From the category archives:

Design

The US Budget Deficit in Plain English

13 December 2011

How can you explain the US budget deficit in layman’s terms? Try a paper bag and an old style font, that displays some fairly simple math.

Does this help you to understand the entire budget process and problem better? Do you think it is too simplistic?
[Via Samantha Adams.]

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User Experience Design

5 May 2011
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Have you ever visited a web site and wondered who created such a great experience? Have you ever wondered who makes the invisible visible?
No? Why do you think that is? If it works well, you don’t notice it, and if the site is a mess, it is all you do notice.
Therefore, what element can help [...]

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Language is Data, Too — Don’t Mind It Too Much

25 April 2011

RogersCreations has created this delightful animation of Stephen Fry’s essay, “Don’t Mind Your Language“, called “Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography“. Fry decries pedants in this essay.

I enjoyed this video. As an academic, I both wish my grammar were better, yet at the same time know that language is a fluid and living beast. Ah! the [...]

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The Mechanics of Moving — A Guide to Avoiding Injuries and Damaged Possessions

2 February 2011
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How many times have you moved from one house or apartment to another in your lifetime? Do you think you know what it takes to move objects, pets, and people? I’ve moved plenty of times in my lifetime, but I am eager to hear of any information that can help me tame the moving beast. [...]

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Beyond C.S.I.: The Rise of Computational Forensics

6 January 2011
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How can you determine if two fingerprints are merely similar or are an exact match? Is forensics as practiced currently, skill and art — or science?
I was surprised to learn from Sargur Srihari that forensics is not as scientific in its methods as one might think from watching the various TV shows. Neither are the [...]

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What is Old is New Again: the Antikythera Mechanism Lego Version

16 December 2010
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A long, long time ago (100 BCE) in a civilization far, far away (Ancient Greece), someone built a mechanism that could “predict celestial events and eclipses with unprecedented accuracy” (Engadget). The machine — or, at least one of them — was lost in a shipwreck and lay on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea until [...]

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Preservation Policies, Forbes, and an Email Time Capsule

12 November 2010
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I’m often asked why the preservation of digital materials is so complicated. After all, isn’t it simply about the storage and migration, or emulation, of digital objects and metadata? Why do you need all of these policies and procedures around a data or digital archive? Why can’t you just store the digital files and leave [...]

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Journalism in the Age of Data

18 October 2010
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How can journalists adapt to the data deluge? One way is to use tools and tricks “from computer science, researchers, and artists” (and, I hope, Information Science).
Geoff McGhee posted this video from Stanford. He writes:

Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some [...]

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How Your Personal Desk Space Defines You

15 October 2010
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How do you like to work? Do you move from place to place, with only a smart phone and your lap top? Is a desk an anachronism? Or, do you prefer to have one place to go to work that is, “yours”?
Aaron Trinder explores the concept of the desk, what it means to various workers, [...]

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The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time

4 October 2010
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Have you ever wished you could go back in time to see a town or city as it “used to be”? Cities like Ancient Rome, Athens, and Tenochtitlan? What about China’s Forbidden City?
Thanks to a collaboration between IBM and the Palace Museum, you may explore this aspect of Chinese culture and history online via [...]

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