Moonshots

Cool article.  I especially liked this bit:

Google’s Larry Page on Why Moon Shots Matter

Teller imagines wheeling a Dr. Who time machine into Page’s office. He plugs it in and—it works! But instead of being bowled over, Page asks why it needs a plug. Wouldn’t it be better if it didn’t use power at all? “It’s not because he’s not excited about time machines or he’s ungrateful that we built it,” Teller says. “It’s just core to who he is. There’s always more to do, and his focus is on where the next 10X will come from.”

Coachella Standard Time

Coachella, you're killing me!

Update:

Guess they saw this post!  Might be the fastest ever correction in my years of calling people out for misuse of PST.

Ghosts of Passwords Past

I had to log into my Gmail account from a sketchy Internet cafe computer in Buenos Aires a few weeks ago to check on a reservation.  Since I generally don't like doing that I made it a point to change my password when I got to the hotel.

Tonight I went on autopilot and tried logging in with the old password, and was pleasantly surprised to see this custom error message:

Very cool attention to detail that both subtly reminds you of the change and/or alerts you to a possible issue.

How Do I Get Outta Here?

Visited MapQuest.com for the first time in (almost literally) forever the other day, and was greeted by this overlay:

Remember when this was among the greatest training revelations in the history of iNetNow?

"I'm going South on I-95"

(Don't ask where they are -- just pick any city to the north, find I-95 and start giving directions from there...)

I even gave it a throwaway in-joke reference in Chapter 4 of Timely Persuasion:

"I can get to the freeway from my house without any help from Mr. Mapquest, thank you very much."

Guess someone at MapQuest read TP and got inspired...

Who Helped?

Saw this in the sidebar on Yahoo! News and did a double take:

Really?  Dr. Who (as in, the time traveler) helped us find Bin Laden?  Wow!  This will be interesting...

But then I realized I was skimming / mentally editing, and hadn't yet processed the last few words:

Um, yeah.  That makes more sense.

Full article for the record, with a full headline that is less open to geeky interpretation:

Pakistani Doctor Who Aided Bin Laden Hunt Gets 33 Years

Mapblast from the Past

Was reminiscing about my fondness for MapBlast and the old school LineDrive directions when I discovered my coworkers hadn't heard of it.  A quick Google brought up this excellent article:

Remembering LineDrive

"It was brilliant. Clean, simple, effective. It tells you everything you need to know about how to get from A to B, and it tells you nothing else. There is no clutter. It does not take up my time or printer ink with roads I won’t be using, or cities hundreds of miles from those I’ll be passing through. I can look at this map quickly while driving. I don’t have to hunt around the page to find the little blue line that contains the path information I need — everything on this page is there because it’s essential."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

A Wiki-less, Google-less World

Wikipedia, other websites go dark in anti-piracy bill protest

End Piracy, Not Liberty

Selfish, Productive, Honest, Sign Me Up

http://nullisnull.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-work-with-me.html

In March 2005, a photocopy was handed to me in preparation for work with one of the top wigs. It enumerated the rules necessary to avoid conflict and ensure efficient communication between me and someone who doesn't have time for bullshit.

I love this in list in theory.

The successful execution of said list would indicate a true master. The unsuccessful execution would indicate a narcissist, egomaniac or idiot. Though an idiot probably couldn't put the list together in the first place.

The Job We Never Had at Google

A Google a Day:

http://agoogleaday.com/

I don't like Google's solution to today's April 12 question. But it's really just due to the ambiguity of the question itself.

My standard for top performance search answering:

- single set of search terms
- answer comes up on 1st page search results
- answer can clearly be read from the search preview, without clicking through to a website

I'd only rate myself a B on this question. It took two sets of search terms for me to find the answer. Better than Google's 3 though.

Semi-Annual and/or Sporadic Thoughts on Daylight Savings

My favorite holiday!

