SML Bookstore: SML Recommend Books

I did a test drive on the Amazon Associates program and created a bookstore using my existing Listmania lists:

Redirected smlrecommendbooks.com to this bookstore as a result :)

Graphic Design

See-ming Lee says: "In order to master the art and science of any field, have a solid foundation of the basic principles, learn the history of its development and always have a critical mind of everything that you create. With these tools in hand, you can solve any challenges that come in your way."



Information Design

See-ming Lee says: "Before there was a field called information architecture, IA is the first step in the graphic design process. Content gathering and organization is arguably the most powerful steps in gaining a thorough understanding of what we wish to create and conceptualize. Information needs to be designed in the form that most eloquently describe its function. This collection of books represents best-of-breed examples. From maps to airplane safety instructions, they knock down linguistic and cultural barriers and enable viewers the most immediate path to their content and structure."



Typography

See-ming Lee says: "My graphic design education at Yale has planted the seed for my love for typography and artists' books."



Flash + ActionScript

See-ming Lee says: "A collection of books on ActionScript that I have read and can easily recommend to any ActionScript developers."



Network Theory

See-ming Lee says: "After reading Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams, my exploration of decentralized networks went down a very viral path. Here are a collection of books that I have picked up over the course of a few years. The application of network theory is enormous, and can be used as a tool and device to understand cities, computer networks social networks, human-human interactions (speech), human-computer interactions (HCI), computer-computer interactions (protocol), diseases, computer viruses, nature. This field of study has brought me tremendous amounts of ideas for the next big thing in marketing strategy."



Life Hacks

See-ming Lee says: "As a highly stressed ADD'ed individual working in the information systems / design industry, these books helped me tremendously in balancing my work + my life."



Business Administration
SML Recommend Books: Business Administration

3D: modeling, rendering, mathematics models
SML Recommend Books: 3D

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

See-ming 思明 / 2007 / SML Dictionary

思 (pronounced ‘see’) is composed of two parts: 田 and 心
田 is a pictogram and it means an agricultural field.
心 is a pictogram as well. It means heart.
Putting both together means putting your heart on
your field. The character 思 means to analyze and to think

明 (pronounced ‘ming’) is composed of two parts: 日 and 月
日 is the sun 月 is the moon
When you place the largest light sources together,
it’s bright, so 明 means bright and clear.
It also means to understand.

Chinese names are poetic by nature, and its meaning
can best be appreciated poetically.
思明, See-ming, can best be translated as
to think clearly, have bright thoughts, to think and be understood.

Related SML Universe
+ Design for Everyday Living
+ SML Dictionary

PS
I moved my previous post to my life blog because I thought this morning that it might be too much for most people to handle.

SML Copyright Notice
© 2007 See-ming Lee (Blog / Facebook / Flickr / LinkedIn / Network / Orkut / Twitter / Wiki)

Flickr Image Loading: Firefox vs IE7 / 2007-11-26 / SML Screenshots

This is a screenshot from my computer browsing to the same Flickr set. On the left is Firefox 2.0.0.9, on the right is Internet Explorer 7.

As you can see here, all the images on IE7 is loaded, but Firefox still won't punch them in. Why? I don't get it. I'm on the same broadband connection here and it appears that Firefox kept on not loading the images.

So why not just use IE, you ask? Because I like my Greasemonkey scripts and Flickr is a whole lot different without them.

I have as such resulted in browsing on IE to look at the photos and commenting on Flickr. This is sad. Am I the only person experiencing this problem?

Originally I thought that maybe it's the greasemonkey scripts that's causing the problem but I disabled them and the problem persists.

Any clue? Any one? Comments would be highly appreciated. Any leads will be given full credits.

Thanks!

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Human Calendar / Inspirations Are Everywhere

The Human Calendar™ is a calendar created by Craig Giffen where portraits of everyday people and puts them into a calendar, where everyone is looking at the current date.

