How does the Internet really work? The World Science Festival created this short video explainer as a setup to Internet Everywhere: The Future of History’s Most Disruptive Technology, a sold-out program featuring Internet pioneer Vint Cerf of Google, MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, lawyer and Internet advocate Elizabeth Stark and Alex Wright, director of user experience at The New York Times.
The video lets you ride shotgun with a packet of data—one of trillions involved in the trillions of Internet interactions that happen every second. Look deep beneath the surface of the most basic Internet transaction, and follow the packet as it flows from your fingertips, through circuits, wires, and cables, to a host server, and then back again, all in less than a second.
We have all walked by the Red Cross sign in airports indicating where a heart machine is located. Do you know what is in them and how to use it? I did not.
Watch this video and see what you think. If you pick the wrong choice — the man dies — choose wisely. You may save a life. I just watched this video twice.
This is an ingenious way to get people to imagine they can do something on the spur of the moment that they’ve never tried before. I didn’t realize that the box actually talks to you.
A TED presentation on Filter Bubbles and how they are changing our world in ways you never imagined. You will want to know about this if you spend anytime on the web using Google Search, or Facebook. 9 minutes. – Robert
A few YEARS ago — I recommended the music service PANDORA to you. Pandora is still great. Still useful. So is iTunes. 220,000,000 active members proves it. And NOW I want to point you to a new service that is an alternative to the first two — it actually compliments iTunes because it includes your current iTunes Library in the player controls. You see the details at their web site.
Try it out. It’s FREE. There’s a lot to explore on their web site.
This is not a paid endorsement. I just like it a lot!
Robyn shares her personal story and how it inspired her current path as a “Real Food” evangelist. Grounded in a successful Wall Street career that was more interested in food as good business than good-for-you, this mother of four was shaken awake by the dangerous allergic reaction of one of her children to a “typical” breakfast. Her mission to unearth the cause revealed more about the food industry than she could stomach, and impelled her to share her findings with others. Informative and inspiring.
About this speaker
Robyn authored “The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.” A former Wall Street food industry analyst, Robyn brings insight, compassion and detailed analysis to her research into the impact that the global food system is having on the health of our children. She founded allergykidsfoundation.org and was named by Forbes as one of “20 Inspiring Women to Follow on Twitter.” The New York Times has passionately described her as “Food’s Erin Brockovich.”
When you do the demonstration, if you think the yellow dots are being removed, start moving your eyes around and you will discover that the yellow dots do not disappear. Keep your eyes scanning when you drive!
It works exactly as described and is one major reason people in cars can look right at you (when you’re on a motorcycle or bicycle) — AND NOT SEE YOU.
From a former Naval Aviator: This is a great illustration of what we were taught about scanning outside the cockpit when I went through training back in the ’50s. We were told to scan the horizon for a short distance, stop momentarily, and repeat the process. I can remember being told why this was the most effective technique to locate other aircraft. It was emphasized (repeatedly) to NOT fix your gaze for more than a couple of seconds on any single object.
The instructors, some of whom were WWII veterans with years of experience, instructed us to continually “keep our eyes moving and our head on a swivel” because this was the best way to survive, not only in combat, but from peace time hazards (like a midair collision) as well.
We basically had to take the advice on faith (until we could experience it for ourselves) because the technology to demonstrate it didn’t exist at that time.
Source: Provided by Prof. Michael Bach PhD, Ophthalmology, University of Freiburg, Germany, from his collection of Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena.
Thanks to Carolyn T. for passing this one along to us.
After solar flare, massive storm speeds Earthward. A solar flare Sunday triggered an outburst of solar material that should hit Earth Tuesday. The disturbance could lead to voltage swings on some power lines, as well as stronger northern lights.
The Christian Science Monitor By Pete Spotts, Staff Writer / January 23, 2012
An outburst from the sun late Sunday night is bathing Earth in the most powerful solar-radiation storm in six years.
The radiation storm is the first act of an event that will crescendo Tuesday, when the brunt of the outburst – called a coronal-mass ejection – arrives at Earth. It could trigger a disturbance of Earth’s magnetic field, leading to voltage swings in long-distance power transmission lines as well as the appearance of the northern lights as far south as New York.
The current radiation storm – rated an S3, or strong, on a scale of 1 to 5 – could damage satellite hardware and present an increased risk of radiation exposure to passengers flying at high altitudes across polar routes, say space-weather specialists. These risks, however, are expected to be manageable.
