What is the best?

“The Best Stuff in the World”:http://www.thebeststuffintheworld.com/ promises to ‘discover and share the good things in life’ in a uniquely web2.0 kind of way. It’s a good way to waste some time and look at pretty things. Way better than “Cute Overload”:http://cuteoverload.com/. Okay, not all that much better.
In case you didn’t know: The “best number”:http://www.thebeststuffintheworld.com/category/number is 42, the “best spread”:http://www.thebeststuffintheworld.com/category/spread is nutella, and the “best movie catch-phrase”:http://www.thebeststuffintheworld.com/category/movie-catchphrase is ‘Hello. My Name Is Inigo Montoya. You Killed My Father. Prepare To Die’ from “Princess”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/ “Bride”:http://www.timeout.com/film/71425.html/.

The practical wisdom of children

http://www.bigfatwhale.com/ is a weekly comic strip by Brain McFadden. The subject matter of the comic ranges, but his sometimes dry, sometimes sledge hammer wit pairs well with the Tin Tin-like drawing style. I'd like to specifically draw your attention to his series entitled "Kids say the Most Pragmatic Things" where such nuggets of wisdom can be found as _'Fingerpainting is fun, but I wish the curriculum would better prepare me for a world that stifles creativity'_ or _'Cooties are just a manifestation of boys' sexual insecurities.'_ See the strips "here":http://www.bigfatwhale.com/archives/bfw_251.html and "here":http://www.bigfatwhale.com/archives/bfw_294.html/. Thanks for the link Tommy.

How long are you going to live?

http://www.livingto100.com/ is a free tool you can use to generate a personalized health profile that tells you the do’s and don’ts for living longer. After a quick 10 minutes of answering ~60 questions about your lifestyle, ranging from dietary habits to drug use to flossing your teeth, Dr. Perls generates an estimated life expectancy, as well as ways to increase it. Although you have to suffer through a few poorly written “always-sometimes-never” questions and several limited response options, it is a quick and easy way to find out how long you have to find the perfect gravestone. Thanks so much to Brian for the tip, the link, and the beginning of this article.

Funky house designs in London

“Boyarsky Murphy Architects”:http://www.boyarskymurphy.com/index.htm specialize in house conversions using small and/or unusually sized buildings. Two such examples are their 11-story conversion of “Christ Church Tower”:http://www.boyarskymurphy.com/ccta.htm into one very compact flat, and this “10-foot wide house”:http://www.boyarskymurphy.com/elgina.htm in a former wine cellar.

Thanks to “TreeHugger.com”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/record_houses_a.php and “Building Design Online”:http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=428&storycode=3084325&c=2&encCode=00000000012cb535/.

Google Earth highlights Crisis in Darfur

Google Earth, the creepily-accurate software that reveals exactly why there’s an 8-foot fence between your yard and your neighbor’s has done one for humanity. Well, at least the morbid side of humanity that likes to revel in suffering. I’m talking about the most recent feature integrated into the Google Earth software that highlights known atrocity sites in the Darfur region of Sudan where there is an ongoing genocide. There may be a search term to help you, but I found it easiest to open the “Google Earth software”:http://earth.google.com/ and drag the window to Sudan which, in case you failed geography in ninth grade, is just south of Egypt in Africa. The ‘Crisis in Darfur’ feature gives locations and even (gulp) pictures of villages destroyed by the government-sponsored militia.
http://earth.google.com/ or read more about the Crisis in Darfur feature in this "CNN article":http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/04/10/google.genocide/index.html with lots of helpful links about the genocide.

Roomba TV


Roomba, autonomous vacuum cleaner and primary reason to hate everything about American society. These little suckers are just plain odd, and so is this. An overenthusiastic Roomba owner has attached a spy cam to the front of his which can be found streaming live vacuum-packed action “here”:http://www.vacuumcleanerlive.com/. Obviously most of the time the stream shows nothing but wall as the Roomba recharges, so he has also put up these “older videos”:http://www.vacuumcleanerlive.com/video.htm/. Thank God for the free market.

Colin Beavan, the no impact man

Striving to neutralize their carbon impact on the world, author Colin Beavan and his family are going completely no impact for a whole year. That is to say that living in Manhattan, this family is using no paper, no razors, nothing to be thrown away. They’re also not buying anything in packaging, composting their waste (hard to do in a 750 sq ft apartment), and walking everywhere. Check out this amazing experiment at Colin’s “blog”:http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/.
Here’s a recent interview of Beavan on the Colbert Report:

`

Zopa.com. It's lending without the banks

http://www.zopa.com/ZopaWeb/ is social lending brought to the masses. The principle is no different from a 12 year-old kid asking her parents for 10 bucks to go to the movies, but the implications are much wider-ranging. Through the very pretty Zopa website, individuals can borrow from other individuals, much like the "earlier profiled":http://duenos.net/article/106/lend-money-online-to-third-world-entrepreneurs micro-lender "Kiva.org":http://www.kiva.org/. Unlike, Kiva, Zopa facilitates big loans in the same way that banks do, only with much lower interest rates. Spreading the risk over dozens of lenders, a £5,000 loan over 3 years would brook 6.38% interest as compared with high-street banks rates of 8.7%-14.9%. It's also a good deal for lenders who can dictate the rates and risk they're willing to take, making an average of 6.75%. Rather than feed the bloated banking industry, paying a 0.5% fee to Zopa seems like a good idea. Unfortunately Zopa is only working in the UK at the moment, although they do have plans to open in the US soon. *Redjoe says: "For a comparable US based site that aims to democratize the banking industry try "www.prosper.com":http://www.prosper.com/"

Books on bytes

Following on from a post I made some time ago about the online book sharing site, “Book Mooch”:http://www.bookmooch.com/, I’ve found another one. “Library Thing”:http://www.librarything.com/ is a free online book cataloging service that takes the ultimate solo activity (reading… get your mind out the gutter) and makes it social. Now you can chat with others that have similar literary tastes, make recommendations, and even trade books with people. Organize your books however you’d like with the now ubiquitous, but still helpful, web2.0 tagging structure, write reviews, anything you want. I’ve only been messing around with the service for a few hours so far, but I’ve already entered a small part of my library and explored the forums. Below is a picture of my “virtual library”:http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=aeherder which is, I regret to say, a lot more organized than the carbon-based one.
Previous posts about similar things are the musical equivalent to Library Thing, “Last.fm”:http://duenos.net/article/14/melodic-match-making-on-lastfm/ (yet again) and “analog peer-to-peer”:http://duenos.net/article/88/analog-peer-to-peer/, sharing in the real world using the internet.