In addition to the main calendar, there are also portable versions, i.e. widgets for Google Homepage, your blogs, MySpace, etc. Very neat. Here's the blog widget. I will look forward to seeing it change for tomorrow:

"

SML Thank You
I found this on the Facebook posted items from Tom Ajello (SML Wiki). Thanks!

Related SML Universe
+ Inspirations Are Everywhere

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

DirtyPatrick's Toolshed = Cubist Constructivist Photography / SML Fine Art

I had the pleasure of visiting DirtyPatrick's studio (aka Toolshed) last Saturday and found some pretty incredible artwork:



DirtyPatrick's real name is Patrick Shawn Bradley (LinkedIn). He was born in Louisiana on December 3, 1966. He graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a bachelor of architecture in 1993, then moved to New York and became a designer for CNN as a broadcast visual designer for their on-air graphics department.



He now works full-time at R/GA as a senior visual designer. When he is not busy, he publishes a very popular fashion documentary which showcases the everyday fashion statements from the crazy people at R/GA.

His art can best be described as cubist constructivist photography. Each photograph will only be printed once and are signed and dated by DirtyPatrick himself. They can be printed at any size (maximum size: 5ft x 4ft). Pricing depends on the size of the print. DirtyPatrick is represented by SML Fine Art. If you are interested in his work, please email seeminglee+art@gmail.com.

More of his work can be seen at toolshed.us/catalog and flickr.com/dirtypatrick.

More DirtyPatrick
+ DirtyPatrick.com
+ DirtyPatrick's fashion documentary
+ Flickr: Dirtypatrick
+ Facebook: Patrick Bradley
+ Prick'D - DirtyPatrick's Video Blog
+ LinkedIn: Patrick Bradley

Related SML Universe
+ SML Fine Art
+ SML Flickr Tags: DirtyPatrick
+ SML Genius Pool
+ SML Gay Blog: Ideal Husband
+ SML Love: Dirty Patrick
+ SML Wiki: Dirty Patrick

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Uniqlo Grid = Branding through interaction design

http://www.uniqlo.com/grid/

YouTube: Uniqlo Grid / Inspirations Are Everywhere



SML Thank You
I would like to thank Tom Ajello (Blog / Facebook / Flickr / LinkedIn / SML Wiki / Twitter) for alerting me to this on his recent tweet.

Related SML Universe
+ Inspirations are Everywhere
+ SML Collection
+ SML Ideas
+ SML Interaction Design
+ SML UI

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Oye Modern = Contemporary Jewelry Design Collection

Jeni Oye launched her own line of modern jewelry collection called Oye Modern. It is the source for contemporary jewelry by emerging and independent designers. It's unique, original and hard to find.

Jewelry is shipped internationally to 40 countries with a 14 day return policy. You can shop in any of the four currency as well: AUD, GBP, EUR, USD.

Check it out!

www.oyemodern.com

Related SML Universe
+ SML Fine Art
+ SML Genius Pool
+ SML Wiki: Jeni Oye

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

365 Special Days = Celebration of Life and Humanity

Fernando Luis Lara is a brazillian artist living and working in the US. He draws the 365 days of the year based on stories submitted by people around the world. Each day will only be drawn once. For $182.50 USD, you get an original drawing (9 x 12 inches = 23 x 31 cm) by mail, and your story and drawing will also be shown on the site. The idea is that over time the site will become a collection of special days around the world, thus serving as a reminder of how special each and every day can be.

It's a genius marketing idea for an artist, and it utilizes the mechanisms of the collaborative theme seen today in the rise of Web 2.0. Very inspiring. Check it out!

365specialdays.com



Related SML Universe
+ Inspirations Are Everywhere
+ SML Fine Art
+ SML Ideas


SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

SML LibraryThing = See-ming Lee + LibraryThing

You are what you read.

SML LibraryThing = See-ming Lee + LibraryThing



Related SML Universe
+ SML Books
+ SML Network
+ SML RecommendBooks

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

TouchGraph Facebook = Social Network Visualization

TouchGraph Facebook = TouchGraph + Facebook







Now I know who my top friends really are...

