A nice compilation of old book illustrations, free to use. your can see it here. Read More...

There are some pretty outrageous ads represented here... click the pic for more Read More...

A visualization of all the nouns in the English language arranged by semantic meaning. Each of the tiles in the mosaic is an arithmetic average of images relating to one of 53,463 nouns. The images for each word were obtained using Google's Image Search and other engines. A total of 7,527,697 images were used, each tile being the average of 140 images.

The average reveals the dominant visual characteristics of each word. For some, the average turns out to be a recognizable image; for others the average is a colored blob. The list of nouns was obtained from Wordnet, a database compiled by lexicographers which records the semantic relationship between words. Using this database, we extract a tree-structured semantic hierarchy which we use to arrange tiles within the poster. We tessellate the poster using the hierarchy so that the proximity of two tiles is given by their semantic distance.

Thus the poster explores the relationship between visual and semantic similarity. For a large part of our language the two are closely correlated as shown by the extent of visual clustering within the poster. The large-scale groupings correspond to broad categories such as plants or people. Within the plant cluster, for example, tighter semantic groupings are visible such as flowers or trees. In turn each of these clusters contains further groupings all the way down to individual, highly specific nouns. The averaging within each tile removes the variation between images of a given word, enhancing the similarly between neighbors.

By clicking on top of the map, you will see the word corresponding to that location, the average image and the first 16 images returned by the image search online tools.

Currently computers have difficult recognizing objects in images. While practical solutions exist for a few simple classes such as human faces or cars, the more general problem of recognizing all different classes of objects in the world (e.g. guitars, bottles, telephones) remains unsolved. Computer Vision researchers are currently investigating methods that can recognize and localize thousands of different object categories in complex scenes. A key component of these algorithms is the data used to train the computers' model of each object. Current approaches use collections of images laboriously gathered by hand.

Our research explores how the billions of images available on the Internet can be used to train models for object recognition. With overwhelming amounts of data, many problems can be tackled with simple algorithms. We gathered from the web 79 million images. We are using this massive dataset to train a computer to recognize objects within an image and to understand the scenes depicted in photographs. Read More...

Don't know what to get me? Make me some pork dumplings! I could eat these every day. click the pic to go to the recipie. Read More...

Finally, someone has created a DIY LolCat tool for creating your own hilarious LolCat pics in the classic style.

LolCat images usually consist of a photo of a cat with a large caption characteristically formatted in an uppercase sans serif font such as Impact or Arial Black. The image is, on occasion, digitally edited for effect. The caption generally acts as a speech balloon encompassing a comment from the cat, or as a description of the depicted scene.

The caption is intentionally written with deviations from standard English spelling and syntax, featuring "strangely-conjugated verbs, but [a tendency] to converge to a new set of rules in spelling and grammar."These altered rules of English have been referred to as LolCat Speak or kitty pidgin. Click the logo to create some! Read More...

fun diversion. after about 10 minutes you get pretty zen about it. click the pic to start splashing paint around. Read More...

There are several full length documentary films on this site... primarily hosted on Google Video or Youtube in decent quality. If you haven't already seen Helvetica (pictured), it's worthy of your time. Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. Click the pic for more.
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from Gizmodo: Designed by a trio of Italian designers known as Paula, Wardrom is described as a vertical wardrobe "to enhance disaster", ie, celebrate the fact that you are a scruffy bastard who, despite your mother's/girlfriend's/parole officer's best attempts to domesticate you, constantly pooh-poohs the idea of order and neatness in the bedroom. Read More...

Laura Maclay makes one of a kind handbags, they are clever, unique and pretty darn cute! She also has an awesome domain, pursesnatcher.com click the bag or the link to visit.
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Nice article y Dustin Wax from the lifehack blog on how to get started when you are stuck or things are in your way. Good stuff. Click the traffic signal to read teh article on their site. Read More...

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Nina Gordon was in the band Veruca Salt and left for a solo career as a Singer, Songwriter. I like this kinder gentler version of the song which gives it a different context. Read More...

A great, and easy to understand MySQL database tutorial that teaches you how to set up a MySQL database and create a random quote generator. A really nice way to be introduced to MySQL which is pretty intimidating to us mere mortals. Click the pic to read the article. Read More...

Amit Gupta wants to change the way you interact with others. He's not just saying that, either -- it's evidenced in every aspect of his life, be it creating offline ventures like the co-working sessions called Jelly which now take place all over the country, building non-profits and writing books with Seth Godin or teaching users how to better their photography through his hyper-successful newsletter, Photojojo. Read More...