Links from December 2010

Links for Wednesday 1 December 2010
Ge.tt | gett sharing
Looks like a good way to share files with people. You can share even before you've finished uploading. (via Haddock)
Perch - A really little content management system (CMS)
I'll forget what this is called if I need to find it again. Sounds like it could be handy, and a shiny blue and pink site always makes things seem even nicer. (via Mildlydiverting)
Momento Is Perhaps The Perfect Passive Diary App
A few people have mentioned this (article via Blech). It really is a very, very good iPhone app -- aggregates your feeds from many services, displays them nicely in a diary, lets you export all the aggregated data. More than worth £1.19.
LukeW | "Mad Libs" Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%
Redesigning a form to a "Mad Libs", sentence style increased conversion 25-40%.

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Links for Thursday 2 December 2010
Delicious blog » Changes to Save and Share
I usually don't mind changes to sites that get lots of users stupidly riled up but, a few nice details aside, the new Delicious 'Save' window does seem a step backward in several ways. And, ouch, that's a lot of unhappy users. (via Blech)

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Links for Saturday 4 December 2010
Tower - The most powerful Git client for Mac
"The most powerful Git client for Mac." Looks good I think. Might be less scary for doing some out-of-the-ordinary things. (via Lee)

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Links for Sunday 5 December 2010
Utopia - Charlie's Diary
Charlie Stross on why we need more utopian visions of the future. Not being very up with science fiction, I've been wondering recently if there is some of this around. Maybe not, yet. (via Magical Nihilism)
Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government” « zunguzungu
Interesting post on Assange's ideas behind the leaks and, whether you agree with him or not, there's more to it than simply publicising specific secret acts.
Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Hint Fiction — Short Evocations of Larger Stories
"Fictional stories done in 25 words or less." I'd just been thinking recently about writing future scenarios that are one sentence long.

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Links for Monday 6 December 2010
FOODTUBES
"GOODS-IN and WASTE-OUT computer-guided, lightweight capsules, travelling through dozens of interlinking 150 km circuits." Property crazy-looking 1990s style website too. Brilliant. (via @tomtaylor)
Lu.ma - LoopIt
Nice camera strap for small cameras. I'll forget what this is called if/when I ever want one. (via Daring Fireball)
Wikileaks and the Long Haul
Yes. I'm unsure about the Wikileaks thing too, but the US's government's reaction to it is the thing that scares me.

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Links for Tuesday 7 December 2010
File:Wardour St Name Changes since 1585.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I had no idea Wardour Street had been so variable over the years. (via gwire's Tumblr)

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Links for Wednesday 8 December 2010
Kohana: The Swift PHP Framework
I hadn't even heard of this before, a PHP framework that originally came from CodeIgniter, now quite different. Sounds good, although the docs don't look as good as CI's.

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Links for Friday 10 December 2010
Vintage British Argos 1985 Catalogue - a set on Flickr
Fantastic nostalgia. But also, backs up my "scan and upload any pre-Internet artefact and people will go 'Wow!'" theory. (via @antimega)
Cognitive Cities Conference, 26. & 27. February, Berlin
Could be interesting, and is in Berlin, and has Hammersley, Greenfield, Voss and others I don't know. (via @mattb)

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Links for Sunday 12 December 2010
Michael Mace on What’s Wrong With RIM
Really good and clear description of why RIM could be in big trouble, despite currently good financial results. Ignoring the RIM/Blackberry specifics, well worth a read for general diffusion of innovation and R&D type stuff. (via Daring Fireball)

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Links for Tuesday 14 December 2010
BBC - Barnsley girl's account of violence at fees protest
Sometimes I can't believe I wanted to be a policeman when I was a kid. So angry. (via @stml)

