Medieval social networks; cause’n'effect and the science of addiction; Vinge on the Singularity; the Great Vowel Shift; eBay was a fad (allegedly); 1337 Wordpress hax OMG …

• 1 – A 13th century social network
  “The mathematicians and computer scientists looked through thousands of records of land transactions dating back as far as 1260 in a Southwest part of France. The result of their study shows ‘how medieval peasants and lords were connected.’”
  (tags: community society analysis research social-network medieval)
• 2 – Word Of Mouth Marketing Isn’t Effective If Your Product Sucks
  “Real word of mouth marketing is about building a great product, and then letting your customers pass on the news however they see fit. If there’s anything to do on the “marketing” side, it’s merely to enable the tools for your biggest fans to spread the
  (tags: product strategy tools campaign word-of-mouth marketing internet)
• 3 – A spliff test for science
  “So for now, we simply don’t know for sure whether cannabis is genuinely changing brain architecture. And the same dilemmas apply to study of all addictions.” Cause and effect, folks.
  (tags: function chemistry brain addiction medicine science effect cause)
• 4 – Great Vowel Shift
  “The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1200 and 1600.” Linguistic archaeology FTW!
  (tags: Great-Vowel-Shift pronounciation english phonetics linguistics language)
• 5 – Vernor Vinge – Signs of the Singularity
  “Even if the singularity does not happen, we are going to have to put up with singularity enthusiasms for a long time. Get used to it.”
  (tags: futurism AI extrapolation singularity Vinge)
• 6 – Was eBay a fad?
  “… we’re beginning to find out that eBay’s seemingly revolutionary core – the online auction – may have been a fad all along.” Or is it just that prices have settled to mutually reasonable points?
  (tags: fluctuation price market online economics auctions ebay)
• 7 – Widget Logic – WordPress Plugins
  “… gives every widget an extra control field called “Widget logic” that lets you control when the widget appears. The text field lets you use WP’s Conditional Tags, or any general PHP code.” Get in!
  (tags: control dynamic plugin sidebar widgets wordpress)
• 8 – Rich countries ‘failed to heed’ food crisis warnings
  “It was all to no effect,” he said. “Only when those excluded from the banquet of the rich went into the streets to express their anger and desperation were responses made.” Business as usual, then.
  (tags: crisis shortage food agriculture famine world)
• 9 – Creating a dynamic sidebar — Wordpress
  “If you have widgets in your sidebar, you can intersperse them into the code provided, or keep them separate, to arrange things any way you wish.” Hmm. Good hack.
  (tags: widgets plugins php tutorial sidebar dynamic webdev wordpress)
• 10 – Sunplant photovoltaic foliage on display in Milan
  “… an elaborate outdoor energy installation that fuses art with environmentally friendly gadget power [...] energy from the sun hits one of the plant’s eight PV panel ‘leaves’, which is then used to recharge up to 48 AA batteries …”
  (tags: installation art photovoltaic energy power solar)
• 11 – Watford Valves
  Glassware for musos, innit? Valve-powered rock action FTW!
  (tags: valves tubes amp guitar)
• 12 – Becoming immortal
  “… the first human to live to 1,000 may have already been born. Which raises the question: does death give meaning to our lives? Where do we go from here?”
  (tags: philosophy meaning religion longevity transhumanism human immortality)
• 13 – Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo
  Interesting, in a kind of CSI-Internet kinda way.
  (tags: images fake forensics photoshop manipulation photo)