Regular Springwise readers are already familiar with transumers and the many ways in which they share and exchange goods without ever having to own them. The Mesh Directory is an online network that attempts to encapsulate that trend, aggregating all the many companies that now create, share and use social media, wireless networks, and data crunched from every available source to provide people with goods and services at the exact moment they need them, without the burden and expense of owning them outright, in the site's own words.

Similar in many ways to Milk or Sugar, the Mesh Directory provides a freely searchable index of some 1,500 companies that are helping to enable the new sharing economy. Designed as a companion site to a forthcoming book on the same topic, the directory allows users to browse alphabetically or by category as well; among the categories included are transportation, fashion, food, real estate, travel, finance and entertainment. Provided for each company on the list are its URL and contact information along with a description of its offerings; there's also an option for companies not already on the list to request to be added. Included on the list, incidentally, are numerous alumni of our pages, including Kisskissbankbank, RelayRides, thredUP, Kickstarter and Aakash Ganga.

Given the rapid growth and far-reaching impact of many consumer trends, figuring out what's already out there can be a considerable challenge. Where else might web users need some guidance navigating new ground...? (Related: First magazine for green weddings Product portal for independent retailers Online library of green building materials.)

Website: www.meshing.it
Contact: info@meshing.it

Spotted by: Jon Wisler

Shared by Jenna
purty

We posted about Joseph Joseph's Index cutting board back in 2008, and now they have an updated version called Index Plus that also comes with four matching knives, also color coded to match your index card-shaped chopping boards.

Joseph Joseph also has some other clever, dishwasher-safe kitchen items worth noting:

Chop2Pot
This innovative chopping board uses the latest and smartest technology in polypropylene living hinges. Locked in the flat position, Chop2Pot provides a durable, knife-friendly cutting surface. But when the handle is squeezed, the sides of the board fold up, forming a chute, down which diced and chopped food can be neatly guided. Available colors include: green, red, pink, black and white.

Elevate
The Elevate range utilizes an innovative weighted handle system to prevent the utensil's head from touching worktop surfaces, which maximizes hygiene while minimizing mess and eliminating the need for a spoon rest. The tool heads are heat resistant up to 480 F and are ideal for use with non-stick cookware. Each tool has an ergonomic soft grip handle and is dishwasher safe. The Elevate range is comprised of six essential tools: a spoon, a slotted spoon, a flexible turner, a slotted turner, a ladle and a spaghetti server, each in a different vibrant color. Available individually or as a boxed gift set.


Orb
The eye catching and witty design of this pestle and mortar, made from non-absorbent vitrified porcelain, provides two individual receptacles for grinding herbs and spices. The main bowl is large enough for crushing and grinding larger quantities or even several ingredients at once. The lid, when inverted, provides a neat, hand-held mortar for grinding smaller amounts. The large green pestle is perfectly weighted and comfortable in the hand, even during prolonged use.

Nest Bowl 8
The Nest range is the ultimate collection of practical, space saving kitchenware, comprising a mixing bowl, strainer, flour sieve, measuring bowl, and 4 measuring spoons, each in a different vibrant color. The unique design of the range allows the individual elements of each set to be stacked together, thereby occupying the absolute minimum amount of space.

Hands On
A perfect paradigm of form following function, this salad bowl has a pair of hand-like salad servers integrated on either side of the bowl. Blending smoothly into the contours of the design, the servers sit securely in place until required. Made from 100% melamine, this product makes a fun and practical solution for both indoor and outdoor entertaining. Available colors include white bowl with green servers, green bowl with light green servers and stone bowl with white servers.

Y-Grinder
This distinctive salt and pepper mill has a unique twin-chamber design allowing both salt and pepper to be dispensed from the same stylish unit. Its ceramic mechanism is anti-corrosive and guaranteed for up to ten years. Hold the body of the mill in one hand and twist either of the two grinding knobs to release salt or pepper. Suitable for grinding all types of spices, as well as rock salt, it can be easily adjusted to grind from coarse to fine grain. Available in white, green and gray.

What if your phone automatically went silent when you step into the movie theater? Texted your significant other when you finished your long commute? Or automatically turned down the volume when a particularly loud friend called? It can; here's how.

Android application Tasker gives you total rules-based automation for your Android phone. It's not free, but it offers a free 14-day trial download. In the Android Market, it's 3.99 in UK moneya little over $6 U.S. If you grab the trial, or shell out the cost of a Double-Double meal at In-N-Out Burger to buy it in the Market (scan the QR code at left), you'll discover it's worth the cost, even if you only have one super-specific use for it.

Since Tasker can do nearly anything on your phone (it's mostly limited by your imagination), here's some up-front ideas about what kinds of uses seem particularly attractive:

Set preferences for each application: Give the Kindle app a longer screen time-out. Make Maps or Foursquare automatically turn on GPS, and have a file browser launch when you trade out SD cards. Have your music and other audio apps lower the volume to 50 percent when you plug in headphones, so you never get a way-too-loud moment.

Time of day automation: Make your phone go into airplane mode overnight, but re-connect for a few minutes every 30 minutes to grab messages. Set up your phone to play specific or random songs from your collection as an alarm, back up files from your SD card every day, load up an application at a certain time.

Set up contact rules: If you've got a friend who talks too loud, make your call volume go down when they ring. Create a home screen widget that sends an automatic SMS ("In the car," maybe). Set your phone to pop up a more iPhone-style message box, rather than background notifications, when you miss calls or get SMS from certain people. Have your phone always record messages from a certain caller.

: More fun, crazy-advanced stuff: Encrypt and decrypt data on the SD card based on your rules. Have speaker phone turn on when you lay your phone flat on a table. Change the home screen icons for apps, have your phone get drastically efficient when battery's below 10 percent, and change your wallpapers to reflect the time of day or the number of messages.

