photo by Michael Rubenstein

The Wall Street Journal has report on the construction of elevated skywalks for pedestrians to get off the busy streets. Story, photo and video here:

Most streets here have no footpaths. The sidewalks that do exist are bursting from a gridlock of walkers, street vendors and squatters. The scrum has become even pushier recently as hundreds of thousands migrate to this city of nearly 18 million people for jobs created by its economic expansion. Success has also led to an unprecedented number of cars and motorcycles on the road.

To lift the pedestrians that power this city above the fray, Mumbai is building more than 50 elevated walkways. The skywalks will sprout from train stations across the city and snake over the traffic for up to two miles to create a pedestrian express lane.

This is the sort of thing that makes me glad to be alive in the present era. Flicker Flow uses color and time to create images. There’s a large series of experiments at the link above in addition to Flicker Flow.

The two of us see the world as a stream of color, and in 2009 we finally had a chance to draw the river in our heads. We began with a collection of photographs of the Boston Common taken from Flickr. Using an algorithm developed for the WIRED Anniversary visualization, our software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. The image below is an early sketch from the piece. Summer is at the top, with time proceeding clockwise.

Carlos Slim has bumped Bill Gates off the top of the richest of the rich list. I actually recognized the name of the new richest because of a New Yorker story. It isn’t available to non-subscribers on the website, but here’s an interesting NYer blog entry with the author of the piece. This link takes you to the richest guy data.

When Slim married, his mother offered to buy him a house—a family custom. Slim said that he would prefer the cash equivalent. Upon receiving a million pesos from his mother, he built a twelve-story condominium in Mexico City. He and Soumaya occupied the ninth floor and rented out the other apartments.
Slim continued acquiring businesses—a copper mine and a printing company among them—but his most significant purchase was the cigarette manufacturer Cigatam, which at the time had the Mexican license for Marlboros. Cigatam provided Slim with a critical ingredient for amassing a fortune: steady cash flow.

What? There’s something beyond Facebook? Come on, there will always be something beyond. Here’s an overview of five new social media sites, from FourSquare to Groupon. With Google’s Buzz in between. And Google is ruling the world:

Buzz allows users to post status updates and upload pictures and videos to a Google profile, not unlike Facebook and Twitter. A user’s network is formed by contacts they interact with frequently on Gmail.

If a user makes an update public, the information also gets added to the “Buzz” layer now available on Google mobile maps. Now, Google Maps users on iPhones and Android devices can view the things other Buzz users have said about businesses in the area.

LOOKING BACK: Wired has an on-going series of over-the-shoulder looks at technology from the past. This one tells about how AOL was bundled with frozen hams.

RUSHING TO COSTA RICA: Much has been said about Rush Limbaugh’s “threat” to move to Costa Rica if health care reform is passed. He must secretly admire those nasty “socialist” health care systems. First he praised Hawaii’s system and now he’s talking about living in Costa Rica’s. Here’s what someone says about Costa Rica’s:

This does not make sense at all: Costa Rica has the best socialized medical safety net of all central American countries, if not Latin American countries. Infinitely much better then the US system. In addition there is the government run “extra” medical insurance for people who want to be treated faster in private hospitals and clinics.

Is Rush totally ignorant? … or does he want the best of all combinations: a peaceful country, no army, great health care, great affordable education. The major bad thing: lousy drivers who are intend to kill each other by the most stupid of actions. Maybe Rush would like to join the kamikaze motorcycle drivers of this country.

Barbara Tadda sent a link to this Discovery page that contains a great video:

The result was this 4-minute Rube Goldberg machine that plays part of the song, synchronizes with the beat, and involves the band members getting very messy. It runs the length of a two-story warehouse, and the action was filmed in a single shot.