Geek News and Musings

Max Berry’s new novel,MACHINE MAN, serialized online
Matthew sez, “Max Barry, author of Jennifer Government (and a seriously funny guy if you ever get a chance to see him talk in person), is publishing his next book, Machine Man, in serial form, one page a day. You can get it via e-mail, RSS, or just on the web site. Eventually there may be some sort of payment scheme, but that doesn’t seem to be particularly thought out at this point. So far, it’s 9 pages in and I’m enjoying it already.”

One Tuesday afternoon my left leg was severed. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Well, it was. It was agonizing. There was a lot of screaming and flopping around and trying to tear my shirt into pieces to stem the bleeding. While I was busy with this, my co-workers stared through two-inch polycarbonate security glass and beat on the door. They couldn’t get in. It was sealed for their safety. I had to apply my own tourniquet and try not to pass out for eight minutes. While I lay there, waiting for the time-release, I could see the top of what used to be my leg poking out from between two thick slabs of steel, gently dripping blood to the floor. I felt sorry for it. My leg hadn’t asked for this. It had been a good leg. A faithful leg. And now look at it.

But in the weeks afterward, as I lay in my hospital bed, I came to see the bright side. I remembered that expression: A setback is just an opportunity in disguise. I decided that was true. Because while I was sad to lose my leg, now I could build a better one.

Machine Man (Thanks, Matthew!)

Digsby Available in New Portable Version [Downloads]

Instant messaging client Digsby, winner of the Best System Tray Applications Hive Five and all-around Lifehacker reader favorite, is now available as a convenient portable application.

The initial release of a portable version of Digsby couldn’t handle updates without breaking. Those bugs have been ironed out, though, and now the portable version updates right alongside the desktop version without a hitch. The author’s site is in German, and for some reason switching over to the English translation makes the download link vanish. The link below is a direct link to the download to save you the hassle of navigating the site; if you want to visit site before downloading the file, follow this link. Digsby Portable is freeware, Windows only.

Brain Rules: Oliver Sacks meets GETTING THINGS DONE, paperback ships, DVD goes free
Avi sez, “John Medina, author of Brain Rules, an excellent summary of 13 neuroscience hacks applicable in daily life, has put the cool companion DVD online for free as an introduction to the paperback release of the book.”

Here’s what I wrote about Brain Rules when the hardcover came out:

John Medina’s Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School pulls off a terrific trick: combining popular science with touching personal memoir and a bunch of practical conclusions for improving work, education and personal life.

Brain Rules takes the brain’s mysteries apart into twelve pieces: Exercise, survival, wiring, attention, short-term memory, long-term memory, sleep, stress, multisensory perception, vision, gender, and exploration. He discusses the best, most current science describing what drives each one, delving into psychology, neurology, evolutionary biology, and practical disciplines like behavioural economics, organizational science, and pedagogy.

Woven into the science are a series of vivid anaecdotes from Medina’s life and from case histories gathered across the scientific literature, and emerging naturally from that are a series of eminently practical recommendations for reforming the workplace and the education system, and for improving the way that we interact with ourselves and others.

Medina’s approach to the subject combines the best aspects of Oliver Sacks and Getting Things Done, making the book into something that’s part manifesto and part education. The BrainRules.net site features a ton of audio and video about the book’s subject (Medina’s descriptions of the value of multisensory learning are very compelling) and other supplementary material, and the book comes bundled with a DVD containing much of this material as well.

Brain Rules in paperback

Brain Rules DVD online

Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education [Lifehacker Top 10]

It’s easy to forget these days that the internet started out as a place for academics and researchers to trade data and knowledge. Recapture the web’s brain-expanding potential with these free resources for educating yourself online.

Photo by Sailor Coruscant.

