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Rob Hoeting › Comments
Jeremy Grantham: Sucker's Rally Almost Over - http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-b...
vivekian, Adam Kazwell, Ed Millard and 8 other people liked this
"Within days of the March low, Jeremy published "Reinvesting While Terrified," in which he observed that it was time to bet the farm. He soon called for a stimulus-fueled rally that would take the S&P 500 to 1000-1100, which is where we are now. He also laid out his expectation that the market would then move sideways for 7 years. Well, we've hit the high of Jeremy's sucker's rally prediction. Stocks are now once again significantly overvalued (Jeremy puts the overvaluation at 25%, with fair value on the S&P 500 at 860). He thinks the market can go a bit higher but that it will break down next year. He's looking for a "painful" pullback of at least 20%. A new low is not likely, but not out of the question."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
wow
- Susan Beebe
It seems like a lot of the gains we've been seeing in the stock market lately have been on weakness of the dollar, rather than a great improvement in economic conditions. So the stock market isn't gaining in value, it's just that the beans that are used to value it are getting smaller.
- Cristo
The market is not sustainable at 10% unemployment, the quarterlys were based on lay-offs not earnings and with no money being spent on mainstreet ie christmas shopping sideways' would be lucky'
- WarLord
We'll see. Tops are much tougher to predict than bottoms. There are many people calling for a major sell-off here, which means it probably won't happen.
- Rob Hoeting
Basement.org: Why Do We Love Rounded Corners? The Answer! - http://www.basement.org/2009...
"A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse of the same size. Our “fovea-eye” is even faster in recording a circle. Edges involve additional neuronal image tools. The process is therefore slowed down.” Professor Nänni is saying that rounded rectangles are literally easier on the eye. Put another way, compared to square-edged rectangles, rounded rectangles are more computationally efficient for the human brain. To me, this is a revelation. An idea that at the very least demands more investigation."
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
My brother and cousin are in the midst of flying their planes from Cincinnati to Alaska. They just sent cool photo from yesterday's leg thru Washington.
John Ruth, Mac Sharp, andrei_c and 23 other people liked this
Wow, that sounds like fun! Any chance they'll stop by SF on the way home?
- Paul Buchheit
I just sent him an email. I'm sure they're playing it a bit loose, so why not? You need to show him around the FF headquarters. Kenny's two boys are with them as well.
- Rob Hoeting
thats a pretty nice picture - if they send you more you should post them :P
- bob
Independence Day (United States) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
"In a remarkable series of coincidences, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founding fathers of the United States and the only two men who signed the Declaration of Independence to become president, died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the United States' 50th anniversary."
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
Delivery Focus : Creativity and Job Security - http://blogs.conchango.com/simonmu...
"A blasé attitude towards job security is risky when pennies are being counted but on the other hand excessive worrying can be counter productive. Fortunately in application development we are in the position where we can respond quickly to the changing market needs. We don’t have to re-tool a factory, throw out stock that doesn’t sell or keep paying for equipment and production lines sitting idle. All we need to do is identify the needs and opportunities, point our tools and skills in the right direction, and solve some new problems."
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
Rockford Lhotka - Why Silverlight is the future - http://www.lhotka.net/weblog...
"I think Silverlight represents the likely future of computing for most of us. And by “us”, I mean both Windows and web developers on the Microsoft platform (and maybe beyond). I think we’re at a point of convergence, where two industry trends are coming together in a way that makes Silverlight the most compelling answer for a lot of development scenarios. These trends are the continued abstraction away from the hardware, and now the operating system; and the likelihood that the web as we know it is nearing the end of its life, so we’re looking for the next big thing in that space."
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
Still No Buyer For Most Expensive South Bay House - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...
Emily Miller, Miller Tzou, Jeff (the マクダジ of FF) and 17 other people liked this
"Stonebrook Court, a Los Altos Hills mansion built in 1914, was listed at $45 million in the spring, but the price was quietly dropped to $38 million in July. The property is owned by venture capitalist Kelly Porter, who spent the last seven years renovating the property. The house has an interesting history, having been used as both a private day school and, earlier, as a brothel."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Wow, Los Altos Hills used to have nice brothels!
- Paul Buchheit
holy cow! what a house and history
- Susan Beebe
a brothel you say? Someone should see if Spitzer's looking to get out of New York.
- Thomas Hawk
Don't you mean Barney Frank?
- Karl Anderson
So how many homes are available in that price range?
- Bob Gannon
That estate is no where worth $38 million.
- Michael Forian
@Paul: Look out for a charge on our credit card for $38mil sometime soon...
- April Buchheit
I'm pretty sure that's above the limit on my card.
- Paul Buchheit
Maybe not in a year or so, if the smart money recognizes the value of Friendfeed.
- Sean McBride
Say someone *gave* you the property, what would it cost you a month in taxes, utilities, insurance, and fighting off entropy?
- Rob Hoeting
Paul, don't you have an AmEx? No preset limit.
