altay

my band played for a crowd of 3500 once -- that felt like a huge mass of people, but it's peanuts in web terms. it'd be fun to see random comparisons to meatspace in your site analytics. e.g., "this week, your site's active users could've sold out madison square garden 8 times" or "your monthly uniques exceed the population of maine."

And if you want to talk about maximizing social approval rather than benefit, check out the red iPod program. =P

Email addresses it would be really annoying to give out over the phone.

There's lots of good stuff on http://itconversations.com, too.

3D printing has come a long way, and this is just the beginning!

Edison was adamant that Edison recordings would be played only on Edison phonographs. His competitors, Victor and Columbia, shared the same playback technique, etching a laterally cut groove that sent the needle moving horizontally as the record played. Their recordings could be played on one another's machines. Edison, however, adopted his own design, a groove that varied vertically, called at the time a "hill and dale" cut. An adapter permitted Victor records to be played on an Edison Disc Phonograph, but Edison forbade the sale of an attachment that permitted his records to be played on competitors' machines.

The name "post-rock" feels a little absurd to me, though.

- write a screenscraper to get the answer from here: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=1000+milliseconds+t...

- or perhaps hook your function up to the search API to get the answer that way (not sure if you can access the calculator through the API, though)

- or maybe just divide by 1000.

(Disclosure: I used to work for LibraryThing... and built their address-book inviter. I'd like to believe we implemented it a little more tastefully, though. =P)

 Urtog.score = new function() {
  this.init = function() {
    this.upmod; // boolean.  if increasing score, it's true; if decreasing, false.
    this.unit = 34;  // the pixel height of one digit
    this.digits = $$('div#scoredigits img.digit');  // array of all the digit images
  }

  /* change the score.  
   * first arg is the # of points to add or subtract (if negative).  
   * second arg is optional, specifies which digit img element to mod.  the default is the "1's" digit.
   */
  this.mod = function( points, digit ) {
    this.upmod = (points > 0);
    digit = digit || this.digits.last();
    var di = this.digits.indexOf(digit);
    var dy = (this.upmod ? 0-this.unit : this.unit);
    (Math.abs(points)).times(function(i) {
      new Effect.MoveBy(digit, dy, 0, {
        queue: {position:"end", scope:"d"+di},
        duration: 0.075,
        transition: Effect.Transitions.linear,
        beforeSetup: preroll.bind(Urtog.score)
      });
    })
  }

  /* the callback that's run before the digit is modded.  
   * does two things:
   * 1. resets the image strip to the top/bottom if necessary 
   * 2. checks if we should simultaneously mod the 10x digit (e.g. going from 09=>10 or 10=>09)
   */
  function preroll(effect) {
    var d = effect.element;
    var di = this.digits.indexOf(d);
    var offset = d.style.top;
    if (this.upmod) { // adding points
      if (offset=="-340px") { // at the bottom of the strip, so reset to the top
        d.style.top=offset="0px";
      }
      if (offset=="-306px") { // transitioning from 9=>0, so mod the 10x digit, too
        this.mod( 1, this.digits[di-1] );
      }
    }
    else { // subtracting points
      if (this.digits.all(function(d) { return is_zero(d.style.top); })) { // we've hit zero!
        Effect.Queues.instances.keys().each(function(k) {
          if (k.match(/d[0-9]*$/)) { // cancel all pending digit mods -- digit effect queue names are like d3,d2,d1
            Effect.Queues.instances[k].each(function(e) { 
              e.cancel() 
            }); 
          }
        });
        new Effect.UrtogShuffle('scoredigits');  // :)
        return false;
      }
      if (is_zero(offset)) { // at the top of the strip, so reset to the bottom
        d.style.top=offset="-340px";
      }
      if (offset=="-340px") { // transitioning from 0=>9, so mod the 10x digit, too
        this.mod( -1, this.digits[di-1] );
      }
    }
  }

  // account for bizarre safari behavior... wtf is "-0px"??
  function is_zero(offset) {
    return (offset=="0px" || offset=="-0px");  
  }
 } // end Urtog.score

But I've never heard of any connection between left/right dominance and this phenomenon ("binocular rivalry"). I suspect it might be BS...

In any case, if you want to learn more, check out this (pdf) slideshow: http://visionlab.harvard.edu/Members/Olivia/tutorialsDemos/B...

This was put together by my friend Olivia, who's done a lot of work in this field. Be sure to check out pg. 16 -- Olivia's studied binocular rivalry not only in meditating monks, but also in people on 'shroom trips. Psychology is FUN! =)

In general, it's best to leave Firebug disabled by default, and only enable it for specific urls when you need to use it.

Give me a place catered to the entrepreneurial types. BUT maintain the social+creative coffee shop vibe... I'm thinking along the lines of Diesel Cafe, not the Cambridge Innovation Center.

Charge membership fees, serve healthy meals, be open 24 hours, whatever. Start with Cambridge, then franchise around the world.

Naturally, there'd be an online component... your Hackspot account gives you access to the network, job board, etc etc.

Anyone know anything about starting a company in meatspace? =P

Admittedly, there's a bit of a learning curve, but once you've gotten over the hump, it's much more pleasant to code "heart smiley lightning-bolt" than all those ugly letters and numbers.

By "plus internet," I mean, hang out with people who don't have an unhealthy obsession with the internet. Lend them an empathic ear, then take their pain/talent/idea and add the internet.

Let me give you an example. I met a musician the other day. He's got a kid now, and he said that most of the energy he formerly put into improvisational music now goes into improvisational storytelling; every night, he makes up a bedtime story with his kid. He said he was thinking about recording these stories for sentimental reasons.

Since I DO have an unhealthy obsession with the internet, my first thought was, "hm, ok, recorded stories plus internet equals ...?" That is, what if you had LOTS of families recording these stories and you managed to get all that data into one system. It doesn't quite work with bedtime stories -- I think those tend to be a little too personal to be of general appeal -- but there are plenty of very talented storytellers out there... there are local societies and whatnot. It's a tradition that dates back to the beginning of language. Why not create a Youtube-like environment where people with a passion for storytelling can share their stories with each other and the world? This guy I was chatting with said he'd never have thought of that, but you could see the wheels turning in his head as soon as I mentioned it.

So let's say you've gotten this far. At this point, if your goal is to create something cool that could change the lives of a group of people, you're all set. (I bet this story idea could turn into a cool folk-art community.) But if your goal is to turn it into a startup, there's one more step... you need to apply this filter: "ok, interesting idea, but is this a business?"

Point is, a good place to start is to get outside the YC/TechCrunch echo chamber and talk to people who have good ideas and painful frustrations but don't automatically think "ok... plus internet?"

Folks that haven't watched this talk... you should. It really got me thinking in new ways. There's a reason why von Ahn won a MacArthur ("Genius") Grant for his Human Computation work.

Flickr -- that other photo-sharing site -- sold for, what, around $30 million? Paypal sold for $1.54 billion.