December 2008
15 posts
“Indeed, humans are remarkably attuned to relative position and status. As the...”
– Why We’re Still Happy - NYT
I’ve seen the story of this study brought forward many times in the last few months in the context of our current economic climate. I feel like the outcome of this study is very intuitive (almost obvious), and the subjects in the study reacting differently would...
“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by...”
– William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
This is a great quote from Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. The whole speech is only three paragraphs, it’s worth a read. Though this quote is a bit dreary, the speech is much more optimistic. I thought this quote is...
Digg Has Dug Into Twitter →
Twitter reports on their blog that pretty much every topic on Digg now has a cooresponding Twitter account (created by Digg). There are a couple important discoveries in this announcement:
The emergence of the need for namespaces in Twitter. Digg’s namespace happens to be digg_* (where * is an object in the namespace). This makes me want to go register andrewparker_* for a bunch of...
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WatchYesterday there was a tweetup (a meetup organized via Twitter) at Shake Shack for a snowball fight. Here’s a video from the event in which I am warmly welcomed. I apparently do not have any regard for the neutrality and defenselessness of videographers. Charlie’s got a nice aggregation of pics and videos.
I had trouble sleeping last night. I...
Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa →
Instead of “genetic programming,” this is more appropriately described as “supervised machine learning.” But, it’s very interesting nonetheless.
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Friction and Perceived Value
Image via Wikipedia
The online sample sale market is wild to me. It’s a group of ecommerce sites (such as Gilt Group, Ideeli, Editors’ Closet) that intentionally make it difficult to enter and browse.
On these sites you cannot simply sign up. You have to be invited by an existing member. These sites are designed to emulate the difficulty of finding real world sample sales....
This is Squarepusher’s “Hello...
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Data Asset Example
One common characteristic of a great web service is a data asset that increases the effectiveness of your service as it grows. As I was Christmas shopping today, I found a great, simple example.
On Amazon, maybe people create wishlists of the things they want but can’t/shouldn’t buy. This explicit gesture of saying “I want this someday” is then aggregated and spit back...
“MIT professor Hal Abelson started today’s final presentation for the school’s...”
– MIT students build mobile applications in 13 weeks
This quote is an excellent example of how many of the barriers to investing in mobile services have vanished. All web services should be thinking about how people will engage with their app via a mobile device, and the fear that a gatekeeper will...
I have not put enough music on this Tumblelog. ...
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Nee Doom and Me
This is great… apparently Doom and I share the same birthday! Doom was release on Dec 10th, 1993. I still remember some of the cheat codes: iddqd (god mode) and idkfa (get fully equipped with weapons, armor, and stuff). I was hooked on id software games growing up.
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iPhone in the Living Room
Image by new-york-city via Flickr
Silicon Alley Insider has a story today asking “Is the iPhone Apple’s Key to the Living Room?” The gist of the article is that there are some hooks in the iPhone API that enable it to be connected via a cable to a TV as a gaming platform. It’s a bit of a yawn.
My answer to the title of this article is “yes, absolutely, the iPhone...
VC Gamers
Does anyone have any good stories about venture capitalists who are big gamers? I know of a few, but I’m curious how many there are.
Joi Ito (VC at Neoteny) runs a WoW guild called “we know.” Former VC Susan Wu (CRV) was a member of the guild.
Susan Wu also worked on the GXMod (a Quake 2 mod).
Fouad ElNaggar (Redpoint) managed to get to second place on the Rock Band...