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Innovation Blues

Color-Changing Planets Could Hold Clues to Alien Life | Space.com - 0 views

  • A new way of comparing the color and intensity changes of light reflected off of Earth's surface to the flickers from exoplanets may help reveal the presence of oceans, continents and ? possibly ? life on alien worlds. Researchers came up with a color scheme for how our uniquely life-filled, ocean-soaked planet would appear to observers tens of light-years away.
  • By comparing the changes in observed hues of an alien planet ?as it rotates to this distinct Earthly color palette, "we can infer the surface composition of the [exo]planet," said Yuka Fujii, a doctoral student at the University of Tokyo and lead author of a paper published in the May 4 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.
Innovation Blues

1% rule (Internet culture) of contribution - 0 views

  • 1% rule (Internet culture)
  • In Internet culture, the 1% rule or the 90–9–1 principle (sometimes also presented as 89:10:1 ratio)[1] reflects a hypothesis that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate.
  • The 1% rule states that the number of people who create content on the Internet represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content (for example, for every person who posts on a forum, generally about 99 other people are viewing that forum but not posting). The term was coined by authors and bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba,[2] although earlier references to the same concept[3] did not use this name. For example, a large 2005 study of radical Jihadist forums by Akil N Awan found 87% of users had never posted on the forums, 13% had posted at least once, 5% had posted 50 or more times, and only 1% had posted 500 or more times.
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  • The "90–9–1" version of this rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.
  • This can be compared with the similar rules known to information science, such as the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto principle, that 20% of a group will produce 80% of the activity, however the activity may be defined.
Innovation Blues

What casues the moon to rotate at the same speed as the earth (resulting in us only bei... - 0 views

  • What casues the moon to rotate at the same speed as the earth (resulting in us only being able to see one side)
  • Excellent question.
  • What causes the moon to rotate at the same speed as the earth (resulting in us only being able to see one side).
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  • The answer is "tidal friction." Back in the day (as they say), the moon spun with respect to the Earth, so people (if there had been people around) could see all sides of the moon, if they looked long enough. But the Moon is not totally solid. It is a mass of dust, sand and rocks that can change shape, just like a pile of dust, sand and rocks can change shape on the Earth. The Earth's gravitational pull on the Moon actually makes the Moon bulge towards the Earth very slightly. The bulge is called a "tidal bulge." The overall effect is to make the Moon a kind of oval, with the long axis pointing towards the Earth. But the Moon rotated with respect to the Earth (you have to say "with respect to the Earth, because the Moon is, even now, rotating with respect to the Sun; rotation, like all motion, is relative), so as a new part of the Moon's surface rotated around to face the Earth, it would bulge, then settle back down as it rotated away from the Earth, kind of like a "wave" in a sports stadium. The overall effect was to knead the Moon like it was a ball of play-doh, raising its internal temperature slightly. But there is a lot of friction when rocks and dust rub against each other, so that would tend to slow down the rotation. Further, the bulge actually lagged a little bit. The materials making up the Moon don't respond instantly to gravity. So the bulge actually wasn't quite in line with the Earth, but was kind of running to catch up with it. The Earth pulled on that bulge more than on the non-bulging parts, so that further slowed down the Moon's rotation.  This mechanism was significant only early in the Moon's history, since the effect becomes smaller as the Moon's rotation slows. So over millennia, the Moon's rotation slowed down and stopped. The bulge stopped moving around the Moon's surface and settled in one spot, incidentally locking that spot in line with the Earth.
Innovation Blues

Watch what you tweet: How online troll crackdowns threaten freedom of speech | Digital ... - 0 views

  • Abusive comments and racist insults are the stock and trade of the Web, but now British police have begun cracking down and making arrests. What ever happened to freedom of speech, and where do we draw the line?
  • These are not isolated incidents. The UK government is cracking down on Internet trolls.
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    Abusive comments and racist insults are the stock and trade of the Web, but now British police have begun cracking down and making arrests. What ever happened to freedom of speech, and where do we draw the line? These are not isolated incidents. The UK government is cracking down on Internet trolls.
Innovation Blues

Iceland's Economy Is Mending Amid Europe's Malaise - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well.
  • It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, and falling. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland’s economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year.
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    Iceland seems to be doing surprisingly well. It has repaid, early, many of the international loans that kept it afloat. Unemployment is hovering around 6 percent, and falling. And while much of Europe is struggling to pull itself out of the recessionary swamp, Iceland's economy is expected to grow by 2.8 percent this year.
Innovation Blues

