Fridays “Weekly Top Ten” – What I’ve Been Reading

Every friday im going to compile a top ten list of the things I have starred on google reader that week. There is a lot of interesting stuff out there, and this can generate some traffic to a lot of cool sites you may not know about. So…here it goes. (Click on any title below to be taken to the full article at the respective website. List continues after the break!

1. Car & Plane Parts Furniture

   from Dark Roasted Blend by Avi Abrams

   “QUANTUM SHOT” #190

   Used cars – for design statement, not transportation

   Car parts provide great ideas for interior design. When your old rusty four-wheel monster finally kicks the bucket, you can still salvage some parts for pretty cool furniture pieces. Car Couches is an obvious design combination, which can be quite attractive when used with collectible vehicle parts. At Route66 store you can get many more.

   

2. Gmail Doubles Maximum Attachment Size to 20 MB (Ionut Alex Chitu/Google Operating System)

   5/23/2007

   Gmail Doubles Maximum Attachment Size to 20 MB — Gmail upgraded the maximum attachment size from 10 MB to 20 MB. Gmail was quite forgiving and you could send more than 10 MB in some cases, but now it’s possible to send at least 20 MB in one message. — Of course, few mail providers …

   Source: Google Operating System
   Author: Ionut Alex Chitu
   Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/05/gmail…

   Techmeme permalink

3. Educate Thyself, Skip School

   5/23/2007

   How to get the most out of your college experience: DON’T GO TO CLASS.

   Instead of going to class go to networking events, get involved, start a business, visit office hours if you want to learn something from your professor. How much can you retain from canned lectures and 100 word power point slides? Textbooks can only teach so much. With textbooks you can be sure of one thing: that what you are reading does not represent the newest thought in your field of study and by the time you get a job it will most likely be irrelevant (unless you’re a history major).

4. Bahia Mission Bay Corvette show

   5/20/2007

   

5. Abominable Snowtruck: The Yeti! Monster Truck Rides on Tractor Tires, Unimog Axles

   from Jalopnik

   

   Whether or not you think the Himalayan abominable snowman is a hoax, this Yeti is as real as getting capped in the nuts by a sock filled with flour. It’s the product of master fabricator Rex Bailey, who built the monster Dodge atop 76″ tractor tires and Mercedes Unimog axles. As appointed, the Cummins diesel-powered 3500 can power through snow up to three-feet deep. [Thanks to prplhaze for the tip.] – Mike Spinelli

   Samsonâ„¢ Helps Build Giant Snow Truck [Samson]

   Related:
   Your Moment of Arctic Zen: The Tankpedition!; Dashing Through the Snow, in a 492 Horse Sled [internal]

6. Why You Shouldn’t Follow Directions Too Closely

   from Neatorama by Smidigt

   A contractor who’s taking the construction plan a little too literally.

   Link – via Buzz

7. Don’t tell us your password: the top ten

   from The mental_floss Blogs by Ransom

   

   Passwords rule our lives. You need one to access your computer, your email, your bank account, and on and on. To make matters worse, there are hordes of thieves and hackers out there trying to get the virtual keys to our online kingdoms, via phishing, the hacking of corporate databases, spyware, etc. So why is it, then — despite ubiquitous warnings to the contrary — that so many people still make their passwords simple, intuitive, and use the same ones over and over for years at a stretch? The simplest answer, which via Occam’s Razor is probably the correct one, is that we’re just lazy. If that’s the case, and you can’t bring yourself to memorize eight randomly-generated numbers and letters strung together rather than using the name of your family pet to secure that million-dollar 401k account, then at least take our advice and avoid these most commonly used passwords:

   10. [The user’s first name.] In Britain, the tenth most common password is “Thomas,” which in 2000 was also the second most popular name given to male British children.

   9. blink182. Lord knows, Blink182 isn’t the most popular band in America. We’re betting it has something to do with the fact that it combines numbers and letters, which many password engines require of new passwords these days. Just don’t do it, people — the band, or the password.

8. It’s a Geek Thing!

   from Dark Roasted Blend by Avi Abrams

   “QUANTUM SHOT” #186

   One Day in the Life of an Office Computer Worker

   ISSUE 2. Read the first issue here

   A day in the life of a good IT employee starts early… in a slightly confused way:

   

9. Understanding Context

   from The Jalopy Journal by Ryan Cochran

   

   You wouldn’t be reading The Jalopy Journal if you weren’t somehow intrigued by old shit – old cars, motorcycles, tools, gadgets, art, etc… It’s just a predisposition most of us have and having an understanding for these collateral items seems to bring a better sense of understanding to our traditional cars. The more you know about the late the 1940’s, the more successful you can be at building a car based around that period – right?

10. Customer Service Heaven

    from Freakonomics Blog by Stephen J. Dubner

    From a recent N.Y. Times article by Michael Barbaro, headlined “Less Risk Seen in Purchasing Clothes Online”:

    For the first time since online retailing was born a decade ago, the sales of clothing have overtaken those of computer hardware and software, suggesting that consumers have reached a new level of comfort buying merchandise on the Web.

    One of the merchants mentioned the article is Zappos.com, “a popular online retailer of shoes, jewelry and clothing.” I first heard of Zappos just a few days ago, and what I learned about the company supported Barbaro’s suggestion that consumers are way, way happier with a certain kind of online merchant: