BBC on the online participation changes it sees.

While we’re talking about participation, here’s a nifty project hosted by the NY Public Library. Collaborative transcription of old menus so that they are searchable. Via Gothamist.

Thowaway culture challenged, could this work in Ireland?

Lots to love about the fictional silence in Lucie and Simon’s Silent World project.

To Fans, From Joss.

Just a little obsessed with Mills’ cover of The Cure’s A Forest from the Lovefilm ad.

Damien sounds off on how RTE can reinvent its newsroom in the wake of the crippling contreversary its embroiled in.

Too many shiny posters in the Good Fucking Design Advice Store.

While we’re looking at wonderful posters, how about map woodcuts?

Tickets for Playful are on sale now.

“To” – On words and signs.

WordByStorm reminds us of FF’s ’97 bus shelter adverts.

Smithfield’s billion dollar house.

Demolition composites. This would be an excellent project to do in Dublin pre-vs-post boom.

Geologic map of Io.

Scrolling down through the page, it’s obvious that the site is designed for tablets. The scrolling between sections seems attuned to touch. Transitions between sections like Latest News and The Players appears to be almost physical, like folding a page. Hovering over the top striped bar, shows a heads-up banner of the main headlines. Interesting again.

Lots has been said about the tweet – why wasn’t it checked/what was the timeline/how should it have been checked/what does this mean for old media trying to be relevant in a new media landscape and etc. The not so weird thing about the entire debate is how entirely Irish the whole undertaking has been. Really. Twitter wonks might go ape-shit over tweets emanating from new or untrusted voices, but just like Suzy has said over and over again on the whole Twitter/old media debate – the network of linked voices and old hands on Twitter tend to weed out the untrusted, unverified sources from real ones. On a flat communications landscape like Twitter, trust is usually earned and not given. The one caveat being that at election times, it’s not unusual and in some ways disgustingly human to see supporters astropitching on Twitter, setting up accounts to support their own or attack opponents. It’s not Twitter’s fault, it’s ours.

And that tweet sat out there like a reverberating bear trap while Frontline was broadcasting live. People on Twitter get excited. And of course, when they get excited, retweets are natual. Lots of crap gets retweeted on Twitter. All the time. Lies, insinuations, untruths. Tweets are subject to libel. While it may be illegal to tweet untruths, it’s a person at the end of the day that sends the tweet. To err, even knowingly, just like to astroturf, is human.

So far we have a cobweb of humanity joined together with 140 characters or less. An excitable bunch bouncing messages around and then someone on the Frontline team has a heady moment and hands Pat the tweet as part of a “reaction” segment and the rest is history.

RTE should have done their homework when for vetting the tweet. That’s totally undeniable. Lots of media organisations have fallen in love with the Twitter machine. Totally in love. Sometimes they are little too love with it, I think. Like a pink unicorn, Twitter has wafted into the media landscape offering old media a way to bootstrap themselves into a shared stream of conversation. A conversation that may contain lies, overexaggerations, allegations and astroturfing. Never! This is, unfortunately, something that they are learning the hard way.

That’s why I find it a little weird to see old media heads complain about the Twitter machine. If ever there was an industry that should be cynical about sources, it’s old media right? But then there’s other interesting thoughts that spring from that well:

• Maybe old media is in a reactionary tailspin about this in Ireland *because* of the decimation of our tiny media landscape to non-traditional, new media outlets that thrive on Twitter and it’s ilk? Just look at the old media heads and politicians that have donned Talking Head jerseys on this whole affair.
• How will this affect how RTE and other media organisations use Twitter? And what potentially interesting uses has RTE and other old media organisations lost because now The Twitter Needs To Be Managed and not just played or experimented with?
• Has this sort of incident affected any other major electoral races in other countries? Why does this feel *so* Irish?
• Reaction, Reaction, Reactionary. I can’t get past the verocity or amount of spittle expended by media and the media on Twitter about this. This is really a discussion that the media are having about media and the medium on the media. Like a snake swallowing it’s tail. To the outside observer watching at home, I’m sure (just like lots of other folks are sure) that the word “envelope” sealed it for Sean Gallagher. But media wants what it wants. It’s an important discussion without doubt, but more about ensuring best practice in verifying allegations regardless of source, right?

Designing perceptual persuasive websites.

Famous literary character composites.

On R Crumbs’ comic album covers.

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions “Lost Me On The Way”

To distract myself and all of yiz, here’s a video of MPU Labs “Snake The Planet” that has been selected for Sydney’s Vivid Festival this Summer. Think Snake, but projected and including traces of the world around us. The promo film was produced by Finch and Publicis Mojo.

Snake the Planet! from MPU on Vimeo.

A couple of great interview gems on The Verge – William Gibson & Yiying Lu on her design of the failwhale.

For the special developer in your life.

I want to…

I’m not a neat freak, but damn there’s a time and place! Via Curbed.

Yeah, so Red Links is very 2011. Let’s go with Links until I come up with a better title..

First Aid Kit “Blue”

I’ve been to the show a couple of times over the years. There were projects on weather, studies on crops, sexuality and society, web applications, teeny electronic steam-punkedness. The most impressive thing about the show is the students. Some bristle, “ask me stuff”, others are a little reticent – but all are passionate about the who, what, why and how of their projects.

This year’s show opens on Wednesday and runs right through to Saturday, although be warned that after the prize-giving this Friday, the booths tend to close up and students go home.

From the squeaky-new release Metals. NYOM.

Fred on keeping the logged-out user in mind when designing sites.

Joe Forkin’s Lebowski Cycle.

The Royal Observatory’s astronomy photographs of 2011. Via io9.

Do you like the Diet Coke redesign?

