This week’s collection is limited in political articles, filled instead with innovation and technology. This may or may not be the result of me not yet understanding what type of articles you readers prefer most. Therefore, if you are so inclined, please let me know in the comments what types of articles you guys prefer. Otherwise, your silence (and clicks!) will be construed as approval. Enjoy!
1
Sometimes a genre, or an artist, or a title doesn't quite encompass the kind of music you want to hear - sometimes that desire is best described by an emotion. That's the concept behind Stereomood, which, with a single click lets you hear the kind of music you want, whether it's raining, you just woke up, or you're simply happy. It's simple, straightforward, and surprisingly good.
2
It's always refreshing to come across someone improving a seemingly dead-end product, which is exactly what Damjan Stankovic is doing with the traditional stoplight. Stankovic's stoplight gives drivers a bit more information as to just how much longer they have to wait until they see green. Considering most of us just watch that crosswalk timer count down anyway, we might as well look straight into this great little idea. For extra credit, check out the Piece of Cake, another refresh take on the common split the check problem.
3
As one of those people who has basically relinquished all personal data to Google while complaining of its ever increasing dominance of everything everywhere, I was slightly comforted by this Louis Gray piece which reassures us tin-foilers that all will be ok.
4
A curious nationwide contest took place this weekend, celebrating and harnessing the power of the internet to locate and report the location of 10 giant red balloons released all over America. The challenge was organized by the Pentagon DARPA unit, which aimed to highlight the true power of social networking today. As it turns out, a team of graduate students at MIT took the $40,000 prize, using a creative monetary incentive scheme to do it. While its not completely clear what lessons can be garnered from this type of widespread experiment, the fact that the challenge was over less than 9 hours after the first balloon was released speaks volumes about our collective (incentivized) power.
5
This short post is from a great website I found called Iconic Photographs, which, in addition to showing the photographs themselves, also reveals a bit of the history behind it. Anna Anderson was the name of a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, Nikolai II's daughter. Although the Romanovs had been murdered in the run up to the Bolshevik Revolution, that fact didn't stop the controversy around Anna Anderson more than three years later.
