31 julho 2008

Após 64 ofertas


uns jeans Levi's de 1890s foram ontem leiloados por 36.099 dólares.

Senta!

Defiant Dog

29 julho 2008

50 anos de NASA

The Birth of NASA: After Congressional hearings during spring 1958, Congress passed the legislation and President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law on July 29, 1958.

Em confronto

Opposing Views: experts go head-to-head on real-life concerns, debating news and events, addressing the questions that keep you up at night. We introduce the questions, the experts present their cases (and disagree with each other), and you leave ready to make well-informed decisions and take action.

28 julho 2008

Literacias

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching television, to read and write.


BTW, The 25 Most Modern Libraries in the World: Libraries aren’t just musty places to store books with librarians shushing anyone who makes a peep. They’ve become much more than that and the modern library is often home to sleek architecture and the latest technology. These 25 libraries, in no particular order, demonstrate how libraries have become part of the cutting edge of information management, design and Web technology, and all of them can help you get some ideas on how to bring your library into the future.

Esquire com primeira capa electrónica

News Flash From the Cover of Esquire: an electronic cover, using admittedly rudimentary technology, that will flash “the 21st Century Begins Now,” when it appears on newsstands in September.

26 julho 2008

É hoje


Art Wiki Marathon 3: There's a lack of art/artist info on Wikipedia, and we're often too busy to find the time to contribute. So, we're setting aside one day where a crew of people collectively drop serious knowledge into wikipedia about art. From your favorite notable artwork, artist or exhibition, to our soon-to-be-famous peers. We'll also add structural links to alumni schools and categories like collective art groups, non profit orgs, etc.

The day is Saturday April 26th: an afternoon on the internet quietly enriching the public domain. We imagine groups of 2-4 people around tables across the country, bottomless coffee cups fueling the discussions, fact checking, and troubleshooting. Ideally lots of “oh, that person worked with X, I'll make a page for them, link me up.” There will also be a lot of online chatting across coasts. Video chats if bandwidth permits.

Milhão de bilião é trilião?

We knew the web was big...: We've known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!

25 julho 2008

Portugueses lá fora

MIT Portugal students win entrepreneurship competition: Researchers and students from the MIT Portugal Program hope a new biotechnology they developed will help treat patients with medical complications from abnormal protein breakdown.

24 julho 2008

I still want journalism. Journalism just doesn’t seem to want me.

Retirado deste Parting Thoughts, onde se dá uma chance ao jornalista que está saindo da profissão (seja por que razão for) para expor seus pensamentos sobre a situação e sobre o que está acontecendo à indústria jornalística.

Picasso



Animals in Art: Pablo Picasso created 'Bull' around the Christmas of 1945. 'Bull' is a suite of eleven lithographs that have become a master class in how to develop an artwork from the academic to the abstract. In this series of images, all pulled from a single stone, he visually dissects the image of a bull to discover its essential presence through a progressive analysis of its form. Each plate is a successive stage in an investigation to find the absolute 'spirit' of the beast.

23 julho 2008

22 julho 2008

Já foi assim


Mais aqui ou aqui.

Cauda longa criticada


Long Tails and Big Heads: Why Chris Anderson's theory of the digital world might be all wrong.
Should You Invest in the Long Tail? It was a compelling idea: In the digitized world, there’s more money to be made in niche offerings than in blockbusters. The data tell a different story.

Manipulação das estrelas



Star Wars Ren: A long time ago, in an art gallery far far away...

Relatório maioritário


Fisco cria perfis de contribuintes em risco de não pagar impostos: A intenção não é sinalizar contribuintes que já foram apanhados a cometer infracções; é antes identificar potenciais infractores, tentando agir preventivamente.

21 julho 2008

Quem é o dono do email?

A propósito deste Quem é o dono da pergunta? e não é a primeira vez, algumas dúvidas:
* A troca de emails entre jornalistas e inquiridos presume que eles serão divulgados na sua totalidade, nomeadamente neste tipo de casos?
* Há "off the record" num email apenas quando isso é explicitado?
* Alguém entrevistado pode ou deve divulgar as suas respostas e as perguntas do jornalista, antes destas serem publicadas no meio para o qual foram pedidas?
Dúvidas...

Estatísticas (com Portugal entre Los Angeles e Nova Iorque)


The Price of Sex: Well, really it's the price of condoms.

19 julho 2008

Vizinhos do lado



For better, and more often for worse, we all live next to someone. And we all have a Next-Door Neighbor story.

PS.: Ka-BOOM !: A Dictionary of Comicbook Words on Historical Principles

17 julho 2008

Pois...

