Author: coutinho

By Drea, Business Pundit – August 23, 2010 at 06:46AM

Image: Bored Bob

By Lambert V., The Awesomer – March 21, 2013 at 07:15PM

Heartwarming anecdotes about Fred Rogers, a man who was a saint both on and off the air. Seriously. He wanted to keep his weight at 143lbs. because, you know, those numbers stand for I love you.

• Hat Tip
• Link

By Scott Merrill, TechCrunch – November 09, 2009 at 03:00PM

Don’t forget: John and I will be at the Surly Girl Saloon tonight around 6:30 PM. Look at the happy smiles on those faces! That could be you, this time! Feel free to tell us about the cool world-changing projects on which you’re working. We love to meet people working on amazing stuff.

By By Spencer Hunt, Dispatch Latest Headlines – September 08, 2010 at 03:26PM

By Mike Masnick, Techdirt. – September 08, 2010 at 10:12AM

Slashdot points us to this wonderful blog post on the Got Medieval blog about how monks and scribes in the middle ages “copy protected” their books with “book curses” inscribed within the book.

I almost wonder if those were more effective than today’s DRM attempts.

The blog has a nice image of one such curse, but here are a couple that I find amusing:

Should anyone by craft of any device whatever abstract this book from this place may his soul suffer, in retribution for what he has done, and may his name be erased from the book of the living and not recorded among the Blessed.

–attributed to a 16th-century French missal belonging to a man named Robert

Thys boke is one
And Godes kors ys anoder;
They take the ton,
God gefe them the toder.

[This book is one (thing),
And God’s curse is another;
They that take the one,
God gives them the other.]

–found in various Middle English books.

Perhaps the most clever one though, is described as follows:

But far and away my favorite curse is found in a collection of English court transcripts made by William Easingwold around 1491. It takes the form of a clever Latin code. If you read the top two lines together it says “May he who wrote this book procure the joys of life supernal”, but the bottom two together produce “May he who steals this book endure the pangs of death infernal” (Drogin’s translation). I don’t have an image of the manuscript, but this is a close approximation:

All of this reminds me of an even older story of books and attempts to stop copying, which we wrote about last year, concerning Saint Columba — also known as Colmcille or Colum Cille — who in the 6th century, decided to copy some religious books in an attempt to “share” the faith with others. He did so with a Latin translation of the Bible and it created quite the mess, with a debate over the legality of copying a book, and whether or not it counted as “property.” You see, these arguments aren’t particularly new…

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By Guest Contributor, Digital Photography School – September 07, 2010 at 07:45PM

A Guest Post by Travis Hill from The Perfect Pose

In recent years photojournalism has been all the rage. Just capture the day or moment as it happens. Honestly that is wonderful style of photography that many people enjoy. The problem is, everyone’s doing it. With so many new photographers in the market today, it’s imperial that we set ourselves apart from the crowd. With that being said lets ask ourselves honestly. How many times have our wedding clients not wanted any formal photographs? How many times have our portrait clients asked; “What should I do”? In these situations we cannot simply rely on photojournalism. We must be able to instruct our clients how to stand, how to hold their shoulders back, we as professional photographers need to tell our clients how to look their best. It’s time for us to take control and make the magic happen.

Know your client: Most people don’t think of this when they think of posing. This is the first step in creating a pose. We need to understand our client’s personality; we need to capture who they are. Establishing a relationship with our clients will not only help us understand what it is they want, it will help build trust. Trust is crucial when it comes to photographing clients. I can’t tell you how many times I have wanted to do something funky, and then get a strange look from the client. Then I just say “Trust The Photographer”. Because I have already established a relationship with the client, they are more willing to “Trust Me”.

Here are some ideas for posing engagement sessions

When you’re posing a couple for an engagement session, remember they’re in love. They want cool artistic images, but they also want some nice romantic images that show their love for one another.

In this image I had my clients lie on the ground and wrap up tight. Of course they didn’t mind! Let you clients have fun with the pose. Remember just because we are posing people, it doesn’t mean they have stiff and boring. Always be willing to go above and beyond the norm.

From this pose we can change our angle and have the couple move around slightly to easily create a few more images. Which is always great, because changing the pose just a little can completely change the image. Tell your clients how good they look. This is going to automatically make them look at you, and then almost always they will look back at each other and smile.

Now just have your clients sit up for the final image in this series. (He actually grabbed his fiancé and rolled her over top of him. That’s why they are laughing, and she is on the other side of him.) Let you clients have fun, and embrace what they do. Posing is about interacting and having fun more than just telling someone what to do.

Two quick poses you can do every time. Look at me, look at each other! This gives them a photo that Mom is sure to love. Plus they have a shot that looks candid, the photo looks natural and doesn’t look posed, but it reality it was. Something important to remember in posing: No matter how posed the shot is, we always want it to look comfortable and natural.

Don’t be afraid to add some background to you shot. Give your clients some space and take in the scenery. Clients are going to want some artistic photos as well.

Notice the pose in this image. They are not facing me. I have there bodies turned toward each other with them looking at me. This will always help slim your clients.

Get two images from one pose. I almost always have my clients pose where the girl is leaning into they guy. Whether it be sitting or standing. It’s a nice relaxing pose that looks very comfortable. And you can always get two images from this one pose. Simply zoom out and give the image a new look and a new feel.

Now when I think; “what do my clients want to look like in an image”? Usually I think they want to look cool. So you always have to set up a cool looking pose. This doesn’t have to be a pose where they are close together. Just brake them a part and make them look cool!

