Daily Bits

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A is for Ackbar: THE Alphabet Book Your Kid Must Have

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If you consider yourself a self-respecting Star Wars geek, then that title applies to you. It is no secret that I am not the biggest Star Wars fan out there, but I do recognize a cool thing when it stares me in the face; and what can be a cooler baby shower gift than a book that will forever shape an infant’s perception of what the letters of the English alphabet stand for?

A is for Ackbar is the masterpiece created by Brandon Peat, with lots of inspiration from his wife Emma. As the story goes, the idea came up when Emma was pregnant with their first child, Tycho. In the quest to decorate the nursery without having to paint the walls (yeah, renting can be a biatch sometimes), they stumbled upon the idea of creating “alphabet posters”, and being the nerds (his words, not mine) they are, Star Wars had to be the theme. Taking things one step further, the couple decided to collect the illustrations and put them together to create a baby book.

Here’s a glimpse of the artwork.

Ackbar

Non-Star Wars fan that I am, I had to look up Ackbar. Thank you, Wikipedia, for enlightening me.

Bossk

Bossk apparently means “devours his prey” – not exactly baby-friendly, but hey, we have to start them young, don’t we?

Chewie

Yes, even I knew that C would represent Chewie and C-3PO!

Nien

The narcissistic side of me would not shut up – I had to look at the letter N and share it with you all. Who the heck is Nien Nunb? Wiki says he is a smuggler…nice!

Now, how to get your hands on the book? I think they were giving copies to individuals who donated at least $15 to Tycho’s college fund, but the site now says that the drive has been closed. Here’s a ray of hope for us latecomers in the game: “If you missed out, bookmark this page, and check back in a month or two. We hope to find a new way to disseminate this collection to the masses!”

Brandon and Emma Peat: any chance copies will be out by January/February 2011? 😀

Twitter’s 2010 in Review: Justin Bieber, the iPad, and Android

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If Google has Zeitgeist 2010, then Twitter has its own review of the year that is almost gone. Twitter recently released the top trending topics on 2010, and if you want to know if you were “trendy” this year (or if you have nothing better to do), you might be interested at poring over the lists.

It may be hard for technophiles to swallow, but there are only two technology-related topics in the overall trending topics list, and they are at the bottom five! Yeah, we have to face it – for some people, the world does not revolve around the iPhone and other gadgets. We can be thankful, though, that these two (Apple iPad and Google Android) still ranked higher than Justin Bieber. Seriously now, if Bieber had ranked higher, I would be doubting the quality of tweets! (Then again, the data does not say whether the tweets are positive or negative.)
Overall Trending Topics

Narrowing the trending results a little bit, here is the list for trending topics in technology. Now it really is not surprising that Apple has practically hogged the list, is it? I am surprised, though, that Call of Duty Black Ops has made it to number 5. If the reaction of friends are anything to go by, the game is really something else, but I thought that the New Twitter would have ranked higher.
Tech Trends

There are other subtopics listed – check them out at Twitter Year in Review.

Google’s Zeitgeist 2010: Year in Review

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Zeitgeist2010
Live curious. That’s what National Geographic kept telling me all day yesterday when the TV was on to serve as background noise. One practical application of that piece of advice is this: take a look at what people have been searching for the most in the past 11 months. I guess the guys at Google have been watching Nat Geo as well!

So they just released Zeitgeist 2010, which showcases the most popular searches in the past year.

Search – that is such a cold term that does not convey much emotion. If you think about it, though, what people from all over the world search for is indicative of what is happening in real life. Indeed, a line from the blog post yesterday says it all: “…most popular and fastest rising queries from the year to capture the joys, sorrows and curiosity that many of us felt—capturing the spirit of 2010.”

Call me sentimental, but I find 2010 to be one of those years that one doesn’t just put in the memory shelves to gather dust. Watch the video below, and most likely, you will experience similar emotions. Oh, and is it just me, or did Google try uber hard to include its vast array of services in the video? (I wouldn’t be surprised if advertising was part of their agenda.)

