Out There

so let your kid get muddy, suffer a few scrapes and bruises, and learn some of life's most important lessons!

Posted by lara at 10:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 16, 2007

Squirrel power

hee..hee..

i have *always* wanted a tail!

Squirrels wield a hot, secret weapon

The ground squirrel heats up its tail then waves it in the snake's face
- a form of harassment that confuses the rattler, which has an infrared
sensing organ for detecting small mammals.

Posted by lara at 02:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 10, 2007

a pretty damned good life-motto

Give me 70 years full of good food, good drink and good friends

Posted by lara at 04:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 03, 2007

Wireless power - electrifying!

I have been moaning and griping for quite a long time about the uselessness of having all wireless gadgets if you still need to plug them in for them to work.  Sure it's great to have wireless mice and keyboards and who knows what else, but, as I have said to anyone who will listen, what good is it until we have wireless electricity/power?  oh, i have been met with skepticism.  i myself have not been able to think about how wireless power would work without frying all of us in an instant, or, less dramatically, killing all other electronic appliances.  but still, i knew, that someday, someone would find a solution to our dependency on the mother of all wires...

and now, here it is: Startup jump-starts wireless power.

so the concept of never needing to plug in for power again is still way out there.  but at least people won't look at me with quite the same "good lord she is out of her mind/too much time spent reading sci-fi there..." look when i mumble something about wireless electricity. they will still have plenty of other reasons to think that of me, just not that one in particular.

Posted by lara at 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2007

i just don't know what to say...

Plea of Guilty from Detainee in Guantanamo


Perhaps i'll be able to bring my thoughts into coherence later, but for now ...

Posted by lara at 01:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 25, 2007

Norway sticks it to iTunes

The consumer ombudsman in Norway has ruled that iTunes does not conform to Norwegian consumer protection laws, and that Apple must either make its code available to competitors by Oct 1st, or it will face court charges.  The ruling is based on the fact that songs purchased through iTunes cannot be played on any competitor's devices.
The full article Norway declares Apple's iTunes illegal at Financial Times.

Goooo Norway : ) 

Posted by lara at 02:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2007

ant navigation

A frightening flashback to a certain CogSci course at my dear alma mater, but still kinda interesting. World's Smallest GPS system.
Not to toot my own horn, but as far as I can tell, this is pretty close to my hypothesis as to how ants navigate. I could be wrong though, as I haven't touched the paper I wrote since I got it back, and have no plans to do so in the future.

OK, fine perhaps it's only interesting to people who took the same CogSci course, and wrote the same horrifying death-by-paper midterm, and to people who have some other devotion to the little critters. whatever.

Posted by lara at 12:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 16, 2007

Interesting. No, really.

I almost didn't click on the link from Reddit.  But then I saw that the article was on Wired.com and changed my mind.  And I was surprised, and intrigued.  At first by the fact alone that the article is a well thought-through piece that actually reviews that notorious game Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, and second, by the realization that the game isn't quite as horrible as I (and apparently many others) would assume.

While that is said, I do find the idea of making this horrific event into a game a bit distasteful... however, reading the author's careful analysis of the entirety of the game - no detail from creator Danny Ledonne is missed here - made me think of whether or not this game might actually be able to impart a thing or two on the young minds of its players.  For instance, the observation that <span class="quote">for all their bombast about being objectified by their tormentors, did
precisely the same thing to their victims. They didn't see them as
individuals: They were just metaphoric targets for their hatred</span>.  And my thoughts continued to spin on from there... i have no idea if whoever is playing this game is taking as much notice of the details of this game, nor whether they are considering the motivation behind the details.  but at least this isn't quite as inconsiderate and mind-numbingly senseless as i originally thought.

Posted by lara at 03:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Actual smart product features of 2006

Brilliant Ideas That found a Welcome

This article was really comforting to read.  Really.  I have spent the past few months getting increasingly frustrated with a couple of cell phones that just never seem to do the things I want them to - and I really don't think I am that demanding... It just seems that for every different make and model, the manufacturers of cell phones and smart phones (large heavy things that try to be both a little computer and a cell phone, and fail miserably at both) each have a few good feature ideas, and at least an equal amount of bad ones.

