For the top few sites that attain popular appeal, a healthy period of traffic and utilisation follows the peak in usage - established services such as Flickr, MySpace and Digg have such sustained appeal that they persist at a relatively stable level - the ‘Plateau of Ubiquity‘, if you please. How long a site persists here depends on several factors, principally including the fierceness of competition and the rate at which a site can evolve to keep its users happy.I agree. But I also think that there's a limit to the possibility of a social networks can evolve to keep users happy. The simple reason is that social networks are about people. Actually if you're part of a social network there's a chance that the biggest reason you joined was to be in a common and shared environment with your friends. If you just wanted to connect with anybody, you might as well open a blog.
Markus Frind, the founder of PlentyOfFish.com is my new hero (James Hong of Hot or Not is a close second). Marcus spends about two hours a day in his underwear managing a free dating website that gets twelve billion page views a year. He is the only employee, and he only has one server. And by the way, he makes $5-6 million/year with Google ads.Other participants are Marcus Kazmierczak of Maya’s Mom, Dave Lu of Fanpop and Karen Northup of CoreFino.
"In case you haven’t heard, Automator rules."
I was wondering about all this hype about Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and I thought: but wait a minute. Do I really use my Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)at full speed? Well actually I almost never used Automator. So I payed a visit to MacApper's Tutorial on Automator and gave it a real try. Man, I couldn't be more impressed. Automator can make wonders for you.Covering everything from cuts and scrapes to broken bones and chemical burns, this little guide should come in handy as a supplement to any home's first aid kit.Click here to download the pdf
iTunes now holds a 9.8% share of music purchases, ahead of fourth place Amazon.com at 6.7% and fifth place Target at 6.6%. Walmart remains the nation’s largest music retailer with a 15.8% share of the market, with Best Buy holding 13.8% for second place.
According to this study the structure of the Internet is a sphere:The researchers discovered that the Internet consists of a dense, heavily connected nucleus of about 100 nodes, including Google and U.S. telecommunications giant ATT WorldNet. Surrounding this core was a region they called the 'peer-connected' component, which is able to connect to the bulk of the Internet without causing congestion in the nucleus. It is possible for data to get between any two points in the peer-connected component within about four links. The final, outermost layer is more sparsely connected, and must travel through the nucleus to reach other nodes.Of course, as for any study worth this name, other scientists criticize how the study was shaped and - therefore - the outcomes. I tend to agree that the spherical shape seems to be coming from how the study was planned (I mean that it looks like - no matter the actual data - the shape would always be spherical), but you know, it's just me :-)
Well I'm painting my kitchen in orange, which I already thought was a pretty hardcore idea. Well as weird as it may seem, this guy had an even better idea! This is a blackboard painting so you won't forget to buy those tasty fruits anymore!
1. Cell phones on planes: Airbus just got approved to enable onboard cell phone use in Europe. Though plane crews can enable a voice-off mode, don't bet on that being enforced during flights as airlines try to offer more convenience to business passengers. Imagine being stuck for seven hours with one half of a conversation. You'll want to grab the thing out of your neighbor's hand and flush it down the tiny airplane toilet.
6. Traffic cameras: Despite fights from driver advocacy groups, red-light cameras are still on the rise, and several states may reverse their bans on speed-violation cameras. Better wireless technology means quicker processing and more efficient systems that will replace traffic cops (who know that hey, you really tried to obey that light) with unmerciful computers. Will you bother going to court to fight the tickets, or will you just pay up?
Office isn't the only Microsoft hegemony that Google Gears could help destroy. One of the defining differences between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux is the application lineup. [...] technologies like Gears render the operating system largely irrelevant. Remember the Milk couldn't care less whether it's running in Internet Explorer on Windows or in Firefox on a Mac. Neither could I, since it's exactly the same useful service on both platforms.
While 0.5" seems ridiculously too thin to me, even using flash HD (that would make this thing DAMN expensive) it would make sense to introduce a "pro" line extension at WWDC instead of the highly anticipated "brushed metal" iMac (resembling Apple's widescreen monitors).
iMacs are indeed a consumer line and I can't understand why they should be presented at a professional event (that is, unless iMac sales are so sluggish that Apple wants to take action right now to be at full speed for the back-to-school campaign).
Bottom line: Assuming that you want a high-end notebook PC designed to work, play and be your everyday machine with style, the MacBook Pro is a surprisingly good value. The models that I compared it with, the Sony and the Dell, had some extras here and there, but they were also more expensive. The key to the perception that Macs are more expensive is that Apple offers very few in-between models.More of the same for lower end computers:
When you configure low-end and midrange notebooks and desktops, you'll find that except at the very bottom of the heap, Windows machines are roughly comparable in price to Macs. There are fewer Mac models, so if your needs vary from what Apple has decided on, you may find a Windows model that costs less for you. But Apple's choices make a lot of sense for most people, and when you do the point-by-point comparison, Apple is actually a better value for some needs.I have a Mac. Even if my opinion is not nearly as fact based, my perception is that in Europe, while retail prices may be aligned, PCs get far more promotional rebates, so the actual price gap may be wider.
Last night, as part of the New York Japan Society's Tech Epoch, Takahashi let his creation strut her stuff. Impressing the crowd by first getting herself up from a prone position, the FT bot amused onlookers by striking poses à la a runway model. FT is actually pretty tiny (only a little over a foot tall), but her small and lean frame contains 23 motors and two gyroscopes, and Takahashi consulted with fashion models to make her programmed movements as graceful as possible.This is a big step for humanity. Sign today in your calendar, because human sexuality just peaked, and from now on it's all downhill.
To market its new show Big Love, HBO has created a series of fake products, including Eau de Polygamie… that special scent that lets you set yourself apart from the ‘other wives’. The show itself is about a polygamist family and a dude with three wives, so the commercials actually do connect with the product…Again this a way of making your ads enjoyable that helps leveraging on YouTube and blogs spreading.
6. Clear workspace clutter. For me, visual clutter is distracting. I like to clear my desk completely, along with all the piles that used to surround my desk and the papers tacked to the walls around me [...].
8. Handle interruptions. [...] there will inevitably be interruptions from time to time. Learn how to handle them efficiently and get back to your task. If someone interrupts to make a request or give you information, quickly jot tasks and information in a notebook to be processed later. If others want to chat, stand up (to stop them from sitting down), politely tell your visitor that you are in the middle of an important task, and let them know you’ll get back to them when you’re done. If the interruption is unavoidable, write down where you were in your task, so you can come back to it with the least possible effort.
9. Use minimal programs. I’m a fan of minimal word processors, such as DarkRoom, JDarkRoom, WriteRoom, Writer, Google Docs or Abi Word. There’s something about these programs that force you to focus on your task. You can always format later. Use them in full screen mode, so everything else is blocked out. Then crank it out.
