http://www.cogandsprocket.com Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:56:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en An excerpt from E.B. White's New Yorker essay, "The World of Tomorrow", in which he responds to the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair. His thoughts are not only beautifully articulated in classic E.B. White style, but the questions and concerns he raises have a great deal of relevance ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/06/29/the-world-of-tomorrow/ I haven't been posting here much lately, and it's because I've been using Tumblr a lot. I really like the ease of use for posting and the social functionality built in to it. I'm still figuring out what I want to do going forward -- I might continue to keep ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/06/18/tumblr/ There has been a lot of reaction to the piece published in the Times earlier this week about the negative effects of multitasking and hyperconnectivity. Most of it has been either been further hand-wringing over how much of a problem this is, or a rejection of the idea that there ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/06/11/unplugging/ Jakob Nielsen has done some usability testing on the iPad -- the first person to publish results of any kind of formal user testing with the device, as far as I know. His results are interesting, but his conclusions are typically Nielsen-ish in their conservatism. In short, he found that iPad ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/05/10/jakob-nielsen-wants-everyone-to-stop-being-so-weird/ James Sturm decided to spend four months offline. Here is his reasoning for attempting this web fast: My (Probably) Crazy Plan to Give Up the Internet And here is his experience so far: Drawing Ponce de Léon is A Lot Harder Without Google http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/05/06/james-sturm-on-quitting-the-internet/ I discovered something really handy today. A number of the icons that Apple uses in the iPhone UI are actually packaged as glyphs within the Apple Symbols font. Here's how to get to them: Open an application (works with most apps -- I used TextEdit) Go to Edit -> Special ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/05/04/iphone-ipad-icons-hidden-in-apple-symbols-font/ Among the revelations was the envious reaction of her father, who pointed at his own BlackBerry and told her, “I’d give anything to put this down. via nytimes.com Posted via web from alexis lloyd ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/04/28/2-days-with-no-text-messages-for-riverdale-students-nytimescom/ E-books are "broken" in several ways that are important to kids, not the least of which is that paper books are super useful as floors in really tall block buildings. via kottke.org Posted via web from ... http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/04/28/on-the-extinction-of-paper-childrens-books/ Among the revelations was the envious reaction of her father, who pointed at his own BlackBerry and told her, “I’d give anything to put this down.via nytimes.com Posted via web from alexis lloyd http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/04/28/big-city-2-days-with-no-text-messages-for-riverdale-students-nytimescom/ via cheatedbylife.com Simple. Cheap. Brilliant. Posted via web from alexis lloyd http://www.cogandsprocket.com/2010/04/28/why-the-hell-didn%e2%80%99t-i-ever-think-of-this/