• Flowplayer: jQuery Tools – “This library contains six of the most useful JavaScript tools available for today’s website. The beauty of this library is that all of these tools can be used together, extended, configured and styled. In the end, you can have hundreds of different widgets and new personal ways of using the library.“
• Google: Google Apps Script – “Google Web Scripts gives users a new level of control over Google products. Now you can access and control Google Spreadsheets and other products via JavaScript scripts you can write yourself and share with others. Unlike browser-based JavaScript, the scripts you write run directly on Google servers in order to provide direct access to the products they control.“
• Second Life Blog: Prototyping Real World Museum Exhibits in Second Life at The Tech – “As you can probably imagine, museums are challenged to develop very complex installations that not only have to be informative but interactive as well. This especially applies to science and technology museums that rely less on unique artifacts and more on interactivity. So the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded this idea in 2007 (that’s Gordon Moore as in Moore’s Law). Basically they asked, what if you could use Second Life to prototype exhibits with simultaneous input from experts and casual visitors as well?“
• The Tech Virtual: Rapid Prototyping an Entire Museum Gallery – “The completed room is nearly indistinguishable in photographs from the real room without close inspection. “

• macetech.com: Live Twitter Table using New Bluetooth Shield – “By correctly formatting your tweet and including the #ledtable hashtag, you can help create an ever-changing work of art in our living room.“
• Make: Open Structures: Help Create an Open-Source Building System – “Open Structures is a set of standards allowing product designers and architects to create hackable items — for instance, a sink or a bicycle — which could be recombined into new inventions. The system’s starting point is a 4x4cm grid that all components must accommodate.“
• Open Structures – “The OS (OpenStructures) project explores the possibility of a modular construction model where everyone designs for everyone on the basis of one shared geometrical grid. It initiates a kind of collaborative Meccano to which everybody can contribute parts, components and structures.“
• GigaOm: How Digg Found a Way to Make Money – “Digg Ads as a whole see about a 1 percent click-through rate, but what’s interesting is the spread between more successful ads and less successful ones. Campaigns that mimic the style of Digg — using a numbered list, for example, or pointing to articles rather than product information — were much more effective, with up to 4 percent CTRs compared to 0.3 or 0.4 for the worst-performing Digg Ads. “

• The Guardian: Ten Rules for Writing Fiction – “Keep your exclamation points ­under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.“
• MonoDevelop – “MonoDevelop is an IDE primarily designed for C# and other .NET languages. MonoDevelop enables developers to quickly write desktop and ASP.NET Web applications on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.“
• Igor Ostrovsky: What Really Happens When Your Navigate to a URL – “As a software developer, you certainly have a high-level picture of how web apps work and what kinds of technologies are involved: the browser, HTTP, HTML, web server, request handlers, and so on. In this article, we will take a deeper look at the sequence of events that take place when you visit a URL.” – Pay attention, this will be on the test.
• Visible Banking: AllState Runs a Virtual Career Fair Today + Financial Institutions Leverage Virtual Worlds & Online Games to Innovate in Recruitment – “Even in the current context, especially in the current context, it is critical for financial institutions to be seen as innovative to attract the best talent out there. But HR Teams are challenged to achieve their ambitious targets with smaller budget. It is time to be smarter, and embrace social media to initiate conversations, increase your reach, change brand perception, and eventually convince your future leaders to join your organization.“
• Evil Mad Science: Peggy 2LE Light Emitting Pegboard Kit – “Peggy LE 2 provides a quick, easy, powerful and efficient way to drive a lot of LEDs– up to 625– in a matrix designed for 5 mm LEDs. You can make an LED sign for your window, a geeky valentine for your sweetie, one bad-ass birthday card, freak the holy bejesus out of Boston, or instigate the next generation of low-pixel-count video games.“
• NASA Image Gallery: Apollo 4 On the Pad – Direct link to high resolution photo.
• NASA Image Gallery: Apollo 12 On the Pad – Direct link to a really nice high resolution photo.
• Second Life Blogs: Prototyping Environment in SL for Dow Chemical: Three Questions with Robert Emory from Scott & Miller Group – “Dow Chemical purchased a large sponsorship at one of their most important trade shows, the 2009 National Plastics Exposition in Chicago. Their sponsorship included an enormous exhibit space—a 36,000 square-foot ballroom and Scott & Miller, as their marketing agency of record, were asked to design the space. Now, 36,000 square feet is a very large space that needed to be thoughtfully planned, from an experience design perspective. So, the Scott & Miller team decided to build a prototype of several concepts in Second Life and walk the client through to evaluate the layout and design.“
• PBS: NOVA: Ghosts of Macchu Picchu – “There were probably three or four things that the Incas did simultaneously. One, they worked very hard in diplomacy, negotiating relationships with neighbors or with people who were targets for incorporation into their expanding territory, and they tried to work out amicable relationships through gift exchanges, marital exchanges, or political alliances. Failing that, they would threaten those people with military conquest, and that having failed, they would actually undertake military conquest. So there was a combination of diplomacy and inducement, coercion, and militarism all wrapped up into one strategic package.“

I am in Tokyo to speak at the Developers Summit 2010, JAWS (Japanese AWS User Group) and to meet with and potential System Integration partners.

Yesterday was Saturday and the weather was great, so I rode the Ginza line of the Tokyo Metro to Kappabashi to pick up some things for my family. Also known as Kitchen Town, Kappabashi consist of about 8 blocks of stores selling kitchen and restaurant supplies of every possible size, shape, and color. There are stores with a wide variety of goods (breadth) and others with a wide variety of one thing (depth). Stores that sell nothing but display cases, knives, signs, packaging, plastic food, and so forth. The entrance to Kappabashi is marked by the giant chef, shown in the picture at right.

Anyway, I picked up the things that my wife had asked for, and got back on the subway to return. I was listening to Sensored, Cory Doctorow‘s newest podcast. In the introduction, Cory says that his daughter had recently turned two and that they celebrated with ice cream at London’s Fortnum and Mason.

Five or six minutes later, a woman boarded the train and sat down across from me. To my astonishment, she was carrying a bag labeled Fortnum and Mason! I was so surprised that I actually rewound the podcast to make sure that this was the name that Cory had mentioned. I had never heard of this shop before yesterday and the name was unfamiliar to me. This must be a billion to one coincidence.

Now that’s a case of synchronicity! This event also gave me a great idea for a sci-fi story. I need to think it through a bit more, but I may soon realize my dream of writing some fiction.

I will be heading to London next month for some talks and meetings. If I run into Cory, that would take the oddness to a whole new level!

• Lifehacker: Build Your Own Pizza Oven – “Suppose you were inspired by the cheap DIY home pizza oven—but weren’t so sure your home insurance would cover oven modifications. It’s time to build a safer, more eye-pleasing oven, and we’ve got a thorough guide.“
• Forno Bravo: Modular Pizza Oven Kits for the House and Garden – “Forno Bravo provides residential modular pizza oven kits constructed from both refractory material and brick. Each Forno Bravo oven kit features a circular dome, enclosed refractory cooking floor, vent, stainless steel chimney, door high temperature mortar, and complete dome and floor insulation. Everything you need to assemble a pizza oven at your house—you provide the stand and enclosure.“
• The Kitchen: Tsukiji Fish Market – “The Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo is the world’s largest wholesale fish market. Strategically located near the mouth of the Sumida River, it is convenient for fishermen who sail up from Tokyo Bay to offload the day’s catch.“