I Heart Social Experiments

Why do social experiments make me laugh so hard? Like Candid Camera, where you watch people think they've entered the twilight zone. Or the guy who stuck bubble stickers on posters around NYC and then returned to see who wrote messages in them.

The Voyer Box is the newest discovery to make me smile. Watch the startled looks as people get their picture taken while they walk by. I thought at first the machine cat-called pedestrians, but this is slightly kinder... maybe.

Of course, intrusive technology is BAD BAD BAD, as anyone concerned about ubiquitous computing will tell you. But SO funny.

Dream a Little Dream

Dreams: I wanna be an astronaut. I wanna sing in a rock band. I wanna ... um, write dirty romance novels. Sometimes they actually come true. You land on the moon, you open for Jewel, you ... um, write a dirty romance novel.

Well, today a little dream of mine came true. This is one of those dreams that you almost forget you have, like not having singleton socks in the laundry or rediscovering some forgotten perfect outfit. And then it happens one day — the dream comes true — and, partially because you've forgotten to yearn for it, you're insanely excited.

That's me right now. Insanely exited. Over something really small, but something I've quietly wanted since I was planning out my dream mansion in fifth grade. Today I discovered... [building suspense] ... a speaker system that can play the Same Song Throughout Your Home. Now I can walk from room to room and never lose the melody. Woohoo! But get this: It can also play a Different Song in Each Room in the House. Woohoo again!

The main reason I'm excited is that it was gushingly reviewed on this blog I read that endorses clever technical products. And although the system costs more than $1000, I'm excited for another reason: I don't need it yet. I barely have three rooms to my name — no house. By the time I need it, I expect the technology will be smaller, cheaper and more accessible.

Today's accomplishments? One lifelong dream fulfilled. Whew! I'm exhausted.

find a photo with geography

Using location tags found on Flickr images, Yahoo! has created a map that shows you pictures connected with the locations where they were taken. There are still several rough spots since it's dependent on accurate tagging and the areas of the country presented on the map seem to be pre-selected.

I've heard rumors of a GPS-based camera that can map your own pictures to an interface like this one. You'll never forget again exactly where you took something. Now that is cool, especially as you could compare someone else's picture taken in the exact same spot. Oooh!

Changing the way we look at history

Technophiles and history buffs alike will appreciate this one: a tag cloud showing the words most commonly used in presidential state of the union addresses since John Adams. The bigger the word, the more times it was repeated.

Can you forgive someone 7 times 7?

I'm going to try (emphasis on try) to renew my blogging efforts, insofar as I'll post interesting websites I've come across. More to come!