However, David Pogue has reassured me that product features are not always astoundingly dumb and ill-thought-through.  From magnetic power cords for your laptop that prevent the technological death caused by tripping over your power cord and bringing your fancy-schmancy laptop crashing to the ground, to Vista's Point Without Pointing speech recognition software feature that lets you identify a button or program without knowing the name, 2006 has luckily spawned a few really great product features. 

I will sleep more soundly tonight.  I think.
; )

Posted by lara at 11:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 24, 2006

cool blogs

an interesting list to check out if nothing else... The 2006 Weblog Awards

Posted by lara at 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 18, 2006

cool/freaky/cogsci/i hope it never happens to me...

OK, brain surgery is scary.  One of the big reasons is the anaesthesia - because anytime you go under anaesthetics there are all kinds of risks that might cause you to just not wake up.  Another tricky thing about brain surgery is - obviously - not messing up.  by that i mean, e.g. when removing a tumor, to remove all of the tumor, while not damaging any other part of the brain. 
Some of these problems are now fading into the past of brain surgery.  Patients can now be awake during the procedure, and can actually be used to test brain functions (can you still move your left arm?  see anything?) during the surgery. 
so the thought makes me a bit squeamish, but the end result is safer, and more precise surgery, so that's good...

Posted by lara at 02:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 15, 2006

about time!

my goodness!  i have been saying for quite some time that the day someone invents wireless power, i will be a happy camper.  these statements have usually come after i have tried to move around my "portable" computer (aka laptop) and stuggled with all of the power cables that still are attached to it (laptop power, speaker power, external HD power...).
Finally, my distant hope is becoming something more than a random idea based mostly in my head, and slightly in the world of science fiction:  Physics promises wireless power.

booyah.

powered by performancing firefox

Posted by lara at 10:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 08, 2006

hybrid photos

a picture is worth a thousand words?  what happens when those words vary from "sad" to "happy" or "smiling" to "evil" depending on how far awar from the pictures?

Some pretty interesting research from the cogsci/AI labs at MIT: Hybrid Images

powered by performancing firefox

Posted by lara at 10:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 07, 2006

a cool little app

Check it out: Autohotkey. 

• Simple - i just made a little app in 2 mins
  
• Cool - the app is a pair of global hotkeys that adjust the volume of Windows Media Player even when it's not in focus
  

powered by performancing firefox

Posted by lara at 03:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 01, 2006

CSS rollover image

i'm not quite sure i understand this yet, but whatever.  Simple CSS Image Rollover. Actually, i don't think it sounds all that simple, because you have to make a composite image, but i suppose that the benefit of not having to plunk around with javascript (biig plus in my book) makes up for that.

powered by performancing firefox

Posted by lara at 01:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 26, 2006

i was DEFINATELY not aware of this

I was enlightened today: At U.S. Borders, Laptops have no right to privacy.   Apparently when you arrive in the US, customs and immigration have the right to browse through all the files on your computer, and even seize it.  this applies to anyone - They don’t need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law. They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations.

Yeah, not so cool. I mean, not only are they prying into whatever you might have on your computer, but they can actually just take your computer and not tell you when you're getting it back. One lady said she has been waiting for a year to get her laptop and its contents back. That is simply unacceptable. Luckily, people and groups are working to get the law changed so that seizing and searching must be based at a minimum, on a reasonable suspicion..

hrmph.

powered by performancing firefox

Posted by lara at 01:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2006

a layman's cognitive science experiment

ok, so this is seriously cool.  I have never heard of Spasmodic Dysphonia, but apparently it is a condition in which the parts of your brain that control speech just shut down.  The cause is really not known, and there is no cure.  Scott Adams (the dude who writes Dilbert) has been suffering from this for the past 18 months, but decided to try and cure himself.  He took the knowledge that the condition only affects certain parts of the brain, and the knowledge that different types of speech (singing, public speaking, talking to a friend, etc) are controlled by different parts of the brain, and started testing.  It turns out he could sing, and speak in public, but when it came to everyday conversation, all he could muster was occasional weak whispering. 
His idea was to try and remap his brain - try and get a part of his brain that handles singing, to take over the functionality of the damaged part of his brain.  Remapping is a familiar phenomenon - stroke patients benefit from remapping when they recover certain functionality because new parts of the brain can be trained to e.g. move a leg, blink, etc.  Conversely, it has been shown with imaging techniques that the parts of the brain that were dominant in processing sensation and movement in limbs that have been amputated.
OK, enough cogsci stuff.  The point is that Scott Adams succeeded: Scott Adams' Good News.
He managed (at least temporarily) to regain his speech after repeating a simple rhyme.  It seems that through this process of repeating, the part of his brain that controls speech in rhyme was able to take over controlling normal speech. 

