Posts Tagged ‘web serendipity’

cc licensed flickr photo shared by storem
Some of my favorite software moments are accidentally discovering something new in a tool I’ve been using for some time. This happened recently my my current iPhone Twitter client, Tweetie 2. I’m not writing about this app, but I’d heard people rave about it, shrugged them off, then eventually [...]

Harvard Law prof Jonathan Zittrain deals with big scary issues, like encroachment of first amendment rights online and the invasions of privacy from bad software. His recent book paints a possible dark future for the internet.
So it was a wonderful surprise when on last week’s plane travel I watched his TED Talk on The Web [...]

I’ve been mumbling in twitter (like anyone notices) about a very interesting data gathering/visualizing tool that rides the back coat tails of twitter in a clever way. I’ll spill the beans first, but stick around for the story and the after blog coffee, okay?
Your Flowing Data (YFD) is described by its creator, Nathan, as “a [...]

Maybe a flickr easter egg, but you cannot find this site from flickr’s explore, so check out the Flickr Clock. It presents a timeline of flickr videos:

It may take a bit long to load as it seems to be hitting the flickr api pretty hard.
So find an interval in time, and you can explore someone’s [...]

I got something in the mail yesterday that moved me so much, it has taken another day to get to blog about it (is that slow enough for the slow blogging crowd). I have to weave a back story before I get to the punch line about getting something back (not tangible, but emotional) for [...]

Are You Talking To Me? by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ‘08, 9.49am MDT PST on flickr
Next time you need a good nom de plume, try the Mob Name Generator. Tell them Shakes Pretiili sent you.

Yes, I am all over the Generator Blog a nearly infinite list of fun little things to do [...]

flickr photo Autoretrato com Colorado by Paulo Brabo
Maybe two months from now will mark the 15th year I have been on the web. This will be October 29, exactly at 10:30am, 15 years to the minute when I inserted a floppy disk labeled “Mosaic” (in perhaps a Mac Quadra 900) that my Maricopa colleague Jim [...]

Perhaps your head is exploding with all the new stuff coming out of every electronic orifice. It might be useful to consider how you go about getting your dose? Maybe it’s RSS, it might be clicking every link shared by a Jedi master, or slogging through the plaff of twitter, heck it might even be [...]

How about yet one more example of neat things that happen when you share your stuff? This is a photo I posted a month ago on flickr; it is a wooden drafting table my Dad had used back in the 1950s and after years of storage in an attic, I decided to re stain it:

Nothing [...]

CDB readers know my affinity for stories of web serendipity; strange or wonderful connections made that otherwise would have not happened without this “internet” thing- here’s another gem.
I’ve forgotten where I first stumbled across on slideshare Power Point 20th Anniversary Cinderella. In 19 slides of lengthly bullet points, inscrutable charts, and exposition, it tells the [...]