Ben Shoemate's Notebook

louisgray@gmail.com (louisgray) via louisgray.com shared by 6 people

There's no question the lifestreaming space has just exploded over the last year, with services like Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed leading the way, accompanied by MyBlogLog, SocialThing, Profilactic and others. Practically all services aggregate your social activity across networks and let you display it in one area, with the option to follow friends and interact with their activity. One of the newest in this space is Strands, which bills itself as a destination site for people to discover new recommended items around the Web from friends. The service, currently in private beta, has some very interesting features, but also has a lot of room to go to supplant one of the bigger names.


As with the many other alternatives out there, you start your activity on Strands by adding your many services around the Web, starting with the most well-known services, like Twitter, Google Reader and Delicious, but the service also supports several other sites not commonly found elsewhere, including Webshots, BlockBuster, Hype Machine and Meneame.


When you add these services, as with other competitors, Strands creates a feed for you, which can then be subscribed to by other users.

As you currently can only get into Strands by being invited, you will start out with at least one friend, but you can find more users by seeing who your friends follow, or by clicking the people button at the top of the page. Strands, as far as I know, has the best array of ways to discover new followers, showing you who is the most followed, who's new to the site, or who is the top by a specific category, like Blogs, Images, Music or Bookmarks. Each person's profile is displayed with their avatar, gender, age and location. You can also search by name or e-mail.

Once you have subscribed to a few people, you can see their activity on Strands' Home screen, which displays, chronologically, the item posted, who added it, the service it originated from. You can then take action on those items with a simple Like or Dislike, indicated by thumbs up or thumbs down, you can comment on the item, click a pushpin to indicate an item is saved, or click an arrow to forward the item to those who follow you. (The equivalent of resharing on FriendFeed)

The interface for Strands if both cluttered and spartan at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Unlike FriendFeed, which offers a clean white background, soft gray text for comments, but little else, except a top navigation bar, Strands offers a wide array of ways to sift through the noise and find specific items. You can filter your feed by people who just follow you, you can show your own feed, or show subgroups of your friends. For example, I started a group called "Digerati", that includes Chris Brogan, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Corvida and others on the site.

You can also filter by category, including Blogs & Notes, Images, Music, Movies & TV, Bookmarks and others. FriendFeed offers this functionality by service by clicking on the service icon, but it's not spelled out, nor does it group similar services (like Delicious and Magnolia for instance). On top of filters, you also have "Hot Posts" which show items popular with your friends, marked by likes and comments, and the ability to have granularity, so you don't share all services with all people. For example, you may want to share some items with friends, but not family or coworkers.

The many different options on Strands make it useful to find things fast, but it also shoehorns the Home feed into a small center position. Arguably, this is the most important part of the site, so its power is greatly diminished. Strands also doesn't auto-refresh, asking you to click a refresh icon on the page, or in your browser. This gives the site more of a static feeling than other sites which do autorefresh, where it seems new data is constantly coming in.

Also, like most good services today, Strands offers a desktop alternative to the Web site with an Adobe AIR application, which keeps you updated on your friends' activity and watches your iTunes to capture what you're listening to, as well as a bookmarklet.

Does the world need another lifestreaming service? With so many on the market, it's interesting to see what aspects one site will get right or what they'll miss. Strands doesn't have the feeling of community today that FriendFeed does, given its newness and obscurity. And like many engineering-driven services, it can be seen at times to have sacrificed the user experience for more features. I've said previously that "the feature war is the wrong war" for social media, which needs to find new ways to connect people, their likes and their activity. Strands does a good job letting me drill down into specific areas, or in helping find new folks, but I'm hoping they can reduce some of the site clutter, and make the site really come to life.

As the service is in private beta, I have a very small number of invites, so leave your e-mail in the comments if you are interested, and I'll see what I can do.

DISCLOSURE: I was introduced to Strands by Drew Olanoff, the Community Manager at Strands, who started there in July. Drew is also the CTO of ReadBurner, where I am an advisor, and hold a small equity position. While Drew gave me an account to test Strands, he did not request an article, nor review this in any way.