This is awesome.  Really cool.  I hope for his sake, and for everyone else who suffers from this, that this turns out to be a long-term "fix".  Yay cognitive science : )

powered by performancing firefox

Posted by lara at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 19, 2006

rediscovering an author

I read Malcom Gladwell's Blink a year or two ago and was slightly disappointed, as it seemed to me the book offered more anecdotes than scientific argument, hypothesis or proof. I have been toying with the idea of reading his previous book, The Tipping Point, but a combination of less interest in the topic and the aforementioned slight disappointment the first time around has resulted in it remaining an idea.
I recently stumbled across an article he wrote for The New Yorker, and was intrigued by the title and subtitle: The Formula: What if you built a machine to predict hit movies?. Like Blink, this article touches on cognitive science, which always grabs my attention. In this article, Gladwell reviews a product developed using artificial neural networks, that predicts the box-office success of movies based on a number of key features such as locale, character, genre etc.

A lengthy read (i had to print it out to get through it), but once again my appetite for this author has been whetted. Perhaps reading the rest of his articles in The New Yorker will be an idea that i actually follow through on...

Posted by lara at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 17, 2006

let's get rich..

so who wants the skinny on a quick and painless way of making a ton of money?

well, i don't have that secret, and neither does Paul, but he does have a simple (e.g. not easy), foolproof method of accumulating a lot of wealth over the span of a decade or two. So if your goal is to be in the top 5% [of wealth holders] or higher then check out his article The easiest way to get rich. It's a good read, and will leave you thinking a lot about just how important those last 20% of your salary are...(even when you're not earning $100K+).

Posted by lara at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 06, 2006

He makes it sound so easy...

V.S.Ramachandran has a seemingly concise and simple solution to the problem of how to understand the human consciousness. However, a small amount of insight into the current status of cognitive/neuro/bio-sciences will clue you in to the fact that his solution - Find out how [the inferior parietal lobule, Wernicke's language comprehension area and the anterior cingulate cortex] perform their job and we will have figured out what it means to be a conscious human being - is a bit harder than it may seem : )

still, it's the briefest piece on human consciousness that i've read in a long time...
On My Mind, by V.S. Ramachandran

Posted by lara at 12:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 27, 2006

flags as visual representation of facts

wow.

we have all heard how strong visual representations are, but here's just another example. This website has taken a number of country flags and have found data that correspond to the relative sizes of the different colors in the flag. Don't worry, you'll understand when you see it...
Meet The World

Posted by lara at 12:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 25, 2006

Patenting gone wrong

Patenting is good, right? I mean, most anyone who has taken a basic economics class has been through the argument that explains how the royalties received on a patent act as an incentive for the development or creation of a new product/method/whatever. Of course, we have all probably also heard of some of the downsides of patents - anti-retroviral drugs aren't viable as a method of preventing the advancement of HIV in Africa, because the patented drugs come with an astronomical price-tag.

ok, so patents act as incentives for the development of new things, but the prices of said patented products vastly limit the spread of the products. what's more important?

how about your thoughts? does it sound ridiculous that you could be sued for just thinking about something? well, this matter, and a number of other thought-provoking issues - are being considered by the Supreme Court. Read one author's (you might have heard of Michael Crichton, he wrote that really famous movie about dinosaurs...) opnion on the notion of patenting the biological relationship between a medical condition and vitamin deficiency (absurd) and the future of a patent system gone wrong (very absurd):
This Essay Breaks the Law

Posted by lara at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 01, 2006

Controlling robots with your mind...

Wow. Researchers Make Robot Hand Controlled by Human ThoughtGranted, this is just a case of getting the robotic hand to play "Rock, paper, scissors", but nonetheless it represents an actual success for converting human brain waves to robotic movement. The use of fMRI to capture the processing that is going on in the brain and having a mapping of sorts between a certain pattern of activity and an actual concept represents a really cool development in this field. The real-world application of this will hopefully allow amputees and other patients with restricted or no use of limbs to control their prosthetic devices using the same nerve impulses that they normally would.
coool. yay cogntive science nerdyness!

Posted by lara at 09:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 31, 2006

An interesting example of forward-thinking...