- Gabe
Don't be fooled peoples this is really the new FriendFeed HQ!! Paul & Co are currently there right now!!, (however; there's even a much bigger house for larger parties but as of yet its all hush hush..ssshh.)
- Jason
the pics dont make it seem that fancy - whats so great about it? does it have a lot of land?
- bob
They should shoot a movie there, it will sell in no time.
- deusdiabolus
I guess this old church can't compare - http://www.castleonthepark.com/wfPhoto...
- Joe Lima
I say convert it into a posh day spa.... Or maybe a Taco Bell, it's a toss up
- Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)
Be A Bad News Bull - Forbes.com - http://www.forbes.com/persona...
Tyson Key liked this
"Bad news is good. You can expect more of it. And you can expect the stock market to resume its recovery, which began Nov. 20. Do you find this line of argument perplexing? You have company. A lot of my clients are baffled at the notion that the stock market should be climbing at a time when employment is declining. Buy if you look back at the pattern in past stock market recoveries, or think about what the stock market represents, the combination of a bull market and a recession will not seem so strange."
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
To be fair, Fisher has nailed many past bear markets, but missed this one. He got back in too early after 2000-2002 bear market. Still, this guy is right quite a bit.
- Rob Hoeting
It depends how deep the crash goes. 1929 didn't bottom until 1932: http://www.lowrisk.com/29crash...
- Paul Buchheit
Here's what I got for the sixth night of Hanukkah! (and I'm not even Jewish)
Piaw Na, Mitchell Tsai, Michael Matuzak and 52 other people liked this
a uouɐɔ? hanukkah rox!
- Chris Hofmann
It's backwards! You should send it back and get a forward version.
- Gabe
Its backwards becuase of the mirror. Doh.
- Roberto Bonini
Awesome. No don't be shy, get some nice L lenses to round it out. Imagine the beautiful portraits of your kids you can now get.
- Rob Hoeting
Baaaaasssstttttaaaarrrrrddddd!!!!
- Robert Scoble
AWESOME!! (HHAHAA Scoble is super jealous!) :D
- Susan Beebe
NICE!!!
- Allen Harkleroad
from twhirl
I recommend getting either the 16-35/2.8 or 17-40/4 lens.
- Gabe
Wow! Looks awesome.
- Ramkarthik
Think of all the wonderful landscapes with a 14/2.8!
- Charles Nadeau
Jealous.
- Josh
Thanks, Noam and Yael for accidentally ordering 2 and selling us your redundant order!
- April Buchheit
I am incredibly envious.
- Jauder Ho
thats wierd u got a camera and tis ono hanukkah and your not jewish very odd|_____
- Jasmine
Nice Paul. Hope you enjoy it
- Bwana ☠
I am looking forward to seeing your next piñata-cam movie in HD.
- Gary Burd
Are you sure it's not a cheap Canon replica? You do know it's got Canon written backwards ;)
- Phil Whelan
We left-eye dominant folk would truly appreciate this model? Care to resell it, again?
- John Lam
+1 Phil
- Scott of Two Countries
Retail Sales Plummet | Wall Street Journal - http://online.wsj.com/article...
Carl Pruitt, Bob Gannon, Bluesun 2600 and 16 other people liked this
"This will go down as the one of the worst holiday sales seasons on record.. the holiday retail-sales decline was much worse than the already-dire picture painted by industry forecasts.."
- Anthony Citrano
What are we looking at here? The collapse of the American economy and empire? Something much bigger than a blip? I think so.
- Sean McBride
In the 30s there wasn't enough "stuff"... now we have too much!
- Rob Hoeting
Peter -- America has sought and possessed empire from early on in its history. I am not using the word in a pejorative sense. America has been an imperial power in the tradition of Rome and Britain. But Bush, the Republicans, neoconservatives and Christian Zionists overplayed their hand and pushed the game one step too far. It's quite possible that they have shattered American power. I saw this coming back in 2002; all the signs were there.
- Sean McBride
Smart American imperialists always understood that the game was primarily about cultural and economic influence and control. Bush and the neocons are, of course, idiots, and didn't get it.
- Sean McBride
Brrr...
- Marcello Del Bono
We all saw this coming. I am not going to "like" this, because there is little to like about the news, short of the shift from being such a consumer society. And yes, I have been guilty as well...
- Rob McNair-Huff
Rob -- I will tell you who didn't see this coming: everyone who voted for Bush and Cheney in 2004, when the handwriting was already written on the wall in bold, neon letters.
- Sean McBride
+1 RobMH and +1 Sean. @Rob H - that's why we have so much further to fall.
- Anthony Citrano
@Anthony - I downloaded almost 15K days worth of S&P trading data (back to 1950) into Excel. A few days in November the index was more than 40% below the 200 DMA. This was a first. During 73-74 bear market, we got close, but not 40%.
- Rob Hoeting
Sounds interesting Rob, but I don't know what 200 DMA is - is it some kind of moving average, or?
- Anthony Citrano
Is that just credit card data? Our sales much more cash heavy this year; also our best year ever.
- Robert Hafer
"...data are based on sales activity in the MasterCard payments network [credit and debit] with estimates for all other payment forms, including cash and checks..."