Those use cases barely scratch the surface, really. Take the developer's tour, and you'll see there are variables, hundreds of events and triggers, and nearly infinite setups. Want to have Reddit.com launch on your browser if your alarm clock goes off on a Tuesday while Wi-Fi is on? You got it.

We'd need to write a research-paper-length treatise to cover everything Tasker can do for you, so we'll instead offer up a few examples of app models we've found handy.

Task 1: Turn on GPS/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi for Certain Apps Automatically

I don't keep GPS positioning on all the time, both for battery efficiency and a niggling sense of privacy. At the same time, I dislike when Maps, My Tracks, Navigation, or Foursquare ask me to turn on GPS, and I'm required to click "OK," then make the toggle in Settings, then head back. For just those apps, I want my GPS to automatically click on. When I'm done with those applications, the GPS should shut off, too. You can easily pull the same trick for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or most any system function, but we'll just show how GPS works.

From Tasker's main screen, hit "New." You'll be presented with six options, or "Contexts": Application, Time, Day, Location, State, and Event. Think of "Context" as an "If""If X is happening ..."

In this case, we're going to choose Application, then pick out the app we want to apply a rule to. You can pick out apps one at a time and apply your "Tasks" to them, but you can also apply Tasks to all applications, or pick out apps you don't want your Tasks to apply to with the "Not" button at bottom. We'll just pick out one app, Maps, which I almost always want GPS to be turned on for.

After you pick your Context, now it's time to add one or more Tasks. Thinking ahead though, we're going to apply this kind of actionturn GPS on when the app launches, then turn it off when it's moved away fromto a few different apps after this. So hit the "New" button in the upper-right corner, then type in a name for your Task that you'll easily grasp later, like "Auto-Launch GPS."

Now it's time to tell Tasker what Task we want to fire when this Context is happening. As you can see at left, you basically get your whole system to play with. The thing we want, GPS, is under "Misc."

In the bar under the GPS "Set" option, you've got three options: On, Off, and Toggle, the last of which just flips the setting the other way, whichever way it is. There's also a checkbox for an "If," which, if clicked, drops down a box where you can enter in a variable and make it a condition. You could, for example, only have GPS turn on if airplane mode is set to off ("%AIR - Isn't Set"). Our needs, for now, are simplejust have GPS set "On," no matter what.

Well, that was pretty easy. Now you'll see that "GPS Auto-Launch" has just one task: "GPS - Set On." Let's say you were a little more protective of your GPS chip, though, and you wanted Tasker to ask you about GPS, Wi-Fi, or whatnot. The gear-and-screwdriver logo in the lower-right corner gives you that option. Set your "Task Type" to "Menu," and you'll get options to set how long the menu stays up, if there's a default option selected, and even set a background image, if you're feeling extra-custom. But we're just having Tasker take care of the GPS switch for us, so get back to the Tasks screen.

You could hit "Test" in the lower-right corner to see how Tasker handles launching Maps and turning on GPS automatically, but we're going to specify one more detail of our auto-launcher. Hit "Done" to get back to the main Tasker menu, then tap on the right-hand side of the process you created, the side with "GPS Auto-Launch" and a green arrow. From the menu that pops up, choose "Add Exit Task." When we told Tasker to do something when Maps launched, we created an "Enter" task. By adding an "Exit" task, we can have something else happen when Maps is closed down or put away. You can add these Exits to all kinds of conditionswhen you're no longer near a certain location, when it's no longer a certain time, etc.

Update: Not all Tasker tasks need an Exit taskin general, whatever settings you've changed while a task is running will set themselves back when you're done. In this case, though, we're getting a little more extra-cautious control over turning the GPS off.

After hitting "Add Exit Task," you'll run through the same process you used to create the GPS turn-on: create a new name template, add the task GPS from the Misc menu, then set it to Off and hit "Done." Now, back at the main screen, you can see that there's a Context (Maps launches), an Enter task (GPS Auto-Launch), and an Exit task (GPS Shutdown). Hit the "Apple" button at the very bottom, and now Tasker will be watching for Maps to launch, then do its auto-GPS thing.

This trick worked fairly well on my Nexus One, despite Tasker providing a pop-up note that application exit watching wasn't as stable on Android 2.0 and later. Worst case scenario, it doesn't launch GPS, and I do it myself.

Task 2: Create an Ultimate Morning Alarm

The next step, adding multiple tasks to a time condition, isn't all that different, but it does show off how far Tasker can go in automating your phone. So let's create Kevin's Ultimate Alarm.

Hit "New" and choose Time as the Context. I'll have this alarm go off at 6 a.m. and, if I don't respond, play for 3 minutes. You could just set 6-6 as your time to run until you take action, but I'll be nice to my morning self. We're going to add another context, the days of the week, later, but for now, you'll be moved into the Tasks section.

For my own Ultimate Alarm, I'm having a song play from my collection, make my Remember the Milk tasks load up on the screen, and have my phone say, in text-to-speech, "Good morning, Kevin. It's going to be a great day." Why? Because, why not? For these pieces, I added three Tasks:

• MediaMusic PlayMusic Play Dir. After long-clicking on the "Dir" field and choosing my Music folder, I also checked "Audio Only" and "Random." If you wanted a particular song, you could swap "Music Play" for "Music Play Dir."
• AppLoad AppRemember the Milk. Fairly simple, and I could set a different starting page in Remember the Milk's own settings, if I liked.
• MiscSay. Then just fille in the text you want, choose a language, and mess with any other fields you'd like. "Stream" sets the output you'd like the audio to go through, which helps if you've got other things, like songs, going too. You can, of course, mess with the pitch and speed of the voice, too.

When you're all done and hit "Done," tap on the left-hand side of your Ultimate Alarm entry, where the clock is. From the menu, roll down Context and hit "Add," then choose "Date." From the pop-up chooser, you can get very specific about the months, days of the month, days of the week, and other selectors for when your alarm goes off. Mine's a basic Monday-through-Friday deal.

