I’ve always been a fan of podcasts ever since I bought my first iPod (which is now over a decade ago), because I’m able to listen to them anywhere while doing other things (like driving, cooking, etc.). And the world of podcasting content has only gotten better. In the past few years, podcasts have gain more notoriety and stopped being viewed as that niche media that only geeks use. They have become massive online repositories of interesting audio content, specially after major radio broadcasting networks have adhered to this format so intensively.

But one of the things that I like the most about podcasts is the freedom they give to content creators to go back to one of the most interesting features that radio broadcasting used to have: telling smaller less-known stories about individuals or places that you may not have heard before. And I’ve been focusing more on listening this kind of podcasts.

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I admire those people that take some of their personal time to come up with a redesign of popular services such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. And what amazes me the most is that some of these proposals look better than the original, which kind of makes you think: “Why aren’t these people getting hired by these companies?”

Here’s a Twitter redesign proposal (by Estie Carrillo):

Click here to see more awesome redesigns

I’m not a web designer, I’m a programmer. I do suffer from the typical programmer syndrome of trying to solve everything with a piece of code. But I also understand the importance of UI design and experience. I always take the opinions of the design people very seriously since I’ve seen the wondrous effect of taking their advises translated into web site visits and engagement.

This example from Reddit is just a sample of what that means.

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Even if you’re not a follower of the World Cup you’ve probably heard by now of the strange appetite of a certain Uruguayan player: Luis Suárez.

If you haven’t (under which rock have you been?), here’s the juicy part:

Click here to see the crazy stuff that the Interwebz delivered.

FixPatents.org

Yes, it’s as simple as that: this is a reader app that merges several different news sources (which includes facebook, twitter, feedly, feedbin and app.net) into one convenient place for binge reading.

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That moment when you know you’re gonna win…

…and you do your little victory dance…

Click here to see some amazing dance moves

And so an era ends.

I’ve been using Feedly as an alternative because the mobile apps are quite good and the website is a “prettier” google reader. And they actually listen to the users and implement requested features. Also, it seems my Mac RSS app of choice, Reeder, will soon have support for it, so I probably won’t miss Google Reader that much.

What happens when you leave 16 autonomous AI bots alone to play Quake 3 Arena against each other for 4 years? Apparently, they play the ultimate Cold War game and achieve “world peace”.

I don’t know if this story is true or not, but it actually makes sense from a purely logical self-preservation point of view. The bots were programmed to study which strategies were more efficient in guaranteeing their survival. After a few years, they probably realized that the best strategy is actually to not engage each other and they all win.

Check the story thread’s screenshot here.

(Seen here via @sh4na)

Imagine that the typical money-for-ransom is traded with a weird request like: “If you want to get your dear princess back, the prime-minister will have to have sexual intercourse with a pig on live television.” Will the prime-minister do it? Or more importantly, in a heavily socialized society where viral content dominates the people’s attention span, would they want him to do it and would they watch?

Or imagine that you live in a future where the most common way of making an income is to work on huge energy-production buildings where people pedal specialized stationary bikes to produce the energy that the rest of the world will consume. The alternative of leading this boring and tiresome life is to become a star in worldwide-broadcast reality shows that range from singing or pornography to physical abuse. Is everything better than the bike?

Or imagine instead that everyone has a brain implant that allows recording and reviewing every memory they have ever had and, by using a small external device, people can simply rewind and fast-forward to a particular memory and display it on a nearby TV for everyone to see. Now imagine you suspect your wife is cheating on you and you over-analyse every memory that you have of her with the guy you suspect she’s having the affair with. How long would it take you to go insane?

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