The Internet has functioned, succeeded and grown because of one major point in its favor- every entity connected to it is only judged by the size of its pipe and quality of its content. By size of its pipe, I mean amount of bandwidth it buys as a connection to the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »
You know those people who even spend their time picking apart charity? When “my story about geek charities”:http://www.scienceaddiction.com/2005/12/18/seasons-givings/ was “reported on at Slashdot”:http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/18/1453256 there were people in the comments there who spent time picking apart my motivations and so on.
Then there are others who pick apart open sourcey communities and people who would spend their times in them. To them, I say “go forth to *The Onion* where altruism is being mocked”:http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46043.
[…] said freelance writer Eric Bergstrom, who was eating at a local diner when he saw Eisenfeld buy the confused man a cup of coffee and ask him where he lived. “Because, you know, it’s not like there’s cops or emergency workers trained to do that stuff. Must be nice having all that free time to be a big hero. What a stuck-up prick.” As of press time, Eisenfeld’s ulterior motive had not been determined.
The “Direct Marketing Association”:http://www.the-dma.org has a fantastic “Privacy Policy Generator”:http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml on their web site which is a great tool for all webmasters/bloggers/administrators out there because sooner or later, you will need one for your site as well. Many advertisers require you to have one, many users will feel more comfortable if they can view yours and in general, it is a step in the right direction.
This tool asks you all the right questions regarding what personal information you collect on your site and what you intend to do with it. At the end, it will generate a personalized “Privacy Policy” for your site based on your answers. You can take a look at the one I had it “generate for my Star Wars web site”:http://www.galaxyfaraway.com/gfa/privacy-policy/.
The screenwriter “John August”:http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/why-i-dont-have-google-ads-part-432 has a great little example of why “Google’s Adsense”:http://www.google.com/adsense is not the solution for all seasons. Anyone referencing his “article on the use of air ducts/vents in films as a poor plot device”:http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/air-vents-are-for-air on their blog/site, finds ads that try to sell you air vents or ducts. Which are completely besides the point of the article- nobody reading an article about good screenwriting is going to suddenly say to themselves “Wait a second. Reading about that scene from Die Hard reminds me- I’m supposed to buy Air Vent shafts!”
You can see an example of this in “the article I wrote about August’s post”:http://www.widescreenglory.com/2006/04/26/the-screenwriter%e2%80%99s-vow-of-air-vent-chastity/. Sad. Like the time I saw Yahoo! ads selling cow hide on a Flickr photograph decrying cruelty to cows.
On the other hand, Google Ads to work tremendously well when they are on generic, well targetted and crafted content. They work on my “Star Wars site”:http://www.galaxyfaraway.com/gfa/ pretty well.
“ThinkSecret”:http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0604aperture.html is reporting, only a week after “my article on Apple’s *mea culpa* on Aperture”:http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/mea-culpa-apple-releases-aperture-11/, that a good portion of the Aperture team is being axed. This is a good news/bad news kind of situation, because it probably means that Apple will have to do a lot of soul searching and rebuilding of the product. The good news is that it may actually help v2.0 be the kind of application Apple was hoping for in the first place- one that would help sell Macs.
Yahoo! has quietly introduced Yahoo! Go for TV, a free DVR and media center software for Windows PCs. This software is a re-branded version of Meedio, which Yahoo! bought earlier this month and is tightly coupled with Yahoo’s own services.
This is a great entry in this area and should prove to be a significant challenge to Microsoft’s Media Center, if it is marketed and packaged well. For me, the trouble is that it is Windows-only and so would be an option only if it proved to be significantly better than “MythTV”:http://www.mythtv.org/ or “Front Row”:http://www.apple.com/imac/frontrow.html. Fun stuff- it seems like everyone is getting a head start on Vista, including those who were never really in competition.
