Mecandes' Shared Items

Tribune Company news exec bans 119 cliché words and phrases from newsroom - Posted

2010-03-11T17:20:40Z

Shared by Mecandes
Good riddance! (The best part is where they use all of them in one sentence, haha!)

They are the phrases that journalists use without even thinking — quiet, tree-lined streets, cautiously optimistic, give it 110%. These words amount to newsspeak. You know them because they are overused, to the point where they no longer mean anything. They are news fillers. They are the lettuce in a BLT sandwich. No one really gives a damn about the lettuce.

(via shaqshead)

2010-03-04T04:34:38Z

(via shaqshead)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/files/2009/05/phd051809s.gif

2010-03-08T17:03:27Z

Top 10 Geekiest Decorations for Your Home or Office [PICS]

2010-03-07T02:50:51Z

We certainly wouldn’t advocate turning your office, cubicle or home office into some kind of over-the-top dork theme park, but a few witty items carefully placed here and there can brighten up the dullest work space with some geek chic.

Having an office gives you the chance to display things you might not get away with (or indeed, want to get away with) at home. From magnificent magnets to clever clocks and wall decals, here’s a choice of ten products that will help you geek-pimp your work space in style.

1. iPhone Icon Coasters

These Meninos coasters are styled after the iPhone’s icons giving Apple fans somewhere cool to stick their cups. Made of medium-density fiberboard (MDF) with a durable vinyl finish and a rubber bottom to stop slips, the anally retentive among you could arrange them on the coffee table as precisely as they appear on the phone’s homescreen, while the rest of us can mix ‘em up as we see fit. Oh, and if the iPhone’s not your thing, then Meninos also offers an Internet-themed set too.

Cost: $59.99

2. Million Dollar Homepage Poster

As well as adding a splash of color to your office walls, this poster will serve as inspiration, reminding you that a small, simple idea can grow into big, fat success. The million dollar home page poster is an exact replica of the original Web page, measuring 60cm x 60cm with a gloss finish. Heck, if you’re feeling flush yourself, you could even frame it.

Cost: $30

3. Enter Key Doormat

Let your visitors know that they are entering a geek domain right from the start with this recycled rubber doormat that is modeled after the “Enter” key. Designed by Pieter Woudt, there’s also a “Home” key version if whoever you share a domicile with will let you get away with geeking out your porch.

Cost: $30

4. Photoshop Magnets

We can’t think of a better way to stick your team pics to the fridge or filing cabinet than with these Photoshop-themed magnets, another little gem from Meninos. The set comprises 13 magnets which will be very familiar to anyone who has used the photo editing software as they replicate the menus and tool bars found in the popular Adobe product.

Cost: $25.00

5. A Red Swingline Stapler

As any fashion-lover will know, it’s all about the accessories. In this case, the essential office accessory is the Red Swingline Stapler. Launched in 2002 after strong customer demand generated by the stapler’s appearance in geek cult classic Office Space, the desk tool will elicit knowing approval from fans of the film. Just be sure to hide it when Lumberg’s around.

Cost: $32.48 (on sale at the time of writing for $21.99)

6. Recycled Mac Clocks

What’s the time? It’s geek o’ clock with these recycled Mac clocks offered by Etsy seller Pixelthis. The version pictured ($59) is the side panel of a retired Mac G4, upcycled into a working wall clock. There’s a whole selection over on Pixelthis’ Etsy shop, while commissions and customization of anything you want to send in to get the timepiece treatment are offered too, with price by negotiation.

Cost: Varies

7. Pantone Mugs

Don’t put up with boring chinaware, or worse still, ugly corporate freebie mugs. These officially licensed mugs from Pantone will delight anyone with an eye for color, or even a passing interest in design. The espresso set offers appropriate shades of coffee brown, whilst the more colorful set provides 10 shades — all marked with their Pantone reference, of course.

Cost: $50 and $120

8. Google Bean Bag

By all accounts, the Googleplex is a place of wonder. You can emulate a little bit of that magic with the Google Bean Bag — the very same kind gracing the Googleplex. Who knows what kind of gProducts have been thought up while someone’s posterior was placed on one of these things? Inspirational, indeed.

Cost: $109.40

9. Orbiculus from Art Lebedev

The Art Lebedev Studio has transformed “Cancel,” “Play,” “Save,” “OK,” and other commands into real-life objects with a useful function — the thumbtack. You can opt for the mixed set, or if you’re feeling particularly positive, go for the “Everything Is OK” set which is made up, as you might have already guessed, of just the “OK” pins. We simply can’t think of a better way to secure items to a bulletin board.

Cost: Approx $6

10. Blik Wall Decals

Blik offers a way to geek up your blank walls that is ideal for the commitment-phobe: Vinyl decals that can be peeled off it you get bored of them, or if your office landlord has a tizzy when he/she sees them. There are a few designs available that will turn your wall into a scene from a Super Marios Bros. game, or the classic Space Invaders. There are some pretty cool robots, too.

