Links from 2009

"Maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all."

Replaces MultipleIE

Possible sandbox alternative.

What does this site do? It keeps track of predictions of the future by public figures.

Like Shapeways but uses "two-dimensional laser cutters; 3-D objects need to be assembled afterward."

Manufacturing-as-a-service removes the equipment and capital barrier to entry for new product companies. These companies can focus on product design and building the community around the product and leave the operation of the manufacturing hardware to manufacturing-as-a-service guys.

Twitter users sending a tweet with the name of a band or artist to MuZoid receive a reply in less than 2.5 seconds with a link to a bespoke webpage containing gig listings, a discography, a recommendation of similar artists that the user might like. If MuZoid doesn’t know an artist, she makes a note of it and gets busy learning. Once enough information’s available, she’ll tweet back to the original querant with an update.

Gang of Four's Dave Allen on the album as arbitrary audio bundle. "Technically then, we can say that 1930 was the year that the organizing principle for the length of a popular music album was implemented, and with the advent of that organizing principle it is worth noting that musical artists had no control over the length of time their masterpiece would run; they were at the mercy of contemporary technology."

"There’s something delightfully Wallace and Gromitey about Poke’s BakerTweet, but not content with its floury goodness I decided to hack it around a bit. I’ve put together an app which takes the feed from Albion’s Twitter account, checks for updates, filters them (I’m only really interested in bread), and if (according to Fire Eagle) I’m within a mile of the bakery, sends me an SMS." Beautiful.

More on continuous deployment.

"An example of cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average."

Answer: probably not.

"Tests your website designs across 17 different Windows browsers right from your Mac desktop in seconds. No need for virtual machines, Windows licenses, or any messing around with Windows Update." Requires a litmus account.

The Freedom of the South West rail rover provides unlimited use of all National Rail services on the map in the validity section. Available any 3 days within a 7 day period.

According to Cutts, more than one h1 is fine as long as you don't go crazy. Pretty much as expected.

Take a look at Verified By Visa. Allegedly this protects cardholders - by training them to expect a process in which there’s absolutely no way to know whether you are being phished or not.

"A small experiment in subtractive synthesis." I could spend all day playing with this. In fact, I think I will.

a social music game that brings fans and artists together and empowers artists and listeners to determine what's hot by creating virtual record labels.

A free tool that lets you assign a unique code to anything.

Hadn't come across this one.

Building Services Porn

When all the sections end evenly on the page, users subconsciously decide there isn’t anything else to look for and don’t try to scroll. Of course, if they don’t scroll, they miss important content, such as the list of products.

Makes a handy checklist of stuff not to do.

"I’ve been using Linux as my primary development environment for a number of months now, despite being an abject Mac fanboy. Why?" Notes on virtualizing dev environment to reduce risk to core OS.

Enables [...] bookmakers and gaming companies to provide their services over a mobile device.

"What I like about the term webmaster is that it implies that one person is the big boss. The master of the site. The person who speaks with the voice of the machine. When you come across a brilliant site it so often feels like it comes through one person. Or at least there’s a very strong sense of singularity in the way it’s written and presented." I always wanted to be a webmaster.

What I'm tried to do is combine the things I love about electronic music, especially proper techno and electro, with... proper songs.

Multiple files upload without SWF objects, applets Java, or other third parts plug-ins.

"Wired, [Albert Read] suggests, may not really be a tech magazine at all. "It's a magazine about innovation and the future, and should not be narrowly confined to technology in people's minds," he says. "You read Wired if you see yourself as a forward thinker or an early adopter." I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

Despite early hype, viral films are still few and far between. Why? Where is viral now, how has it evolved, and what's the future for disseminating online content?

"Add the billion plus PC owners who, from time to time, leave their desks and you get a glimpse of the untapped reservoir of potential new gamblers which is the m-gambling marketplace." That sentence makes me feel a little ill.

When we decided to create project management software, we knew Microsoft Project was the gorilla in the room. Instead of fearing the gorilla, we used it as a motivator. We decided Basecamp would be something completely different, the anti-Project.

The relationship between musicians and the people who make music websites is slightly broken. The problem is that anyone developing a new service for bands has to make money to keep the project afloat - and that means pulling in enough eyeballs to sell advertising on the site. The best way to get people to stick around to click on some ads? Make them invest time and energy in creating a profile, and encourage them to continually update it.

A weekly get together between those working in music. Intended to provide a working environment whilst also sharing questions, knowledge and gossip about music and the industry. Every Thursday at Leon in Spitalfield Market. 2pm onwards. Wi-fi available

Allows you to compare different [IE] rendering engines in a single unified interface

More on font stacks.

Takes the guesswork out of designing for color blindness by showing you in real time what people with common color vision impairments will see.