August 2007
86 posts
SiliconValley.com - Mercedes connects with Net →
Japan's Warp-Speed Ride to Internet Future -... →
The copper wire used to hook up Japanese homes is newer and runs in shorter loops to telephone exchanges than in the United States. This is partly a matter of geography and demographics: Japan is relatively small, highly urbanized and densely populated. But better wire is also a legacy of American bombs, which razed much of urban Japan during World War II and led to a wholesale rewiring of the...
'I Am a Fashion God' - washingtonpost.com -... →
“Just tell her that I just ate an MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants. Maybe tonight I will have time to move my pebbles on the parking garage floor so they don’t stab me in the back while I try to sleep,”
The Mayor Wants Tourists to Be Welcomed.... →
Yesterday, the mayor kicked off a tourist-welcoming campaign by encouraging confused new arrivals to “Just ask the locals” where to go and how to get around. Visitors should not expect a response like, “What do I look like, a tour guide?” or words more choice, the mayor said at a news conference in American Airlines’ new terminal at Kennedy International Airport.
The Seattle Times: Tech Tracks →
New site lets people rate financial advisors — New ventures that combine social networking and personal finance are starting to to take off, and the latest local example is financialjoe.com.
SiliconValley.com - Beijing police launch virtual... →
Police in China’s capital said Tuesday they will start patrolling the Web using animated beat officers that pop up on a user’s browser and walk, bike or drive across the screen warning them to stay away from illegal Internet content. Starting Sept. 1, the cartoon alerts will appear every half hour on 13 of China’s top portals, including Sohu and Sina, and by the end of the year...
Telephones: Get Reverse Phone Lookups with Sullr -... →
Web site Sullr provides reverse phone number lookups with an attractive AJAX interface and Google Maps mashup.
One in four read no books last year - Yahoo! News →
People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently.
Condense Your Day With the Life-Hacking FAQK →
So why is it called life hacking? Because a new name makes it sound like a new idea. Geeks can’t admit that anything worthwhile was invented before 1981. Soon, “making cocoa” will be called “milk hacking.”
MacFixIt - Tutorial: Common fixes for USB device... →
USB device issues can crop up at anytime, but are most common after a significant system update. Here’s a quick rundown of workarounds, in increasing order of complication and potential for side-effects (i.e., try the first-listed ones first) for eliminating problems with lack of device recognition, conflicts between devices and more.
Preserve the record by manifesting the context |... →
Clark Hoyt finds the Times’ “business strategy” of getting “its articles to pop up first in Internet searches” — well, at least not at #45 — responsible for the quandary the Times finds itself in when it comes to the errors in its archive.
Streetsblog » First-Ever Electronic Bus Status... →
Bill Live! →
Yancey Richardson Gallery > Exhibition > Group... →
The Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present our summer exhibition Easy Rider: Road Trips through America which pays homage to the tradition of road trips in American photography. Highway culture has long been a quintessential part of American identity. Easy Rider explores the common themes of social commentary, cultural geography and photographic biography produced by the marriage...
How to bypass the Portrait Mode on Your Digital... →
Text-message ban for drivers mulled →
Ban Proposed On Cell Phones, iPods In Crosswalk -... →
Some thoughts on Mahalo (Skrentablog) →
We know this from experience: No one will ever go to Mahalo directly, just as no one ever went to About.com, dmoz, Tripadvisor, Nextag, IMDB or any other vertical or broad-but-shallow site. Google is where everyone starts and Mahalo’s distribution strategy has to be SEO. Its traffic is going to live or die based on SEO skill and Google’s continued favor.
Google Reader (100+) →
John Battelle's Searchblog: YouTube Unveils Ad... →
tafiti →
Vacations Get Shorter, but Turn Up More Often -... →
In aggregate, the number of full-time employees who took less than an entire week off has more than doubled since 1990, according to the Current Population Survey compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics; in 2006, 7 percent more workers took off partial weeks than in 2005. At the same time, the percentage of all workers taking the full week off on any given week has declined by about a third...
Strand Bookstore: [search] quick (suburbanization... →
A series of essays debating whether the gentrification currently occuring in New York is a blessing or a curse.
What happened on August 16 - Heartbeat →
On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.
Are We Failing Our Geniuses? - TIME →
gifted students drop out at the same rates as nongifted kids—about 5% of both populations leave school early. Later in life, according to the scholarly Handbook of Gifted Education, up to one-fifth of dropouts test in the gifted range. Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries,...
MoodSwing — Circle Six Blog →
Welcome to MoodSwing, another Applescript to help you stay on top of your web life by simultaneously updating multiple chat clients and web services using Quicksilver.
As Billboards, Public Phones Always Work - New... →
Since 2003, every new phone the city has authorized has been put at the curb, the only spot where city regulations permit advertising. It has approved moving 465 pay phones from alongside buildings to the curb.
Delocator →
Esquire Magazine's feature on Dateline NBC's 'To... →
Nine months ago, NBC’s ‘To Catch a Predator’ arrived in Murphy, Texas, to conduct a sting operation. The only honest thing that followed was the gunshot.
Report: Cable companies facing big bandwidth... →
Your local cable provider will soon be faced with a serious bandwidth crunch, according to a new report released by ABI Research. The problem comes from more demanding applications, including high-definition video, video on demand, online gaming, and higher-bandwidth Internet applications. The result? Big problems—like fewer HD channels and sputtering download speeds—if the industry doesn’t...