Blogging's Dead, Long Live Blogging

O jornalismo em Timor Leste

Licensing plan for East Timor journos: A United Nations-sponsored lawyer has recommended that journalists in East Timor be licensed to practice and that defamation be included in the country's criminal code. [...]

That proposal has already triggered a stern response from East Timor's Journalists Association.

Spokesman Virgilio Guiterres said journalists were "appalled" that defamation could be included in a penal code.

East Timor's deputy chief government prosecutor, Ivo Jorge Valente, supported the inclusion of defamation in the penal code but said it should not be considered in isolation.

Oposição

All aboard the nuclear power superjet. Just don't ask about the landing strip: Climate change and the oil crisis are being used to project atomic energy as a green panacea. In fact it is a reckless gamble

Yet to disregard the "vestigial risk" of nuclear energy is to misunderstand the cultural and political dynamic of the "residual-risk-society". The most tenacious, convincing and effective critics of nuclear energy are not the greens - the most influential opponent of the nuclear industry is the nuclear industry itself.

The most beautiful suicide?


The serenity of McHale's body amidst the crumpled wreckage it caused is astounding.

Uma pequena curiosidade, com admiração ignorante

a confirmar algumas "teorias económicas", pelo menos em Portugal:

1) a Albano R. N. Alves (ARNA) é "a maior empresa no sector da distribuição de papéis, consumíveis e materiais para o escritório no mercado português";

2) a ARNA e o seu presidente do Conselho de Administração, Jorge Augusto Martins Fazendeiro, passaram a deter desde anteontem uma "participação qualificada" na Inapa ao adquirir "402 186 (quatrocentas e duas mil cento e oitenta e seis) acções, passando a sermos detentores, nesta data, de 3 083 851 (três milhões e oitenta e três mil oitocentas e cinquenta e uma) acções, representativas de 2,06% (dois virgula zero seis por cento) do capital social e do mesmo valor percentual dos direitos de voto" na administração;

3) Jorge Fazendeiro explicou ontem na Sic como o custo nos transportes vai obrigar a despedir pessoas na ARNA, "nomeadamente as pessoas que estão há menos tempo na empresa e que estão a contrato, nós temos que prescindir do serviço dessas pessoas";

4.a) só por curiosidade, gostava de saber quantos dos 130 funcionários da ARNA estão a contrato e

4.b) anualmente, quantos funcionários entram e quantos são dispensados da ARNA quando termina um contrato?

5) qual a importância de deter 2,06% em direitos de voto num grupo onde a Parpública e o BCP aparentam deter a maioria, segundo a última informação disponível, de 14 de Abril?

6.a) alguém já analisou a relação custo/benefício, nomeadamente o impacto social, entre despedir pessoas numa empresa e investir ou adquirir participações - qualificadas ou não - noutra(s), como sucede neste caso?

6.b) qual é a lógica de uma empresa desbaratar os seus recursos humanos - a contrato... - para investir noutra na qual apenas (?) se senta na sala de reuniões?

Se alguém me puder ajudar neste tipo de assunto, agradeço.

Nota: não tenho qualquer conhecimento pessoal ou relação profissional com estas empresas ou suas concorrentes (que eu saiba).

16 julho 2008

Teorias económicas

Naomi Klein: Bush Sees Crises in Fuel, Food, Housing and Banking as Chance to Exploit Us More: There is a clear political strategy, and has been for several decades, to exploit these moments when people are desperate for quick-fix solutions and more inclined to believe in a kind of a magical cure, to push through very, very unpopular policies that don't actually solve the crisis at hand, that don't actually help people, but are incredibly profitable for multinational corporations.

A resposta ao ataque a uma indústria...




Promoting the Power of the Press: WAN has just added a new advertisement to its global initiative to promote the power of the newspaper and to rectify some of the absurd and damaging claims being made about its imminent demise.

Newspapers around the globe are invited to download and use this advertisements, which provide the true facts about our dynamic industry. [...]

This initiative provides an opportunity for newspapers everywhere to positively respond to attacks on our industry. Put the power of your newspaper behind this campaign!

15 julho 2008

Mais de um milhão!!

"Terrorist" Watch List Hits One Million Names. Do you feel safer now?

Um país de loucos?...

...ou Fernando Pessoa no NYT: Portugal Holds on to Words Few Can Grasp

Top 100 no Reino Unido

Media 100 2008:
* 1. Sergey Brin and Larry Page
* 2. James Murdoch
* 3. Mark Thompson
* 4. Paul Dacre
* 5. Rupert Murdoch
* 6. Steve Jobs
* 7. Steve Ballmer
* 8. Ed Richards
* 9. Patrick McKenna
* 10. Jane Tranter

...


