random($foo)

• Towards tag-based bookmark management in web browsers? – Whoa, how’d I miss this?
• Living Design Case Study – Flickr.com – Ludicorp’s genius came up in conversation at dinner. Peterme points out the latest example

Wow, thanks everyone for their generous contributions. Dropcash success! (thanks to Paul for pushing it over the top) I’ve already provisioned 3 additional 100Mbps dedicated servers and will be putting them to good use. All contributors will be getting an early sneak peak at the next project being cooked up at the labs a bit later this week.

Thanks to all who contributed and keep it coming (if you want, I’ll eat the difference either way, but it’s certainly appreciated). I’m going to be picking up a couple servers that I hope to have up and running by Monday. I’m no whiz w/ the driving out and registering voters thing, but I have some ideas cooking that hopefully won’t disappoint.

• FlashPoint Pen Drive – has a tiny battery and female USB plug to allow computerless copying. Genius!
• Discussion on Heather’s bizarre complaint – sorry, the reason the web looks the same is because most of the millions of people who are now blogging, *gasp*, aren’t designers! (also people, stop beating up on Anil. At least for anything besides his taste in music [or lack thereof])
• UF SCIENTIST: “BRAIN” IN A DISH ACTS AS AUTOPILOT, LIVING COMPUTER – this is just, well, sorta scary
• random($code) – pre-launch, but this is where I’m releasing some code, testing out Drupal
• Gizmodo: Blu-Ray Has Already Won – looks like a solid case

Last night, Robbie gets animated at SPARC‘s ElectThis! artists discussion.

I went to support a friend and listen to some good discussion, but also ended up giving some props to The Internets when the talk turned to distribution.

In a nutshell:

What is the definition of politics? Everything.

I like the newly blatantly politicized blog that William Gibson is keeping these days. I suppose it must be hard to be a person of conscience and sit by without trying to do something.

If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I’d certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan’s presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.

• Reality Bytes: Eight Myths About Video Games Debunked – by Henry Jenkins
• Bush Relatives for Kerry – Because blood is thinner than oil!
• Why We Cannot Endorse President Bush For Re-Election
  

  We find ourselves in a position unimaginable four years ago when we strongly endorsed for president a fiscal conservative and “moderate man of mainstream convictions” who promised to wield military muscle only as a last resort and to resist the lure of “nation building.”

• AP: Report Finds Lavish Spending at TSA
• BlogsAndPolitics – This is an attempt at generating a comprehensive timeline of when weblogs had a significant impact on politics. For now, I’m focusing on American politics, but feel free to add information (in the International section) of how weblog commentary and breaking stories authored by webloggers have changed the political discourse in other countries.

Bush Supporters Still Believe Iraq Had WMD or Major Program, Supported al Qaeda

• Agree with Kerry Supporters Bush Administration Still Saying This is the Case
• Agree US Should Not Have Gone to War if No WMD or Support for al Qaeda
• Bush Supporters Misperceive World Public as Not Opposed to Iraq War, Favoring Bush Reelection

For more analysis, including a good chart summarizing the numbers, see Kevin Drum’s blog.

• /. – Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor – if you’re a writer, heck if you’re a reader, you’ll want to read this. Score:5 Insightful, Score:5 Interesting, Score:5 Funny
  

  In order to set her straight, I had to let her know that the reason she’d never heard of me was because I was famous.

• “Bush’s Big Joke” — A Video of Atrocities – this got passed around a couple months past. Considering how many people have died for this, it was in horrible taste then, and is even worse now. George W Bush, you’re an asshole.
• Garrett’s F-Spot UI design notes – OSS w/ good UI? What’s this?
• One of the most interesting changes in the last five years is that Microsoft has become a depressing place to work. – Gates keeps lamenting
  that talented people are losing interest in IT, and has recently been
  stumping
  for the field. But what if he’s got a dark window on the IT world not
  because software is failing to attract bright developers, but
  because Microsoft is failing to attract bright developers?