The virtual universe

The map of the Internet is a photo shot of the global network as of end of 2011. It encompasses over 350 thousand websites from 196 countries and all domain zones. Information about more than 2 million links between the websites has joined some of them together into topical clusters. As one might have expected, the largest clusters are formed by national websites, i.e. sites belonging to one country. For the sake of convenience, all websites relative to a certain country carry the same color. For instance, the red zone at the top corresponds to Russian segment of the net, the yellow one on the left stands for the Chinese segment, the purple one on the right is Japanese, the large light-blue central one is the American segment, etc.

Interesant cum Softpedia e site romanesc si e in romania ca locatie dar nu ca si culoare. Prespun ca asta inseamna ca majoritatea utilizatorilor lui sunt din afara. Siteul: http://internet-map.net/#6-159.36187744140625-111.01329803466797

Online now

Online Now from Pocket Jakes on Vimeo.

O privire asupra societatii moderne

Cetateanul tipic al planetei

The man from Romania

World population - WebGL

Populatia globului reprezentata interactiv in functie de densitate

Sursa: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/globe (Google Chrome recomandat)

How to use The Chinese Dictionary

Science is the engine of prosperity

Dr. Michio Kaku explica de ce educatia este foarte importanta si cum stau lucrurile acum la nivel mondial. Concluzia socanata este ca 50% din masteranzii si doctoranzii din America sunt straini iar la nivelul stiintelor exacte acest procent se apropie de 100%.

Move, Learn, Eat - Calatorie in jurul lumii

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage... all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films.....

= a trip of a lifetime.

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

All Music composed and performed by Kelsey James
Music Recorded and mixed by Jake Phillips

Colour Grade : Edel Rafferty and Roslyn Di sisto
Online Edit : Peter Mirecki

Assistance in titles and production design : Lee Gingold, Jason Milden, Rohan Newman

Hobo codes for digital nomads

La origine Hobo Codes sunt reviewuri codate lasate de oamenii strazii in anumite locuri. Arata asa:

During the 19th and 20th centuries hobos (a wandering homeless worker) developed hobo codes, a system of marks made with chalk to help each other find useful opportunities and avoid danger. Golan Levin and Asa Foster III have updated this system for the digital generation with QR code stencils.

Tot articolul: http://blog.ponoko.com/2011/07/20/hobo-codes-for-digital-nomads/

My Summer at an Indian Call Center

For three weeks, a culture trainer will teach us conversational skills, Australian pop culture, and the terms of the mobile-phone contracts we'll be peddling. Those of us who pass the training course will graduate to the calling floor. Our first job at DCC will be to interrupt Australians at dinner and ask them to switch phone providers. In the Delhi area alone, maybe 100,000 call-center agents make their living selling vitamins to Britons or helping Americans troubleshoot their printers. I am almost certainly the only one who acquired his conversational skills accidentally—by being born in the United States.

Every month, thousands of Indians leave their Himalayan tribes and coastal fishing towns to seek work in business process outsourcing, which includes customer service, sales, and anything else foreign corporations hire Indians to do. The competition is fierce. No one keeps a reliable count, but each year there are possibly millions of applicants vying for BPO positions. A good many of them are bright recent college grads, but their knowledge of econometrics and Soviet history won't help them in interviews. Instead, they pore over flashcards and accent tapes, intoning the shibboleths of English pronunciation—"wherever" and "pleasure" and "socialization"—that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from MTI, or "mother tongue influence."

Next is "culture training," in which trainees memorize colloquialisms and state capitals, study clips of Seinfeld and photos of Walmarts, and eat in cafeterias serving paneer burgers and pizza topped with lamb pepperoni. Trainers aim to impart something they call "international culture"—which is, of course, no culture at all, but a garbled hybrid of Indian and Western signifiers designed to be recognizable to everyone and familiar to no one. The result is a comically botched translation—a multibillion dollar game of telephone. "The most marketable skill in India today," the Guardian wrote in 2003, "is the ability to abandon your identity and slip into someone else's."

While we idle in interminable traffic, my coworker Nishant asks where I'm from. "America?" he says. "I'll tell you about America."

I must look wary, because he quickly explains that, after years of 50-hour workweeks, he's probably spoken with more of my compatriots than I have. "America is not all honey and roses the way they tell you," he informs me. "Truth is, 90 percent of the people there, you will find, they'll do the most stupid things, impulsive things. I know for a fact. At the same time, Americans are bighearted people, and the remaining 10 percent of them are smart. Bloody smart. That's why they rule the world."

