Archive for July 10th, 2007

The iPhone: Will It Blend?

Fans of Blendtec’s Will It Blend series will enjoy watching an iPhone in a blender. Well, who wouldn’t watch a $500 gadget being destroyed by a kitchen appliance? Push play or go to YouTube. Link to website.

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Romanian Witches Go Online for Work

Now that Romania has joined the European Union, a new world of customers is open for the country’s “recognised profession” of witchcraft, so the witches are taking their skills to the internet:

One of the country’s most famous witches, Witch Rodica, has set up her own web and blog site – http://vrajitoare.blogspot.com – offering everything from a dream interpretation book to tarot card reading.

. . . .

She said: “I still do spells and potions the traditional way, but the blog keeps me closer to potential clients and can be used to convince the sceptical that witchcraft is real.”

The witches are also offering a new range of spells such as love potions for gay men and lucky charms guaranteed to win EU grant money.

It makes perfect sense: now that your homeland is part of an organization with two dozen or so other countries, each of which has its distinct culture and language, it must be time to reach new markets by setting up your own website in Romanian. Relax, I won’t receive a hex for my sarcasm: Rodica is a white witch.

Link to news article – via the Anomalist

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What Not To Do During a Zombie Outbreak

Because zombies are fast becoming a problem in big cities, Zombie-Philes wrote the treatise (okay, okay, a top 10 list) on what not to do during a zombie outbreak, like this one:

2) Don’t get too creative with zombie defense.

Sure, chainsaw slits in your van seemed like a good idea at the time, before you filled your car with fumes and exhaust, passed out at the wheel and got yourself sawed in half. The temptation to get very creative with zombie dispatching can seem almost unbearable at times, but when it comes to killing zombies, that old adage applies: Keep it simple, stupid!

Link – Thanks Dumidu!

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Fine Arts LEGO

Flickr user udronotto has a few neat LEGO dioramas inspired by fine arts and famous movies – this one above is Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks.

Link [Flickr photoset] – via Lego Mania (a few more cool pics), thanks Atila!

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Touchless Toilet Paper Dispenser for Public Bathrooms

Kimberly-Clark is "crossing the final touchless restroom frontier" by making the first electronic bath tissue toilet paper dispenser.

After the no-touch faucet, soap and hand towel dispensers, it’s a natural progression of bathroom gadgetry, if you think about it.

Link not working, but you get the idea – Thanks Karen!

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Automated License Plate Recognition

Automated License Plate Recognition [wiki] or ALPR technology is not exactly new: it was invented in 1976 and is currently used to for traffic congestion control in London.

Canada is testing out a portable system using a specially outfitted police cars: cameras on the outside of the car will automatically scan license plates of cars as the policeman drives – and the computer will ping if it finds a match of the license plate with a hit from databases of stolen vehicles, outstanding warrants, etc.

Predictably, critics are accusing the system as being Big Brother-worthy. Oh, and see if you can find the "irony" in the video clip. Hint: it’s a guy driving.

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks matthew!

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Brand Identity of Terrorist Groups

Even terrorist organizations need brand identities! Ironic Sans did the research for this strangely entertaining post on logos of terrorist groups around the world (well, mostly from the Middle East, I suppose): Link – Thanks Dumidu!

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Rule the Web (and Rule Your Email Inbox!)

I picked up Boing Boing editor and our pal Mark Frauenfelder’s new book Rule the Web while browsing at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble a few days ago.

Now, I’m a pretty savvy web user (though a luddite when it comes to fancy gadgets) but I’m still pleasantly surprised at the breadth of useful information in the book. The cover of the book promises to tell you "how to do anything and everything on the Internet – better, faster, easier" and it delivers (funny if you think about it: it’s a book about the Web, with actual paper pages!).

How useful is the book? Here’s an example: Rule the Web has a chapter on how to obtain the elusive zero inbox – you know, to actually clear off your email inbox. Even a last-resort "email bankruptcy" option.

Having a zero inbox is a productivity-must. This I can speak from personal experience: it took me a long time to learn to tame the chaos that is my Outlook inbox. If only the book came out while I worked out a system through trial and error …

I’ll share with you my system, which is remarkably similar to Mark’s (you’ll have to buy the book to find out about Mark’s unique color-coded sorting process) and other methods out there on the Web (for example, 43 Folders has a nice series of articles):

1. Slot a dedicated email answering time
   This is the time to take care of your emails – answer them, delete them, file them, whatever. Depending on your needs, this may be as little as once a day or a couple of times a day.
   
   The rest of the day? Work, eat, sleep, whatever. Just don’t obsess with checking your email.
    
