"interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production" - http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008...
There has to be some sort of birthday paradox around graphs. Given a large enough library of graphs, you will find a strong correlation between two.
- Joe Beda
Mean global temperature correlates quite well with the decline in the pirate population, after all. Actually, we can test causality now -- will the rise of Somali and Asian pirates bring the temperature back down? Or are the required to wear 17th century pirate regalia?
- Joel Webber
This also confirms my conjecture that there have been no new good artists since 1975.
- Gabe
This is why we must start drilling in Alaska.
- τorƍue
Will drilling in Alaska improve rock music?
- Gary Burd
Speaking of birthdays, I think a histogram of the birthdays of music critics would probably look a whole lot like the red graph... shifted 13-18 years or so.
- Ken Sheppardson
'Songs in "Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of all Time,"' huh? That's some ground truth for ya.
- j1m
I'd like to see the graph for Pitchfork, but the lists are segmented by decade.
- Gary Burd
@Ken - "predicting oil production by music critic's birthdays". Who'd have thought we could solve the whole running-out-of-oil thing by getting Rolling Stone to hire 16 year olds!!!
- Nick Lothian
Ken: I think you might find more correllation with a histogram of drug use than age of critics.
- Gabe
Wolfram Alpha is launched, and Google adds public data search. Wolfram Alpha teams up with Bing, and Google adds World Bank data. Synchronicity, they call it.
- milivella
Damn, I would have honestly preferred WA to partner with Google, but maybe that's just because I despise MS ...
- Oblomov
Re: Silk Road - I know some people who have done it, and they liked it but didn't rave about it. I think Samarkand looks fascinating, though.
- Nick Lothian
Go to BA, then Patagonia, then end up in Ushuaia. Then get a last minute antarctic deal from there for < half price (available most weeks in the Summer). Plus you get BA and Patagonia.
- Steve Crossan
How can you get a last-minute Antarctic deal? Are there web sites to do this? Please point me to some.
- niniane
I think the point is to go show up at the dock and find out who's got space at the last minute. Cancellations are not uncommon, and they don't overbook the Antarctic boats. :-)
- Piaw Na
at $5/year for 20GB it starts making sense
- ǝuǝƃnǝ
Someone needs to fix the math on the purchase storage page "Free storage you are currently using: Gmail - 1.2 GB (0%) of 7.26 GB..." https://www.google.com/account...
- Eric Borisch
Dear Google: Please get rid of this page. Just add a setting so I can say "always use Google Reader for RSS feeds." (Or vice versa, or an option to always ask if someone uses both.) I've been going through this extra step for years now, and I am really tired of it.
I really wish they would kill it. I *NEVER* want to add a feed to my google homepage. I never go there.
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Exactly, Rah. I've never chosen the Homepage option. Google knows everything about me, they should know by now that this page is worthless to me. And seriously, now with Google's profiles and centralized accounts, a persistent setting for this should be a piece of cake to implement.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Agree, always on the Reader! Great tool!
- John Tastad
Does it, Mitchell? I have Feedly installed at home, but I haven't noticed. I use Chrome at work, though.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Google Homepage just isn't needed for anything. I wish they'd pull the plug on that thing.
- Matthew DeVries
that is why i use the google reader "subscribe" bookmarklet ;-) (edit: you can find it in your google reader settings)
- Stanislas Jourdan
Jandy: there is a preview of feedly for chrome. If you are interested, please send me an email at edwink@devhd.com and I will send you an invite.
- Edwin Khodabakchian
"Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a chemist turned photographer ahead of his time who undertook an ambitious photographic survey of the Russian Empire for Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909 and 1915, he completed tours of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped train carriage which had been provided by the Ministry of Transportation. What made this project remarkable was his use of an innovative technique for taking photographs in full and extremely vivid colour. He was able to capture colour by using a camera that exposed one oblong glass plate three times in rapid succession through three different colour filters: blue, green, and red. To view his images, he printed positive glass slides of his negatives and projected them through a triple lens magic lantern. The images were projected through the three lenses and, with the use of colour filters, superimposed in full colour on to a screen."
- April Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
I feel guilty that I feel this way, but color really helps me relate better to people of that period. I was just watching that link to color film footage of London in 1927 and felt the same way. There's something that makes it so much more real and empathizable even though other things you'd think would be barriers (strange hairstyles, clothing) are still there.
- Spidra Webster
It's surprising that he was able to take so many good photos of people. That's almost impossible to do with multiple exposures.
- Gabe
You can see the motion in the shot he took of the kids on the hillside.
- Spidra Webster
"We are just destined to be really, really good friends who only hang out when I don't have a boyfriend, but still need male attention to boost my fragile and all-consuming ego."
- Ana
from Bookmarklet
"Don't worry. You're so funny and smart and amazing, any girl but me would be lucky to date you. You'll find someone, I know it. And when you do, I'll be right by your side to suddenly become all flirty and affectionate with you in front of her, until she grows jealous and won't believe it when you say we're just friends. But when she dumps you, that's just what we'll be."
- Dan Hsiao
The conclusion of this article finds the Onion in top form.
- Andrew C
translation: I am not into you like that. You don't do it for me in that way. Never did. never will. Sorry, but only sort of...
- Morgan Haley
The "my mom says hi" part is a nice way to twist the knife a bit.
- Brian Chang
I just opened the link and I'm kind of astounded. I had no idea what a deep influence Paul had over at Google. Created GMail? I am in awe. That plus Friendfeed and many other accomplishments. Happy birthday, Paul. I know we get fussy here sometimes about you, but that's only because we love so much what you helped create, and we're terrified at the thought of it vanishing.
