Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Interesting read on how the internet, email, chat, mobile phones and more are changing language, from new words and slang to different modes of language and making written English more like the spoken varieties. (via Slashdot)
From lolcat to textspeak: How technology is shaping our language
I swear the humidity must be negative today. Has someone been experimenting with antimatter water vapor or something?
Stepped out to look at the moon and Jupiter again on the way to shuffle laundry. Saw a meteor while I was out there.
Stacy comments on Google+: Sean was entranced by it too. Unfortunately we got into it over the fact that it was Jupiter and not a star. Ah five, they seem so rational until they don’t.
Interesting map: Combine NASA’s view of the world at night with the map of Facebook usage, and you find out which developed countries do and don’t use Facebook.
Where people don’t use Facebook
Words mean things. Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with jargon, they don’t always mean the same things to different people.
Phil Plait: Scientists are from Mars, the public is from Earth | Bad Astronomy
A couple of days ago here on G+ I linked to a table that shows words scientists use, and how the public hears them – and it’s not the way the scientists think. I had more to say, so I wrote a whole post about it.
Bottom line: if scientists want to sway public opinion, they need to make sure what they say can be understood.
–GP
What scientists say, and what people hear, isn’t always the same thing. That’s a problem with any kind of jargon, but when you get into things that have been politicized, it’s important to be clear.
–FB
Finished assembling the new computer desk last night. First thing J did after I cleaned up all the packaging and vacuumed the floor was crawl over, check the thing out, and start opening and closing the drawers. Next up: cabinet locks!
Wayne comments: unit test complete, next phase ;p
They’re finally replacing the broken window in my old 11th-floor office. (It’s been held together with duct tape for months.) I’m still in the same suite, so the air pressure just started pulling a serious breeze from the vent in my ceiling.
I should really go grab lunch…
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Why, yes, that was thunder I heard. Good thing the window replacement is done.
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Storm, smog and sky above LAX. I’ve seen one lightning bolt and heard a few thunderclaps. The darker clouds are bunched up over Palos Verdes.
It’s rare that translating from English to (in this case) Chinese and back to English improves things, but “The user’s space has been used up” is clearer than “Mailbox over quota.”
Wayne suggests on Google+: lol might be because Chinese like to be more formal in their phrasing so Chinese probably translated to something like “The user’s space…”
Just in time for National Coffee Day.
Coffee-powered car buzzes past speed record
Do you need coffee to get going every morning? So does this car, which this month broke a Guinness World Record ‘for vehicles run on gas from organic waste.’
Nice! Cloudflare is adding a feature to its service that allows computers on IPv6 networks to connect to your plain old IPv4 webserver.
Introducing CloudFlare’s Automatic IPv6 Gateway – CloudFlare’s blog
Woot parodies the Netflix/Qwikster announcement.
BREAKING: Woot CEO Matt Rutledge Has His Own Explanation and Reflections to Share
Netflix made quite the splash with their innovative strategy of “Upsetting Every Last Customer We Have” recently, and CEO/Co-Founder Reed Hastings took a lot of heat…
Interesting theory: Amazon could buy Netflix, but wouldn’t want to buy the current business with all its shipping centers in places where Amazon doesn’t have to pay/collect sales tax. If Netflix spins off the discs first, then Amazon gets Netflix’s catalog, technology…and most importantly, the zillions of TV sets and set-top boxes that have the streaming client included.
Netflix split to set up Amazon streaming merger? | ZDNet
Netflix’s move to separate its DVD-by-mail service may pave the way for Amazon to buy the company, argues an analyst.
Comments on Google+:
Brion: Possible… but I’ve always found netflix’s streaming catalog to be insufficient as is… best of a bad lot I guess!
Me: Yeah. That’s the main reason we still have the DVD subscription: 80% of our queue isn’t available streaming. In this theory, the big win for Amazon would be the install base.
