A cool new version of the periodic table. I don't know what was wrong with the old one. A little ungainly, sure, but it has served loyally for decades.

Some lucid comments at 43 Folders and at Lifehacker on how to make more convenient filenames, so you can avoid mish-mash titles like "thing-2 finalFinal! v3 (with new changes) 05b.psd".

Steven Johnson announces the birth of outside.in, "an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood." It's in the early stages (may I please have a link to "home"?), but I'm thinking it could be very cool. Once you spend a decent amount of time online, especially if you're a blog reader, you realize that there is so much content out there. The shameful thing is that so much of it is just sort of floating in the either. The potential is there for a service like outside.in to add some tethers or anchors to all this information, aggregating all the events, stories, and conversations happening in a community. It's RSS for where you live.

While the description has something of a present-tense bias, there is the potential for rich juxtaposition of old and new by integrating something like geo-tagged Wikipedia entries. Maybe if you hear a little buzz about the Atlanta Beltline project, you could hop over and learn about it one of the neighborhoods it will cross, like Cabbagetown. What you end up with is a conversation that is not only (gleefully) tied to a physical location, but there is also the history running parallel (or is that perpendicular?).

I wonder if there are any plans for mobile-friendly access? Seems like a cool way for travelers to get acquainted as well. The obvious challenge is getting enough caring people and relevant data in there. I like it, let's see where it goes.

Really, the only reason you shouldn't be using Firefox is because Firefox 2 was released today. Get it while it's hot.

Here's a map of Springfield, home of the Simpsons.

Here's a comprehensive, though not unbiased, guide to electronic music. It touches on the early cerebral, experimental works from guys like Iannis Xenakis, to James Brown and the early days of house, to today's niches like downtempo, trance, Europop, and speedcore. Cool.

In the latest issue of Wired magazine, a long feature about the 'New Atheism'.

Alan Nelson links to a sweet collection of photos from the Hubble space telescope. I'm glad we got that lens fixed.

Understanding Comics is both an excellent treatise on comics and a working example of the form. Scott McCloud explains the medium within the medium--highlighting one of the unique strengths that comics have. McCloud makes the argument that comics fill the gap on the scale that has purely representational images on one end (visual 'high art'), and on the other end, the realm of purely arbitrary images (aka words, as 'literature'). But the comics niche has been trivialized as a mere diversion of pop culture, and that ain't right. (See Highbrow/Lowbrow for similar cultural divisions and how they came about)

McCloud traces the roots of comics back to the early days of literacy, before literature and art went their separate ways. Drawing on this union is where comics set themselves apart as a unique form of visual communication. I see a parallel here with Beautiful Evidence (my review), where Tufte has a whole chapter called "Words, Numbers, Images, Together." Those were the good ol' days when words and doodles got along just fine without ridicule.

After the history, there's an extended analysis of form and style and structural elements. It's interesting to see McCloud use an argument that is revived in Steven Johnson's Everything Good is Bad for You (my review). Namely, that comics are more demanding of the reader. The storyline isn't completely spelled out for you. The selected elements of the story are presented together, but you have to fill in the gaps between frozen moments in time, to give them life. As McCloud says, the comics reader becomes a participant.

Though it is probably beyond the scope of the work, I'd only ding McCloud for not going into enough depth. I'm sure there would be some copyright issues (grrr!), but I wish he were able to do a longer work with more case studies and analysis of the form. That task, however, is left for the newly-educated participant-reader. Which is perhaps how it should be.

The Cover Browser allows you to (wait for it)... browse the covers of thousands of comic books.

The friendly folks over at Worldchanging have a shiny new book coming out in a couple weeks: Worldchanging: A User's Guide.

"The problem of connecting is partly that of fitting mood with opportunity." Judith Guest's book was such a pleasant surprise. In a nutshell, it's about a family dealing with tragedy, focusing on that odd relationship of individual and family. Nothing new there, but the writing is so tight and so focused. What I really like is that Guest can slide so smoothly from narration to thought to dialogue and every which other way. The writing as much as the style makes it a compulsive page-turner. Add in some great male characters whose internal world feels really genuine, and some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments balance the more patient, reflective meditation on family. This bit was perfect:

He would do it, too, if it were not for a frenetic-butterfly manner that she radiates. It grates on his nerves. She has an endless supply of nervous energy. Tiny women are often like this, he thinks. They never run down. They overwhelm him, make him feel lumpish and stupid. Too large.