I wasn't aware that NYC is supposed to grow by 1 million people in the next decade or so. That's a lot of people. A lot of kids, a lot of employees, of employers, a lot of breakfast sandwiches and cups of coffee, a lot of empty coffee cups and a lot more people that in general need entertaining. This article, The Future of New York City: A vision of 2016 provides an interesting thought experiment. I find it somehwat reassuring that city planners and officials at least seem to be trying to get themselves, and the city, prepared for the increasing population, instead of panicking when it becomes a reality.

Posted by lara at 09:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Why do I love stanford professors? Here's why...

Here is a charming article written by John Perry, a Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, about The art of Structured Procrastination. Reading this essay made me smile, feel slightly silly at my own proficiency in procrastination, and recognize just how accurately the author captures the sentiment of procrastination. I won't mention what task I am currently putting off by writing this entry... ; )

Posted by lara at 09:15 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 25, 2006

my new favorite place on the web

Not quite sure how I originally stumbled over this web site, but I just spent some time exploring Paul Graham and am rapidly becoming a big fan. I do find some of his articles to be rather lengthy, but always on an interesting topic, and definately with a lot of great thoughts and ideas. E.g. How To Do What You Love. And, it turns out that he is the author of one of the books I used in CS...what a coincidence : )

Enjoy!

Posted by lara at 02:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

ARGH

Once again, a charming example of the whole "one step forward, two steps back" phenomenon. Those of us who care about such things have been happily registering that more and more hip and cool college students have been switching over to browsers other than IE, and have shared all sorts of lovely thoughts about the progression of technology. Then this happens: Microsoft Sends Windows Live to College. This might sound all peachy-keen, until you read about some of the limitations of Microsoft Live:

• It only works in IE 6 and higher
  


• It doesn't support mail forwarding
  


• It doesn't support IMAP or POP
  


• Microsoft reserves the right to turn on ads after you graduate
  

The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live.

Yeah, good old microsoft...

Posted by lara at 01:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

April 18, 2006

Things we laughed at back then...

ok, so i remember watching that charming movie Spaceballs, a spoof on the Star Wars movies (and other SF movies)... it was cute, it had a few funny lines, a couple of well done parodies on the characters and events of the originals and a lot of crazy ideas... one of these ideas was canned oxygen. a brief background: there was some kind of oxygen depletion on planet Spaceball and part of the main plot revolved around kidnapping another planet's supply of oxygen. Anyways, the sinister President Skroob at one point is in his office and pauses to enjoy a refreshing can of scented air. "how silly!" you say... "those poor bastards, they polluted the air on their planet so much that they now sell canned oxygen"
But now, this is in the news: Canned oxygen flavored air. Wow. I had previously read about oxygen bars, but only now made the connection to that funny piece of comedy I saw in a bad SF spoof years and years ago. we know that the future societies predicted in A Brave New World and 1984 turned out to be just fiction, but perhaps the future societies joked about in fiction of the recent past will hold more water? a scary thought...

Posted by lara at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

April 13, 2006

Travel resource

yay for Ryan Air having suuuuper cheap flights to italy! we're going to Bergamo (right outside Milan) in May, and so i've been looking for some information about the city. i stumbled over Wikitravel and found it to be quite interesting and useful. Unfortunately there just doesn't seem to be much information about the city out there, but perhaps I can add to the site once i get back!

Posted by lara at 04:52 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 05, 2006

What happened to all the pretty colors?

If you're wondering why this blog is stripped of all design today, read more about CSS Naked Day. The point of this effort is to first of all show the power of CSS but also remind people the practice good standards when writing the content of their pages.

Posted by lara at 03:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 22, 2006

What's the secret to successful web design?

well, as in many other cases, that depends on how you would like to measure your success. Are you interested in being noticed for your sleek coding and simplistic design? Or are you trying to show that you artfully master all the latest and greatest tips, tools and tricks of webdesign? Do you want positive comments on your website, or maybe even an award or recognition for your design? Do you measure success in number of visitors? Or perhaps you just are interested in the bottom line - how much money can you make on your website?

This article, The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites, brings up the classic debate of form vs. function, and reminds us that in fact

a large part of our society is actually afraid of the Internet.

and that it is often this part of society that actually drops the dollars at various websites (often by bringing in ad money). So the bottom line here is actually not a big surprise - especially if you know a little something about the fundamental tenets of marketing - it's all about trust. The important part is determining your target audience and then figuring out the best way to earn their trust.

