A World of Tweets

Geography mashup using HTML5, the Twitter API and Yahoo Places. Be sure to scroll down the page for lots of interesting stats.

Twiddle the knobs yourself at:

• a world of tweets

The Lost Principles of Design

Nice reminder about design fundamentals such as balance, contrast and proportion.

• The Lost Principles of Design | Fuel Your Creativity

What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York

New York's 311 line handles an average of 50,000 calls a day. This article discusses what those calls tell us about the Big Apple, people who live there, and maple syrup.

Gripes by zip code:

Read more at Wired.com. Hat tip, Charlie:

• What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York | Magazine | Wired.com

Google and the Digital Disruption

Google's CEO and Director of Ideas discuss their essay "The Digital Disruption", the role of connectivity and information technologies in foreign affairs, and the inherent issues of promoting these kinds of technologies in countries like China and Iran.

Summary from the original essay:

Increased connectivity allows for the spread of liberal, open values but also poses a number of dangers. To foster the free flow of information and challenge authoritarian regimes, democratic states will have to learn to create alliances with people and companies at the forefront of the information revolution.



About the authors:

ERIC SCHMIDT is Chair and CEO of Google. He is a Member of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology and Chair of the New America Foundation. JARED COHEN is Director of Google Ideas. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Children of Jihad and One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide.

Read more:

• The Digital Disruption (essay)

Unsubscribing, and the Power of Guilt

I tried out Groupon a while back, while I was checking out different services for local online coupons. Finding myself just deleting the daily emails, I decided to just unsubscribe to help keep my inbox empty.

When I unsubscribed, I stumbled upon a clever idea for getting folks to resubscribe:

 

Now, I'm not normally a cruel person, but could *you* resist punishing Derrick? 

I didn't think so.

His coworker then proceeds to berate and attack him:

Poor Derrick, lying on the floor, suffering. Don't you feel badly for punishing him? Just a little? 

Wouldn't you feel better if you... resubscribed? 

Yeah, I didn't either, but still very creative.

If you feel Derrick still hasn't suffered enough, you can give him his just desserts here:

• http://www.groupon.com/washington-dc/unsubscribed