I just finished the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter. The series is a look at the (solution to, reason for, questions surrounding the) Fermi Paradox through three potential lenses. Best and most raw sci-fi I've ever read. The books left me hopeful, suspended, disgusted and in awe of the depth of this man's observation of humanity.
If you're looking for something lighter, perhaps check out Time Ships by the same author. This was the only authorized sequel to the legendary classic The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.
I'm currently working my way through Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy. His writing is incredibly insightful and psychedelic. I'd also suggest the Time Ships (only authorized Time Machine sequel) and anything from the Xeelee universe. Maybe start with Vacuum Diagrams?
David Brin's Uplift series is brilliantly written, and personifies non-human characters wonderfully.
Heinlein has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, and his writing always makes me giddy.
The depth of his exploration of the human condition through the continuation of H.G. Wells' classic just floored me. My jaw was dropped practically from page one.
If you know any journalists, I'm sure they'll have ideas -- They are (in my limited experience) intelligent and incredibly busy people, leaving them with little time to really dive in to every topic they see that interests them. Also, news organizations have been slow to catch up to the internet age. At least in the US, there are only a handful of papers REALLY diving into the app side of things. Thankfully that number is growing.
I'd love to see what you and your friends are doing with open data. I'm finding it difficult to stay motivated in my own area, with few developers and little free time.
Glad to see that people world over are investing time in open data. :)
Look for information you would want to see in your available media -- find a dataset and build it into a useful app to be filtered and queried in different ways. Map data points to physical locations. Correlate those things. At some point it all starts to look like a population density heat map, but sometimes you find good stuff in there. And people want to see it. They need more tangible access to all the real world data we have been collecting. Otherwise, what's the point?
I worked for a year at a newspaper and built apps and stuff like that -- it was the most fulfilling work I've ever done and I wish the situation had been able to work out. If I ever get a chance to do real news apps again, I would jump on it. Enjoy your opportunity, Anders, and be prepared to show your work.
Sometimes, the phrase "if you build it, they will come" is applicable. If you build something that shows you CAN build something, show it to the right people and you will attract attention.
If the technology were there to have a workable version of Glass as a contact lens, I'd wear it all day every day. Augmentation of the senses is the next logical step, right?
I've been finding that just simply mocking up the sites/apps I'm building or even just pieces of their functionality has helped me refine what I feel is implementation of good user experience. The marker comes down to "Would I use that?", and more often than not, as fast as I can get a page up it's no match for a mockup that comes to fruition even quicker. Check out Balsamiq (http://www.balsamiq.com/) for the app that I choose to use. I also lurk ux.stackexchange.com, as mtrn suggested it's a great resource.
Not digging against you, but this might (though, imho it shouldn't) be a barrier to entry to newcomers. I've simply resigned myself to editing the one line it takes to complete the tutorial every step of the way... Though in retrospect I think I probably could have just forked it and updated that line myself for a permanent fix... :)
We'll be releasing frequent UX and content updates over the course of the next couple months as we develop new features and add more tutorials. Please feel free to make suggestions; all are welcome! :)
Thanks for the feedback nik! I'm glad you like the idea. Personally, I can't wait to add more videos and more instruments so the appeal and potential audience of the site grows.
I plan on adding a feedback form to the search page when there are no results, so that users can suggest more music to add. That's at the top of my list for things to do today actually. Right now we've got about 1000 tutorials, but we're planning on adding more soon, of other instruments and more songs. Guitar will be the next instrument added.
As to the pages with dead videos, there should be a link under each video that says "Broken video?", that will pop up a feedback form.
I think a proper response to this question would be in the form of another... What would happen if the US doesn't default? I was raised to think that my parents tried their damndest to leave this world a better place for their children. They might have, but their generation sure failed in that respect. Continuing the charade as if a debt-based economy isn't hurting anyone is just asking for more trouble down the line. Why don't we, as a people of the world, do the responsible thing and get rid of the corruption linking politicians, multinational corporations and banks. The people of the world are suffering and it ain't getting any easier. I heard Latvia just voted to oust their parliament because it was as bad as the US government. Corrupt politicians doing favors for the ones with the "money" and leaving the little guy (the other 99%) to fend for himself.
Also, Ron Paul has some words of wisdom on this topic. He has been saying the same thing his entire career and people keep calling him crazy. I think it's about time we listen.
Though the rest of the features are relatively mild, I'm definitely a fan of the "hangout". I was just on a chat earlier with 4 friends - I'm in the pacific northwest, three of them were in the midwest in several cities and one was all the way on the other side of the world, in Calcutta. Quality was fantastic and smooth, especially considering our pal in India was on a tethered 1Mbps cellular connection. Needless to say, I'm sold. Google+ makes Skype look like some teenager's high school science project gone wrong.
Hope I can be helpful with this. I believe in active meditation, for lack of a better term. All of my activities I take in stride, paying attention to what I'm doing instead of just walking blindly through life. At least, that's the goal!
I got started on this when I decided to start working for myself actually. Now that I have a say in my schedule, the pressure of "getting there" practically doesn't exist! With that out of the way I only do what I enjoy doing and it allows me to take the time I need. I get to spend time each day on ME because I don't have to answer to THEM.
Good luck mate! Freeing myself from the cyclical struggle was the best thing I've ever done. It wasn't nor is easy but it's worth it for all the benefit I've seen!