Posted by lara at 12:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 03, 2006

Cloning - this scares me

ok, so mainly because of an Ethan Hawke obsession among my friends in middle school, i saw the movie Gattaca a few years back. Watching it gave me quite the chills, and i've never forgotten the gist of this movie - highlighted by it's tagline "There Is No Gene For The Human Spirit. "

I've been paying some attention to the discussions of cloning in the news, and recently came across an article in a magazine here that discussed commercial cloning. The main picture with the article was this woman holding a clone of her cat... she had a new version of her old cat made after it died. In the same article they discussed the present state of human genetic analysis and modification, including the options of removing genetic flaws and sex-selection. (of course, such options are only available to those who have a significant amount of money to spend on it, but they are available nonetheless) This scares me.
It immefiately brought to mind Gattaca, and the issues that the movie raises about the ethics of genetic manipulation... and now companies like Clonaid use quotes like this

If you just lost a beloved family member and would like to see an identical twin of him/her live again,

Plotline from Gattaca:

Gattaca Corp. is an aerospace firm in the future. During this time society analyzes your DNA and determines where you belong in life. Ethan Hawke's character was born with a congenital heart condition which would cast him out of getting a chance to travel in space. So in turn he assumes the identity of an athlete who has genes that would allow him to achieve his dream of space travel.

Posted by lara at 12:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 28, 2005

Time's best movies of the year

of course as the end of the year draws closer, we are overwhelmed by all kinds of "Best of " and "Worst of" lists trying to capture the essence of the year gone by. i came across Time magazine's Best movie list while drinking my coffee today, and was in part surprised that i had only heard of (let alone seen) one of them. After reading the reviews of the movies, i now want to see all of them. Granted, the reviews are obviously positive, but they are also interesting. and, i've certainly had poorer reasons to see a movie before... the only question is how and when these movies might make themselves available in this cold nook of the world!

Posted by lara at 05:22 AM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2005

a little step in the right direction

woohoo!
Senate fails to reauthorize Patriot Act

i could say a lot more on this issue, but i think that the main point is that it is nice to think that perhaps people have finally gotten ahold of themselves in washington...

Posted by lara at 09:44 AM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2005

on the first day of christmas...

...or, a Very Nerdy Advent Calendar!
24 Ways to impress your friends

cute idea. i wish i could pick up all of these little tips...maybe with time?

Posted by lara at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2005

aren't we in the season of giving???

here the city of new orleans is trying to find ways of enticing people to re-establish themselves, and at the same time, taking a significant leap forward into the technological future. and what is the response from a major american corporation? withdrawal of a donation of a BellSouth building for the new police HQ. Now, I do understand that BellSouth is seeing this as a loss of potential sales, but still.. it's not like the city couldn't use the goodwill, and it's also not like this will run BellSouth into the red...and right before christmas too???

Angry BellSouth Withdrew Donation, New Orleans Says

Apparently this is an issue in several other states as well. I guess it's clear where my stance is on this matter. Is there something terribly wrong with drawing parallels between sewer and water being supplied by the government with WiFi being supplied by the government? I think the key here is to keep an eye on the future and try to imagine what we think WiFi will be in 5 years. A service that everyone has to purchase for themselves, or a public-type service?

Posted by lara at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2005

cool!

The Cyberhand Project

I think this sounds really cool. but in that border-line terminator kind of way... which also happens to be the cogsci-kind of way... I think that the University in Uppsala (Sweden) is also working a lot on the idea of artificial hands.

Posted by lara at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2005

Movies in 15 minutes...

will make you laugh. or at least chuckle. or at the very least, crack a dimple just a teensy bit... for instance:

::Gryffindor Boys' Dormitory::
The boys eat candy, roar like wild animals, and have a pillow fight.
DEMENTOR FLOATING AROUND HOGWARTS: I think I saw a porno like this once.

PARVATI: *changes a snake into a GIANT SCARY CLOWN JACK-IN-THE BOX*
HARRY: Dude, you're not helping.
LUPIN: Go on, Harry! I'm sure none of the things you've witnessed in your life would give the other students heart attacks at all!
HARRY: *conjures a dementor*
LUPIN: AHHH! CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL!