- Anthony Citrano
Robert Hafer: best year ever in which sector of the economy?
- Sean McBride
this will only go down as the worst holiday season for 1 year -- they haven't seen next year's holiday season.... sorry to be a pessimist, but let's get serious. the economic crisis won't be solved in 12 months.
- Gabby
I would love to hear Col. Bacevich would comment on this thread, esp. w/r/t McBride:Simard and "empire". Also: +1 Gabby.
- Anthony Citrano
I would love to hear Andrew Bacevich comment on any subject.
- Sean McBride
@Sean, you saw his Moyers interview, right?
- Anthony Citrano
Anthony -- missed the Moyers interview, but read "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism."
- Sean McBride
Moyers / Bacevich here: http://www.cosmictap.com/andrew-...
- Anthony Citrano
I look forward to watching these.
- Sean McBride
Why is ReadWriteWeb's traffic going down and Mashable's going up according to Compete? Discuss here:
michael silverton, Sean McBride, Rick Turoczy and 38 other people liked this
ReadWriteWeb has been doing some of the most in-depth and interesting blogging on the web lately. Mashable is seeing traffic growth while RWW is going down, though. Why?
- Robert Scoble
i prefer RWW personally....
- Jeff (the マクダジ of FF)
I think its because Mashable has more social networking news, and there is always social networking news.
- Daniel Brusilovsky
I know this isn't the primary reason, but I can't stand the look of RWW. It's really harsh looking.
- Andrew
Daniel: that might be it. Mashable has more "quick hits" too. This isn't a good trend. I always assumed the market would reward great work. I agree with Jeff. RWW has been doing great work lately.
- Robert Scoble
They all look like they are going up, it's just that ReadWriteWeb had a bad October ? No idea why but every blog can have an off month. Maybe they have a friendfeed problem ? However 216.8% up for RWW is double techcrunch and mashable for 08 so they look like they are doing ok.
- Adrian
Adrian: most tech blogs are down in October, so finding one that is up, Mashable, is interesting and worth talking about.
- Robert Scoble
Here's a chart comparing Mashable to VentureBeat and Gigaom: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/mashabl...
- Robert Scoble
I enjoy and follow both blogs. But Mashable cranks out more posts, and they're usually social-networking - related news, like Daniel said. And Mashable's posts are short and to the point. Quite a few people do have short attention spans. ;) While RWW's posts are in-depth, people might not want to spend too much time reading (this doesn't go for everyone, of course). - And I personally like Mashable's lists. Just my two cents.
- deepikaur
I did some ad hoc analysis of Compete a while back, and found it to be complete bollocks: http://tr.im/competebollocks
- Darren Barefoot
Robert: One thing that attracts readers other then content is the look of the site. Mashable has a nice site, while RWW has a cluttered site that is sometimes hard to read. I personally just use a RSS feed reader for both plus all my other sites.
- Daniel Brusilovsky
I think it could be the "Long Tail" effect manifesting itself in this space.
- Rob Hoeting
One reason also is that Mashable posts 3 to 4 times more than RWW... More page views!
- Ilan Abehassera
Darren: now THAT deserves a conversation all on its own. How would you compare these sites? What's your data telling you is happening in the tech blogging world?
- Robert Scoble
RWW obviously has some terrific posts, really solid. But Mashable is comfortable, and never snobby or elitist like RWW writers sometimes act in social media settings.
- Ed Shahzade /NextInstinct
I don't read Mashable, since it has no value for me. Read RWW regularly. Most people dont't have patience for analysis and detail. That said, RWW seems to be doing fine, so nothing to worry bout there. Plus that last month only matters if it is indicative of a long term trend.
- Deepak Singh
Pageviews are dead. Attention is key
- Chris Saad
the fact that Mashable focuses on lists, lists and more lists has got to be a major factor...lists are link bait, appear high on search engines and remain popular often for months.
- Zee.
I like ReadWriteWeb more than Mashable.
- Veetrag
could merely be cyclical; also mash is kind of good looking & definitely Mashable's 3/4 of a page articles work well for attention span (does anyone know what team he bats for?). I have errrrr a friend...
- sofarsoShawn
Robert: Anecdotally, our clients get more visitors from coverage on RWW than on Mashable. On the other hand, they get covered more often by Mashable. Still, I'm drawing on a reasonably small data set there, so that's not empirical.
- Darren Barefoot
first, don't look at compete when you have real, directly measured traffic stats for RWW, Mashable and techcrunch from Quantcast http://www.quantcast.com/profile...
- Andy Beard
Mashable seems to have periods where they go against the trending (Mar 08 going down while the others up, same with a few months ago) - no analysis, just an observation.
- George Smith
Personally, I really like RWW but I think the primary reasons are, which others have also pointed out, Mashable has more coverage of the social networking space which is driving more traffic and Mashables posts are shorter which could be a positive. Definitely don't think their should be any assumption the quality of RWW is going down, if anything it is continuing to get better.
