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This neat story from New York magazine details some of the newest graphic artists and programmers trying to rethink the New York Times. I'm glad someone is paying some attention to this effort because the newspaper began pulling out all stops recently. They're willing to try almost anything and I think some of the efforts are marvelous.

The article does seem to short change the history of innovation at the newspaper, a necessary side-effect of looking forward and talking about what's new. I started working with the Cybertimes group, another similar pocket of programmers and writers back in the mid 1990s. Their offices were blocks away from the old building in a non-descript office building called, of all things, the Hippodrome. We weren't really part of the main NY Times then, but then we weren't really outcasts either. Everything was too new for anyone to know the social pecking order yet.

ASCII art that creates an image out of characters is one of the great traditions left over from the teletype days. Vincent Chu just published a cool website that turns an image and a secret message into ASCII art. It relies on the fact that a number of letters have the same amount of ink in them. If the ASCII art needs a dense object, it could use an ampersand, a hash sign, or maybe a lower-case m. If they all have the same visual density, then the ASCII art generator could use them interchangeably.

The first printed and bound proofs of the second edition of Translucent Databases are back from the printers. This means they'll be available to the world pretty soon.

There are two editions this time:

• The main edition is 202 pages strong with four new chapters.
• Available from CreateSpace .
• Available from Amazon. ( Coming soon. )
• The "lite" edition is only about 85 pages and contains the core ideas.

This new version of the bestselling classic includes four new chapters and updated versions of the originals. The book is still designed to help the world build databases that answer useful questions without keeping any useful information around. The examples show how most databases don't need to be filled with the world's secrets and personal information. If the client uses the right amount of encryption, the databases don't need to be dangerous one-stop shopping for the identity thieves and others who with malice aforethought.

The new chapters are:

This story by David Kravets at Wired News shows just why companies need to be more serious about translucent databases. Even if the database is usually protected, mistakes can be made. Operating systems can fail. And even when that doesn't happen, programmers can forget to implement an important rule.

I received my first copy of the third edition of Disappearing Cryptography today. The cover is even better than the last cover. Check it out here. And you can order it from Amazon here.