The outburst, which occurred at 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Sunday, marks the second major solar eruption in three days.
But the flare triggered the release of billions of tons of energetic particles from the sun’s atmosphere. This coronal-mass ejection (CME) is hurtling toward Earth at 4 million miles an hour, “by far the fastest CME directed at the Earth during the current solar cycle,” Dr. Biesecker says.
CMEs are vast clouds of protons, electrons, as well as heavy atomic nuclei formed in the nuclear fusion reactions that power the sun.
This CME’s unusually high speed is accelerating some of its protons to nearly the speed of light, and they are arriving in quantities not seen since May 2005.
The resulting radiation storm could cause some hardware or onboard software glitches for satellite operators. And radio communications at high latitudes, as well as navigation-satellite accuracy for high-precision uses, could suffer some degradation for the duration of the radiation storm.
A geomagnetic storm Tuesday could further affect satellites.
For satellite operators, geomagnetic storms have a Janus-like quality. If strong enough, they can produce voltages on a satellite’s exterior that can be powerful enough to arc and cause damage. And the storms can increase the atmosphere’s drag on satellites, causing them to lose altitude.
But such storms also can increase drag on space junk that can pose a risk to satellites, sending more of it to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
This week’s geomagnetic storm also could bring auroras to viewers farther south than usual.
Biesecker says the storm may reach a level that could render auroras visible as far south as Idaho and New York, and perhaps even Illinois and Oregon if the CME’s intensity is large than estimated.
I ran across this story in USA Today and it’s surprising what it reveals — and the hot links it offers to let you address these privacy issues quickly. Here’s the intro to the story. Click the link to visit the complete story and access the hot links. – Robert
What Apps Can Access Your Social Media?
By Sarah Kessler, Mashable
There are more than 130 Facebook app developers with access to my profile. Sixty-eight apps have permission to post to my Twitter feed, eight of them can access my LinkedIn data and another eight are connected to my Gmail account. You don’t have to be an online privacy expert to understand that’s probably too many, but how many apps have permission to your account?
Israel-based entrepreneur Avi Charkham has cut down the time it will take you to find out. After becoming frustrated with how difficult it is to locate app permission pages on social sites, Charkham compiled direct links to such pages for eight different networks into one place on the site MyPermissions.
My good friend Carol W. in Pittsburgh, PA sent me a link that really rang true in what it says. I thought you might find value in this alternate view of shopping. Feel free to click on the Add A Comment button and add your own suggestions. Come back later and see what others have added. Full disclosure : I edited the advice on Apple based on personal experience. — Robert
Buying tech smartly is difficult. Sam Grobart reduced a lot of hard-earned and complex wisdom to seven rules of thumb in the New York Times. I was pretty impressed with this list because I think his advice is sound and he was able to reduce it to short rules of thumb. Here are his seven rules, each one a trade off, as annotated by me.
When buying hi tech….
* Pay for RAM, not speed. The speed of the computer chip does not matter; the attention-span or RAM memory does matter.
* Pay for messaging, not minutes. On your phone, your texting is more expensive than your voice time.
*Pay for components, not cables. Buy the best components, and the cheapest cables.
* Pay for speed, not channels. For cable internet, with enough speed you can watch TV channels on the internet for free.
* Pay for AppleCare if you have a portable device (iPad, iPhone, Mac laptop) -OR- If you are new to Apple equipment. The 3 years of telephone support are life savers. Buy MobileMe through Amazon, instead of directly from Apple. It’s worth what it cost for all it does.
* Pay for screen size, not refresh rate. On TV screens, bigger size makes a difference while refresh rate does not.
* Pay for sensor size, not pixel count. On today’s cameras you’ll have enough megapixels; better quality comes from larger sensors.
Relative sensor sizes in various camera families form here.
Those seven got me thinking about other tech shopping rules of thumb. Here are a few others that come to mind:
* Pay for reliability, not mileage. On a car, you’ll spend more of repairs and maintaince over its lifetime than you will on a difference in gas.
* Pay for comfort, not weight. A bicycle’s feather weight is moot once you add water bottle, a bag, any extra clothes you wear, while its comfort never disappears.
* Pay for foam, not down. The biggest difference in the warmth of a sleeping bag is the insulation under you, not the down over you.
* Pay for glass, not shutters. In professional cameras, great lenses endure, while the camera bodies change and go obsolete.
A unique collection of over 175 complete books on woodworking and related topics of interest to woodworkers. The Library continues to grow, All Free, 24/7.
These books are in the public domain in the United States and everybody, including you, may read and distribute them. If you don’t live in the United States you’ll have to check the laws of the country you live in before downloading and distributing these ebooks.
This library collection contains books which consist of both HTML and PDF format files. These files are very large and regrettably, are not optimized for dial up connection speeds.
Earth Day is here! This year, Earth Day’s theme is themed after A Billion Acts of Green: our people-powered campaign to generate a billion acts of environmental service and advocacy before Rio +20. Check out the cool new Billion Acts of Green Facebook app onhttp://apps.facebook.com/billionactsofgreen
Ready to take part in Earth Day 2011? Here is how you can get involved:
My personal, all time, number one, favorite television series was Connections by James Burke. A science program that set the standard for all who tried to follow it. It is an original and even by the standards of that time, elaborate and worthy of attention even now.
Connections was the highest rated television series to date when it aired on PBS.
The clip above is the first of five 10 minutes segments of the first program. A program that sets the whole format for the show and gives you an excellent taste of what is to come.
There are very few television programs I would ever recommend to you and this is one of them. James Burke has just posted all of his series on YouTube and you can see them all by clicking the link below.
If you aren’t hooked in the first 10 minutes of “The Trigger Effect” no harm in taking a peek. The rest of you are welcome to a real treat! — Robert
( If the embedded YouTube video is not visible to you click below )
I believe you want to know what is happening with regard to YOUR Air, Water and Health in America. This is C-SPAN coverage of my US Senator, Tom Udall, as he speaks to the Senate on this immediate issue. I do not intend to play politics here, I trust you’ll find this short video enlightening. I think we all basically agree. Everyone one of us needs to breathe. — Robert
“The Clean Air Act has been a standard for successful public health policy for more than 40 years. Signed into law by President Nixon with strong bipartisan support for decades, this law has helped keep the air we breathe free from pollution.
Just last year, the law protected American families from 1.7 million asthma attacks, 130,000 heart attacks and 86,000 emergency room visits.
Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s best efforts, in New Mexico alone, over 170,000 residents still suffer from asthma, and over 47,000 of those are children. Thousands also suffer from other respiratory illnesses.
Given those statistics, some might find it hard to believe that there’s a movement afoot on Capitol Hill to roll back these important protections on air quality — to protect polluters, not people.
The House budget bill calls for the removal of important regulations already in place, putting hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans at greater risk from pollution from power plants, oil refineries, and cement kilns.
This is a step backward, not forward, and I recently took to the Senate floor to defend the Clean Air Act. You can watch that video above.
Yesterday, I also joined 18 senators to express this concern to President Obama and today I co-sponsored a resolution reaffirming the authority of the Clean Air Act.
The Clean Air Act has cut six major pollutants by over 40 percent, but air pollution still claims 70,000 lives per year, three times that of car accidents. If we weaken the Act, unfortunately that number will rise.
It also protects pregnant mothers and developing children from mercury, a neuro-toxin that creates problems in brain development, including attention and memory problems.
Mercury comes out of smoke stacks into the air, deposits into our water, and is also consumed in the fish that we eat.
Overall, the House Continuing Resolution undermines the Clean Air Act, leading to more pollution, asthma, hospital visits, and less healthy children.
It’s no surprise that there is widespread opposition to efforts to roll back this important law’s protections:
“Please fulfill the promise of clean, healthy air for all Americans to breathe. Support full implementation of the Clean Air Act and resist any efforts to weaken, delay or block progress toward a healthier future for all Americans.”
As you may have guessed, the Internet isn’t perfect and neither is blogging software.
Each time I post a new item on Pixel Harbor I make sure it actually works as expected on the PixelHarbor.com site.
Many of you subscribe via an email subscription or RSS and you get a notice that there is something new to see on the blog.
As occasionally happens — what works on the actual website might not work as expected in your email alert. { Like “Click the Video to play it” } — when it doesn’t work as expected, just click on the title or go to the actual blog site and you’ll still be able to enjoy the item with the rest of us.
I wish it were otherwise. I wish it were perfect. I wish we could all win the lottery. But I hope this little message sheds some light and reduces your frustration with the technology as it continues to evolve.