- Steve Zimmerman
rww is up on the year & its growth is far higher than Mashable. Comparison with Microsoft and Google is interesting - Microsoft are down 17% on the year: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/google...
- Russell
Darren: I believe that. I bet that the longer posts on RWW have a more engaged audience who is more likely to click and try stuff out. My videos are the same way. Anyone who'll sit through a 20-minute video is going to be very engaged and interested in the product being discussed, but fewer people will do that.
- Robert Scoble
Andy: Quantcast's charts are a lot harder to read, but seem to me to be showing same data: that Mashable is going up while the others are going down or flatlined.
- Robert Scoble
Another thought, I always hear big voices in the Tech community complaining about Mashable. Maybe this is proof that there is no bad publicity.
- Andrew
Andrew: that is somewhat true. Mashable does a lot of SEO tricks that piss off other bloggers. I don't really care. I look at social networks to see who is getting talked about. What keyed me into this conversation is RWW is getting talked about a lot on friendfeed and twitter in positive terms.
- Robert Scoble
Growth in RSS subscriber numbers doesn't equate to increased site traffic - the more feeds people subscribe to, the more likely they will just mark all as read
- Andy Beard
Mashable is spam, PR and contests and RWW is much the same, just try to read them everyday you'll be bored out-of-your mind!
- paul mooney
I agree w/ Beard, truthfully I just collect RSS feeds, perhaps 80% I read properly
- sofarsoShawn
Between RWW and Mashable, there is a huge difference in content choice for links/traffic, and the SEO and social media benefits are significant
- Andy Beard
How can it be "spam"???? I dont read either daily, or even often lol... maybe once in a while look at them... but thats it... not sure how you (paul) can call a blog spam???
- Rob Sellen :o)
Interesting discussion you started, Robert. I've always thought Mashable and RWW served very different audiences, so hopefully there's room enough for both of us to succeed. Also, so nice to see how many RWW supporters there are in the FF community! That's always nice to hear.
- Sarah Perez
It's just ads with content as a filler
- paul mooney
ha ha.... and you call that spam???
- Rob Sellen :o)
I hope RWW get paid a lot for hosting a Swicki in their sidebar, but links to searches for "funny horse videos" don't do their own internal traffic any good at all.
- Andy Beard
@Andy: +1 for Quantcast and +5 for seeing Mashable SEO strategy. Mashable is working on traffic generation big time and using a lot of SEO 'tricks' (aka - good business strategy) to drive traffic. While I prefer RWW content, Mashable is out marketing them.
- AJ Kohn
I agree to point that blogs like that are just a little content and a load of falshing banners...crap, but they already built up traffic..if you STARTED mashable today, no way would it get to where it is. But to call a blog for being like this spam is ridiculous...
- Rob Sellen :o)
I got a PR realise from some company I never heard of with a product that seamed useless and less then a hour later mashable on Twitter linked to a new blog post and it was THAT PR realise
- paul mooney
interesting. yesterday I observed that gigaom traffic is down 100k plus since October. it's possible lot of user attention turned to financial riot. can't imagine why mashable traffic grow though
- Kiran Patchigolla
Another time on Twitter Richard MacManus linked to a blog post on another blog listing himself as one of the best software developer bloggers, he's not a software development
- paul mooney
RWW is "intellectual" and Mashable is "sexy". I think RWW is really exceptional but sex sells.
- Elliott Ng
paul..whats that gotta do with anything here? :o/
- Rob Sellen :o)
RWW is quality content, commenting and analysis, while Mashable is kind of "just the news". I wonder if that is a generalizable trend.
- George Tziralis
sexy???? elliot, wtf?
- Rob Sellen :o)
I guess RWW will have to have more contests to keep up with mashables. Does mashable ever mash anything? Does Read-Write ever Read Write?
- paul mooney
Mashable currently has 6 list / resource posts on their front page - RWW have list / resource posts in their popular posts links, but some are relatively old - lists and resource posts gain links from a wider number of sources over a longer period of time
- Andy Beard
aside: So no one knows what team Mashable plays for?
- sofarsoShawn
http://bit.ly/162UE Google trends says Mashable traffic's going down. http://bit.ly/fFyt Alexa says it's going up. RWW is more cerebral than Mashable.
- Desire Athow
Between FriendFeed and Twitter you guys should be able to discover bloggers worth reading. The best blogs are written by people who blog about what they do. I've never met a mashable or RWW blopgger at CES or any of the many conferences I attend each year. I think they are fead by PR realise and cash from the companies who give then advertising
- paul mooney
fascinating discussion, thanks Robert for starting it. as for paul mooney, u r full of shit.
- Richard
fwiw I'm happy with RWW's traffic growth, Nov was our best month yet. that compete data isn't right. I do agree that mashable's traffic is fantastic right now. A smart SEO strategy, some fortune with google keywords, and sheer quantity of posts all helped. good luck to them, as Sarah said there is room for all of us to succeed, in our own ways.
- Richard
It's because RWW puts long posts over two pages. People don't like that so they're staying away from RWW, even though it is better. :-) Who knows? And it doesn't matter. But Mashable is USA Today and RWW is NYT.