[Via “GigaOm”:http://gigaom.com/2006/04/25/yahoo-now-offering-free-meedio/ Via “John Battelle”:http://battellemedia.com/archives/002518.php ]
While eBay has offered fixed price sales under its Half.com banner for many years, for the first time eBay has announced eBay Express, which allows buyers to buy an item without the auction process. It also features a single shopping cart and check out process for items bought from multiple sellers.
This puts them up in direct competition with similar services from “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com and to a certain extent, from Google (with “Base”:http://base.google.com and “Froogle”:http://froogle.google.com). I’ve used Half for years now and actually prefer it over the auction format because some things are not always in demand. Sales that are not time-dependent (unlike auctions, which are) allow you to have something for sale for a long time; so a potential buyer can find you days, months or years later if you still have that item for sale.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
– William Pitt, House of Commons, 11/18/1783
The NSA wiretapping story is close to becoming forgotten (read: Valerie Plame), or worse, old news (read: Bolton) or worse still, political (read: everything else). I can deal with forgotten- this article should help- but if this story is slipping into either of the other two categories, we are in trouble. Read the rest of this entry »
In “Ray Troll’s”:http://www.trollart.com own words:
A few months ago I received an email from my friend Dr. Ted Daeschler at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia telling me about a new lobe finned fish fossil that he and his colleague Dr. Neil Shubin had unearthed in late Devonian rocks way up in Nunavut, Canada. One of the many extraordinary things about this new fish is that it looks almost exactly like an amphibian, except that it has fins instead of legs…. I wrote a song called the ‘Devonian Blues’. I drew pictures of Charles Darwin ( AKA Chuckie ‘D’ ) embracing it.
The “song and video”:http://www.trollart.com/sound/devonianblues/index.html are fantastic- and in case your wondering, “Devonian”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devonian _is a geologic period of the Paleozoic era_.
With “lyrics such as”:http://www.trollart.com/sound/devonianblues/index.html Your momma was a Lobefinned Fish. My momma was a Lobefinned Fish. and Thinking ’bout my mama and I’m thinking ’bout you. Got those Sarcopterygian Devonian Blues. This is the stuff of viral internet legends!
Considering the rate at which Google introduces new features to the public and the small amount of publicity they afford each of them, it’s no surprise that most people are unaware of the many different ways to use Google.
To start, “here is a list”:http://www.google.com/help/features.html.
Here are some of my favorite Google power-user tips:
* *Music* – People are not aware that you can search Google for all kinds of information on artists, albums, songs and more using “Google Music Search”:http://www.google.com/musicsearch.
* *Movies* – Then try searching “movies” in Google or “let me do it for you”:http://www.google.com/search?q=%22movies%22. That gives you showtimes for your area!
* *Strange Stuff* – Try searching “ford escape”:http://www.google.com/search?q=ford%20escape and Google suggests where you can buy one. Or “homes for rent”:http://www.google.com/search?q=homes%20for%20rent or maybe “homes for sale”:http://www.google.com/search?q=homes%20for%20sale.
* *Books* – Similar to music and movies, there is “Google Book search”:http://books.google.com/books.
* *Phone Book* – Try putting in someone’s (or your) lastname, city and state in Google. “Like this”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=schwarzenegger+sacramento+ca&btnG=Search.
* *Q&A* – And sometimes just gives you the answer to your question. Like “the population of the USA”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=population+of+USA&btnG=Search and the “birthplace of George Bush”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=birthplace+of+George+Bush&btnG=Search (which one?).
* *Fedex, Patents, UPS, more* – Seach for information on Fedex tracking, UPS tracking, USPS tracking, patent, VINs, UPCs, FAA codes and a lot more using “Google numbers search”:http://www.google.com/help/features.html#number.
* *Finance* – “Google Finance”:http://finance.google.com is a fantastic tool for casual study of stock quotes though it doesn’t have the depth of “Yahoo! Finance”:http://finance.yahoo.com yet.
And of course, there is a “lot more stuff you can do with Google here”:http://www.google.com/help/features.html.
Science Addiction 