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10 December, 2002
An Efficient Way to Keep Up With the News
I think I've found a good way to monitor dozens of news sources. For the past month, I've been using a program called NewzCrawler -- and it works quite well.
The three-panel
user interface resembles Outlook Express. You can select the news sources to
monitor (thousands are available) and arrange them in a hierarchy that makes
sense to you. Click the update button to retrieve the latest headlines. Click a
headline and read the story. You can read it in a NewzCrawler window, or in a
separate browser window.
For example, I've specified a list of about a dozen news sources, and stored them in a group named "Technology" (see screen shot). I select the group name, and press F5. In a few seconds, all of the current headlines are retrieved and displayed. I can then quickly scroll through them. If something looks good, a single click is all it takes to retrieve the entire news item. The entire process is about 20 times faster than visiting each of the sites and checking for new items.
In addition to standard news sources, NewzCrawler work very nicely with blogs -- as long as they provide an RSS (Rich Site Summary) feed. Did you ever wonder what that little orange XML button is for? That button is a link to the RSS data for the blog, stored in a standard XML format. NewzCrawler uses this data to update the headlines.
The product can also display standard newsgroups, and it works much like Outlook Express. For example, I can read and post to newsgroups such as microsoft.public.excel.programming.
Finally, you can set up a group of Web pages that you visit frequently. One click will refresh the entire group, and you can then view them quickly and efficiently.
You can download a trial version of NewsCrawler, but the fully licensed version is only $25 -- a bargain as far as I'm concerned.
Posted on 10 December, 2002
2002 Year-End Google Zeitgeist
What do Jennifer Lopez, Eminem, Ferrari, MP3, and David Beckham have in common? They are all among the top search requests at Google in 2002. Read more.
2002
Year-End Zeitgeist offers a unique perspective on the year's major events and
hottest trends based on more than 55 billion searches conducted over the past
year by Google users from around the world.
Posted on 10 December, 2002
The Letter Project
I guess this is another one of those sites that has been around for quite a while -- but I've never seen it. It's called The Letter Project. A guy collects photos of people holding a letter of the alphabet. Then he combines the photos to spell a word or phrase of your choice. Example:
(via Metafilter)
Posted on 10 December, 2002
Brain Scans for Advertising
What will a company do to sell its products? Try this:
A company in Atlanta is scanning people's brains with MRIs, in an effort to record our subconscious thoughts about products and ads. The process has been dubbed neuromarketing. It's being hailed as a giant leap in the science of selling.
The goal, of course, is to get more control over the consumer:
"What it really does is give unprecedented insight into the consumer mind and it will actually result in higher product sales or in brand preference or in getting customers to behave the way they want them to behave"
What companies are involved with this?
"We can't actually talk about the specific names of the companies, but they are global consumer product companies...Right now, they would rather not be exposed.
I wonder why?
(via Boing Boing)
Posted on 10 December, 2002
A Hyperspace Star Polytope Slicer
This
interactive Java applet
is loads of fun, even if you have no idea what this means:
A 4-dimensional convex polyhedron (properly called a "polytope" or "polychoron") is a volume of 4-dimensional space that is bounded by a number of hyperplanes. For example, the 4-dimensional polytope known as the "120-cell" is bounded by 120 hyperplanes.
Locate a pair of those red-blue 3D glasses, and try the Anaglyph stereo mode setting.
Posted on 10 December, 2002
Worldview Desktop
Gong Szeto, in Brooklyn, has created a dual monitor system that displays 57 real-time data sources.
The premise for this was simple. I got bored of static desktop wallpapers and was futzing around with the web-enabled desktop, which windows has had since win95 (i think), but I never used it after diddling with those funny 3D clock demos they included. until now... Basically I scoured the web for every conceivable "live" or "real-time" information graphic I could find, and was happily amazed at the types of data that was out there. Stock market data, meteorological data, live television feeds, astronomical feeds, and the items that took up most of my search...live webcams.
Very cool! Gong even provides URLs for the 57 items.
Posted on 10 December, 2002
Microsoft Evangelism
Every once in a
while, I'll see a reference to Microsoft Evangelism. Here's an example
from this morning:
Microsoft Announces New Office Tools.
"Microsoft is focused on creating great opportunities for developers, and 'Visual Studio Tools for Office' enables developers to build solutions that provide an intuitive end-user experience," said Microsoft's vice president of the Developer Platform and Evangelism Division, Tom Button.
The Meriam-Webster online dictionary provides two definitions for evangelism:
1: the winning or revival of personal commitments to Christ
2: militant or crusading zeal
I assume that Microsoft is using the second definition. I don't see anything militant about their behavior, so I guess the "crusading zeal" part qualifies.
BTW, Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism Division was formed in October, 2001.
Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but snicker every time I see a reference to "Microsoft Evangelism." Why would they choose a word that has such strong religious connotations? Why not use the term Advocacy instead?
Posted on 10 December, 2002