Billboards That Talk To You

I wasn't sure how to categorize this, so I'm giving it a new "marketing" tag.

I know we're going to see more of this localized, location-based, Minority Report stuff in the future. For some reason though this makes me uncomfortable. I wouldn't opt in for this type of marketing, but I'd love to see the fool next to me using it...

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/01/talking_billboa.html

"The enthusiastic guinea pigs for the Mini experiment will be more than a thousand Mini owners in New York, Miami, Chicago, and San Francisco who have signed up for what the company calls "an ever-changing array of unique, personal, playful, and unexpected messages."

The boards, which usually carry typical advertising, are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob. The messages are personal, based on questionnaires that owners filled out: "Mary, moving at the speed of justice," if Mary is a lawyer, or "Mike, the special of the day is speed," if Mike is a chef."

I especially liked the 4th comment down.

Sincerest Form of Flattery

Bo showed us ChaCha back in this September post.

Small world, eh?

Tech guru’s ChaCha to have human touch

Tim Durham, one of the wealthy individuals Jones approached for investment in his new search engine, said ChaCha’s business model is similar to one he attempted himself half a decade ago with a company called iNetNow. Now defunct, it also employed teams of college students to surf the Net on behalf of others.

“The difference is, we had a call center and you had to man that call center day and night. That was the bulk of your cost,” said Durham, CEO of Indianapolis-based Obsidian Enterprises Inc. “Scott’s unique approach is to have college students be his call center all around the country.”

Durham said he considered investing up to $500,000 in Jones’ company, but ultimately passed because his money was tied up elsewhere. He said ChaCha would likely be most useful to cell phone users, who could connect with it when they wanted rapid answers to questions like where to find the nearest Italian restaurant or men’s clothing store.

“I think the concept is a great one. Now, whether or not it becomes economically profitable is another issue,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that are neat ideas that don’t make money. I couldn’t get it to make money, but his model is different.”

SMS: The Novel

Kinda steals my idea of telling the story of iNetNow only in emails...

Text message novel published in Finland

"The Last Messages" tells the story of a fictitious information-technology executive in Finland who resigns from his job and travels throughout Europe and India, keeping in touch with his friends and relatives only through text messages.

His messages, and the replies — roughly 1,000 altogether — are listed in chronological order in the 332-page novel written by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. The texts are rife with grammatical errors and abbreviations commonly used in regular SMS traffic.

She Came In Through the iTunes Window

Neat NPR story about meeting a wi-fi freeloading neighbor via the shared iTunes folder they left behind.

How I met my neighbor on iTunes

(Click the "listen" link near the top.)

via TUAW

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.