That's all there is to that one, but it's a pretty nice package.

Task 3: Make Your Phone Quiet Down When Face-Down

Now I'm going to create a kind of "Quiet Down" mode for my phone. When I put it face down on a flat surface, like arriving at my desk for work, it should turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth (and, heck, you can turn off EDGE/3G data, if you'd like), and then turn the system, ringer, and media volumes all the way down but keep vibrate on. You could add an Exit task to turn some or all of these back on, but that's giving a bit too much leeway to the phone's sensors.

For our context, choose State, then pick Orientation. You'll get the options you see at left. I like to stay away from "Face up," "Standing Up," and "Upside Down," because they're pretty common occurrences. For this example, "Face Down" is a pretty deliberate action you take with your phone.

For the tasks, I added "Bluetooth" and "WiFi" from the Net menu, set to Off, "GPS" from Misc set to Off, and set the volumes for "Media Volume" and "System Volume" to 0 from the Audio menu. "Silent Mode" with Vibrate could simplify your setup, but I like to be sure. Hit Done, and you're all set.

On my TV show on New Threats to Freedom, I thought I was joking when I used the term Food Police, but here they are, caught on tape.

Food faddists who buy raw food and unpasteurized milk are fools. There's no good evidence that the food is healthier, and they risk their families' health. The risk is real but small. If buyers of unpasteurized milk get sick, word will get out, and those sellers will be punished. Whole Foods already dropped these products because selling them would have raised their liability costs.

But the LA Times reveals that that's not good enough for our ever more intrusive government:

"With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk.I still can't believe they took our yogurt,' said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us because we're selling raw dairy products?'

At least the reporter interviewed the other side.

How can we not have the freedom to choose what we eat?

But they denigrate them as a faction of foodies. The editors devote more space to the food nannies' justification for the raid. As usual, the mainstream media are quick to assume that the bullies ought to act:

Regulators say the rules exist for safety and fairness.

Safety, I understand, but fairness? The Times says the raid was also to provide a level playing field for producers. Sounds like crony capitalism--the established health food nuts using government to shut competition down.

Good lord. When will they ever stop?

Earlier this month, Cadbury Australia transformed YouTube with a new campaign that threw out the traditional rectangular video player and made it round. The video player transformation is part of a Ready to roll campaign for Cadbury's Dairy Milk Rollpack, rolled out in collaboration with Saatchi & Saatchi Australia. The round videos were featured on Australian YouTube at the beginning of the month and have been causing a stir ever since.

Cadbury's custom round YouTube player is the first of its kind. Though it is not fully functional like the traditional YouTube player, viewers have the option to pause and play, as well as to mute and unmute the volume. Commenting is also not enabled on the round videos, although Cadbury has included a few comments from Facebook users for atmosphere and viewers can feel free to write their comments in the Channel Comments field. Unfortunately, embedding is not enabled for these videos, but you can watch them on Cadbury Australia's YouTube page.

Saatchi & Saatchi Australia discussed the campaign earlier this month with Campaign Brief. The company's ECD, Steve Back, said, This idea was about offering people a quick, unexpected moment of joy in a unique space. Digital creative director Peter Galmes said, We want to reach people I places they are already choosing to spend their time. With over two billion videos viewed per day, YouTube was the natural choice.

Cadbury Australia and Saatchi & Saatchi worked closely with Google in the early stages of their campaign in order to plan and create the custom round player. Special content was created to fit into the new round player, including a hamster running on a wheel, a guy in a dog suit running on a wheel, and a parrot that is awesome at basketball. Check the videos out here and let us know what you think. Do you think Cadbury's campaign was a success, breaking out of the box and going round? Do you think we'll be seeing more campaigns like this in the future?

New York-based design studio MyDesign Group has recently completed a metal collection for Namb. The main design in the collection is the Scoop Server, a really fun chip & dip bowl where the dip bowl seems to hover effortlessly over the larger serving bowl.

Wei Young, head of MyDesign, explains the inspiration for this piece:

The inspiration for the Scoop Chip and Dip came from the sweeping, fluid motion one performs when scooping an actual chip into dip. The captured movement lead way to the curvaceous lines and spherical silhouettes of the piece. The Scoop was designed to immediately convey it's function while being inviting and alluring to the user. The two bowls seamlessly blended together creating the distinctive profile. Simple yet complex in form, the shape of this object would be highly difficult to produced in one solid piece using typical molding processes and techniques. The Scoop lends itself perfectly to Namb's signature hand crafted alloy and intelligent manufacturing processes. I wanted to created an object that reflects the energy of our modern era, and be classic in form to last into generations to come. Aesthetically original in form and function, the Scoop is for entertaining as much as it is for conversation.

Namb let us know that the Scoop Server will be available at the end of August.

Filed under: Humor, Niche Going, Lists

Three Wolf Moon T-shirt

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

Tuscan Whole Milk

I shall be telling this with a nostalgic sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two milks available in a mart, and I--
I took the Tuscan Whole Milk (1 Gallon, 128 fl oz),
And that has made all the difference.

"Birth Control is Sinful in the Christian Marriages and also Robbing God of Priesthood Children!!" by Eliyzabeth Yanne Strong-Anderson

The title of the review rated "Most Helpful" should give you the gist of it: "I'VE FOUND THE LIGHT WITH MY CAPS LOCK KEY." Gold.

Fresh Whole Rabbit

You'd think describing an animal as "fresh" and "whole" would make it pretty clear that it's 1) dead and 2) intended to be eaten, but some 78 reviewers have flocked to the Fresh Whole Rabbit item page to express their dismay that the headless carcass doesn't make a good pet. As one "wronged" reviewer wrote,

Our children were traumatized and Easter is not the same holiday that it used to be for us. On the upside, we don't have to fill their Easter baskets anymore as we told them the Easter bunny was killed by Amazon.

