Ben Shoemate's Notebook

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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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Sarah Perez via ReadWriteWeb shared by 15 people

The iPhone has been making headway in its battle to become a business-ready tool. Obviously, the addition of Microsoft Exchange support was a big step towards being considered a viable alternative to the traditional smartphones used at work, like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. However, beyond simply supporting enterprise email, the iPhone platform has a lot of potential to cater to the needs of its business users, too.

Today, we're introduced to what hopefully will continue the trend of more "serious" apps for iPhone: LinkedIn.

The new LinkedIn app for iPhone launched today in the iPhone store. The app itself is simple, but VentureBeat thinks simple is perfect. We have to agree. Business apps don't need to overly complex or feature-rich necessarily - they just need to provide you with quick and easy access to information and data.

The LinkedIn App

The app features four different sections: the main page, connections, search, and status:

• The main page of the iPhone app displays a news feed that shows updates from your LinkedIn contacts - things like whether they've updated their profile, changed positions, asked a question, added a new contact, etc.

• The "Connections" section displays your LinkedIn contacts in a way that's very much like the iPhone's built-in contact list.

• From the "Search" section, you can search for contacts by name, keyword, title, or company.

• The "Status" section allows you to update your LinkedIn status, which many people use to announce what they're working on. Others have this hooked up via Ping.fm or a similar app so it's updated with their latest tweet.

However, one of the app's best features is its ability to copy LinkedIn contacts over to the contact list on your phone itself. You can download the app from the iPhone store here.

Business Apps Rock, Too

Although a lot of the focus in the blogosphere has been on "fun" apps, like Twitter clients, games, and social networking apps from Facebook and MySpace, the iPhone is offers a lot of apps for business users, too. In the business section of the app store, there are three pages of apps that include everything from virtual rolodexes to time trackers to expense recorders and various calculators. There are even IT-focused apps like VNC clients and command prompt tools. Yet, there could be so many more apps available here.

When you think of the types of businesses there are today, you realize that there's potential for that business category to explode with apps. It could be subdivided into numerous sections focusing on the different types of business users: sales, marketing, retail, accounting, executives, HR, IT, real estate....the list could go on and on. The LinkedIn app holds universal appeal for anyone anyone who works for a living, but more importantly, we hope that, through its adoption, developers will see the potential for building iPhone apps for business as well.