comic strip spoofing the movie. I watched it today & here are my learnings:
1. Directors should have their offices on the ground floor.
2. Engineers are in serious need of a suicide hotline.
3. Doctors should always carry a vacuum cleaner with them.
4. If you are an MBA grad working abroad, then don't wait till mid to late 30s to get married, or else your bride may run away to Ladakh to ride a scooter.
5. The Airtel network is better around a remote bridge up north than in the IITB campus & at home in Bangalore.
6. Pencil wood is also flammable in high oxygen environments & so that's another factor to worry about – http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen
7. Going green may be good for the environment, but stay away from green chutneys if in a relationship.

'I'm no career counselor but I do know that the job requirements of the Information Age have shifted the way people work and the responsibilities they assume in many undocumented ways.
I don't think human resource departments are especially aware of this shift and, based on panels and sessions I've sat on or listened to, I'm very sure a lot of respected higher-education institutions don't understand it at all. Sadly, a lot of undergrad and graduate business school is still about professors selling the latest edition of their textbook.'

Amit Agarwal's account of how to get back your gmail/google account if it's hacked

So it was a poor choice of words after all. The marketing guys are in hot water all right –

Extracts photos based on the words typed in to form a photo story. Does give some interesting results.

So now we have landmarks featuring in the directions to make life easier.

Virus models made out of glass & more

Courseware from Harvard, MIT & other top universities. Interestingly, the material seems to be Creative Commons licensed.

Wonder whether we should have (or already have) something for the IITs?

Replaces the static icon in Windows 7 with the animated one like in Windows Vista & below. Funny thing that this was an area where Windows got downgraded.

So far so good, but will they be singing the same tune if Chrome gets a major piece of the browser pie?

Create an manga avatar for yourself

$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected

Combining multiple photos

A handy tool from Google to check out how much of a site different visitors can see. Not too useful for centred pages though.

A compilation of some of Paul Samuelson's big ideas in economics that have shaped many an economic theory.

Interesting way to run a store & survive at that
'The shop's front door was shut tight. The little "Will Return At" sign that was attached to it was of no help — its clocklike hands were conspicuously missing.
It was another business day at the Never Open Store.
At a time when vacant storefronts and "For Lease" signs dot Melrose Avenue, Stephanie Mata's tiny shop is doing just fine, thank you.
The Never Open Store is open only when Mata feels like unlocking it and allowing shoppers inside.
Those who do get in are intrigued by the merchandise that fills every cranny of the 245-square-foot shop.'

Pathological leaders & their problems

Very pretty. Gives you a feeling of standing all alone in a vast environment at times.

Right from Obi Wan & Yoda to Transformers, the geekiness universe visualized.

The current leader will always try to control growth, and thus slit its own throat. Call that Gates' Law, because he both discovered it (as it applied to IBM) and fell victim to it (in his struggle to control the web).

'Using a male pseudonym when you're a woman isn't anything new. Writers have been doing it for centuries. George Eliot, George Sand, Isak Dinesen. Even the Brontë sisters, championed today, wrote as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell back in their time.
Why did they do it? To have their work accepted, because women weren't supposed to be writers. Their work had a much better chance if their audience didn't have to get over initial skepticism that a woman could write at all, much less do it well.'

Text of a speech Bill Watterson gave at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class. Includes his experiences like painting a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of the dorm room.

Now you know what to do & how to do it. Wonder whether they'll come out with the perfect automated pizza cutter next…

Leveraging word of mouth & an incentive driven system to maximize impact

'Rainmeter is a desktop customization platform. Through Rainmeter, you can enhance your Windows computer at home or work with skins: handy, compact applets which float freely on your desktop, much like Windows Sidebar gagdgets, or dashboard widgets for the Mac.'

A very handy list of freeware tools, including Win 7 shortcuts, virus scanners, Firefox, Thunderbird etc

A handy way to run Ubuntu Linux within Windows, especially to run Linux only Apps. Should also run off a USB drive.

Very handy utility to enable the Windows 7 shortcuts like dock window to the left/right, show desktop etc, for Windows XP & Vista

A bunch of windows recovery tools

'Twoddler is a prototype that has been created as part of a course on mobile and pervasive computing at Hasselt University, and was designed and implemented for the Innovative and Creative Applications (INCA) 2009 awards.'

Very interesting setups

Multivac the great…
Let there be light…

She has certainly been around for a long long time

Another Foodie Mathematician

Food loving Mathematicians anyone?

Thank goodness it's just an art piece & not a real baby carriage armed with guns.

Using a gun to create art. A variety of animal images by firing guns into aluminium sheets.
via http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/12/the-gunshot-art-of-walt-creel/

'Well, here's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further "smoking gun" claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story.
And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job.'