Dave Naffziger's Blog

Cool by Dave Naffziger + on January 15, 2008 at 11:47 pm

Its been a little while since I put one of these posts out.

Interesting:

Higher wine prices boost drinking pleasure. A fascinating research study that demonstrates areas of the brain that register pleasure are more active when we’re told the wine is expensive. Fascinating implications for marketers.
Become your own Registrar. Need to register a lot of domain names and just don’t trust GoDaddy. For $3K a month, MyRebel will operate the technical infrastructure of your very own registrar for you.
Deriving Neighborhood data. An interesting post on OpenList’s approach to understanding neighborhoods. This aligns with my thoughts on the semantic web - most semantic meaning will be derived by ‘intelligent agents’, not defined by content owners. Thanks (Rahul and Niki).
Live energy consumption Data. Chris pointed me to this article about a pilot project that allows consumers to monitor their energy consumption real-time.

Cool:

5 very cool research facilities (plus 5 More). Some of these are familiar, but others aren’t. The ATF Fire Research Laboratory where they conduct full scale combustion of houses is my favorite new discovery in this batch.
Circular Rail Gun. A new approach to launch satellites that removes the high g forces necessary in existing designs.
Lord of the Rings Origami. Yup, each of these figures was made from a single sheet of paper (thanks Kurt)

Useful:

Google Map of Seattle Red Light Cameras.
Audiworld Forums. My Audi A4 was recently totaled (their fault, everyone ok), and I replaced it with a used B5 S4. The content in this forum is incredible - just about every common problem is diagnosed along with detailed steps to remedy the problem. I’ve already repaired two speakers and replaced my blinker control module based on content found here. It is only a short time before car repair wikis replace the Bentley/Chilton manuals that people use today.
Whistler Skiing Tips. Rich Tong has been penning a series of awesome consumer tips posts. This one provides a quick useful guide to Whistler vacation planning (and triggered my Edge card purchase).

Hilarious: