Eve Online User-Generated Portraits – Just look at the quality of those pictures above – they’re all created by players using Eve Online’s character generation system. Back in 1997 I worked on a pool game with animated characters, and a generator we nicknamed the Barbie Fashion Show, but I never realized how far the technology had come since then. Just check out this video of the interface to see how easy it is to create amazing results. In a funny twist, one of my old colleagues from that pool game is now working for Eve out in Iceland as a senior designer.

Carpets for airports – A connoisseurs guide to airport flooring, revealing their secret meanings. The Da Vinci Code for carpets, with a funky flash interface.

Without adding context, a journalist with data can be dangerous – A fantastic example of something I’ve been struggling to get across to people. At the moment we’re incredibly susceptible to believing number’s people throw at us, in a way we wouldn’t with stories told in prose. As a society, we need to wise up and develop enough savvy to build an immune system to this sort of manipulation, and part of that has to be calling out distortions like the one David pounces on.

Lighting the dark continent – Africa’s lack of development can seem staggering, but as Jon points out, it’s also a massive opportunity.

The Quantified Self Conference – I didn’t know there was a grass-roots movement around this idea, I thought it would be something driven by the product folks, but it makes sense there’s people interested in instrumenting their lives. This looks like a great opportunity to get feedback if you are in the business of offering solutions around this area.