Visual DNA

http://dna.imagini.net/friends/ runs you through a bunch of pictures that visually describe a specific term. After doing a bunch of them it comes up with your personality type and then matches you with others who've gotten similar results. It's no e-harmony, but it's something to do for 5 minutes while avoiding real work. Also it's a little late for Christmas, but I ran across a strange visual "gift finder":http://alliwant.imagini.net/variants/imagini/start.php also hosted at "Imagini.net":http://imagini.net that apparently thinks that I want to receive cashmere hot water bottle holders, Moleskine city notebooks, paintballing for two, ethical travel guide, and collar stiffeners with the city of London etched on. I'd rather not. (Thanks to Tommy for the tip)

Solar buses

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Solar-power meets mass transit with the Tindo solar bus. This latest and greatest from the City of Adelaide in South Australia can hold 42 people and go for 200 km on one charge. The Tindo bus (named for the Aboriginal Australian word for “sun”) will be free to ride and started normal service last week.
For more detailed information check out the “article”:http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/12/18/transportation-tuesday-tindo-the-solar-powered-bus-arrives/ from “Inhabitat.com”:http://www.inhabitat.com, or skip the middle man and go straight to the source at the “Adelaide City Council”:http://www.adelaidecitycouncil.com/scripts/nc.dll?ADCC:STANDARD::pc=PC_151048.

Everyone's an owner

Move over “Abramovich”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Abramovich, it’s our turn to own a soccer team. Much like the publicly-held “Green Bay Packers”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers#Public_company, “My Football Club.com”:http://www.myfootballclub.co.uk/ offers the chance to own and operate a real English soccer club, “Ebbsfleet United”:http://www.ebbsfleetunited.co.uk/. The idea behind the site and the service is that this brings fantasy sports play, a huge trend in recent years, into the real world. Co-owners vote on player acquisition, coaching staff and business ventures all through the website. It’s $70 to get a seat at the table so if your lifelong dream has been to own a sports franchise, “pony up”:http://members.myfootballclub.co.uk/register.

Unilever straddles fence when it comes to women

Picture the two most varied images of women you can come up with and chances are they might coincide with two ad campaigns from Dutch multinational “Unilever”:http://www.unilever.com/. Over the past few years Unilever-owned “Dove”:http://www.dove.us/ has marketed themselves as a brand for “real women.” Their TV ads feature everyday women giving testimonials in favor of the soap company and its products. Off-screen Dove lives up to its image with the “Dove Self-Esteem Fund”:http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/, a non-profit subsidiary dedicated to being “an agent of change to educate and inspire girls on a wider definition of beauty and to make them feel more confident about themselves.” In short, Dove seems to be the perfect personal care company.
On the other side of Unilever’s gender coin is a different brand with a very different message. “Axe”:http://www.theaxeeffect.com/flash.html sells sex. They also sell body spray, deodorant and shower gels, but the biggest thing they sell is sex. Axe commercials set a whole new standard for female objectification by portraying women as nothing but walking playgrounds for men who get all randy at the very sniff of a boy wearing Axe, often stooping to animal stupidity to get there.

By pushing both campaigns, Unilever makes it very clear that they don’t really care about the issues. Good business is simply good marketing and as long as it sells, principle doesn’t seem to matter. Does this mean that feminists should stop buying Dove, or misogynists stop buying Axe? I don’t know, but it’s worth noting the hypocrisy in pushing both images.
In case you haven’t seen either ad campaign, I’ve embedded samples from YouTube below.
Dove:

Axe:

