Art History For Geeks
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Paul The Wine Guy has created a great series of images that help geeks related to art history: “Understanding art for geeks”
via Drawn!
mashup image by Paul The Wine Guy
Archive for January 23rd, 2008
EveryBlock, Track News In Your City, Neighborhood & Block
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
EveryBlock is a new service which launched today that helps you find news and information in your city, neighborhood and even down to your block. The service is currently available in San Francisco, New York and Chicago. The local news takes the form of civic information, news articles, blog posts, Flickr photos, Craigslist listings, Yelp reviews and so on.
“What’s happening in my neighborhood?”
For a long time, that’s been a tough question to answer. In dense, bustling cities like Chicago, New York and San Francisco, the number of daily media reports, government proceedings and local Internet conversations is staggering. Every day, a wealth of local information is created — officials inspect restaurants, journalists cover fires and Web users post photographs — but who has time to sort through all of that?
Our mission at EveryBlock is to solve that problem. We aim to collect all of the news and civic goings-on that have happened recently in your city, and make it simple for you to keep track of news in particular areas. We’re a geographic filter — a “news feed” for your neighborhood, or, yes, even your block.
via Simon Willison
Mashable Potato Head T-Shirt by Haythem Haddad
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
I received the latest package from Startup Schwag (schwag bag #4) today and along with a bunch of stickers it included this interesting potato head t-shirt for the social networking news blog Mashable. The shirt was designed by Haythem Haddad, who won the Mashable t-shirt design contest back in November.
Until recently I’ve had no real contact with Mashable, but then last Friday I finally met the blog’s founder Pete Cashmore at The Crunchies, of all places. Mashable and TechCrunch are rivals of sorts, so I think his appearance stirred things up a bit.
photo by Scott Beale
ProBlogger on How Twitter Helps Bloggers
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Darren Rowse wrote an excellent post on ProBlogger today about “9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers”. In the write-up Darren, a recent convert to Twitter, explores several ways that Twitter can help bloggers, including:
- improve the quality of blogs
- network with other bloggers
- widen readership
- grow a blogger’s profile
- drive traffic to blogs
Twitter is still by far the social network I use the most, including many of the ways outlined by Darren, like using TwitterFeed which I have written about in the past.
Blue Bottle Café Opens, Features $20K Siphon Bar Coffee Machine
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
The new Blue Bottle Café opened today in San Francisco’s Mint Plaza, the first full cafe from Blue Bottle Coffee. cheesebikini? points us to a New York Times article about their Lucky Cremas Bonmac 105 siphon bar, a $20,000 Japanese brewing device located at the new cafe.
With its brass-trimmed halogen heating elements, glass globes and bamboo paddles, the new contraption that is to begin making coffee this week at the Blue Bottle Café here looks like a machine from a Jules Verne novel, a 19th-century vision of the future.The NYT article features a photo gallery that shows the step-by-step process of how coffee is made using the siphon bar. UPDATE 1: Niall Kennedy went to the cafe’s opening this morning and shot a few photos, including some of the Lucky Cremas Bonmac 105 siphon bar.
UPDATE 2: Ryan Bailey shot some video of coffee being made with Lucky Cremas Bonmac 105 siphon bar.
photos by Peter DaSilva via The New York Times & Niall Kennedy
Laughing Squid Vendors, Products and Services We Use
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
People often ask me what companies we use for various products and services, so I thought I would be good to put together a list of Laughing Squid vendors. I’ll update this list over time as we add use new products and services.
We have our Laughing Squid t-shirts screen printed by the great folks at Ape Do Good Printing in San Francisco. Here’s my write-up on Ape Do Good, which includes some photos I shot of their shop.
People love our Laughing Squid stickers and we print them by the thousands at Contagious Graphics in Charlotte, NC. They make quality vinyl stickers and are able to match the PMS 360 green we use, as well as the occasional custom color. We have been using them to print our stickers from day one.
We have our Laughing Squid buttons made by One Inch Round in San Francisco.
For our fulfillment services we use NoonaCo in San Francisco, run by our good friend Helena “Noona” Nolan. They do all of the packing and shipping for our t-shirt and poster orders, as well as run our online store. Here’s my write-up on NoonaCo.
We lease all of our servers, including those used in our web hosting operations, from Rackspace based out of San Antonio and our servers are located at their Dallas/Ft. Worth data center. They have been really great, living up to their motto of “Fanatical Support”. We are one of their oldest customers and have been with them since May 1999. Here’s my write-up on Rackspace from when I visited them in 2005 after SXSW.
Laughing Squid is proudly run on the wonderful open source blogging script WordPress, along with a variety of great WordPress plugins, including Akismet, WordPress stats and WordPress Super Cache.
Some other services we use for the blog are Flickr (image hosting), blip.tv (video hosting), FeedBurner (feed statistics), Google Analytics (traffic statistics), Federated Media Publishing (direct advertising), Google AdSense (contextual advertising), Amazon.com Associates (referral program), Google Reader (feed reader shared items), Skitch (screenshots) and ShareThis (blog post sharing).
The Squid List runs on Helios Calendar, with the email list generated by FeedBurner using their RSS to email service.
My primary camera is a Canon 5D DSLR, which I use with a variety of lenses. Also I always try to carry along a pocket camera, which is currently the Fujifilm F50 (here’s my write-up on the F50). I use Apple’s Aperture photo editing tool and host all of my photos online (over 20K of them) using the excellent Flickr photo sharing service.
I’m an Apple person so I do most of my work on a Mac Pro as well as a MacBook Pro when I travel. Oh yeah and of course my mini computer, the iPhone.
Regarding Mac software, in addition to what comes with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), the main apps I use include Firefox (browser), Adium (instant messaging), VMware Fusion (virtualization), BBEdit (text editing), Transmit (FTP), SpamSieve (spam filter), SuperDuper! (backups), 1Password (password manager), iTerm (terminal emulation), Skitch (screenshots), Twitterrific (Twitter client), Speed Download (download manager), AppZapper (uninstaller), Photoshop (image editing), Aperture (photography post production), Final Cut Pro (video editing), Colloquy (IRC), QuickBooks Pro (accounting), Skype (internet phone) and Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 (office suite).
T-Shirts
We have our Laughing Squid t-shirts screen printed by the great folks at Ape Do Good Printing in San Francisco. Here’s my write-up on Ape Do Good, which includes some photos I shot of their shop.
Stickers
People love our Laughing Squid stickers and we print them by the thousands at Contagious Graphics in Charlotte, NC. They make quality vinyl stickers and are able to match the PMS 360 green we use, as well as the occasional custom color. We have been using them to print our stickers from day one.
Buttons
We have our Laughing Squid buttons made by One Inch Round in San Francisco.
Fulfillment
For our fulfillment services we use NoonaCo in San Francisco, run by our good friend Helena “Noona” Nolan. They do all of the packing and shipping for our t-shirt and poster orders, as well as run our online store. Here’s my write-up on NoonaCo.
Managed Hosting & Data Center
We lease all of our servers, including those used in our web hosting operations, from Rackspace based out of San Antonio and our servers are located at their Dallas/Ft. Worth data center. They have been really great, living up to their motto of “Fanatical Support”. We are one of their oldest customers and have been with them since May 1999. Here’s my write-up on Rackspace from when I visited them in 2005 after SXSW.
Laughing Squid Blog Resources
Laughing Squid is proudly run on the wonderful open source blogging script WordPress, along with a variety of great WordPress plugins, including Akismet, WordPress stats and WordPress Super Cache.
Some other services we use for the blog are Flickr (image hosting), blip.tv (video hosting), FeedBurner (feed statistics), Google Analytics (traffic statistics), Federated Media Publishing (direct advertising), Google AdSense (contextual advertising), Amazon.com Associates (referral program), Google Reader (feed reader shared items), Skitch (screenshots) and ShareThis (blog post sharing).
The Squid List Resources
The Squid List runs on Helios Calendar, with the email list generated by FeedBurner using their RSS to email service.
Photography
My primary camera is a Canon 5D DSLR, which I use with a variety of lenses. Also I always try to carry along a pocket camera, which is currently the Fujifilm F50 (here’s my write-up on the F50). I use Apple’s Aperture photo editing tool and host all of my photos online (over 20K of them) using the excellent Flickr photo sharing service.
Computer Equipment
I’m an Apple person so I do most of my work on a Mac Pro as well as a MacBook Pro when I travel. Oh yeah and of course my mini computer, the iPhone.
Regarding Mac software, in addition to what comes with Mac OS X Leopard (10.5), the main apps I use include Firefox (browser), Adium (instant messaging), VMware Fusion (virtualization), BBEdit (text editing), Transmit (FTP), SpamSieve (spam filter), SuperDuper! (backups), 1Password (password manager), iTerm (terminal emulation), Skitch (screenshots), Twitterrific (Twitter client), Speed Download (download manager), AppZapper (uninstaller), Photoshop (image editing), Aperture (photography post production), Final Cut Pro (video editing), Colloquy (IRC), QuickBooks Pro (accounting), Skype (internet phone) and Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 (office suite).
ShareThis, Making It Easy To Share or Send Blog Posts
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
I’ve just updated Laughing Squid to include the ShareThis service using the ShareThis WordPress plugin. Now at the bottom of each post you’ll see a small ShareThis button and link that looks like this:
Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Facebook, Technorati, Reddit, Tailrank, Ma.gnolia and others or to send directly to people via email, AIM, SMS, MySpace and Facebook.
Also the ShareThis icon is an nice green, so it perfectly matches our design.
For more on ShareThis, check out Eric Eldon’s recent post on VentureBeat.
MacHeads The Movie, A Documentary About Apple Fanatics
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
Here’s the trailer for the upcoming documentary “MacHeads The Movie”, produced and directed by Kobi Shely, which explores the cult of Apple fanatics.
MacHeads is a documentary about fanaticism and unconditional devotion to a corporate brand. The film takes us through the history of the Macintosh community and how it lead the Apple revolution. MacHeads explores the human side of Apple, telling the inside story of a loyal community and its struggle to spread the Macintosh gospel. Now that Apple is world known success, is it losing its faith as a community and becoming just a… brand?I was interviewed for the documentary last year at Adam Jackson’s DailyTechTalk Macworld Party, but I’m not sure if my interview made it into the film. Here’s more about the documentary from Violet Blue, who appears in the trailer, admitting that she’s never, ever slept with a Windows user.
