Shame on you Portuguese readers, for nominating this blog on the Internet category. I just can’t understand how 300 lazy posts managed to grab your attention. Is it the source ? Is it the inspiration ? Oh, i know, it’s those Shameless PromoTions and you feel like thanking me. No need, your projects are that good.
It’s been a hell of a ride since September 2006, talking to readers, deleting more than 30000 spam comments, digging some breaking news, becoming a screener, being listed at AdAge150, guest blogging, and the hardest part, writing regular content.
In one of those “duhh” moments, i became aware of a new feature on the New York Times. It happened while reading the priceless piece about Radiohead, and incidentally double-clicking a word. Surprise, surprise, a new window opened with a reference search on the highlighted word.
The feature is powered by Answers.com, although i’d love to see a Wikipedia powered one (perhaps with a Greasemonkey script ?).
In web design, it’s a best practice to gracefully conceal power-user features, and this one is a really useful life hack, specially if you’re used to Firefox’s context menu search. Take note of this simple and effective idea, and if your site has specialized or dense content you can use it as a cross-reference shortcut to provide enhanced interactivity and semantic help.
Get used to it, as each year i will bother you with my ultra-subjective selection of favorite albums. Or maybe it’s just me giving away ideas for Christmas.
The list goes without comments, but feel free to completely disagree. I can handle your arbitrary music taste.
One last note for Portuguese band The Soaked Lamb and their first album “Homemade Blues”, where co-worker Vasco plays keyboards. It’s a great album, and if you don’t believe me listen them at myspace or have a look at their delicious website.
Tired of putting your name on web forms? Don’t give up yet as you can do something different for a change and unsubscribe.
Amnesty International UK is inviting people to do just that, on a message to governments that citizens are no longer quiet while human rights are attacked under the false pretext of ‘the war on terror’. And while most petitions ask you to sign up, the British AI is asking citizens to take your name off.
The campaign uses email and social media to encourage others to spread the message, and at the same time building a humanitarian life-stream conscientiousness.
With a subscription process that feels like a regular social network service, you’re invited to write your views on the subject and share it to your friends.
Data visualization is also one of the main features of the “true” social network, with live updates on the progress you and your friends have made to stop the government manipulation of public opinion, with a call to action against such acts as the ones being perpetrated at Guantanamo.
It then extends itself to other networks, such as Orkut, MySpace or Facebook, and links to other online media activists, again building on the concept of networks and how these can make a change. With such a magnitude, I guess we could call it human-rights crowdsourcing.
And of course, with a widget that you can use to share the campaign latest film:
When you read that one of the world’s leading creative magazines has a monthly readership of only 13,000 you know there is no contest between print and web. Sites like Digg probably get that many people in twenty minutes.
The newest release of Flash Player 9 Update 3 comes with a companion website: Adobe Flash On. To fully experience it, it’s advisable to install the latest plugin version, easily accessible with an upgrade option (or choose the standart mode).
On screen, you can choose amongst a shuffle of video thumbnails, with a HD option delivering a full-screen experience on high resolution, powered by the new H.264 codec.
The Flash Player Update 3brings some impressive features (that i’ve pointed before), such as new H.264/HE-AAC video codecs and a performance boost.
Now all I need is some generous bandwidth and some fiber-optic connection to fire my cable company and store the TV for good. I’ll stick with the projector for series and good movies.
The unusual thing is that Robert wrote a application in Processing that Nando could use to build his own customizable flocking behavior, based on perlin noise algorithms.
