1. Well, I guess I can say you heard it here first, the NY Times has a nice article, by Mary Jo Murphy, talking about the design of wind turbines and their recent ubiquity in eco-advertising. When it’s the NY Times, they interview Seth Godin, who mentions how the wind turbines as icon that works because it is more about the infinite supply of energy over reducing demand and consumption. Murphy raises a good point that, the wind turbines is still more about hype than results, and is “both of and ahead of its time,” and that its ultimate success is still undetermined. [via Frank.]
2. I need to create a category, “what made me a dork in the 80s is cool now.” Bow Wow and The Game are continuing the history of the rap battles. Only this time, they are putting up $100,000 (proceeds go to charity) to settle things the real way, by playing Madden NFL 09.
3. I love early internet history. NSF is putting your tax dollars at work with this interactive history of the internet. It’s all their ARPANET, NSFNet, Mosaic and TCP/IP. The best feature shows the number of the computers on and the speed of the internet for each decade, (1960s had 4 computer at 400 baud.)
4. Speaking of the early days of the Internet, Noah made a sweet iPhone ringtone of a dail up modem.
5. Back to the present, Timo Paloheimo created Google Minus Google to find out what Google would be without Google. The site serves up Google search results which filters out Google owned properties, such as YouTube, Blogger, Gmail, Knol and Orkut, and thus removes any inherent conflicts of interest. [via Core 77]
6. I recently did a Google search on the actually Google page. Usually, I just type my search terms in search tools built into Firefox and Camino. Both do a nice job of trying to predicting my search terms as I type. However, the Google search box now offers the results too, so you can widen or narrow your search terms before your first try. You know, the one that takes 0.16 seconds. Am I the last person to notice this? And in true frienemy form, I must admit that it is nice that even if Google is the dominant search engine, they are still innovating in their core business, even in small ways.