10. Teach yourself programming

Coding, whether on the web or on the desktop, is one of those skills you’ll almost never regret having. Coincidentally, the web is full of people willing to teach, and show off, programming skills. Whether you’re looking to knock out a modest Firefox extension or tackle your first programming language, there's no requirement to run out and buy the thickest book you can find at Barnes & Noble. Google Code University, for instance, hosts a whole CSE program’s worth of straight-up coding lessons in its bowels. We’ve pointed out a lot of other programming resources found around the web, so you should be able to get started in almost any project. As for the random, unexpected, seemingly inscrutable bugs, well … welcome to the fold.

9. Get a Personal MBA

“MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work.” The Personal MBA site occasionally updates its list of dozens of helpful business books, designed to teach both the nuts-and-bolts money stuff and the kind of thinking one needs to get ahead in sales, marketing, or wherever your interests lie. A business school can offer networking, mentoring, and other perks, but nobody can teach you enthusiasm and business savvy—except yourself.

8. Learn to actually use Ubuntu

Too often, newcomers to Ubuntu, the seriously popular Linux distribution, find that their questions about any problem great or small is answered with a curt “Search the forums,” or “Just Google it.” From experience, that’s like telling someone there’s maple sap somewhere in that forest, so here’s a nail and get moving. With a brand-new installation sitting on your computer, few resources are as straight-forward and comprehensive as the Ubuntu Guide, which is packed with common stuff like installing VLC and getting VLC playback, but spans across topics including Samba and remote printing configuration. Author Keir Thomas also offered Lifehacker readers a little preview of his Ubuntu Kung Fu in two excerpts that tweak one’s system into a faster, more efficient data flinger.

7. Get started on a new language

Nobody’s pretending you can talk like a local without some immersion experience. But there’s a lot of resources on the web for honing an already-sharpened second language, or at least picking up some of the vocab and nuances. Learn10 gives you 10 vocabulary builders delivered every day by email, through iGoogle, through an iPhone page, or most any other way you’d like. One Minute Languages podcasts its lessons and lets newcomers stream from the archives. And Mango Languages has about 100 lessons, shown to you in PowerPoint style with interstitial quizzes, to move you through any language without cracking a book. Not that books are bad, of course, but this is stuff you can crack out during a coffee break.

6. Trade your skills, find an instructor

As Ramit Sethi put it in our interview, many people don’t realize the value of the skills they do have, whether it’s something as simple as higher-level English or software lessons for those in need. A site like TeachMate capitalizes on the inherent disparities in our interests, letting someone willing to teach a bit of, for example, Russian language get cooking lessons in return. If a site like TeachMate doesn’t quite reach you, try Craigslist, which, especially in a recession, is brimming with people looking to trade skills instead of cash.

5. Academic Earth and YouTube EDU

We have to guess that having a giant, searchable database of free academic lectures was just too good an idea for two different web firms to pass up. Academic Earth has been described as a Hulu-like aggregator for lots of major universities’ content, and offers the slicker and more navigable front-end for them, as well as allowing embedding and sharing with no restrictions. YouTube EDU might have a broader reach, and the player and format might be a bit more familiar to most. Both sites offer both individual lectures and full course series, and are definitely worth checking out.

4. Teach yourself all kinds of photography

Sites like Photojojo and Digital Photography School are oft-linked resources around Lifehacker, and for good reason. They let the uber-technical shooters run wild in forums and discussion groups, but focus the majority of their front-page posts on things that beginning DSLR shooters and moderate consumer-cam photographers can grasp and mix into their daily camera work. Of course, we’ve compiled and sought out our own digital photography advice at Lifehacker, including photographer Scott Feldstein’s guide to mastering your DSLR camera (Part 1 and Part 2), and our compilation of David Pogue’s best photography tricks, plus ours. Then there’s the simple pleasures of posting on Flickr, seeking out Photo by Marcin Wichary.

