| Awwwwwwwwwww! |
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An expert witness in the Pirate Bay file-sharin’/copyright-infringin’/music-stealin’/you’re-killing-the-music-biz trial was asked yesterday (day 9 of the trial) whether he wanted to be reimbursed for travel expenses. He replied that it’d be better if someone just sent his wife flowers. Boy, did they ever, at least 300 orders: “Thus far, in an amazing show of generosity from a section of society labeled by the music industry as ‘thieves’, more than 4100 Euros [about $5,200] worth of flowers, chocolate and gifts have been sent to the couple.” No word on how many gigs of free movies and music they’ve received as well. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (1)| Only 90 More Friends To Go and I’ll Make It To “Average” |
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Yesterday The Economist posted about the size of social networks on Facebook. Given that Dunbar’s Number states that we can handle no more than 150 friends, The Economist contacted Facebook’s Research Scientist, Cameron Marlow, to see if he had any relevant data. Marlow has determined that the average number of friends in a Facebook network is 120, but the average user interacts with only a small percentage of them: “Thus an average man —- one with 120 friends —- generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or ‘wall’. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six.” Let me tell you about my social network. I live in a house with 3 other people. I married one of ‘em and share DNA with the other 2. And there are stretches of time during which I swear I do not interact in a meaningful way with any of them. It’s peaceful that way. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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February 25, 2009
| The World is Still Full of Mystery |
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Google Earth didn’t discover Atlantis after all — it was simply noisy data: “For the patch of ocean that drew so much attention last week, there was a discrepancy in the readings collected from satellites and the higher-resolution echosounding data collected by boats at water level. That caused exaggerated traces to show up on the map. Typically, when data collected by satellites and sonar surveys are blended, the result is much smoother, [Steve] Miller [product manager for Ocean in Google Earth] said. But here, the ‘batches of imagery didn’t overlap properly.’” |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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February 24, 2009
| Netbooks, Revisited |
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Netbooks are all the rage. I’ve blogged about them before. I haven’t followed up on that original post, because most of the articles I’ve been reading are written by propeller heads who argue about cache speeds or screen refresh or some other esoteric thingie that 99.99999999% of computer users do not know or care about. But Wired has a quite interesting article about the Netbook Effect. Here’s one quote that jumped out at me: “For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems. What netbook makers have done, in effect, is turn back the clock: Their machines perform the way laptops did four years ago. And it turns out that four years ago (more or less) is plenty.” So true. And even though I have 2 pricey — at least by *my* standards — Macs at home, I am quite fond of my 6 year-old, hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 1100 running CrunchBang linux. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Google Gives Up On Saving The World, Decides To Make Information Look Really Cool Instead |
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Yesterday Google.org announced that its Chief, Dr. Larry Brilliant, will now be its Chief Philanthropy Evangelist. At the same time, Google.org is redefining its mission: “During our review it became clear that while we have been able to support some remarkable non-profit organizations over the past three years, our greatest impact has come when we’ve attacked problems in ways that make the most of Google’s strengths in technology and information; examples of this approach include Flu Trends, RechargeIT, Clean Energy 2030, and PowerMeter. By aligning Google.org more closely with Google as a whole, Megan will ensure that we’re better able to build innovative, scalable technology and information solutions.” Google Flu Trends? That’s your answer to the world’s ills? Thank God we have Bill Gates. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| Safari 4 Is Out And It Looks All Chromey |
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Today Apple announced that the beta version of Safari 4 is available. I installed it on my work laptop — hey, for any app the installation is half the battle! — and have been playing around with it for about a half hour. Aside from the placement of a couple of buttons, it strongly resembles its cousin, Google Chrome. I like the cover flow feature that Apple’s pushing out on every product, from iPods and iPhones to Time Machine. It’s the only visualization method for presenting results that works for me. BTW I’ve blogged previously about SearchMe, a search engine that uses a version of cover flow to display the hits. In the past, Safari was my printing ace-in-the-hole. Some blog posts don’t print completely in IE and Firefox. (Here’s an example from today. Firefox simply refuses to print the last 3 paragraphs, not matter how I twiddle with the print/page settings.) Whenever that happened, I’d switch to Safari to Gutenberg the article. Unfortunately, Safari 4 doesn’t work for me anymore — it skipped the last 6 paragraphs of the article. I had to turn to Cuz Chrome to print the complete article. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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February 23, 2009
| Dear Sisters, Dear Daughters: Strategies for Success from Multicultural Women Attorneys |
 By Commission on Women in the Legal Profession, et al., SponsorsDear Sisters, Dear Daughters: Strategies for Success from Multicultural Women Attorneys is a unique, inspirational collection of letters from 44 experienced women attorneys of color to the next generation outlining various roadmaps for success in the legal profession as a minority woman attorney. Library Record • Borrow it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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February 20, 2009
| Google Earth Discovers Lost City of Atlantis, However No Sign Yet of Bermuda Triangle |
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Must be a slow news day. Multiple sources are reporting that something resembling a grid of streets has been spotted off the coast of Africa. This is consistent with the supposed location of the Lost City of Atlantis. To see for yourself, fire up Google Earth — it must be version 5, which has the ocean data layer — and plug the following coordinates into the search box: 31 15′15.53N 24 15′30.53W I dunno … Finding Atlantis takes all the mystery out of life. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| IE6 … The Jason Voorhees of Browsers |
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Internet Explorer 6 is just like a certain fictional film star — it simply won’t go away. According to Wired, between 10-20% of all Internet users worldwide are still using the creaky old browser released in 2001. There’s a groundswell to get people to upgrade to IE7 — no spring chicken itself, as it’s been out for 2+ years now — or even convert to Firefox, Opera, Chrome or Safari. There’s even a Facebook group you can join if it means that much to you. Just for a hoot I looked at the browser stats for Jenkins visitors: as of the beginning of 2009, 39% are using IE6. Are lawyers conservative or what? |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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| There’s An App For That. (And You’ll Use It For a Day Then Forget About It.) |
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How about those “There’s an app for that” iPhone ads on TV? Makes you envy those folks who, with a touch of a button, see snow conditions at Tahoe or Sun Valley, find the calories in their lunch, or get directions to where they parked their car. But how “sticky” are those iPhone apps? According to TechCrunch, not really: “For free applications, only about 20 percent of users return to use the app the first day after they download it, and then it quickly drops off from there. By 30 days out, less than 5 percent are using the app. The chart for paid apps shows a slightly steeper fall-off rate.” I guess I fit the pattern, even though I’ve got an Android G1. I’ve downloaded 5 apps, but I only use 2 of them on a regular basis — a voice recorder and a text editor. (How boring am I? Please don’t answer that.) Though I liked ShopSavvy at first, I haven’t used it since mid-December. Somebody needs to come up with an app that deletes your unused apps. Is there an app for that? |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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