bookofjoe

Helpful Hints from joeeze: How to privately direct message on Twitter

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I've always wondered at exchanges on Twitter which clearly indicate that people are replying to other  people individually.

I mean, I see how you can direct message someone who's following you via a direct link on their home page but what about the zillions of other people on Twitter who've never heard of you but for one reason or another you want to contact?

I remained in the dark about how to do this until I read Jessica E. Vascellaro's article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal headlined "Why Email No Longer Rules."

Buried deep within the piece was this: "You can... send private 'direct messages' through the system by typing d and the user name."

Who knew?

But I still wasn't clear about how to do it even with those instructions.

It's a TechnoDolt™ thing.

So I had a look at the stuff under "Help" on my Twitter homepage, and over on the right at #7 on a list of articles was "What are Direct Messages?"

I clicked on it and got the page up top.

I thought I understood so I typed d+bookofjoe+ in the Twitter box but nothing happened.

When in doubt, reread the instructions.

This time I looked at the example (above) and saw where you don't actually use the + sign.

Doh.

I tried that and sure enough, as soon as I'd finished typing d and then left a space, the word "update" under the "What are you doing?" box changed to "send" and the "What are you doing" changed to "Direct message."

Easy as pie.

If I can do it, anyone can.

STOP PRESS

Alas, it turns out that Ms. Vascellaro's instructions neglected to mention the fine print, namely that if someone isn't following you — which for most people is most people — you're out of luck when it comes to direct messaging them.

You have to go the public route, i.e., @.

Oh well, it sure was fun while it lasted.

My Cleaning Trolley — 'Girls Only'

 

Like something brought back from a time machine visit to the 1950s.

"11-piece cleaning set includes a vacuum cleaner with real vacuum functions, a trolley and lots of other accessories."

£29.99.

[via The Daily What]

BehindTheMedspeak: What is the opposite of prosopagnosia?

Easy, joe: first off, what's prosopagnosia?

Prosopagnosia is a diminished ability to recognize faces, found in about 2% of all people.

In a paper published in the April 2009 issue of Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, Harvard psychologist Richard Russell and colleagues "have shown that there is a third group of people whose face recognition skills are unusually good — people whose powers of face recognition seem to be as enhanced as the face recognition powers of those with prosopagnosia are diminished," wrote Shankar Vedantam in a May 25, 2009 article in the Washington Post.

Here's the abstract of the paper.

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Super-recognizers: People with extraordinary face recognition ability

We tested 4 people who claimed to have significantly better than ordinary face recognition ability. Exceptional ability was confirmed in each case. On two very different tests of face recognition, all 4 experimental subjects performed beyond the range of control subject performance. They also scored significantly better than average on a perceptual discrimination test with faces. This effect was larger with upright than with inverted faces, and the 4 subjects showed a larger “inversion effect” than did control subjects, who in turn showed a larger inversion effect than did developmental prosopagnosics. This result indicates an association between face recognition ability and the magnitude of the inversion effect. Overall, these “super-recognizers” are about as good at face recognition and perception as developmental prosopagnosics are bad. Our findings demonstrate the existence of people with exceptionally good face recognition ability and show that the range of face recognition and face perception ability is wider than has been previously acknowledged.

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Want more?

Scroll down here (it's the website for the research group whose work appears above) for links to over 35 recent articles an a variety of publications and media, including video clips.

"Super-recognizers" — not catchy enough.

Let's put on our thinking caps and come up with a better word/term; I'll send on your suggestions to Professor Russell.

Louboutin x Ladurée Macaroons

"Parisian shoe maker Christian Louboutin has teamed up with Parisian pâtisserie Ladurée Ladurée to create an exclusive collection of macaroons. The macaroons were created by Louboutin himself and Ladurée chief pâtissier Philippe Andrieu and inspired by the Mediterranean in the summer."

"The fig- and date-flavored macaroons come in boxes inspired by Christian Louboutin shoes and in the colors of this year's fall collection. Available exclusively from Ladurée stores."

[via Sybarites]

Surf Montreal — Who knew?

"The mission of Surf Montreal is to make surfing more accessible... and to promote the Montreal surfing scene."

Excerpts from Jesse Huffman's July 10, 2009 New York Times story follow.

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Behind the striking modular apartment complex known as Habitat 67, a crowd of surfers slipped into wet suits and waxed up their boards, 500 miles from the nearest ocean beach.

They were preparing to surf a standing river wave [above] in the St. Lawrence, where high-velocity water roars over a steep river-bottom depression, pitches back and upward, and creates a waist-to-overhead breaker. Surfers paddle into it or swing out by rope to catch the green-faced wedge, rewarded by a seemingly endless ride.

“Once you’re carving, it’s exactly the same feel as on an ocean wave,” said Chris Dutton, the founder of the Web site surfmtl.com, “except that instead of going straight down the line, you carve a little bit, flip around, carve back, and can go all day.”

Corran Addison, an Olympic kayaker and three-time world freestyle kayak champion, was the first to tackle the Habitat wave with a surfboard, in 2002. Mr. Addison’s river-surfing school, Imagine Surfboards, has taught 3,500 students since 2005, and has expanded to include a surf shop and board line. A second Montreal river-surfing school, KSF, has hosted 1,500 students a year since 2003. From fewer than 10 original surfers, Mr. Addison estimates the current participants to number around 500.

Modern river surfing on standing waves evolved on the Eisbach River in Germany in the mid-1970s. Tidal bores have been ridden for years on the Severn in England; in Bordeaux, France; and on the Amazon. New standing waves are being pioneered almost daily in rivers in places like Colorado, and in Ontario and Alberta in Canada.

Concrete Ring

Concrete and steel.

$60.

HEMA's wonderful website

Wrote Joe Peach, "Now this is a catalog — very creative webmaster. HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands."

"Take a look at HEMA's product page — just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens, and 

 DON'T click on any of the items in the picture; just wait.

This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer, who has too much time on his hands."

A question for my Dutch readers and (others who've visited a HEMA store): does this sense of whimsy extend to the stores themselves?

Lambswool Pencil Scarf

By Sara Carr.

£35.

[via noquedanblogs]