Zubaz Pants

JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank

If you thought the word "badonkadonk" was reserved for Missy Elliott, you'd better make way because here comes a $20,000 tank and 234 ironically satisfied customers. "Shopping for a personal tank can be a bit daunting," said one reviewer, but this one "

Uranium Ore

I was very disappointed to have my uranium confiscated at the airport. It was a gift for my son for his birthday. Also, I'm in prison now, so that's not good either.

• previously:// Three Wolf Moon T-shirt Parodies
• previously:// The Saga of Smile Lines Girl

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Over at Gizmodo there's a wonderful image gallery from the book Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection, by author Amanda Young and photographer Mark Avino.

Incidentally, this particular image reminds me of a frame from Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen. "Milk in the batter, milk in the batter! We bake cakes like nothing's the matter!"

Smithsonian's Spacesuits: Number One On The Runway (Gizmodo)

• Opinion Cloud: Summarizes comments on YouTube videos and Flickr photos to provide an overview of the crowd's overall opinion.
• Google Voice: All sorts of helpful Voice features directly from the browser. See how many messages you have, initiate calls and texts, or call numbers on a site by clicking on them.
• AutoPager. Automatically loads the next page of a site. You can just scroll down instead of having to click to the next page.
  
• Turn Off the Lights: Fades the page to improve the video-watching experience.
• Google Dictionary: Double-click any word to see its definition, or click on the icon in the address bar to look up any word.
• After the Deadline: Checks spelling, style, and grammar on your emails, blog, tweets, etc.
• Invisible Hand: Does a quick price check and lets you know if the product you are looking at is available at a lower price elsewhere.
• Secbrowsing: Checks that your plug-ins (e.g. Java, Flash) are up to date.
• Tineye: Image search utility to find exact matches (including cropped, edited, or re-sized images).
• Slideshow: Turns photo sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and Google Images into slideshows.
• Google Docs/PDF Viewer: Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer.
• Readability: Reformat the page into a single column of text.
• Chromed Bird: A nice Twitter viewing extension.
• Feedsquares: Cool way of viewing your feeds via Google Reader.
• ScribeFire: Full-featured blog editor that lets you easily post to any of your blogs.
• Note Anywhere: Digital post-it notes that can be pasted and saved on any webpage.
• Instant Messaging Notifier: IM on multiple clients.
• Remember the Milk: The popular to-do app.
• Extension.fm: Turns the web into a music library.

The kitchen was a complete mess. I tried to clean the utensils and machines right after I used them but I couldn't keep up with my own cooking frenzy.

I baked one loaf of carrot nut bread and two loaves of zucchini spice bread. I made a carrot-dill soup, a chilled yogurt-cucumber-dill soup, and a kale-swiss chard-carrot soup. I also shredded a beet-mint salad, cooked an eggplant-green pepper-tomato thing, and grilled peppers in the oven.

Just for the record, usually the only thing I ever bake is cookies, by squeezing batter from a store bought tube. If I make dinner, it consists of steamed veggies, rice and my pice de rsistance for the kids frozen pizza. Warmed, of course.

What's even more curious is that it wasn't a special occasion. We weren't celebrating someone's birthday. No guest was coming for dinner. It was just going to be me and my family.

So what possessed me? Why did I work so hard to create such a feast?

My family had spent the weekend at Isabella Freedman, a non-profit Jewish retreat center (full disclosure: I'm on their Board of Directors) that also has a ten-acre farm.

There are many things that were lovely about the weekend we were together as a family, the setting was beautiful, the food was excellent, and my cell phone didn't get reception.

Our kids felt comfortable roaming with more freedom and independence than usual. So when they woke up at six in the morning and asked to go see the goats, I was more than happy to let them go and get a little extra sleep myself.

Thirty minutes later, I awoke with a strong pang of regret. I couldn't believe I would let them go by themselves like that. While I quickly got dressed, Eleanor turned over and saw I was going after them. "Relax," she told me. "They'll be fine."

"I'm not worried about them," I told her. "I don't want to miss the goats." She thought for a second, jumped out of bed, and we ran down to the goats together.

Now I don't know if you've ever milked a goat before, but if not, I suggest you find yourself a farm and try it. Not just because it's a cool feeling. Not just because it's good to know how the whole get-milk-from-an-animal thing works. And not because you better know how because one day you might be thirsty and really need to get milk from an animal. It's not a knowledge or understanding or capability thing.

It's an experience thing. Because once you've milked a goat, you'll never drink milk or eat cheese the same way again. You'll choose your milk more carefully. You'll want to know who milked the animal, how that person treated her, and what she ate. And when you drink the milk, you'll have a much deeper appreciation for the taste.

In short, you'll care more about your milk than you ever did before.

After the goats, we went to the vegetable fields where the kids (I include myself here) went crazy. We pulled carrots out of the ground. We broke off stalks of kale and swiss chard. We gathered bunches of dill. We picked zucchini. We plucked tomatoes. We collected green peppers.

That day, in the field, my kids ate more raw vegetables than ever before.

Where and when you enter a process is a strong determinant of how connected you'll feel to the outcome. If I'm on the receiving end of a new initiative, I'll approach it more critically than if I'm one of the people involved from the beginning.

New sales process? Don't figure it all out yourself and then tell your sales people about it. Let them figure it out with you. If they do the seeding and weeding and picking, they'll be far more likely to eat the produce.

Want customers to buy your service or product? Involve them in the creation of it. I never write proposals anymore and if a client requires it, I'll take myself out of the process. Not because I'm above it it's the opposite actually I take myself out of the process because I know I won't win the project.

The projects I win and the only ones I do now are the ones I design with my clients. Those designs are always far better than anything I could propose on my own because they are informed by my clients' deep knowledge of their companies their culture, personality, and capacity to absorb change. Most importantly those projects sell and succeed because the people impacted by the work feel responsible for its success. Which is entirely predictable since they designed it from the beginning.