- Dominic Jones
Just a thought... Mashable's higher page views don't seem very compelling in light of their higher frequency of posts. Looking at a ratio (for comparison), or something like average views per post would be a much more informative number. Or maybe unique visitors (but these are still mediated by number of posts) or new subscriptions. Comments per post is also something to consider. The road to erroneous conclusions is paved with page views (examined in isolation, without regard to any other variables).
- Kim G.
Where is Sean McBride? He's going to flip when he sees this discussion not happening on twitter & with SCOBLE nonetheless ~ he hates twitter
- sofarsoShawn
Fascinating thread. Happy to confirm that Mashable's traffic is surging at the moment. I'm also a huge fan of RWW. Assuming your general case is true: one of these sites is for tech industry analysis, one is for early-adopting web users. One of those target audiences is bigger than the other; both approaches create value.
- mashable
I prefer RWW to Mashable (seems smarter and more thoughtful to me), am viewing this discussion on Friendfeed, and do indeed still fail to understand why anyone uses Twitter when there are much better choices available (Friendfeed, to be precise).
- Sean McBride
Twitter can be updated through SMS for one. Plus, most of my Twitter updates are done through Ping.fm
- MarkCarras
Maybe the quality of RWW is too high for many users to manage. They don't want to be forced to use their noggins. I'll bet that's it.
- Sean McBride
Hard Work and Practice in Programming - http://radar.oreilly.com/2008...
Bill Romanos, TiTi, Turkey banned Bloggum :( and 20 other people liked this
Wow, quite a read! But that was certainly inspirational, maybe I should learn a new language.. objective-c is tempting.
- Scott
Interesting excerpt "One aspect of practice that is really important that I think is worth mentioning is that most true creativity comes from people who have done a lot of work in their field. (See Explaining Creativity by Sawyer and On Intelligence by Hawkins). Most of that work is "practice" - getting to a level of expertise so that we can think more abstractly about whatever the...
more...
- Rob Hoeting
K. Anders Ericsson has done a lot of fairly controversial research on this topic and he points out that it's not just about practice. It has to be the right kind of practice. He called this "deliberate practice" meaning it's guided, challengng, goal-oriented and measurable
- Adewale Oshineye
TheDieline.com: The #1 Package Design Website, World's Best Packaging: Vintage Soda Packaging - http://www.thedieline.com/blog...
Emily Miller, Anne Bouey, Adriana and 17 other people liked this
Yea I remember when soda cans used to be steel. We used to make great tennis ball canons out of them. All you needed was about 5 cans, a roll of duct tape and some lighter fluid and you were in business.
- Jeff P. Henderson
You can still make tennis ball canons out of aluminum cans, though a long cardboard tube works better.
- Paul Buchheit
Funny - I was just thinking about pull-tabs today. They made litter all over the place. I remember collecting them.
- BEX
I remember seeing pull tabs all over the place along with cigarette butts. We used to collect the pull tabs and make long chains out of them.
- Jeff P. Henderson
Root Beer flavored Root Beer FTMFW!
- teh Dork Knight aka Kenny
My favorite is the old Mountain Dew can. Some hillbilly gunning down a dude running for the outhouse and the slogan: "Made from flavors specially blended in the traditional hillbilly style"
- Rob Hoeting
Does Microsoft have a speed problem? - http://scobleizer.com/2008...
Voyagerfan5761, Jay, Bob Gannon and 30 other people liked this
With a lot of their products it's an ad serving problem.
- Andrew Smith
My guess is that MS has more javascript and CSS files.
- Gabe
"Google’s maps are 385% faster than Microsoft’s."
- Jess Lee
Hey, I'm a huge fan of Google Maps, but be fair, Jess, and cite the context ;). Er, actually, Scoble, I'm lookin' at you! The full sentence: "In our worst case scenario of 500 pushpins on the map in IE6, GMaps is 385% faster."
- Adam Lasnik
i always can't see any vedio on MS'site.
- jedorstar
I think most people underestimate importance of speed. Lag time is a subtle form of cost to the consumer.
- Rob Hoeting
I like the Birds Eye view in Live Maps, but OTOH it doesn't have street view
- Jemm
Speed is the reason I switched from Firefox to Chrome, I've been able to live w/o my extensions because the browser launches faster and pages render very quickly. More features aren't always a good thing.
- Thomas Hunsaker
One thing I really miss, is the Verisign OpenID "Seatbelt" plugin I used for my OpenID @ Verisignlabs.com .. Give me that for Chromium/Chrome and make me happy!
- Linus
xero nailed it with his comment on the blog itself: "I think it stems from the old mantra of making it work then letting the technology catch up. Unfortunately that just doesn’t work in the web."
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
As for Bird's Eye view vs Street View... I get Bird's Eye view for my neighbourhood and even somewhat rural areas of my municipality. I've yet to see much for Street View even in Toronto. Perhaps if Google would get its ass moving up here in Canada, I'd <3 them some more, but if I'm trying to positively ID some location, Live Maps does it better for me, and at roughly the same speed (I don't notice any difference).
