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Science & Technology

WordPress 2.8 – Better Widgets?

Widget management is item #1 on the list of priorities for WordPress 2.8 development. I explored the cognitive psychology behind the widget management screen design in an earlier post, WordPress 2.5 Widgets?Taking the Load Off Your Mind. Here are the takeaway design suggestions.

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The Infinite Book: The Plastic Logic Reader (and the Real Nature of Books)

A book is essentially whole, unitary — a little world of human thought, word, & spirit, chosen, shaped, and bound within its covers. Books are bundles; a book is what is bound together. For what makes a book more than it’s binding?

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Gutenberg’s PC: The Espresso Book Machine

The Espresso Book Machine brings the flexibility and ubiquity of digital media to the old medium of printed paper books, extending the transformation that Gutenberg’s press began, and putting the final say on publishing a book firmly in the hands of the authors and readers. So what will happen when everybody has one of these?

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Does Your Book Deserve My Vote?

Kids react to books much as they react to their favorite candidates: they like them because everyone else does, adding titles to their favorites list even when they haven’t read them. Voting for a Book, part of the Youth Radio series on NPR.

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August, 1945

Sixty-three years ago this week, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The enormity of the event, the inhuman scale of both this power and its consequences, is nearly impossible to communicate. How can one understand the power of a thousand suns unleashed upon whole cities? It became one of the defining stories for generations […]

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Civility on the Web (or, If you talk, be polite)

The New York Times explores calls for a Code of Conduct (like this from Jimmy Wales, or this from Tim O’Riley) on the web, as well as the motivations and secret lives of the Trolls Among Us; and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, explains why A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.

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Male and Female: Equal After All

Cecilia Ford’s investigations into the power of conversation for her new book, Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings, are reviewed here: Researcher finds that women are speaking up; and Janet Hyde, author of Half the Human Experience, has published research that finds no gender differences in math performance.

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The Library Has Landed! Phoenix Takes Books to Mars

Human interactions with the Red Planet have long been a blend of wonder, science, imagination, fear, longing & engineering. In honor of this interplay, The Planetary Society has placed a DVD among the scientific instruments on board the Phoenix Lander that touched down on the Martian south pole this last memorial day. And it carries books.

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Firefox 3: How to Surf the Web

I’ve been using the open-source Firefox web browser since 2003, when a techie friend (thanks, Rocky!) emailed our church list to suggest it as a less virus-vulnerable alternative to the standard Microsoft mess.

That makes me an internet expert 😉 –and since I know everything there is to know, I thought I’d write you this handy guide:

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