And they're always happier with the outcome. They feel something deeper than the success of a project gone well. They feel pride of ownership. They feel satisfied by the journey that brought them to their success.

So we returned home with a car filled with fresh produce. And I spent the next day inspired chopping, shredding, boiling, and baking preparing more food than I had in months. I needed no external motivation. I had no sense of urgency because guests were coming (they weren't). I had no desire to perform for money (I wasn't making any). There was no need for a proverbial carrot or stick. My motivation came from a real carrot one I pulled from the ground myself.

Boooooom! Bang! AahhhhhhComic Wall is a collection of vinyl wall decals designed by BAG.Disseny Studio that allow your walls to speak and express fun comic book moments. That is, if you're still into wall decals. Whether you're over them or not, these would be the perfect addition to your comic-obsessed son's roomor maybe in a game room?

Shared by phillip
hmm

Over the last 500 million years or so, life on Earth has been threatened on many occasions; the fossil record is littered with extinction events. What's curious about these events is that they seem to occur with alarming regularity.

The periodicity is a matter of some controversy among paleobiologists but there is a growing consensus that something of enormous destructive power happens every 26 or 27 million years. The question is what?

In this blog, we've looked at various ideas such as the Sun's passage through the various spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy (it turns out that this can't explain the extinctions because the motion doesn't have had the right periodicity).

But another idea first put forward in the 1980s is that the Sun has a distant dark companion called Nemesis that sweeps through the Oort cloud every 27 million years or so, sending a deadly shower of comets our way. It's this icy shower of death that causes the extinctions, or so the thinking goes.

Today, Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas and Richard Bambach at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC re-examine the paleo-record to see if they can get a more accurate estimate of the orbit of Nemesis.

Their work throws up a surprise. They have brought together a massive set of extinction data from the last 500 million years, a period that is twice as long as anybody else has studied. And their analysis shows an excess of extinctions every 27 million years, with a confidence level of 99%.

That's a clear, sharp signal over a huge length of time. At first glance, you'd think it clearly backs the idea that a distant dark object orbits the Sun every 27 million years.

But ironically, the accuracy and regularity of these events is actually evidence against Nemesis' existence, say Melott and Bambuch.

That's because Nemesis' orbit would certainly have been influenced by the many close encounters we know the Sun has had with other starsin the last 500 million years.

These encounters would have caused Nemesis' orbit to vary in one of two ways. First, the orbit could have changed suddenly so that instead of showing as a single the peak, the periodicity would have two or more peaks. Or second, it could have changed gradually by up 20 per cent, in which case the peak would be smeared out in time.

But the data indicates that the extinctions occur every 27 million years, as regular as clockwork. "Fossil data, which motivated the idea of Nemesis, now militate against it," say Melott and Bambuch.

That means something else must be responsible. It's not easy to imagine a process in our chaotic interstellar environment that could have such a regular heart beat; perhaps the answer is closer to home.

There is a smidgeon of good news. The last extinction event in this chain happened 11 million years ago so, in theory at least, we have plenty of time to work out where the next catastrophe is coming from.

Either way, the origin of the 27 million year extinction cycle is hotting up to become one of the great scientific mysteries of our time. Suggestions, if you have any, in the comments section please.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1007.0437: Nemesis Reconsidered

Producteev, the up-and-coming task management service which launched the newest version of its service earlier this month, just launched its first API. With this release, developers can now make use of Producteev's scheduling back-end to create their own online, desktop and mobile front-ends for Producteev or integrate the service into their existing apps. The company is also launching a developer contest, with a cash prize of $2500 for the winning app and $1000 for the runner-up.

Sponsor

According to Producteev's CEO Ilan Abehassera, the company wants to enable the developer community to "build their dream task management app for whatever it is they are using today." Producteev itself is already using the API in all of its tools, including the company's iPhone app, IM clients and upcoming desktop applications.

As we noted in our review of the latest version of Producteev last month, the service takes on a number of established task management services like Basecamp, Remember the Milk and popular mobile apps like Todo and Things. To use Producteev, users can use the company's online interface, iPhone app or simply send a tagged email message to Producteev. The service is available in a free version for individuals and in various paid versions for teams.

You can find our in-depth review of Producteev here.

Screencast Producteev Two from Producteev.com on Vimeo.

The data that once suggested the Sun is orbited by a distant dark companion now raises even more questions

Over the last 500 million years or so, life on Earth has been threatened on many occasions; the fossil record is littered with extinction events. What's curious about these events is that they seem to occur with alarming regularity.

The periodicity is a matter of some controversy among paleobiologists but there is a growing consensus that something of enormous destructive power happens every 26 or 27 million years. The question is what?

In this blog, we've looked at various ideas such as the Sun's passage through the various spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy (it turns out that this can't explain the extinctions because the motion doesn't have had the right periodicity).

But another idea first put forward in the 1980s is that the Sun has a distant dark companion called Nemesis that sweeps through the Oort cloud every 27 million years or so, sending a deadly shower of comets our way. It's this icy shower of death that causes the extinctions, or so the thinking goes.

Today, Adrian Melott at the University of Kansas and Richard Bambach at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC re-examine the paleo-record to see if they can get a more accurate estimate of the orbit of Nemesis.

Their work throws up a surprise. They have brought together a massive set of extinction data from the last 500 million years, a period that is twice as long as anybody else has studied. And their analysis shows an excess of extinctions every 27 million years, with a confidence level of 99%.

That's a clear, sharp signal over a huge length of time. At first glance, you'd think it clearly backs the idea that a distant dark object orbits the Sun every 27 million years.

But ironically, the accuracy and regularity of these events is actually evidence against Nemesis' existence, say Melott and Bambuch.

That's because Nemesis' orbit would certainly have been influenced by the many close encounters we know the Sun has had with other starsin the last 500 million years.

