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links for 2010-03-11

  • On Feb. 23, a select group of Washingtonians received an intriguing e-mail: "The orange arrow is pointing at you," the subject line read.

    It was an exclusive invitation to "an exclusive underground anti-restaurant," the e-mail explained. "Because the DNA of the magical dinner is unmapped, these events will evolve, month to month, season to season, place to place & plate to plate."

    Orange Arrow plans to obtain location and liquor permits for its ambitious suppers, which will host as many as 150 select "hungry, hedonistic gypsies" at venues that range from a museum to an alleyway. Hush, the brainchild of a former World Bank staffer, invites no more than 16 for an intimate evening of home-style Indian food and culinary storytelling. There are even traveling underground restaurants. On Feb. 20, 40 in-the-know hipsters surrounded a long table to eat garlicky shrimp (and learn to suck out the heads) at the area's first Wok + Wine event.

  • OnLive has announced that its cloud-based game streaming service will launch in the 48 contiguous US states on June 17, 2010. The service will initially be available to PC and Mac owners for a monthly service fee of $14.95. Each game purchase and rental will carry a charge on top of the base subscription.
  • Mark Zuckerberg has long signaled that the future of Facebook will be off Facebook.com. His social network will take a big step toward that future at a developers conference in April.

    That's when, according to a WSJ report, Facebook plans to launch a tool set for Web developers who want to make their off-Facebook Web sites look and work more like on-Facebook "pages."

    Facebook calls this toolset the "Open Graph API," and describes it this way:

    The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page – users will be able to become a Fan of the page, it will show up on that user’s profile and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans.

    The Open Graph API will allow any page on the Web to have all the features of a Facebook Page. Once implemented, you can include a number of Facebook Widgets which enable the transformation of any Web page so it functions similar to a Facebook Page.

  • Fashion chain Zara’s flagship store in west London’s Westfield shopping centre has a façade made from panels of HI-MACS material.

    Designer Zara Estudio and fabricators Gruppo Candido Hermida chose HI-MACS in a Toffee Brown hue, and combined it with a metal trim between the pieces. Using 81 panels of HI-MACS and 3 sheets of steel, the angles and 3-D shapes allowed them to create an intriguing effect.

  • Stihl needed an inventive business gift to promote its new line of leaf blowers and Euro RSCG Germany delivered. The agency conceived the Stihl Autumn Calendar 2010, the first of its kind to tear of its pages automatically. Fusing elements of nature, technology and brand awareness — the calendar symbolizes the effectiveness of leaf blowers each day of fall. The calendar spans from September 23- December 21.

links for 2010-03-10

links for 2010-03-09

  • Members of MIT's Bits and Atoms lab visited Afghanistan some time ago. While there, they showed locals how to turn pieces of board, wire, a plastic tub and some cans into reflectors for a wireless network. The result? Fab Fi.

    The project resulted in 25 simultaneous live nodes being up in the city of Jalalabad and residents being able to enjoy a stable connection all over the place. Locals are even expanding the network by adding more reflectors and routers. There are some difficulties in actually obtaining the routers though, but the MIT crew—now dubbed the Jalalabad Fab Lab—are helping resolve those by shipping routers over.

healthcare reform

I usually stay away from politics on this blog but I felt like I had something to say, so here we go!

In relation to Chris Dodd becoming the 37th senator to commit to supporting the public insurance option as part of hc reform if using reconcialiation. C’mon USA you are 13 votes shy of

According to the most recent figures of the OECD, the USA is first as healthcare expenditure as % of GDP, with 16%, followed by France at 11%. That 5% difference represent roughly 700 billions US$ in extra spending. That’s it. It’s roughly the 2009 economic stimulus bill, every year. And keep in mind two important facts: 1: the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median and 2: there’s between 15 and 29% (depending on the study) of the population that is still uninsured in the US. Medical expenditure was a significant contributing factor in 62% of personal bankruptcies in the United States

A Commonwealth fund study attributed this discrepancy (between the US and the rest of the world) to the lack of universal insurance, but also due to slow adoption of information technology and a lack of national policies to improve performance.

It’s time to pick up the phone and call your elected officials.

source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_reform_debate_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninsured_in_the_United_States
http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,2340,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html

links for 2010-03-08

links for 2010-03-07

  • Reminded me of teen prostitution in Japan…

    They loiter at the mall for hours, young teenage girls selling their bodies in return for designer jeans, Nokia cell phones, even a pair of socks.

  • I've already posted about MS tablet, here some more infos!

