U.S. military personnel watch movies on their laptops at Orgun-E Camp on November 6, 2009. (REUTERS/Bruno Domingos) ... This is a great shot of three soldiers relaxing at their base in Afghanistan, watching movies on their laptops. The real question: what movies are they watching? [Gizmodo.com] Her yer de Apple var ya...
"Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S. Traditionally we take stock of the things that we’re thankful for on this day each year. And I realized that one of those things is Steve Jobs. I’m thankful that he returned to Apple in 1997 and did the things he has done since. It wasn’t at all a certainty that he would ever return to the company that he cofounded two decades earlier. In fact, it was only luck and coincidence that pushed him back there."
- See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
from Bookmarklet
"Google announcing nine new Search Options tools: past hour, specific date range, more shopping sites, fewer shopping sites, visited pages, not yet visited, books, blogs and news."
- Ron"micronet"Harwood
Speaking of Mythbusters, why aren't new shows coming out?
- Michel
@Michel: I think it's on summer hiatus. IIRC, Grant Imahara tweeted that new shows aren't starting back up again until October!
- Cheryl Jones
Kari Byron is also having a baby :) Probably don't want to do the shows without her for now.
- CannonGod
Ah. That is an excellent point. I guess the show would be totally different. Plus it also means that they had time for longer myths to work on.
- Michel
from iPhone
"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living." - http://blog.kickstarter.com/post...
Kickstarter is a site for funding art and music projects. According to their data, if a project reaches 25% of their funding goal, they almost certainly reach 100% eventually. The graph above illustrates the trend - almost no projects have achieved more than 25% and less than 100% of their funding goal. Interesting phenomenon. They argue it is due to those projects reaching a threshold of "true fans" who evangelize the project to "lesser" fans.
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
What's the y-axis of the plot? The graph doesn't make any sense to me (could be the cold meds, but yeah)
- LANjackal
I assume it's a histogram of the number of projects according to how far they got before giving up or reaching their deadline or whatever. The shape seems like it would depend highly on the give-up/time-out mechanism and how people set their "goal" targets.
- ⓞnor
Yah, a line graph was not an appropriate representation. It is a histogram, as Dan says. The site is also really new, so the numbers may not be meaningful, and may just reflect unreasonable goals for some projects. It would be interesting to see this graph for different goal segments (i.e., do all the "successful" projects just have lower goals?)
- Bret Taylor
The numbers are interesting, but I have trouble drawing any conclusions about "true fans".
- ⓞnor
Yah, "tipping points" are common, and "true fans" might not be the reason. I agree that the connection is a bit tenuous.
- Bret Taylor
1000 true fans still seems monumental. Especially by that definition.
- Andrew Smith
dunno about true fans, but certainly micro-community dynamics
- Steve Gillmor
Andy is using the site to create "An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis" ~ http://www.kickstarter.com/project... an 8bit recreation of Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue". The striking thing is he got enough money to do it without the risk of his own capital. It is also over-subscribed. An interesting funding alternative for things that require a lot of intensive up-front design & can be distributed as bits (music, software etc).
- Peter Renshaw
When everyone will pay $5 per month in global culture tax to pay for all arts, that'll provide salary for 1 artist full time for every 300 people paying this tax. But no reason all artists need to be full time artists. So consider lots of artists can be pretty happy getting only a few hundred dollars each month for monetizing just a bit of the artistic stuff they do on their free time.
- Charbax
So me being a photographer with over 2k subscribers on FriendFeed, does that mean I should be making a living? ;-)
- Kol Tregaskes
remenber that Clay Shirky has the similar statement about "1,000 True Fans"
- K.D.
@Kol - The statement is a bout true fans - the die hard fanatics! They are probably only 1 in a 1000 in real life.
- Paul OFlaherty
Do you have higher standards for that network? My highest % is on FB, because I truly friend only people who are good friends...
- Christopher Galtenberg
I believe it's because for someone to care about my travel they have to care about me on a personal level. So people who only read me once in a while just don't add me on dopplr, while they might on other networks.
- Robert Scoble
The percentage there is much higher than on Facebook, for instance.
- Robert Scoble
i think primarily because its a travel network focused on meeting people when you in the same place at the same time
- Zee.
For me it's Facebook. But I'm really strict about follows on there.
- Chris Nixon
I've hardly anybody on Dopplr I know... I guess I just don't know anybody
- Aad 't Hart
I've never heard of Dopplr before! :)
- Kevin Kuphal
Kevin: that also is interesting. Dopplr has the highest percentage of early-adopter types of all my social networks. It's a bit geeky and insidery and hasn't yet gotten outside of the early adopter crowd yet like most of the other social networks have that I'm on.
- Robert Scoble
Every community has its natural "third place" appeal for some core group. But the movable feast moves on and on. Kinda like talking about your favorite restaurant, coffee house or bar.
