Late Sunday Reading

Some really nice gems from around the web. 

Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions: psychopathologizing the human being. 

When did life itself become a treatable mental disorder? Idem

Where The World Lives, By Latitude [Infographic]

I still love Kierkegaard: He is the dramatic thunderstorm at the heart of philosophy and his provocation is more valuable than ever

Portugal é um dos melhores países do mundo para se ser mãe (in Portuguese): Portugal is one of the best countries to be a mother. Yes, ahead of Canada, the US and others. The report is here.

Change is good by Thomas Hawk, a well known photographer. An analysis about the intersection between the social narratives and technology. I don't agree completely but there are some really good points here. 

On the road: Leaving LA? Forget the scenic route along the coast: hit the Five instead and see what’s on California’s mind

Late Sunday reading

Or maybe for the week. :)

A 75-Year Harvard Study Finds What It Takes To Live A Happy Life: it's all about the love and your relationships.

Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine: what is death? When do you become dead?

How Ray Kurzweil Will Help Google Make the Ultimate AI Brain: living in intersections.

Arriving at Auschwitz, October 4, 1944: From the Diary of Helga Weiss: History will never forget. 

Helga's Diary: Holocaust survivor Helga Weiss relives her story (video)

In the dark: Dark matter is the commonest, most elusive stuff in the universe. Can we grasp this great unsolved problem in physics?

Exploring the therapeutic effects of yoga and its ability to increase quality of life

Efficiency and chaos

Is efficiency directly linked to a durable and wide loss of jobs across every sector of society? Where is the point where you leave "good" efficiency and get "extremely harmful" efficiency? Will this "bad" efficiency lead to the equation efficiency=social void=unhappiness=social unrest?

Printing photovoltaic cells on paper or fabric

I hope MIT can bring this to market.

Asus UX21 ultrathin laptop hands-on

Now, Acer Chromebook, Macbook Air or Asus UX21?

New Nook

Here's the new Nook from Barnes & Noble.

It comes with Android 2.1. I'm wondering if we will see Honeycomb on this beauty... ;)

Yale Digital Commons

As on their website,

...search across Yale's collections of art, natural history, books, and maps, as well as photos, audio, and video documenting people, places, and events that form part of Yale's institutional identity and contribution to scholarship.

Enjoy!

Autism and Technology

Gregory Abowd on Computing & Autism

Queens University Researchers Unveiled the PaperPhone

The question is: what's a PaperPhone? :)

According to researchers, it is best described as a flexible iPhone – it does everything a smartphone does, like store books, play music or make phone calls. But its display consists of a 9.5 cm diagonal thin film flexible E Ink display. The flexible form of the display makes it much more portable that any current mobile computer: it will shape with your pocket.

Here's a video:



It looks pretty interesting but I don't see the use for it for the average consumer. But, let's wait for further developments.

Here.

Resultados do Inquérito sobre o Panorama Nacional Tecnológico

Interessante relatório.

Destaco os 87% que afirmaram que não é fácil ser empreendedor em Portugal.

Possíveis razões:

- Começar é muito difícil. Não há um sistema de incentivos (impostos) adequado.
- Há poucas oportunidades de obter pequenos financiamentos para dar os primeiros passos: Seed capital e VC.
- A cultura de risco é fraca e deve ser ensinada nas Universidades. Falhar ou errar é culturalmente considerado mau e deixa sequelas na nossa sociedade.

Aqui.

Graduate with Google Apps: social 2.0+

Want to know what's Social 2.0+?

Take a look!

iPad Study and Academic Experience Enhancement

I have serious doubts that the iPad (and other computer devices) can be used as a fundamental instrument to promote better learning of children and young adults but I think that fully integration with learning contents can reduce the negative aspects that technology can have when disengaged from the learning process.

For those who live in Portugal and remember the introduction of computers in schools, we know that they ended up by creating no stimulus for children learning processes because not enough attention was given to content integration. Instead, they were "thrown" to schools by politicians whose main goal was to rise high the flag of education without considering scientific research on the subject.