Thanks for subscribing and keep the “good stuff” coming by sending me the best bits you find in your travels on the web. We ALL appreciate it.
-Robert
PS: For those of you who had a problem viewing “A Game of Hope”, Click Hereto visit the actual blog site. It’s worth your time to do so.
“If art is among your full-blown obsessions or just a budding interest, Google, which has already altered the collective universe in so many ways, changed your life last week. It unveiled its Art Project, a Web endeavor that offers easy, if not yet seamless, access to some of the art treasures and interiors of 17 museums in the United States and Europe.
It is very much a work in progress, full of bugs and information gaps, and sometimes blurry, careering virtual tours. But it is already a mesmerizing, world-expanding tool for self-education. You can spend hours exploring it, examining paintings from far off and close up, poking around some of the world’s great museums all by your lonesome. I have, and my advice is: Expect mood swings. This adventure is not without frustrations.
On the virtual tour of the Uffizi in Florence the paintings are sometimes little more than framed smudges on the wall. (The Dürer room: don’t go there.) But you can look at Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” almost inch by inch. It’s nothing like standing before the real, breathing thing. What you see is a very good reproduction that offers the option to pore over the surface with an adjustable magnifying rectangle. This feels like an eerie approximation, at a clinical, digital remove, of the kind of intimacy usually granted only to the artist and his assistants, or conservators and preparators.
There are high-resolution images of more than 1,000 artworks in the Art Project (googleartproject.com) and virtual tours of several hundred galleries and other spaces inside the 17 participating institutions. In addition each museum has selected a single, usually canonical work — like the Botticelli “Venus” — for star treatment. These works have been painstakingly photographed for super-high, mega-pixel resolution. (Although often, to my eye, the high-resolution version seems as good as the mega-pixel one.)
The Museum of Modern Art selected van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” and you can see not only the individual colors in each stroke, but also how much of the canvas he left bare. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s star painting is Bruegel’s “Harvesters,” with its sloping slab of yellow wheat and peasants lunching in the foreground. Deep in the background is a group of women skinny-dipping in a pond that I had never noticed before.”
There is much more to the story, and I highly recommend it to you. – Robert
Here’s a neat little app for checking flights. Straightforward and quick. One caveat… it does NOT include Southwest Airlines. (Nothing does except Southwest’s own site)
Many of you are familiar with the short lectures & presentations that come from TED. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences — the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK each summer — TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.
Once you know about TED, you don’t need to be reminded that it exists and is worthy of your time. That’s why I don’t post a continuous list of TED Talks here on PIxel Harbor. You can subscribe to TED directly if you choose.
However… In the past week I have had FOUR individuals ALL send me links to this recently posted talk by Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability. I took the 20 minutes needed to watch her presentation and I think YOU will agree that it is more than worth your time to do so, as well.
Circadian rhythm information graphic by Matt Kursmark
Where Is Everyone? from Design you trust.
Information graphics, or infographics, are visual representations of information, data or knowledge. The graphics are used where complex information needs to be explained quickly and clearly, such as on signs and maps and in journalism, technical writing and education. Today, infographics surround us in the media, in published works both mainstream and scientific and in road signs and manuals. They illustrate information that would be unwieldy in text form and act as a visual shorthand for everyday concepts, such as “Stop” and “Go.”
Creating an effective infographic requires both artistic sense and a clear vision of what to tell the audience. The following are some cool infographics we have collected. Some are colorful, some are simple, but all are informative and visually pleasing. Not only do they provide information in a format that is easy to understand, but they are also artistic creations in their own right.
I don’t particularly like my handwriting—neither did my third grade teacher. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to professional fonts that look like handwriting. Or maybe it’s because they’re just plain awesome.
-Jay Nelson
Browse local data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, based on samples from 2005 to 2009. Because these figures are based on samples, they are subject to a margin of error, particularly in places with a low population, and are best regarded as estimates.
Through a special agreement with more than 800 newspapers worldwide, the Newseum displays these front pages each day on its website. The front pages are in their original, unedited form, and some may contain material that is deemed objectionable to some visitors. Discretion is advised.
Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes.
Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Thanks to Peter B, Bob P, Bill V (all) for forwarding this link to us.
Geocoded Art is a collection of the world’s greatest landscape, cityscape and seascape paintings. Explore the location of these paintings using Google or Bing Maps.
Like thousands of others, I grew up inside the images of LIFE magazine. The earthquake in Alaska, the Zapruder film, Richard Avedon, Jay Maisel, and countless other greats. It’s one of the fundamental inspirations that made me become a professional photographer. – It’s fitting that these images live on in the printing press of the 21st Century. They are some of the best of the best. They set the standards for the rest of us. -Robert Barnes
Vern Seward from the Mac Observer brings this FREE app of real value to our attention.
To quote Mr. Seward:
Life photographs are not merely pictures, they are mirrors reflecting us at our best and worst, they are windows into out past, bridges to our present, and links to our future.
Life Magazine now has an iPad app: Life for iPad. Get it. It’s free, but it shouldn’t be. It is so full of photos that you literally can’t see them all, but you’ll want to. They are all just that good. -VS
My friend Lesa Snider has a column in both Mac and PC World magazines this month on using Photoshop CS5 and Photoshop Elements 9 — but you can use almost any photo editor — to design your Holiday Greeting Cards.
Designing your own holiday cards makes for fun, creative, and deeply personal messages to friends and family. Armed with your trusty Mac (or PC) and a digital camera, the design possibilities are endless! Here are three ideas to get your creative juices flowing fast.
If you are a freelance artist, photographer, designer or ever use the word creative in polite conversation – then I urge you to visit this wonderful resource by Joanna Ciolek. – The web site speaks for itself while supplying a wealth of inspiration.
Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies.
Panopticlick tests your browser to see how unique it is based on the information it will share with sites it visits. Click below and you will be given a uniqueness score, letting you see how easily identifiable you might be as you surf the web. Only anonymous data will be collected by this site.
The Edge Annual Question for 2010 – How Is The internet Changing The Way You Think? from the Edge.org.
Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world.
The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society. Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Contributors to Edge own the copyright to their original writing posted on this site and their posting is in effect a license permitting Edge Foundation, Inc. the electronic use of this work. In the event Edge Foundation, Inc. wishes to use the work in a print medium it will not do so before asking and securing the written permission of the author. Edge Foundation, Inc. owns the cumulative copyright to the site.
Universities house an enormous amount of information and their libraries are often the center of it all. You don’t have to be affiliated with any university to take advantage of some of what they have to offer. From digital archives, to religious studies, to national libraries, these university libraries from around the world have plenty of information for you. There are many resources for designers as well. Although this is mainly a blog that caters to designers and artists I have decided to include many other libraries for all to enjoy.
The Wall Street Journal has released a study from the job site CareerCast.com ranking the 200 best and worst jobs in the U.S. in 2009 based on five criteria–environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.
Thanks to Shel H. for bringing this link to our attention. He notes: It is a great read, and, as far as I can tell without actually doing any actual work, true.
Scientists call it the Naked Photo Test, and it works like this: say a photo turns up of you nakedly doing something that would shame you and your family for generations. Ask yourself how many people in your life you would trust with that photo. If you’re like the rest of us, you probably have at most two.
Even more depressing, studies show that about one out of four people have no one they can confide in.
The average number of close friends we say we have is dropping fast, down dramatically in just the last 20 years. Why?
As “grit” from the comet strikes our atmosphere, it burns up, often creating streaks of light across the sky.
This week, when the shower occurs it will be even more spectacular because a new Moon means will be no overpowering moonlight to spoil the show and the sky should be cloud free. The best time to see the meteor shower is Thursday night and the early hours of Friday.
The best spots to see the shower will be anywhere in the US where the weather is clear. It is most important to be out of towns and cities where it is dark.
“With a good weather forecast, this year’s Perseids display could be a cracker, and not one to be missed.”
No special equipment is required to watch the sky show. Astronomers say binoculars might help, but will also restrict the view to a small part of the sky.
Pingtest.net is a free broadband quality analyzer designed to complement Speedtest.net. This troubleshooting tool grades your connection on how well it is likely to handle things like voice services (VoIP), streaming music or video, telecommuting or online gaming.
Over a billion served has helped establish Speedtest.net as the clear global standard for speed testing. Pingtest.net goes further to test Ping, Jitter and Packet Loss – each critical to understanding the true quality of a broadband connection.
We hope you will find this site as easy and familiar as Speedtest.net, and hopefully just as invaluable.