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
I'm doubtful. Surely they've switched to meth by now like everyone else.
- Kelly Norton
Does it really surprise anyone that the company typically known for bloat in their software appears to be letting it slip into their web services? Ok I don't actually know if it's bloat, it could just be a poor scaling architecture, but given the minds at Microsoft bloat probably seems more likely.
- Devlin Dunsmore
from twhirl
@Rob: I actually read something a while ago that suggested that Google doesn't see things such as RAM, hard disk space, or number of servers as their most limited resource. Their most limited resource is a user's patience. A very smart and very real concept.
- Devlin Dunsmore
from twhirl
I thought speed was just another name for meth. Was I wrong?
- Gabe
I don't know...Gmail and GReader have been doing that "Loading" and "oops an error occurred" thing a lot lately. It's really annoying. I think any system has its slow periods from time to time. (I'm waiting for Gmail to load now as I type this...let's see...nope, still not done!!)
- Sarah Perez
If i remember right, there were some researchers saying that after this much broadband internet connection without pushing new investments to infrastructure, sooner or later we will be stuck with a more slower web. http://bit.ly/EkyB
- doruk tokçabalaban
Google Maps are *horrible* on the iPhone using either edge or 3G. They simply will not load. This might not be so bad if there were a way to load a KML file on the iPhone to use the map function there, but alas, there is not. One of the main reasons I bought an iPhone in the first place was to use Google Maps on it which is entirely worthless.
- Thomas Hawk
That's interesting--I certainly the agree the iPhone is frustratingly slow (even with it's internal apps)--but I think overall Google Maps is one of the more useful features.
- Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)
America's Best Places To Raise A Family - Forbes.com - http://www.forbes.com/2008...
April Buchheit liked this
Interesting to note: Almost every place is a wealthy county just outside a major city.
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
I could not stand a page reload for every city. Too annoying.
- Robert Felty
Have you ever seen such a well cabled datacenter? ;)
Itachi, Niv, Bryan Tsai and 88 other people liked this
Whoa, where is that?
- Rob Hoeting
The original Google datacenter in '99 :)
- Paul Buchheit
One of the consequences of factoring in component failure in your every move: you can save the cases, stuff's going to break anyway ;)
- Mustafa K. Isik
This design turned out to be somewhat nightmarish. It was eventually cleaned up (we had a "cabling fest") and by now the designs are quite slick, though still very unconventional. I wish Google would publish more about their hardware, because it's very interesting.
- Paul Buchheit
i have! it was even color coded, cables of different colors
- Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)
WHEN CABLES GO BAD! I used to have a similar problem and the only way to trace cables was to put a small binder clip over the wire and push it along.
- Stephen Pierzchala
Cables Gone Wild! woo hoo! gees that is bad. Paul YES I too wish Google published their IT Infrastructure / hardware info
- Susan Beebe
pretty sure their current IT infrastructure involves genetically-modified human brains soaking in some kind of nutrient bath.
- Karim
Personally seen much much worse.
- Santa CW™
BTW, I believe this is the same generation of hardware found in the Computer History Museum (they have the jj rack, as I recall).
- Paul Buchheit
Paul: I've been inside a Google datacenter. They are a thing of beauty now. I've always wanted to interview the team that is responsible for doing those and get some video.
- Robert Scoble
That's how it would look if it was set up at my house.
- Gabe
I worked in a server room that look like that too - all those spagetti cabling craziness.
- imabonehead
Robert - YES do video interview with Google DC Infrastructure brains! :)
- Susan Beebe
How long would it take to fix if you pulled out just one cable?Or plugged it into the wrong socket?
- Alistair (alpinefolk)
Neatly labeled I see ;)
- Cam MacRae
I've seen worse, much owrse
- Amit Morson
Spaghetti anyone?
- Håkan Dahlström
Here are some pics of a datacenter I put together for a client back in 2003 with some pretty insane cabling. With this much cabling, it was too hard to manage without automation. So I built some tools that allowed me to plan for rapid growth (i.e 20 server SAN jumped to 120+ while we were building out) http://bit.ly/9Q7O
- Jauder Ho
Grunt: OK boss, I've got a new cable crimped. Where do you want it? Boss: Server 99,9999 port 1. See it? I'll see you in a week. Grunt: &^*
- Shane
"Employees dismantling sections of Google's original data center discovered the decaying corpse of an engineer tangled in a web of network patch cables, police reported today. The mostly-skeletal remains have not been conclusively identified, though the victim appeared to have been wearing a 'Banyan Vines' t-shirt. While forensic tests have yet to be completed, the County Medical Examiner has estimated the date of death to be 'sometime around the 1999, 2000 timeframe.'"
- Karim
"A police spokeperson said foul play was not suspected, adding, 'Unfortunately, this is not the first time we've seen this. The Internet was growing so rapidly back then, these things just happened. Someone goes in to work on a patch panel, and they get tangled up. It's sad. And I don't blame Google for not noticing -- their headcount was growing rapidly too. One or two engineers go missing, nobody notices. I bet the poor bastard is still getting direct deposit on his paychecks.'"