Adam Pash via Lifehacker shared by 4 people

Weblog Apartment Therapy Re-Nest shows how to repurpose a pile of old magazines or vintage books into a small table in just about 10 minutes. Pulling it off is a simple matter of tucking every 10 pages or so back into the spine of the magazine—you don't even need glue or any additional supplies. As the post points out, the concept is very similar to cardboard furniture, like previously mentioned Blox, counting on folds and layers for strength. The folks at Apartment Therapy used the magazine tables as a plant holder, but you can put it to use for whatever you need (at the very least they're a cool decoration).

via http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/greenpeace_economy?size=_original

via http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/fashion/06photo.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

via http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/greenpeace_oil?size=_original

via http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/2579628/Cartoon-skeletons.html?image=3

Antonio via woork shared by 5 people

Are you looking for design inspiration for your next web project? Take a look at these websites:


1. The New York Moon - http://www.nymoon.com/
Beauty newspaper style, nice illustrations.




2. The Aardvark Brigade - http://www.aardvarkbrigade.com/
Big attention to details, great design.




3. The National Archive Experience - http://www.digitalvaults.org
Another fantastic SecondStory project with an awesome Flash interface.




4. Natalia Devalle - http://nataliadevalle.com.ar
Elegant, clean, handwritten style. Nice wood texture for background.




5. EdgePoint Church - http://www.edgepointchurch.com/
Nice design and color scheme.




6. Slabovia Tv - http://www.slabovia.tv/
Nice site with newspaper style.




7. Rob Morris - http://www.digitalmash.com
I like the animated face :)




8. Cabedge - http://www.cabedge.com/
Clean and elegant site for this Web Design & Development company




9. Karim Zurita - http://www.karimzurita.com/
Essential an clean style for the site of this web designer and developer.




10. Freelenz - http://www.freelenz.at/
Nice vintage style :)





Suggest your site
Do you have a nice site to suggest for the next daily inspiration post? Add a comment with a link!

Alex via Neatorama shared by 7 people

Water, good ol' H₂O, seems like a pretty simple substance to you and me. But in reality, water - the foundation of life and most common of liquid - is really weird and scientists actually don't completely understand how water works.

Here are 5 really weird things about water:

1. Hot Water Freezes Faster Than Cold Water

Take two pails of water; fill one with hot water and the other one with cold water, and put them in the freezer. The hot one would be frozen before the cold one. But wait, you say, that's counterintuitive: wouldn't the hot water have to cool down to the temperature of the cold water before proceeding to freezing temperature, whereas the cold one has "less to go" before freezing?

In 1963, a Tanzanian high-school student named Erasto B. Mpemba was freezing hot ice cream mix in a cooking class when he noticed that a hot mix actually froze faster than a cold mix. When he asked his teacher about this phenomenon, his teacher ridiculed him by saying "All I can say is that is Mpemba's physics and not universal physics."

Thankfully, Mpemba didn't back down - he convinced a physics professor to conduct an experiment which eventually confirmed his observations: in certain conditions, hot water indeed freezes before cold water*.

Actually, Mpemba was in good company. The phenomenon of hot water freezing first, now called the "Mpemba effect" was noted by none other than Aristotle, Francis Bacon and René Descartes.

But how do scientists explain this strange phenomenon? It turns out that no one really knows but there are several possible explanations, including differences in supercooling (see below), evaporation, frost formation, convention, and effects of dissolved gasses between the hot and cold water.

*In reality - of course - it's much more complex than that: hot water freezes first (it forms ice at a higher temperature than cold water), whereas cold water freezes faster (it takes less time to reach the supercooled state from which it forms ice) - see discussion on our previous blog post about this topic.

2. Supercooling and "Instant" Ice

Everybody knows that when you cool water to 0 °C (32 °F) it forms ice ... except that in some cases it doesn't! You can actually chill very pure water past its freezing point (at standard pressure, no cheating!) without it ever becoming solid.

Scientist know a lot about supercooling: it turns out that ice crystals need nucleation points to start forming. These nucleation points could be anything from gas bubbles to impurities to the rough surface of the container. Without these things, water would continue to be a "supercooled" liquid well below its freezing point.

When nucleation is triggered, then a supercooled water would "instantly" turn into ice, as this very cool video clip by Phil Medina of MrSciGuy shows:

Note: Similarly, superheated water remains liquid even when heated past its boiling point.

3. Glassy Water

Quick: how many phases of water are there? If you answer three (liquid, gas, and solid) you'd be wrong. There are at least 5 different phases of liquid water and 14 different phases (that scientists have found so far) of ice.

