Taken from The Combustion Chamber

—Seth Godin
If you’re someone who’s itching to start your own ‘thing’—make art, open a store, bake your own pies—then you really need to read The Icarus Deception.

The NYTimes reports that “a team of California craftsmen is restoring the first Duesenberg sold to the public to its original 1921 glory and to compete at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Élégance.” Be sure to check out the 2-minute video accompanying the article.

You ever here some use the term, “It’s a Duesie”?

It came from this car.

Frank Caliendo’s impersonation of Morgan Freeman is insane.

If you don’t believe that’s not Morgan Freeman, here’s Caliendo doing it on a radio show.

Most of us geeks and nerds know Apple’s product cycles are pretty regular.
I know this from not only following the tech news regularly, but I’ve also known about MacRumor’s Mac Buyer’s Guide for at least 8 years now. Apple releases a new iPhone every year, or to be more accurate, every 338 days.
Please share this knowledge with any non-nerd/geek relatives who nag you about whether they should get a new iPhone now or wait.
There’s absolutely no reason anyone should still be saying, “Dammit! I wish I had known Apple was going to drop a new iPhone. I would have waited.”
No more excuses.

Microsoft launched a new site, Microsoft by the Numbers which highlights all their product stats like:
over 170,000 apps for Windows Phone
over 2 billion minutes per day spent by Skype users
76 million XBox 360 consoles sold to date
It looks like they’re missing a big number though.
Where’s the $900 million write down for all the unsold Surface RT tablets?
I couldn’t resist. Microsoft, you set me up for this.

Taken from The Combustion Chamber

Mark Wagner is badass.

via Colossal

I love the fact that Microsoft is touting the non-touch-optimized interface of Office as an advantage over the iPad.


Wow, we’re all really dying for the those hard to tap hit areas!
I’ll give them this, it is a differentiator.

via Yimmy’s Yayo

The Verge: CBS blackout sparks rise in TV show piracy

CBS’s block on Time Warner Cable (TWC) customers is less than a week old and already the blackout is fuelling a rise in TV show piracy. TorrentFreak reports that the percentage of illegal downloads rose substantially in the week since it went dark, as piracy rates for popular CBS show Under The Dome increased by 34 percent over the course of one weekend. As downloads went up, the show unsurprisingly saw its lowest viewing figures this season.
My wife worked at NBC Universal for over 10 years. One of the many things I learned about television from her was don’t fuck with peoples’ cable.

One of my favorite things to do when I taught design at Rutgers Newark and FIT was to have students rethink existing websites/services.
SVA Masters student Tom Calabrese did this with one of my most hated services of all time, the United States Postal Service.
Check out his presentation on Slideshare.
via Brand New
Update: Regarding my hate for the USPS–I’m specifically referring to the experience of waiting in line at the physical post office locations. It’s just a miserable experience. When at all possible, I use the automated machines, where you can weigh, stamp and mail things without having to interact with postal employees.

As I kid I loved watching the nature shows on PBS.
If I happen to be flipping around channels and I come across one now, I’m always sucked in (the same happens if I stumble upon Cast Away or The Godfather).
Mental Floss has a great story about a wasp in Costa Rica that turns spiders into zombie construction workers:

In another post, we were talking about what happens to spiders and their webs when scientists give them a little bit of marijuana and other drugs. While researching that post, I learned that its not just humans that alter spiders’ behavior with chemicals. There’s a wasp in Costa Rica that does the same thing, in a more gruesome and sinister way, as part of its journey to adulthood.

The tropical wasp species Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a parasite, and it takes advantage of an unlikely host. The web of the orb weaver spider Plesiometa argyra is normally a place where bugs meet their untimely death and become spider snacks. Using an arsenal of toxins and mind-altering chemicals, though, H. argyraphaga is able to turn the spider into a slave and a meal and its web into a safe haven.
Nature rules.