These encounters would have caused Nemesis' orbit to vary in one of two ways. First, the orbit could have changed suddenly so that instead of showing as a single the peak, the periodicity would have two or more peaks. Or second, it could have changed gradually by up 20 per cent, in which case the peak would be smeared out in time.

But the data indicates that the extinctions occur every 27 million years, as regular as clockwork. "Fossil data, which motivated the idea of Nemesis, now militate against it," say Melott and Bambuch.

That means something else must be responsible. It's not easy to imagine a process in our chaotic interstellar environment that could have such a regular heart beat; perhaps the answer is closer to home.

There is a smidgeon of good news. The last extinction event in this chain happened 11 million years ago so, in theory at least, we have plenty of time to work out where the next catastrophe is coming from.

Either way, the origin of the 27 million year extinction cycle is hotting up to become one of the great scientific mysteries of our time. Suggestions, if you have any, in the comments section please.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1007.0437: Nemesis Reconsidered

Newsom's directive, issued in April but whose practical impacts are starting to be felt now, bars calorically sweetened beverages from vending machines on city property.

That includes non-diet sodas, sports drinks and artificially sweetened water. Juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners. Diet sodas can be no more than 25 percent of the items offered, the directive says.

There should be "ample choices" of water, "soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or non dairy milk," says the directive, which also covers fat and sugar content in vending machine snacks.

Sugary-drink ban starts to affect SF sites

The 6/28/2010 issue of the New Yorker includes an engagingly waspish article by Anthony Lane, "Letter From Oslo, 'Only Mr. God Knows Why'". Along with its witty observations about global language and culture, Lane's piece also includes some surprisingly elementary errors of fact. The New Yorker has long (and loudly) cherished a reputation for assiduous fact-checking, and so this sort of thing still surprises me, though it happens often enough that it probably shouldn't.

Here's how Lane starts:

By any measure, Thursday, May 27th, was an important day for the stability of Europe. Two decisions, at different ends of the continent, did much to calm the nerves of anyone perturbed by its recent crisis of confidence. In Madrid, the Spanish parliament voted to approve an austerity package [] In Oslo, meanwhile, an eighteen-year-old girl named Sieneke, from the Netherlands, singing "Ik Ben Verliefd (Sha-la-lie)," was voted out at the semifinal stage of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest. Reaction to both events was swift. The euro rose 1.6 per cent against the dollar, [] No less dramatically, those of us who cling to Europe as the cradle of the Enlightenment, and who therefore applaud each triumph for probity and justice, went to bed with lighter hearts, knowing that never again, in public, would we have to listen to this:

Shalalie shalala
Shalalie shalala 't gaat niet uit m'n kop
Shalalie shalala
Shalalie shalala ik sta d'r 's morgens mee op.

Translated into what one hesitate to call English, this means:

Shalalie shalala
Shalalie shalala, I can't get it out of my head
Shalalie shalala
Shalalie shalala, it's there when I get up in the morning.

In a way, the lines are brutally honest. Trying to get them out of your head is like trying to dislodge an ant that has crawled into your ear canal. That itch has long been a notorious side effect of Eurovision, and anyone who grew up in Europe, as I did, with a television in the house, can never quite shake off the affliction, just as old Africa hands used to suffer malarial twinges for the rest of their lives.

Here's Ms. Sieneke's performance, if you dare to listen to it after that review:

It's enough to give prima facie credit to Lane's opinion that

The Eurovision song contest is kindly, diverting, flamboyant, efficiently run, and surprisingly tough. In fact, there is only one thing wrong with it. The music. []

The stuff you hear in the back of Belgian taxis, on German radio, in Sicilian bars, and in the lobbies of Danish hotels: it was all created by the great god of dreck, and Eurovision is his temple. P.J. O'Rourke, sureying the dancing at a club in Warsaw in 1986, deplored what he called "the tragic lack of black people behind the Iron Curtain," and there is no doubt that, had Motown opened up a branch in, say, Bratislava, Europe would have been a happier landmass. But the want of taste runs deeper than that deeper, even, than the puzzling way in which pop loses every trace of kick and soul when sung in anything but English. There is, and should be, something cheesy in all good pop, but what Eurovision delivers is flavorless processed cheese, as if it were produced not by musicians but by a cultural subcommittee of the European Union, convened in a back room in Brussels. It wasn't that I sat there, in Oslo, longing for the Supremes or the Stranglers, or R.E.M. That would have been too much to ask. I was longing for the Bee Gees.

I'm skeptical of Lane's opinion that "pop loses every trace of kick and soul when sung in anything but English" here are a few exhibits for the defense, among thousands that prove he's wrong but never mind that for now. Let's turn to Lane's discussion of the languages actually used in Eurovision entries:

From 1966 to 1972, the rule was that you had to compete in the language, or languages, of the country you had been chosen to represent. That rule was reinstated in 1977 and held sway for twenty years, and many acts still voluntarily cleave to it. [] "Europe has a problem: it's not the United States," [Albanian violinist Olen] Cesari said, in words that would make the Eurovision creators quiver with dismay. "So, if you don't speak English, you're immediately at a disadvantage." []

Cesari is right: of the songs that have reached the finals over the years, two hundred and sixty-three have been in English, the lingua franca of pop. French, with a hundred and fifty, is the only other language in triple figures; the rest lag far behind. [] [W]hen you sing in English, you may be blasting through the language barrier to reach a wider audience, but are you not abasing yourself before the Anglo-American cultural hegemony that the competition is clearly designed to rebuff? There is, of course, a middle way, as taken by the Israeli-born Carmela Corren, who sang for Austria in 1966, and changed gear from German to English halfway through "Vielleicht Geschieht ein Wunder" ("Maybe a Miracle Will Happen". Historians of Eurovision argue that the miracle had been waiting to happen ever since the same country dispatched Bob Martin again not the most wistfully Viennese of names to the competition in 1957, with his bottom-ranking ballad "Wohin, Kleines Pony."

