The (2008/05/25) cover story of NYtimes (login reqrd), exposes –the tip of the iceberg–a tale of web 2.0 gone wild.

It’s easy to draw parallels between what’s going on online and what’s going on in the rest of our media: the death of scripted TV, the endless parade of ordinary, heavily made-up faces that become vaguely familiar to us as they grin through their 15 minutes of reality-show fame. No wonder we’re ready to confess our innermost thoughts to everyone: we’re constantly being shown that the surest route to recognition is via humiliation in front of a panel of judges.

the Gawker “voice” was righteously indignant but comically defeated, sighing in unison with an audience that believed nothing was as it seemed and nothing would ever really change. Everyone was fatter or older or worse-skinned than he or she pretended to be. Every man was cheating on his partner; all women were slutty. Writers were plagiarists or talentless hacks or shameless beneficiaries of nepotism. Everyone was a hypocrite. No one was loved. There was no success that couldn’t be hollowed out by the revelation of some deep-seated inadequacy.

When Jessica cautioned me against reading the comments, she also told me that the commenters loved it when she revealed personal details. Not only did I find this to be true, I found it to be almost necessary. Injecting a personal aside into a post that wasn’t otherwise about me not only kept things interesting for me, it was also a surefire way of evoking a chorus of assenting or dissenting opinions, turning the solitary work of writing posts into something that felt more social, almost like a conversation.

It’s a must read for anyone who “overshares” on the public arenas of the internets.

This is a video that I’ve been looking for ever since I saw it at a Jon Kabat Zinn lecture a few years back… now, a new cause has found a use for it …

via: metafilter

I am astounded to learn that there are 30,484,761 (chemically distinct) organic and inorganic substances currently known to man. (And they’re all indexed here.) I wonder if anyone has put a bound on the number of substances there could ever be.

keywords: substance, another substance, yet another substance, …
mood: aspirant
music: Haydn / Symphony no 48 in C major.

SmashingTelly is your station:

Smashing Telly is a hand edited collection of the best free, instantly available TV on the web. Not 30 second clips of a dog on a skateboard, or the millionth person to mime the Numa song, but full length programs. Smashing Telly, not Gimmick Telly.

keywords: TV, no-TV, TV, no-TV, etc
mood: defiant
music: وجيه عزيز / قول معايا

(previously on surfing…)

Quite a few people have toyed with the idea of blogging. Many have quit. 200 million according to a study conducted by the analysts Gartner (bbc report.)

“A lot of people have been in and out of this thing,” Mr Plummer said. “Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they’re put on stage and asked to say it.”

I am no expert, but I’d like to add that I think some people also stop blogging because the response they get falls short of (or is in some other way different from) what they had imagined or desired.

In the spirit of the previous post, here’s another useful resource: onelook.com is a comprehensive dictionary and translation search, which has “6,257,269 words in 993 dictionaries indexed” .This is nice because it is always useful to get a second opinion — as the Egyptian saying goes, if someone tells you you’re a donkey, don’t believe them; if more people do it, then go buy yourself a saddle.

The most impressive and distinctive feature of this website is the reverse lookup feature — make sure you try it out.

keywords: search (for), meaning, reverse, lookup, onelook-is-all-you-need.
mood: overwhelmed
music: I am not sure and I couldn’t care less right now.

Maybe I’m nine months behind the times (read: ages in blogging time), but this is too good to miss (incase you didn’t know about it either): Answers.com is a brilliant “reference search service” which consolidates information from a number of sources (dictionaries, encyclopedias -including wikipedia-, libraries, etc) about “millions of topics” — it even provides the translation of your search term in god knows how many languages.

What is even more impressive, from a practical point of view, is a software they provide which lets you search for any term you highlight in any application running on your machine with 1-Click. (And of course it wouldn’t be complete without the mac os x widget.) Let me know what you think.

keywords: answers, search, encyclopedia, things-I-have-been-missing-out-on
mood: inquisitive
music: كاظم الساهر / إش جابرك علي المر

Brilliant flash application for browsing flickr images using related tags.

via: researchBuzz
keywords: flickr, photo, flash, yet-another-way-to-waste-time-on-flickr
mood: flickery
music: mettle music / tranquility

Ah Gee — somebody should’ve told me about this back in 1995; now, I have to restart the web all over again!

via: cecilia
keywords: caffeine, caffeine deficiency, have I mentioned caffeine?
mood: lethargic
music: feist/let it die

What the media portray, like one of those fairground mirrors, is a grotesque species that murders, squabbles, bullies and dies. What gets omitted is the extraordinary ordinariness that keeps people getting up in the morning; the humour, innocence, generosity, love and friendship - the very human characteristics that might begin to inspire more confidence in our ability to alleviate, rather than simply know about, the suffering of others.

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