Caterina’s post has been swimming in my mind for few days, and it came to the surface yesterday as I read this tweet by @jessefarmer:

People don’t want to be convinced, they want to be inspired.

These both come from the same place. As human beans, we all just wanna be inspired. The things that inspire me to make things or make things better are not reading about Y Combinator deals, or going to enterpreneur- sandwiched meetups. It’s not baitlinkings. Or ebooks.

Sometimes the frustration of mangled double-speak on topic of technology makes me want to scream bullshit like I used to and run away like a seven-year girl. If someone is inspired, they’re probably hacking together something rather than speaking around it. They are probably investing their time in things they love making.

My day job necessitates me being a critic all day long. I enjoy this. But sometimes, the doing of trying to make things better gives one a sinking feeling, nay a hesitation, of making things from scratch. 9-5, I plan for gaps. Afterhours, it can be difficult to focus on the making things, gaps and all. It slows the pace of making, as I Hans Brinker my way through. Plugging gaps in designs proactively. And that’s something I have to deal with, and something I’m getting better at. But even then, I’m inspired and led to making things, by the things that made me. Kinda like Caterina alludes to.

In a roundabout kind of way, I suppose I’m saying that making doesn’t have to be profound or released to the public or a straight line or the subject of every greasy-till fumble. And the making of Silly is needed now more than ever.

A lot of the problems I see Yahoo making over and over again stem from its failure to really embrace the spirit of its failed Brickhouse project and give levity and space to its engineers to invent. Yahoo aren’t the only company making this mistake.

Brickhousing
On establishment, Brickhouse was shaped to be a pocket monster of an invention studio. Set in the startup hub of central SF, its mission was to recapture the startup vibe in Yahoo. While it produced some interesting projects like Fire Eagle, it was for all intents and purposes, a phantom limb for nurturing innovation in Yahoo proper.

There seemed to be a lot of problems that stunted Brickhouse’s impact. Not being on the main campus was a massive problem. Not just for the Brickhouse imagineers feeling the beat of the HQ, but also for reinvesting that innovation and reenergising the body of Yahoo. It’s difficult to motivate people at the coalface of an organisation working on the mundane but shipping parts of a site, when you’ve created a special hip beast in central SF and annointed them as the engine of the org’s R&D effort going forward. Who wants to be shipping yesterday’s software?

Revolving Chiefs, Revolving Goals

Leadership was going in circles. A lot of tech vets ran through the doors of Brickhouse – Salim Ismail (now at Singularity U), Chad Dickerson (now head of Etsy), Caterina Fake (Flickr, Hunch). It all seems a bit chicken and egg. No doubt the exec bounce rate was inextricably linked to Yahoo’s existential crisis. A crisis completely characterised by the infamous Peanut Butter Manifesto written by the former SVP Brad Garlinghouse in 2006 just as the Brickhouse was was finding its feet. A crisis that included Yahoo buying Zimbra in 2007 for $350m, a company who’s mailbox architecture was seen by Yahoo as an undoubted opening salvo against Google Apps dominance

The acquisition of Zimbra will help Yahoo! to expand its presence in universities, businesses and through ISPs by enabling organizations to host e-mail on or off premises with their own domain.

Zimbra was then punted to VMware less than three years later, with Yahoo still committed to using its technology for its mail and calendar products. A double-whammy. Yahoo basically said we don’t want to architect Zimbra’s IP, but because of dependancies with our architecture, we’ll be at the mercy of your decision-making, Mr VMware. Basically.

It’s damn clear that rebellion was ricocheting at lots of levels of Yahoo – the manifesto, execs and key product people leaving. The effect was astounding. Acquisitions were bolted on hap-hazardly. Partnerships on roads to nowhere inked – search deals with Samsung and RIM etc while the iPhone quietly hoovered up marketshare.

But all of that is now in the past. Or is it? There’s a lot of commentary on the web saying that Yahoo needs to embrace its present company DNA and just decide it’s a media organisation rather than a technology company. Yahoo, the media org is at first-glance is an easier value proposition to understand. It has properties to drive – Yahoo! Finance and Mail are still well eyeballed but I fail to see the impetus to reinvent these properties if Yahoo decides just to be a media company. Yes, media organisations like the Guardian do very well – thank you very much. But Yahoo will never be the Guardian. And it probably shouldn’t try to be.

And stirrings of the impending sale of Yahoo shouldn’t come as a surprise. Packaging the whole company. If I’ve learned anything from Pretty Woman it’s that selling off a company in well-rounded units rather than a confusing maw of properties makes sense. Which is why I am intrigued to read reports of possible sale of the company is on the cards. Maybe going private is what needs to happen, but a private monster is still a monster.

Across four years, we analyzed the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students’ major.

To me, the use of nouns — especially concrete nouns — reflects people’s attempts to categorize and name objects, events, and ideas in their worlds. The use of verbs and pronouns typically occur when people tell stories. Universities clearly reward categorizers rather than story tellers. If true, can we train young students to categorize more? Alternatively, are we relying too much on categorization strategies in American education?

I haven’t bought a Sunday newspaper in months. And it’s been good. I’m suddenly 16 again.

Divorcing oneself away from the medium slowly while the flames of the News of the World hacking, the sick events of the Utoya shootings and #Aras11 licked our news cycles has been good. There’s more reading, writing and thinking. I’m buying more stationary.

While all this good stuff fizzles away, reengaging with news on Twitter and some online news sites has been a largely empty experience. News in the shape of a photocopy of a photocopy infinity. Don’t you feel like a girl waiting for the Jetsons’ flying car too?

The 9th Dublin Argentine Tango Festival opens today and runs through the weekend.

The New Yorker profiles Guillermo del Toro.

AI in Stanford to be the biggest class in the world?

An oral history of The Dana Carvey Show.