Cost: Varies

More gift guide resources from Mashable:

- 5 Must-Have Geek Collectibles
- Twitter Gift Guide: 15 Ways to Shop for the Twitter Obsessed
- Mac Gift Guide: 10 Buying Ideas for Apple Fans
- 10 Great Digital Gifts for Social Media Lovers
- 10 Romantic Gifts for Your Beloved Geek

Tags: design, geek, gift guide, Google, iphone, List, Lists, office, shopping, shopping list, trending

Popular Science Puts Entire Scanned Archive Online, Free

2010-03-04T16:38:00Z

Gadget nerds: Prepare to lose the rest of your day to awesomeness. PopSci, the web-wing of Popular Science magazine, has scanned its entire 137-year archive and put it online for you to read, absolutely free.

Tim Hortons to launch new upscale format - thestar.com

2010-03-05T15:30:33Z

Shared by Mecandes
...they're going all Starbucks on us? Ah well, I just hope they add wi-fi.

The redesign is intended to more sharply define Tim Hortons image with what the company calls “enhanced finishes, fixtures and seating areas.”

How to Kill the Design Community | Webdesigner Depot

2010-03-04T22:43:32Z

Shared by Mecandes
Tee hee!

Recently, the notion of killing the design community has come up on a few blogs (sometimes indirectly), creating many intense conversations on the direction the design community has taken over the past couple of years, and what can be done about it.

The world's most generic news report

2010-02-24T07:37:59Z

HBO Will Play ‘Game of Thrones’ - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

2010-03-03T05:21:46Z

Shared by Mecandes
...with Sean Bean as Eddard Stark, no less!

The cable channel has officially ordered a new series based on George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy novels.

CBC News - World - Chile quake may have shortened day

2010-03-02T16:55:26Z

The 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake released so much energy that it may have slightly shortened the length of the Earth's day, a NASA scientist says.

Photoshop 20th Anniversary - Startup Memories | Adobe TV

2010-02-23T17:06:18Z

In this documentary, the founders of Adobe Photoshop - John Knoll, Thomas Knoll, Russell Brown, and Steve Guttman - tell the story of how an amazing coincidence of circumstances, that came together at just the right time 20 years ago, spawned a cultural paradigm shift unparalleled in our lifetime.

Links for 2010-02-15 [del.icio.us]

2010-02-16T00:00:00-08:00

50 Free UI and Web Design Wireframing Kits, Resources and Source Files - Smashing Magazine

An Aside | ‘Fallout’ developers working on ‘Wheel of Time’ Videogame

2010-02-13T00:09:35Z

From Shacknews:

Fallout: New Vegas and Neverwinter Nights 2 developer Obsidian Entertainment will join Red Eagle Games in working on its video game adaptations of Robert Jordan’s acclaimed fantasy novel series ‘The Wheel of Time,’ the pair announced today.

“The Wheel of Time is one of the greatest and well-received fantasy series of all time,” said Obsidian chief creative officer Chris Avellone. “Games set in Robert Jordan’s universe have the chance to deliver on the epic storylines and the complex characters that the series is known for – and this is one of Obsidian’s strengths. It’s a natural fit.” Obsidian was founded by veterans of Fallout and Planescape: Torment dev Black Isle.

Red Eagle Games has been planning to make a Wheel of Time MMORPG as well as tie-in games for the movies its parent company Red Eagle Entertainment is making.

It’s not entirely clear what Obsidian’s involvement in the projects will be, as a press release merely states that the two have signed a “services agreement which provides a comprehensive framework for Obsidian Entertainment to work closely with Red Eagle Games’ in-house development team to create new video games for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy series.”

‘Wanted’ screenwriter Chris Morgan has signed on as story director for the games, serving on an “advisory council” with others including Tom Frisina of EA Partners–who are distributing the series. There’s still no word on when the first game will arrive.

Interesting. With vets from Fallout and Planescape: Torment (not to mention more recent games like Neverwinter Nights 2 and the upcoming Fallout: New Vegas), game known for providing gamers with expansive views of their gameworlds and characters, now working with Red Eagle Games this game might have a chance of being worthwhile. At the very least, I’m curious to see how Obsidian lends their touch to the project and one wonders just how closely they’ll be working on it. Still, it’s good to see some proper weight behind the project.

That said, I’m not sure it’s worth bragging about the fact that the due who wrote Wanted is working on your game. One has to wonder where Richard Morgan’s role at EA has taken him….

Buzz launch wasn’t flawed, Google’s intentions are « counternotions

2010-02-22T23:02:22Z

Google is a $170 billion company. It employs thousands of engineers and developers. It tests, tests, tests, and tests more. In fact, its “designers” once unable to pick a shade of blue tested 41 variations of it. It’s ludicrous to think that the Buzz fiasco was simply a result of under-testing.