Brion: Yep… hell, with any luck Amazon can strong-arm better deals with the studios. 😛 But I’d still love blanket non-exclusive compulsory streaming licenses: if the content’s out there for sale to the public on little plastic disks, anybody should be able to stream the same material for a nice standard fee (like ASCAP etc’s public performance, radio, & streaming systems… but maybe not as annoying. The reason Pandora doesn’t let you choose exactly which songs to play is to comply with the hoops necessary to qualify for the compulsory licensing, since they presumably think they can squeeze more money for on-demand services. A couple years out of date, but good overview of the lay of the land there from JWZ: http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/webcasting.html )
Me: Wow. That is profoundly screwed up.
Interesting: It turns out that Facebook allows you to log in with two variations of your password: One with the first letter capitalized (because so many mobile phones automatically capitalize the first letter of a field to “help” you) and one with all the capitals/lowercase flipped (so that you can still log in with CAPS LOCK on).
Anyone who’s used some sort of traffic analytics knows how high bounce rates are on the web, but what’s interesting here is that the longer someone stays on a website, the more likely they are to stick around – and that the behavior fits a standard statistical model.
How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?
Users often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds, but pages with a clear value proposition can hold people’s attention for much longer because visit-durations follow a negative Weibull distribution.
Interesting timeline.
Consolidation in the Telecommunications Industry – Graphic
AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA would cap two decades of deal making that has left the U.S. telecom industry with just a handful of major players. Today’s AT&T…
The US government broke up the AT&T monopoly in the early 1980s, leaving the original AT&T doing little more than long-distance service. NYNEX, US West, Pac Bell and the rest were all separate companies until they started buying each other up again.
Looking back at it, what I find weird is that while Pacific Telesis ended up as part of AT&T, and MCI ended up as Verizon, their wireless divisions ended up owned by the opposite companies.
That’s disturbing: Under Gingerbread, someone plugging your phone into a computer with a USB cable doesn’t have to unlock your screen to get at your files. Though I suppose if they have physical access to your phone, they can just pull out the SD card anyway, so it wasn’t really much of a safeguard.
It’s tough to step out for some fresh air when you’re across the street from an airport.
Discussion on Google+:
Wayne: All hogged by the airplanes. sheesh ;>
Stacy: Don’t you just love that smell? Evenings in Manhattan Beach in July…
Me: Yeah, you were close to the refinery, weren’t you? It’s actually pretty nice where we are (closer to Artesia Blvd), but my office is literally across the street from LAX. I can look out the window and watch planes on the runway.
Me: And hear them when they take off, even from inside the building.
Stacy: Redondo we got the airline fuel smell twice a year, when the wind seriously died down. Manhattan Beach it was the month of July, the breeze stopped blowing the airline fuel smell out to Dockweiler and it found us.
Me: Yecch.
I have given up on GNOME 3.0. Never have I before encountered a computer desktop environment that seemed so dedicated to getting in my way of actually accomplishing anything.
On the plus side, KDE 4 seems a lot snappier than I expected.
Some thoughts I had about when it’s better to post something online immediately, and when it’s better to hold off for a bit.
https://hyperborea.org/journal/2011/08/is-now-better/
Wayne: Good point. I’m a more later kind of poster mainly because I want to live in the moment. Posting as you experience an event can leave one distracted and I want to get my full “money’s worth” before I go talk about it otherwise I may not have much to talk about. ;p
Though I’ve always wanted to try a live twitter feed of a big presentation like the E3 press conferences with a laptop just for the fun of having the event flow from my fingertips. But that’s mainly because I wouldn’t need to move and I can type without looking at the keyboard. ;>
Me: Great point about actually experiencing an event rather than reporting on it.
I’ve liveblogged a couple of Comic-Con panels, which was kind of neat – but they were all annoucement/Q&A, like a press conference, so they were kind of built for that to begin with. It was neat interacting with people who weren’t there, though, as they offered comments and questions during the event.
Wayne: hehe exactly, I’ve been part of some live tweet sessions giving those comments myself which makes me want to try hosting one. As you said for news bytes they’re short blurts already. (Made for the ADD generation! ;p) So might as well blurt more on it and share. :>