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Links for Wednesday 15 December 2010
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
Conversations around pages of a book.
the Awesome Highlighter >> Highlight text on web pages
Frames a web page and lets you highlight arbitrary sections of text and add sticky notes. You can't seem to add notes to highlighted sections though.
Digress.it
A WordPress plugin (and more) that adds the ability to comment on paragraphs of a text (like CommentPress I guess?). The UI feels a little clunky.
The inhumane detention conditions of Bradley Manning - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
I increasingly find myself thinking that if the USA were a country that was mainly, say, Muslim, or full of dark-skinned, non-English-speaking people, the "West" would be deploring its behaviour, talking about sanctions, etc.
Chemistry of Cast Iron Seasoning: A Science-Based How-To
For next time I need to do this to my frying pan. (via Chrisdodo)
Coffee Drinks Illustrated « Lokesh Dhakar
Different types of coffee made clear. I'd seen this before but didn't bookmark it and had to... Google it! Never again.

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Links for Thursday 16 December 2010
Archive Fever: a love letter to the post real-time web | mattogle.com
Yes. It should be easier to access our old online stuff. We should archive it more often. There should be better ways to explore archives. I am interested. (via Blech)
Anthony Volodkin is Fascinated: Archive
A nice view of someone's online activity per month. CORRECTION: It's a standard Tumblr archive page. Still nice. 

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Links for Monday 20 December 2010
More4 cuts back The Daily Show to one episode a week | Media | guardian.co.uk
But! What? Grrr! May have to get a Witopia VPN again so I can watch the Daily Show online. What kind of media industry is this where I find myself paying $40/year to circumvent region protection in order to watch a TV show? (via @megpickard)
Adactio: Journal—Home-grown and Delicious
Yes, I've been thinking this self-hosting-with-syndication model is the way to go. I don't use Delicious's social features at all, but if I self-hosted my links I'd still like them to be viewable by others in my network, if they're interested. (via @preoccupations)
Isle of Tune
Really lovely thing for making music out of cars driving round a pretty isometric road layout. Worth firing up Flash for. (via Kottke)
Coding Horror: So You'd Like to Send Some Email (Through Code)
Things you should do when sending email via code. (via Daring Fireball)
Said the Gramophone: BEST SONGS OF 2010
I have completely failed to keep up with this or any other music blog this year. Again. But StG's end of year lists are always good.
Memolane | Your time machine for the web
Currently invite-only, and I've not tried it, a thing for aggregating and/or archiving your stuff from various web services.
Blissblog - 10 for 2010
Simon Reynolds' top records of the year. So much to listen to. (via Warren Ellis)

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Links for Wednesday 22 December 2010
Unboxed Consulting - Blog - TechHub and Silicon Roundabout
James Darling on good form. It's great that co-working offices like TechHub exist for people who want them, but TechHub's press releases are a bit overblown, like something from one of the previous booms.
Mare Street’s failed music venue Ocean to reopen as Hackney Picture House next year - News - Hackney Gazette
Ooh, that's good. I wish it had been a decent cinema when I lived up the road, rather than the ill-thought-out Ocean. (via @catfunt)

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Links for Saturday 25 December 2010
Christmas dinner with an excess of trimmings | Jonathan Meades | Comment is free | The Guardian
I like the fry-up / Christmas Dinner comparison, and much else too. (via many people)
Wikileaks Exposes Internet's Dissent Tax, not Nerd Supremacy - Zeynep Tufekci - Technology - The Atlantic
"the Internet is somewhat akin to shopping malls, which seem like public spaces but in which the rights of citizens are restricted, as they are in fact private." (via Blech and more)
The Blast Shack
Bruce Sterling on WikiLeaks, Cablegate and Julian Assange. Worth a read, especially if you can do so with Sterling's weary drawl as your interior voice.