1. See-ming Lee
2. Adam S. Kirschner
3. Kip Voytek
4. Claudia Chow
5. Susie Rust
6. Roland Nasr
7. Alex Rainert
8. Luke Hughett
9. Daniel O'Neil
10. Paul Steketee
11. Sugar Butter
12. Joy Yih
13. Angela Fung
14. Kim Carpenter
15. Gavin Fraser
16. David Papworth
17. Michael Paige
18. Ning Gao
19. Jeffrey Durland
20. Anthony Monahan

Related SML Universe
+ SML Facebook
+ SML Genius Pool
+ SML Life
+ SML LinkedIn
+ SML Network
+ SML People
+ SML Viz

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Menumap = MenuPages + Google Maps

http://menumap.monkeythumb.net



Menumap = MenuPages + Google Maps

Source: Thrillist

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Amazon Kindle = iPod of E-book Reader

Amazon.com unveiled its electronic-book reader Kindle to compete directly with Sony® Reader. Unlike Sony's electronic book reader, Kindle allows users to shop and download books from Amazon.com wirelessly via cellular network EV-DO. Books are priced at $9.99 or less. The reader itself will sell for $399.

One of the key issue users of the Sony Reader has is the lack of content, and Amazon.com definitely has content. You can not only download books, but also magazines and newspaper, which is a god-send. It also has a built-in dictionary and allows you to perform searches across your entire library. Sounds like a pretty smart business plan to me.

Design wise it's not as sweet as the Sony Reader, but I look forward to trying it out to see how its performance compares to Sony's, as the number one reason I did not buy the Sony Reader is because of its sluggish refresh rate.

WSJ Video: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tells WSJ's Jeffrey Trachtenberg the new Kindle is "designed for people who really love reading."

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Related News
+ CNET News.com: Amazon's Kindle vs. Sony's Reader

Related SML Universe
+ SML Wiki: Amazon

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

UGC = Love + Culture + Free Speech / Larry Lessig / TED Talks

Stanford professor Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of "three stories and an argument." The Net's most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the "ASCAP cartel" to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you've ever seen.

TED Talks: Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

The HBR Interview with Jeff Bezos

Harvard Business Review did an interview with Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, on the October 2007 issue.

Here are my key take aways:

Amazon.com = Strategy

Amazon.com was born of strategy.

Base your strategy on things that won't change:

Jeff Bezos: When I am talking with people outside the company, there's a question that comes up very commonly: "What's going to change in the next five to ten years?" At Amazon we're always trying to figure that out, because you can really spin up flywheels around those things. All the energy you invest in them today will still be paying you dividends ten years from now. Whereas if you base your strategy first and foremost on more transitory things — who your competitors are, what kind of technologies are available, and so on — those things are going to change so rapidly that you're going to have to change your strategy very rapidly, too.

If in the old world you devoted 30% of your attention to building a great service and 70% of your attention to shouting about, in the new world that inverts.

No-brainers = important

Jeff Bezos: We're still working on identifying [the constants] for the developer community, although we have some good guesses as to what they are. Reliability of the platform would be one, which is a kind of a no-brainer. But then a lot of these things are no-brainers. No-brainers are no-brainers for a reason: They actually are important.

Social features = Customers first

Jeff Bezos: One of the ways to get vast selection is to invite other sellers, third parties, onto our websites to participate alongside us, and make it into a win-win situation...

Now, if we're offering a certain digital camera and you're a seller with the same camera to sell, you can go right on our own detail page and underbid us.

It was a very controversial decision internally at the time.

Whenever we're facing one of those too-hard problems, where we get into an infinite loop and can't decide what to do, we try to convert it into a straightforward problem by saying, "Well, what's better for the consumer?"

We don't make money when we sell things; we make money when we help customers make purchase decisions

How to be #1 = customer focus

Jeff Bezos: If you're competitor focused, you tend to slack off when your benchmarks say that you're the best. But if your focus on customers, you keep improving. So there are a lot of advantages.

