The New York Talk Exchange

The New York Talk Exchange, that's right--not Stock, it's Talk--is MIT's latest publicly announced project. Created with the help of AT&T, BT (British Telecom), and Yahoo!, the program monitors the incoming and outgoing calls and internet communications of New Yorkers.




The whole idea of this makes me kind of scared--like, when did MIT tell New Yorkers that the were logging their transmissions?--but when I saw what pretty visuals were created from the data, I relaxed a bit. Makes me think if the PATRIOT Act included spiffy 3D recreations of their wiretaps I would be a little more OK with it... Right.




Anyway, Orwellian or not, the fruits of the MIT team's labor is on display in MoMA until May and, once again, available at any time here. You can read the AP article written about the exhibition here.



I'll leave you with what I think is the most interesting fact gleaned from this info: "From Manhattan, the most-called city is London, which represents about 8 percent of all calls overseas. The second most-called city from Manhattan is Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with more than 5 percent of all calls."

Makes you think...

P.s. In the first image/link, I love the time of night--must be like 4am or something, when the communication dies out altogether for like a split second. Incredible.

We Feel Fine

We Feel Fine is one awesome-looking website.



It's a website that queries blogs all over the internet for the phrase "I feel _____" and then organizes the results in something that, in my opinion, looks bitchin' sweet. Colors relate to a happy or sad feeling, and depending on where you click, you can have results organized into gender, age or even what the weather was like outside during the time that the poster made the blog post. Combined with particle physics that are just so fun to play with; We Feel Fine is probably one of my favorite sites to check out on a fairly regular basis.



Go check out We Feel Fine today!