Early School Leavers: Comparison among Developed Countries for year 2005, 2006: Eurostat defines an early school leaver as a person aged 18-24 who has only received up to lower secondary education. This graph shows the percentage of early school leavers in developed European countries for 2005 and 2006. Portugal has the highest rate of early school leavers and that percentage increased between 2005 and 2006. The European Social Fund notes that Portugal is lagging behind the EU in several key areas. Inequality when it comes to income distribution is also among the highest in the EU; children and the elderly are the most vulnerable.

John McCain, online e offline e tudo e nada ao mesmo tempo

Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?

Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes.

(Mrs. McCain and Ms. Buchanan both interject: “Meagan’s blog!”)

Mr. McCain: Excuse me, Meagan’s blog. And we also look at the blogs from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper, that are just part of your blog.

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

Q: Do you use a blackberry or email?

Mr. McCain: No

Mark Salter: He uses a BlackBerry, just ours.

Mr. McCain: I use the Blackberry, but I don’t e-mail, I’ve never felt the particular need to e-mail. I read e-mails all the time, but the communications that I have with my friends and staff are oral and done with my cell phone. I have the luxury of being in contact with them literally all the time. We now have a phone on the plane that is usable on the plane, so I just never really felt a need to do it. But I do – could I just say, really – I understand the impact of blogs on American politics today and political campaigns. I understand that. And I understand that something appears on one blog, can ricochet all around and get into the evening news, the front page of The New York Times. So, I do pay attention to the blogs. And I am not in any way unappreciative of the impact that they have on entire campaigns and world opinion.

Blogues e anónimos em Nova Iorque


At the Uneasy Intersection of Bloggers and the Law: A grand jury subpoena sent by prosecutors in the Bronx earlier this year sought information to help identify people blogging anonymously on a Web site about New York politics called Room 8.

The subpoena carried a warning in capital letters that disclosing its very existence “could impede the investigation being conducted and thereby interfere with law enforcement” — implying that if the bloggers blabbed, they could be prosecuted.

“We were totally perplexed,” said Ben Smith, who co-founded Room 8 with Gur Tsabar. [...]

In addition to Republican Dissident, prosecutors wanted to identify several other people who chose to post comments anonymously. Some of the comments cited news reports about investigations to support their criticism of Republican officials.

The prospect of helping to unmask some of the commenters on the site made Mr. Smith and Mr. Tsabar nervous.

“If our anonymous bloggers were to learn that we’d been handing out their identities to politicians whom they’ve been criticizing, I think they’d be much less likely to write on the site,” Mr. Smith said.

14 julho 2008

Os críticos, ainda

Is it curtains for critics? An army of arts bloggers is posting internet reviews on subjects from grand opera to soap opera - instant, global and free. US newspapers have begun to ditch their reviewers as digital alternatives flourish. Could it happen here?

The critics: Is the web democratising opinion? People have never been slow to voice their opinions. What's changed is the way opinions are shared. But it may or may not be a conversation I want to join in with. As to whether there will always be a place for the professional critic, when newspapers are prepared to do away with foreign correspondents, one would be hard pushed to argue the case for keeping critics.

Critics in a hostile world: Critics are looking more and more like dodos.
A primary cause of our imminent extinction must be the internet.

Look inside!

14 de Julho


Remembering the barricades: France's national day is a tribute to militarism, mythology and media kitsch

13 julho 2008

Sessão da tarde


Cinema Redux explores the idea of distilling a whole film down to one single image.

11 julho 2008

Capas

Maravilhas ecológicas


7 Modern Wonders of Green Technology: Conceptual and Actual Ecological Designs of the Future + 15 (More) Future Wonders of Green Technology: From Spinning Towers to Seawater Greenhouses

Estado de uma nação


Idosos vêem 5h30m de Tv, por dia: no primeiro semestre de 2008 cada português viu, em média, por dia, em sua casa, 3 horas, 37 minutos e 26 segundos de televisão, mais 6 minutos e 25 segundos que no período homólogo do ano anterior.

Este valor sobe, no entanto, para as 5 horas, 30 minutos e 51 segundos quando analisamos os indivíduos com mais de 64 anos, que são os maiores consumidores deste meio.

iPhone

iPhone Timeline, starting in 1999 with the fist signs of Apple planning an iPhone till the current time when Apple is prepared to release it's second generation phone.
[act.: History of Just one more thing]

10 julho 2008

Ídolos da ciência


It's Time to Vote: Choose Your Science Idol!

Mais uma manipulação



In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many: Agence France-Presse has retracted the image as “apparently digitally altered.”

Coisas que é bom saber

10 Things You Didn't Know About You

Criaturas

09 julho 2008

Escravos

Vitória do utilizador contra o email

Inbox Victory
1) Get your email inbox down to zero. [...]

2) Open up your webcam software and take a screenshot of yourself profiling in front of your defeated foe.

