I’m curious as to why the regulars on this site are so reluctant to vote on content. You’re logged in, you’re reading and commenting, but the 1-second process of casting a vote rarely seems to occur. Is there a reason you’re not? If not, I suggest voting for things that you both read and didn’t feel was a waste of you’re time. In doing so you accomplish two things: you move good content to the top, and you let the writer know you read their stuff and thought it was a useful read.

Back in February the BBC reported that,

“Dolphins should be treated as non-human ‘persons’, with their rights to life and liberty respected, scientists meeting in Canada have been told. Experts in philosophy, conservation and animal behaviour want support for a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans. They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethical considerations as humans.”

As far as I can tell, this is still an open proposal. I’m curious what this crowd thinks. Is this going too far, or is it simply a heightened awareness of our planet’s intelligent co-inhabitants?

Ever read xkcd and wish you could whip up a chart like the one in the comic? Now you can. Check out Dan Foreman-Mackey’s XKCD-style plots in Javascript using D3.

If you’re a regular, you definitely noticed some changes today. We’re trying to simplify the site to ease maintenance, but hopefully also make it a little easier to use. Here are some key changes:

Obituaries

1. Death of NerdRank – I know, it’s like we killed our first born. Ultimately though the number had become meaningless and the backend to maintain it was just overkill. If it ever comes back, it will certainly be in different form.
2. Death of Auto-Moderation – It seemed like a good idea, but all it created was a bottleneck. Now the computer isn’t judging your writing as you type, or deciding what is/isn’t front page worthy.

I recently blogged about how I think using Aperture and Picasa is the best way to manage and share photos. I’m curious if anyone has any thoughts on photo software, workflow, etc. Do you have an approach that you think is notably good?

I recently purchased a CrashPlan+ plan and blogged about why I picked CrashPlan in favor of several other options. I’m curious what others are doing. More specifically, do you have unique needs that a service provider or application must offer before you would consider it?

If you’ve watched any NFL football game in the last year or so, you’ve probably become of fan of the ultra slow motion, high resolution video replays of receivers dangling in the air and being crushed mid-flight by defensive backs. It’s fascinating to watch every muscle flex and every facial expression slowly form.

As I watched the Super Bowl though, I couldn’t help but wonder if it makes sense to give this sort of footage to referees? And it’s not because I don’t think referees should have all the information they can get, but I think this footage distorts reality. For example, consider the linked video. That all probably occurred in less than a second, two tops. But the video makes it last a full minute. In decisions where a player is being questioned for control of a ball, or other things where time matters, it seems that slow motion gives a warped view of reality. In one of these clips, a player may seemingly cradle a ball for 30 seconds, but in reality he only held it for a quarter of one second.

I just received an email from Google that brought a tear to my web-developer-eye:

“In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. … As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

Welcome to OmniNerd Version 5. We’ve implemented a completely new color scheme, changed the header and front page layout, and even added a little dose of Twitter into the mix. We got a lot of negative feedback regarding the v4 layout to include things like “not intuitive,” “too blue,” and “too much going on.” Our response is v5, which we hope is more intuitive, color balanced, and simple.

Shades of Orange and Brown

I had been planning to upgrade my home network for a while and finally decided to do it over the weekend. On my network was an older 802.11 b/g Apple Airport Express that just wasn’t very useful anymore. Aside from being older, it’s not an 11n device and we just can’t have that, now can we? The bigger issue was that I live in an older house in San Francisco (we’re talking 1908 old) and it’s just not very “wired” friendly. My goal was to move my existing Time Capsule from out of my bedroom (this is the only place in the house the cable modem can plug in without significant rewiring) and into my office. From the office it would connect wirelessly to whatever new device I put in my bedroom to be the router. The idea being that an 802.11n bridge would be a sufficiently fast alternative to running physical cables. With the Time Capsule in my office I would be able to wire my laptop into it directly for very fast Time Machine service. Moreover, my Linux server, which is also currently residing in my bedroom, could move into the office and I could avoid having to put a wifi card in it (it has to be wired in, which is why it’s lived in my bedroom until now).