Listen to your customers first-hand

Jeff Bezos: Every new employee, no matter how senior or junior, has to go spend time in our fulfillment centers within the first year of employment.
HBR: Even you?
Jeff Bezos: Oh, yeah. I just got re-certified about six months ago. The fact that I did a lot of customer service in the first two years has not exempted me. Besides, it's quite entertaining, and you learn a ton. It's not a chore.

Response to Barnes & Nobles = customer focus

Jeff Bezos: I told everyone [in an all-hands meeting], "Yes, you should wake up every morning terrified with your sheets drenched in sweat, but not because you're afraid of our competitors. Be afraid of our customers, because those are the folks who have the money. Our competitors are never going to send us money."

Don't just ask why, but why not as well

Jeff Bezos: When something seems like an opportunity — it seems like you have the skills, and maybe some kind of advantage, and you think it's a big area — you will always get asked the question, "Why? Why do that?" But Why not?... But that question doesn't get asked. It's an asymmetry that is linked to those errors of omission.

Innovation: The institutional yes

Jeff Bezos: Sometimes you make guesses and you think, When we launch this, people are going to love it. And they don't... Our history is full of things like that, where we came up with an innovation that we thought was really cool, and the customers didn't care. Fortunately, there are also quite a few that went the other way... And by the way, it's very fun to have the kind of culture where people are willing to take these leaps &mash; it's the opposite of the "institutional no." It's the institutional yes. People say, "We're going to do this. We're going to figure out a way."

Pursue your believes

Jeff Bezos: My observation on [the early results of experiments] would be that it's important to be stubborn on the vision and flexible on the details. I talked about the evolution of our marketplace business — that's a good example of where we wee relentless on the vision... We worked on it for a few years. But we didn't give up on the vision... If you really believe that the addressable market is big enough for it to matter, then it pays to be stubborn in pursuing that.

Company culture at Amazon

Jeff Bezos: I'm actually thinking, who doesn't [say no to me]?... Intensity is important. I always tell people that our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove, we'll settle for intense. But there is no contradiction between being intense and having fun... In a one-hour meeting we may spend ten minutes of it joking around, and I'm often the worst offender. I'll laugh and say, "This reminds me of..." and get us off on some story. Eventually somebody says, "Well, that is very interesting, but you do see we have an agenda..." And I think that works out great."

Full article available as a PDF for purchase at HBR:
Harvard Business Review: 2007-10: The Institutional Yes: The HBR Interview with Jeff Bezos: How Amazon's CEO leads strategic change in a culture obsessed with today's customer by Julia Kirby and Thomas A. Stewart

Also available in the print edition of Harvard Business Review: 2007-10: pp.74-82

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Digg 2.0 Comment Digging Features: Friend or Foe?

Two weeks ago, my friend Rich Schuster (SML Wiki) sent me a photo of the halloween costume his friend Nathan Sharatt (SML Wiki) has made. I like it, so I faved it on Flickr and dugg it.



Since Digg now added Web 2.0 features, I thought that it would nice to leave a nice comment thanking demonbaby for sharing, since he is a friend of mine.

Digg - Spectacular Bioshock Big Daddy / Little Sister Halloween Costume! [Pics]: User Comment from iamorlando

Just like that, I received a comment from a user named iamorlando posted on 2007-11-01 which says the following:

Dear See-ming,
Thanks for adding to our discussion, also thank you for turning the comments section into our own personal correspondence section.

Yours truly,
Orlando

Digg Stats
iamorlando's comment has +13 diggs on it, for which I am stunned. Conversely, my thank you note has -26 diggs on them, which I am double stunned.

SML Research
To figure out why a user hate me so much, I instructed SML Bio Bot to do some research for me to determine who iamorlando is, and this is what it scooped:
SML Wiki: iamorlando

SML Question to iamorlando
If we cannot even thank our friends for posting to something we thought is brilliant on Digg, then what should we post instead?