On his first day, Nishant donned his headset, dialed the number on the screen and was connected to a 60-year-old woman in Tennessee. She had an outstanding hospital bill for $400. "I told her, 'Just pay this, what's the problem?' She told me, 'You don't understand, I can't pay.'" They talked for 45 minutes, and the woman cried as she told Nishant about the Iraq War and its toll on American families. "By this time I'm crying also," Nishant said.

The same day, he was connected with a man living in a trailer. "I told him, 'What's a trailer?' He told me, 'It's this tin shed; it gets 90 degrees; we don't have our own washroom.'" Nishant learned more about America that first day, he told me, than he had in his whole childhood.

During our second day of culture training, Lekha dissected the Australian psyche. It took about 20 minutes.

"Just stating facts, guys," Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, "Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently. So speak slowly." Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No college in his notebook.

"Technologically speaking, they're somewhat backward, as well. The average person's mobile would be no better than, say, a Nokia 3110 classic." This drew scoffs from around the room.

"Australians drink constantly," Lekha continued. "If you call on a Friday night, they'll be smashed—every time. Oh, and don't attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals."

The computer terminals were of a clunky premillennial vintage. DCC, Lekha admitted, was not "one of your Dells or IBMs with fancy workstations and a McDonald's in our cafeteria." This reminded her of another rule: "No leaving the premises during work. You can smoke out front, but don't leave the gates."


On our next smoke break, I asked Mr. Long Island City if he found this rule strange. "No, it's just for safety types," he said. "Especially for the girls. Who knows what could happen to a girl on her own?" Another classmate had his own theory. "Out there it's India, man," he said, gesturing through the gate to where a goat was urinating in the street. "We go outside, and when we go back in, we bring India in with us."

Articolul este extrem de fascinant. Multe paralele pot fi trase si cu Romania.


Tot articolul: http://motherjones.com/print/114946

Varianta pe pagini: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/indian-call-center-americanization?page=1

Most popular names by country

(click pt mai mare)

A Pail of Air - short story

A world where the Earth has been thrown out of the orbit with the sun and the air has frozen to the ground. A family continues to survive on this harsh planet everyone used to call home.

Povestea cu Pamantul inghetat nu este singura din colectia asta. Pentru a le vedea pe toate aveti butoane de navigare in dreapta sus. Toate sunt destul de scurte pentru o pauza de la lucru.

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743498747/0743498747___6.htm

Daca va intrebati ce e un "pail"

Dimineata in lume

Kick back, relax, mutati pe HD, fullscreen.



Da vor fi si momente de "am fost acolo" :)

Global Village Construction Set

Global Village Construction Set in 2 Minutes from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

What is dust?

Let's set aside the bunny for a second, and focus on the filth. Dust is everywhere. Fine sand is rock dust. Rubber, brakepad and pavement particles are road dust. Fine ash can be volcanic dust. Hell, Carl Sagan famously and repeatedly referred to Earth as a "mote of dust," albeit in a cosmic sense. But the dust we're talking about, dust bunny dust, is a specific thing, with a specific recipe. And a studied one! According to David W. Layton and Paloma I. Beamer, who coauthored a report called ‘Migration of Contaminated Soil and Airborne Particulates to Indoor Dust,' typical household dust in a midwestern home is comprised of the following:

Indoor dust is a mixture of soil tracked into a residence, particulate matter derived from ambient outdoor air, and importantly, organic matter inputs from various sources. A prominent feature of indoor dust is its organic material content, with levels of about 40 wt % in residential housing.

Tot articolul: http://gizmodo.com/5715598/giz-explains-where-dust-bunnies-come-from

What's cool or fun about a thumping, sweaty dungeon full of posing idiots?

I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only "saddoes" dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled "sad" - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.


Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.


Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they "enjoy" clubbing. They don't. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.

Tot articolul: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/aug/13/fashion.comment/print

This is broken

Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Trebuie sa mentionez ca nu am aceeasi parere cu el in multe cazuri dar e f interesant talkul.

Less Confusing View of World Time Zones

 If you ever need to schedule an online meeting or a conference call with multiple people who work in different time zones, a web app called Every Time Zone should come handy.

Every Time Zone offers a unique view of the time zones around the world that is less confusing and you simply have to drag the green bar on either side to figure out the best time that may be suitable for all the meeting participants.

Sursa: http://www.labnol.org/internet/world-time-zones/14346/

Site: http://everytimezone.com/

Student loans gateway to slavery

(click pt mai mare)

The new retro-encabulator