via Wired

Over at Wired Science, Jonah Lehrer looks into how we identify good ideas:

I’ve always been fascinated by the failures of genius. Consider Bob Dylan. How did the same songwriter who produced Blood on the Tracks and Blonde on Blonde also conclude that Down in the Groove was worthy of release? Or what about Steve Jobs: what did he possibly see in the hockey puck mouse? How could Bono not realize that Spiderman was a disaster? And why have so many of my favorite novelists produced so many middling works?

A big part seems to lie in letting your ideas marinate in your head for a while to give you some distance and perspective.

iFixit.org sounds very interesting. Probably because I grew up spending a lot of time in junkyards and my dad’s basement fixing shit too:

We have been traveling to developing countries in Asia and Africa, visiting e-waste scrapyards and small repair shops, meeting “fixers” who breathe new life into gadgets that the western world has tossed away, and photographing the journey. Part travelogue, part investigative reporting, part soapbox, iFixit.org promises only one thing: a clear-eyed, thoughtful look at global repair culture.

via Minimal Mac

via Carscoop

Alex Rainert is right, you can’t not see veins or think of a heart when you look at these visualizations of geotag density in cities by Eric Fischer.
via FlowingData and Animal

It annoys the fuck out of me whenever I see commercials for a product or company who want you to follow them on Facebook or Twitter. Hey! Check it out, we’re tweeting! We tweet! And put something on our wall too! Like us!
Aside from this annoyance, I could never quite put my finger on why social media doesn’t work for companies, but Randy Murray nailed it:

The opposite is also true: businesses are not people. For a business to be social, it has to be focused and friendly, but it can never be your friend. I really like Apple products, I own Apple stock, but Apple isn’t my friend. I don’t need a social relationship with the company that made my car, where I shop for food, or the local dry cleaners. I do find it useful to get news and information from them, and someone to listen and act when I have a problem, but I really don’t need another channel of happy talk from businesses.

Clay Shirky responds to David Pogue’s stance on SOPA and how we shouldn’t be so quick to assume Hollywood’s legal dogs are savage, rabies-infected hounds:

If their legal arm gets out of control? This is an industry that demands payment from summer camps if the kids sing Happy Birthday or God Bless America, an industry that issues takedown notices for a 29-second home movie of a toddler dancing to Prince. Traditional American media firms are implacably opposed to any increase in citizens’ ability to create, copy, save, alter, or share media on our own. They fought against cassette audio tapes, and photocopiers. They swore the VCR would destroy Hollywood. They tried to kill Tivo. They tried to kill MiniDisc. They tried to kill player pianos. They do this whenever a technology increases user freedom over media. Every time. Every single time.

via Ars Technica

via Yield Media

via The Atlantic

Sam Biddle for Gizmodo on ultrabooks:

What is an Ultrabook? Intel says they’re supposed to be affordable (around $1,000), thin (no more than 0.8 inches), light (no more than 3.1 pounds) and tenacious in the battery. They’re to have speedy SSD storage. That is Plato’s Ultrabook.

Thank you, Mr. Biddle. The term has been driving me crazy since it was introduced. It was adopted by PC makers to help them compete with the MacBook Air and term ‘netbook’ started to lose its coolness a few years ago.
Oh, by the way, the MacBook Air just turned 4 years old.
How many times to I have to say I’m tired of writing about Apple?

via @asymco

Office of Harvey Earl, Vice President of Design at General Motors (c. 1950’s)
via Flickr via asaucerfullofwheels