Life & Research Notes

boxee: the open, connected, social media center for mac os x and linux seems like these guys may be nailing it better than songbird. media video tv entertainment opensource

Tracking the $700 Billion Bailout - The New York Times graphics visualization economics money business government politics

About Add-Art | Add-Art Add-Art is a free FireFox add-on which replaces advertising on websites with curated art images. The art shows are updated every two weeks and feature contemporary artists and curators. A Rhizome and Eyebeam funded project. web tool art plugin software rhizome

Is it Safe to Visit? The new travel safety aggregation/recommendation service is up. :) Yet another side project finally coming together. :) travel advice service resource api world data

Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley - The Big Picture - Boston.com another great set from boston.com's big picture series. gallery of the us soldier's experience in afghanistan. afghanistan war photos journalism images military

oblong industries, inc. finally oblong is up and online, with a demo reael of the gspeak. i actually used the gspeak today at the lab, and i gotta say it's pretty badass. ui startup interface hci medialab

Smule is Sonic Media glad to see cool stuff like this is doing so well. the co-founder is a friend of visnu and professor at stanford's ccrma software iphone app mobile stanford

Google Uses Web Searches to Track Flu’s Spread - NYTimes.com via tang. web trends information visualization analytics health science

The West Point Inn - Marin, San Francisco, Mount Tamalpais, Hiking A nice place to have lemonade. I grew up biking and hiking here. travel marin millvalley bike hiking nature outdoors

Via arikan.

This week Andy Volk and I put the finishing touches on the first version of isitsafetovisit.com, a simple tool that lets people check safety ratings and advisories for any country in the world.

From our about page: “Every night our trusty scripts head out and find data about the safety rating of each country from the U.S. Department of State, Canadian Foreign Affairs Department, Australia Smart Traveler, and New Zealand Safe Travel. We then compare the ratings and average them together to give our best estimate as to the current safety rating for that country. We’re also tracking the data over time to enable some exciting new features in the future.”

Always dreamed of the beaches in Thailand? Thinking about moving down to Mexico? Or maybe you prefer the safety of Ireland? A big part of what’s interesting about this service is seeing how the various advisories offer alerts and warnings differently. Andy and I are both passionate travelers. We don’t want these advisories to necessarily prevent people from traveling; we’re just trying to make the government recommendations more available and understandable.

Anyway, check out some random countries, and if you have any feedback, leave a comment here or in our forum on GetSatisfaction. Thanks!

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

Via arikan’s delicious. Quite lovely.

Billings 3 | Professional Time Billing for Anyone. via arikan. nice looking mac time tracking and invoicing system time business tracking software mac management project elance freelance

Sprint: Plug into Now. super ridiculous dashboardness. via arikan information data web visualization widget

Ellen Lupton: Design Writing Research: Cooper, Muriel research interview medialab maeda vlw murielcooper design history ellenlupton

The Mysterious “Save For Web” Color Shift | Web Design Blog: Web Design & Innovation in web standards : Viget Labs oh man, this explains a lot. via simplebits web design color howto photoshop tips

Amazon.com: Help > Shipping & Delivery > Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging FAQs amazon keeps on innovating, this time repackaging products they sell into easier to open, more recyclable packages. very cool. via visnu. green recycling waste service amazon business

the big chart this is amazing and weird. thanks sara. video humor design charts graphs

CHRIS BALLANTYNE nice dreamy landscapey scenes art visual paint artist

kenfoo pretty great stuff. like crumb crossed with manga and poo and grand theft auto. from luis blackaller. illustration comics art humor

iphone-google-maps-component - Google Code nice simple code for using google maps in an iphone app iphone development google maps programming sdk code

GEO GOO by JODI map based net art. via arikan. jodi map art visualization

GLOBALMOVE.US jodi uses the google map api like a web readymade. geo map art web visualization readymade jodi netart geography javascript google

Am I flirting? well this is amazing. flirt advice romance blog writing

Scott Snibbe - Interactive Art great interactive art installations vision video media art interaction technology installation

Yay, after being, uh, kinda dead for awhile, I finally resurrected Yummy, the little delicious timeline that could. I updated its code to a slightly less embarrassing state and put it under the Taco Lab masthead.