From the category archives:

Internet

I just don't get it

June 17, 2009

I may be tilting at windmills with my Twitter rants, but I find it so hard to believe that this is really the future. It may constitute an incremental step towards some form of communications bliss, but I'd be shocked if it doesn't get pushed aside by the first service to get data organization right [...]

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The flow of information

June 16, 2009

This NYT article on Twitter and Iran sums it all up (emphasis mine): “We’ve been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony,” said Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor. “The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over.” It's an amazing and deserved accolade for the young service. But. [...]

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Is Opera Unite the anti-cloud?

June 16, 2009

Opera Unite lets users turn their computers into zero-effort servers, allowing easy peer-to-peer access. Unite: store data locally, access it globally. Cloud: store data globally, access it globally. I'm curious about what advantages there are in Unite, other than strict peer-to-peer uses (i.e. sharing photos with just one other person) and the "I don't want [...]

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Don't Bing me

June 11, 2009

The great Bing experiment has come to an end, having lasted just more than a week. Google resoundingly won. It wasn't so much that Bing's results were bad, per se, as much as I found myself constantly feeling sure that "hmm... Google would have better results." I can't say that Google's results were objectively "better", [...]

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Progress in Safari 4 (update)

June 8, 2009

And while we're comparing Safari 4 to its beta, I had also noticed various progress bars that were available in the beta. The final release has gone with none of them, choosing instead a more radically visible indicator: My immediate reaction is that I preferred the subtlety of the beta indicator (eventually preferring it to [...]

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Update: Safari 4 still breaks bookmarklets

June 8, 2009

When the Safari 4 beta came out, I observed that having more than one tab open would break any resize bookmarklets. I can confirm that this is still the case in the stable release of Safari 4. Cody Robbins commented on my original post and noted that the problem has been filed as a WebKit [...]

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Irrational exuberance here we come! ...again.

June 6, 2009

Only Techcrunch would be so bold as to take three datapoints, all from large firms (read: outliers) and two of which are stale, and extrapolate the entire social network value distribution. From a relative standpoint it may be interesting for ranking, but I wouldn't put any stock in the actual numbers. Modeling The True Value [...]

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Twitter will/will not change your life

June 5, 2009

Time magazine has Twitter on the cover and can't gush enough about how the service will change your life. Remember when they had you on the cover? This is totally different. This is you distilled into 140 characters, which, naturally, is better. Obviously, I see the benefit of allowing people to upload their thoughts in [...]

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Sponsored by GM

June 1, 2009

I was searching for "GM" (in Bing) and a sponsored ad came up at the top of the results. It said: Official GM Site: www.GMreinvention.com Change at GM is Under Way. Visit the Official Site to See How. I assumed the ad was an outdated one referencing GM's (well, Chevrolet's) "An American Revolution" campaign, and [...]

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Bing me!

June 1, 2009

Reviews of Microsoft's new search engine Bing keep rolling in - and are utterly disappointing. I'm talking about the reviews, not the engine. Invariably, the reviewing site searches for itself followed by a few key words the site finds relevant. The most "helpful" reviews show side by side screenshots of Google and Bing. Forgive me [...]

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Security, more or less

May 30, 2009

58 minutes and 30 seconds into the Google IO demo of Google Wave (youtube link), does Stephanie Hannon actually type out the Wave password by mistake? Is it really "wavewave"? I hope that was just the password for the demo Twitter account and not for anything more sensitive. As Stephanie said, better get that tab [...]

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Google Wave

May 29, 2009

If Google Wave is successful, will anyone care about Twitter anymore? To me the most exciting thing about Google Wave isn't that it's real time; nor that it's live; nor that it combines email, IM, and social networking; nor that it lets people send photos quickly; nor that it is the first "web application" that [...]

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Web 3.0 is/isn't coming

May 26, 2009

Looks like I'm not the only one -- All Things D has declared we are on the cusp of Web 3.0: This year, as we convene the seventh edition of D: All Things Digital, we think something major is happening at the intersection of tech and media, and we think it deserves its own new hyped-up [...]

