Links for 04-18-2008

• Open Reasoning: Some data points on social media - To very briefly summarize: Except for reading blogs there's very little use of social media for work/education purposes. Not especially surprising.


• Let's Tell a Story Together - Detailed history of interactive fiction.


• ASCII by Jason Scott: Twilight of the Area Code Master - "Once I could stand there and recite these numbers and their locations with the greatest pride. They were my geography teacher and my sage-like awareness of the lands around me. But those times are gone."


• Kevin Kelly: Digital Things I've Been Wrong About - "I believe no one can always be right about what will work because the number of variables determining success are too high. The details of execution for each idea matter greatly."


• Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Waxy.org


• Megan McArdle (April 17, 2008) - Ms Fix-it speaks "Apparently, customers can now offer Starbucks suggestions on how to improve their service. My humble offering: tell the whoever runs the flamethrower they use on their coffee beans to throttle back on the oxygen and leave some actual flavor in the roast."


• Our Daily Bleg: Did I.B.M. Really See a World Market For About Five Computers? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog - (Supposedly) the truth behind the famous Watson "there's a world market for five computers" quote.


• Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > I've Got Two Words for You: Lawn Darts - I bought lawn darts a few years ago (via Yahoo auctions). I could never have them as a child. Parents probably thought I'd toss them at my brother. Probably true :-)


• Bruce Schneier's Security Matters: Prediction -- RSA Conference Will Shrink Like a Punctured Balloon - We're seeing much the same trend in virtualization. People don't want to assemble a whole lot of complicated piece parts.


• WebUrbanist » 10 Impressive Parkour and Free Running Videos: Urban Buildering and Building Jumping in Action


• Slides to JPEG Files [DIGITIZESLIDES] - $0.35 : Slides in a Flash, A New Alternative to Slide Scanning - Haven't tried them but another economical slide digitization option.


• Kevin Kelly -- The Technium - "The web is the initial OS of this new global machine, and all the many gadgets we possess are the windows into its core."


• Presentation Zen: Latest "Steve Jobs" keynote best yet: watch and learn - Spoof Steve Jobs keynote. This is pretty funny.