iPhone and the Blind

Couldn't resist...

Does the iPhone shaft the blind?

Comments are an especially fun read, running the full gamut from honest to troll to politically incorrect.

Stock Prices

Here's my obligatory iPhone post:

Check out the hourly stock price comparison for Apple, RIM, and Palm.


Wonder what happened midday today? ;)

Also interesting and amusing:

Note the difference in presentation between the Apple and Cingular websites.

Intended for different audiences maybe, but feels like different planets.

The Expert Mind

As you can guess, I tend to read Scientific American religiously.

It's a very interesting read on how experts process large amounts of information to come to their conclusions.

It talks about "innate talent" vs. "intensive training", and may give hopes to those of us who want to improve our mental abilities in a particular area.

http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945

Google's Hiring Algorithm

This reminds me of taking what we were trying to do with new surfers at iNetNow to the next level (OK, many levels above what we were doing).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/03/technology/03google.html?_r=1&em&ex=1167973200&en=96e5f90b11ca1594&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

"Google has always wanted to hire people with straight-A report cards and double 800s on their SATs. Now, like an Ivy League school, it is starting to look for more well-rounded candidates, like those who have published books or started their own clubs.

Desperate to hire more engineers and sales representatives to staff its rapidly growing search and advertising business, Google — in typical eccentric fashion — has created an automated way to search for talent among the more than 100,000 job applications it receives each month. It is starting to ask job applicants to fill out an elaborate online survey that explores their attitudes, behavior, personality and biographical details going back to high school."

Bubble?

Interesting post over at TechCrunch theorizing that Web 2.0 isn't actually a bubble, but moreso a return to sanity for venture capitalists.

Bubble, Bubble, Bubble

"Remember that VC’s business models are designed to fail most of the time - the majority of their investments are expected to go belly up, and they hope that just one or two out of ten have a big return. VCs place a bet, and if it fails they move their money and attention elsewhere."

"In Web 1.0 companies didn’t fail (until the crash). They just raised more money, at a higher valuation, and gave it another shot. That isn’t happening today. VCs are letting their startups die, as they should. Things aren’t as exciting as they were in 1999, but it’s a whole lot saner."

Which Superhero Are You?

Gary will love this. I'm Spider-Man:

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.



Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Assault on a Battery

This would have come in handy when we were looking to power the CatchPhrase timer on Xmas.

Why I Never Pay For "AAA" Batteries

(via Lifehacker)

And speaking of CatchPhrase, check out the new electronic version...

2006 Zeitgeist

It's that time of year again...

2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

Still blows my mind that people do google searches for things like "myspace" or "wikipedia" rather than just using the URL. Plus the queries with "Who is..." or "Where is..." in front of them.

That said, I will concede the usefulness of "how to" and acknowledge the brilliance of the Google "define" command.

Should I be embarrassed I've never heard of Bebo?

Now with more spam!

Unbelievable. Or, believable that it's true, but unbelievable that it's come to this.

"On average, spam accounted for 87% of e-mail traffic this year, a 30% increase over a year ago. Spam rates, however, varied considerably by user and organization. Some small enterprises had spam rates as low as 45%, while large free e-mail providers got pummeled with rates as high as 98%. In general, business e-mail accounts received a smaller percentage of spam than consumer accounts."

(From InformationWeek, via TUAW)

#6

The annual DVD rip of the 24 "prequel" bridge between seasons is floating around the net. Most of the links I found to it were dead, but this one was still live as of last night:

24 Season 6 Prequel

Agree with most of the Internet chatter that the RAV4 product placement here is pretty lame. Otherwise it's entertaining to get a little sneak peek that's part of the official canon yet not as spoiler-filled as the trailers/commercials that I can't stand to watch, even if it has no "real" bearing on the story other than a couple of minor hints of background and timing.

Happy Tails

Arlo's Christmas present...

Happy Tail Ale

New Version of Blogger Ready...Almost

Psst...Bo. We're ready to upgrade to the new version of Blogger, but you have to initiate the change as the owner/admin. Pretty please?

Money from Home

How flippin' cool is this?

USAA Federal Savings Bank Allows Customers to Send Deposits Electronically from Home

"Starting today, home banking takes on a whole new meaning for members of USAA Federal Savings Bank ("USAA"). USAA is now the largest nationwide bank to offer an easy-to-use, secure new service that enables its customers to deposit checks into their bank accounts using a scanner and an Internet connection."