Remember the supercooling we talked about before? Well, it turns out that no matter what you do, at -38 °C even the purest supercooled water spontaneously turns into ice (with a little audible "bang" no less). But what happens if you continue to lower the temperature? Well, at -120 °C something strange starts to happen: the water becomes ultraviscous, or thick like molasses. And below -135 °C, it becomes "glassy water," a solid with no crystal structure. (Source)

4. Quantum Properties of Water

At a molecular level, water is even weirder. In 1995, a neutron scattering experiment got a weird result: physicists found that when neutrons were aimed at water molecules, they "saw" 25% fewer hydrogen protons than expected.

Long story short, at the level of attoseconds (10^-18 seconds) there is a weird quantum effect going on and the chemical formula for water isn't H₂O. It's actually H_1.5O! (Source)

5. Does Water Have Memory?

In the alternative medicine of homeopathy, a dilute solution of a compound can have healing effects, even if the dilution factor is so large that statistically there isn't a single molecule of anything in it except for water. Homeopathy proponents explain this paradox with a concept called "water memory" where water molecules "remember" what particles were once dissolved in it.

This made no sense to Madeleine Ennis, a pharmacologist and professor at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ennis, who also happened to be a vocal critic of homeopathy, devised an experiment to disprove "water memory" once and for all - but discovered that her result is the exact opposite!

In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn’t contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths’ claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out.

So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy.

You can understand why Ennis remains skeptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry. (Source)

So far, other scientists failed to reproduce Ennis' experimental findings (throughout, Ennis herself was skeptical of the result's interpretation that water has a "memory" but maintained that the phenomenon she saw was real).

See also Jacques Benveniste's Nature controversy | Louise Rey's thermoluminescence study

More recently, a team of scientists at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Max Born Institute in Germany, studying water dynamics using fancy multi-dimensional nonlinear infrared spectroscopy did find that water have a memory of sorts - in form of hydrogen bond network amongst water molecules. Problem for homeopathy was, this effect lasted only 50 femtoseconds (5 x 10^-14 seconds)!

Bonus: Ice Spikes

photo: SnowCrystals

Ice spikes are, well, spikes that grow out of ice cube trays. They look like stalagmites found in caves, and you can make 'em yourself using distilled water. Kenneth G. Libbrecht of SnowCrystals explains:

How do Ice Spikes Form?

Ice spikes grow as the water in an ice cube tray turns to ice. The water first freezes on the top surface, around the edges of what will become the ice cube. The ice slowly freezes in from the edges, until just a small hole is left unfrozen in the surface. At the same time, while the surface is freezing, more ice starts to form around the sides of the cube.

Since ice expands as it freezes, the ice freezing below the surface starts to push water up through the hole in the surface ice (see diagram). If the conditions are just right, then water will be forced out of the hole in the ice and it will freeze into an ice spike, a bit like lava pouring out of a hole in the ground to makes a volcano. But water does not flow down the sides of a thin spike, so in that way it is different from a volcano. Rather, the water freezes around the rim of the tube, and thus adds to its length. The spike can continue growing taller until all the water freezes, cutting off the supply, or until the tube freezes shut. The tallest spike we've seen growing in an ordinary ice cube tray was 56mm (2.2in) long. (Source)

Bonus 2: Make Instant Snow with Boiling Water

What do you get when you throw boiling water to the air in subzero weather? Instant snow. Interestingly, it only works with boiling hot water:

[YouTube clip]

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These aren't the only things weird about water. We didn't talk about how water density changes with temperature (ice, for instance, is less dense than water so it floats - a key property of water that made life possible in the oceans and lakes). Nor did we talk about the weirdly strong surface tension of water, ordered clustering of liquid water, and so on. If you are interested, check out the Anomalous Properties of Water article by Martin Chaplin

Adam Pash via Lifehacker shared by 33 people

Blogger Felix Geisendorfer points out a clever URL hack that scored him free Wi-Fi at the Atlanta airport.

I found that I could easily visit sites like slashdot, Google, or even this weblog, when adding a ?.jpg at the end of the url. The next logical step was to automate that. I downloaded Greasemonkey and wrote a 4 line script that would add ?.jpg to every link in a document. That way I was able to browse most sites without a hassle.

This trick will only work on Wi-Fi networks that allow images to go through without a redirect, and though it may seem like a bit of a stretch, it's better than shelling out $7 for 30 minutes of Wi-Fi. Unfortunately the author didn't make the Greasemonkey script available, but even without it you could get in some decent browsing. The post isn't new, and I haven't tested this, so if you've ever used this trick or you're at an airport or Wi-Fi hotspot and can give it a try, let's hear how it worked for you in the comments. Photo by Jace.