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Data.gov + Wolfram Alpha = Skynet?

May 21, 2009

Data.gov launched today, a surprisingly good-looking archive of government data. It has the potential to be an incredibly powerful resource, but I'll be really exicted when it has more than 47 datasets (and only a handful in CSV; KML is nice, but I don't see Google Earth running any regressions). I'll be patient - the [...]

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Tweeting Libor

May 21, 2009

I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen: The British Bankers’ Association announced today it is now publishing its key benchmark figure (three-month sterling LIBOR) on Twitter every afternoon, shortly after it is announced to the financial markets. Words fail. Libor, a [...]

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QOTD: March of Progress edition

May 18, 2009

Just received this gchat from MB: i'm on a virgin america flight with wifi And now I know exactly how Alexander Graham Bell felt when he called Mr. Watson in 1876.

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The Web 2.0 bubble

May 17, 2009

Techcrunch disagrees with me, saying that "real time streams" are the future, and here to stay. Maybe this is the latest bout of irrational exuberance that lets us break out of the Web 2.0 paradigm and start thinking intelligently about Web 3.0? It was a similar hubris about the power of static/read-only web sites and [...]

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42

May 16, 2009

I am absolutely ecstatic that Wolfram Alpha knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Indeed, it comes right back with "42" and a parenthetical citation: "(according to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)." On reflection, it turns out Google knows the answer too, but doesn't cite its source (which I think I actually [...]

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Wolfram Alpha is live!

May 16, 2009

Wolfram Alpha is live, albeit a little unstable. A couple times I was told "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" and shown a live view of the W|A command center, a quiet room filled with monitors of colorful maps and charts and, yes, a dias in the back upon which Stephen Wolfram [...]

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Real time and the data society

May 16, 2009

The Times has gone all Twitterish - a new feature called Times Wire displays stories as they are published. It is the latest effort to cash in on the growing phenomenon of "real time search." The new Times page implies very simply that recency = importance, which just isn't the case, but somehow our need for [...]

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When are users right about design changes?

May 12, 2009

I just saw this article about Google's data-driven design philosophy. It seems Google will not make design choices unless they are backed by quantitative findings that the change is a measurable improvement; users vote with their clicks. Adhering too rigidly to a design philosophy guided by “Web analytics,” Ms. Dunn [of the Stanford Institute of [...]

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Fact-checking the singularity

May 10, 2009

This movie made the rounds last year, but now that it's resurfaced on Mashable I need to revisit the frustration it has caused me. First, here's the video in question: It's a tour of the "pace of progress," designed to alternatively intimidate the viewer by revealing his lack of identity and insignificance and astound the [...]

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Just in time for the LOST season finale

April 30, 2009

ABC shows are coming to Hulu!  Cleverly, NBC/News Corp-owned Hulu has always listed ABC shows, but the links directed to ABC's hosted player. Will you watch LOST at Hulu? (Obviously. Multiple times. ) Can CBS's tv.com stand up to the challenge? (Hulu is more of a video aggregator; tv.com is more of a television resource [...]

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Facebook traps Mankiw

April 14, 2009

Facebook has trapped Mankiw and refuses to let him go.

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Conficker

April 1, 2009

Is it: or: ?

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Superbowl Tweeting

March 27, 2009

I know I'm really late on this one, but the NYTimes put together an excellent timelapse visualization of Twitter comments across the US during the Superbowl.  It's especially cool to see player names jump out as plays take place, or ad campaigns taking hold as commercials air.  Check it out here.

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Issues with embedded video

March 27, 2009

It appears that the TinyMCE editor which ships with WordPress 2.7 does nasty things to HTML in a misguided attempt to be helpful.  In particular, it strips "embed" tags from embedded media (such as flash video), leaving only the object tag. The end result of this particular example is that embedded video shows up fine [...]

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