of news and other things.

Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre

The oldest photograph of a person, 1838.

From wiki:

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 3rd arrondissement, Daguerreotype. The purportedly first picture of a living person. The image shows a busy street, but due to exposure time of more than ten minutes, the traffic was moving too much to appear. The exception is the man at the bottom left, who stood still getting his boots polished long enough to show. Look closely and you will also see another man sitting on a bench to the right reading a newspaper. Also in the upper left hand side you can also see another man standing under the awning of the 3rd building from the left. What looks to be a woman standing under the street lantern at 10 o'clock from the man getting his shoes shined and another one in the big white building,1st row 3rd window down. Notice the child in the top floor window of the white building in front. Note that the image is a mirror image.

10 minute exposure time is so crazy. I mean, none of the carriages (cars?) are visible, and it's not like they're super fast either.

Got this from the 1000memories blog post How many photos have ever been taken? which has some other crazy stuff. Sample this:

I just don't understand why it's all so PINK.

Not really a surprise, but still, I DID NOT imagine that Facebook would have so many more photographs than other libraries.

This post is via Charles Apples' blog on newspaper/ magazine design. Also discovered via him: the Nueseum website's Today's Front Pages webpage which, well, showcases the frontpages of newspapers from around the world (but mostly within the USA). The Nueseum also displays newspaper frontpages outside its building along the public sidewalk.The Nueseum's in Washington, and while we didn't visit it, I remember clearly its very dramatic (and impressive) facade:

Excuse the random composition. Taken when on the move.

I wonder: is this mannerism, as defined by Robert Venturi? An example of the decorated shed and not the duck. Fits in well with the WordWeb definition of mannerism: A deliberate pretence or exaggerated display. In any case, I think it works really, really well.

Some other interesting links:
sans serif: on the latest behind-the-scenes happenings in Indian news and media. Offers pretty much what the tagline offers: the news. the views. the juice.
Information is Beautiful: on infographics- simply put, graphics which covey information. Some really-fucking-brilliantly-amazing work. (via Rachit)
History of Graphic Design: Just how beautiful is this site? Sigh.