Travis Hill is photographer from Baltimore Maryland. See more of his work at his studio site, his posing blog and on Facebook.

Post from: Digital Photography School

By Sean Michael Ragan, MAKE – September 07, 2010 at 06:00PM

I actually had to send some snail-mail recently and remembered the clever Google map envelope trick from Beste Miray Dogan that made the rounds awhile back. Turns out, a friendly bloke named Stephen has created a handy generator website that lets you input your return address and then automagically creates a printable cut-and-fold pattern.

More:

• AirMail: Felt / homemade Manila envelope laptop sleeve for MacBook Air
• The minimalistic no-cost iBook sleeve (it’s an envelope too)
• Letters without envelopes, cutting or glue
• Envelope and Letter Folding

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » |

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Digg this!

By Dennis Crouch, Patent Law Blog (Patently-O) – September 07, 2010 at 05:37PM

The USPTO has publicly released its data visualization center and patent dashboard. The site does an excellent job of providing a visual overview of the current USPTO state-of-affairs in terms of patent backlog, pendency, and allowance rate. The site also breaks-down those numbers in various ways that may be useful for advising your clients.  Data-downloads on the site provide unprecedented public access to PTO numbers that were previously either uncalculated or largely kept secret.

PTO Director Dave Kappos additionally sees the dashboard as providing patent office accountability and publicly facing the challenge of reducing patent pendency. Kappos writes on his blog:

An important part of the effort to reduce pendency is better understanding the numerous factors that contribute to examination delays and measuring their impact in a way that makes the USPTO more transparent to the public.  By looking at the whole picture, we can more effectively develop ways to increase the efficiency of the examination process.  While we know we have to hire more examiners to reduce the backlog, we also know that we must re-engineer the way we do business at the USPTO and have already implemented a series of initiatives designed to improve efficiencies.  These process changes will empower our workforce to be more effective and have already begun to yield important gains.

. . . [The Dashboard] will help the entire IP community to better understand our processes, and enable applicants to make more informed decisions about their applications, especially as we develop more opportunities for applicants to control the timing at which their applications are examined.  The new dashboard, which will be updated monthly, will also be used internally by the USPTO to analyze and improve our examination process and to track the effectiveness of our improvement efforts.  We intend to further refine the dashboard and welcome your input about ways we can improve it.  A dedicated mailbox [feedback@uspto.gov] has been set up for your comments and we intend to monitor your feedback carefully. 
 
The dashboard introduces six new measures of pendency designed to give a better overall picture of the contributions of different parts of the examination process to application pendency.  For example, the traditional total pendency measure stops the clock with the filing of an RCE, which may not provide an accurate measure of the total time it takes to complete the examination of an application through request for continued examination (RCE) practice.  A new measure, called “Traditional Total Pendency Including RCEs,” looks at pendency of applications from filing of the original application to ultimate disposal of that same application, including any additional time attributable to RCE filings in those applications where RCE filings are made.  Similar measures are provided relative to divisional applications and other types of continuation practice.  We also provide information about pendency for applications in appeal practice.

Links:

• Data visualization center and patent dashboard
• Kappos Blog
• [It appears that the site has a few kinks to work-out as the data downloads are not working properly]

By Anil, Anil Dash – September 07, 2010 at 01:34PM

There are some links I just keep finding myself sending around to friends and coworkers. Hmm, isn’t that what a blog is for?

• From back in April, a look at the service guidelines for staff at Momofuku offshoot Má Pêche. Though the Eater commenters respond with their typical asinine snark, what you see in this list is the extraordinary level of detail it takes to get consistently great service, and how thoughtful a successful organization needs to be to the culture it creates and the communications that shape that culture. “No pointing.”

• Mike Monteiro continues his fantastic series of fundamental posts about the business of design over at Mule Design’s blog with Presenting Design Like You Get Paid For It.

• From the always-great Danc’s Lost Garden, a visualization of the creative process. Absolutely brilliant in capturing a concept I’ve wished I could articulate for years.

• Andre Torrez on meaningful work. Where the first two links are about motivating a team to be of service, Andre’s is similar to Dan’s in focusing on giving a group of people work they can be proud of.

We will build this application. You might use it or you might not. We have an actual plan for making money and we have such low overhead that we can play with that plan until we think it’s right. It would be nice if more people did it this way. Life’s too short to spend it sitting in a stupid meeting wishing you had more time to make something good.

Each of these pieces is, essentially, an exploration of the process of cultural accommodation, of communicating and understanding communication in a way that frees others to be more comfortable and happier. And, incidentally, also leads to them being excited about the potential for giving you money or opportunities, instead of resentful or suspicious.

By James Johnson, ForeverGeek – September 07, 2010 at 11:36AM

If you’re a fan of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody then you’re in for a treat with this remake of the song based around Star Wars Episodes 1, 2 and 3.

The song, renamed Midichlorian Rhapsody relies on footage from those films with all new words and an actually decent vocal recording, although not quite as good as Queen’s original version.

The song features such brilliant lyrics and by brilliant I mean funny as “Mama Shmi-oh let me go” and covers the span of the prequel films.

Here’s the song synced up to the movies:

What did you think about Midicholrian Rhapsody? It could have done with a unique made from scratch parody video in my opinion, but the lyrics weren’t awful and it actually seemed to fit the editing job that was done for the song.