Some fans who bought nosebleed-seat tickets to see the Golden State Warriors received a friendly suggestion from their phones when they stepped off the escalators at Oracle Arena: Wouldn’t they like to spend a few extra bucks for a seat where they could actually distinguish Stephen Curry from Andrew Bogut?
See any downside to this? All good?
The Streisand effect occurs when an attempt to suppress something has the opposite unintended consequence. Which is the definition of irony, I might add.
So what does this have to do with Twitter and Turkey? Read on…
Have an app or icon to design?
Have you ever wondered what the most popular colors are in each category of the iOS store? We did. So we crawled the iOS app store and grabbed the top 5 app icons in each category and ran a histogram analysis on each one to find which colors were used most often. What we found was very interesting.
Before you design you next app icon, take a look at the color palettes below.
Great idea. Pass this along to your dev friends.
[VIDEO] The embedded video lays things out in three distinct pieces, so make sure you watch all the way through. The first piece is Louis C. K. starting things off with a premise. Then things get good. Then things get great.
To be clear, by book-less I mean an absence of printed books, a completely digital library. This is not the same as an internet cafe, a room filled with computers for general use. There actually is a library of eBooks for loan to library patrons. No waiting, and no late fees.
Vulfpeck’s latest album is a business experiment, not a musical one. The idea behind the project is for fans to stream the “songs” constantly, generating royalties for the band in their spare time. Vulfpeck plans to use the proceeds to go on tour. It’s an ingenious publicity stunt and, if you squint hard enough, a commentary on the way music is valued in the digital age.
Um, what? Is this art or is it theft? Interesting question.
Take a look at the two videos embedded in the post. The first one is more of a commercial, showing different aspects of life with a Google watch. The second one is more detailed, a bit more of a mission statement. The linked blog post lays out four keys to Google wearables
Before there were Apple Stores, before big box retailers like Best Buy, there were the mom and pop computer shops. It’s where you’d go to buy your first Apple computer, where you’d get supplies like floppy disks and perforated computer paper (one long sheet of paper, perfed into individual pages, sprocket feed holes on the side). More importantly, it’s where you’d go to get your questions answered, buy your software (or find shareware), and get your computer fixed. And now they are closing.
Big, big fan of Seth MacFarlane. He is one talented individual. Some favorite questions in the post.
I’ve always been a voracious reader. When I was a kid, I spent a good amount of time reading every single Hardy Boys book I could get my hands on.
This piece on the true nature of Franklin W. Dixon, whose name was on the cover of every one of these books, was crushing. Not just because Mr. Dixon was a complete fiction, but because of the appalling treatment of the people who actually did write these books.
There have been moments, as an adult, when I’ve thought about rereading one of the books, perhaps The Tower Treasure, which was the very first one. But after reading the linked article, not so much.
As you’d expect, these are some great pictures. But the national winner, the first one on the page, just blows me away. It looks like a painting. Incredible capture.
Interesting writeup on the industry’s reaction to Secret. Personally, I feel like I need to wash my eyeballs after reading some of these posts. Anonymous posting brings out the worst in people. And maybe that’s why they found it so easy to raise $8.6 million.
Benjamin Mayo (from 9to5Mac): I am slightly obsessed with the anecdote about Jobs throwing a pen in your face. Is the story true?
Eddy Cue: No it’s not.
‘Nuff said.
[VIDEO] You really have to see this to get how cool this is. Either watch the entire video below, because this is an awesome movie and stunts and great driving.
OR
Jump right to 8:45 in the video and watch this incredible camerawork.
No way to verify this (at least not yet) but take extra care if you find yourself heading over to the EA Games site.
Heart surgery is a big deal. Doctors frequently have to use a reciprocating saw to cut through your breastbone, often have to flip over your heart to get at the backside of it. Any tech that makes this unnecessary, or even a bit easier, is a real boon.
This camera is threaded to your heart via an artery and produces high resolution images in real time.
This is worth watching for two reasons. First, Nellie Niel is a street musician, down on his luck, but is an incredibly gifted slide guitarist. Just wow!
But enter Rob Chapman. Rob has a channel on YouTube, posted a video of Nellie on his channel, and actually made a nice bit of change on the post. It’s what he did next that got my attention and respect. Well done, Rob. Love this!
Too many people focus on the short term wins in their life. This thoughtful piece, by Brian Fetherstonhaugh, CEO of one of the largest and most successful advertising agencies in the world, is valuable both as career advice and life guidance.
I think there’s incredible food for thought here, so very much worth the time to read.
Siri has long told stories, but this one is new to me. Bring up Siri, and say:
Tell me a story
Keep going until you get one that starts:
OK…
Once upon a time, in a virtual galaxy far, far away, there was an intelligent young agent by the name of Siri.
I’m a long-time Strat fan and find this pretty amazing.
The sunburst-finish Strat bears the serial number 0100. Although some Strats have lower numbers that begin with 0001, Gruhn says they actually were manufactured later in that first year of production. He says the number-one Strat was sold to an amateur who evidently took good care of it.
If someone is going to sell a Strat for $250K, there better be some damn well documented provenance.
From Seeking Alpha (free reg-wall):
In effect, the watch is a device for using Google Now and cards that apps on the phone send to it.
This is an interesting model. It means that a Google watch is a satellite device that locks you in to the Google ecosystem. Since the watch without the phone is just a wrist-watch, or less, if it does not have the built in smarts to do its watch and alarm thing without its master.
This is truly gorgeous. A completely controllable, 360 degree, zooming view from atop the tallest skyscraper in the western hemisphere. Brilliant!
Well said, Mike. I feel exactly the same. I know I can turn these notifications off, but that’s an extra step I have to take and an annoyance.
Tom Conrad has been with Pandora since almost day one. Sad to see him go.
[VIDEO] Stanford professor Andrei Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, a core explanation of what happened in the first moment of the Big Bang that created the universe.
As you no doubt have heard by now, yesterday a critical element of inflation was proved, at least experimentally, and the astrophysics world is giddy with excitement.
This video shows the moment when Professor Linde was told of these results, that his decades of hard work have finally borne fruit. A truly beautiful moment.
Sign outside a Dublin barbershop. I just could not not link to this.
Just as we search for ways to preserve our ancient video and photographic images, it’s critical that we work out a mechanism for preserving our digital archives. Interesting article.
This is a bit of a rant, but there’s logic at the core of Marco’s argument.
Maybe the reason Prime economics have become tricky is because Amazon bundled in a video service nobody wants since 2011, leveraging one business’ extreme success to juice the numbers of one that’s faring poorly against its competitors. Netflix charges $95.88 per year for a similar service. How much of Prime’s price hike was really to help pay for the video service that’s just a tax on Prime members who have never used it and don’t want it?
This is a classic business problem. How do you distinguish a product that is a drag on revenue from a product that has yet to blossom?
Ever consider subscribing to Office 365? Here’s how Microsoft handles things when you let your subscription lapse. Interesting.
Facebook is working on improving face verification software, an alternative to fingerprints for verifying someone’s identity.