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Entries for June 2004
Canada briefly invades California to retrieve Internet domain name
Canada briefly invades California to retrieve Internet domain name. Airbag.ca urgently needed for driver safety education site.
Why the Iowa Election Market is not
Why the Iowa Election Market is not just an average of other national polls.
The EFF is holding a patent busting contest
The EFF is holding a patent busting contest. “The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Patent Busting Project is here to protect you from dangerously bad patents. And you can help us pick which patents we’re going to bust first!”
GoogleWorld is a Yahoo-style directory, but just about Google
GoogleWorld is a Yahoo-style directory, but just about Google.
MoreGoogle plugin for IE adds new features
MoreGoogle plugin for IE adds new features to Google search results. Amazon product info, preview thumnails, etc.
Season premiere of Six Feet Under tomorrow night
Season premiere of Six Feet Under tomorrow night. The long wait is over.
A Mac user’s take on essential software for Windows
A Mac user’s take on essential software for Windows.
“Of the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 51 are
“Of the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 51 are now corporations and 49 are countries”.
How newspapers reported Reagan’s death
How newspapers reported Reagan’s death. Hundreds of front pages at the Newseum.
Video game characters are getting too realistic
Video game characters are getting too realistic and they’re running into the uncanny valley problem.
Scientists working in Antarctica have extracted an
Scientists working in Antarctica have extracted an ice core that dates to 740,000 years ago. That’s lots of climate information.
Suggestions for TiVo
The NY Times announced today that TiVo will be introducing some new features to their service, allowing people to watch content from the Internet on their TiVo. As with Apple’s AirTunes & AirPort Express, Slim Devices’ Squeezebox, and networked DVD players, the idea behind the new TiVo is that people should be able to play their media, independent of file format, source, or delivery mechanism, on the device or through the interface of their choosing.
Many companies seem to be heading in this general direction, generating lots of buzz about convergence or whatever it’s called these days, and I guess it is exciting, but I can’t help but feel that TiVo in particular is missing (and has been missing for a couple of years now) an opportunity to expand upon their core business in a more meaningful way for their customers.
First off, TiVo still does not allow you to view or modify your To-Do list over the Web. The TiVo Web Project fills this need for hardcore TiVo hackers, but a consumer-friendly version is needed. I should be able to everything I can do while sitting on the couch in front of the TiVo (short of watching programs) over the Web. And you can imagine other ways in which you could talk to your TiVo: SMS messages from your phone or IM from your computer to the TiVo message center (“hey lazyass, before you watch that six feet under, go pickup groceries for dinner”) for starters.
Along with that, TiVo should provide recommendations about what I should watch, displayed both online and on the Tivo. The current recommendations suck, especially if you consider the massive amounts of data that TiVo gathers on their users’ viewing habits. They can do better than a list of 50 shows that are vaguely related to ones you may have watched before. Take a page from Amazon’s book. When a user views a particular show’s details, offer a short list of similar shows (“people who watched this show also watched…”). Break them down by category into recommendations for sports, for movies, for whatever. Along with the collaboratively filtered recommendations, TiVo should publish lists of new and notable shows, categorized appropriately. TiVo has largely abstracted away the idea of television channels and networks and turned the TV experience into watching one big TiVo Channel. With so many shows available on this huge channel, they need to give each of their users many ways to compile their own personal channel.
Above all, television is a social experience for many people. Even if you don’t watch sporting events, reality TV, game shows, or even Sesame Street with friends or family, yelling, joking, and laughing at the TV and each other, chances are you’re going to talk about it at work or school the next day. Or, TiVo willing, on TiVo’s Web site. TiVo needs to more effectively harness the views and opinions of their customers and push them back out to everyone. Create a community…not people interested in TiVo but people interested in watching television. Think Television Without Pity. Or, again, Amazon with their user reviews. Let people share their television watchlists with others, like Apple or Mixmatcher do with music playlists. The social software / online community space is ripe with ideas that could be applied to TiVo and their users.
