Jason Hong's Confabulations

See where movie stars are in Manhattan in near-realtime based on reports by people. A weird (and somewhat scary) form of a smart mob. http://www.gawker.com/stalker/

I made this prognostication a few years ago, and it just keeps coming true. Now, you can run not just Doom, but Doom II and Halflife on a video ipod. YouTube Link Reminds me of Zawinski's law : "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

At the latest HotMobile: Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications , IBM researcher John Barton poses an interesting question: Why can we connect to Amazon so much faster than the computer across the room? Also reminds me of Bruce Sterling's question: why can I easily pull up pictures of the moon, but can't see what's inside my walls?

Wired Magazine's web site has an article about people using Craigslist to find things that they've lost. It would be really compelling if we could actually figure out the stats for how effective something like this is. In an increasingly cynical world, there are still places where people try to do the right thing. Everyday on Internet message boards, honest folks post notes about valuables they found: cash, bank cards, diamond bracelets, engagement rings, wedding bands, digital cameras, and even a cockatoo valued at $1,200. In turn, when there is no place left to look for something missing, the desperate sometimes take the longest of longshots and look online themselves. Occasionally, it works for both sides. People such as Silliman get back their iPod, still loaded with Radio Head and Broken Social Scene. Link

I'm not sure what's scarier, the fact that one of the students in our Usable Privacy and Security class showed the video of the exploding whale today, that there's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale">Wikipedia article on exploding whales , or that there is a series of Wikipedia articles on exploding animals .

Makezine thinks that online games and credit cards will combine, similar to what I wrote about it a few weeks ago . Very soon, credit card companies and game makers will reward their customers who spend money in the real world using private label "rewards" credit cards. They will use gifts of virtual currency such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft gold and Second Life's Linden dollars. Link

There's a (somewhat) interesting article in today's New York Times on adopted Chinese children. I have to say that my experiences with adopted Chinese children and their parents here in Pittsburgh have been highly positive. The children are all wonderful, and their parents go to extraordinary lengths and sacrifices for their children. Shelley and I (along with others) have been helping to teach the children basic Chinese and a little about Chinese culture, and everyone is so excited to keep learning. I also can't help but think that this will help the United States' relation with China in the long term. When there is greater awareness here in the United States (that China is more than Chinese food, the Great Wall, and martial arts), as the young girls go back to visit China, as we strengthen our connections between our two countries, we have a better and more grounded understanding of each other rather than the stereotypes and caricatures often presented in the media. S...