July 2009
80 posts
Alt-text of today's xkcd →
“My biology grad student friends tell me that different types of alcohol don’t actually have different effects. I trust their expertise, not because of the ‘biology’ part, but because of the ‘grad student’.”
“Apple just may be the world’s most discreetly feminine brand.”
– Fortune’s Bridget Brennan
“Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is...”
– Dieter Rams (head designer at Braun)
“Now that money is tight, venture capital firms are able to fully dictate the...”
– Kottke
whitewhine:
Ugh, My Google Reader is gonna be filled with movie news I already know, when I get back from comic-con.
-Whine by @nerdtram
The perils of being a media junkie. I know the feeling ;-)
I'M BEGINNING TO HATE BBC NEWS. →
On the front page of the Beeb’s politics section: “The prospect of another cat stalking the corridors of Downing Street may have receded after David Cameron said he had ‘no plans’ for pets if elected.”
(See this that I wrote yesterday).
The power of blogging →
Or: “people do crazy things for Crocs”.
“Ya know, if you don’t give me shoes – I could totally write something bad about you on my blog.”
“Excuse me?” I asked – hoping she would laugh or give me some indication that she was just joking around. Nope…
“It’s just a pair of shoes. It’s a lot easier to give them to me than deal with the...
BREAKING NEWS: some people are stupid →
I’ve always been a big fan of the BBC, but some of the items they choose to cover as “news” do wind me up. Often it’s the prominence given to some brands/commercial entities over others (Spotify, some festivals) that annoys me, here it’s a complete non-story about the stupidity of two people (“Swedes miss Capri after GPS gaffe”) linked to from the front...
“At Goldman we always round to the nearest $50 billion, so anything less than $25...”
– Michael Lewis (via soupsoup)
Dictionary definition of “silly money”.
Windows has fanboys too →
;-)
Exempt charity →
“An exempt charity is an institution established in England and Wales for charitable purposes which is exempt from registration with, and oversight by, the Charity Commission.
Exempt charities are largely institutions of further and higher education, universities, student unions, Industrial and Provident Societies, Friendly Societies, or national museums, that were established by Act of...
“My electronic badge still opened Apple’s doors, so I just kept showing up.”
– The Graphing Calculator Story
I've been particularly witty/insightful on Twitter... →
Just thought it needed pointing out.
robinbrown78 says:
I was looking at Johann Hari’s blog today (I have my reasons) when I spotted a word I didn’t know the meaning of: anecelaphic.
So I did what anyone would have done under the circumstances, and Googled it. Then I Yahoo’d it.
Google returns three results, all from Hari’s blog. I actually managed to Googlewhack, er, Yahoo with the query.
Dictionary.com suggests encephalitic.
...
rickyv says:
The cack of barriers to entry in the media business is devaluing media businesses.
Sic. And, indeed, another Freudian typo…
See Ricky’s original post for a very good point though.
catbird says:
I realize that “Tim Armstrong” is some guy at AOL, but every time I read his name in a headline, I *ALWAYS* at first think they’re talking about the lead singer of Rancid, and I keep thinking “Why is Techcrunch writing about the guy from Rancid?”
I always think similar when I read about ngmoco’s Neil Young.
“It takes IPOs to build confidence in the financial markets. IPOs beget IPOs. ...”
– Albert Wenger on the Zappos acquisition
Well, duh. →
“Researchers have confirmed what parents have long believed - running around in the day means your child may well fall asleep faster at night.”
Brioche
The donut it’s socially acceptable to eat for breakfast. I love those crazy continentals.
Three Laws of Robotics →
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
By Isaac Asimov (of “I, Robot” fame).
Freudian?
Mis-typed “progress” as “process”.
“The ‘next Google’ is unlikely to be a search engine, however, just...”
– Paul Graham
Brandweek on companies' use of Tumblr →
IBM, Universal Music, EMI…
“More than eight out of ten local authorities have a problem with fly-posting. It...”
– Keep Britain Tidy
“Arrrgh! The posters - they’re coming to get me! I feel uneasy and fearful!”
Marco writes a very interesting post about running a business writing iPhone apps, but this bit in particular caught my attention:
iTunes Connect, the interface through which developers submit and manage apps, is extremely buggy and frequently mishandles important operations. On multiple occasions, it has posted screenshots and description text from an in-review update submission to the live app...
“I released [a computer program] as ‘t-shirt ware’, ie, if you like...”
– Comment on Stack Overflow
BBC: Monkeys recognise 'bad grammar' →
(via didyouevernotice)
Even apes hate LOLcats ;-)
Windows 95 Running on iPhone →
*cries*
Stack Overflow learns me stuffs →
“Gmail is written in Java.
Wikipedia is written in PHP.
Many parts of google.com are written in Python.
Slashdot is written in Perl.
Twitter is written in Ruby.
Stackoverflow is written in C#.
The list goes on…
As you can see, there is no best language, a language is only what you make of it.”
Wii menu music →
“That’s right - I’ve ripped the music from all the Wii channels. Everyone knows the Wii Shop channel music is awesome, but you may be surprised to find out that the Photo Channel features a number of good tunes as well, particularly the ones you can use for slideshows. They’re actually full songs, not just little looping melodies.”
dearoldlove:
When I wrote “Love me” I didn’t accidentally leave out the comma.
A romance story for grammar fiends.
“Actors are cattle.”
– Alfred Hitchcock
“During the first Internet boom, the most common business model was probably,...”
– 5 Business Models for Social Media Startups
“‘There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis’ was Kirsty MacColl’s first hit single […] a promotional version was released in the USA which referenced a truck stop as opposed to the very British chip shop, but this was only available to DJs and did not get a full release.”
The Deck and Fusion Ads. Thoughts?
I’ve been bery interested in curated/boutique advertising networks like the above today. Anyone know any similar ones? General thoughts on ‘em? Answer via Tumblr or Disqus or on a postcard.
Tumblr users might have seen Fusion Ads on sites by our friends:
Marco
Instapaper (erm, Marco again)
Start.io
lonelysandwich
They basically take the opposite approach to Google Adwords:...
Best programmer jokes on Stack Overflow →
A man flying in a hot air balloon suddenly realizes he’s lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts to get directions, “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”
The man below says: “Yes, you’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”
“You must work in Information Technology,” says the...
“Much in the way that everybody who saw Sideways is now an expert on wine, the...”
– The Register (via Marco)
Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi... →
“Sergeant in USMC stationed at Camp Lejeune (…) recently returned from my 3rd trip to Iraq. I fight every day to stem the tide of multicultturalism and to ensure that my children have a better world. SIEG HEIL!”