The 2004 Republican ticket is set for success:
The 2004 Republican ticket is set for success: Bush and Zombie Reagan. “Zombie Reagan: More Than One Life to Give for his Country.”
All about the Brazilian bikini wax
All about the Brazilian bikini wax. So named for the seven Brazilian sisters that introduced it to the US.
Black and white cookie
I read somewhere last week a lament that no one had told the writer about the special magic of the black and white cookie. I, too, lament. Jonesing for a snack last week, I remembered this person’s rave about the b&w and purchased one at the bodega on the way home. Whoa, what a dessert! The black and white cookie is, in fact, not a cookie but a flat, thinly frosted cake, like someone has sat on a cupcake. Cookie convenience, cupcake taste. I am hooked.
Being the last person in NYC to learn about this biracial delectable, I need some help in locating the best b&w in the city. New Yorkers, where do you get your black and white cookies?
David Sedaris, literary rock star
David Sedaris, literary rock star. He was at Barnes and Noble in NYC last week reading and signing books for almost 5 hours.
OB/GYNs are getting upset when people
OB/GYNs are getting upset when people decide to deliver at home with midwives because it cuts into hospital profits. Maybe we should seek a better way to run a healthcare system.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner on the economics of bagels
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner on the economics of bagels. Man distributes bagels to companies, watches payment trends. Small companies are more honest in payment than large ones, bagel crime dropped 15% after 9/11, and people steal more around Xmas.
Michael Lewis on social responsible business practices
Michael Lewis on socially responsible business practices. I have so much to write about this issue, but a quick link will have to do for now.
Incredibly detailed page of information on the Venus transit
Incredibly detailed page of information on the Venus transit.
McRevolution, a new t-shirt from Threadless depicting
McRevolution, a new t-shirt from Threadless depicting Ronald McDonald raising the flag at Iwo Jima.
McEconomics
The Economist reports on using the McDonald’s Big Mac as an economic indicator. By comparing the prices of burgers in different countries, you can come up with an exchange rate and compare that to conventional market exchange rates and determine if a country’s currency is over- or under-valued, Mac-wise:
The Big Mac index was never intended as a precise forecasting tool. Burgers are not traded across borders as the PPP theory demands; prices are distorted by differences in the cost of non-tradable goods and services, such as rents.
Yet these very failings make the Big Mac index useful, since looked at another way it can help to measure countries’ differing costs of living. That a Big Mac is cheap in China does not in fact prove that the yuan is being held massively below its fair value, as many American politicians claim. It is quite natural for average prices to be lower in poorer countries and therefore for their currencies to appear cheap.
The prices of traded goods will tend to be similar to those in developed economies. But the prices of non-tradable products, such as housing and labour-intensive services, are generally much lower. A hair-cut is, for instance, much cheaper in Beijing than in New York.
One big implication of lower prices is that converting a poor country’s GDP into dollars at market exchange rates will significantly understate the true size of its economy and its living standards. If China’s GDP is converted into dollars using the Big Mac PPP, it is almost two-and-a-half-times bigger than if converted at the market exchange rate. Meatier and more sophisticated estimates of PPP, such as those used by the IMF, suggest that the required adjustment is even bigger.
The two ways of determining the value of currency (and, eventually, the size of a country’s economy) have different results. Using the PPP figures, economies like China and India are much larger than with market exchange rates; China is the 2nd largest world economy by PPP reckoning. As I understand it, a simple way of thinking about this is imagining a Chinese man and an American man meeting and turning out their pockets. The American man would have so much more money than his Chinese counterpart. However, the American lives in the United States and has to purchase products and services at US prices while the Chinese man lives in China and pays Chinese prices. The American may have more to spend, but the Chinese guy can stretch his yuan further.
Brief item in Metropolis on the design
Brief item in Metropolis on the design of the San Francisco Apple Store.
The Wiki is dead. Long live the Wiki.