- Karim
A spokesperson for Google referred to the grisly discovery as "a regrettable loss, but not a single point of failure," and added that engineers are currently required to use "the buddy system" to work in pairs when cabling servers.
- Karim
Karim, you owe me a keyboard sir!
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
Looks like spaghetti.
- Rochelle
I've seen worse. Karim, that was funny! :D
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
We'd like to see FriendFeed's datacenter pics!
- Merry Xmas FFeeders - AJ
Datacenter is the new black
- Burak Arikan
Most datacenters I've ever been in don't allow photography. The exception was the Stanford Linear Accelerator data center that Scoble got me into: http://www.flickr.com/photos...
- Thomas Hawk
AJ, we're trying to avoid spending too much money, so our datacenter pictures would be a lot less interesting than Google's. Here's a photo of one of our servers though: http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Paul Buchheit
One of the walls (supposedly the one they began with) at eBay's datacenter in Sunnyvale looked very much the same about 5 years ago.
- earlyadopter
In 1970 we couldn't fathom the PC. In 1980 we couldn't fathom email. In 1990 we couldn't fathom today's web? What is it that we cannot fathom now?
mjc, Mo Kargas and Chrimmus Tad liked this
Ok, be nice... I realize these thing may have been invented before those dates, but you get my point :)
- Rob Hoeting
If I fathom it, does that prove me wrong?
- Paul Buchheit
the semantic web.
- David Lynch
And end to spam and malware?
- Jack (a.k.a. Jeber)
The singularity.
- Chrimmus Tad
I think it's the end of the labor class is what we can't fathom
- Dave Senior
++ Dave. That's a great thing too. Humans should not labor unless they wish to.
- Chrimmus Tad
A library with no books?
- Joe
Paperless, cloud, non-physical data being the norm
- Rodfather
no computers. all smart phones.
- Neha Narula
Dave, there's some truth to that... In Jules Verne's "Paris in the 20th Century," he wrote, circa 1860, what life would be like in Paris, circa 1960. He predicted automobiles, skyscrapers, high-speed trains, fax machines, and even possibly the Internet, but in his 1960, the door is still answered by a human servant. Apparently rethinking the labor class was too hard... ;-)
- Karim
Unless there are cheap robots to pick all the lettuce and strawberries, there will always be a labor class..
- Rodfather
Chris, seems like a waste of AI! :-) I guess I'm thinking of Marvin the robot from the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series. "'Reverse primary thrust, Marvin,' that's what they say to me. 'Open airlock number three, Marvin.' 'Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?' Can I pick up that piece of paper! Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to..."
- Karim
We'll never get rid of the labor class. We may reduce its size or give them other jobs, but it will never go away.
- Gabe
All of your examples are computer related and computers have changed the shape of many unrelated fields, but I wonder if the next leap will come in a different area than pushing around bits.
- Clare Dibble
Gabe, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. At the very least, the human labor class will be gone when the robots kill all humans.
- Paul Buchheit
No, Paul, you're wrong. Once the robots kill all the humans, who will build robots? The robot labor class, of course!
- Gabe
ubicomp.
- Victor Ganata
We will genetically engineer the new labor class, which will exterminate us.
- Jim Norris
Here's a book that will help you guard against the coming "robot uprising" http://www.amazon.com/How-Sur...
- Rob Hoeting
Agreed with Clare. The next big thing may well not be computer-related. Perhaps a push towards *less* time on computers? I could join that movement.
- Brent Newhall
Designer genes?
- Ruchira S. Datta
I'm thinking, whatever it is, we don't even have a standard name for it right now.
- Victor Ganata
Black Friday Blues
Doug Bloebaum liked this
So the question is, will they honor those great deals on the items I got into my shopping cart before the site went down?
- Rob Hoeting
Ugh... you'd think a corporate environment like Sears might have some pretty rigorous load testing in place. So, any updates as to whether or not you'll get the deals? Wow, and I guess they didn't learn from last year, either: http://www.websitepulse.com/corpora...
- Doug Bloebaum
Actually, their customer service was decent. They honored the deals, although they had me pay the regular price and they would credit the difference. That's funny the site crashed last year too. It's not like they had NO IDEA traffic was coming.
- Rob Hoeting
SonnyRadio.com :: Feel better about being alive! - http://www.sonnyradio.com/oneinam...
A photographer looking for a good picture of the setting sun happened to snap this photo. What are the chances. Have a nice night.
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
FOXNews.com - Walmart Worker Dies When Shoppers Break Down Doors - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - http://www.foxnews.com/story...
April Buchheit and Paul Buchheit liked this
The 34-year-old male employee was pronounced dead one hour after shoppers broke down the doors to the shopping center in Valley Stream, N.Y., and knocked him down at around 5 a.m. Friday, police said. A 28-year-old pregnant woman was also taken in for observation and three other shoppers suffered minor injuries during the incident, police said.
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
Running of the Bulls -- New York Style. I guess that's the reason they call the sales "door busters".
