Facebook apps
I played around with Facebook’s API for a little while today hoping to put together some kind of contact exporter that would allow Facebook friends’ contact info to be exported/synchronized with an address book. Unfortunately, it limits the amount of information you can get access to birthdays, and a few other generic pieces of contact-related information.
That hasn’t stopped other developers from running with the API though and building lots of handy applications. Will Pate has put together a list of some of the best Facebook apps out there. Among my favourites are the Facebook Birthday Calendar Generator, an app that exports your friends’ birthdays in an import-compatible format, and Your True Self, which visually plots your friends across the political spectrum. It’s pretty interesting to see how all this data can be visualized and organized in so many interesting ways.
The 300 workout regimen
Beyond the usual praise I’ve been hearing about 300 as a film, the most heard comment I’ve heard from any guy that has seen it is, ‘I need to start hitting the gym (more).’ I try to frequent the gym pretty often, but by no means do I even come close to pushing myself to the degree that the actors had to in order to fit the part of a Spartan warrior.
The average celebrity trainer would have trained the actors to look like Spartan Warriors - Mark Twight put the actors in 300 through workouts that would create the kind of strength and power they would need to be Spartan Warriors.
Intense! Be sure to check out the accompanying video as well. [via Accordion Guy]
March Madness - Toronto Style
For the next couple weeks, Torontoist is pitting Toronto’s hot-button issues against one another in a topical battle to the death. As with any weblog battle royal, readers have the chance to decide the winners. Past matches put the CN Tower Ice vs. The Gardiner, with the ice clearly taking the victory flag, and The Beaches edging out on top of the The Beach. Go ahead and cast your vote if you’d like to see Rob Ford make any sort of leeway against those pesky Bike Lanes.
Twittervision answers the question, “What’s Twitter?”
I’ll admit that I still don’t think I completely get Twitter. To me it has a sense of lite blogging; one or two sentence updates done very casually, but consistently. The mobile aspects of it are fascinating, but most of the people I know are only now starting to warm up to Facebook, nevermind moving on up to the next social networking craze. Twittervision, however, does a pretty good job of concisely demonstrating what Twitter is all about, in an almost creepy “this is what the world is saying right now” kind of way.
Wallpaper by mandolux
I’ve always been widly impressed by the desktop wallpapers put together at mandolux, and today’s piece, ‘Lavender’ is no exception. All of the wallpaper up there is offered in a dual-monitor format, so that you can span the photo across both monitors; Very slick!
‘Heroes’ charity artwork auction
Looking for some art to show off your inner fanboy? NBC is holding an auction to support the Epilepsy Foundation where they’ll be selling prints from one of my favourite shows, Heroes. Auctions will kick off with two pieces on March 26th, and another two going up on April 2nd. The Hiro/T-Rex and Homecoming paintings are among my favourites of the bunch. Did I mention my birthday’s coming up, and that my walls are feeling a little empty lately?
Wired redesigned
It looks like Wired have gone through quite the radical redesign, and I must say it looks fantastic. It focuses much more on the content rather than the glitz of the Web design. Their site has always been known to have a pretty radical colour palette, so it’s nice to see they’ve moved away from that a bit and more towards creative use of typography and whitespace.
My reading list
I’ve added a link in the sidebar to my profile on All Consuming, a sister site of 43 Things/Places, where you’ll find what I’m currently reading and what I intend to read. I’m really enjoying the End of the Alphabet so far, though it’s a bit short. I just picked up World War Z yesterday, so that will likely be next in the queue.
Will Wright on Spore at SXSW
Will Wright, creator of the Sims and Sim City, talks about interactive storytelling, procedural content generation, simulating life and the power of computers as a catalyst for imagination at this year’s South by Southwest (SWSX) festival. I always find it awe-inspiring to watch Will Wright give demos of the technology he’s working on, if nothing else, for the passion he has for everything he does. Some videos of the keynote are up already as well. [via Waxy.org]
Open source architecture
The Open Architecture Network is bringing open source to architecture through innovative, sustainable, and most importantly, affordable design to developing and impoverished nations. I first heard about the OAN at the TED Conference 2006, where Cameron Sinclair pitched the idea and then went on to with the TED Prize, which got the project off the ground. Later this year, the OAN will be partnering with AMD and will offer a $250,000 prize to the winning design of an open competition to develop technology centers in the developing world. [via Inhabitat]
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Adam is a User Experience Specialist at IBM in Toronto and also produces content of all kinds around the Web.
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