Day: March 23, 2008

In an effort to start the week with a clean(er) inbox…

• Nothing like bowling to bring a smile. Thanks for the pic, Cory.
• I’m reading this book right now, so I’ll review this podcast after I finish it.
• Wikis make a lot of sense to me, so I want to find time to listen to Jon Udell talk with Ward Cunningham, father of the wiki and now involved with AboutUs.org. Compare this to this. Hmmm.
• When were these words written? Answer at bottom.
  

  If our own computers give us information by the ton, the Internet can provide it in Krakatoan quantities. It is sometimes hard to find anything whatsoever of value on the Internet, with so many sites listing such things as the personal TV-show preferences of people you have never met or showing “live cam” shots of office workers in Germany. Finding the particular facts you are looking for can seem impossible. Yet in the long run the Internet, which links together many of the world’s data resources, should be the ideal research vehicle.

• I’m not a programmer, but I’m curious about the art all the same, so I save links like this one on hashing.
• Video interview about typography, from The Atlantic.
• The First, The Free, and the Good: “My current hypothesis is that there are at least three positions of prominence in each segment — three ways to be number one, if you will: The First One, The Free One, and The Good One.” My comment: a lot of fun to be all three.
• Absurd entries in the OED, via DF.
• Divinegreen.com is a former CNET colleague’s blog.
• Stripping design of its “administrative debris. Ummm, where’s the WordPress theme? 😉

The answer to when those words on information retrieval were written? 1996

Daylight Savings Time provided an excuse for the New York Times to run the Op-Ed column Time Out Of Mind a couple of weeks ago. The author, Stefan Klein, blends scientific studies and literary references to remind us that measuring time leads to changed perceptions of same. Stress and mistakes are also common for those who worry about “wasting” time.

Studies have shown the alarming extent of the problem: office workers are no longer able to stay focused on one specific task for more than about three minutes, which means a great loss of productivity. The misguided notion that time is money actually costs us money.

Hmmm. Klein is a science journalist, writing in German, but his book “The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life’s Scarcest Commodity” has been translated into English. On my list now, even if Klein missed the chance to steal part of this blog’s title.