Link Banana

Like Mr. Kottke, I’m fascinated by color photos from an era usually seen in black-and-white. After explaining autochrome, he offers these links:

Here’s a slideshow of some photos taken by this process. Here’s some autochromes of Mark Twain from 1908.

More early color photography (not necessarily autochromes): Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii’s stunning photographs of Russia circa 1909-1915, photos of WWI, photos of WWII, and photos of America in the late 30s/early 40s (color corrected).

This may be the greatest thing I’ve seen today.

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

He goes on — and on and on — to personally make just about every gripe that every other user of Microsoft software has.

(via BBGadgets)

Matthew Baldwin recently compiled a list of reactions to his not own a cellphone through history. It makes an interesting story. The first few:

1998: Solidarity (“Yeah, me neither — I hate those things!”)
1999: Envy (“Lucky you; I had to get one for work.”)
2000: Indifference (“Okay, what’s your home phone number then?”)
2001: Encouragement (“You should get one — you can play Tetris on them now!”)

Actually, says the Green Lantern, if you’re really green you use your pants. If you’re not open to that, the often-ineffective solution is the greener one:

The bottom line is that hand dryers will be the greener choice in about 95 percent of circumstances. If the choice is between using a tiny corner of recycled towel versus a 2,400-watt dryer, then the Lantern can see how the towel will win. But dryers get the nod in most other scenarios, particularly if the dryer is rated at less than 1,600 watts. (Check the specs plate on the side if you’re really curious.)

A few months ago, a team from Rensselaer and Rice Universities made a surface the blackest black that was ever called black.

(via kottke)

Sometimes interesting things come consecutively from an interesting site with an unlikely theme. This is one of those times.

• Israeli scientist grew a tree from a 2000 year old seed. Alexis Madrigal wonders if such a tree could be a “native plant” or if it’s actually a seed without a country. (Yes, I do think it’s rather fitting that Israeli scientist conjured the thought of someone “without a country.”)
• Also, a solar-thermal demo plant has been completed in Israel. I’m a little surprised. I thought such things would forever exist only in memory.

Architectural Record has an interesting run-down of the most innovative skyscraper designs that were never realized.

Darshak Sanghavi makes an interesting point:

The greatest medical advances depend mostly on small but consistent improvements in the use of old drugs.

This idea, like all great ones, seems like something a seven-year-old dreamed up:

Dietrich Stein, of the Ruhr-University of Bochum, wants to free up the roads by diverting the Ruhr’s freight underground. If his plan succeeds, the road network at the surface will be duplicated by a system of tubes below, inhabited by small vehicles that steer themselves automatically from factories to shops or even to individual homes.

In a thorough summary of the basics of hybrid auto technology, The Economist’s Tech.view column sees a future that may favor less-efficient (but cheaper) mild hybrids over “stronger” ones like the Prius.

The complexity and cost of such drive-trains has made many in the industry think twice about strong hybrids. Mild hybrids like Honda’s may offer only modest fuel savings, but they are considerably cheaper to make. Selling for less than a Toyota Prius, the new mild-hybrid version of the Chevrolet Malibu has been a runaway success, despite having only 2mpg better fuel economy than a conventional Malibu.

Think of it as a post-Rapture Christian gloating service. As Threat Level snarkily points out:

The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site’s five Christian staffers “scattered around the U.S.” fail to log in for six days in a row — a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.

(via Waxy)

Jack Shafer says that Michael Chrichton’s rather infamous prediction about the demise of mass media wasn’t wrong, just early.

As we pass his prediction’s 15-year anniversary, I’ve got to declare advantage Crichton. Rot afflicts the newspaper industry, which is shedding staff, circulation, and revenues. It’s gotten so bad in newspaperville that some people want Google to buy the Times and run it as a charity! Evening news viewership continues to evaporate, and while the mass media aren’t going extinct tomorrow, Crichton’s original observations about the media future now ring more true than false. Ask any journalist.

He also talks at length with the author about the topic and more.

I noticed two interesting things on Google today, so I thought I’d share.

• Google has a new favicon. They’ve switched from the big G to the little one. I like it. (via DF)
• Maps on searches for country names and cities. Now when I want to know where Zambia is, I no longer have click through to Wikipedia to know.

I’ve mentioned this before, but with all the hype about the monkey arm the perhaps more important and impressive prosthetic from Dean Kamen and company deserves attention. Wired’s Gadget Lab has video from his presentation at D6.

(via Waxy)

It’s today’s entrant for the cool-but-pointless prize.

(via GOOD)

Short answer: no. Slightly longer answer:

Virtually no fuel is wasted during startup, and only a thimbleful is burned as the car roars to life. So forget about the 30-minute axiom you were raised on—the threshold at which it makes more sense to shut off rather than to idle should be expressed in seconds, not minutes.

A lot of environmental organizations advocate the 10-second rule: If you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds, it’s best to shut off your engine.

Andy Baio points out that Garry Kasparov was recently “griefed,” while giving a speech, by a flying phallus. A similar event occured in the alternate reality of Second Life a few years ago.

Yves Rossy flew like an aiplane today and landed successfully. Sadly — as MetaFilter commenters pointed out — he didn’t take off from the ground. It’s still cool in my book.

UPDATE (5/27/2008): Via 3qd, video of the flight.

I’m probably not the only one a little surprised to learn that the United States has the lowest rate of software piracy of any country. I suppose it has a lot to do with the fact that the country has no visible market in pirated software, so all the theft is essentially pro-bono.

Sue Halpern wrote a long but rather good exploration of the use of virtual reality as a way to treat American soldiers with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This paragraph caught my eye (and made my think about the paralyzing cult of manliness):

When Travis Boyd was first asked to consider enrolling in the Virtual Iraq clinical trial, he was hesitant. He had already decided not to talk to his division therapist, because “I didn’t want to have it on my military record that I was crazy,” he said. And he was a marine. “Infantry is supposed to be the toughest of the tough. Even though there was no punishment for going to therapy, it was looked down upon and seen as weak. But V.R. sounded pretty cool. They hook you up to a machine and you play around like a video game.” Telling his buddies that he was going off to do V.R. was a lot easier than telling them he was seeing a shrink.