Astronauts Turn International Space Station Into TIE Fighter [Space]

2010-02-17T14:24:00Z

Here's the first view from the open Cupola, the huge window installed in Tranquility. And yes, it looks like the view from Darth Vader's loft in the Death Star, overlooking Tatooine. Update: Multiple HD shots inside.

Cupola was installed in the new module recently attached to the International Space Station by the Endeavour crew, and has now be opened for the first time. And the view actually is Tatooine: This is the Sahara desert, where Luke's home planet scenes were filmed. [Thanks John Benac—ISS Logistics Engineer at Boeing—for the shots, and Gonzalo Oxenford for the heads up]

Please Rob Me

2010-02-19T15:19:13Z

Shared by Mecandes
A reminder that as we get more comfortable sharing personal information on-line, folks (and companies) will find ways to take advantage of it.

Showing you a list of all those empty homes out there.

Windows Phone 7 Series: Everything Is Different Now - Windows phone 7 - Gizmodo

2010-02-15T18:35:38Z

Shared by Mecandes
Oooh, Xbox Live is the killer app.

It's astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn't compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we've been waiting for. Everything's different now.

Links for 2010-02-10 [del.icio.us]

2010-02-11T00:00:00-08:00

Commodore 64 Pixel Art Gallery

Emulated Commodore Amiga Games Coming from Manomio [UPDATED] | Touch Arcade

2010-02-11T06:50:41Z

Retro gaming fans can add another item to their "things in life to be excited for" list, as we just got word that Manomio, who brought us the C64 for iPhone emulator, is currently working on bringing an Amiga emulator to the App Store.

Google Wastes No Time in Launching Google Buzz API

2010-02-10T00:07:21Z

Today Google launched Google Buzz, a new service taking aim at social platforms like Facebook and Twitter by providing the ability to share links, photos and status updates directly from your Gmail account. And right off the bat Google has released the accompanying API:

We believe that the social web works best when it works like the rest of the web - many sites linked together by simple open standards. Rather than launching with a one-off API, we see Buzz as a tremendous opportunity to work with the community to create and support open protocols for the next generation of social web apps and websites. To kick things off, Buzz is launching with support for public activity feeds and offers users the option to connect their favorite sites to their Buzz activity feed using open protocols.

There are going to be many ways for developers to access Buzz: Atom, AtomPub, Activity Streams, PubSubHubbub, OAuth, MediaRSS, Salmon, the Social Graph API, PortableContacts, and WebFinger. It’s quite an open stack. Initially this is read-only, but read-write APIs are coming soon. We’ve setup a Google Buzz API profile to track these updates.

CSMonitor have posted a nice writeup explaining how Google Buzz works, and how it compares to similar services:

How is Google Buzz different from Facebook and Twitter? In many ways it’s very similar. Users can post new buzz by sharing links, photos, videos, and status updates. You can comment on and “like” friends’ postings just as on Facebook, and send @ messages to get specific users’ attention much like on Twitter.

Google Buzz’s algorithms are constantly analyzing users’ preferences - what they like and dislike, what their friends are sharing, and who they’re interacting with. If a bunch of your friends are passing around a link or talking with a person, Buzz will shoot you a recommendation.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb notes how Google Buzz will use these open standards to try and build a broad social platform:

Google Buzz was presented as a destination site, but a look at its APIs and developer roadmap indicate that it may actually intend to be a platform - the central hub for a world of distributed social networking. “This is a downpayment on where we’re going with the open, social web,” Google Open Web Advocate Chris Messina told us.

People will build services on top of analyzing your public Buzz activity. They will build new applications for publishing to Buzz, just like the Twitter ecosystem has today. Planned support for things like the Salmon commenting standard mean that comments left on Buzz could appear out on blog posts around the web, and comments on blog posts could be viewed inside of Buzz when the post links are shared.

With its focus on open and existing standards, developers should find Google Buzz API fairly easy to get started with. There is also an opportunity to mould the API as it develops - Google are looking to work with the community, and encourage those with ideas and feedback to use the Google Buzz API discussion group.

Related ProgrammableWeb Resources

Google Buzz API Profile

Our world may be a giant hologram - New Scientist

2010-02-06T16:09:41Z

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

Have 'Avatar' And 'District 9' Shattered The Oscars' Sci-Fi Stigma? - Movie News Story | MTV Movie News

2010-02-04T01:20:38Z

What do "The Empire Strikes Back," "The Matrix," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Alien," "Back to the Future" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" have in common?

Links for 2010-01-22 [del.icio.us]

2010-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

Thematic, A WordPress Theme Framework
Thematic is a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it. It's perfect for beginner bloggers and WordPress development professionals.

Links for 2010-01-20 [del.icio.us]

2010-01-21T00:00:00-08:00

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2010-01-05T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2009-12-18 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-19T00:00:00-08:00

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2009-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

Browser Size - Google Labs