Links

Friday Links: How to innovate and not Lose Focus

• The Biz Journal has a Fast 50 Diary entry on How to Innovate and Not Lose Focus. If you want to read about The Nerdery’s tips you can check out what we had to say in the News Section.
• Mathematical mechanics behind Battleship (the game).
• Computer legend & gaming pioneer Jack Tramiel died this week.
• Why “Community” is the most popular show on the Internet.
• Everything you wanted to know about Top Ramen and Cup Noodles, because you know you were kind of curious.
• A non-designers guide to typefaces & layout.
• Interview with Caine of Caine’s Arcade fame and the filmaker.
• The Calendar of Fictional Birthdays, is pretty awesome.
• If you were/are a fan of ZeFrank, watch An Invocation for Beginners. If curse words offend you, don’t watch it.
• The Draw Something masterpiece collection.
• How GM is saving money using LEGOs.
• Kids drawings recreated by a professional artist. It’s pretty cool, go take a look.

The story behind Eadweard Muybridge, the guy from today’s Google Doodle

You didn’t want to hear more about the Instagram acquisition, did you? I didn’t think so. Instead, here’s something that photography related: the shocking story behind today’s Google Doodle. If you have four minutes to spare, spend it reading about Eadweard J. Muybridge, the guy honored today in Google’s Doodle.

Muybridge was a name-changing, photography pioneer who killed his wife’s alleged lover.

The murder trial was juicy. Muybridge’s lawyer entered a plea of insanity against his wishes, but the jurors ultimately acquitted Muybridge. They found that the killing was justifiable homicide.

After the trial, Muybridge went to work taking photos in Central America for two years. While he was away, Flora died and Florado was placed in an orphanage.

The story, sadly, never tells us what happened to little Florado. Wikipedia does, of course.

Friday Links: Banksy in LEGO

• Banksy rendered in LEGO. I repeat, Banksy rendered in LEGO.
• Just one more game. . . Angry Birds, Farmville and Other Hyperaddictive ‘Stupid Games’.
• Don’t forget to RSVP for one of next week’s Nerdery Webinars on supporting legacy browsers.
• The Line has a nice write up of this year’s Overnight Website Challenge.
• Yoda speaking correctly.
• The world’s sweetest Scrabble set is now a reality and it’ll cost you 199 bones.
• For those who aren’t afraid of profanity and like their ad-world blogging with a definite point of view the news that Copyranter is blogging fulltime for Buzzfeed was cause for much excited hand clapping.
• Also on BuzzFeed (which is rapidly gaining favor with this here blogger), gowns of the internet.
• The secret science behind memorable movie quotes.
• Why $7.99 beats $0.99.
• Weird advertising characters. The Oreo Middleman is pretty rad.
• Should you keep your personal and professional identities separate online? Sounds like a lot of work.

I’m sure Superman would beg to differ

Looking up in the sky seems to be a portent of certain doom. Just take a look at this supercut.

Friday Links: The History of April Fool’s Day

• The history of April Fool’s day. I guess we get to blame the French for this one.
• An intro to metadata and taxonomies.
• Train your brain to boost memory.
• Errors in production, a nice gallery of oops.
• 36 of Apple’s most viral ads, in honor of its 36th birthday on Sunday.
• MythBusters by the numbers. 461 myths busted. 146 vehicles destroyed.
• The main failing of design school? Kids can’t think for themselves.
• When was Super Mario Bros released? Apparently there is some debate.
• Best Buy to close 50 stores.
• The gendered ad video remixer.
• The business case for investing in UI design.
• 10 most baffling moments in Lois Lane & Superman’s love life.

Dude abides

We all fall victim to it at one point or another, unwitting, unending dude-ing. It’s a hard habit to break. Once dude slips into your vocabulary everyone becomes dude: moms, boyfriends, girlfriends, cats. While this article from More Intelligent life doesn’t explain the viral-aspect of the word, it does dig up its etymology and charts its rise to fame in popular culture.

Though the term seems distinctly American, it had an interesting birth: one of its first written appearances came in 1883, in the American magazine, which referred to “the social ‘dude’ who affects English dress and the English drawl”. The teenage American republic was already a growing power, with the economy booming and the conquest of the West well under way. But Americans in cities often aped the dress and ways of Europe, especially Britain. Hence dude as a dismissive term: a dandy, someone so insecure in his Americanness that he felt the need to act British. It’s not clear where the word’s origins lay. Perhaps its mouth-feel was enough to make it sound dismissive.

Also, this (sorry to foist Rob Schneider on you, but it had to be done):

Pour one out for Chaleo Yoovidhya, the creator of Red Bull

As you can see by the graphic on the left (snipped from the Nerds page), nerds love caffeine. So when trolling through the NY Times obits today, I stopped to read about the death of Chaleo Yoovidhya, the man responsible for Red Bull.

Though he created a pharmaceuticals company in the 60s, the Thailand-native soon started making a beverage loaded with caffeine and marketed toward laborers and truckers. It wasn’t until a German discovered the jet-lag mitigating properties of Red Bull that the product really took off. Red Bull’s unique approach to marketing helped make the company ridiculously successful:

“Red Bull long eschewed traditional media outlets, like television, and focused on sponsoring student parties, sporting events and athletes, with a special emphasis on the stars of extreme sports.

The strategy worked. In January 2011, the privately held company reported that it had sold 4.2 billion cans of Red Bull, generating revenue of $5.1 billion. It claimed a 70 percent share of the energy drink market. Forbes estimated Mr. Chaleo’s wealth at $5 billion and ranked him the 205th-richest man in the world.”

Friday Links: Mike Derheim named one of the 40 under 40

• Mike Derheim named to The Business Journal’s 40 under 40. You can check out the other honorees too.
• A dad’s plea to developers of iPad apps for children.
• Hipster branding.
• Sounds of the Internet Vol. 1, a ridiculously fun “mixtape of websites with autoplay music.”
• Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs (feels a bit like Don Draper’s “Why I’m quitting smoking”) also, Why I am leaving the Empire by Darth Vader.
• On Tuesday the interrobang turned 50. It’s a punctuation mark you should go read about.
• Chris Pirillo’s Dad uses Windows 8 for the first time and OSX.
• The 10 most successful failures in geekdom.
• Sweet bookends for the nerd in your life.

Tron Dance

Seriously, just watch it.

Friday Links: Are you a speed reader?

• How fast do you read? 233 words a minute here.
• Super Morrissey Bros is the most charming Smiths/Super Mario Bros mash-up ever. See what I did there?
• Five leadership lessons from James T. Kirk.
• Monopoly for Web lovers.
• The history of animated GIFs (Warning if you’re a hard-G gif person, every time someone in the video says “jif” your eyeballs will itch a little).
• How zombies & superheroes conquered highbrow fiction.
• 67 books geek parents should read to their kids before age 10.
• After 25 billion downloads Apple names the all-time top apps.
• Toy Story meets The Shining, better than you’d think.
• I Am the Lorax, I Speak for Rainbow Sprinkle Pancakes and Mazda SUVs.