   
2. Open then Answer/Delete/File
   Don’t re-read, leave it, then re-read your emails. Handle it once: answer it or delete it (or if you must, file it for reference). When in doubt, delete it. Yes, delete it.
    
   
3. It’s Okay to Answer with a One-Liner
   This is the biggest stumbling block in attaining zero inbox zen: in the beginning, I felt that it’s impolite to answer a long missive from friends and family with just "Thanks, that’s interesting" one-liner. However, the euphoria of having a zero inbox quickly obliterated all feeling of guilt and shame.
   
   Actually, I often reply with a short one-liner, and then stick a note to write an email, or better yet, call the person in my to-do list.
    
   
4. Have a Simple Filing System
   Don’t overthink this: a complex folder with subfolder system is not what you need to remain organized. Obviously, your particular needs will dictate how many folders you have … but in my experience, you rarely, if ever, need subfolders.
    
   
5. Have a Follow Up Folder
   There will be times that I need to research an answer to a particular email or do something before I can reply. I let these emails sit in my inbox for a maximum of 1 day (gasp!), then they get put into a Follow Up Folder if I haven’t gotten around to them – and then I add an entry in my to-do list.
    
   
6. Set Up a Keyword Filter
   Actually the four things above take care of 90% of my legitimate emails – the rest are usually emails from cranks or spam that I get tired of deleting over and over again.
   
   To make life easier, I set up three filters in my Outlook (all email softwares have this capability): one for the sender, another for the subject line and another for the body of the email, with instructions to delete the email if particular phrase are present.
   
   If for some reason my spam filter doesn’t catch the same type of spam email – and this happens with regularity, I simply add a unique phrase from either the sender, subject line, or body of text into the rules above and poof – spam disappear automatically from the inbox.

Note: Something I haven’t been able to do is set up a filter for those annoying PDF spam – if anyone know how to do this, please let me know!

So, pick up a copy of Rule the Web, start off by taming your email inbox, and move on to all the things you could do better on the Internet!

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Barigo Clock Weather Station

The Barigo Clock Weather Station is definitely stylish – this contraption not only tells you the time, it also acts as a weather station:

Standing 10cm in height, and featuring a series of nickel brass dials that seemingly float within a clear acrylic tube, the Barigo Clock Weather Station serves as a clock, a thermometer and a hygrometer and, whilst it not be anywhere near as geeky as other weather stations, or as fully featured for that matter, there’s no doubt that from an aesthetic point of view at least its certainly a head turner.

Link – via Gizmodo Japan

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Pop Culture Quotes.

This cartoon by Carl Huber made me chuckle! Link

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Inflatable Giant Monkey Scrotum: It’s Just So Wrong!

Apparently, it’s something for kids to crawl inside…

Found at Kelley Bean [Flickr] – via giantmonster

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Topoware: Topographic” Dishes.

Inspired by topographic maps, designers Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Karola Torkos and Thomasine Barnekow created Topoware, dishes that "outline" the dining experience. Bonus: the lines tell you how much food to put on the plate based on how hungry you are at the moment!

Link – via Mike Ballan

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Plan vs. Reality

Found at Lee’s Doodles.

Update 7/10/07: Nicole Lee updated the "Reality" for Neatorama readers. At least for me personally, it’s so accurate it’s eerie! – Thanks Nicole!

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Christian Paintball

In exurban Wisconsin, in a town called Pleasant Prairie halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago, sits “North America’s largest Christian paintball park,” dubbed Promised Land:

“I’ve looked in the Bible, and can’t find anything wrong with paintball,” reasons Andy Leong, a 48-year-old Chicago marketing executive who’s come to celebrate the birthday of his 13-year-old son, Luke. “In fact, the Bible is filled with combat as a topic.”

. . . .

“There’s an impression that Christians are wimps — that they’re just no fun,” says Promised Land owner Rick Pinter.

“Christians can be tough and heroic.”

Link – via News of the Weird (Image)

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A Skull A Day

Designer Noah Scalin is using various techniques to create one skull image every day for a year. The results are featured in his blog.

Link – via Craftzine

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Cutest puppy ever?

A puppy with a heart-shape spot in its fur was born in May in Japan. Breeder Emiko Sakurada has no plans to sell “Heart-kun”. Link -via Fark

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The Caves of Lascaux.

The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux, discovered in 1940, were closed to the public in 1963 due to deterioration caused by human intervention. But you can take a virtual tour! See the paintings with explanations of what they portray at the French Ministry of Culture and Communication site. Link -via Ursi’s Blog

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Periodic Table of the Internet.

Wellington Grey has produced the Periodic Table of the Internet. This makes me wonder what kind of molecules compounds you could produce by combining these “elements”! Link -via the Presurfer

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