Tuesday, September 11, 2007

it was impossible to NOT share this one

When it comes to medication, what you don't know could kill you. Or cause eyelid droop, amnesia and decreased sweating. Match the drug to the safety information taken from its warning label. These 10 warnings on labels can be matched to the 10 prescription drugs pictured below


"Do not use if you are a woman."


"Sleepwalking, and eating or driving while not fully awake, with amnesia for the event, have been reported."


"[In a small number of people] your skin and the whites of your eyes turn yellow."


"This product is harmful to humans if swallowed. Avoid contact with skin."


"Some patients tried to end their own lives. And some people have ended their own lives." (Hint: While Paxil also has been linked to an increase in suicidal thoughts in some children/teens, that's not what we're looking for here.)


"The most common side effects following injection include temporary eyelid droop and nausea."


"Serious risks include decreased sweating."


"Babies born to mothers who have taken [this drug] in the latter half of pregnancy have reported complications, including difficulties with breathing, turning blue, floppiness, stiffness, irritability or constant crying."


"Vision changes, such as seeing a blue tinge to objects or having difficulty telling the difference between the colors blue and green." Also, "An erection that won't go away."


"Gas with oily spotting, loose stools, and more frequent stools that may be hard to control."




1


2


3


4


5


6


7


8


9


10




Read More...

Master Chao: Chinese virtuouso flat-pattern designer

Andrew "bunnie" Huang -- the guy who broke the Xbox and founded Chumby -- has a great blog post today about Master Chao, a middle-aged Chinese man who has helped design thousands of everyday products that fill your gadget bag and home. Master Chao's gift is in creating flat patterns for sewing into three dimensional shapes, something that is insanely hard to model well on computers. I heard bunnie give a talk on Chinese manufacturing process last June, and his lyrical description of Master Chao's virtuoso performance has stayed with me.
It turns out there are still things where Craft, and I use it with a capital "C" here, matters-it's where CAD tools haven't brought about the ability to simulate out our mistakes before we build them. The creation of a flat pattern for textile goods is a good example of a process that requires a Craftsman. A flat pattern is the set of 2-D shapes used to guide the cutting of fabrics. These 2-D shapes are cut, folded and sewn into a complex 3-D shape. Mapping the projection of an arbitrary 3-D shape onto a 2-D surface with minimal waste area between the pieces is hard enough; the fact that the material stretches and distorts, sometimes in an anisotropic fashion, and the fact that sewing requires ample tolerances for good yields makes it a difficult problem to automate. On the chumby, we add another level of complexity, because we sew a piece of leather onto a soft plastic frame. As you sew the leather on, the frame will distort slightly and stretch the leather out, creating a sewing bias dependent upon the direction and rate of sewing. This force is captured in the seams and contributes to the final shape of the device. I challenge someone to make a computer simulation tool that can accurately capture those forces and predict how a device will look at the end of the day.

Yet, somehow, Master Chao's proficiency in the art of pattern making enables him to very quickly, and in very few iterations, create and tweak a pattern that compensates for all of this. It's astounding how clever and how insightful the results can be. And really, the point of this particular post is to introduce you to a person whose old-world skills -- absent computers, all done with cardboard, scissors and pencils -- has likely played a role in the production of something that you have used or benefited from in the course of your life.

Link

Read More...

Beautiful colored kaytdids

200709111411 Asahi Shimbun reports that a woman in Osaka discovered these pretty katydids in a field.
Osaka Museum of Natural History entomologist Itaru Kanazawa identifies them as the larvae of Euconocephalus thunbergi (”kubikirigisu” in Japanese), a close relative of the katydid. While he says it is normal for these insects to change between green and brown to match their surroundings, pink and white are considered abnormal.
Link

Read More...

TNS: Ad Spending Slips Two Quarters in a Row

Source: http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=120363

Gains for Cable TV, Consumer Mags, Outdoor and Web

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- U.S. ad spending in the first half of this year slipped to $72.59 billion, a 0.3% decline from the first half of 2006, as the second quarter repeated the falloff of the first.
The top 10 advertisers' collective outlay fell 2.2% in the first half as five of them made significant cuts.
The top 10 advertisers' collective outlay fell 2.2% in the first half as five of them made significant cuts.

If the drop seems slight, remember that media sellers' costs are rising fast. Even more unsettling, this is the first time since 2001 that media ad spending has fallen for two quarters in a row, according to TNS Media Intelligence, which produced today's numbers. More challenges ahead "While the protracted downturn in automotive spending has been a prime contributor, the overall results reflect weakness across a wide range of industries and advertisers," said Steven Fredericks, president-CEO of TNS. "Given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges during the second half of the year." It's true that the first quarter of 2006 was blessed by the Winter Olympics ad bonanza, but it would have been soft even without the Olympic effect. And the second quarter declined without any particularly tough comparison from 2006. The only media to gain were cable TV, which was up 2.8%; consumer magazines, up 6.9%; Sunday magazines, up 4.3%; Spanish language magazines, up 13.1%; outdoor, up 3.6%; and, of course, the internet, up 17.7%. That internet figure doesn't include keyword search or video advertising -- TNS doesn't track those. TV feels pain The brunt of the budget cuts hit network TV, which was down 3.6%; spot TV, down 5.4%; business-to-business magazines, down 7.2%; local magazines, down 4.2%; local newspapers, down 5.7%; national papers, down 6.4%; Spanish language papers, down 4.4%; local radio, down 1.5%; national spot radio, down 5.3%; and network radio, down 4.4%. The top 10 advertisers' collective outlay fell 2.2% in the first half as five of them made significant cuts. Spending fell 12.5% at AT&T; 25.1% at General Motors; 7.9% at Time Warner; 9.1% at Johnson & Johnson; and 2.6% at Walt Disney. Fortunately for the media business, the other half increased their budgets. The biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, raised ad spending 1.8% to reach $1.61 billion. Spending also rose at Verizon Communications, which was up 8.8%; Ford Motor, up 2.7%; Sprint Nextel, up 13.5%; and National Amusements, up an impressive 56.5%. By category, declines registered in telecom, which was down 6.3%; nondomestic auto, down 6.1%; domestic auto, down 10.8%; and travel and tourism, down 1.2%. The biggest category of the half, financial services, expanded spending 3.5%. Local services and amusements spending increased 2.1%. Miscellaneous retail (excluding department stores, food stores and home furnishing and appliance stores) grew 0.2%. Direct-response advertising rose at the greatest rate, 11.3%. Personal-care products grew 6.7%. And restaurants expanded 0.8%.

Read More...

Adobe: Photoshop Goes Online and Free

psx_screenshot.jpgWhile it's still a teaser at the moment, John Nack (senior product manager for Photoshop) has confirmed the development of Photoshop Express. It's a free online photo editor that's not meant to replace Adobe's current offerings, but "make Adobe imaging technology immediately accessible to large numbers of people." And from the screenshot here you can tell it's not even a dumbed- down Photoshop, but an entirely new product (that reminds us of something from the new iLIfe).

The announcement follows Adobe's implementation of Premiere Express, their online video editor, and it signifies a fairly progressive market plan by Adobe. In a content creation culture where every teen is a video editor, the democratization of powerful multimedia tools online allows Adobe to reach out to this new generation without abandoning their industry professional bread and butter. And it makes us want to remind kids that we once edited a movie on a VCR (after walking 30 miles barefoot in the snow, aiming our kite for lightning to capture the electricity to do our work). [adobe]

Read More...