Remember The Milk is a tasklist site that keeps track of your to-dos.FEY AS PALIN: "Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...Also..."Tina is pretty spot-on. Typical. (From the Huffington Post)
FFFFOUND! is a site for image bookmarking. According to their "about" page, it allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, and also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image. An interactive bookmarking experience, if you will, and I will.
One regular on the site is a user known as Essjay, who holds a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law and has written or contributed to sixteen thousand entries. A tenured professor of religion at a private university, Essjay made his first edit in February, 2005. Initially, he contributed to articles in his field—on the penitential rite, transubstantiation, the papal tiara. Soon he was spending fourteen hours a day on the site, though he was careful to keep his online life a secret from his colleagues and friends. (To his knowledge, he has never met another Wikipedian, and he will not be attending Wikimania, the second international gathering of the encyclopedia’s contributors, which will take place in early August in Boston.)
EDITORS’ NOTE:
The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator and contributor called Essjay, whose responsibilities included handling disagreements about the accuracy of the site’s articles and taking action against users who violate site policy. He was described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.”
Essjay was recommended to Ms. Schiff as a source by a member of Wikipedia’s management team because of his respected position within the Wikipedia community. He was willing to describe his work as a Wikipedia administrator but would not identify himself other than by confirming the biographical details that appeared on his user page. At the time of publication, neither we nor Wikipedia knew Essjay’s real name. Essjay’s entire Wikipedia life was conducted with only a user name; anonymity is common for Wikipedia administrators and contributors, and he says that he feared personal retribution from those he had ruled against online. Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
I read this on the Internets it must be true.
STEVE BERLIN: Oh, I have plenty of recollections of working on that one. I don't know if you heard the stories, but it was not a pleasant deal for us. I mean he [Simon] quite literally -- and in no way do I exaggerate when I say -- he stole the songs from us....
And you know, going into it, I had an enormous amount of respect for the guy. The early records were amazing, I loved his solo records, and I truly thought he was one of the greatest gifts to American music that there was.
At the time, we were high on the musical food chain. Paul had just come off One Trick Pony and was kind of floundering. People forget, before Graceland, he was viewed as a colossal failure. He was low. So when we were approached to do it, I was a way bigger fan than anybody else in the band. We got approached by Lenny Waronker and Mo Ostin who ran our record company [Warner Bros.], and this is the way these guys would talk -- "It would mean a lot to the family if you guys would do this for us." And we thought, "Ok well, it's for the family, so we'll do it." It sounds so unbelievably naïve and ridiculous that that would be enough of a reason to go to the studio with him.
We go into the studio, and he had quite literally nothing. I mean, he had no ideas, no concepts, and said, "Well, let's just jam." We said, "We don't really do that." ... Not by accident, not even at soundcheck. We would always just play a song.
... Paul was a very strange guy. Paul's engineer was even stranger than Paul, and he just seemed to have no clue -- no focus, no design, no real nothing. He had just done a few of the African songs that hadn't become songs yet. Those were literally jams. Or what the world came to know and I don't think really got exposed enough, is that those are actually songs by a lot of those artists that he just approved of. So that's kind of what he was doing. It was very patrician, material sort of viewpoint. Like, because I'm gonna put my stamp on it, they're now my songs. But that's literally how he approached this stuff.
I remember he played me the one he did by John Hart, and I know John Hart, the last song on the record. He goes, "Yeah, I did this in Louisiana with this zy decko guy." And he kept saying it over and over. And I remember having to tell him, "Paul, it's pronounced zydeco. It's not zy decko, it's zydeco." I mean that's how incredibly dilettante he was about this stuff. The guy was clueless.
It was ridiculous. I think David starts playing "The Myth of the Fingerprints," or whatever he ended up calling it. That was one of our songs. That year, that was a song we started working on By Light of The Moon. So that was like an existing Lobos sketch of an idea that we had already started doing. I don't think there were any recordings of it, but we had messed around with it. We knew we were gonna do it. It was gonna turn into a song. Paul goes, "Hey, what's that?" We start playing what we have of it, and it is exactly what you hear on the record. So we're like, "Oh, ok. We'll share this song."
JAMBASE: Good way to get out of the studio, though...
STEVE BERLIN: Yeah. But it was very clear to us, at the moment, we're thinking he's doing one of our songs. It would be like if he did "Will the Wolf Survive?" Literally. A few months later, the record comes out and says "Words and Music by Paul Simon." We were like, "What the fuck is this?"
