Wired has an interesting infographic today from WordStream on where Google makes its money in advertising. No surprise on some of the top entries: but the last was surprising (both to me, and the folks who did the analysis): Cord Blood. Seems “rich parents” are wanting to store their newborn’s umbilical cord blood for the …
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Category:insights
kaching
I had been playing with a fun stock market simulator/investing application on Facebook until yesterday. It was called kaching (now defunct). The authors decided to focus their efforts on their for-pay service, kaching.com, and drop the free app on facebook. That’s all well and good – folks making money does not bother me. What does …
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irony
About 2 years ago, I wrote about the problem of holding onto electronic stuff just because storage was cheap. It wasn’t until I met my fiancee that I realized I did the same thing with “real” stuff – holding onto it just because it was there. I’m no where near a candidate for Hoarding: Buried …
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john stossel’s show last night
want to reduce gas consumption?
Buy better tires. I referenced Seth Godin earlier today in regards to investment in developing countries. Why is it, then, that a marketing blogger would talk about wanting to reduce fuel consumption? I think it’s because it’s easier to relate to than streamlining other processes you may have in your business or development cycles. It’s …
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store brands are sometimes better
I shop at various grocery stores, and the cashiers generally look at my purchases a little askance: clementines, milk, ice cream, pot pies, beer, Ensure – they seem to get confused when I checkout with my selections. I was raised with a thrifty mindset, but am not afraid to spend money for better quality. For …
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the best middle name. ever.
While I typically don’t repost, Seth Godin’s post was awesome. “The best middle name ever It’s not Warren or Susan or Otis or Samuel or Tricia. It’s “The.” As in Attila The Hun or Alexander The Great or Zorba The Greek. When your middle name is ‘The’, it means you’re it. The only one. The …
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nucleation – the secret to maintaining a good head?
I had a Beck’s this evening with dinner. The special Beck’s glass, like the Samuel Admas Perfect Pint Glass, has a small segment at the bottom that forces the dissolved CO2 to form bubbles, and yields a [near] constant head on the beer. For those of you that saw the Mythbusters episode dealing with Mentos …
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kelly johnson’s 14 rules of management
Johnson’s famed ‘down-to-brass-tacks’ management style was summed up by his motto, “Be quick, be quiet, and be on time.” He ran Lockheed’s Skunk Works by these 14 rules. Kelly’s 14 Rules: The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or …
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please stay home next week tuesday
if you’re undecided. If by now, with a week left, you haven’t picked who you’re going to vote for as President (and I almost don’t care who you pick [I do, but that’s another story]), don’t vote. I’d like to tell you to vote for the guy I want to win, but I don’t like …
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i love traveling
I hate not being home. I travel for a living now, performing site installations, upgrades, customizations, and on-site support for our customers. The travel’s a blast – see new places, try new food, drive different car. But not being home except weekends does kinda cut into one’s social activities. At this point, I wouldn’t trade …
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queuing the next generation
Like many people, I work for an under-staffed segment of a remarkably under-staffed company. Before transitioning to professional services, I worked for support, and they are even more under-staffed. I see a simple solution to this problem, but the company is too short-sighted to implement anything like this, sadly. Problem: We need new people. Desperately. …
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preparing for change (part the second)
As with knowledge capture, so must any successful organization pursue training. Training need not be formal. It can be self-paced, on-the-job, as-you-go, or formal. I know that I have learned the most about the product I support not from formal training, but from actually supporting it. Part of that is because we have had a …
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preparing for change (part the first)
I have recently been preparing to change jobs within my company from Support to Professional Services. This has lots of caveats, concerns, and corners to shine light into, alleviate, and circumvent. The first thing that I did when I found out that I would, in fact, be able to move to ProServe from Support was …
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computers were made for americans
Or at least, they were built for people who speak English. Evidence for my claim: the first electronic computers were built during WWII by the British and Americans for code breaking; the first programming languages were designed, written, and implemented by Americans and British; the transistor, which led to the IC, was developed by Americans; …
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a perfect hash function?
As I was walking to get my turkey pot pie today that was cooking in the microwave in our break room, I looked at the parking lot below and realized that parking lots are approximately perfect hash functions. Think about it: cars come in in some semi-random order; spaces are available in semi-random fashion; cars …
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the inanity of ‘special’ lanes
Carpool lanes do not alleviate traffic. They encourage folks to either a) ignore the ‘carpool-only’ signs, or b) get pissed-off at other drivers ignoring the signs. I’ve been in California for a few days on a working vacation, and the carpool-only lanes are stupid. Because I’ve been driving by myself to work, I do not …
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i know why search is broken
Search is broken. Google, Yahoo, Ask, Alta-Vista, and on, and on the list goes. Hundreds of companies, thousands of individuals. I know why search is broken, and I know what needs to be fixed. Now to figure out the how of fixing. When you’re looking for information, you search on keywords. Google’s been nice enough …
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is plagiarism really so bad?
There has been a lot of talk recently about the huge issue of plagiarism among students. Ars Technica had an article about it on 20 October [arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061020-8041.html]. I have also heard the issue discussed on radio talk shows, and been lectured on the consequences of being caught plagiarizing by almost every professor I’ve ever had. …
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ask the right question
If you’ve never read Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley, and especially chapter 1, you should. Even before finishing this post. Even if you never write a program or touch a computer. Now that that’s out of the way, I can continue. The biggest issue in answering any question is not the answer – it is …
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