Killer Apps for Mac – Ogg Drop

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 and "AAC":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding--are both proprietary codecs which means that any application that wants to use them have to pay the owners of the license. "Ogg Vorbis (.ogg)":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_Vorbis is a non-proprietary, open source codec developed by the "Xiph.org foundation":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiph.Org_Foundation. There are a number of advantages to the .ogg format, most notably a variable bit rate which means that you can fit more complexity into the same size file. It used to be that iTunes users couldn't play .ogg vorbis files, but that's no longer true. There's a "Quicktime plugin":http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=41359 to allow for playback and "Ogg Drop":http://www.nouturn.com/oggdrop/index.php for encoding audio CDs. Unlike most encoders, Ogg Drop also accesses "CDDB":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB so song data is automatically retrieved from the internet, saving you the pain in the ass of typing it all in yourself. Previously featured _Killer Apps for Mac._ * "Adium":http://duenos.net/article/129/killer-apps-for-mac-adium - an alternative chat client * "App Zapper":http://duenos.net/article/231/ - tracks down all the caches and libraries for deleted applications and deletes them * "Darwiin Remote":http://duenos.net/article/193/KillerAppsforMacDarwiinRemote - an application that allows the use of the Wii-remote as an input * "Disk Inventory X":http://duenos.net/article/163/KillerAppsforMacDiskInventoryX - visualizes the hard disk * "img2icns":http://duenos.net/article/274/KillerAppsforMacimg2icns - A conversion tool for making any image into a .icns icon file * "iStumbler":http://duenos.net/article/312/KillerAppsforMaciStumbler - A far more detailed wireless network information tool. * "Mac Pilot":http://duenos.net/article/174/KillerAppsforMacMacPilot - an interface to control more options on the Mac * "Sidenote":http://duenos.net/article/111/killer-apps-for-mac-sidenote - a VERY helpful note-taking program * "SizzlingKeys":http://duenos.net/article/119/killer-apps-for-mac-sizzlingkeys - allows universal control of iTunes through simple hotkeys * "Tangerine":http://duenos.net/article/150/KillerAppsforMacTangerine - analyzes and organizes the iTunes library by beat characteristics * "TV Shows":http://duenos.net/article/232/ - automatically downloads torrent files of TV shows * "UnRarX":http://duenos.net/article/234/KillerAppsforMacUnRarX - very good at decompressing .rar files * "Vienna Reader":http://duenos.net/article/204/KillerAppsforMacViennaReader - an OS X-integrated RSS reader with an internal browser * "VLC Player":http://duenos.net/article/228/ - the best media player in existence, it plays anything

Plastic bag leadership nowhere to be found


When I was in South Africa a few summers ago I was really happy to notice that the stores charged extra for plastic bags. The result: everyone had re-usable cloth/thick plastic bags to carry their shopping with them. Since then I’ve learned that they were just one of the first to start the ball rolling on something most of the world has now taken on, the banning of the disposable bag.
Environmentalist uber-blog “Inhabitat”:http://www.inhabitat.com has a “great article”:http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/12/17/africas-outlook-and-ban-on-plastic-bags/ about the move away from throw-away plastic in Africa and I’m just left wondering, outside of San Francisco where is this movement in the United States. Like a lot of environmental movements, we in the States are in a great position to take the helm on this and yet we sit with our heads so firmly stuck in the sand I’m not even sure we can feel the winds of change blowing around us.
The above picture is taken from an awesome contributor-based photography site called the “Plastic Bag Gallery”:http://www.photonet.org.uk/plasticbag/. Individual credit goes to Jessica Backhaus from the UK.

USB Booties


After “USB genitals”:http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/teledildonics-virtual-hole-and-stick-a-small-step-not-giant-leap-228948.php, this seems like the next strangest computer peripheral. These red “Santa-like booties”:http://geeksugar.com/867852 plug into a spare USB port on your PC and keep your feet warm while you surf. Is it overkill? Yes. Will people buy them? Probably. Should anyone ever think about these again? No.
Here’s a link to someone else’s “Top 10 strange USB devices”:http://gadgets.fosfor.se/the-top-10-weirdest-usb-devices-ever/.

Flying Men!

http://nytimes.com ran an article about one of the forerunners in what is formally called wingsuit diving, Jeb Corliss. Mr. Corliss came to wingsuit diving (which is basically people trying to be flying squirrels) after trying base-jumping and shark-baiting so you can imagine how dangerous this is. Still, despite it's danger, there are teams in at least half a dozen countries trying to be the first to perfect the art of falling without a parachute. The original article can be found "here":http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/sports/othersports/10flying.html?ex=1198040400&en=2246abb0d4805064&ei=5070&emc=eta1 at the New York Times website.