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Links for Sunday 26 December 2010
Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money - Politics - GOOD
It's staggering, as ever, to see how financially unequal the country is, but also fascinating to see how people don't realise it. I'm not sure I'd have responded much more accurately, and it's also probably similar in the UK. (via @ianbetteridge)
ASCII by Jason Scott / Yahoo!locaust
About Yahoo! and Delicious, and other things they've closed, and Flickr, and the fact all the content on Yahoo! Video will be deleted in March. *sigh* (via Simon Willison)
LRB · Terry Castle · Adieu, madame
A good account of just how huge an international star Sarah Bernhardt was. Also, the fedora was originally a hat worn by women. (Subscribers only unfortunately.)
LRB · Stefan Collini · Browne’s Gamble
A good account of the inconsistencies of the Browne Report into the future of funding Britain's higher education. Sounds like it's written by people for whom education is simply a way of earning MOAR MONEY.
LRB · Ross McKibbin · Nothing to do with the economy
On the cuts. The bigger the cuts, the more it makes the economy seem in more trouble than it is, and this in turn makes the previous Labour government look more incompetent. Also, the Liberals as a friendly fig leaf hiding the Tories' extreme ideas. Fuckers.
LRB · David Simpson · Because We Could
Interesting look at why soldiers torture prisoners. Lays much of the blame at (a) the normalisation of torture as a technique in films/TV watched by troops and (b) the training soldiers go through that prepares them for being tortured themselves. (Subscribers only.)
The Online Photographer: How To Improve Digital Print Tonality
Simple tip for improving tonal separation: "Pull up Unsharp Masking. Set the Amount for somewhere between 8 and 15% (depending on taste, subject, and printer). Set the Radius for around 60 pixels. Set the Threshold to 0."
THEM THANGS
Sorting out my bookmarks, I have a few image scrapbooks like this. Love this one. No comments, just interesting images grabbed from all over. Absorbing. (Occasionally NSFW.)
THE DAY AFTER YOU DIE
Also quite a good scrapbook, although a higher adolescent incidence of naked ladies (so 40% chance of NSFW).
CONVOY
Not sure about this scrapbook. Some nice interiors and products, but all a bit too tastefully hipster. 
Dinosaur media and the Internet both suck, a Booktrust story
Francis Irving using the Booktrust funding u-turn story as an example of how most journalism never providws basic facts and resources that, these days, should be a no brainer.

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Links for Monday 27 December 2010
"Dude, that Was the Trailer?"
Comparing the trailers for the original and new 'True Grit's, and 'Tron's.
Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training
Recommended a few times in an Ask Metafilter thread for beginners looking to build strength.
The Viral Me: Devin Friedman Investigates the New World of Social Networking: Big Issues: GQ
Quite a good description of the Silicon Valley start-up scene, and why people want to use all these social sites/apps, by someone who starts off not really understanding it all. (via Blech)
A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (VersoBooks.com)
Oh, that looks good doesn't it. Fills a gap that I now realise was aching to be filled.

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Links for Tuesday 28 December 2010
Alibi_factory: There's only one person in the world who decides what I'm going to do, and that's me.
I love those Doctor Who/Citizen Kane stills compared. I also simultaneously love and hate the barely comprehensible syntax of the enthusiastic writing. "WHAT GIANT DOLLS O NO. Nightmare fuel for days." (via Haddock)
Danish homestore. The classic danish furniture specialist
Lots of lovely looking furniture which I'm not looking at at all, oh no. (via Haddock)

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Links for Wednesday 29 December 2010
Thought of a Day
I knew there was something wrong with that "Venn Diagram" about TSA agents/prostitutes/doctors and touching your junk. This explains what it is. (via @rooreynolds)

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Links for Thursday 30 December 2010
LRB · August Kleinzahler · Diary
I really enjoyed this description of a road trip in the American West, although it's for subscribers only.
The battle of Towton: Nasty, brutish and not that short | The Economist
Fascinating account of a War of the Roses battle from an excavated mass grave. I didn't know men of the time weren't much shorter than the average today (people shrank in the Victorian era). (via Kottke)
LRB · John Lanchester · Let Us Pay
On the future of the newspaper industry. Many good nuggets, including: "New York Times, if it stopped printing a physical edition of the paper, could afford to give every subscriber a free Kindle. Not the bog-standard Kindle, but the one with free global data access. And not just one Kindle, but four Kindles. And not just once, but every year."
LRB · David Runciman · Look…
For this: "a new divide in British public life: between the people who say ‘Look…’ and the people who say ‘So…’"

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