Another priceless bit of craft was husband and wife driving out to a dinner party. Within their routine dialogue, Guest makes the next scene transfer so seamlessly...

"We'll go in the spring," he says. "I promise." She doesn't answer. "Who's going to be there tonight?" Testing. Her tone when she answers will tell him if she is angry. "Well, the Murrays. It's their house." She slides over next to him. Happily grateful, he squeezes her hand. Wonderful, unpredictable girl. "And Mac and Ann Kline, Ed and Marty Genthe. And us." "Why us? We hardly know the Murrays." "That's why. That's why you have people over, darling. To get to know them better."

(thanks for the recommendation, Kelli)

Music video for Bjork's tune, Bachelorette. Great song, great video. Directed by Michael Gondry, who was in charge of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I enjoyed very much this weekend. [via waxy]

The Rest is Noise reminds us that Steve Reich turned 70 this year. Do yourself a favor and read up on Reich. The wikipedia entry gives a good start. For your listening pleasure, I'd recommend that you find, and subsequently purchase/ download/ rip/ obtain his works Electric Counterpoint, Clapping Music, Proverb, and Six Marimbas as an appetizer.

Visualizing Meaning is a project among scholars at Cornell, who were asked, "Of the many charts you have seen in your life, which has been the most important, remarkable, meaningful, or valuable?" [via rebecca's pocket crediting seat 1a linking to infosthetics]

Shaun Inman points to As Slow as Possible, John Cage's composition which is now the longest musical work ever in the history of concept art. It's still going on right now, and will for proceed for, oh, 600 years.

Great Zeldman post and excellent comments about Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0.

After finishing up Beautiful Evidence, I was impressed enough to check out one of Edward Tufte's earlier works. Envisioning Information is mostly targeted to the display of complex, multi-dimensional data within the constraints of our merely 2-dimensional presentation media like paper and computer screens. While I really liked it, it was missing some things I really liked seeing in Beautiful Evidence. For one, there didn't seem to be as much original material in this book. Tufte seemed to stay in the background more, displaying best practices and analyzing effective examples. What I really missed was his criticism and revisions of faltering works. As he points out, comparing and contrasting is one of the purposes of good analytic design--I don't think he took enough opportunity to do so. Some other minor quibbles would be the omni-present transporation timetables, and some recycled graphics from chapter to chapter.

On the upside, I really liked two of the more user-oriented chapters. 'Layering and Separation' was all about human perception. It branched off from Albersian ideas about how sometimes 1+1=3, moir?© patterns, and other unintended effects. Tufte makes good use of examples and suggests some corrections in that chapter. Seeing the clumsy "before" and the polished "after" versions is a huge help. The other section I liked was 'Color and Information', dedicated to use of color in distinguishing marks and values, and the ways color be a cognitive aid (and distraction).

I wish Tufte could work more quickly. As it is, his books take quite a while to work on (understandably so). I'm looking forward to what he'll come up with another 6-7 years down the line.

A New York Times feature on the tortured life of Friendster.

An absolutely fantastic interview with Neil Gaiman over at Bookslut. Aside from great fiction, Gaiman is known for signing every book, no matter how long it takes:

The worst one ever was in Sao Paulo in Brazil in 2001. Brazilians are lovely people. But they don’t hold back on how they feel. And 1,200 showed up and at 700 the shop decided to cap the line, thinking that was enough. The 500 people left behind apparently explained to them in a very enthusiastic and cheerful and Brazilian sort of way that they could of course shut down the line if they wanted to but those 500 people would destroy their store if they did. And they thought about it for a minute, reopened the line, and I signed for all 1,200. But I only discovered this happened until the end of the day. I stayed until 2 o’clock in the morning, and I lost my voice.

Gaiman's got a new book out, by the way, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders.