OK, yeah… I know it’s slightly sexist and overly obvious (and shilling ice cream), but have to admit I really like the visual style, direction and music on this thing. Anyone know how they do the film effects on this? (my guess is they just film at a super high frame rate).
Trying to think what it reminds me of as well…
I have to admit I am pretty impressed at the number of educational videos that have been created to explain to people what actually happened with the mortgage-backed securities crisis and how it affects everyone.
And Part II of the video .
If you happen to be looking at key-value stores and document databases for whatever little dev problem you have that might need to be looking at these, you’re probably like me and thinking you probably need to have a version of CouchDB on your trusty macbook to kick the tires on.
So, thank plok’s CouchDBX revival for sorting you out. Nice implementation, you can even run it independently of an already existing macports installation on your system.
While a title like Is the Relational Database Doomed? is obviously link-bait, this Read-Write Web article on the differences between relational databases and the current rapid rise of key-value pair data stores (particularly for distributed, rapidly scalable, multi-tenant web applications) is excellent.
Obviously, relational databases (like MySQL, Oracle, DB2 etc.) aren’t going anywhere soon, but the use of key-value pair stores, as well as their recent resurgence with things like Amazon’s SimpleDB , Google’s Big Table , CouchDB and a host of others, and understanding where it might be a good idea to use them, makes this article a great primer if you’ve been wondering.
Animation on the then versus now world of brand communications.
And what works. Which kinda of harkens back to the cluetrain manifesto idea that markets are conversations. And in fact, not just the traditional idea of a market, but any market; attention span, fundraising, information consumption has to have people with something interesting to say and to interact with. advertising and sloganeering is no longer enough.
Re-posted from BoingBoing. This is, as they say, one “scary-ass job-loss chart.”
{{ figure src="/images/farm4/3472/3264714648_c0f939cee2.jpg" title=“Comparative job losses across recessions” }}
This is from Nancy Pelosi, the current Speaker of the House’s blog. This is what 3.6 Million jobs lost over 13 months looks like . It plots the last two recessions against the current recession (the green line doing the scary death dive.)
I think this is pretty cool: Ads while you’re browsing are constantly becoming more and more intrusive and annoying.
The Add Art firefox plugin works in conjunction with AdBlock (also part of the download) to block the incoming ads and place a curated art exhibit in their place. The images are local so as not to slow down your browsing experience.
Love this. Anything to beautify the browsing landscape. Now if I could just somehow to do the same with billboards in the real world.
The fine buccaneers at The Pirate Bay have published an interactive map of people seeding and leeching torrents ~~bad link~~~ around the world with data by country (percentage users and connections through country at a given time).
Great and fascinating snapshot of p2p activity globally. China is far and away the highest poller and well over 30% of world activity every time I’ve looked. Would be even cooler I think if you could divide this into seeders and leechers with these stats.
OMG, I am so going to see these guys when I get to Vegas. Yet another reason I must go to RailsConf .
Palm, Ditch, Steal, Load, Simulation, Misdirection and Switch.
Probably equally appropriate to watching politicos…
This is great dev tip. The number of times I’ve accidentally cap deploy-ed something without checking I’d git committed everything is beyond counting, so this visual indicator on the command line is great - as well as telling you which branch you’re using:
(though I also use the excellent ProjectPlus Textmate plugin for scm status badges which I’d recommend if you’re using Textmate).