The language of lyrics is, in short, a booby trap, and there are three well-established methods for avoiding it. One is to be France, whose performers, as you would hope, grind away in French, year after year, repelling all intruders, giving only the barest hint that other languages, let along other civilizations, even exist; their man in Oslo, Jessy Matador (possibly not his real name), delivered a song called "Allez Olla Ol," which is as close as France will ever come to hedging its bets.

OK, everyone likes a good laugh at the expense of the French, but this little joke is false to fact. A few minutes with Wikipedia reveal to us that France's 2001 entry was Natasha St-Pier singing "Je n'ai que mon me", half in French and half ("All I have is my soul") in English hardly "grinding away in French, repelling all intruders". And France's 2008 entry was Sbastien Tellier performing Divine, (almost) entirely in English:

The lyrics (and the music, and the video) may well make us long for the Bee Gees, but the only French is a dozen words stuck in near the end:

No no no no no no no
I'm looking for a band today
I see the Chivers anyway
Through my eyes

Oh oh oh
I I'm alone in life to say
I love the Chivers anyway
'Cause Chivers look divine
Look away
They try to find the Milky Way
They love to drink it everyday

No no no no no no no
You You and I, It's like you said
I'm not a Chivers anyway
You look fine

Oh oh oh
I I'm alone in life to say
I love the Chivers anyway
Cause Chivers look divine
Look away
They try to find the Milky Way

I Toi et moi C'est comme tu sais
Comment mon coeur a succombe
She looks fine

Oh oh oh
I'm looking for a band today
I see the Chivers anyway
I 'll be a Chivers guy some day
In my mind

This is surely a song whose "kick and soul" could have been increased by translation into almost any other language perhaps Etruscan or Cornish. But the fact that France's 2008 entry involved "grinding away" in English was hardly a secret it was discussed in the French parliament, for example and so we might have hoped for the New Yorker's fact checkers to ask Anthony Lane to modify that passage of his article, even if it takes some of the sting out of the joke.

Continuing with Lane's discussion of the three ways to deal with not being English:

The second method is to be Ireland, the nation that has won the contest more often than any other. Seven times it has struck gold, and no wonder; if you can sing in English without actually being English all the technical advantages without the shameful imperialist baggage you're halfway to the podium already. []

The third method, which is by far the most popular, and which has brought mirthful pleasure to millions on an annual basis, is to sing in Eurovision English: an exquisite tongue, spoken nowhere else, which raises the poetry of heartfelt but absolute nonsense to a level of which Lewis Carroll could only have dreamed. The Swedes are predictably fluent in this ("Your breasts are like swallows a-nesting," they sang in 1973), and the Finns, too, should be hailed as early with their faintly troubling back-to-back efforts from the mid-seventies, "Old Man Fiddle" and "Pump-pump," but the habit continued to flourish even during those periods when the home-language ruling was in place, as cunning lyricists broke the embargo by smuggling random expostulations into their titles and choruses. [] Hence such gems as [] Sweden's "Diggi-loo Diggi-ley," which won in 1984. The next year's contenders, spurred by such bravado, responded with "Magic, Oh Magic" (Italy) and "Piano Piano" (Switzerland). Not that the host nation relinquished the crown without a fight, as anyone who watched Kikki Danielson can attest. Her song was called "Bra Vibrationer." It was, regrettably, in Swedish.

Another well-worded joke, this time at the expense of the Swedes, who are another reliable object for Anglo-American linguistic humor. But again, there's a small problem of fact. This passage is likely to leave readers with the impression that "Bra Vibrationer" was an instance of those cunning lyricists breaking the linguistic embargo by smuggling random bits of un-idiomatic English into their titles and choruses. But being (however regrettably) in Swedish, "Bra Vibrationer" actually was (and is) Swedish for "Good Vibrations". And Ms. Danielsson's costume included a fairly demure pink jacket that eliminated essentially all possibilities for visible jiggle, so that Anthony Lane's innuendo, though undeniably effective, is a misleading cross-linguistic pun.

Perhaps the job description of New Yorker fact checkers stops short of spoiling a joke by insisting on clarity about such things. Or perhaps, as in the matter of the lion tongues, those fact checkers are now more legend than reality.

[I should also mention that an ingenious fourth way of not being English was tried by the French entrant in the 2007 contest, Les Fatal Picards (discussed here), whose song was in a combination of English and French produced with a fake English accent:

Maybe that one was a little too ironic for "kick and soul", but I liked it.]

By Andrew Liszewski

While this chesterfield sofa might look like it's made from a bland gray leather, believe it or not it's actually made from concrete. It was created by a UK-based company called Gray Concrete, appropriately enough, for the 100% Design exhibition in London, and the incredible amount of detail in it was captured using the company's special molding techniques. Not only does it look like it's made from actual leather, but they went the extra mile by ensuring the cushions have bum prints' and you'll even find a concrete fifty pence coin stuck behind one of them. Now obviously the piece was created to show just how versatile concrete can be, but I think you could really class up a city by replacing its traditional park benches with durable, concrete reproductions of famous pieces of furniture.

[ Design Milk - Concrete Chesterfield Sofa by Gray Concrete ]

Whether that leads to actual convictions, who knows. But this Bloomberg article has some interesting analysis on one legal avenue for prosecution that could actually lead to punishment for BP, as a company, and top executives, including Tony Hayward, rather than simply focusing on the employees directly in charge of operations at the Deepwater Horizon site.

One hint of what a broader indictment might look like comes from an unlikely source: private civil-racketeering lawsuits that have been brought on behalf of property and business owners in Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida. One of the suits, filed on June 12 in federal district court in Pensacola, Florida, by the plaintiffs' firm, Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner Rafferty & Proctor, accuses BP and Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward not only of discrete instances of pollution; it also alleges the company engaged in an illegal "enterprise" to mislead regulators over a period of years.

