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In my search for podcasts that matter, it seems like I churn through two or three recommended podcasts for every one that I actually end up liking. Here's one that I came across that I really dig: Slacker Astronomy. It tickles that cosmology itch without having to pore through opaque scientific journals, and in spite of myself, I like the bad puns. I just donated: well worth it to keep them on the air.
Link: Slacker Astronomy Show Notes.
Blingo is just a shell around google. I know, as a Google partner company, that distribution of Google search is an extremely profitable business to be in. Blingo is a great twist on google though: they get all the distribution $$s and then they share the love in the form of prizes with their searches. See, as a searcher, you're making money for both Blingo and Google, becuase you're going to click those ad links, and they're going to get paid. Blingo is simply saying, "Hey, search google here at our simple URL, and sometimes you'll win prizes. Win win situation!"
Plus, if any of your friends win, you win! Click this link: to sign up as a friend of mine!
Link: Blingo Search.
This is a great quote from the programmer behind the really cool iSight barcode scanner in Delicious Library:
One of the rules of writing algorithms that I've recently been sort of toying with is that we (as programmers) spend too much time trying to find provably correct solutions, when what we need to do is write really fast heuristics that fail incredibly gracefully.
This is almost always how nature works. You don't have to have every cell in your eye working perfectly to be able to see. We can put together images with an incredible amount of damage to the mechanism, because it fails so gracefully and organically.
I wonder if he's read On Intelligence, Jeff Hawkin's amazing book on how the brain works.
I've read 29 of these: TIME Magazine - ALL-TIME 100 Novels.