Today I found a site named iSerenity that offers ambient backgrounds for your work or home. Instead of offering minimal beats of ambient musicians, iSerenity offers environmental sounds. Not only things like waterfalls mind you, but the obviously relaxing sound of highways, typewriters, and vacuums. You know, things most people find relaxing. Yes, the concept makes me giggle a little.

Some of their selections are not very successful in producing a relaxed environment. The heartbeat makes me want turn into Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and the purring is as about as relaxing as a chainsaw.

Still, some of their efforts work surprisingly well. I found the dryer noise to be oddly focusing. As I listened to it I forgot it was there – yet it still helped me focus on my tasks. Turning off the sound felt strange, too – everything was suddenly different and I was back in the real world.

Give it a try at http://www.iserenity.com/.

Being a massive nerd I have a tendency to do a lot of things while at my computer.

This includes: eating, brushing my teeth, lifting weights, sleeping, wine tasting, texting, changing, and crying about my pathetic state of nerdery.

Hence, it was no surprise last week when I dumped an entire bowl of Rice Krispies onto my brand new Apple bluetooth keyboard. And let me clarify, we aren’t talking some minor spill. I literally dumped the entire bowl onto my keyboard. In fact, I mind as well have used the keyboard as a bowl in the first place. However, before losing all hope I quickly removed the keyboard’s batteries, dashed it to the sink, and washed the whole thing with water. After a good shake I set it down on a towel at a 45 degree angle and let it dry for the next six days.

To my surprise when I plugged the batteries back in last night the keyboard came back to life as if nothing had gone wrong. Now… I’ve heard rumors about being able to place keyboards in the dishwasher, but I myself have never successfully had this work. And therefore I have to admit that I was not only extremely happy (not to mention $80 richer), but also somewhat amazed that my keyboard was still functioning.

Either way, I hope this tale helps fellow geeks resurrect what would otherwise be a dead keyboard or laptop. Or better yet, helps them realize that food and drink directly over the keyboard might be a questionable idea in the first place.

Now that most of you have visited the Imulus Insights blog, you will notice a change that has taken place just last week. The blog has been redesigned, but please be patient with us if you would like to read or leave comments…they are missing. The blog is still undergoing work, but your ability to read or leave comments will be available soon.

Enjoy reading our articles that flow in at random times from our creative team of people at Imulus. In the meantime we will ramble about design and coding goodness and sip on caffeine to get our creative juices flowing. Please stay tuned or should I say blogged.

It is unbelievable to me that after countless election problems over the years that the same mistakes continue to be made. A study by CALTECH/MIT estimated that 1.5 million votes were not recorded in the 2000 election because of equipment and ballot design problems. Another 3 million votes were lost because of registration issues caused by problems with the registration forms. Since elections are handled at the state and county level there is no consistency of election process and ballot design. This is horribly inefficient, with process and ballot design being reproduced by various election officials all over the nation (some better than others). The lack of consistency also fails voters. As a voter, every time that my local election officials decide to change the ballots, or I move to another area, I have to learn a whole new way to vote. Even a bad ballot would be better than the current situation, if only the ballot were the same everywhere and every election.

From what I understand, it might be extremely difficult to change the laws and make federal standards for election process and ballot design. But as an alternative standards could be developed and ballot designs created that could be adopted by the states on a voluntary basis. If local officials were presented with an option that was proven to be effective and reduced their costs for doing all the work themselves, I would imagine that adoption would be very high.

Visit the following links to learn more about this issue:

http://www.reformelections.org
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/
http://www.designfordemocracy.org

I’ve been thinking recently about generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs). These are Top Level Domains (TLDs) that are not associated with a country such as .us (United States) or .co.uk. (United Kingdom). Here are some of my thoughts:

.musuem – a bit verbose; I love museums, but I never thought they would want or need their own gTLD. Why not bookstores or coffee shops? I can see it now: www.starbucks.coffee. But what is there to stop the proliferation of niche gTLDs? And is this the proliferation of niche gTLDs a bad thing? Not in my opinion.

.pro – bad idea, but only a bad idea becuase of its restrictive rules. I’m a pro at what I do. So are consultants, engineers, programmers, professors, construction workers, waiters, chefs and teachers. It’s presumptuous for these domains to be limited to lawyers and doctors and the like, if not insulting. This domain could have been the next .com in my opinion if its rules limited its use where less restrictive.

.jobs and .aero – Makes sense. Self explanatory.

.coop – for Co-ops. This TLD seems to have pretty good potential for creative domain hacks.

.cat – for Catalan related websites – seems fair as Catalonia is part of Spain. Will this inspire other groups in other countries seek their own TLDs?

And what about .dog?