... these events show that BP engaged in a scheme that violated the civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The RICO law was enacted in 1970 to help prosecutors put Mafiosi behind bars. It has been used more broadly against corporations and high-profile individuals, including junk-bond impresario Michael Milken in 1989. It allows prosecution of people who operate or oversee an illegal enterprise, even if they did not commit the main criminal acts in question. The maximum prison term is 20 years for each count.

Wallter, the brand that brought you the beautiful Fold Bedding, wall decor, and modern mobiles has just launched a line of modern planters. The powder-coated spun aluminum planters are available in orange, mustard, white, or teal and come in three styles: Post, Wall, and Hang. The wall planters are ideal for small indoor container gardens, and the posts are perfect for lining your fence or patio with greenery.

[via Grassrootsmodern]

Shared by Mariela
mmmmmmmmm, want :)

Yes, I am officially the token GTD guy at Androinica. One of the things that I have battled with while owning an Android device is how to use it in my day-to-day GTD system. So, this is my mega-GTD-on-Android post that may help my fellow GTDers on Android.

There are plenty of productivity apps, but there is one prerequisite for this list. I have a hard time considering an Android GTD app viable with absolutely no synchronization to a webapp or desktop PC available. The only apps I am looking at have some sort of sync option.

QR codes are available for download. (If browsing from a phone, click on the QR image to open in the market)

Astrid (Free)

Astrid has been a staple for most Android to-do and GTD people for a long time, and that isn't a coincidence. Astrid is one of the easiest task options and is definitely filled with the right features:

• tags
• 4 priority levels
• time estimates
• notes section
• deadline and alerts control
• repeat interval
• syncs with RTM
• view by tag (which includes the list name in RTM)
• add tag to homescreen

Astrid is a strong competitor, but the weirdness of sync to RTM is what really kills this app for me. The difference between an RTM list and tag is a confusing one with Astrid. I have even erased all lists and tags and tried to start over with just lists and somehow the proper sync gets lost in translation. If this sounds confusing to you, it's because it is and the ONE thing that has kept me from Astrid. Other than that, Astrid is one of the best.

Remember the Milk (requires $25 annually)

RTM is definitely a strong contender for THE Android GTD app. It is simple, has a nice web app, and the Android app seems polished. Here is what is included:

• proper sync with RTM (costs $25 a year for the Pro account)
• add new lists
• add new tasks and tag, set due dates, notes
• tons of list views
• search
• reminders
• widget

RTM has been good to me, but there are some definite quirks. When in edit mode on a task you can't add or remove notes. You have to do that from the task view and there doesn't seem to be any good reason for it. RTM also does not wrap the title of the task so if it is too long to fit in a list in portrait you can't see the whole thing. Best part about RTM is the excellent sync with the tried-and-true webapp. The worst is the price. RTM requires an annual $25 for a Pro account, which will turn off many users.

Shuffle (UK)

Shuffle is a little known GTD app for Android and, I tell you what, it follows the GTD methodology very well. Mr. Allen may be proud. Anyways here is what Shuffle brings to the table:

• actions with dues date are added to calendar
• can tie tasks to projects
• control the action's appearance
• backup to SD
• syncs with any installation of Tracks
• start, due dates
• details field
• contexts

What I love about Shuffle is that it is so simple and really doesn't force anything on you. You can create actions and link them to projects or not. You can create tasks and set there categories and details. Plus, the webapp Tracks (open source) can be installed to any webserver with Ruby so you could technically have your own install of the cloud app on your own server. There are also some installs out there of Tracks that you can use to try the app out. Sometimes I feel that Shuffle just might be too simple for some users, myself included.

Got To Do (UK2.00)

Go To Do is a robust GTD app for Android that syncs with the robust webapp Toodledo. This app is definitely up and coming with a very responsive developer. Here's what you get:

• tasks and subtasks (Toodledo Pro only)
• in depth todo summary
• contexts, folders, tags, due dates, notes, status
• customizable templates for tasks
• sync with Toodledo
• widget and use with Pure Calendar widget
• great filtering options

The best part about Got To Do is that it can be set up almost any way you want. To many summary choices on the homescreen? No problem, just change the summary in settings. Don't want to use all task fields. Great, because nothing is forced on you. Although Got To Do has a couple of bugs here and there (casual freezes but no loss of data), it seems like one of the most robust GTD apps in the Market right now. And full sync with a Toodledo Pro account makes it even sweeter as Toodledo is one of the best GTD webapps.

ActionComplete (Free)

ActionComplete (AC) is a GTD app that has a bunch of functionality and syncs with actioncomplete.appspost.com. It recently added location-based and social services that enhance the app. Here is what AC brings to the table:

• actions, waits, projects, and pending lists
• tags, notes, people, and due date fields
• custom made filters
• full app search
• sync with ActionComplete webapp
• ability to share tasks with others on Google map

What I love about AC is the fact that you can tie tasks to projects (just like Shuffle or Got To Do (pro account) and have the ability to view the actions and waiting for items in one list. This is something that is very convenient for the on the go GTD user. There is an optional layer of complexity that many apps lack. However, one of the biggest downfalls of this app is that context isn't as important. There is no tab along the top or no way to set a context at all for actions, a true bummer.

Final Verdict

Here is the thing about GTD. It is a very personal experience and you have to be able to LOVE the tools that you use to become more productive. The very premise is to create system that best suits you. If you aren't comfortable with the tools, then say goodbye to your complete, trusted system. Knowing that, the best GTD app for Android is

Remember the Milk and Got To Do! It's a tie! The reason for a tie is simply this: sync with RTM and Toodledo. I can't say which one is the best because that is totally up to the individual. What I can say is that both RTM and Got To Do are the most robust and easy to use GTD apps in the Market today. Deciding which app is best depends on which online sync works best for you.

So, what are you still doing here reading this? Go pick up you GTD app and start getting some stuff done!

Best GTD Apps for Android Feature Graph

Click image to increase size