The Wiki is dead. Long live the Wiki.. First, there will be IP-based banning. Then blacklists. Then shared blacklists. Bayes. Whitelists. Then an authentication system will be proposed. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
Proctor and Gamble to print advertisements on individual Pringles chips
Proctor and Gamble to print advertisements on individual Pringles chips. Does this mean the price will go down? (Ha!)
On the naming of residents of the US states
On the naming of residents of the US states. Mainers, Michiganders, and New Mexicans.
Adaptive Path in NYC
Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path will be in NYC on July 22 to teach a one-day course on The Elements of User Experience. The course will be based on his excellent book of the same name and his essay on The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Teams:
This presentation provides a framework for user-centered Web design with clear explanations and vivid illustrations that you can put to immediate use. During this full-day seminar, Jesse will show you how to apply his concepts to simplify the complex challenges of creating products that meet business goals while satisfying user needs. Along the way, he’ll share his insights on the next wave of user experience innovation.
If you’re interested in attending, kottke.org readers can register with promotional code AFT38 to get 15% off the cost of the course.
James Surowiecki on executive perks and how they hurt companies
James Surowiecki on executive perks and how they hurt companies. Surowiecki’s recent book, The Wisdom of Crowds, is interesting reading.
A home where the buffalo roam noisily
I should start out by telling you that I live downstairs from
THE MOST ANNOYING PERSON IN THE WORLD!!!!!
Every weekday morning for the last couple of weeks, the woman upstairs, who just recently moved in, has been holding some sort of ballroom dancing function in her bedroom — which just happens to be above mine — at 7:15 am. The clomp, clomp, clomp of high heels on hardwood floors directly above your head for 20 fucking minutes is enough to wake the dead and even a heavy sleeper like me. And even when she isn’t wearing hard-soled shoes, she’s a heavy walker. It sounds as though a 6’8”, 350 pound man is jumping rope up there.
To make matters worse, I think she’s got a 2.4GHz cordless phone. 802.11b doesn’t play well with 2.4GHz cordless phones. Every so often, and only when she’s home, stomping around like an elephant, the wifi signal in the apartment goes to shit, usually right when I’m in the middle of something.
SO ANNOYING!!!!
Michael Moore Hates America is an upcoming
Michael Moore Hates America is an upcoming documentary that’s basically Michael and Me.
Backslider, the browser history scrolling mechanism I
Backslider, the browser history scrolling mechanism I posted about recently, gets a bit more thought put into it. With a screenshot of how it might work.
Bubble Fun is yet another one of those addictive games
Bubble Fun is yet another one of those addictive games. I could only manage about 25,000.
“The undersea explorer who found the wreck
“The undersea explorer who found the wreck of the Titanic 19 years ago has returned to the North Atlantic site to find out why the luxury liner is decaying more quickly than expected.”. Perhaps because it’s lying at the bottom of the ocean?
Some photographers talk about the proposed ban
Some photographers talk about the proposed ban on NYC subway photos.
Spelling bee scandal!!
The gang over at Coudal Partners has uncovered a mystery concerning the winning word from the 2004 Scripps National Spelling Bee:
We don’t often traffic in conspiracy theories around here, but considering there are upwards of 250,000 words in the English language figure the odds of this: The dictionary.com “Word of the Day” for Wednesday, June 2 (as emailed to our own Dave Reidy’s inbox at 4:32 AM) was “autochthonous.” Less than 36 hours later, autochthonous was also the winning word in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Did someone at the Bee leak the elite championship word list to dictionary.com? Fresh Signals calls for an immediate and thorough investigation.
Congrats to CP for uncovering this and for their restraint in not using any bee puns in the write-up. So, what’s going on here? Is this 1) a coincidence; 2) someone from dictionary.com is part of the process for choosing words for the Bee, autochthonous stuck in their memory, and they made it word of the day; c) some fiendish cross-marketing scheme between the Bee and dictionary.com; or 4) a leak from the Bee to dictionary.com?
Update on Spellbound kid Ashley from DC
Update on Spellbound kid Ashley from DC. Became an unwed mother at 18 and was homeless, but is turning it around by making the dean’s list at Howard.
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