Mail server settings, iCal settings, etc.

Great apps for Release Preview: third-party Metro apps in Windows 8
In a sparse app store, Microsoft's featured picks are about as good as it gets.

Merrimack River in Newburyport, MA. Created with AutoStitch for iPhone.

Braun TP1 1959 Portable Transistor Radio and Phonograph (model TP 1) (MOMA Collection) Dieter Ram

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders--a lot of things we like--didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.


If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.


And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

[…]


So I tell her all this stuff, and I think, "Okay, we're going to have a conversation about authority or social construction or whatever." That wasn't her question. She heard this story and she shook her head and said, "Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."


So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in--that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it's a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it's the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.


And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that's finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

There we go, this will be handy.

Seriously, RIM? Again? You can't spin this kind of screwup forever.

"The structures that respond to music in the brain evolved earlier than the structures that respond to language," Levitin said.

We love the apocalypse as long as nobody acknowledges the truth: It's not a mythical event. We live on top of one.

A conservative, don't-regulate-us technologist concludes that US broadband policy has failed, calls for regulation:

Helsinki street art (Multicoloured Dreams) by Chia-Yi Hou, via Flickr

Home power (deep cycle) batteries are generally measured in "amp-hour" capacity. One amp-hour is equal to one amp of current drawn for one hour of time. Amp-hour capacity is generally given as the "20 hour rate" of the battery. Therefore, the number given as the amp-hour capacity for a deep cycle battery will be the number of amp-hours the battery can deliver over a 20 hour period at a constant draw. A 105 amp-hour battery can deliver 5.25 amps constantly over a 20 hour period before it's voltage drops below 10.5 volts, at which point the battery is discharged.

Austerity Survival Guide. Vote GOP, then follow these instructions carefully.

Want to field an @imarcllc team to the "Quidditch World Cup"!

panning one-ninth of the earth's circumference across three continents, the Roman Empire ruled a quarter of humanity through complex networks of political power, military domination and economic exchange. These extensive connections were sustained by premodern transportation and communication technologies that relied on energy generated by human and animal bodies, winds, and currents.
Conventional maps that represent this world as it appears from space signally fail to capture the severe environmental constraints that governed the flows of people, goods and information. Cost, rather than distance, is the principal determinant of connectivity.
For the first time, ORBIS allows us to express Roman communication costs in terms of both time and expense. By simulating movement along the principal routes of the Roman road network, the main navigable rivers, and hundreds of sea routes in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and coastal Atlantic, this interactive model reconstructs the duration and financial cost of travel in antiquity.
Taking account of seasonal variation and accommodating a wide range of modes and means of transport, ORBIS reveals the true shape of the Roman world and provides a unique resource for our understanding of premodern history.

Diet Coda still on sale this morning. If you own an iPad and maintain sites, you should get it while you can!

I have been mulling for years over how to do the nav­i­ga­tion for this site, such that it en­tices some peo­ple with­out turn­ing away oth­ers (for all val­ues there­of). I think I may have fig­ured it out.

We are often asked if a particular driver is suitable for using in a down-firing configuration. Below is a formula that takes into consideration the effects gravity will have on the "sag" of the cone structure of any woofer. You will need the Fs, Vas, Sd (surface area of the cone), and the Xmax to determine the relative long term usefulness of up or down-firing any woofer.

You can calculate the sag of a driver from:

Percentage of Sag = 24,849 / ( Xmax * Fs²)
where

- 24,849 is a constant value based on the relationship of acceleration due to gravity and Pi.
- Xmax is the maximum linear excursion of a loudspeaker voice coil while remaining within the magnetic flux field (mm).
- Fs is the free-air resonant frequency of the woofer (Hz).

The following is the same formula, including the relationship of acceleration and Pi in this case:

Percentage of Sag = 981,000 / (Xmax * (2 * Pi * Fs)²)
where

- 981,000 is acceleration due to gravity (mm/S²) * 100 (for the percentage).
- Xmax is the maximum linear excursion of a loudspeaker voice coil while remaining within the magnetic flux field (mm). - Fs is the free-air resonant frequency of the woofer (Hz)
- Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter, usually rounded to 3.14.

As a general rule of thumb, any time the sag exceeds 5% of the driver's Xmax, it's not recommended for a down-firing subwoofer application.

Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in a tiny expensive package
Disassembling Apple's diminutive inch-cube iPhone charger reveals a technologically advanced flyback switching power supply that goes beyond the typical charger. It simply takes AC input (anything between 100 and 240 volts) and produce 5 watts of smooth 5 volt power, but the circuit to do this is surprisingly complex and innovative.

Providing subwoofer design software programs for solving the required calculations for custom bandpass, sealed and vented box cabinet designs. Can be used for car, truck, sport utility vehicle (SUV), jeep automotive, guitar and home theater applications and projects. This site provides the instructions and "how to" information to successfully plan, design, construct, build and setup subwoofer enclosure systems using AJ Bandpass Designer, Sealed Designer and Vented Designer. Works with any type and size of driver (8, 10, 12, 15 inch). The Subwoofer Designer Series is intended for the hobbyist, audio / acoustic enthusiast and Do It Yourself (DIY) speaker builder.

subwoofer

subwoofer design tool

This calculator will tell you:
Whether the speaker is better suited for a sealed or ported enclosure
The 3dB down point of the speaker in either enclosure
The recommended volume for sealed and ported enclosures
The resonant frequency of both enclosures
The port length for ported enclosures
The reference efficiency in both % and decibels at one watt
If any of the fields return 'NAN' or 'infinity', you did not fill one of the fields required to make the calculations.

Thank you Apple & iPhone team for FaceTime.

On the origin of "Prometheus". (Disclaimer: I'm biased: he's family.)

Oh Jeff. There are not enough words to describe his magnificence. How about a photo.

Really interesting piece on HBO's business model, strengths and weaknesses;

Img2icns is an application to create icons from images or images from icons, keeping them organized for future use. Creating an icon is as simple as dropping one or more images into Img2icns and choosing an export format.

New water bottle label promises "BPA FREE Stainless Steel". Good to know it avoids that horrid plastic-steel.

SOON