DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Chuck pointed out this thoroughly technical article on Acoustic Treatment and Design for Recording Studios and Listening Rooms.

(I’ve mentioned other soundproofing resources before.)

Following is a roundup of topics discussed repeatedly at Etech 2005. It is an entirely subjective, non-comprehensive listing of the stuff I heard about in multiple contexts, with pointers to session descriptions, transcripts, reactions, and blog items. I’ll be updating this list over time, so if you have corrections or additions, please send them, but please note that I’m filtering, not simply aggregating.

• Search engine improvements: Several search engine companies were present. Most of them announced new tools and features.

  Sessions: Google’s AdWords, Yahoo Web Services, Ask Jeeves Alpha, Microsoft Research Labs, Yahoo! Research Labs, Google Research Labs, Bezos on Vertical Search

  Related sites: research.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Labs), next.yahoo.com (Yahoo! Technology Demos), developer.yahoo.net (Yahoo! Web Services Developer site), labs.google.com (Google Labs), code.google.com (Google Web Services Developer site), google.com/apis/ (Google Web Services signup), Ask.com Search Tools, A9’s “Vertical Search” plug-in index

  Coverage and Transcripts: Daniel H. Steinberg on “From the Labs”, MIT Tech Review on A9’s “Vertical Search”, my piece on A9, John Battelle on OpenSearch, Dare Obasanjo on YSDN, Gordon Gould on Yahoo! tools

• Ontologies and tags: Etech played host to a number of big-brained technologists waving their hands about ontologies, taxonomies, and tagging (aka “folksonomies), the latter being a new spin on an old concept (keywords) but suddenly relevant as demonstrated by the success of Flickr, del.icio.us, and Technorati.

  Sessions: BOF: From Trees to Tags, Ontology is Overrated: Links, Tags, and Post-hoc Metadata, Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess

  Coverage and Transcripts: David Weinberger on “Ontology”, Cory Doctorow on “Folksonomy” and a partial transcript of the session, Mark Taylor on “Ontology”, David Weinberger on “Folksonomy”, Eric Benson on tagging, Alberto Escarlate on “Ontology”, Tim Oren on “Ontology”, Jeff Clavier on the BOF, Audio Transcript of Shirky’s Ontology is Overrated Session

  Related: Cory Doctorow on Metacrap, Clay Shirky on the Semantic Web and on folksonomies, Weinberg, post-Etech, on broad vs. narrow folksonomies

More to come…

Just as Body Worlds II is closing its (very successful, extended) Los Angeles exhibition, a competing circus of preserved bodies sets up shop in San Francisco. See theuniversewithin.org.

For gruesome example photos, which I had to file for a press credential to publish, see my piece on the original Body Worlds.

The Universe Within opens on March 31.

Here’s a change of scenery for my 2560x1024 desktop… NASA’s awesome Earth at Night image. Click the thumbnails to download the fullsize images.

(Previous desktop image: Mount Shasta.)

If you’re still driving a single-monitor system, you should check out this deal at Amazon: a 17'' Samsung LCD, 1024x1280 resolution, for $275. You could buy two of these for less than I spent on my first Samsung 17'' LCD. Arrange them side-by-side and your productivity will double, at least. Especially if you use one of my cool desktop backgrounds.

(It’s actually true that using a bigger virtual desktop increases productivity. If my physical desk were bigger, I’d add a 3rd LCD in portrait orientation between the other two.)

Pictured is the second-best Tom Kha Hed I’ve ever had.

The best Tom Kha Hed I’ve ever had was at the same restaurant, the previous night, when it had even more stuff in it, including tofu, which is not normally something I get excited about, but in this case, wow.

(Thai restaurants in Germany offer a variation of this soup adapted to the local cuisine and culture. It’s called “Tom Kha Headcheese.”)

If you’re in the Gaslamp area of San Diego, check out Thai Time near the Westin Horton Plaza. The curries are great, and the price is right.