3. Get an unofficial liberal arts major

Whole-mind learning doesn't end the day you declare a major and start sending out resumes. A huge number of universities offer up some of their most unique and fascinating resources for free online, posting up databases, image galleries, and all kinds of stuff you wish you had time to dig through during your undergrad years. Learn everything you ever wanted to about Picasso at Texas A & M's Picasso Project. Indulge your inner geo-geek with super hi-res images from Hirise at the University of Arizona. Tour the world’s spaces in 3D with The World Wide Panorama at UC Berkeley. Wendy Boswell discovered those resources and way more in her discovery of the .edu underground, and you can find a lot more down there, too.

2. Learn an instrument

If being dropped off at the music store/mall/piano teacher’s house wasn’t a memorable part of your childhood, you might dig the digital age’s equivalents a lot more. Guitar players, in particular, have a lot of places to turn for video, audio, and graphical teaching tools. Adam rounded a lot of them up in his guide to learning to play an instrument online. If you want to build a foundation for learning any instrument, though, Ricci Adams’ Musictheory.net has Flash-based tutorials that offer a gentle tour through keys, time signatures, modalities, and the other ins and outs of notes and chords.

1. Learn from actual college courses online

A huge number of colleges, universities, and other degree-granting universities are going all open-source these days—giving away the actual guts of their courses, while retaining their revenue stream by awarding degrees only to those who pay. In this day and age, though, programming, marketing, design, and other self-taught skills are pretty valuable, however you came by them. Whether you're looking to break into a field or just augment your skill set, dig into our guide to getting a free college education online, which we then updated a bit with Education Portal’s list of ten universities with the best free online courses. Just think about it—at home, with your coffee and comfortable chair, you're far more awake than the average co-ed who totally should have hit the hay a bit earlier last night.

Where do you turn when you have to teach yourself something? What skills or topics would you like to see more coverage of on Lifehacker, or just anywhere on the web? Help us plan a curriculum in the comments.

This Week’s Most Popular Posts [Highlights]

Time for a look back at all the productivity goodies you loved this week on Lifehacker.

If you missed too many posts over the course of the week, your Lifehacker eyes may be bigger than your productivity stomach. Consider giving our top stories feed a try, or get really specific with your own customized feed. Here are this week’s best posts:

• Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities
  It’s the little things that make a Windows system great-like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
• Five Best Web Browsers
  It’s probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser, in this week’s Hive Five.
• Turn an Old Laptop into a Wall-Mounted Computer
  Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? Lifehacker reader Justin took an old Sony Vaio laptop he wasn’t using and turned it into a wall-mounted computer.
• First Look at Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” Beta
  The name’s ridiculous, but “Jaunty Jackalope,” the next release of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, is seriously focused on the user experience.
• Ramit Sethi on Getting Rich and Automating Your Money
  Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and the same-named blog, answered a few questions recently about managing and automating money.
• Academic Earth Aggregates Lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Others
  Web site Academic Earth is like Hulu for academic lectures, pulling free lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale into one attractive, easy to navigate site.
• Killer Typography Tools and Free Font Downloads
  Whether you’re putting together a resume, flyer, or web page, everyone needs to find and compare fonts some time. Here are some tools that can help you find the perfect font.
• Switch to a Two-Week Grocery Cycle to Waste Less Food
  The Green Cheapskate Blog cites studies showing that the American grocery shopper wastes 25 percent of their purchased food-if not more. Switch to an every-other-week shopping regimen, and you might start throwing less money away.
• 101 Recession-Busting Free Sites and Downloads
  PC World just published my (Adam’s) big old compendium of great free web sites and downloads. They’re calling it 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, but you’re Lifehacker readers, so you’ve seen most of them at some time or another here.
• Create Edible Gummy Shot Glasses
  Trying to figure out what to serve your skittles-infused vodka in? Why, a flavored gummy shot glass, of course. ShesParticular at tinkering haven Instructables uploaded a ridiculously simple tutorial on making your own gummy shot glasses.
• Make Your Home Dust-Proof
  Cut down on the time you spend dusting and make the air in your home healthier with a few simple tips.

