clock … watching time, the only true currency

After fighting allergies during the last two beautiful days in San Francisco, it’s time to clean out the inbox from the last few weeks.

• The Daily Mail reminds us all of Worldmapper, which tries to use maps to tell different truths. All maps distort reality. These maps do it deliberately, which makes them more honest than usual.
• How to grow a super athlete from the New York Times includes a reference to an article from the USOC, which boils down to “it takes 10 years of extensive training to excel in anything.” The research focuses on athletes, but the broader lesson is…there is no silver bullet. (link)
• I was all excited about this Sony product for converting videos to DVDs until I learned that it doesn’t include an actual VCR player. Ours is dead, and I almost don’t want to replace it. I certainly hope to transfer this analog material to digital.
• Thanks to Kevin Burton, I’m watching News War. I’d rather do it on TV, but the online stuff is solid, too.
• Intuit continues to try and get us to upgrade Quicken. Although I admire the company, the Mac version from 2002 still works just fine…and I’m not sure what new stuff was added in the last five years. I’m not yet willing to put all this online, but I’m more likely to do that than upgrade to Quicken for Mac 2007.
• I came across GreenDimes via Stephen O’Grady. Not jumping on it yet, but I’m curious.
• Jakob Nielsen reminds us that email newsletters are still one of the top ways to reach customers. While we offer our OpenDNS blog updates via email (sign up at blog.opendns.com, if you’re not an RSS fan), this has not been a focus. Small mistake, definitely.
• Video of a Google TechTalk in the Netherlands, on an interesting topic: How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People (And You Can Too). It’s 50+ minutes, so I don’t know if/when I’ll ever watch. (Via Slashdot)
• Mike Masnick points out the irony that kids are reading more. The boy is tearing through books, but no video games yet.
• Thanks to George, I am no longer annoyed by the Mail.app error message for IMAP accounts about not being able to save the message.
• The Big Brother State, via infosthetics, is a short propaganda film.
• I picked up The Onion in print during lunch today, and then saw a video version is coming next month. Hope they can live up their high standards.