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Marc & Angel’s “7 clever Google tricks worth knowing” - a nice list of how to use Google search more effectively. Here are a couple of examples:

Google + Social Media Sites = Quality Free Stuff – If you are on the hunt for free desktop wallpaper, stock images, Wordpress templates or the like, using Google to search your favorite social media sites is your best bet. The word “free” in any standard search query immediately attracts spam. Why wade through potential spam in standard search results when numerous social media sites have an active community of users who have already ranked and reviewed the specific free items that interest you. All you have to do is direct Google to search through each of these individual social media sites, and bingo… you find quality content ranked by hundreds of other people.

• Examples:
  • site:digg.com free “desktop wallpaper”
  • site:reddit.com free “wordpress templates”
  • site:del.icio.us free “stock images”
  • site:netscape.com free “ringtones”
  • site:stumbleupon.com free icons
  • More info.

Google for Music, Videos, and Ebooks - Google can be used to conduct a search for almost any file type, including Mp3s, PDFs, and videos. Open web directories are one of the easiest places to quickly find an endless quantity of freely downloadable files. This is an oldie, but it’s a goodie! Why thousands of webmasters incessantly fail to secure their web severs will continue to boggle our minds.

• Examples:
  • Find Music: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Counting Crows”
  • Find Videos: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpg|wmv) “chapelle”
  • Find Ebooks: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdf|doc) “george orwell 1984?
  • More info.

Some of these search functions by the way are built into a nice little program called “google hacks”
[For more info see Marc & Angel’s “7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing“]

ZDNet provides an interesting article and overview on 17 new or evolving mashup platforms. All the products listed had to allow live integration of functionality or content (data) over a network, provide an easy-to-use development model that is theoretically accessible by end-users, be available in at least beta form, and either consume and/or produce Web-based applications and services.

The article is primarily concerned with business requirements but at the same provides enough useful material for end-users in both business and home environments. It also points to the fact that current mashup platforms focus primarily on sourcing and combining data from a variety of sources; what will be interesting though to watch is the development of platforms allowing the end-user to create software in the same way they now begin to create content.

[Source: A bumper crop of new mashup platforms]

Spin sells - unfortunately. I just looked at J.D. Power and Associates’ top 10 greenest hybrids, published this week in form of its Automotive Environmental Index of the 30 most environmental cars on the road. And I can’t help wondering, what’s environmental about them. Take the Lexus GS 450h: to achieve the car’s 339 horsepower, its fuel economy is anything but low, as evidenced by its EPA rating of 22 mpg city and 25 mpg highway. The only thing the GS 450h has going for it is that it is a “super-ultra-low-emissions vehicle” (SULEV). Apart from that it still is a car like any other, manufactured in polluting industrial processes from heavy metals, plastics, a range of other toxic chemicals.

Low emissions in this context are nothing but an environmental token, used by marketing executives, the EPA and consumers to ensure no one is inconvenienced. The only problem with this equation is that hurricanes, floods and melting ice caps need an exponentially higher level of convincing.

[For more details on “green glory” see The cleanest hybrids of 2007]

I don’t really feel drawn to the paintings of most old masters, but J.M.W. Turner is one big exception. My appreciation of his work is similar to what I feel about Arthur Rimbaud: both belong to the Romantic period, both pushed the boundaries and became important anchors for new movements that would see some of their roots reaching back to these protagonists, and both express a level of passion and emotion that seems to have come from the bottom of their souls.

Turners soul seems to have been drawn to the moods of nature and the power of the elements. Many of his pictures portrait the violent sid, certainly of nature, but sometimes also of human actions. It shows in his fascination for shipwrecks, fires, natural catastrophes or the murderous actions captured in The Slave Ship (1840), where he portraits the then common 19th century practice of slave traders throwing overboard the dead and dying human ‘cargo’ during the middle passage in the Atlantic Ocean in order to claim the insurance for ‘drowning’. The picture shows the violent power of the sea, the hands of black slaves in the water, can be seen still shackled, but also strange sea creatures representing the forces of nature punishing the guilty (Turner was hoping that painting such an emotive subject would help to assist the abolitionist campaign). Other examples for Turner being attracted by the violent power of the sea, are the Dawn after the Wreck (1840) or The Shipwreck of the Minotaur (1810).

Human beings in many of his paintings indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but also its vulnerability and vulgarity amidst the ’sublime’ nature of the world on the other hand. ‘Sublime’ here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And God’s presence was not just seen in the violent upheavals of nature but also in ‘light’, the emanation of God’s spirit. In his later paintings, Turner refined this subject matter by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be ‘impressionistic’ and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. (”The Sun is God,” he stated shortly before his death.)

[For more information on Turner click here (Wikipedia)]