Test Your Vocabulary:
English has the most words of any language on Earth.TestYourVocab.com is part of an independent American-Brazilian research project to measure vocabulary sizes according to age and education, and particularly to compare native learning rates with foreign language classroom learning rates.
According to the test, I know over 36,000 words. I bet a lot of them are just different words for beer.
CNET:
If you’ve ever wanted to take a spin around the “Top Gear” test track in the UK, but don’t qualify as a Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, now’s your chance.
As a fan of the UK TV show Top Gear, I really enjoyed “chasing” The Stig around their track.
Is this creepy? A form of stalking? Not sure, but it certainly is clever and a great little read.
While at NAMM, Jim joins Dan and special guest Merlin Mann to talk about their favorite Macs new and old, the future of the computer in the home, the power of portable and wearable devices, amps, guitars, Yamaha’s purchase of Line 6, new gear, why Jim isn’t getting a new Mac Pro, and more.
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I love the idea of this. Watch the movie on the site to see it in action.
Calendars 5 is complete re-imagining of what the best mobile calendar experience should be.
Calendars 5 is smart, excels in both tasks and events and runs on any iOS device you might have.
This looks really nice.
I just don’t know what to say about this.
This is great. A family kept a mysterious note from their grandmother for 20 years. The note was a series of letters, clearly some sort of code. Try as they might, they could not decipher this last message from grandma. So they posted it online. 15 minutes later, they had their answer.
Bill Murray is a national treasure. And now he answers all your questions in this Reddit “Ask Me Anything”.
Gizmodo:
Can you spot the fakes? Hundreds of amazing images wash over our greedy eyeballs each and every day, clogging our Twitter timelines and Facebook feeds. Many of them are fakes, lies, or both. Like these!
I’m seeing more and more of these being passed around Twitter. Even worse, being passed around by people who should know better.
I just spent the last three days in New York. Walking in mid-town, I encountered something that was just plain eerie. I saw an actual, real-life Toynbee Tile.
From the Toynbee Tile Wikipedia page:
The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of unknown origin found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American capitals.[1][2] Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate (roughly 30 cm by 15 cm), but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:
This infographic traces the road less traveled, threading together the hidden internet, the TOR browser, and BitCoin.
Matt Gemmell:
So I’m going to try this. Maybe it’s foolish, and from a commercial point of view it certainly looks that way, but I must try. As of this moment, I’m no longer developing software, either for myself or for others. I’m writing full-time.
Matt is one of the few writers on the Internet that I truly enjoy reading. I’m really looking forward to reading more.
I don’t get why Feedly needs to do this.
Nest CEO Tony Fadell:
“The data we collect is all about our products and improving them,” Fadell said, reiterating a statement he issued about the company’s smart thermostat and smart smoke detector following the announcement of the acquisition. “If there were ever any changes whatsoever, we will be sure to be transparent about it, number one, and number two, for you to opt in to it.”
I’m not convinced. Google’s recent changes to Google+ show they are an opt-out company and could care less about their users.
Come on people, seriously.
Great article from Harry McCracken detailing some of the people that said “Apple must…” do this or that.
Rene Ritchie wrote a great article on Google, and all large companies for that matter. I agree with everything he said, until this:
I value my privacy. I’m deeply concerned about who collects my data and how they use it. But I’m no more concerned about Google owning Nest than I am Nest existing in the first place.
The problem that I have is that Nest sold a product—we bought that product, used it and we’re satisfied with that transaction. With Google, the transaction is Google mining my data looking for information so they can show me the best advertisement.
With Google, I am the product.
When the CEOs of Apple and Samsung, accompanied by several in-house lawyers, meet for their (court-requested) settlement negotiations on or before February 19, there will probably be flexibility on both sides relating to the billions of dollars in license fees that may change hands, but if Samsung wants a deal, it will have to accept, as HTC did before it, an anti-cloning provision that would allow Apple to still bring lawsuits if Samsung’s products resembled Apple’s offerings too closely in ways that could actually be avoided by means of designarounds.
Good. There is no sense in going through all of this only to have Samsung copy the next thing Apple comes out with.
I saw this on Huffington Post. It is truly incredible how powerful our devices are these days.
This is a nice ad, I wonder where they came up with the idea…
Peter Cohen:
The Mac mini is overdue for a major refresh. It’s been well more than a year, and it’s been several years since the Mac mini had any significant work done to it. That’s got me thinking about what Apple could do it and probably should do to it.
It will certainly be interesting to see what Apple does with the Mac mini. Clearly, Apple’s interest has been with the iPhone and iPad, as well as the MacBooks and Mac Pro in recent years.
On Thursday night, KSDK in St. Louis reported on a high school lockdown. And it was one that they had caused. Kirkwood High School went into lockdown earlier that day and, after more than an hour, people in St. Louis began finding out why.
I would be pissed off.
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Sam Rijver:
I’m using quite a few iHealth products to measure a few things regarding my health. I have measurements of my blood pressure, blood-oxigen levels, weight, activity and sleep patterns and more. I do this because it’s useful information I can use to monitor my own health. More importantly I can (choose to) provide this information to my physician during my yearly check-up. I have yearly check-ups due to heart disease running in the family and with the iHealth products I can provide a great amount of data points for about 80% of the tests they run on such a check. It’s great. It’s useful. It’s also scaring the crap out of me that Google might go out and buy the company for an insane amount of money. I just can’t shake the feeling that if that happens I would feel worried about the implications of Google getting their hands on that kind of data.
For me, all of this commentary comes back to simple point: people don’t trust Google. Eventually that has to come back and bite them in the ass.
That’s quite a headline from Consumer Reports. And the FTC goes after Apple.
CNET News:
If you’re one of the people more interested in watching Super Bowl commercials than watching the actual game, you’re in luck. YouTube has offered early access to Super Bowl commercials for those who just can’t wait.The Google-owned company on Thursday announced the Ad Blitz channel on YouTube.
Or, if you are unlucky enough to live in a place like Canada where the Super Bowl ads are replaced by local market ads for mufflers and mattress superstores, this channel lets you see what all the buzz is about.
Goalies are known as “The drummers of hockey” so 14 minutes of insanity from netminders is pure gold.
Modern Farmer:
About 80% of the world’s maple syrup comes from Canada and 90% of that comes from Quebec which produced 96.1 million lbs of syrup valued at $270 million in 2012.
We wrote about this when it first came to light in 2012 but this “illustrated update” is interesting too. The idea of a “International Strategic Reserve” of maple syrup still cracks me up.
The Dissolve:
In January 1994, a group of filmmakers from Chicago went to the Sundance Film Festival to accomplish the impossible, by selling a three-hour documentary about two inner-city teens hoping to get to the NBA. By the time they left, their lives had changed, and so had the way non-fiction filmmaking is perceived.
The movie still holds up as a powerful commentary on sports and the role it plays in the lives of too many “disadvantaged youths”.
But it’s also a wonderful film in and of itself. Even if you’re not a fan of documentaries, I’d encourage you to watch it.