http://feeds.2×5.in/2×5

please subscribe to our new feed address above!
It’s our new name for our company 2×5 INteractive (two by five = 2 hands and 5 fingers). Xtepz is the name of our super duper exciting project and this site will give you more information on this project as it develops.

Thank you for subscribing to our blog. We have more exciting ideas to share with you so keep your eyes on us through our brand new domain.

sung

 

Baby Name Brainstorm [babynamebrainstorm.com] is an interactive, animated name graph that helps future parents to find names with particular aesthetic and semantic qualities. Names can be selected (e.g. “Andrew”) and explored within several contexts, such as “sounds like” (e.g. “Andreas”), “found in” (e.g. “Andrews”) or “contains” (e.g. “Andre”), while also pointing out some facts (e.g. “Andrew” being one of the Apostles, “James” being one of the Tank Engines).

See also:

- the famous Baby Name Voyager

- Baby Names Trends

- Baby Diaper Tracker Graphs

permalink

 

If you’re looking to keep a closer eye on your finances this year and you live and breath Gmail, reader Nick Espinosa has developed a clever method that may be up your alley.

Using Google Docs, Espinosa creates an expense form designed to quickly and painlessly gather expense information and save it to a Google Spreadsheet. He then emails that form to himself and bookmarks that email in Gmail using Gmail Quick Links.

You can submit the Google Doc form directly from the email as many times as you want, so every time he incurs an expense, Espinosa simply opens that email and adds the expense. It’s a nice little system for quickly and easily capturing expenses using tools that you’re already using every day.

Use Gmail and Google Docs to Track Your Spending [Google Docs]

permalink

Here are some notes I made while watching this video

Design pattern, recurring problem solving

Twyla Tharp’s book - The creative habit

Stephen King’s book - On writing

time you set aside each day (I’m trying to make this a habit these days)

process of making things
having ideas is the least of your problems
making something awesome is hard

people who want to make the leap

learning how to work your ass off - jacky chan school (I need this)

Uber patterns
- you gotta want it enough to sacrifice
- sit down and work, try
- soft/hard absorbe, then edit

Merlin Mann - “Toward Patterns for Creativity” - Macworld PULSE

Here’s a video of my presentation, “Toward Patterns for Creativity,” from earlier this month at Macworld, here in SF.

As I said, I’m very interested in seeing where a topic like this could go. Because I truly believe it’s an idea that could help push a lot of people to the next level.

Related: if you’re interested in where my head was as I prepped for this, be sure and catch the previous post, The Problem with “Feeling Creative”.

Also, if you haven’t done so already, do yourself a favor, and pick up the book I highlight in this talk: The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe.

[via: Macworld Pulse: Merlin Mann | Macworld]

permalink

In 1981, the first Motorola cellular phone, consisting mostly of a big battery, was marketed almost exclusively to police and emergency services. Few other customers could afford it.

The development of technology that could “hand off” a call from one cell tower to the next was a huge achievement at the time. I like the way the museum curators adjusted the appearance of this display, using Lucite and perforated steel to capture that “modern” 1980s look.

I have a DVD of an early Hong Kong gangster movie in which actors talk into Motorola DynaTAC phones. I wish I owned one. Imagine pulling one of these monsters out of your briefcase during a business lunch.

permalink

We sure came a long way.

Jason sez, “DePauw University presents a series of videos on how to program the PDP-11. They present all of the steps: toggling a loader, reading and punching paper tape and running an assembler. A must-see for retrocomputing neophytes!

Just one Jon-Lovitz-warning: ACTING!”

ZOMG, these are utterly fantastic!

Using a PDP-11/10 to Teach Content and History in Computer Organization Courses

(Thanks, Jason!)

permalink

I was very intrigued when I saw that they were selling the content generated by this application. Can a company make a business out of selling user generated content back to the users? Or is everyone doing this already?

aMap [amap.org.uk] is a new venture designed to promote the art of arguing by mapping out complex arguments in a simple visual way across social media. aMaps come both in printed and internet formats. The printed, pocket-sized series of aMaps cover a mixture of weighty and not so weighty arguments including: Does God exist? Cat or dog? Is modern art rubbish? Beatles or Stones? Are children worth it? The interactive aMaps allow people to create their own interactive arguments so they can argue with friend (or foe) online.

The initial aMap project was set up to look at how “visualization techniques” could be used to help create simplified visualisations of complex arguments, with the overall aim to help the average man on the street be able to engage and participate in complex policy issues. The current goal is obviously to investigate different routes of how to best visualise arguments in a social, online medium context.

See also Narrating Bits and Verbal Conversation Clock.

Thnkx Adam.

permalink

Checkvist is a web-based to-do list manager that’s easy to navigate, simple to export from, and smart when it comes to organizing your tasks.

The first thing you might notice at Checkvist’s site is the support for keyboard shortcuts that allow for quick task and sub-task creation. Everything is displayed in hierarchical, first-things-first fashion for easy review and navigation, and collaborators can add to and work with your lists. But the best feature by far is the ability to import and export your lists easily in plain text, HTML, and OPML formats—a welcome bit of openness for anyone who doesn’t pretend to live entirely online. And when you’re copying from list to list, Checkvist’s copy-over tool transfers only the uncompleted items, saving you a whole lot of checkbox toggling.

For more to-do list options check out the Hive Five best to-do list mangers and to keep your to-do list under control take a peek at the art of the doable to-do list. Our apologies for the dupe.

Checkvist [via MakeUseOf]

permalink

via http://www.gridplane.com/html/projects/data-vis

permalink