No dogs, Yelpers allowed | Tech news blog - CNET... →
But more importantly, it seems like that first homemade sign in a coffee shop means Yelp has come up in the world, if only a wee bit. It’s joining an esteemed list of cafe no-nos: no cell phones, no skateboards, no bare feet, no Yelpers.
John Battelle's Searchblog: Yahoo Upgrades Local... →
MediaShift . Digging Deeper::Hearst Uses Startup... →
“The likelihood of an individual online visitor to subscribe [to a print magazine] has gone up more than 50 percent,” he said. “We have had sites that have doubled their propensity for an individual visitor to subscribe. This isn’t about cannibalization, it’s about brand experience. If you have a good experience in print, you might try out the mobile experience. If you have a good experience...
Curbed: First-Time Buyer: The Six Things You Need... →
home-buying primer
North Denver News - Editor's Note →
Strangely, while many readers have grasped that “Surgically alters thumbs” represents satirical social commentary, many on the internet, alas, have not. Careful reading of the piece makes it clear to any critical consumer of information that the piece is pure humor and not news or reported as fact.
Product Packages Now Shout to Get Your Attention -... →
In the last 100 years, Pepsi had changed the look of its can, and before that its bottles, only 10 times. This year alone, the soft-drink maker will switch designs every few weeks.
Howard Kurtz - Candidates Map TV Strategy -... →
To a striking degree, the candidates are picking their spots, carefully choosing which media operations they will court and which they will ignore. That leaves some of them preaching to the political choir, but also shields them from especially aggressive questioning. … “Republicans like Fox because it plays to their primary voting constituency, and Democrats like to boycott Fox...
Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law - New... →
The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party, and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.” “They have figured out that all they have to do is start talking about an imminent terrorist threat, back it up against a...
Off to Resorts, and Carrying Their Careers - New... →
From 2000 to 2006, population in the 297 counties rated highest in natural amenities by the United States Department of Agriculture grew by 7.1 percent, 10 times the rate for the 1,090 rural counties with below-average amenities, the department reported.
The Road to Clarity - New York Times →
The Federal Highway Administration granted Clearview interim approval in 2004, meaning that individual states are free to begin using it in all their road signs. More than 20 states have already adopted the typeface, replacing existing signs one by one as old ones wear out. Some places have been quicker to make the switch — much of Route I-80 in western Pennsylvania is marked by signs in...
Race relations | Where black and brown collide |... →
Last year Pew, a pollster, found that one-third of blacks believe immigrants take jobs from Americans—more than any other group. Yet in some ways their views were benign. Blacks are less likely than whites or even Hispanics to believe that immigrants end up on welfare or commit crimes. Latinos, on the other hand, appear to make no such concessions. One survey of Durham, in North Carolina, found...
NPR : Stuck and Suicidal in a Post-Katrina Trailer... →
According to a recent study of 92 different Katrina FEMA parks published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, suicide attempts in Louisiana and Mississippi’s parks are 79 times higher than the national average. Major depression is seven times the national rate.
Pew Research Center: Why it will Be Hard to Close... →
Non-internet users as a group are disproportionately old and poor. The median age of non-internet users is 59, and 25% report having household incomes under $20,000 per year. It is not, however, simply a question of money or age. Non-internet users do not have very positive attitudes about information technology. Many report worries about information overload and few link information technology to...
10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of |... →
Automatic tests, checks and analysis services can be extremely valuable if you’re looking for bugs or try to avoid them. To make sure everything is just the way you think it should be, you need validators. To improve the value and quality of your content, you need to be able to analyze the behaviour of your visitors. And to perform better in the future you have to know exactly, what your...
Fox Report says goodbye to teases - Lost Remote TV... →
Viewers have said, ‘Stop telling me for 45 seconds what you’re going to do in the next four minutes.’ So we have. We’re not going to do more crap.
North Denver News - Surgically alters thumbs to... →
Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as “whittling.”
Machinist: Tech Blog, Tech News, Technology... →
And in the middle of a performance of “Daughter,” Vedder sang “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home” to the tune of “Another Brick in the Wall.” But if you were at home listening to the show on the Webcast being provided by AT&T, you would have missed those lines. As the band writes on its site, the Web...
Stuck Holding the Electronic Leash - WSJ.com →
Ms. Hegarty is one of many parents and children who helped Webkinz’s traffic surge to 3.71 million unique visitors in May, up from 334,000 in May 2006, according to comScore, a Web-tracking company. “Who’s really going to walk the dog?” is a question that parents have long used to avoid buying their children pets. Virtual pets seemed like a good compromise. Yet some parents...
Yahoo! Personal Finance →
For employees at Clarian Health, feeling the burn of trying to lose weight will take on new meaning. In late June, the Indianapolis-based hospital system announced that starting in 2009, it will fine employees $10 per paycheck if their body mass index (BMI, a ratio of height to weight that measures body fat) is over 30. If their cholesterol, blood pressure, and glucose levels are too high,...
Customer Reviews Increase Web Sales - eMarketer →
one-third of online sellers were concerned about negative reviews — a major barrier to adoption of ratings and reviews — “but retailers are finding that they can improve conversion rates, drive sales and increase customer satisfaction even if customers aren’t necessarily singing their praises all the time.”