June 2010
Twitpic Blocks Posterous’ Import Tool; Out Come... →
Battle of the commodified services!
I can’t think of a reason why anyone wouldn’t leave either platform.
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Google Me
To be a fly on the wall at Google Me meetings… Listening to engineers try to reverse engineer people into an easily searchable, sortable form.
Here’s what I how I imagine the project has progressed:
A worker realized that Google knows most everything about all of us anyway and organized personal data into a automatically generated profile.
A team was tasked to turn this into a...
The guy who oversaw Chrome OS development left for... →
And just a few weeks before it was supposed to launch. That’s not a good sign (Via VentureBeat)
Caltech Scientists: Yes, the World Cup Ball Does... →
They took it to a wind tunnel to find out.
“So as the goalkeeper sees the ball coming, it suddenly seems to change its trajectory,” McKeon said. “It’s like putting the brakes on, but putting them on unevenly”
(Via Discover)
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“OS4’s behavior might be best characterized as latertasking. Rather than...”
– Ian Bogost suggests a new term.
Trying to pin language to new devices and usage is like nailing Jello to a wall. Usage may vary, and there’re are a lot of tricks an engineer may grasp that are functionally invisible to the user.
Plus, the term ‘multitasking’ is a bit odd for a...
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“King’s Meadow,” Mogwai.
There...
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90:00, +3
After watching the USA lose to Ghana, I’m placing my bets regarding soccer’s football’s soccer’s popularity in the USA. I believe it’s not going to catch on, mostly because of that damn clock.
Many will be optimistic, but in the end we’re not going to care. Pundits will blame the bad calls or the loss to Ghana. I blame the clock.
The clock counting upwards...
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"Simbiont"
A new word to describe the post-data plan human. The Simbiont’s ever-present connection to the internet allows them to offload human responsibilities like memory, guidance, and amusement to an electronic device.
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What else are we holding wrong????
Call Apple To Test Out FaceTime With A Real Person →
Have they opened the FaceTime protocol yet? If so, there are at least 3 devs rigging up a Google App Engine, iPhone 4-only Chat Roulette clone. (Via Gizmodo)
Steve Martin's Leaked Tour Rider (via... →
EMERGENCY SITUATIONS
If Steve has been playing World of Warcraft up until curtain time, and key purchases must occur while Steve is onstage, please ensure that a staffer will be available to complete the transactions at appointed times.
“And surely somebody at Apple HQ has had a look at their iPhone and thought ‘hmm,...”
– Swiss Cheese and Bullets
Starbucks as a Safe-Zone for Location-Based...
Starbucks’ announcing their plans to make WiFi free in all of their stores was enthusiastically received by laptop-sporting coffee drinkers everywhere. But tech commenters brushed it off with only a brief mention. I found this odd, as the platforms and applications the tech obsessed champion daily might find huge potential within Starbucks’ news. With just a bit of development, Starbucks could...
We live in a world where an e-reader is considered...
An unexpected benefit of the iPad is that reading a Kindle in public is suddenly nothing of note.
Blogging platform Posterous takes preposterous... →
But Posterous, the blog service that lets users post using e-mail, did just that Tuesday, taking a shot at a platform called Tumblr on its company blog. The headline: “Hey Tumblr users: Want comments? Need privacy? Graduate to Posterous.”
HA! I love how the LA Times journalist can barely contain their favoritism. Good luck with that, Posterous. Until you fix the product you designed...
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“You did not see politically disgruntled generals rallying around McChrystal....”
– Ezra Klein, Praise for the military
Zelnick Buys Gossip Girl Creator Alloy For $126.5... →
Alloy operates a range of businesses, from development of TV series like Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries, as well as the Alloy Digital Network, which aggregates a collection of websites aimed at ages 12- to 24. Alloy also runs Channel One, an in-school broadcast net, and high school sports social net Takkle.com.
Big news. Lots of people call Alloy the advertising agency of the future. I...
Google Needs To Decide Which Side Of The Music... →
Yesterday saw an interesting coincidence of stories hit the wires: on the European side of the Atlantic, the BPI, Britain’s biggest recording-industry association, announced it had sent a cease-and-desist notice to Google with regard to links to copyright-infringed music files. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported on (further) rumours that Google was planning on launching a...
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Anecdotes for a Nation
Three stories that could serve as devices to understand our times. Refer to this list when you’d like to encapsulate the state of the US and staring at a deadline:
Someone is now a sponsored, professional line-sitter.
Google now integrates drug information into related searches, for easy access.
The new election demographic buzzword is “WalMart Moms.”
Some cities (like...
Gourmet Is Relaunching As An iPad App →
I was really excited until I read this sentence:
It brings together branded high-quality content, social and location-based technology, as well as monetization structures new to Condé Nast, like virtual currency, that are typical in digital economies like gaming.
Please don’t turn Gourmet into Farmville. The Gourmet audience is not looking for digital currency. Give them great pictures,...
Nintendo explains Vitality Sensor's absence at E3:... →
My favorite E3 story. (Via Engadget)
Christian Right Loves Apple's Anti-Porn Stance →
Strange bedfellows. (Via the Atlantic Wire)
2000 iMac compared to the 2010 iPhone →
Blows your mind. (via lkm)
“The introduction of high-speed internet service is similarly associated with...”
– The National Bureau of Economic Research.
In other news, kids are posting all time highs in the virtual-farming aptitude test (VGAT). (Via Rough Type)
Official State Questions
Mental Floss points out that New Mexico has an Official State Question, which is: “Red of green?” As in peppers. After a quick Google, I’m pretty sure no other state has an Official Question, something we need to rectify here and now.
Some suggestions:
California: “North or South?”
Texas: “Medium or rare?”
Arizona: “White or illegal?”
...
French find e-mail passwords in Google Street View... →
While I don’t believe for a second the WiFi sniffing was an accident, this headline is a bit over-dramatic. As someone who did his share of network hacking in his youth, any passive WiFi snooping is bound to snag a password. You’re either snooping or not, the password ending up in your stream isn’t something you can control. (Via BBC)
President Obama Suffers from Crippling Rationale,... →
Faced with the most devastating natural disaster in our country’s history, Americans are wondering: why isn’t the president angrier? The answer may not be a matter of character but a medical condition that affects the president’s demeanor. Sources close to Mr. Obama are pointing fingers at a rare disorder called antidrenaline, which inhibits the president’s ability to become angry or irrational....
Vatican Deems The Blues Brother a ‘Catholic... →
The Vatican writes, “For [the Blues brothers] this Catholic institution is their only family. And they decide to save it at any cost.” (Via Vulture)
BP Chief Draws Outrage for Attending Yacht Race →
Now I’m no PR expert, but…
Also: how big of a fuck up is this guy? He makes gaffe after gaffe while overseeing the spill, causing the board to pulls him back (after his Congressional hearing, of course) so he can’t embarrass the company further. And then he watches his yacht compete in a JP Morgan sponsored race.
Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is... →
Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two...
“China now exports every six hours as much as it did in the whole of 1978”
– Marginal Revolution: China fact of the day