There is also a dedicated site for Zeitgeist 2010, wherein users can interactively discover more about the searches that shaped 2010 (or searches that were shaped by 2010, depends on how you want to look at it).

Google’s right. As we near the end of the year, one can’t help but wonder what 2011 will bring. I don’t know about you, but I feel optimistic. 🙂

Movies and E-books More Desirable Than MP3s

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You may not be involved in illegal downloading or file sharing anymore, but bits of useless information trivia always come in handy, don’t they?

According to Find That File, the file type that is downloaded the most today is AVI. This covers movies and other video files. Next in line are the PDF and RAR, which typically refer to e-books. The pie chart below shows downloading preferences of people with regard to the type of content.

The “winning” file types do not really come as a surprise. With high quality movies and videos available and people not having the time to go to the cinema or watch TV series as they are aired, downloading is a more convenient alternative. Note that I say convenient – in no way am I implying that it is ethical. (Then again, there are services which allow you to download or stream legally – we are walking a thin line here.)

The proliferation of e-book readers is also contributing to the popularity of e-book downloads. Add to that the fact that mobility is key to most people, having books in electronic format is really bound to make e-books more popular.

What about mp3s? Where did they go? For sure, people are still downloading music via shady means, but I think that the ease and price of legal downloads play a role here somehow. More so, we also know that albums and discographies can be downloaded in RAR or ZIP format. Since the survey only took the extensions in consideration, music can actually be part of the top downloaded file types.

Photo via gigaom

The Noun Project: Get Your Fill of Symbols

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noun project
What’s a noun? Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary gives a simple definition:

A word that is the name of something (such as a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, or action) and is typically used in a sentence as subject or object of a verb or as object of a preposition.

It’s the first part of speech that English learners pick up – everyone knows what a noun is! This is the premise behind one of the newest projects you can find on the Internet: The Noun Project. The guys behind the endeavor aim to share, celebrate and enhance the world’s visual language by creating symbols (based on nouns, of course) and sharing them with the rest of the world.

When you visit the site, you will be greeted by lots of black and white symbols of the most common things you encounter in daily life. The images themselves are not something to drool over – they are very simple, stark even. Then again, that is what the whole concept is about. Going back to the basics, keeping things simple – that’s what they want to do with the project.

Simplicity does have its perks. Whether you need an image to stick on to a blog post or a presentation, or you need a base image to modify for aesthetic purposes, The Noun Project’s collection do the trick for you. You simple have to hover your cursor over an image and download it for FREE. Their pledge is that the images will be ALWAYS be free.

One thing I am looking for – which they say is forthcoming – is the ability to search the images. For now, they are still trying to raise enough funds to continue the project, so head on over to Kickstarter to help them out. Learn more about the project by watching the video below.

Will You Be on Cloud 9 Thanks to Google eBooks?

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I read about the launch of Google eBooks yesterday when they posted the announcement in The Official Google Blog. I did find myself chewing on the idea for longer than I should have been, so I decided to take a look at some other topic. Needless to say, the bookworm in me just can’t ignore the supposedly more than 3 million books that Google eBooks is supposed to have on offer.

So what makes Google eBooks worthy to read/write/think about?

To be honest, I am not sure. Aside from the fact that it is Google who is behind the new product, I am not clear as to how the “new” concept is beneficial to me (or the average consumer for that matter). Aside from the fact that there are millions of books available on demand – some free, some for a fee, of course – what else has Google eBooks to offer? (Also consider the fact that Amazon, B&N, etc. have lots on their roster anyway.)

One distinct feature of Google eBooks is the fact that all the books are going to be stored in the cloud. This offers convenience above all – that is, if you are located in a country where Internet connection is not an issue. Yes, there are countries where Internet access is still sluggish and not omnipresent. With the cloud as storage, though, readers can pick up where they left off in a book using whatever device they feel like using. The video below showcases this and more.

That’s a pretty cute video, you have to admit. It reminds me of the e-book that Google recently release – 20 Things I Learned. Still, one cannot deny that Google is not offering something revolutionary here, can you? As great as Google is, I don’t think this development is a Cloud 9-instigating one.