This is awesome. I’d have eaten this up, back when I was a cartoon-obsessed, constantly-scribbling kid.

The BBC’s new style guide.

This is beautiful. Keep watching; it gets cooking a few minutes in. (via Jess)

I guess this is why I can’t get Offline Gmail in Chrome of all browsers, on OSX.

My Grandma and Grandpa (Dad’s side) renewed their vows on their 65th anniversary in the Dominican Republic. This is their photo album, and it’s packed with priceless images.

Neat product.

Here’s another note to go watch this amazing talk, if you haven’t gotten enough prods from your other channels. I’ve been somewhat in future-shock and denial around this whole phenomenon around Facebook games. This talk makes everything clear. It’s like having someone from the near future come tell you what’s going on.

Oh man. This is the first bag I’ve seen that has all the features of my Chrome messenger (three-point strap system, quick adjustment buckle system, 100% rainproof, overstuffable, etc.) plus many that my bag doesn’t have. I worry that it’s a bit over-designed, but damn if it isn’t pretty.

Depending on the feature set they release with, this will either be super useful or a security nightmare. I’m hoping for the former, as it could mitigate a lot terrible UI design on the web today.

LOL

Leila went to Port-au-Prince last week to begin training at our new service partner in Mirebalais. I’ll likely be going next week with the State Department to build out more of our infrastructure, there.

This is one of the best product intros I’ve ever seen.

The steel ones are kind of neat-looking.

This is another awesome item in the Makers Market. (via Jess)

Embedded in here is a really good, succinct definition of the quality of one’s software.

You know what’s awesome? Videos of mosquitoes being shot out of the air by lasers.

I like it. It’s a voluntary version of the flat-rate ISP levy to pay copyright owners that the EFF was advocating many years ago.

Robot humans trying to survive in monkey business culture. I can identify with this approach, somewhat, but I mostly glad I’m not quite this hobbled.

Indie games are so varied and pretty, these days.

A cool breakdown of how games are designed and where their limitations lie.

There are some really horrible ones in here. (via Ajaxian)

Looking forward to seeing what you do next, Lukas.

Way better search in Textmate. I checked out a few forks of this bundle, and this one works best.

Hilarious. Come read it and dream the dream of a web without Flash. (via Daring Fireball)

A short post about chukudus, the ubiquitous transport gadget of eastern Congo. I was fascinated by these, and this article fills in a few more interesting details, for me. I have a little model one in my room.

This site uses Twitter geolocation to show who’s not home, so you can rob them. Scary, good awareness-raising. (via Ballantyne)

The dual-axis navigation through the magazine and the page scrubber are nice. So are video, moving/shifting panels, and the ability to rotate objects. Revolutionary, however, is how these features also apply to the adverts. This is is higher value for content publishers to go after, and they will finally have a medium to present sell it through.Maybe the iPad will save the print industry.

This is certainly an issue I’m experiencing at Samasource.

A counterintuitive idea. (Via Will)

One of the best instructables I’ve ever seen. It’s a topic I enjoy, hacking everyday stuff into something super useful, and packed to the gills with useful, accurate technical background.

Awesome. Maybe T-Rex was covered in leopard spots.

More bags for me to fetishize. These are made from recycled tire inner tubes, and they’re beautiful.

Interesting. And (as is usual with Robb’s ideas), depressing.

Cool non-relational DB competing with CouchDB. This is now available as a one-click install on Dreamhost, which is where I first saw it.

Nice. Free, sexy fonts. I’m going to run my hand over my monitor, lovingly.

A political call to action for the tech-obsessed set.

Neat! Trying it out, today.

"In some ways, we have been so much harsher to men in the destruction of their ‘Girl Cell’." A powerful talk.

The last generation doesn’t want these things; they’re just resigned to them. It’s unclear if their outlook will ultimately be proven more realistic than ours.

This should have been a False Profit, LLC press release.

May the best cyborg win.

Stats collected on users by Hunch.com

Neat: GUI scripting using screenshots and computer vision. via Kevin.

There are new reasons every day to wonder what is wrong with our culture. (via titaniumdreads)

This is a nice guide to the ins and outs of wireless networking design, written for non-techies. Written by Inveneo, who are Samasource officemates and are on the ground in Port-au-Prince right now.

Yan says it’s not a bug. It’s a feature.

The Goog gets more scarily intelligent (i.e. more scarily useful)

A (hopefully) sarcastic post on BoingBoing, illustrating the difference between "steampunk" and "crappily made"

I’m kind of sick of hearing about this. So far, it’s crossed my feeds half a dozen times, but they all refer to the same press release. If these guys are going to change the world, they should at least put out some more convincing content.

Another day, another RC helicopter link from Ben to drool over. Check out the video. I wonder if these will be used to film shows in the near future. They can go where booms can’t.

Interesting. Dreamhost is open-sourcing their massive data storage code.

Here is video from the crowdsourcing meetup from this week (http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2010/01/crowdsourcing-work-meetup-january-20th/). Inspiring talks from the Mechanical Turk head Sharon Chiarella, artist Aaron Koblin, researcher Panos Ipeirotis, and of course Samasource founder Leila Chirayath.

Why would they do this? Surely they don’t need the cash.

This is the current state of UX design as a career track.

Holy crap this is gorgeous. Via Olga

Purty.

Why Kiva matters even though it only lends about 7% of the world’s microfinance dollars, at present.

This is your brain on 8-bit video games.

I love this shirt. It’s styled as if it were just finger paint, but the game it represents is unmistakable.

Now, if they’ll just do authenticated feeds…

Okay, that was a genuine LOL: "neva reenacting the birth experience"

Samasource uses Beanstalk. This is a useful feature, and smart for them. It introduces data to your code that is Beanstalk-specific, outside the code repository itself. This makes moving away from their system a bit harder, though they’re good about exposing an API for the comments.

Fantastic post for nonprofits wanting to redesign their websites. It’s very basic, but good for sending to those in your org who need to be oriented around the idea that an online presence needs to be designed, not simply a collection of whims.

Cute.

Neat video of the performance capture rigs that were used.

After all the terrible films that Jackie Chan has been in for the last decade, this one could be a breath of fresh air.

So, this is from an anti-advertising blog, but I can see it being very useful. I’d lvoe to check out a neighborhood and peek at storefronts to see what’s new, read up-to-date flyers on the doors of businesses, menus in the windows of restaurants, etc.

TextMate, which I use every day, has been largely unchanged for over three years. Despite being the product of a single developer (Allan Odgaard) so long ago, there are still no good alternatives to this fantastic piece of software. This baffles me, especially given the speed with which so much other software obsolesces. In the meantime, this guy has been working on version 2.0. This blog post underscores his struggle. It’s like he’s a tortured artist writing a novel in some cave somewhere.

This is an artifact representing possibly the first time eye-lines were discovered to be so critical in animation/live action composite scenes. Basic knowledge, these days.

A beautiful story, the Thing, told from the point of view of the Thing rather than the humans.

Indulge yourself.

Good advice if you need to explain social media/marketing to someone who doesn’t get the context.

Neato.

This looks extremely, extremely useful for those of us who occasionally need to do impromptu tech support for someone in need.

Interesting observations.

Chun and I are playing around with my little mini-RC copter, which led us to check out some higher-powered offerings online. This, by far, is the most insane RC helicopter stunt reel I’ve seen.

Notes on adding subtle depth to user interface elements.

Ben will mock me for sharing yet another item from Core77, but this is awesome nonetheless.

It sounds even creepier than when HAL sung it.

More good commentary (support, with additional nuance) on the Clay Shirky rant.