Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Obama learns to code, an addictive digital spirograph, Behance's year in review and more in our weekly look at the web

1. Obama Learns to Code Last year when President Barack Obama delivered a YouTube speech encouraging young kids to learn to code, he hadn’t actually had any coding experience himself. To kick off this year’s Computer Science Education Week, Obama took on the task. While he didn’t complete the entire tutorial, Obama did build a modest program that drew a square on the screen, making …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

NASA launches Orion, Peter Marino gets real about retail, touchable holograms and more in our weekly look at the web

1. Eco-Friendly Air Conditioning A new material developed by Stanford University’s Dr Aaswath Raman is potentially going to revolutionize the way we keep cool. Made from ultra-thin layers of silicon dioxide, hafnium dioxide and silver (for reflectivity), the new material is able to radiate as much as 97% of sunlight back into the frigid vastness of outer-space while still remaining cool itself. When tested, a …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Odor-friendly toilets, newly discovered Shakespeare, a monetary celebration of scientists and more in our look at the web this week

1. In Defense of Toulouse-Lautrec To celebrate his would-be 150th birthday, radical French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was celebrated in the latest Google Doodle. For those not already familiar with Toulouse-Lautrec, the tech giant’s bleak portrait of the progressive painter, printmaker and illustrator may create the wrong picture. Though he’s known to many for his work at the Moulin Rouge, the Guardian argues that the …