Interesting Links

1. Sixty Symbols

Via Kottke, the folks at the University of Nottingham who brought us the Periodic table of Videos now bring us a collection of small videos explaining the 60 major symbols used in physics and astronomy. It's a really neat way of presenting things. I wonder how well they get used. In some other sorts of similar projects I have heard accounts of people not really getting into re-use of the pithy little talking head appraoch. But the way these are presented and collected may mean that these work better.

2. Weblog as Personal Thinking Space
A slideshare of a talk Lilia Efimova gave on weblogs as personal thinking space. There has been a lot of talk about blogs being egocentric and in the sense that it is usually something of a one way conversation, that may be true. But in this talk Lilia captures another way that blogs also work, a way that I find very useful. 

3. Streams not blogs
One of those arguing that we need dialogue not monolog or blogs is Jay Cross of informal learning fame. He gives a typically thoughtful explanation of the shift that he feels happening away from blogs and towards Twitter and aggregatoirs like Posterous and FriendFeed. Some interesting pushback in the comments from Alan Levine and others. 

4. Bad charts. Example no. 875
What we have here is a failure to communicate. A beautiful explanation from Junk Charts of why a spectacularly awful set of charts from the London Times is in fact so awful.  

5. Great Shop Names
A little photo essay from Guy Kawasaki on stores in Edinburgh with great names, including Thistle Do Nicely and Well Hung.