I had lunch at the Googleplex yesterday and as a result got to add several geeky license plates to my photo collection. I wasn’t even trying hard to look for these, I was just glancing at the plates I passed walking to and from my car.

In unrelated geekiness, if you prefer to unleash your inner geek with the help of a bit more text then I recommend the quotes on this page. A couple of my favorites:

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses. (Bjarne Stroustrup)

[The BLINK tag in HTML] was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn’t have written it! (Mark Andreessen)

If none of that made sense then you could go watch some Jay Leno Headlines where it is by design that many of the featured items don’t make sense.

Taken: November 19, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I did some shopping for kids yesterday and noticed this abandoned mini shopping cart in one of the stores. I figured it summed up my experience well.

My brother sent me a link to a site about regifting stories some of which are pretty amusing. On the side is a poll asking people about their reasons for regifting. I have considered regifting in the past, but in the end I don’t know if I’ve ever done it. It mostly comes up in cases when I really don’t like something I’ve been given. But then I ask myself: if I really don’t like it then would I want to inflict it on a friend? Plus there’s the potential embarrassment of being thought of as someone who might’ve actually found the item valuable. Hmm…

Taken: November 18, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I have never seen chestnuts this huge. They are scattered around campus and initially I didn’t even know what they were. In fact, picking them up made me realize that this is probably what this squirrel was holding the other day.

• WTF were the designers thinking?
  very funny, be sure to click through
  (tags: funny)
• Secret Santa reveals his identity
  (tags: charity giving article)
• Secret Santa USA
  (tags: giving)

• Pricenoia
  comparing book prices across various international Amazon sites
  (tags: books prices comparison)
• Diary of a Sex Slave
  incredibly disturbing story about sex-trafficking rings in California
  (tags: gender legal politics)
• Book about Nazi horror takes France by storm
  (tags: books)
• In Online Auctions, Misspelling in Ads Often Spells Cash
  (tags: frbk ebay spelling article)
• Get flight status information on your mobile
  (tags: tools mobile)
• Easy Photo Wall
  (tags: howto photos diy)
• Curbly
  Do-it-yourself (diy) design community
  (tags: diy howto)

Taken: November 17, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Northwestern played Stanford in basketball yesterday. These two schools don’t play each other much so it was a special treat to have the ‘Cats in town. Although NU lost, they played a good game. It was one of the most fun ones I’ve seen them play actually. I honestly believe if it hadn’t been for the home court advantage, the outcome would’ve been different. But the way Stanford’s stadium is set up the students stand along half the court and are quite a presence. Weird element of the game: the Stanford redwood dancing mascot (?). What’s up with that?

And no, I don’t plan on making basketball court photos a regular on Project 365.

Taken: November 16, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

One of my favorite areas at the Center is the hot beverage counter where I can choose from among over a dozen teas. See the larger context herep.

Does anyone around here play Fantasy Congress? I’d heard about it before, but now that I was invited to join a league, I started looking into it in more depth.

As in other fantasy sports, you – the Citizen – draft a team of real-life legislators from the U.S. Congress and score points for your team’s successes.

However, as one commentator aptly notes: “[I]t’s lifelike: you win by getting bills passed, not by passing good bills.”

If you only care about winning the game, sure, you can compile a team of senators and represenatives who have an active record. But do you really want to be sitting around hoping that some real-life bill that makes your stomach turn is successful just so you can score some points in FC?

I can see the appeal to some extent, but overall I am not convinced the system is refined enough at this point to get me sufficiently enthusiastic. And while my first reaction was that at least it has educational value by teaching people about the legislative process, now I’m thinking that since it is most likely to appeal to folks who already know much about politics, it’s not clear that it will really spread the word far and wide about how the system works.

That said, I don’t have much experience with fantasy sports so I may be missing some important factors. Moreover, I do think the idea is interesting and certainly impressive that some college students thought it up and managed to execute itp. And to be fair, it sounds like its creators – four undergraduate students at Claremont McKenna – are working on refining the system.

• Managing Change: Is the Penny Worth Keeping?
  a penny costs more than a penny to make, a nickel costs about 7c to make
  (tags: article economics)
• Teen Online Safety : 2 SMRT 4U
  (tags: security private teens users education skill frbk)

Taken: November 15, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Wednesday, I gave my seminar presentation to fellow Fellows. I took this photo an hour after the Q&A had ended. You can see on the clock on the right that it was 10pm.

The title of my presentation was The World is Bumpy: Information Technology and Social Inequality. It was interesting to prepare for this talk as I took several steps back from where I usually start my presentations given that this was a more varied crowd. The questions and comments at the end were great, it’s wonderful to get feedback from a smart diverse group of scholars. Lots for me to think about.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken a photo of the people sitting in the seminar room. Bummer.

