October 2009
45 posts
1 tag
Bit of early press about the iPhone virtual gifts... →
“Although How-Do will be sticking to the booze and Terry’s Chocolate Oranges on its Xmas list, apparently more and more consumers are being bewitched by virtual gifts - the little twinkling trinkets that folk give to each other on social media sites such as Facebook.”
1 tag
IMMA LET YOU FINISH →
BBC: “According to Google, the words ‘music’ and ‘lyrics’ are among the top 10 search terms of all time.”
OF ALL TIME.
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“When the cost of your own factory is only two months’ wages, how ya gonna keep...”
– Review of Cory Doctorow’s Makers
2 tags
Survey: iPhone app purchasing habits →
I’m involved in writing a report for the UK’s Northwest Vision and Media on what makes a successful iPhone app, how they’re marketed and so on. If you’re an iPhone user/fan, I’d love it if you’d fill out the survey and share your views.
And if we quote you, we’ll give your a shout-out/link in the final report. Amazing, fame at last!
1 tag
marco:
World of Goo’s pay-what-you-want report has some great statistics about the average prices people paid. This one was surprising: I expected Windows users to be the cheapest, but I didn’t expect Linux users to be the most generous.
Really? Linux users are probably more likely to understand/use (or even develop) free software (both as in speech and beer), so to me it makes sense that...
“We envision a world where CE stands for community [not consumer] electronics,...”
– Greetings from Bug Labs
“E-readers will be great for newspapers, provided they can figure out how to...”
– Continuations
People read more than books →
“Sure, fine, make your single-use devices. But all these e-readers — the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, et al — are all focused on the wrong single use: books. (And in the case of at least the Nook and Kindle, the focus is on buying books from B&N and Amazon. The Kindle is more like a 7-Eleven than a book.) The correct single use is reading. Your device should make it equally...
Wikipedia: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol →
“[It is specified] accurately enough for it to be a real, non-fictional protocol”.
“In my view, if your goal is to start a company, it is mostly a waste of time to...”
– The ideal startup career path - cdixon.org (via Instapaper)
Little World Gifts →
Exciting times at work:
“Little World Gifts is a boutique store full of festive curios and trinkets to surprise, delight and amuse during the festive season. The free Little World Gifts iPhone App lets you browse a range of gorgeous, handcrafted, 3D, interactive digital gifts, and send them to your friends. And of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas if you couldn’t play with your presents...
Amazing footer →
“Hi, if you are coming to this site via Internet Explorer 6, you might not be getting the best experience possible. Honestly, I can’t even begin to think about what your entire experience on the internet must be like? (…probably like riding a bike on the highway while cars blow by you on their way to Costco to get gallons of mayonnaise and 60-inch plasma TV’s). How will you...
1 tag
This is why we have a monarchy. →
“A five-year-old boy from Buckinghamshire received a personal message from the Queen after she found a balloon he had released.”
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“Sci-fi’s not just part of mainstream culture, it is arguably the dominant...”
– Are we now post sci-fi? (The Guardian) (via Instapaper)
whitneymcn:
Kind of cool, but sobering: there’s more ongoing interest in a site I created 15 yrs ago as a joke than almost anything I’ve done since.
Now you know how David Bowie feels. Years of trying to push boundaries and innovate, people just wanna hear Space Oddity.
“The impact of the internet and other communication technologies, such as mobile...”
– BBC: What is happening to the Royal Mail? (via Instapaper)
“The mobile internet is at the same stage as the internet was in 1998.”
– BBC: Battle of the smartphones begins
Sexy prime →
dailymeh:
A sexy prime is a pair of prime numbers that differ by six. Hence the first sexy prime is (5, 11).
“The term ‘sexy prime’ stems from the Latin word for six: sex.”
Pet hate →
“Celebrities” who think they’re above the law because:
a) they’re famous,
b) they’re being “cheeky”,
c) they think they’re some sort of Ghandi-esque social radical.
PS. Noel Edmonds is an idiot.
“To speak another language is to possess a second soul.”
– Charlemagne, ~ AD 780 (via morningstar)
Even a scripting language? ;-)
1 tag
We are going to look so foolish when we realize...
(via soupsoup)
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The problem with online “local” businesses →
Applies to a lot of stuff I’ve been thinking about recently.
(via Instapaper)
“[I made my latest movie for] an audience of one. President Obama. I hope he sees...”
– Michael Moore (via Instapaper)
“A good writer can make you care about anything.”
– Copy Editing at The New Yorker Magazine (via Instapaper)
Colleague: Is it "obsequity" or "obsequiousness"?
Me: The latter. Why?
Colleague: I'm writing about Twitter.
Get your name on a bus, support independent film. →
Surely this is everyone’s dream, right?
And even if it’s not, Kickstarter’s a fantastic site. If you’ve ever wanted to do some sort of creative (or other) project but not had the money, you’ll love it.
2 tags
“Had Bob Dylan been more of a technical virtuoso, he might not have felt the need...”
– Ignore Everybody - by Hugh MacLeod (via artistspaid)
Got this book sat on my shelf ready to read. Damn too-many-interesting-things-to-read.
1 tag
September 2009
100 posts
1 tag
The New Science of Causation →
“Statistics has no mathematical way to express the notion ‘mud does not cause rain’. It can say mud is correlated with rain (i.e. that there’s a high probability of seeing mud if you see rain), no problem, but expressing the simple causal concept — the kind of thing any five-year-old would know — is impossible.”
I need to re-read this properly as it’s a bit...