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Zerply

Zerply:

I had fallen out of love with LinkedIn a long time ago, but last week’s sneaky move (read about it here) pushed me over the edge. What a lost opportunity. LinkedIn was built on such a fantastic core idea. And then they tried to be twitter-and-facebook-and-everything-else at once. Bummer.

But don’t worry, here’s a new service that seems to be getting it right: Zerply is a beautifully designed service that let’s you find like minded people by tags, skills, location and let’s you set up a public profile themed by world class designers.

You’re dreading entering all your information again? No worries, you can import all of your information directly from LinkedIn during the setup. Easy peasy.

I hope that Behance will strike a deal with them and let us display our portfolios on Zerply as well.

Hat tip to the team behind Zerply. They site is beautifully designed and well considered. Here’s my public Zerply my profile.

[Seems like a good idea… but I haven’t tried it yet…]
Source: swissmiss

The New BostonGlobe.com

The New BostonGlobe.com:

I’m beyond impressed with the new Boston Globe web site. It’s the best I’ve ever seen. Congrats to @beep and the rest of the designer/developer team. As +Craig Hockenberry said on Twitter, other newspapers are going to look at it and either realize they need to imitate it, or they’ll keep dying.

If you have a big monitor, resize your browser window from very narrow through to full screen. Go very slowly, and watch as the layout adapts to the new size, every step of the way. The images resize, the number of columns will change from 1 to 2 to 3, each column’s width changes… it’s brilliant.

(What I’ve mentioned here is just the first-glance stuff. Look around, the attention to usability and detail is intense.)

[Impressive work.]
Source: Truer Words – A Journal

Patagonia and Ebay

Patagonia and Ebay:

Good ol’ Yvon Chouinard. A couple of days ago, Patagonia announced a partnership with Ebay, urging consumers to buy and sell their used Patagonia garments and refrain from purchasing the new stuff. The whole thing is part of the longstanding Common Threads Initiative, and in order to be part of the buying and selling bonanza, you have to make a pledge to Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle and Reimagine. No argument here.

Sorta makes any “We made this garment with the most eco-friendly this and that” greenwashing statements a little less powerful, eh? Because really, what’s more eco-friendly than telling people to buy used gear?

[Yvon & Co. Really push the limits huh? Awesome.]
Source: Cold Splinters

Michael S. Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg, Dies at Age 64

Michael S. Hart, Founder of Project Gutenberg, Dies at Age 64:

From his obituary at Project Gutenberg:

Hart was best known for his 1971 invention of electronic books, or
eBooks. He founded Project Gutenberg, which is recognized as one
of the earliest and longest-lasting online literary projects. He
often told this story of how he had the idea for eBooks. He had
been granted access to significant computing power at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. On July 4 1971, after
being inspired by a free printed copy of the U.S. Declaration of
Independence, he decided to type the text into a computer, and to
transmit it to other users on the computer network. From this
beginning, the digitization and distribution of literature was to
be Hart’s life’s work, spanning over 40 years.

A true pioneer, who made the world a better place.

[Considering where I work, this is especially notable.]
Source: Daring Fireball

The Acquisition: An Open Letter to our Customers – Competitive Cyclist

alloy/macvim: The Acquisition: An Open Letter to our Customers – Competitive Cyclist:

Unlike the current essential structure of the bike industry, where dealer interests take priority over consumer convenience, our focus at Competitive Cyclist has always been on you. For those who asked if we sold out of financial desperation, the answer is a definitive “no.” We sold out of a sense of aggression. If nothing else, 20 years of bike racing has honed my sense of timing for an all-in attack. The moment is perfect for us to fast-track our ultimate vision for Competitive Cyclist.

[My local guys need to embrace this more than they have…]

A Supercomputer in Every Backpack

A Supercomputer in Every Backpack: People visit my school all the time. They shake my hand as they leave and tell me how inspiring it all is and often they sign off with “truly, the iPad is the future of education”. I bite my tongue every time because unlike Richard Stallman I’m not an anti-social jackass, but I want to correct them.

I want to tell them that the iPad is not the future of education, it’s the present of education. If we consign the iPad to the realms of the future, then we are implicitly saying that it’s not for right here, right now, today. We’re saying that we can postpone the task of seriously engaging with the educational and social impact of ubiquity of Internet-connected computing.

I ask you to consider other industries that put off dealing with such challenges. How is that approach working out for record companies? For newspapers? For booksellers?

The hour is already late. We have allowed a 16-year gap to develop between society and schools in terms of our children’s access to computers. Can we properly prepare Beth and her cohort for the year 2029 with the same level of access to computers that I had 35 years before?

How long can we let this gap continue to grow? Another five years? Another ten? In another 14 years, if GSMA are right, society as a whole will have 7 connected devices each – will we be delivering relevant education in that world if each pupil only has a third of a computer to themselves?

Cedars is not a school of the future. I think we’re a decade late. [Everything that Fraser has been working cuts close to my heart as I concern myself Noah’s education. What parts are his school getting right? What parts are they getting wrong? Where is it so bad that I need to shore it up, where can ignore it as it as irrelevant? Clearly his school has the computer and technology stuff wrong. But I don’t think it matters because that is something that I can (fortunately) fix. Not everyone can, but I (we) can. The stuff I can’t fix? What they feed him. The crappy behaviors he learns from the kids on the bus. Yeah, I know all survivable stuff, but considering the importance of these years… anyway, consider how your child’s education doesn’t match the needs of the marketplace. What are you going to do about it? Where do you think it’s lacking?]
Source: Fraser Speirs

Unconventional Monetary Policy

Unconventional Monetary Policy: “Unconventional monetary policy” means the Fed targets some level of nominal GDP and keeps buying things until that level is met. Usually, the Fed buys and sells short term Treasuries to influence the clearing price of reserves in the overnight interbank market. The clearing interest rate in the overnight interbank market is the “Federal Fund Rate” and this intervention is the mechanism it uses to manage the level of excess reserves in the system (as it can drain reserves by converting them to Treasuries). Scott argues that the Fed can buy other things, like road repair services, bridge building services, etc. etc. and therefore hit any NGDP target it chooses. [Hmmm.]
Source: Zimran