- Gabe
Of course this is nothing compared to the Toys R Us double-homicide: http://abclocal.go.com/kabc... "Most years we have zero homicides"
- Gabe
Sears shopping cart apparently can't do math
Doug Bloebaum, Sumit Chachra and Paul Buchheit liked this
Sears.com absolutely crumbled due to the black Friday traffic. When I finally was able to checkout my items, the sale had expired. The shopping cart knew this, but the catalog did not. Man, can you imagine what life must be like in their IT organization.
- Rob Hoeting
1997 called... http://www.investors.com/editori...
Cibeles, Susan Beebe, Brandon and 12 other people liked this
...and wants its money back :\
- dario
...with interest...
- Karim
or was it 1929 that called?
- Pras Sarkar
no, you're coughing out that Nixon's "gold taking over" in 1972 or alike... no, wait... is _us_, non-US people, who are coughing it out...
- A.T.
Limbaugh is screaming this is "the Obama Recession."
- Phil Boiarski
Here's a scary thought. S&P is trading 40% below it's 200 day moving average. It has never been close to that in all of its 14K days of trading.
- Rob Hoeting
Grandpa told me some folks got rich in the depression, or richer at least.
- Phil Boiarski
Citigroup's Move Below $5 Could Trigger Major Selling - Financials * US * News * Story - CNBC.com - http://www.cnbc.com/id...
Paul Buchheit liked this
"Citigroup's stock [C 4.71 -1.69 (-26.39%) ] plunged below $5—a 13-year low—and the banking giant's troubles may be just beginning. Most institutional investors and pension funds are barred from owning stocks below $5. So if Citigroup's stock remains below that level, it could trigger a wave of selling that would send the share price even lower. "That's the danger of crossing that $5 threshold," says Owen Malcolm, senior vice president of Sanders Financial Management in Atlanta. "They're (Citigroup) already in trouble. It could get worse." Money managers don't necessarily have to sell Citi immediately. But they would have to get out before the end of the quarter if the stock doesn't recover and may opt to do so now to mitigate potential losses."
- bob
from Bookmarklet
"Most institutional investors and pension funds are barred from owning stocks below $5" - I realize that penny stocks are bad, but on balance this rule just seems silly. It's market cap or P/E that matters, not price.
- Alex Power
More than 100 of the S&P500 stocks are under $10.
- Rob Hoeting
Sign post - http://ken-jennings.com/blog...
Ken Jennings is smart. :-)
- Doug Bloebaum
Now that is funny stuff!
- Rob Hoeting
Give Up and Use Tables - http://giveupandusetables.com/
If you're wasting time fighting with CSS -- and we know you are -- we've got just the tool you need. Download the Give Up and Use Tables timer. We've scientifically determined the maximum amount of time that you should need to make a layout work in CSS: it's 47 minutes. When your time is up, we'll even give you the table code you need. Take three minutes to build a table. And ten minutes to get a donut. Bill the client for an hour. Done.
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
Starbucks 4Q profit drops 97 pct on closure costs: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance - http://biz.yahoo.com/ap...
Susan Beebe and April Buchheit liked this
"Seattle-based Starbucks said profit fell 97 percent to $5.4 million, or a penny a share, from $158.5 million, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier. The coffee retailer earned 10 cents per share when the costs from closing about 600 stores in the U.S. and 61 locations in Australia are excluded. Analysts expected profit of 13 cents per share, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters."
- bob
from Bookmarklet
I feel responsible. The stock price has been cut in half since I stopped going.
- Rob Hoeting
Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - http://www.amazon.com/dp...
![Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Z1scnqz1L._SL160_.jpg "Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything") |
winckel liked this
Good book... actually downloaded audio and listened to it during my commute downtown.
- Rob Hoeting
John Doerr's advice to President-elect Obama: Take Bill Joy - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17...
Ana liked this
Would he try to ban biotech?
- Paul Buchheit
"Doerr said he would miss Bill Joy from the Kleiner-Perkins team, but he seemed willing to make the sacrifice. ". Hmm.
- Private Sanjeev
Yeah, I had to laugh at that line as well.
- Paul Buchheit
Bill Joy actually came to Ohio speak at my old company back in 1992. Topic: computing into year 2000. It was scary how many of his predictions came true.
- Rob Hoeting
Gmail Backup Archives Your Email Account [Featured Download] - http://lifehacker.com/5075460...
Cool... have you used this?
- Rob Hoeting
No, not yet. But it feels like a good idea...
- Doug Bloebaum
$200 Asus Eee PC Coming in 2009 - http://laptoping.com/200-asu...
Asustek is expected to launch an Asus Eee PC model priced at $200 next year, the company’s president Jerry Shen said. Shen also pointed out that Eee PC netbooks with 7- and 8.9-inch displays will slowly phase out of the market. They will be replaced by 10-inch models. Eee PCs with a hard drive account for 70% of total shipments, while solid state drive-based netbooks account for the other 30%. The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3.
- Rob Hoeting
from Bookmarklet
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