Some remarks:

Consensus is the integration of the iPad can enhance a student’s academic experience and have a positive impact for faculty as well. We used the iPad in every aspect of our course. The most important consideration is the device must be truly integrated. Simply distributing the device without evaluation of how the course might be modified for its use limits the impact.

The description of results made by the authors seem very fragile but I don't know the specifics of the program or its implementation.

The iPad pilot program in Oklahoma State University



From here.

Chrome OS File Management Improvements and more

Here are some screenshots of improvements made in the last Chrome (ok, Chromium.. :D) OS build:

File Manager open as a new tab (you should use CTRL+O to open files)

New folder name pop up

Folder "Test" created

You have to hit DEL if you want to delete the file

Folder "external storage" (note the curious date...)

Folders inside "external storage"

EFI boot files

Login screen when locked

The screensaver

Chrome OS is building up to be an amazing OS! I'm very convinced that Chrome OS will mark the begining of a new phase in operating systems.

And it's only Chrome OS v1.0. The party is just starting!  

Google Inside Out

Steven Levy, respected journalist and author of "In the Plex," reveals fascinating untold stories about one of the most massively influential companies in history.

Speaker: Steven Levy, Senior Writer, Wired Magazine
Moderator: Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, AllThingsD.com



Via All Things Digital.

An open letter to Mr. Richard Stallman

For those of you who don't know Mr. Stallman, whe's the Free Software Foundation Guru and Evangelist and founder of GNU. Radical to some, righteous activist to others.

Being a controversial figure, he has always attracted heated discussions. This open letter is justified by that ride between the two extremes and the right point between them, where wisdom lives.

I mostly agree with the points made on this letter.

Enjoy!

Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

Some startup kids nodes

Here's the list of all the links of startups referred in the trailer of The Startup Kids. But there's A LOT MORE on their website!

Bambuser
Playfish
Vimeo
College Humor
Wildfire
Y Combinator
Art.sy
Song Kick
Eden Ventures
TechCrunch Europe
Wooga
Dropbox
Newspepper

Know more about the interviews in Europe and in the US.

The tech startup kids documentary

The Startup Kids Trailer from The Startup Kids on Vimeo.

Enjoy! ;)

Free guides: from Gmail to iPhone

The tech nerds at Make Use Of made available some interesting free guides. And there are many! From the Ultimate Guide to Gmail to The Underground Guide to the iphone, there's a lot to choose from.

All you need to do to get these free guides is to be a friend of Make Use Of on Facebook. Yes, that's it!

Enjoy!

Unity revision branches in 30 seconds

Enjoy this video of the revision branches of Unity in just 30 seconds. Amazing!



Via OMGUbuntu.

Google Documents Features Wishlist

My wish list:

- pagination on document view. It's probably coming soon;
- omission of page number on 1st page;
- insert page numbers without being necessary to print the document;
- insert page numbers in headers and footers;
- table of contents with automatic page numbering (very useful for Thesis and other school work, for example);
- more options to format tables;
- dictionary spelling corrections available through right click;
- keyboard shortcut to hide controls;
- have print preview as an option in the toolbar;
- option to choose font sizes other than just the ones that are available;
- option to change the background color of document's page;
- fix copy and paste (It doesn't seem to work very well, even with the web clipboard extension..Not sure about this one);
- merge the Help sub menus;
- give more emphasis to Template Gallery;
- change the Tools --» Preferences. What the hell is that?! That's weird stuff for most of Docs users!;
- get back the Document styles menu (Got it and next day it was gone);

- fix the confusion between the CTRL-F and Find and Replace

- offline access to Docs. This one is OBVIOUS! :)

That's it for now.

Don't get me wrong, I truly appreciate all the efforts that Google has been putting in Docs development. They just need to address some of these issues to take Docs even further.

And hey, it's free! ;) And it also has one heck of a set of collaboration features! Love it!