We tried calling him, and we can't find him. Weeks go by and our managers can't find him. We finally track him down and ask him about our song, and he goes, "Sue me. See what happens."
JAMBASE: What?! Come on...
STEVE BERLIN: That's what he said. He said, "You don't like it? Sue me. You'll see what happens." We were floored. We had no idea. The record comes out, and he's a big hit. Retroactively, he had to give songwriting credit to all the African guys he stole from that were working on it and everyone seemed to forget. But that's the kind of person he is. He's the world's biggest prick, basically.
So we go back to Lenny and say, "Hey listen, you stuck us in the studio with this fucking idiot for two days. We tried to get out of it, you made us stay in there, and then he steals our song?! What the hell?!" And Lenny's always a politician. He made us forget about it long enough that it went away. But to this day, I do not believe we have gotten paid for it. We certainly didn't get songwriting credit for it. And it remains an enormous bone that sticks in our craw. Had he even given us a millionth of what the song and the record became, I think we would have been - if nothing else - much richer, but much happier about the whole thing.
JAMBASE: Have you guys seen him since then?
STEVE BERLIN: No. Never run into him. I'll tell you, if the guys ever did run into him, I wouldn't want to be him, that's for sure.
Mental Floss is a website dedicated to Trivia Facts. It is a web version of their magazine."For the record: mental_floss magazine is an intelligent read, but not too intelligent. We're the sort of intelligent that you hang out with for a while, enjoy our company, laugh a little, smile a lot and then we part ways. Great times. And you only realize how much you learned from us after a little while. Like a couple days later when you're impressing your friends with all these intriguing facts and things you picked up from us, and they ask you how you know so much, and you think back on that great afternoon you spent with us and you smile.Bonus points for tamping down the smug factor.
And then you lie and say you read a lot."
Flatshare Fridge is a Design Lab 2008 contest finalist that makes it easy to divvy up the space in a shared apartment. "For creator Stefan Buchberger, a design student at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, the idea grew out of a semester-long theme about keeping personal space clean and tidy. “I decided to create Flatshare fridge because there is nothing more disgusting than a dirty fridge in a shared flat,” he says. 'At the time, I was living in such a flat!'I have totally moved in to a summer sublease where the fridge contained things from people that had moved out before the previous tenants had moved out. I honestly opened the freezer and there were frozen ants. The ants were trying to go for the frosted flakes that were stuck on the door rubber.
The fridge consists of a base station and up to four stackable modules. The modules allow each individual user to have his or her own refrigerator space and can be customized with various colorful skins as well as with add-ons like a bottle opener or a
whiteboard.
Handles on the sides of the modules make them easy to transport. 'If you move to new flat, you can just transport your module like a suitcase and hook it up to the base station in your new flat,' Buchberger explains. "
This is the second (and final) of Cammie's favorites from the Wired article.
Play Sleuth is an online RPG game for the budding detective. An open-ended, detective role playing game (RPG) where you solve mysteries by searching for clues, questioning suspects and interviewing witnesses. Every mystery is unique with different victims, suspects and clues.
According to Wired, "Reuben's tube is a classic way to demonstrate the concept of a standing wave. Pump some flammable gas into one side of a tube, and attach a speaker to the other side, and watch what happens to the columns of flames that issue from small holes along the top."This was actually one of two of Cammie's favorites from the article.
English Spelling Inconsistencies is a video about how English is such a crazy language. By your new favorite geezer. 
Today's Big Fail is a website that chronicles a fail moment every day. The pictures are grainy, but the fails are big. Considering it's daily, and internet, it was a clear win.
300 Love Letters is an art project by Asia Wong. Asia explains her project in a convoluted way, but the gist of it is that she wrote 400 love letters to people she knows, and sent them, contents exposed, to unrelated strangers. It's like the unwitting strangers are forced to over-hear an awkward love confession. The letters are color coded as follows:red and pink = loversI particularly like this backhanded compliment. The project is a little exhibitionist, a little stalker-like. As Mefite quintessencesluglord says, "I tried this once. And then the restraining orders came."
orange = fan letters
yellow = strangers
green = acquaintances
blue = friends
purple = crushes
indigo = family
brown = people Asia doesn't really like
gray = anyone
black = everyone
white = Asia
flesh = Asia's dream lover
Umbrella Today? is a Ruby on Rails application/website that tells you if you need an umbrella today, depending on your zip code.
Right Now: What Are You Doing? is a web page on the site 43 folders that reminds you you're wasting your time RIGHT NOW. On the Interwebs.
How to create a super shiny pencil icon in Photoshop
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