Whole Earth Index/Photosweep/Map of the Best

Recomendo - issue #382

Whole Earth archive

The legendary publications of the Whole Earth Catalogs — all 20,000 pages — are now available online for free at the Whole Earth Index. These hi-res scans are almost better than the original newsprinted ones. They are a breeze to browse and navigate, and on a large monitor, very easy to read. First published in the 1970s and 1980s, these pages were the internet before the internet. The how-to books were pre-YouTube, and the articles pre-web blogs. Most of the content is still refreshingly informative today. — KK

Unclutter your photo library

Photosweep is an iPhone app (sorry, no Android) that works like Tinder for your photos. It displays the photos in your library one at a time. Swipe left to delete, swipe right to keep. It has quite a few other useful features, too. It costs $20, or $10 a year. — MF

Map of the Best 

I didn’t know it, but I guess I did need another search engine for restaurants. Map of the Best filters only “the best” restaurants near you based on stars, awards and reviews. It eliminates a lot of the Yelp noise and is especially helpful for me in San Jose, California where there’s an abundance of Mexican restaurants serving delicious food. — CD 

Mad Cow Disease podcast

"The Cows Are Mad" is a podcast series from BBC Radio 4 that explores the unsettling Mad Cow Disease epidemic of the 1990s. This strange and fatal neurological disease not only wreaked havoc on Britain's bovine population, it also claimed the lives of 178 humans. If you like zombie fiction, you’ll probably like this zombie nonfiction about cannibal cows. — MF

VR update

Meta (Facebook) quietly revealed their latest version of virtual reality tech as a demo between Mark Zuckerberg and podcaster Lex Fridman. The video of their interaction is worth watching to get a glimpse of how virtual presence might work between two people. Although each person is wearing goggles, they experience a full-sized 3D avatar of the other person without goggles. It’s a technological trick that seems to work, and might be in our future as something better than Zoom. — KK

Curate to create

In this article on navigating content overload,

Jorge Medina

outlines the importance of having a personal curation system. His premise is “You’re not lacking creativity, you’re overwhelmed” and talks about the concept of digital hoarding and how the overwhelming amount of internet content can lead to decision fatigue. He recommends being intentional about your curation system and using a framework like CODE, which stands for: 

1. Capture - Keep what resonates

2. Organize - Save for actionability

3. Distill - Find the essence

4. Express - Show your work

For me, the whole point of collecting links and keeping tabs open is for inspiration and to learn something new, so I really appreciate this reminder. As far as a “tool” goes, I’m still really happy with my OneTab recommendation from two years ago, and highly recommend it to organize your tab clutter. — CD

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Recomendo is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We run the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel, and other newsletters, including Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW? and Book Freak.