A Google Labs project, the strangely named NGram Viewer allows you to search for various words and see how their usage in books within the Google Books archive has changed over the past 200 year (or any time frame you specify). Examples: Hitler Computer (note the weird blip around 1900?) War Socialism Negro Canada (highest […]
This slideshow presentation was made only using Google Docs’ “Presentation” mode – no Flash, no animation software, no trickery at all!
With the announcement of Mark Zuckerberg as Time’s 2010 “Person of the Year”, I thought it would be fitting to post this awesome map that’s been created by a Facebook engineer comprised solely of lines showing the connections between 10 million Facebook users around the world. (Full size image – 4.3 mb but worth it) […]
This year’s winners of the annual “Pimp My Bookcart” contest have been announced. This was the contest’s fifth and final year so people appear to have gone all out with their entries. (On a related note, we briefly considering having a “Pimp My Bookcart” contest as part of our staff conference this year. Unfortunately, a […]
The Anythink Library system in Adams County Colorado made waves after a major shift over the last decade where pretty much every aspect of the library – from classification (no Dewey) to fines (they have none) to job titles (Wouldn’t you rather be a “wrangler” than a clerk?) was changed. As someone who’s very interested […]
I went to the Ness Creek Festival a few times in the late 1990’s. It’s got many similarities to the more typical folk music festivals you’re probably most familiar with but there’s something about this festival – its origins as a tree planters’ festival in a remote location probably being its most distinguishing feature – […]
A fun graphic which matches the list of “Largest Countries in the World (geography)” against the list of “Largest Countries in the World (population)” So, for example, Russia (largest by geography) would be home to the people of China (largest by population.) Interestingly, a couple countries (including the US which is 4th in the world […]
Shea and I had physicals last week and while wandering through the mall where our doctor has his office, we popped into one of those “All Halloween All The Time” specialty stores that always appear just before the holidays and are gone soon after. In other years, I had noticed that there were a lot […]
MapCrunch is a very cool mash-up that’s sort of a cross between Google Street View and ChatRoulette (but with a lot more clicking if you want to see some nudity!) Instead, the site gives you a random shot from Google Street View, either anywhere in the world or narrowed down by specific country or continent. […]
This clip went viral over the weekend so you may have seen it by now. It’s by a band from New York called Atomic Tom who decided to do a performance of their latest single on a New York subway train using only the music apps on their iPhones – one for a microphone, one […]
