October 2011
Ad Companies Face a Widening Talent Gap →
The NYTimes finally writes a trend piece that hits home for me:
The digital talent gap is driven in part by the enormous amount of user data that ad tech companies are collecting for agencies and marketers — data that is instrumental in directing ads to consumers and analyzing trends. New hires are needed for a variety of tasks, including writing code, creating digital advertisements, Web site...
Anonymous vs. Mexican Drug Cartels →
This will be interesting:
An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate’s associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates’ businesses.
(Via The Houston Chronicle)
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Why Apple's use of the linen texture is wrong. →
joshuanguyen:
ben:
I’m glad Jake Marsh wrote this post. Now I don’t have to.
True.
My hypothesis: those that grew up using computers daily are beginning to tire of external metaphors. Most of these people have spent more time in file directories than with actual files1. Computer UIs are more familiar to us than linen. Adding metaphors complicates our usage as opposed to aiding it, like...
Watching TV Ads for the First Time in Awhile...
What I’ve inferred from these commercials:
Given how much every company claims to support small businesses, it’s odd that all the ads are from large businesses. When you’re picking a theme, pick one that won’t be refuted by all the ads around your own.
“Klout scores are being used by employers for hiring”
– GigaOm.
Can we compile a list of these companies? I want to know from whom I should be running.
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“If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be
very very...”
– Richard Stallman’s rider, which also details approved formats for recording his speech (OGG Vorbis), food he doesn’t care for and the suggestion that you shouldn’t offer him help while crossing the street.
“Mr. Jobs relied on a loophole in California law: the owner of a brand new...”
– The Mac Observer explains a mystery.
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“White roofs have always been considered a “soft” geoengineering scheme — an...”
– The Washington Post’s Wonkbook on a recent Stanford study that shows that white-roofs make the world warmer, contrary to initial thinking.
Louisiana Bans Using Cash in Sales of Second-Hand... →
Absurd, possibly illegal law of the week:
In a new law that could put every trading post, Goodwill, flea market, garage sale and Craigslist merchant in the state of Louisiana out of business, a bipartisan group of elected representatives has opted to ban all cash payments for the buying and selling of used goods.
Though House Bill 195 was intended to make it easier to track the sales of...
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I think I've been coding too much
While culling my closet I just wondered if I could map reduce my socks into pairs and strays.
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How to Control Every Gang in Southern California... →
Make sure everyone in your gang is behind bars.
Alex Tabarrok explains:
The Mexican Mafia is a fairly small prison gang (perhaps 150-300 made members) and it has significant operational control only within prisons in Southern California yet the Mexican Mafia is extremely powerful. In fact, the MM taxes hundreds of often larger Southern California street gangs at rates of 10-30% of revenues....
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“Trust me folks, I saw this happen time and again, for years. Jeff Bezos has all...”
– Steve Yegge is following up his accidentally public Google+ rant with stories about other companies he’s never made public. Up first: how to present to Jeff Bezos without being destroyed.
In addition to detailing how sharp Bezos is, Yegge reveals what might be my favorite corporate policy:...
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“We’re getting more subscribers coming on the 3GS…than other...”
– AT&T Mobility CEO, via asymco
In the mass market, free matters.
“Two Senators have come up with a plan to boost the moribund U.S. housing market:...”
– MSNBC reports.
Wow.
While it’s damn near impossible to garner a Visa with legit skills, these two knuckleheads put forth a proposal that effectively makes being rich a skill.
Further, I doubt you could come up with a better plan to undermine US citizens via immigration. Using external...
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You can stream the Lou Reed / Metallica album... →
In case you were wondering.
147 Tightly Knit Companies control 40% of the... →
A group of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology applied mathematics used to model natural systems to corporate data to untangle actual ownership within the global economy:
The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average...
“According to the NY Times, the most prominent weather app that employs...”
– Gizmodo shares my excitement for distributed weather networks powered by barometer-bearing mobiles, Samsung’s new Galaxy Nexus.
Area/Code founder Kevin Slavin on Talking to... →
Slavin, in discussion with Rob Walker, concisely touches on how we move towards machines:
When I’m talking to a voice recognition system, and it’s telling me to say “Yes” or “No.” I find that I’m saying “Yes” in this way that isn’t speaking to be understood by a human; I’m speaking to be understood by a machine. The machine is basically making a concession by allowing you to speak human, and...
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SplatF Gets Rejected From Google News →
parislemon:
As Dan Frommer points out, this is bullshit. But then again, Google News itself is mostly bullshit.
I’ve ripped them again and again and again for various things that a service serious about severing up the best news to its readers should care about. And I’ve spoken with that team a number of times behind the scenes about other issues. Nothing ever gets fiBlackwaterd. In fact, it...
“Less than half of Internet connected televisions actually get connected to the...”
– Van Baker, vice-president of research at Gartner.
Love this. If only because it might stop talk from marketers who tell me pushing an ad through a Yahoo! TV widget is the future. So far, the only successful innovations in digital TV don’t involve ads. Unfortunately, admen aren’t taking...
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“There are, after all, an estimated 180,000 dogs in San Francisco — surpassing...”
– The culture of San Francisco. (Via Dog Lobby Has Political Bite in San Francisco, The Bay Citizen)
“A minibar is designed as a dollhouse for grown men.”
– Dubravka Ugresic, writes in the Paris Review
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Siri, Violin Vibratto, and Bing Crosby's Croon
Will Siri change us or will we change Siri?
Following the announcement of the iPhone 4S and Siri, much has been written about the awkwardness of voice interaction. We’ve documented the clever rebuffs carefully crafted by Apple’s designers. Casey Neistat tested Siri’s ability to answer the questions that really matter. We also discovered Siri can’t really understand...
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BlackBerry Outage Significantly Reduced Car... →
In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.
On average there is a traffic accident every three minutes in Dubai, while in Abu Dhabi there is a fatal accident every two days.
(Via The National)
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"There is only one Cloud Icon in the Entire... →
(Via Scott Hanselman)