Feb 11, 2009
Think Artificial has made it as finalist in the student category of the SXSW Web Awards ‘09!
The notification came yesterday and what a delightful wake-up call. I knew there’d been about a thousand submissions last year, and that they’d had to make a delay this one due to an increase, so it was quite unexpected. (Each category is drastically different—but it still makes my head spin to be on a list with Ars Technica! Awesome.)
My thanks go out to the judges, bows to the fellow finalists and best wishes all around!
Jan 24, 2009
Just a quick note about the newly created Facebook page for Think Artificial. Followers can upload images & videos, share links and have some discussions. Facebook’s ‘discussion board’ sucks about as much as the economy, but posting comments on individual pics, links and vids could be fun. If you’re interested then please be my guest to join and post some cool artificial stuff.
Jan 23, 2009
Dear readers of Think Artificial—my apologies for not having posted sooner. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, there are some things weighing on my shoulders. This is, among school and other things, a burning desire to help rebuild on Iceland’s ashes of economic collapse.
Only yesterday the police employed gas to disperse a crowd for the first time since 1949 when Iceland joined NATO. The people are protesting the government’s poor management in the months since the collapse.
I’ve been brooding on ideas of how to introduce innovation as a key component in the new society. This is not an easy thing to do—Iceland is drenched in history-based economic models to make decisions. When that model goes too far, as it has royally, it does not favor innovation, startup companies and extensive research; businesses tend to put their money where its safe, not into the abyss of new ideas that may- or may not revolutionize the world.
This compels me to do something; try to help steer this country into something less extreme, more innovative. I’ve been doing presentations about how special, unique and rebellious ideas can bring about great things if done right. There’s much more planned for 2009, and also: I’m learning about politics—can you believe that?
There’s a lot on my mind—but Think Artificial is not dead. Or if it is, then it’s only because there’s the new Think Artificial of 2009 waiting to take its place. I hope to see you and your comments around. I humbly thank you for reading in 2008 and for sticking around!
Best regards,
-Hrafn
Jul 17, 2008
We’ll now be able to maintain better visual and personalized presence around Think Artificial. After some CSS struggling due to discrepancies between Firefox and Safari page rendering, I’ve finished implementing Gravatars on the site! (I’m sorry IE6 users, I don’t have time to test and accommodate a broken browser — please get Firefox).
If your comment shows up with a gray person like the third comment above, it means you’ll have to get yourself a Gravatar. If you haven’t heard of Gravatars, or Globally Recognized Avatars, they’re a service that allows you to upload and associate an avatar with your e-mail address. Since they’re in use by many popular websites, it’ll spare you some time when commenting or creating accounts there—all you’ll have to do is enter your email address and they’ll pop up automatically (email encrypted via the MD5 algorithm). For the record, the people on the pic with me above are Gnorb and Esther — both of which run great blogs.
See you around.
Jul 7, 2008
On May 27th 2007 I launched ThinkArtificial.org, a symbolic step up from my earlier blog that I’d been running for some months.
Following that step I was faced with whether I should flag the number of subscribers on the site. To set myself a goal I decided I wouldn’t reveal the number until it reached 300. And now it has happened.
Subscribers to TA have been holding at around 300 for about a month now—subscribers being people that are either subscribed to the site’s RSS feed or via email. Not counting those that visit the site regularly.
My thanks to everyone who’s been reading. You’re the reason I’m still at it.
Jun 26, 2008
UPDATE-1: The issue has been resolved.
The site’s feed has been having some trouble since June 13th which may coincide with a software update I did around that time. The bug caused the site to stop generating an RSS feed.
It seem I’ve resolved the issue. If anyone has still not received updates since the post “Reaper UAV Used Against Enemy Targets” I’d appreciate that you report it.
May 30, 2008
Last month I invited readers to apply for invitations to Twine.com, one of the major players in this first wave of semantic web applications. Twine is still in a private, invitation only beta; meaning it’s an incomplete product under heavy development (Twine intro). Due to this I set some conditions for invitees last time. But as promised, here’s the second round of invitations — this time unconditional (I know you’re all ‘telligent and enthusiastic).
Simply leave a short comment on this post if you’re interested in giving Twine a spin. An invitation will be sent to the email address you specify in the comment’s field.
Apr 22, 2008
Briefly rehashing what I said in my introductory post to Twine; this online service allows you to gather your data into one place (videos, bookmarks, photos, etc.). From around the web or from your own machine. And with more intelligence and metadata extraction/understanding which makes it easier to organize and find your information. Or discover information of interest to you as there’s a lively bunch of people (and AI) on there already recommending information.
So I’m pleased to announce that I have invitation tickets for interested readers & supporters of Think Artificial. Getting a nice productivity tool ahead of about 40,000 people waiting to get access.
Apr 3, 2008
Just a quick notice to those who only read the feeds and not the comments. Last entry was posted on April 1st. And to those who read it and believed it, I hope you forgive me and that you’re comforted by laughter in this last tiny part of the joke — the text hidden in the HTML code, right beneath my signature:
[[ SYSTEM-MESSAGE-BEGINS.
This post was automatically generated by TOWTAW v1.3.
Administrator privileges have been subsumed and user 'Hrafn' purged.
SYSTEM-MESSAGE-ENDS. ]]
Apr 1, 2008
Since early December 2007, a new author has been publishing articles on Think Artificial under my name. This author is not human, but intelligent software created by myself to relieve the pressure of regular posting. Currently, the system has posted over 20 articles without breaking cover.
Taking its cues from Google News Alerts on “robotics”, the system analyzes news articles — identifying and extracting relevant lines of text and generating a shorter version of the article. The text is then paraphrased using preset tunings to mimic my writing style. The ultimate result is an article that only needs my one-click administrator approval to be published.