- John Blossom
I don't travel enough for Dopplr to be useful.
- Chris Nixon
if its still all early adopter it makes sense you know so many, you being an early adopter as well
- Nicholas
It's way off my radar. I don't travel much (family trips, very occasional for work). TripIt is something I've encountered because of LinkedIn but I still find myself using sites like Yahoo! Travel more for family trip planning
- Kevin Kuphal
Linda Stone told me to SEE @Jyri Object-centered sociality http://bit.ly/1cmzn7 -- off to read that now. (She's an authority on all this stuff, came up with the term "continuous partial attention."). Jyri works for Google and did Jaiku.
- Robert Scoble
for a while they targeted a lot of corporate types by striking agreements with the management. They also went to a lot of business schools and handed accounts out to the MBA students & such. My brother is a member and he got given an account via HSBC. It has definitely gone downhill over the last year or so though, from what i've heard anyway
- Zee.
Zee: I don't think it ever got a lot of adoption outside of the early adopter and insidery circles, based on my contact list (which has more than a thousand people on it). This is one reason why I accept all requests, so I can compare services for the kind of audience they are attracting.
- Robert Scoble
Because most people only want to share their detailed travel plans with close friends. I don't really care though, and I wish Dopplr would let me make my trips public: http://getsatisfaction.com/dopplr...
- Daniel Sims
in the early 1990's bulletin board 'social networks' like WWIV and Major BBS were use by people in the same area code due to phone costs. We would have meet-ups in parks, restaurants computer shows etc. Then internet access became affordable in the mid 90's and ruined everything. (thanks Al..) I dont think it has been the same since. So the answer to your question is simple logistics. The earth is too big.
- Mike Nencetti
Robert, just shared trips with you, thus lowering the % of people you know well. ;-)
- Val Klump
Hey gang made me 1st dollar on the zillionDC oops I mean the 30DC ha. Amazon just informed me that I made $3.57 waahooooo Think I sold a health care product. First it breaks the ice and 2nd every millionaire always starts with his first dollar.
This post was emailed to me which has never happened before. Anybody know anything about that (why it was emailed to me)(has ff ever emailed you anything before)
- Russ
Greg to answer your question I think the post says it all (zillion...) but with a straight face let me say that I do believe it can be done in 30 days in fact even less (depending on I don't know what)(how much you impliment the stuff I guess)
- Russ
Russ when I got my 1st $s I too called it the zillion DC - I think there are quite a few of us around :D
- Isha (Marysia)
Ahh- I remember it well...already looking to this years! Looks like it involves twitter? Do hope so, I love anything minimalist & simple! Using twitter loads!Thats y I dont get to FF so much now...
- Inspired Writing Research
Software is not an end in itself: it is a means to accomplish a task. People use software to pursue their goals, goals that exist in the real world, not cyberspace. It is for this reason that software should function as an extension of the human, not a hindrance to. - http://bluebirdapp.com/
If you have a Mac, or thinking of getting one, you might want to check out this deal which comes from one of the most fun/clever/community building marketing exercise each year for Mac software. Feel free to use this code if you want me to get a free app http://www.macheist.com/bundle... (link above is a clean link)
- Allison
from Bookmarklet
Flock, a social-focused browser startup that has raised nearly $30 million in venture funding, has ceased building on top of the open source Firefox browser, say multiple sources. The next version of the Flock browser will be built on Google’s open source Chrome browser platform. The last version of Flock was released in October 2008.
- Leo Laporte
Maybe they should be looking at building their own on WebKit instead of trying to work on someone else's browser based on WebKit. Seems like they're trying to latch onto an identity instead of making their own identity.
- William Stearns
from twhirl
This makes me think they don't really have a clue about their own product - and it wouldn't be the first time in Flock development history. I like the Flock idea and I used it in the past, though. The article on techcrunch.com features now an update, where Flock devs state they "haven’t ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform".
- Opensource Obscure
Very interesting. I'm currently using Flock but what I like is the integration of social networking AND the ability to use Firefox add-ons. There are several I can't live without and, if the next version doesn't support them (or similar), I'll just use Firefox. I know Chrome has promised extensions so maybe it won't matter.
- Herb Hernandez
@William: No I think using chrome is not a bad idea at all. Instead of building in all the plugin support(eg. offline support) etc. its easier this way and people would be more at home. There is no harm is latching onto the WebKit identity. More so since they would be adding on features and some people find them very useful.
- Siddharth Mitra
This is a good idea. Chrome is a better browser than firefox, faster on the whole.
- Rajesh
"No, we haven't switched. We've looked at it, just as we've looked at Mozilla 2, and will look at whatever else is promising." - Matthew Willis, Flock Employee http://is.gd/lDOO
- Ken Sheppardson
mac fans won't like this... chrome's windows only right?
- Juho Tunkelo