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A Woolen Giant Slug

via www.etsy.com

hmm that's my size I think I'll take it

I'd love this to become even more competitive. How about this scenario: You find an item you like, but it's already been placed into someone else's cart. You then have the opportunity to challenge them for the right to purchase it. In Gilt's case, that challenge could be in the form of a fast-paced fashion quiz, where you have to correctly identify the designers of a certain set of pieces (perhaps from that day's set of available inventory). You wouldn't want to scare off newbies, so you'd need to have the right incentives to play, including discounts on future purchases if you lose, a limited number of "deny this challenge" (get out of jail free) chits, etc.

via www.sippey.com

Translating the Barney's Warehouse free-for-all into an online experience. I like the insta quiz idea..

Dave Winer talks with Jeff Jarvis in his Rebooting the News #30

Site vs. stream

Jay: "The web is detaching itself from web 'site' and it's becoming 'stream.'"

Dave: "If that's true, how do we get this thing to open up? It's not good enough for me to be dumping stuff into Twitter space and then complaining later than they don't own it. Because they do own it."

Jay: Maybe it will take an user revolt like what happened at Digg in 2007.

Dave: Why didn't the Suggested Users List trigger something like that? "The way Twitter is organized, it tends to dissipate those things."

Jeff: "Things die out so quickly.... The half life of an idea on Twitter is about six minutes... That's what we have to solve here."

Dave: If Twitter was an open web-based system we could fix these things.

Jeff: "The blogosphere has the permanence that Twitter doesn't have. It's the old page web, the SEO web.... Use Twitter to feed something, if Twitter is the end in itself, we're screwed. We're putting things into this dispersed cloud that disappears."

via rebootnews.com

Labrang Monastery - photographs by Eugene Kuo

via www.fotokuo.com

Photos of the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, China. It is one of the six major Tibetan Monasteries of the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism is Tibetan Buddhism's most important monastery town outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region.

The NYT Learning Network's Blog has Great Lesson Plans

Overview | What does it take to be a good Web citizen? How can a blog reader add to the duologue in a positive and constructive way? In this lesson, students explore the do’s and don’ts of good Web etiquette and practice posting comments on blogs of their choice.

via learning.blogs.nytimes.com

Of course I'm a bit biased since my sister wrote this plan and my friend runs the site BUT the new blog format of NYT's The Learning Network is great. It's reactive and flexible, easy to manage, has community and archives, and a lot of good bloggy things even if it isn't MT (Mt :( ) Leaps and bounds more engaging than their old site. 

Chocolate Mouse Invasion

Burdick's chocolate, a mainstay of visits to Walpole NH, has just opened a store around the corner from my office on (20th off of 5th) If they sell seconds like they do at the original store I'll be a happy (and fatter) man.

 

The Effect Of A Recession Layoff On Your Future Wages

• Percentage after five years by which the pay of U.S. workers laid off in a recession lags that of those who kept their jobs : 30
• Percentage after twenty years : 20
• Chance that such a worker will ever regain his or her income level : 1 in 4

Sobering factoids from the Harper's Magazine November Index.

Wow A Lot of People Don't have Cellphones And Here Are Three Fun Examples

After 20 years, 85 percent of adult Americans have cellphones, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. According to the Federal Communications Commission, cellphones caught on faster than cable TV and personal computers although, by some accounts, broadband Internet service was adopted faster.

Those who still do not have them, according to Pew, tend to be older or less educated Americans or those unable to afford phones. “These are people who have a bunch of other struggles in their lives and the expense of maintaining technology and mastering it is also pretty significant for them,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project.

