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World's largest cell

4 Feb 2010 -

New Scientist has a fascinating story about the little-known Syringammina fragilissima, a single-celled species that can reach an astonishing 10cm across! Outside the usual definition of a cell, Syringammina contains several nuclei and though speculative, it might feed by farming bacteria inside itself. It really is amazing how life adapts and evolves.

Whatever form or strategy, surviving works.

It's the execution, not the idea

22 Jan 2010 -

Joel Johnson from Gizmodo nails it:

The fact that Apple does not reveal prototypes but shipping products is the fundamental difference between their entire business strategy and that of the rest of the industry.

A lot of people believe that the idea is what matters to succeed; that the rest is just details. I say ideas are easy. It’s making them real that takes real effort and a whole lot of time.

As Steve Jobs says, real artists ship!

Does it work

21 Jan 2010 -

‘‘Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,’’ says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. ‘‘People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.’’

The World of Things would be a better place if everyone kept that in mind.

Software Changes

13 Jan 2010 -

Guy English has written an insightful article on how software use changes. Just like the internet was democratised in the nineties, the same is happening to software – particularly on the iPhone:

“Apps” is fun. It’s fun to say, it sounds unthreatening, it’s a word sufficiently abbreviated that it takes on a life of its own without dragging to the forefront of peoples minds the more sterile and technical sounding “application”. Apps are not Applications – they are their own things. They are smaller. They are more fun. Apps are treats atop your technological sundae.

Bugs, Users and Technical Depth

12 Jan 2010 -

Karl Fogel has a very interesting article on bugs in software, how it relates to technical dept and how to deal with them.

The number of bug reports is proportional to the number of users, not to the number of defects.

It is impossible to know the exact number of unknown bugs in a software system, yet it is easy to forget this when the reports keep pouring in.

Images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

12 Jan 2010 -

Last year I wrote a short entry about the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. I mentioned the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO for short, and how it would bring new and better pictures of the moon. The Big Picture has collected some of the best and they are as always a treat.

The Uniqueness of Humans

11 Jan 2010 -

Robert Sapolsky, professor of neurology, neurological sciences, neurosurgery and biological sciences, speaks on how the human species is similar to all other animals and where we differ. So inspiring.

From wikipedia I found this little gem of a quote:

I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature. Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

That’s a view I too wish more would share.

Plastic doesn't go away

7 Jan 2010 -

Striking photographs of dead baby albatross chicks from stomachs full of plastic – 3200 kilometers from the nearest continent.

Aquatic Tranquility

4 Jan 2010 -

Absolutely stunning footage from the world’s 2nd largest aquarium, the Kuroshio Sea, by Jon Rawlinson. I could stand in front of that for hours. (via Kottke)

Onwards and upwards

4 Jan 2010 -

The Economist on the idea of progress:

The idea of progress forms the backdrop to a society. In the extreme, without the possibility of progress of any sort, your gain is someone else’s loss. If human behaviour is unreformable, social policy can only ever be about trying to cage the ape within. Society must in principle be able to move towards its ideals, such as equality and freedom, or they are no more than cant and self-delusion. So it matters if people lose their faith in progress. And it is worth thinking about how to restore it.

The Cost of Care

31 Dec 2009 -

Interesting graph by the National Geographic depicting the cost of medical care per person for several OECD countries. The US spends more money than any other country. Not surprising, it seems there is little or no correlation between health care spendings and life expectancy.

2009 in Photos

17 Dec 2009 -

A nice look back over the year in stunning photos by the always great The Big Picture.

8 Stars Speak Out on Steve Jobs

11 Nov 2009 -

An extraordinary visionary, Steve Jobs was recently named CEO of the Century by Fortune.

The difference between me and Steve is that I’m willing to live with the best the world can provide. With Steve that’s not always good enough.

A quote from Larry Ellison, that’s a remarkable goal!

Escape From City-17

6 Nov 2009 -

Canadian filmmakers David and Ian Purchase has made a remarkable sci-fi short film set in the Half-life 2 universe. It is a testament to what can be done with personal computers these days and a tribute to the brilliant game that Half-Life 2 is.

Combining objects from the game with hand-held video, it is yet another example of the creative mashups that are possible when not stopped by unimaginative copyright holders.

Modern File Browsing

31 Oct 2009 -

Thomas Worall sums up an important change in the way we think about windows and the content within:

In the user’s terms, it used to be that the window was the document. The two were equivalent. Now, in a trend that started with the World Wide Web and has now moved into the rest of the operating system, a window is merely a container for one or more documents. That’s a fundamental change in the user’s concept of what a window is.

The Real Goal of Android

27 Oct 2009 -

Om Malik interviews CEO of Symbian Lee Williams. Lee shares some unusually frank thoughts on Android, particularly in relation to how Google makes it’s money: Through knowing enough about the user to present valuable ads.

Google makes some amazing things online, but I think there’s a growing and valid fear, proportional to their size, that they just might know too much about us.

What Google Wave Is

19 Oct 2009 -

Daniel Tenner explains Google Wave

Wave is not a social tool. It’s not Twitter, it’s not GTalk, it’s not Facebook. It was never designed to appeal to the crowds of geeks who are currently trying it out.

Principle of Least Power

13 Oct 2009 -

Tim Berners-Lee on choosing a computer language

Nowadays we have to appreciate the reasons for picking not the most powerful solution but the least powerful. The reason for this is that the less powerful the language, the more you can do with the data stored in that language. If you write it in a simple declarative from, anyone can write a program to analyze it in many ways.

It’s the programmer’s version of choosing the simplest file format for storing data.

Pristine Font rendering for the Web

1 Oct 2009 -

script.aculo.us author (and more) Thomas Fuchs has built a Mac-only ruby script that is pure genius for image-based font rendering for websites.

It all boils down to a Ruby script that runs on OS X only and uses OS X’s really awesome typography and subpixel antialiased font rendering. Why not tap into this to make those headline graphics? With Rubycocoa you can easily whip up a small app that draws some text, and save it into a PNG file.

I love the simple solution of building on Apple’s hard work in making text look good. Great stuff!

Feeling Software

1 Sep 2009 -

Wil Shipley on programming:

Life isn’t fair, and programming is even less fair. Programming is all about picking a certain class of users with a certain specific class of problems, and making their lives much MUCH better.

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