Train Operators Around The World Stopping Others From Helping Riders… Due To Intellectual Property
What is it about folks who operate train lines that make them so confused when it comes to intellectual property? They seem to be focused on harming their own businesses in an effort to “protect” intellectual property. If enforcing your intellectual property makes you worse off, then why are you enforcing it? Just today, we received two separate stories of incredibly backwards thinking from those who operate train-lines — which makes you really wonder why some people get so focused on protecting intellectual property that they lose sight of the fact that it’s harming their business.

We’ve already talked about those who run trains in Germany and Australia cracking down on people creating their own iPhone train schedule apps, claiming they violated intellectual property rights of the train operators. This makes very little sense for a variety of reasons. First, it is still quite ridiculous that any sort of factual information can be covered by copyright — but in Europe such “collections” of information can be covered by the database copyrights — the idea that if you put factual information into a “database” that database then deserves copyright protection. Europe has this, while the US does not — and studies have shown that contrary to what copyright supports insist, this increased right has actually hindered the database industry in Europe… but that hasn’t made the law go away.

But, of course, even more idiotic than just the question of copyrighting facts, is the simple point that these apps make it easier for people to ride the trains, which should be exactly what the train operators are encouraging. Thanks to the mantra of certain copyright supporters that “free is bad,” some folks seem unable to think out more than a single step. The fact is, that if people can make a great train schedule app that makes it easier to take the train, then that means more people will take the train, which is where the real money is for train operators. But, of course, the folks who only see one step out, think “wait, we should be making money on that data!” even if it means fewer people take the train, and the net benefit is less.

The latest to make that decision is the UK’s National Rail Enquiries, who forced the creators of the MyRail Lite app to shut down (thanks to Donald for sending this in). MyRail Lite was a free iPhone app. NRE is offering its own app… for £4.99. So in the short-term rush to try to score a bit of money from a small group of people, NRE is making the overall rail system a lot more complex for the majority of people. Short-term thinking at its finest.

Unfortunately, the author of the article, Rory Cellan-Jones, starts out by agreeing that this is dumb, but then seems to change his mind, after reading the silly James DeLong article about newspapers where he (in typical DeLong fashion) insists that the use of “free” is what destroyed newspapers. The arguments are easy to debunk, but Cellan-Jones seems to have fallen for them. But it’s easy to see how wrong it is in this case: the business NRE is transportation. If it gets people from point A to point B more efficiently, it will be able to make more money charging for that service. A free app that makes the process more efficient helps the bottom line. Trying to scrape up a bit of extra cash at the front end, while making the process more inefficient for more people is incredibly short-sighted.

But, that isn’t the most ridiculous story we heard today about trains and intellectual property. Lucretious sends in the news that a group of four very nice women in New York City who have been voluntarily working to make public transportation in NYC more pleasant have been ordered to stop by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The women have set up a website, MTAService.org where they provide information on how to make your public transit in NY better. It’s run by four women, who also ride the subways regularly (wearing their own made up uniforms) trying to help provide better service — helping people find where they need to go, or helping mothers with strollers, for example.

But, of course, the MTA has sent them a cease-and-desist, demanding they pull down the information. You can see the trademark worries — even though the website clearly states that the MTA Service Specialists (as they call themselves) are in no way affiliated with the MTA (they note “unfortunately.”) But, rather than the MTA doing the smart thing, and seeing if they can actually associate themselves with these helpful women, the MTA just wants to shut them down. This is short-term thinking again. Sure, there almost certainly is a valid trademark claim here — but if someone actually took the time to sit back and look at the facts of the situation, they would realize that a better response would be to see if they could sign these women up officially to help improve service on the subway. As the women note, they’re just trying to improve the MTA’s service, without costing the city any money at all.

Once again… we see how this aggressive believe in “we must protect our IP!” is actually being used to hinder service improvements, rather than help them.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story