Philosophy of Google

Never noticed this page on the Google Corporate site before:

Ten things Google has found to be true

"Google has persistently pursued innovation and pushed the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use search service that can be accessed from anywhere. To fully understand Google, it's helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet."

Follow link above for a paragraph on each, but the list is:

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There's always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn't good enough.

Pretty inspirational stuff...

Also amusing (and true) disclaimer on the bottom:

* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer –- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -– and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).

No More Answers

Google is shutting down Google Answers.

Adieu to Google Answers

Remember the buzz around iNet when this service was born? We encouraged all of the Surfers to utilize their skills and sign up as a side project (I registered too), but not a single one of us was accepted.

Is this the first Google product to be retired?

(I mean actually retired, rather than never graduating from the lab or being banished from the front page.)

Deja Vu (and Internet too)

Saw Deja Vu on Friday. Eagerly anticipated after the teaser trailer due to my well known time travel fascination, but went in skeptical based on the big budget blockbuster vibe and a feeling that the full trailer gave it all away. (Both trailers are here.)

My thought process during and after went something like this:

-Loved the movie while I was watching it, but thought the ending was lame, too Hollywood, and obviously a rewrite.

-Started to deconstruct the time travel in my head and felt it started to fall apart and not make any sense.

-Picked apart the time travel a little bit further and suddenly realized the underlying story and plotting was absolutely brilliant (including the ending, but excluding the laser pointer), and especially impressive given the big budgetness of it.

-Probably the best non-indie time travel flick since 12 Monkeys and BTTF, and even holds it's own against Primer and Donnie Darko.

The other tangential thought I kept having during the movie was this:

How the heck did Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives end up as part of the same government agency? Wikipedia to the rescue.

Slippery Ships On Air

This is a more scientific article than usual, but it does have implications for energy conservation and global commerce.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg18925391.600&print=true

"YOSHIAKI KODAMA is weaving a magic carpet large enough to carry a ship. Conjured up from thin air at the flick of a switch, this slippery blanket will help transport a fully laden tanker or container ship across the ocean at higher speed, and using far less fuel, than ever before."

Choices = Headaches

I read this blog frequently, and I liked this particular article.

The fellow runs a software shop, but they get other aspects such as UI, marketing, etc. Maybe a little like 37 Signals.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

The article discusses the many choices in turning off a computer using Windows Vista.

My New Movie

I'm Gonna Kill You Saturday Night is a short film I shot in September. It's a dark comedy described as follows:
"When Jimbo and Stu, two stoner roommates, receive a threatening card in the mail all hell breaks loose as the clock ticks down to Saturday Night."

Check out the website and trailer, linked above. You can get to the trailer quickly by mousing over and clicking on the remote.

We're having a premier in Hollywood on December 5th in the evening (time TBA) so please keep that free - you are all invited!

Yes, shameless plug. BTW, my director designed the website as well -- pretty slick, huh?

Features: "A Collection of Hacks"

Great article about the creator of Firefox's next project -- untangling the loose alliance of applications and hacks that hold the web/desktop interface together to create a more unified system.

Thought this was appropo and similar to Google's approach of making what they have work together better.

Parakey


The answer, he and his programming partner, Joe Hewitt, decided, resided in the gap between the desktop and the Web. “Right now, people want to shuffle around content,” he says, “but the world’s fused together by a collection of hacks.” Something that should be simple, say, getting photos from a digital camera onto the Web, is a Sisyphean task for most people. “Step back and ask, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’” Ross says.

The problem, according to Ross, is there’s no simple, cohesive tool to help people store and share their creations online. Currently, the steps involved depend on the medium. If you want to upload photos, for example, you have to dump your images into one folder, then transfer them to an image-sharing site such as Flickr. The process for moving videos to YouTube or a similar site is completely different. If you want to make a personal Web page within an online community, you have to join a social network, say, MySpace or Friendster. If you intend to rant about politics or movies, you launch a blog and link up to it from your other pages. The mess of the Web, in other words, leaves you trapped in one big tangle of actions, service ­providers, and applications.

Ross’s answer is named Parakey. As he describes it, from a user’s point of view, Parakey is “a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.”