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5 Intriguing Things: Tuesday, 12/11
1. A robot telemarketer who denies she is a robot. "Over the course of the next hour, several TIME reporters called her back, working to uncover the mystery of her bona fides. Her name, she said, was...
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The NSA Raven, a Poem
Alice Popkorn/FlickrOnce upon a database query, while I pondered weak security, And many avenues of access via backdoor, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a wiretapping, As of some...
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Is 'Delightful' the New 'Cool'?
This is one of the first images that appears when you do a Shutterstock search for "delightful." (Shutterstock/Olesia Bilkei)In July 2012, when Marissa Mayer became the new CEO of Yahoo, she told The...
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A Rare Glimpse of the Moon Orbiting the Earth From Afar
At first you can't even see it. It's too dark, too small. And then, helpfully, an arrow appears: "Moon". That's it. The biggest object in the night sky as it appears from Earth. The glowing orb that...
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Where Have All the Cats Gone? YouTube Is Ruled by Professionals Now
Take a look at the top Youtube videos for 2013. 1. Ylvis - The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?) by tvnorge 2. Harlem Shake (original army edition) by kennethaakonsen 3. How Animals Eat Their Food |...
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Six Degrees of Seven Barefoot Canadian Kids
Seven siblings sit on a wooden fence in L'Anse Saint Jean, Saguenay River, Quebec, Canada. 1938. (Howell Walker/National Geographic)One sunny day in 1938, seven siblings, tanned and barefoot, sat upon...
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'50 Social Innovations That Changed the World'
In my article accompanying our "50 Greatest Inventions [since the wheel]" project last month, I said that since such a list was inevitably arbitrary, its real value would be the discussion it provoked...
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2013: The Year 'the Stream' Crested
Jumping into the The Stream (Reuters).The Stream has been the organizing metaphor for the web for the past several years. In May 2009, a high-ranking editor of TechCrunch identified and summarized this...
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No Old Maps Actually Say 'Here Be Dragons'
The Hunt-Lenox Globe (NYPL)Here be dragons. The words supposedly contain every difference between ancient maps and our own. Where old maps were illustrated and incomplete, ours are accurate and...
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5 Intriguing Things: Thursday, 12/12
1. Autonomous tractors are being deployed on our nation's farms. "The 'go to here' feature has proven to be very beneficial for the farmers. Users can instruct the tractor to go to a spot in the field...
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Facebook Is the News, in 2 Charts
It’s all right, you can smile, Mark. (Reuters)It’s an odd, busy time for social networks. The two giants—Facebook and Twitter—are fighting over users feature-by-feature. Today, for instance,...
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Behold, Facetwitterest: The Standardized Future of Social
Integrated TechnologyMuch of the content of the World Wide Web, from approximately 1990 to the early 2000s, was communications in and among small groups of people. It was discussion boards and blog...
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Walt Whitman Is Great at Twitter
Ol' Walt himself (Wikimedia Commons)It began like this: I CELEBRATE myself, — Walt Whitman (@TweetsOfGrass) December 5, 2013 And what I assume you shall assume, — Walt Whitman (@TweetsOfGrass) December...
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The Grinch That Stole the Coal Industry's Christmas
Coal-industry woes mount. (AP)Coal industry executives can only wish Santa will leave them a lump of the black stuff in their stockings this Christmas. But as 2013 draws to a close, those stockings are...
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Welcome to the Internet of Thingies: 61.5% of Web Traffic Is Not Human
It happened last year for the first time: bot traffic eclipsed human traffic, according to the bot-trackers at Incapsula. This year, Incapsula says 61.5 percent of traffic on the web is non-human....
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Public Libraries Are Better Than Congress, Baseball, and Apple Pie, Say...
studioVin/Svetlana FooteEvery so often, a grave and concerned person will ask (as, in fact, the New York Times asked last year): “Do We Still Need Libraries?” Hasn’t the Internet kind of, you know,...
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6% of Americans Think Bitcoin Is an Xbox Game
A new poll from Bloomberg has found that six percent of Americans think Bitcoin is an Xbox game, and another six percent believe it to be a new iPhone app. Nearly half, 46 percent, were honest and said...
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The Most Instagrammed Place in the World Is a Mall in Bangkok
The year-in-review posts are coming fast and furious from the world's leading technology companies. Instagram is the latest to post their statistics. And it has the best social network factlet of the...
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5 Intriguing Things: Friday, 12/13
Emojis by Kyle M.F. Williams1. The Emoji Art and Design Show, featuring 5IT favorites Cara Rose DeFabio and Fred Benenson, opened in New York at Eyebeam last night. "...a wide range of mediums from...
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A Win for Consumers on Cellphone Unlocking
ReutersGood news on the year-long cell phone unlocking battle. The Federal Communication Commission just came to an agreement with U.S. wireless carriers that will make it easier for consumers to...
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