    We've been dying to know more about Microsoft's Courier tablet / e-book device ever since we first caught wind of it last September, and while our entreaties to Mr. Ballmer went unanswered, we just learned some very interesting information from an extremely trusted source. We're told Courier will function as a "digital journal," and it's designed to be seriously portable: it's under an inch thick, weighs a little over a pound, and isn't much bigger than a 5×7 photo when closed. That's a lot smaller than we expected — this new picture really puts it into perspective — and the internals apparently reflect that emphasis on mobility: rather than Windows 7, we're told the Courier is built on Tegra 2 and runs on the same OS as the Zune HD, Pink, and Windows Mobile 7 Series, which we're taking to mean Windows CE 6.

links for 2010-03-06

  • (tags: culture food)
  • Japadog kiosk owner Noriki Tamura is so encouraged by those incredibly long lineups in downtown Vancouver for his enormously popular Japanese sidewalk creations that he plans to set up shop in New York.

    "I'm planning for the end of the year," Tamura told The Province last night. "We will expand to Los Angeles too. But we have to choose [which city first]."

  • After dominating the Chinese market to the tune of $1 Billion in sales this year, which also happens to be their 20th Anniversary, Li-Ning has now entered the American market with the opening of their very first US retail location in Portland’s Pearl District. The brand pulled out all the stops earlier tonight, as Portland Mayor Sam Adams was even on hand for the official ribbon cutting, joining Baron Davis and Li-Ning General Manager Jay Li for the ceremonial grand opening. “Portland is the epicenter of athletic footwear,” said Li. “It is a great testing ground for us to introduce the brand and ease into our international presence.”
  • Yotel, which has been an innovator in establishing micro hotel facilities called “pod” hotels at major airports of the world, has now ventured into opening hotels in cities too. Their first hotel is scheduled to open in 2011 in New York’s Times Square.

    The hotel, designed by the Rockwell group, will have all luxury amenities such as business lounges, a bar and restaurant. The hotel will have a capacity of 669 rooms and each room will be twice the size of a capsule in a Yotel’s pod airport hotel. The rooms will be furnished with motorised beds and mood lighting.

  • After Twitter's launch in 2006, it took years to collect its first one billion tweets. It finally crossed the billion benchmark in November, 2008. Just one year later, Twitter hit five billion messages. And today – only four months later – that number has doubled, according to Twitter counter GigaTweet. Thursday night at about 7:50 p.m. Eastern time, the site hit 10 billion tweets.
  • PSFK friend, London conference speaker and entrepreneurial designer Kate Moross was asked recently to apply her visual aesthetic to a limited run of their Creme De Corps moisturizing cream.
  • Rapportive is a browser plugin that replaces the ads that appear in Gmail messages with contextual information about the sender. In addition to provide social context for more inspired conversations, the service features a section where users can create personal reminder notes about their contacts. With plans to integrate with popular CRM, helpdesk, and email marketing services, Rapportive’s upcoming features are modeled as tools for business users and a platform for managing relationships with clients and customers directly within Gmail.
  • 'If we planted one of those in every hole, it would be like a forest in the road'

    An ongoing series of public installations highlighting the problem of surface imperfections on Britain's roads.

  • The Kobe Shimbun recently reported on a “boom” happening among drinkers in their twenties and thirties: online nomikai.

    As we know, Japanese nomikai often have a lot of ritual and social tension, especially when it’s with colleagues: where you sit is important to your rank in the office, and of course you have to be nice to your boss, pour his drink, and generally show lots of 遠慮 (enryo or “consideration”).

    Suntory ran a campaign last year promoting its 3% low alcohol Chu-Hi Horoyoi (”tipsy”) as a drink for the young consumers to enjoy just by him or herself. It also started a community site to encourage people to go online and interact with each other. Horoyoi.com, did not, though, use a web cam, but instead provided you with a drinking avatar and customizable profile.

    Nomikai-related tweeting has already been taking off too, it seems. Check out the tag #twinomi for what’s happening now.

links for 2010-03-05

links for 2010-03-03

links for 2010-03-02

  • This is a movie of a super-cool "painting" hanging in the basement of the British Library, in London. The author has done many such paintings, but this is the best (and all the others are very similar). It's called "Paradoxymoron", by Patrick Hughes
  • Platos vs. Platos is a culinary-musical society in Barcelona organized by Soon in Tokyo where people come together to enjoy good music and food. The group offers a guided themed tour with renowned chefs and disc jockeys who bring together complimentary cuisine and musical offerings. The experience starts as a live event, and then goes online, where mixtapes of the djs sessions, playlists, menus, guest chefs recipes, photos and videos are all listed. Past events have included: Italo Disco vs La Mamma, Black Music vs Black Food and Rock vs Roll.