Agents are browsing information published on MySpace, discussion boards, and using search engines to learn about unclaimed income, purchases, and the physical location of suspects who owe back taxes.

Scofflaws should beware, take head, or pay their taxes. Cue appropriate song by The Beatles:

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Taxman!
Cos I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

Visit: Taxman Turns to Social-Network Sites

By the way, if you are not listening to WYNC’s Radio Lab podcast, you really should give it a try — it is a great source for inspiration and interesting ideas. The show is very creative and they do a lot of fun things with the audio storytelling format.

Visit: 16: Moments – A short film by Will Hoffman

It looks like the course and downloadable materials are reset each semester. So, be sure to access the site and save materials from the full course while it is still available!

Want to learn to develop your own iPhone app? Then you should visit: Free Stanford course on developing iPhone, iPod Touch apps.

There is also a good looking book over at Amazon.com titled Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK that has received hundreds of positive reviews. Personally, I always like a combination of a printed reference, audio lectures, sample files, and specific/focused projects for learning to develop on a new platform. Now…all I need is about 100 more hours in the day. Happy programming!

Book cover design for Chris Anderson's "Free - The future of a radical price".

Wired Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Anderson’s new book Free was released on July 7, 2009. The publisher’s summary of the title indicates that “in Free, [Anderson] makes the compelling case that, in many instances, businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them”.

Anderson is distributing copies of the new title for free in eBook, MP3, and audiobook format. For those of you who love the feel of a book in your hands, printed copies of Free are now available for sale too. I plan to enjoy listening to the free audiobook version from Audible during my commute.

Anderson also wrote the bestseller The Long Tail — about how niche markets delivering unique products can be made available to consumers through online stores.

To download your copy of Free, visit: Get a free copy of “Free” by Chris Anderson

Visit: Save Our Sounds – A social powered audio archive from the BBC

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

- Scott Adams (yeah, the Dilbert guy)

This quote rang true to me. I was surprised I never heard it before. I think another part of creativity and art is finding partners to collaborate with. You really need folks who are not afraid to fail, can look at things from a lot of different angles, and actually have a well developed sense for seeing potential and understanding benefits and consequences of going down certain paths.

Creative and artistic people are comfortable with play and are able to play well with others. It is amazing what can happen when all these things come together at the same time.

Over the years, John has done some amazing work at MIT, in the Media Lab, through MAEDASTUDIO, writing about simplicity, and has in the past year moved on to new endeavors: becoming the current president of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. I followed him from his old blog on simplicity, to his new one titled Our RISD, where he has been writing about getting into his new role and building community etc.

This week he posted an interesting video, done by the folks over at cool hunting, about simplicity and the glass house. I found it very interesting, and wanted to share it with you:

The full interview had some fun moments too where Oswalt describes himself as a nerd and how he had to contain himself when presented the opportunity to work with Pixar — the complete interview with Bird and Oswalt can be heard at NPR.org.

From YouTube, Patton Oswalt’s “Black Angus” skit:

If you want to see some examples of impressive “impossible” photography, then look no further than Holger Pooten, a photographer who works in the UK and Germany for companies like Nike, Adidas, Vogue, and Intel. I would love to learn more about the techniques he uses to capture images like the one pictured above of an exploding/blown-apart fax, print, phone machine. The Nike runner photo series is also impressive — as subjects were caught while in mid-air so that they appear to be floating. I also really like the surreal lighting he uses. Please note that a few of the samples in Holger’s portfolio may be considered not safe for work.

The only other photographer who’s work might be classified as ‘impossible’ is that of Li Wei (sample photo below), a thirty-something professional artist living in Beijing. I am just amazed at the creativity demonstrated by Li. His photographs of people hurling each other, landing head first in water, hanging dangerously outside a building, and more are just breathtaking.

I would love to learn more about the inspiration, influences, and techniques of both of these photographers.