Taken: November 14, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

On Tuesday, the Berkeley-Stanford inequality group met for dinner and a talk at the Stanford Faculty Club.

• Albaniabridge
  a project to help raise money for a bridge in Albania with the goal of uniting two parts of a village that get separated each year for a period of time
  (tags: charity)
• Using the Internet Strategically (The Association for Progressive Communications)
  By supporting and defending civil society access to information and communication tools and skills, APC has been an integral partner in global efforts for social, economic and ecological justice.
  (tags: internet development frbk)
• Click to call in Google Maps
  curious that it’s not possible to enter a Google Account and take the call that way, but it’s still a neat feature (assuming you don’t mind them having your cell phone number)
  (tags: googlemaps phones)
• Yahoo Time Capsule Scavenger Hunt
  Ten teams descended on Palo Alto to compete in a video/photo scavenger hunt. The competition was fierce and the creativity darn near brilliant.
  (tags: video yahoo tcc06)
• Homeslyce
  coordinate among friends to split the cost of a gift
  (tags: tools shopping social)

Taken: November 13, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

Squirrel outside my office at CASBS. It’s the third in a series of three I took one after the other. In the first one, two squirrels are facing each other. In the next one, the squirrel with the food (?) turns toward me. The third one is that same squirrel in action.

I have not been a big fan of squirrels ever since one chewed its way through the screens into my room at the Old GC in grad school.

Is this is a new Google Maps feature? I noticed the Google logo with Africa as the “g” on Google Maps today. I wonder if this is a way of letting people know that Google Maps now covers that continent. Neat.

• Band promotes itself solely online and rockets to #1 on UK charts
  (tags: frbk music internet)
• ETS ICT Literacy Assessment
  (tags: literacy digital-divide students users)
• Are College Students Techno Idiots?
  Inside Higher Ed article on new ETS test regarding students’ ICT skills
  (tags: education technology students article users skill)
• SanDisk Cruzer Titanium (1GB or 2GB)
  (tags: storage backup products-services)
• Room painted like a cartoon
  (tags: design funny)
• Larry King Admits He’s Never Used The Internet: “Do You Punch Little Buttons and Things?”
  (tags: politics internet video)

Taken: November 12, 2006 (What is Project 365?)

I went for a walk on Sunday around campus with my walking buddy and took some photos of the Hoover Tower, the Rodin Sculpture garden and other assorted sights.

• Phishing Schemes Scar Victims (WaPo)
  (tags: phishing frbk)
• Woman falls for Nigerian scam, steals $2.1m from law firm
  (tags: scam frbk)
• The Perfect Mark
  People falling for Nigerian scams
  (tags: frbk scam)
• Overselling the Web: Development and the Internet
  by Chalres Kenny
  (tags: books ToRead)
• Information Technologies and International Development
  all articles available for free with support from Microsoft [thanks
  (tags: internet international journal free)

I’m collecting examples of interesting ways in which people use various online services for their benefit. Of course, I can come up with lots of hypotheticals and examples from my own life, but it’s helpful to have concrete cases from the world at large.

Here, for example, is an interesting case of IT being put to use for the potential benefit of folks in a realm having little to do with IT. It’s about the use of Google Earth to back up claims about the value of some land that the government in India wants to acquire from farmers for limited compensation. The piece doesn’t say whether the use of these images ultimately led to a different outcome, but the potential is there.

Another relevant example is how people exploit spelling errors on ebay listings to get good deals. Because most people searching for those items don’t find them, there is much less of a bidding war and the final price is lower than would be otherwise. There are now even Web sites that help you exploit this, for example, eBooBoos does the guessing on your behalf. The results of a search on “turtle” yield items such as a turle neck sweater or a trutle box. (One wonders why ebay hasn’t worked on this issue in-house, but that’s another matter.)

I am looking for other examples concerning the beneficial uses of IT by average folks in particular, although interesting uses by super techies are welcomed as well. I’m not so much interested in (at this time) cases of xyz Web site helping to deal with other realms of IT uses (e.g. a handy tool for following blog posts), but uses that have a relatively direct impact on other realms of life as well. If you can share pointers to articles like the one above regarding the farmers in India that would be great. I also welcome stories from personal experiences. This is all related to some talks and papers I’m working on. Thanks!

• For Georgetown ‘Apostles,’ A Rowhouse Rebellion (WaPo)
  “Nine Georgetown University students who live in a $2.4 million house owned by one of their parents have gotten around local zoning limits on the number of unrelated residents who can live in a house by registering as a religious organization”
• Is America too Racist for Barack? Too Sexist for Hillary? (WaPo)
  (tags: article politics)
• LabPixies
  widgets
  (tags: widgets)
• The voice of many movie trailers
  (tags: video audio)
• Scholarpedia
  “the free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world” [thanks]
  (tags: reference encyclopedia wiki wikipedia)