But there is also a smaller subset of adults who resist cellphones simply because they do not want them. They resent the way that ring tones, tiny keyboards and screens disrupt face-to-face conversation. They savor their moments alone and prize the fact that no one knows how to reach them.

via www.nytimes.com

So if 15 percent of adult Americans don't have cell phones that would really mean that roughly 34,500,000 people don't have them but rather than write about how that communications divide affects their lives the NYT has instead found these three people to profile:
- a 34 year old tech blogger who doesn't have a landline either (oh my!) but who use Skype IM and e-mail. Handsome picture though he doesn't look to wacky and far from savoring his moments alone seems very reachable if you follow the detailed instructions he leaves with people. Those crazy bloggers...Apartment Therapy should pay him more.
-a 32 year old who likes to bother her friends neighbor by getting his dogs to bark so they can alert her friend on the fifth floor. what other crazy things does she do to get by, how does she arrange dinner? Maybe her friend should just give her a key.
- and a (just guessing here) slightly hippyish romantic who finds being always reachable "scary" and who prefers letters.

None of these perfectly nice seeming people professed to the "... smug satisfaction of marching to a different ring tone." It's almost as if the author had a premise and the prose and just slotted these little vignettes in.

Kindle for PC Coming..Mac?

via www.amazon.com

Continuing my sense of deja vu. Timing is everything isn't it? Also integrated giant systems don't hurt.

The Nation to Publish Anti-Palin Book On Same Day As Palin's Book

via www.newser.com

Nicely done

Fake AP Stylebook (FakeAPStylebook) on Twitter

It's "trick or treat" (no hyphens,) but hyphens are included in "trick-or-treaters" and "get-off-my-porch-you-little-brat."43 minutes ago from web

"Fuckhead" should only be capitalized at the start of sentence. When referring to a talk radio host it is hyphenated.about 1 hour ago from web

via twitter.com

Two fine examples of the kinds of valuable knowledge you can pick up from this feed. (via my friend Dan Rosenbaum

Do you have a business card?

via tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com

Video of the Yes Men prank at the National Press Club. He didn't flinch.

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 has landed

via technorati.com

Drumroll... Fast on the heels of their redesign comes the state of the blogosphere this time with articles.

Dalton kids getting growth hormone to be taller than their West Side Counterparts

"They said that the height that's owed to him is around 5-foot-8 or 5-foot-10," she said.

via www.nypost.com

My mother didn't love me enough to give me growth hormone. Clearly this wasn't done at Ethical Culture or at least the version of Ethical that she carries around in her mind. The kind of place where you don't fake a gym note. But I digress...

Freehands are back

via www.coolhunting.com

Gloves that let you use your iPhone while keeping your hands warm. Also helpful this winter for keeping flu germs out of your mouth.

Bad meme - high fiving strangers

via typetees.threadless.com

Twice in the last week people have tried to high five me as I've walked down the street. I would like a version of this shirt with a line through it or a "I ^^don't high five strangers". Arghh.

Notes from a Chinese Trade Show

But the atmosphere was markedly different in two halls reserved for non-Chinese exporters, amid a mishmash of emblematic exports from 35 countries: designer housewares from Italy, rugs from India, bird’s nest soup from Malaysia and lawyers from the United States.

via www.nytimes.com

"What I really hate most is when people come and flip you over to see where you were made. The first time it happened everything fell out of my pockets. But I adjusted and borrowed a stapler from the Italian booth over there so it hasn't happened since." said Quentin "Griff" Whately, part of a large contingent of furloughed lawyers sent over to the trade fair by their NY firms.

Great Idea - Publishers with a Purpose

Publishers with a Purpose is a group of online publishers who have pledged 5% of their total ad inventory to selected nonprofits and social causes, with the shared goal of making a difference in our neighborhoods and around the world by grouping together. Started by Flavorpill in October of 2009, PWP is a collaborative effort of world-class, independent publishers and important local and global causes which regularly update this site with ad creative around their latest projects. Our goal is to raise awareness and money for these worthy organizations. With this 5%, our founding publishers already represent more than 40,000,000 monthly impressions — a clear example that together, we can make a difference.

via publisherswithapurpose.org

A really nice idea. Not-For-Profits can add creative to the site. Publishers can pick it up and run it.

The Huffington Post uses real-time Aa/B testing to write headlines

So here’s something devilishly brilliant: The Huffington Post applies A/B testing to some of its headlines. Readers are randomly shown one of two headlines for the same story. After five minutes, which is enough time for such a high-traffic site, the version with the most clicks becomes the wood that everyone sees.

via www.niemanlab.org