Free online speed reading software | Spreeder.com - 0 views

  • preeder.com is free online speed reading software designed to improve your reading speed and comprehension. Spreeder is a free service provided by 7-Speed-ReadingTM.
  • Speed reading is the art of silencing subvocalization. Most readers have an average reading speed of 200 wpm, which is about as fast as they can read a passage out loud. This is no coincidence. It is their inner voice that paces through the text that keeps them from achieving higher reading speeds. They can only read as fast as they can speak because that's the way they were taught to read, through reading systems like Hooked on Phonics.
  • However, it is entirely possible to read at a much greater speed, with much better reading comprehension, through silencing this inner voice. The solution is simple - absorb reading material faster than that inner voice can keep up. In the real world, this is achieved through methods like reading passages using a finger to point your way. You read through a page of text by following your finger line by line at a speed faster than you can normally read. This works because the eye is very good at tracking movement. Even if at this point full reading comprehension is lost, it's exactly this method of training that will allow you to read faster. With the aid of software like Spreeder, it's much easier to achieve this same result with much less effort. Load a passage of text (like this one), and the software will pace through the text at a predefined speed that you can adjust as your reading comprehension increases.
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  • To train to read faster, you must first find your base rate. Your base rate is the speed that you can read a passage of text with full comprehension. We've defaulted to 300 wpm, showing one word at a time, which is about the average that works best for our users. Now, read that passage using spreeder at that base rate.
  • After you've finished, double that speed by going to the Settings and changing the Words Per Minute value. Reread the passage. You shouldn't expect to understand everything - in fact, more likely than not you'll only catch a couple words here and there. If you have high comprehension, that probably means that you need to set your base rate higher and rerun this test again. You should be straining to keep up with the speed of the words flashing by. This speed should be faster than your inner voice can "read".
Innovation Blues

Sonar3 - Manuscript and submission tracking program - 0 views

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    "Sonar is a manuscript submission tracking program, and I wrote it because I was going nuts keeping track of short story submissions. This program tells me which market has each story, whether a story has been sold or rejected and which stories are gathering dust instead of earning their keep. If you decide to use it, you will be able to view a list of all your stories and then filter them in various ways (e.g. only show stories which are available to send out). You can add markets, stories and submissions and best of all it's completely free!"
Innovation Blues

Trello - 0 views

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    Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance, Trello tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what, and where something is in a process. How it works. A Trello board is some product or project that is under continuous development, though a board can have a variety of uses and mean different things. Boards are made up of multiple lists. Generally, lists on the left are the start of a workflow and lists on right are the end. Lists contain cards. Cards represent the basic unit of a board, for instance: a new feature, a bug, a story lead, a legal case, a client, research for a paper, a potential employee, or a customer support issue. Cards move from list to list to indicate progression. Board members can add themselves to cards, start conversations on cards, create checklists on cards, and so on.
Innovation Blues

buddhify | mobile meditation app for iPhone and Android - 0 views

  • Five things you may want to know about buddhify 1. buddhify has been designed as a solution to the problem that there is a lot of interest in mindfulness-based meditation nowadays but most of the ways its taught are still stuck in the 20th century 2. buddhify is made by a team who are both properly experienced in traditional meditation and properly knowledgable about technology, innovation and understanding what people really want 3. buddhify aims to start a new wave of authentic modern translations of classic contemplative traditions, so if you don't like it please do make something better. Really 4. Over and above the many good and great meditation teachers who have influenced the app, the perhaps more surprising inspirations behind buddhify are Ira Glass of This American Life, Jad Abumrad of Radiolab, the late Steve Jobs and the emerging culture of urban and pro-social gaming represented by people like Hide&Seek and Jane McGonigal 5. buddhify is called buddhify because a) it's a cute name and b) it's a grateful nod to the roots of mindfulness-based meditation in Buddhism. However the app is for anyone with an interest in developing their mental wellbeing and is not interesting in pushing any particular belief system, religious or otherwise
Innovation Blues

Pocket Neighborhoods * Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World - 0 views

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    Pocket Neighborhoods grew out of the work of Ross Chapin and his colleagues, but the idea is beyond any one person or style. It is pattern of housing that fosters a strong sense of community among nearby neighbors, while preserving their need for privacy. Examples can be found across the spectrum, from small towns, to suburbs to urban areas.
Innovation Blues

Wisdom - A Social Intelligence App for Facebook - 0 views

  • Wisdom™ for Facebook is a free collective intelligence application that gives you an unprecedented level of insight derived from the social graph of the Wisdom Network or your own. Wisdom is powered by the knowledge of millions of users.
  • Put the collective knowledge of millions to work for you. Tap into the Wisdom Network and discover what’s hot, and what’s not. Single? Use Wisdom’s filtering capability to find the most popular single spots in your town. Looking for new music? Match your tastes with others to see which bands you might be into. You’re no longer alone when you have the power of Wisdom.
  • Stay on top of what’s important in your own network. Wisdom gives you unprecedented insights into your own Facebook friends and makes sure you get to the content that means the most to you. Never miss another party or important update. And stay in the know about your friends’ favorite restaurants, movies and more! 
Innovation Blues

Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste: Scientific American - 0 views

  • Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste By burning away all the pesky carbon and other impurities, coal power plants produce heaps of radiation
  • December 13, 2007
  • The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity. Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky. Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts.
Innovation Blues

TIL That google offers free legal download of music in China, in a partnership with the... - 0 views