Palin Ningthoujam via Mashable! shared by 16 people

For those of us who are active Google Talk (GTalk) users, sometimes chatting is not enough. Luckily, there are tools to make your GTalk experience more interesting like VOIP, translations, and more. Here are 10 third party tools and special features that will help you get the most out of the service.

Which ones are your favorite? Know any more? Tell us in your comments.

Extended Talk

Extended Talk is a free addon for GTalk that brings in enhanced features such as making your chat windows transparent, changing font colors, message and typing areas, creating text filters, using smileys, and custom images. It also provides shortcuts to insert dates, time, IP address, email, etc. in your messages. Overall, the addon is non obstructive and fits quite well with the GTalk interface, while providing a few handy extra features.

Google Talk Shell

Google Talk Shell is another GTalk addon with some extra features that you might like. Firstly, it allows you to add several avatars and make them rotate in short intervals in your GTalk application. You can auto-hide the GTalk main window so that you have a large work area, or you can configure GTalk to always be on top of the desktop. You can also run several GTalk user names simultaneously using this addon. There is even an anti-boss hotkey to hide the GTalk window quickly.

Translation bots

Translation bots are described by Google as pieces of software that act as chat contacts and provide some fun or useful functionality. Whenever you need to translate any word or sentence from one language to another, you can send that as a message to one of the appropriate Google Chat translation bots. The bot then acts as a translator and replies to the translated version of your message. Of course you need to add the translation bot as your GTalk contact beforehand.

Currently there are 50 bots available in two language pairs. The names of the bots have been made of two letter abbreviations of languages, the English to French translation bot is ‘en2fr.’ To add the bots as contacts, you simple need to add the email of the specific bot in this format: name_of_the_bot@bot.talk.google.com. For example, for English to French bot, it’s ‘en2fr@bot.talk.google.com.’

Transliteration bots

Transliteration bots are somewhat similar to translation bots, but here they convert English sentences to scripts of various Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. You can add the bots using their names ‘en2hi’.translit, ‘en2kn.translit,’ ‘en2ml.translit,’ ‘en2ta.translit,’ and ‘en2te.translit,’ ending with ‘@bot.talk.google.com’.

Chatback Badge

Chatback badge is a nice little tool from Google that you can use to chat with non-Google users. The badge can be put on your blog, website, or anywhere you can embed an html code, and it will display your online status along with a ‘Chat with me’ message in a nice chat bubble. You can create the chatback badge in different styles as well.

GTalk Sidebar

GTalk Sidebar is a convenient way of chatting with your GTalk contacts using the Firefox sidebar. Every chat window opens in a new tab in the sidebar itself. You can make the GTalk application pop out in a new window if you wish. Although GTalk Sidebar doesn’t provide any additional feature, it can be another nice alternative, just in case you don’t want to open a Gmail window on your browser and don’t have the desktop client installed. An alternative to this addon is to save the GTalk Gadget as your Firefox bookmark and set the bookmark to load in the sidebar.

GTalk Profile

GTalk Profile is an online service that you can use to find other GTalk users from across the globe. You can simply click anywhere on the world map provided at the GTalk Profile site to look for users in that area. You can also look for users using its search box.

Ping.fm

Ping.fm is not an exclusive GTalk application. What it does is update your status on as many as 21 of your social sites including Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Wordpress, Tumbler, Pownce, Blogger, Plurk, Xanga, Friendfeed, etc., and even Mashable, simultaneously. All you need to do is add Ping.fm as a contact in your GTalk application and send it to your status update as a chat message. You also need to create your account at Ping.fm and add your social profiles so that it can do the posting for you.

GTalk to VOIP

GTalk to VOIP offers a number of free and paid VOIP services that you can use with your IM tools including GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, and Live Messenger. These include incoming calls to your IM tools from any mobile, landline phones, or Web services; outgoing calls to SIP phones, Internet radio, video conferencing, offline messaging, IM interoperability, SMS service, etc. Payment can be completed through Paypal.

Inezha

Inezha allows you to use your Gtalk application as a feed reader. Simply send the RSS feed url to the Inezha bot on your GTalk and ask to be notified on all future updates. You can also access you online account at the Inezha site and add the feeds you want to subscribe to. There are also Firefox and Internet Explorer bookmarklets and widgets that you can add to your blog. Inezha also provides a social networking feature where you can add your friends and subscribe to their updates.

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