These are both excerpts from
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in Fifteen Minutes. more fun summaries can be found at: Movies in Fifteen Minutes - deemed by Slashdot to be not another "angst-fest" from Livejournal, but an example of using "the power of self-publishing to impressive ends". woohoo.

Posted by lara at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2005

because keeping coffee and beer separate is apparently a bad idea...

ok, so Nestle has just patented a fermented coffee drink - a cross between coffee and beer. no alcohol, it just foams like beer. why would someone do this to coffee? ah well, perhaps i will refrain from condemning this too much at this point. either way, i'm going to make a real latte now.

Posted by lara at 05:43 AM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

Eric Myer's Stereotypes

Eric Myer Photography

really kinda interesting... although there are obviously limitations caused by skin color. a very thought-provoking photo-project nonetheless.

Posted by lara at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2005

yay my country

Norwegian Minister: Proprietary Formats No Longer Acceptable in Communication with Government

i think this is really cool... and i had no clue that we had a minister for modernization, but that's cool too! now, all i need to do is ask him for a job ; )

Posted by lara at 03:55 AM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2005

the brain as a biological organism/ analog vs digital debate

this might seem like an obvious statement.. however, the idea that it might not be leapt out at me in the first 30s of reading this article:

"Are brains analog, or digital?"

honestly, this article really annoyed me. i personally don't think that there is a need for the attitude that prevails in this guy's writing - which in itself is confusing and hard to follow. i don't think i even understand what argument the author is trying to make. other than saying that a psycholinguist and associate professor of psychology at Cornell is not "a real scientist". which i take a fair amount of offense at on behalf of the professor, the school, and the field of psychology.

so while i originally started out this entry to comment on the actual contents of the analog vs digital metaphor of the brain, instead i am more interested in finding a better source for my insight into this debate... because i can't take anything in the above article seriously.

Posted by lara at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

June 24, 2005

RSS feeds, and how they are changing the nature of technology

very interesting article, and some quality thoughts on the matter of the evolution of the way in which we gather information from the internet:
Channel 9: Longhorn (heart) RSS

the more i think about this issue, and in particular the characteristics of the evolution that this guy is talking about, the more intrigued i am...you might recall that i occasionally talk about how the majority of our existing technology is pretty much a passive resource - the value of any database is only as great as the quality of the way in which information is retrieved from it by people - and i think that the development of RSS represents a significant change in this. it seems to me that RSS feeds, and perhaps the subscription services more so, are a significant step in the direction of creating technology that takes an active role in parsing and distributing information. imagine what this new type of technology could do for a company that has a massive database with information gathered from all its projects - this is the kind of stuff that makes my brain tick. loudly...

Posted by lara at 08:02 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2005

music and me being a cheapskate

so i've really decided that i'd like to get an mp3 player. with my obsession with music, it just makes a lot of sense. however, i don't know which one to get... the thing is, i'd like to get one that is around 20gb, so that i can use in for a backup hd or whatever if i need it. and for some reason i'm really hesitant about getting an iPod. i'm a serious cheapskate, at least when it comes to large purchases, so i need to feel like i'm making an educated choice. however, the things i'm trying to do to make said educated choice (talk to people in stores, read online reviews etc) aren't getting me any closer to a decision. the Zen is looking like a really solid contender, but I just can't seem to make up my mind. this is what usually happens, and then i just never end up buying whatever i'm looking at. this time will be different though, i just need to make up my mind!

Posted by lara at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2005

an interesting experiment

http://yagoohoogle.com/
searching from this site runs two searches and displays them in a split screen (horrors!! it uses frames) but it allows you to compare the results of the two search engines. when i searched for my name, yahoo actually gave more relevant results, which i found interesting...

Posted by lara at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2005

OMG this man has made my YEAR!!!

this link is hilarious. it will extend your life by many many months by giving you a wonderful laugh. it will be even better if you know (and love) O-zone's Dragostea Din Tei.
take a look at this, and make sure you're volume is turned up!!

Posted by lara at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2004

a few good links...

this is generally amusing and informative at the same time. send all your IE-using friends to this site!
http://www.browsehappy.com

and this one is useful for people who are interested in web design and CSS...
http://www.molly.com/2004/12/18/web-design-world-cool-down/

enjoy. and merry christmas : )

Posted by lara at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)

November 11, 2004

once again...

http://www.livejournal.com/community/vassar/203811.html

Posted by lara at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)