- Kamilah Gill
They Photoshopped the *heck* outta this grub (not caterpillar), but I have to admit that the smaller version here had me fooled momentarily.
- Kamilah Gill
Interesting, Brian. Goliath beetle grubs come close, but the grub in this picture is still too large. I think that's more impressive since it's real. I'm stealin' it :] Thanks!
- Kamilah Gill
+ nakachi, that's how I feel about going to the Amazon
- Lo
Ben, by commenting, you insure that the item cannot be hidden. (at least not in My discussions) :)
- Cristo
True, now it's just mostly hidden. It won't show up in any list view (including the home feed). I got this notification via email because I am subscribed to you and I have it set to email me when a friend comments on anything in "My Discussions" but the picture doesn't appear in the email so I'm ok with that :) The only place it will continue to show up is in "My Discussions". But I never visit that feed
- Benjamin Golub
from email
Isn't that what Paul said FriendFeed is right now?
- Jesse Stay
Thank "Brian Johns" for the info. It's the Larvae of Giant Scarab.
- Acharad Sami VanJoulee
This one is too large. I posted the real one.
- Kamilah Gill
from email
I have sat on this since Kevin posted this... But I can wait no longer........... "der ner ner der ner ner ner... Foxy Lady"
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Some friends of mine did something similar, only instead of a door, the three of them would self-assemble to become a facade of a house (complete with door that opened and someone behind it), and instead of knocking on doors, they approached trick-or-treaters on the street. The kids were pretty confused though.
- Seth
First off, I'd agree that right now Apple has more apps and more "name brand" apps--they're the clear leader in the apps space. But it seems like emphasizing the quantity of apps is the wrong message. Apple has to hand-approve apps for inclusion in the Apple store; I don't think Google does pre-approval before apps are added to the Android market. As a proof of concept, someone could generate 150K Android apps quickly. So it seems to me in the long-term, comparing platform apps by quality is better than by quantity. Does that make sense?
- Matt Cutts
Absolutely. It's like the old days when search engines compared the size of their index. They've all since learnt that it's not the size that counts anymore. App stores are just lagging behind a bit...
- Tony Ruscoe
Tony, yup. Or when Overture/Yahoo had to hand-approve all ads before they went live, while Google would look for ways to not require that human in the loop before someone could see the new ad.
- Matt Cutts
Not sure I'd agree. Number of apps implies something about the platform. How easy it is to code for, the potential market that developers see, the capabilities that make such a wide variety of apps possible. MHz was a stupid number that had no real, translatable meaning to an average user. Apple, however, has effectively delivered the message that there apps for just about any use. That DOES resonate with users.
- Kevin Pedraja
It's like counting # of page views or # of followers or # of subscribers. It's the intellectually easy thing to grasp - and easiest to drop during a 30 second commercial.
- Louis Gray
+1 Kevin. 90% of everything is crap, and Apple has more everything (mobile apps) than you do. Their 10% is bigger.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
taximagic is the future. I wish they had it for android.
- Jenna Bilotta
I used to use the quality vs quantity argument as Palm was rolling out the Pre. Then I started seeing the apps people were actually building, and I quit making that argument. At this point unless you have some way to quantify app quality, you won't convince me that one platform is better than another. Apps are apps, and numbers do matter... i.e.... What Kevin said.
- Ken Sheppardson
The quality of apps is even more important for GSM operators and mobile phone manufacturers. I believe we will see more packs of high quality apps that are recommended by the operators and manufacturers to enrich their marketing.
- Can Demirezen
Somebody please explain what a "quality app" is. Thanks.
- Ken Sheppardson
I don't think the many iFart apps and their variants are considered quality apps, for starters, Ken.
- Maxamad
Can you generalize that into some sort of criteria other than "I know it when I see it"?
- Ken Sheppardson
Company in Pakistan was submitting 2-3 apps a day to Apple, charging $5 for bait like "WWF News" which was just ripping off news pages off the web and packaging them as iPhone apps. They had 800 apps before Apple finely got a clue, and after taking a cut off them for a long time.
- Ed Millard
For me, it's not even about the quality of the apps. It's all about whether the device has the apps I want to use. For a lot of users, Google Maps Navigation would trump 100,000 App Store apps any day. Since I hardly use any apps on my iPhone, I don't care about the numbers. All I want is a Twitter client. Anything else is a bonus. (Note: And just because an app makes lots of money, it doesn't mean it's a quality app. Not as far as most users are concerned anyway.)
- Tony Ruscoe
Seems like some third party research firm out there somewhere could take a list of features and benefits folks are looking for with a mobile device and do a survey for each platform looking at what apps there are out there to meet those needs, i.e. mobile mapping, social networking clients, etc.
- Ken Sheppardson
@Tony, totally agree. I think I use maybe 5 apps. Not even remotely interested in the other 99,995.
- Travis Koger
Bret Taylor is the best PM in the entire world and is one of the few people I would consider doing a startup with. http://friendfeed.com/bret
- Jess Lee
Louis Gray is one of the few people I've met IRL through Friendfeed and he is totally awesome. Great writer/blogger/journalist, incredibly nice, and father to adorable twins. http://friendfeed.com/louisgr...
- Jess Lee
We started out as arch enemies but he quickly became one of my favorite people on FriendFeed - sharp, clever, with a great sense of humor http://friendfeed.com/cristob... :)
- Mona Nomura
I'm not convinced having family facebook me is a good thing.
- Cristo
you know...it's led to a more open relationship after pics from a party I was at got put on facebook....I wasn't crazy about it, but meh whatever, it's my life, if they don't like it they can unfriend me :P
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
from IM
Fbook is like a poison soup. Family mixed with friends mixed with office people. I'm scared to post anything.
- Jess