] In a study published yesterday in Health Psychology,
] researchers at Carnegie Mellon University reported that
] lonely and socially isolated students had weaker immune
] responses to flu shots than their more outgoing peers.

NY Times | Signs: Responses: Meet, Mingle and Stay Healthy

] Mr. Ploppy's Monday Morning Tool List Volume VIII -
] Competitive Analysis and Keyword Research Tools

SEO tool overview. I find the whole thing fun to watch.

� Mr. Ploppy's Monday Morning Tool List Volume VIII - Competitive Analysis and Keyword Research Tools Stuntdubl Internet Marketing Consulting

] White House staffers Joe Hagin, left, Karl Rove and
] Stephen Hadley check information on their BlackBerries,
] hand-held devices with thumb-operated keyboards that
] allow users to send e-mail.

Caption Contest!

Blackberry Cool - Your Favourite Source for Everything Blackberry! �

] But before moving on, I can't resist identifying the
] three things that are consistently missing from any
] serious analysis of our current approach to PowerPoint:
]
] 1. There is no defensible reason why we do what we do
] today. If we came up with a better approach, we'd dump
] the old one in a New York minute.
]
] 2. Researchers have been studying the use of
] multimedia in presentations for 13 years, yet most
] discussions about PowerPoint take place in a vacuum as if
] it never happened.
]
] 3. Although many people blame presenters for bad
] PowerPoint, it's not their fault if their culture forces
] them to do things that way.

Cliff Atkinson runs a nice blog in support of his "Beyond Bullets"
book. His way of presenting sounds like fun, almost makes one
encouraged to try harder to make a /good/ presentation of his style.

beyond bullets: Norman calls Tufte's PPT Criticisms

] It has become commonplace to rail against the evils of
] PowerPoint talks; you know, those dull, boring
] never-ending ordeals where the speaker %u2014 or should I
] say "reader" %u2014 displays what appears to be a
] never-ending progression of slides, each with numerous
] bulleted points, sometimes coming on to the screen from
] unexpected directions in unexpected ways, each one being
] slowly read to the audience. PowerPoint should be banned,
] cries the crowd. Edward Tufte, the imperious critic of
] graphic displays has weighed in with a document entitled
] "The cognitive style of PowerPoint," in which, among
] other things, he credits poor PowerPoint slides with
] contributing to disaster with NASA's space shuttle
] Columbia, January 2003.
]
] I respectfully submit that all of this is nonsense.

Don Norman versus Edward Tufte. Quite a matchup.

Is jnd.org something a usability expert really wants to claim for his own? Perhaps it reflects a bit too much on Norman's style.

In Defense of PowerPoint

] Ginger is a VIA Epia 800, hard drive, and power supply
] encased in a gingerbread village. The idea for this
] server "case-mod" came from two CIF members who for some
] reason thought that making a gingerbread village, without
] putting a computer inside of it was a crime against
] humanity.

mini-itx.com - projects - ginger, the gingerbread village server

] Now you can access your vehicle's electronic sensor and
] fault code data without a cable. You can receive full
] diagnostic information without a cable connection to the
] car. The OBD Bluetooth Transmitter connects to the OBD-II
] socket available in modern vehicle electronic systems to
] get the data you need.

Bluetooth for Vehicle Electronics :: Blueserker :: Berserk about Bluetooth

] Bill Gates bets against dollar %u2014 What is the point
] of making these proclamations? I wouldn%u2019t really
] care about this except that Microsoft is one of the top
] offshoring companies in the country and contributing to
] the dollar%u2019s demise. It%u2019s incredible to me that
] he%u2019d stick a knife into the heart of America with
] these public comments. Does he thinks this helps things
] here in the USA? Apparently he doesn%u2019t give a crap.
] After all, we know little about the rest of his
] portfolio. Why is he making this %u201Cinvestment%u201D
] to help sink the dollar and perhaps the US economy public
] knowledge?

What an awful blog entry and set of comments.

Bill Gates says he is short the dollar, like his friend Buffet. When Buffet shorted the dollar, it was personally painful and he fully documented his reasons; I expect his argument, set to convince anyone, convinced Gates. The reason one can expect the dollar to decline has little to do with outsourcing, or Microsoft. Its the deficits. This year I believe we became completely net debtors as a nation; the global finance structure is still oriented toward that not being the case: arbitrage.

It doesn't bother me, much, that Dvorak doesn't get it. But the bulk of the comments just made me sad.

Dvorak Uncensored � Bill Gates to America: The Dollar Sucks, Screw it!

] [Y]ou can safely assume you've created God in your own
] image when it turns out that God hates all the same
] people you do.

43 Folders: Remainders: Notebooks, NextBus, the Wiki, and more

] UK firm DSP Design has made a PC that gets electric power
] via a network cable rather than through a wall socket.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Net-powered computer goes on show