  • TIL That google offers free legal download of music in China, in a partnership with the largest record labels in the world (since 2009). All of this while they sue children for illegally sharing music in the western world. (self.todayilearned)
  • I have been watching the SOPA/PIPA drama unfold, so thought I would share something that perhaps not everyone of you may know of. It took me three years to realize that google offers a free legal way to download music for people located in China (since 2009): www.google.cn/music/ It is backed by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Group, Universal Music and the Warner Music Group. So much for the RIAA suing families and kids in the western world for illegally sharing music for free when they give it out legally and for free - at the same time - to China. Hope Google will do the same with the MPAA for TV shows and movies. Let's just say I've been downloading like a mad man lately - legally for free :) NY Times article from 2009
  • [–]NorsteinBekkler 419 points420 points421 points 6 months agosorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted on1 - Set up a proxy that runs through a Chinese server. 2 - DOWNLOAD ALL THE THINGS. 3 - Tell the RIAA to go fuck themselves.
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  • [–]patrik667 321 points322 points323 points 6 months ago*sorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted onUnbelievable So let me get this straight: 1) China is made an example of internet censorship as they have most western content blocked or unavailable. 2) The US sistematically prosecutes and fines people for downloading music. 3) We use a Chinese-based proxy to download music "legally". Music that comes from the US. /I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Innovation Blues

Creativity Portal® · Transforming through Creativity, Consciousness, Kindness... - 0 views

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    Creativity Portal® inspires creativity, consciousness and kindness through personal expression and the arts, innovation in the workplace, and sustainability in the world. Featuring the voices of today's creativity leaders, Creativity Portal advocates for the growing creativity coaching profession worldwide and has been named one of the 101 Best Web sites for creativity by Writer's Digest magazine. Creativity Portal® is an invigorating online community alive with the voices of creativity coaches, authors, artists, writers, and business professionals sharing their knowledge and expertise, inspiring creativity, consciousness, and kindness in everyon
Innovation Blues

Welcome to virtualdub.org! - virtualdub.org - 0 views

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    "VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).  It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.  It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters.  VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images. I basically started VirtualDub in college to do some quick capture-and-encoding that I wanted done; from there it's basically grown into a more general utility that can trim and clean up video before exporting to tape or processing with another program.  I released it on the web and others found it useful, so I've been tinkering around with its code ever since.  If you have the time, please download and enjoy."
Innovation Blues

Volunteer, work, intern, organize, hire and connect. Change the world - idealist.org - 0 views

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    Our Vision We would like to live in a world where: All people can lead free and dignified lives. Every person who wants to help another has the ability to do so. No opportunities for action or collaboration are missed or wasted. Our Mission Idealist connects people, organizations, and resources to help build a world where all people can live free and dignified lives. Idealist is independent of any government, political ideology, or religious creed. Our work is guided by the common desire of our members and supporters to find practical solutions to social and environmental problems, in a spirit of generosity and mutual respect.
Innovation Blues

act.ly - Start a Twitter Petition in Seconds - 0 views

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    Act.ly is a suite of activism tools designed to take full advantage of Twitter. Things happen fast on Twitter, a petition can come out of nowhere and catch fire in a few minutes, so the ability to easily scale up and scale down is crucial.
Innovation Blues

BBC News - Alvin Hall: The generation poorer than their parents - 0 views

  • Many young people in Britain are set to be in a worse economic position than their parents, but is there any sympathy among older generations and is their cause gaining support from politicians?
  • Twenty-five-year-old City worker George Lewkowicz is mad about the economy. He is typical of many young Brits under the age of 30 who have come to realise that their financial prospects are substantially less bright than that of their parents' generation.
  • thousands of students from across the UK protested against the rise in university tuition fees and the scrapping of the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA)
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  • "There is this huge population of older people who have essentially had it all, and my generation are then paying for their retirement."
Innovation Blues

Olympic transport bonus strike - 0 views

  • Olympic transport bonus strike
  • nions say the latest TfL accounts for the financial year 2011/12 show a budget surplus of £759m, while new government figures show the London Olympics is set to come in under its £9.3m budget with £476m of contingency funding remaining.
  • “These TfL staff will be as busy as anybody else and the attempt to bullying them into bans on annual leave and unilateral changes to working conditions for nothing in return is a disgrace.
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  • “RMT remains available for talks and with Boris Johnson directly intervening in the bus dispute there is no excuse for him, as chair of TfL, not to get involved in settling this issue.”
  • Instead, it looks like a coordinated attack, orchestrated by the Tory mayor, looking for a political fight with Unite and London’s bus workers. Even ‘Boris bike’ workers are getting a £500 Olympic award.
  • ther London transport workers – such as on the underground, Docklands Light Railway and some network rail services – are to receive bonuses of between £500 and £900 in recognition of the expected extra workload during the period of the games.
Innovation Blues

HTwins.net - The Scale of the Universe - 0 views

  • Zoom from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of spacetime and learn the scale of things along the way! Press left or right or drag the scroll bar to zoom in and out. Press down to toggle quality.
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    A very interactive tool to really allow one to identify with the size and the scale of the Universe, something everyone can struggle to grasp.
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