Weekly Reading List

So a few days ago Andy turned me on to Evernote. It's not my first time using it, I've tried several times in the past to find a workflow that made sense, but this time I had a problem in search of a tool. Specifically I've tried several bookmarking solutions and never really stuck with any of them so the idea of using Evernote as both a bookmarking tool in addition to note taking, archival information, and anything else was appealing. Plus the tools that interface with Evernote have gotten damn good in the past few years to where you can grab full pages from websites and archive them locally in your account. To that end I figured I'd start blogging a weekly summary of items that I've found around the web, similar to what Tom Woodward has been doing.JQuery One Page ScrollAnytime Apple releases new products I'm as much if not more so interested in what they'll do on their site (see the Mac Pro page for an example of stellar web design). This script looks really handy for integrating into a single page site where you want pages broken out by section and I like how the scrolling is fluid and seamless.RawEasily create visualizations from datasets with vector graphic export options. Looks handy for building infographics or analyzing data in interesting visual ways.Macaw: The Code-Savvy Web Design ToolI was immediately impressed by this web design tool when I saw the first demo reel of what it could do. Often these days I start a project in Wordpress but the tools in this are so slick I'm tempted to push myself towards doing more custom work with a tool like this rather than relying on a single CMS and available templates.WP Test | The Best Tests for WordpressUseful set of demo data to import into Wordpress to push the limits of whatever theme you're testing. Covers a lot of edge-case scenarios and a huge range of default Wordpress options.Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!: Cinco MIDI Organizer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSwqnR327fk I can't help but think trying to create something like this would be a total blast. (via Jim Groom)Structure Sensor: Capture the World in 3DI've been doing a lot recently with 3D scanning preparing for a project with the History department at UMW and I can say one of the big hangups is portability. This device from the same developers of Skanect, which I'm also already using and very impressed with, looks like the perfect answer. Another incredible Kickstarter project ending very soon.Woman Burned by McDonald's Hot Coffee, Then the News Media http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCkL9UlmCOE The New York Times is doing a new Retro Report series where they shed new light on old topics of conversation surrounding news media. This first one covers the story of the woman who spilled hot coffee and sued McDonalds.Microcomputer Software Lives Again, This Time in Your BrowserThe Internet Archive does it again, this time adding vintage software programs to their collection including video games and emulates them on the web using a Javascript emulator called JSMess. You can view the full archive here.‘Big Data’ Is Bunk, Obama Campaign’s Tech Guru Tells University LeadersI've got to give credit to any person that has the cojones to keynote a big event sponsored by a large and growing industry and call the entire thing out as a sham. “The exciting thing is you can get a lot of this stuff done just in Excel,” he said.