GOOGLE'S ART PROJECT

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Art lovers will be able to tour some of the world’s best-known galleries and museums from the comfort of their armchairs thanks to a new service from Google.
The search engine has teamed up with 17 art galleries – including the Tate Britain in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Uffizi in Florence and the Hermitage in St Petersburg – to capture high-resolution images of famous works. FT

WHERE'S THE BUS BROOKLYN

Today, we are excited to launch a new project: real-time bus locations for the B63 line in Brooklyn.  For the past several months, we’ve been working closely with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build the open source and open data infrastructure for this new service.  As open source software developers, as open data advocates, and as MetroCard-carrying members of the NYC tech community, we at OpenPlans are extremely proud to help New Yorkers answer the question: “where’s the bus?” OpenPlans

FACEBOOK VIDEO CHAT

Rounds. It’s an application for Facebook that allows you to do video chat, browse the Internet with friends and even play games. But it’s also an incredibly powerful API and now it’s a way to meet up with other random Rounds users, as well. TNW

A PATCH OF SUMMER IN AN OTHERWISE WINTRY NY

Openhouse Gallery has heeded our cries and offered up a distinctly saner salve: an indoor pop-up park that scoops a heaping of summer onto the un-summery streets of NYC. FASTCODESIGN

SKYLINE-ETCHED SUNGLASSES

The All Access World exhibition has some interesting items on display. Taking place at the Guggenheim Berlin, it is comprised of art pieces that reflect our relationship with landmarks such as the Pyramids. TrendHunter

A LOOK AT MONOGAMY

It's pretty obvious that for monogamy to work, both parties have got to be on the same page — which is why it's useful to note that a new study found that's not always the case. Researchers at Oregon State University discovered that young couples don't agree on whether they agreed to be faithful to each other. Time-HealthLand

TIME REWRITTEN

QLOCKTWO makes you pause and allows a different view of time. The typographic front combines the moment with the written word and makes it a statement. „It is half past eight.“ Biegert&Funk

CYBERCRIME: APPLE'S IDENTITY THEFT CRISIS

NEW YORK — Dozens of people have been charged with forming a prolific identity theft ring that used thousands of stolen credit card numbers to shop at Apple stores around the country, according to a court document and a law enforcement official. Huffington

A LEAN TOWARDS SOCIAL

The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. This new study revisits the Center’s study of Inc. 500 social media usage for the fourth consecutive year, making it a valuable and rare longitudinal study of corporate use of these new technologies. Dartmouth

GOOGLE SHOPPER MOVES TO iPHONE

Google today announced that it has made a version of Google Shopper available to Apple's iPhone. Shopper, which has been available to the Android platform since November, is a shopping tool that allows users to look up product information, read reviews, compare pricing, and save and share products for later shopping trips. PhoneScoop

RETHINKING FOLDERS

'the waste-folder' is a compact, hand-held bin, which easily unfolds into a six-compartment device 
for garbage and recycling. designed by akarchitectes 'the waste-folder' adapts to any spontaneous event:
picnics, barbecues or unexpected meetings. the design is literally a flat folder thin package made from
paper and cardboard which can also be recycled after use. DesignBoom


Put a handle on this thing and I'm sold. 

HURICAN YASI REPORT

Mass evacuations are underway in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland in anticipation of what forecasters expect will be the largest cyclone ever to hit the continent. Yasi has intensified rapidly and currently has winds gusting up to 295 kilometers per hour (183 mph). It is expected to maintain that intensity-equivalent to a Category Five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale--until landfall in northeastern Queensland between Cairns and Innisfail during the late evening local time on Feb. 2 (early morning Feb. 2 in the United States). NASA

A 5 YEAR PLAN: CHINA

China's 12th Five-Year Plan makes it clear that the county, which overtook Japan in 2010 to become the world's number two economy, has now turned its attention from the pursuit of national strength to increasing its people's prosperity. DigiTimes

GOOGLE BUZZ ON THE FENCE

Google Buzz was launched earlier this year in February with high expectations and was even being touted as a serious potential competitor to Twitter. Its button appeared on Mashable which is the worlds largest social media blog. Its leverage was expected to be massive  driven by the huge installed base of  Gmail users with an interface similar to Twitter. JB 

SHOTS FIRED: GOOGLE AND BING SQUARE OFF

A Google engineer suggests Bing may be pilfering the search giant's results, and has showed the results of Google's digital sting as proof. Bing says the results offer little more than a lesson in "click fraud." Shots fired! FastCompany

A LOOK FORWARD: CHINA 2020

China is betting that an ambitious program of applied research will help to secure its future as an economic superpower. Innovation 2020, unveiled last week by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), maintains support for basic research. But the plan will place a new emphasis on translating the research into technologies that can power economic growth and address pressing national needs such as clean energy, said Bai Chunli, vice-president of the CAS, at the academy's annual conference in Beijing, where the plan was announced. Scientific American

INDIGENOUS BRAZIL: ISOLATED INDIANS

Survival International, a UK-based rights group dedicated to protecting indigenous communities worldwide, has just released new photographs of an "uncontacted" group of indigenous people living on the Brazilian-Peruvian border. This is only the second time in two years photos of the isolated Indians have ever been released. Gadling 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

CUTTING TIES

The trend seems to be that great ideas can come from anywhere, including the grass roots, but are you being rewarded for your generous contribution?


If the answer is no, you might want to ask yourself what it is that you're accomplishing. 


Marketers and other opportunists might ingeniously package their attempts in wonderful religious esque diction; setting up shell friendships in a clever attempt to disarm and encourage engagement to further their agenda. 


They work hard to manipulate the environment (and you) in a seamless and all but invisible way for this specific purpose (so don't blame yourself for getting taken). 



Some Key Factors To Look Out For

• If the conversation is largely one-sided: The director or blogger is merely setting up a subject or topic to be discussed without responding to comments made after the fact.
• They frequently promote products and companies with links riddled throughout their text. 
• If they are unwilling to collaborate or forge real meaningful relationships: i.e. they're unwilling to go beyond the digital. 

To paraphrase, ask yourself "What am I getting out of it"  if you can't come up with a real tangible answer than you might want to move on and find a better way to invest your time. 

WHY NOT TO INCLUDE A COVER LETTER

In my last post I talked about how to make your résumé more likely to catch the attention of a hiring manager. As a follow up, I'd like to discuss cover letters. Here's my basic philosophy on them: don't bother.

That's because the cover letters I see usually fall into one of three categories: Harvard Business Review