SML Ask
Conversely, how reasonable are the Web 2.0 comment digging features on Digg?

Related SML Universe
+ SML Digg
+ SML Random Thoughts
+ SML Public Media

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Wing Suit = Human + Wings

Found a video called Wingsuite on Ben Hammersley's blog today. Stunningly amazing. It's like jumpsuit with wings. Found more videos so created a playlist:

SML YouTube Playlists: Wingsuite



Related SML Universe
+ Crazy is Good
+ SML Skydive
+ SML YouTube Playlists

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Flickr Social / 2007-11-11 / SML Pipes

Yahoo Pipes: See-ming Lee: Flickr Social
Updated with additional fields for permission filtering.

See Flickr screenshot for module details:



Here's a screenshot of the additional fields. They are all optional. Again, see Flickr screenshot for notes.



More information available on SML Wiki
SML Wiki: Flickr Social

Related SML Pro Blog
+ SML Pro Blog: Flickr Social / 2007-11-11 / SML Pipes

Related SML Universe
+ SML Flickr Tags: Yahoo Pipes
+ SML Ideas
+ SML Pipes
+ SML Wiki: Yahoo Pipes
+ Yahoo Pipes: See-ming Lee

SML Copyright Notice
© 2007 See-ming Lee (Blog / Facebook / Flickr / Google / LinkedIn / YouTube)

Yahoo Pipes: Flickr Social / 2007-11-10 / SML Pipes

I use Flickr a lot, but I am increasingly finding it frustrating to have to go onto Flickr everyday to track my friends' comments and also comments I have posted on, so I created this pipe to track all the commenting activities such that I can log them somewhere.

One of the problems I have with the way the Comments You've Made page works is that if you commented on some particularly popular images, you ended up having a lot of noise in that feed that is unrelated to you.

Given these two problem at hand, I created this pipe to return an RSS feed of all things happening to my activities without the extra noise:

pipes.yahoo.com/seeminglee/flickrsocial


This screenshot has notes. Click on the images to get notes on individual modules used on Flickr

What this pipe does

1. Based on a Flickr username (not user id), return a feed of:
   • Recent comments other people have posted about your photographs
   • Recent comments you have made to other people's photographs
2. For your recent comments on other people's photographs, fitler out the result such that the feed contains only comments you have made and exclude other people's comments on the same photograph. This ensures that you don't get too much noise on that particular feed if that photograph become very popular--which appears to happen a lot to photographs which I commented on.
3. Aggregate the results from the two and sort the items based on the published date.

More SML Pipes

• SML Flickr Tags: SML Pipes
• SML Pipes (smlpipes.com)
• Yahoo Pipes: See-ming Lee (pipes.yahoo.com/seeminglee)

SML Thank You
I would like to thank Kris J. Clarke from Scotland for helping me out during the process as I develop this. Kris, you rock!

SML Copyright Notice
©2007 See-ming Lee 李思明 SML / SML Pro Blog / SML Universe. All rights reserved.

Thoughts on Google Personalized Search Results

I did some random Googling this morning and found that my initials SML is featured on page one again (Google: SML) which is sweet. However, I noted something interesting when I performed the same search at work.

In both cases, I was logged into Google account—which technically speaking should give me the same results. Well, apparently not. I did some screenshots so you can scrutinize it:

Home: SML Flickr: Google: SML / 2007-11-08 / SML Data



Work: SML Flickr: Google: SML / 2007-11-08 / SML Data



Noting this, I can't help but wonder if Google uses algorithms to randomize results a bit to test which links people would click on in various times—a strategy that I hypothesize is being used on Flickr to determine interestingness as well.

In turn, this suggests an interesting visualization exercise: what would the results pages look like if I search for the same thing over and over again by taking screenshots of the results page? It would be a kind of a SERP time-lapse, if you will. And if the data is available, all the merrier. It would surely be nice to see search results nodes moving at real time. Now I just need two more instances of SML working on these projects while I can still live my 24-hour day.

More random searches
Additional random searches that I like to do are Google