3) Leave your screenshot in the comments of this post.

Inovação social

ten thesis on Social Innovation:
1. The world has a deficit of social innovation. [...]
2. There is a widening gulf between business and society. [...]
3. There is no shortage of creativity. [...]
4. However, something is missing [...]
5. Many fields can contribute methods and insights to social innovation. [...]
6. We need better ways to design, incubate and supply new ideas and models – feed by crisis, curiosity, combination. [...]
7. Large scale impact depends on better ways to spread innovations and mobilize demand, using capital, commissioning and collaboration.
8. Demand and supply need to be linked by intermediaries. [...]
9. Every city, every region, every country should cultivate its own capacity to innovate solutions its own social problems.
10. We need to bring all these elements together so that social growth to match economic growth.

08 julho 2008

Para utilizadores do Gmail


Remote sign out and info to help you protect your Gmail account: With this new feature, you can now track your recent sessions and you can also sign yourself out remotely.

Hiperligações vs. sites sociais (com comentário)

The Importance Of Blog Linking Seems to Be Declining: Now, I'm not saying that this data proves linking is dead. I know links power Google juice, and they enhance Technorati rankings, and if done well, people can find new sources of data, but the ability for even a so-called A-List blogger to deliver a windfall of visits is much less than I had ever expected. It is now more important to be part of the social media sites that drive strong traffic - the Twitters and Techmemes and FriendFeeds and Stumbleupons and Reddits, if traffic is your goal. Those sites, combined with RSS activity in Google Reader and other programs are what will drive traffic. So don't wait around begging for Scoble or Mashable to write you up. It might not have the effect you thought.

Louis - what you need to realize is that most times when a blog references another blog, it's part of an overall story about some topic. The topic or product will typically receive the traffic while the other blogs will get the link juice. Some big blogs refuse to link out anymore, except to their own site network.

The sad part is that at this rate with the changes going on, blogging will be dead within a year - especially tech blogging. People aren't realizing yet that cannibalism is going on. Save my comment and look back in a year and see if I am right :)

O que são batatas fritas?


In Big Win for P&G, Pringles Found to be ‘Not Potato Crisps’: According to the judgment, P&G’s lawyers had argued that potato chips “give a sharply crunchy sensation under the tooth and have to be broken down into jagged pieces when chewed.” A Pringle, they continued “is totally different . . . a Pringle is designed to melt down on the tongue.”
The tax court agreed, though it didn’t address what Pringles are.

Galinhas barulhentas

Swiss court rules on noisy chicken [to] be locked up in a soundproof box every night so its neighbours can get a good night's sleep

Browser das ciências

Ranking and Mapping Scientific Knowledge

07 julho 2008

Ricos e pobres

Upstairs, downstairs: Not only are the very rich getting ever richer, but they are also increasingly cut off from the common experience of those who are obliged to do things differently.

Since they have no need to interact with less prosperous members of their community at all, they know increasingly little about us. They can, if they choose, turn their backs on the lives and circumstances of the rest of us. [...]

If increasing numbers of the wealthy never take public transport, never sit in a cinema audience or a doctor's surgery, or shop in the High Street during normal opening hours, that sense of the general good involving everyone is lost.

The danger is that, confined within the CCTV-monitored walls of their palatial mansions, the rich stand apart from those ordinary kinds of social bond which bind communities together, so that they have absolutely no idea what it means - let alone what it feels like - to be poor.

[act.: Age of Riches - Challenges of $600-a-Session Patients: Dr. Michael H. Stone, a psychiatrist affiliated with Columbia, said that the preponderance of patients with self-made fortunes, many made at a relatively young age, marked a striking shift.

“It used to be that my patients were the children of the rich: inheritors, people who suffered from the neglect of jet-setting parents or from the fear that no matter what they did, they would never measure up to their father’s accomplishments,” he recalled. “Now I see so many young people — people in their 30s and 40s — who’ve made the money themselves.”

Dr. Stone said those two kinds of patients tended to have different problems: “In my experience, there was a high incidence of depression in the people who were born rich. And by contrast, the people today who are making a fortune are so often narcissistic in a way that excludes depression.”]

Supertorre



A tower of unprecedented scale conceived not as a building so much as a vertical extrusion of the city...

Questões bloguianas

Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Blog?
5. Do you write for search engines instead of people?

4. Are you doing what everyone else is doing with their blog in your niche?

3. Do you agonize over writing a great post, only to slap on some hastily-concocted post title that all but guarantees hardly anyone will read?

2. Do you hope to make money with your blog, and yet rattle on excessively about your personal life, your dog, your goldfish, and your recent appendectomy?

1. Do you use user-unfriendly RSS options that you bury at the bottom of the page, and leave out an email subscription option altogether?