• This is the first daylight savings since I bought a new atomic clock for the kitchen. I wanted to stay up and watch it set itself, but forgot and went to bed 15 minutes before it should have happened :(
• When our office manager sent out a "spring forward" reminder on Friday, I was tempted to hit reply all and give one of my classic "standard time" rants. But I didn't...
• Someecards.com seems to be an appropriate outlet for that sort of thing:

My Eyes! My Eyes!

Unbelievable and fascinating in a train wreck sort of way:

A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web

Quick Summation Quote:

“Hello, My name is Stanley with DecorMyEyes.com,” the post began. “I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement.”

A Little Deeper:

Lady buys glasses online. Wants to return them. Merchant says no. Customer says they'll dispute the charge. Merchant says:

“Listen, bitch,” he fumed, according to Ms. Rodriguez. “I know your address. I’m one bridge over” — a reference, it turned out, to the company’s office in Brooklyn. Then, she said, he threatened to find her and commit an act of sexual violence too graphic to describe in a newspaper.

It's all a stunt for a better Google ranking. And it worked!

(Or, at least it used to work.)

The full article is a heck of a read.

Doomsday

Learned this from a question in yesterday's edition of QRANK (an iPhone/Facebook trivia game BoRyan and I have been playing), and it totally blew me away. I can't believe I've never heard of this before!

The Doomsday Rule is a formula that let's you calculate the day of the week of any date in past or future history based on a (relatively) easy math formula plus some simple memorization.

We already know from experience that St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo always fall on the same weekday. This uses the same general concept.

In a nutshell:

1. Doomsday
By coincidence of the calendar, 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12 are always on the exact same day of the week each year. This is called "Doomsday." (And to get a touch fancier, the July 4th and Halloween also always fall on doomsday, as do the palindromic pairs of 7/11 & 11/7 and 9/5 & 5/9). If you know the day of the week the doomsday is for a given year, you can use that as an easy reference points to compare to other days.

2. Anchor Days
Every century has an "anchor day" to use as a starting point. The anchor for the 1900s is Wednesday and for the 2000s is Tuesday. For all practical uses that's all you have to memorize, though history buffs and time travelers may want to learn a few more.

Once you know the anchor, this formula will give you doomsday for a given year:

Last 2 digits of year + last 2 digits divided by 4 (you can discard the remainder) = # of days to add to the anchor.

So if we take November 5, 1955 as an example:

Anchor for the 1900s is Wednesday

55 + 55/4 = 55 + 13 = 68 days after Wednesday.

68/7 is 9 with a remainder of 5 (or to user fancier math: 68 mod 7 = 5)

So Doomsday is 5 days after Wednesday, aka Monday.

11/7 is a doomsday, so 11/5 is two days earlier on Saturday.

Pretty cool, eh?

Even better: The inventor is guy named John Conway.

Wikipedia - Doomsday Rule

Some Daylight Card

A little belated, but...

Gmail is Like Cilantro

This one's for BoRyan:

Google's Wiltse Carpenter compared the frustration with threaded Gmail to the backlash over cilantro. "And just as an outspoken minority has banded together in unison to declare their distaste of one of nature's most delicious herbs, some of you have been very vocal about your dislike of conversation threading," he wrote in a blog post.

(via cnet)

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

A little old, but fascinating:

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

The Wilderness Downtown

Please go to the following URL using Google Chrome:

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

(And don't skip the address part, even if it says it doesn't have enough info.)

Directions in the Modern Age

(via xkcd)

Google Wave: Cancelled, and it's Your Fault

Snarky, pissed off tutorial about the soon-to-be ex-product follows. Stick around for the punchline.

Surfing

1. Found this crazy article (crazy in how it takes itself so seriously):

Boycott Bill Murray for a Better America

2. Based on the website the above article was from, I had a hunch that led to another search. My hunch proved false, but indirectly allowed me to naturally discover a Googlewhack without even trying!

3. And linked from the page the Googlewhack uncovered is yet another awesome (albeit old) headline, especially given the context/content:

When Cracked Objects Collide

What Would Happen If The Earth Stopped Spinning?

If The Earth Stood Still

Santa Monica would turn into Hesperia or worse.