| AdFlip.com Billing itself as the "largest archive of classic print ads," Adflip hits the online trifecta: clean design, fun attitude, and great content. Several of these old magazine ads are are truly awe-inspiring: plaid car seat covers, nylon shirts with racing stripes, pea green shag carpeting. Combine subject areas with time periods to search through your own impossible categories (i.e.. home electronics in the Forties, music in the Eighties, education in the Nineties). In ten years folks will be giggling at our advertisements, but until then we can laugh at the past. |
| Downside, i-Resign.com In light of the recent discovery of gravity on Wall Street, we thought these two sites made a nice pair. Downside, "the investor's reality check," was chosen mainly on the strength of it's opening graphic, which is equally disturbing and hilarious. You'll also find an array of downward curving charts, discussions of Danish tulip crazes, and obituaries masking as business reports. The highlight of I-Resign.com, "the resignation portal," is an archive of notable resignation letters organized under categories like The Gloat, The Stab in the Back, The Lover (!), and The Rat Race. The Hall of World Class Quitters features such luminaries as Boris Yeltsin, David Duchovny, and Richard Nixon. |
| For the Love of LEDs In the words of site proprietor and LED enthusiast Craig Johnson, "LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are those little colored lights you see in electronic equipment, household appliances, toys, on signs, and many other places...An LED is basically a really fancy diode. Diodes only let current (electricity) to flow in one direction and not the other. LEDs are diodes too, but they have the unique 'side effect' of producing light while electricity is flowing through them." And if it's LEDs you want, it's LEDs you'll get: intricate descriptions of various types, detailed performance tests, lengthy discussions of incandescent vs. LED flashlights, and more. Craig Johnson owns the LED space. |
| How Much Information? A team of researchers at U.C. Berkeley's School of Information Management has published a study that attempts to measure how much information is produced annually worldwide. The analysts examined a variety of media including print, film, optical, broadcast, and Net, and summarized their findings at different levels of detail. We went for the heavy overload version: "The world's total yearly production of ... content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage. This is the equivalent of 250 megabytes... for each man, woman, and child on earth." Anyone remember when PCs had less than 1MB of storage? |
| Sister Helen Prejean's Report from the Front Sister Helen of "Dead Man Walking" fame has her own web page, and it's a personal effort: bimonthly journal entries, a short biography of Sister Helen, lots of links regarding the death penalty, and an email contact. Her latest journal entry covers the recent world premiere of the "Dead Man Walking" opera in San Francisco. Anyone familiar with her book or the film will find this elucidating if not moving, and anyone with an interest in the death penalty issue will discover a wealth of resources. |
| SnakeRobots.com "What questions does a viper ask,/With silent slithers through the grass?" writes Dr. Gavin Miller. Scientist and artist, Miller's interest in snake locomotion dates back to the late 1980s. This site documents his groundbreaking work on robotic snakes and points to related research conducted by NASA and elsewhere. You'll be amazed at the circling and sidewinding prototypes Miller has created over the years, especially the robotic snake that wriggled down the aisle as ring-bearer at his own wedding. |
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