Microsoft is flexing its muscles with new in-house search technology for MSN. As the new big three search companies Yahoo, Google and Microsoft really engage they will have to compete on the paid for search as well as algorithmic search.
Today Findwhat bought Espotting for $163 million. What's the bet that Findwhat don't get bought by someone further up the food chain like Overture, and that Overture get bought by Yahoo or Microsoft within a year.
Mercury News | 06/18/2003 | FindWhat.com will buy Espotting for $163 million
Scientists decoding the human genome have discovered that just 78 genes separate men from women. But what are they?
The BBC asks brits to guess:
"When faced with flat-pack furniture, men never read the manual. Yet they spend hours reading manuals for cars or bikes they will never own.
Linda, UK
Women could never invent weapons that kill, only ones that make you feel really bad and guilty until you surrender
Dan, UK
..."
Thanks Ceri
BBC NEWS | UK | What are the 78 differences between women and men?
After a three year hiatus I bought a Mac - largely because design of PC laptops has seemingly regressed to the days before the Sony Vaio 505.
When I last had a Mac, both the hardware and the software were better designed than a Windows based PC. On an Apple you didn't have DLL's that made it impossible to manage software installations and you could link several computers together without having to hire a full-time network administrator. Microsoft software was a pile of junk compared to Apple's until very recently.
These days, however, Apple seem to be able to produce excellent hardware design, but their software has deteriorated. Take, for example, the 'aqua' interface in OSX - yes there are animated events just like on an SGI (and where are they now?), but the principal interface issue, text rendering, is a joke on OSX. The latest version of the Apple OS anti-aliases text, period - you can adjust the threshold above which text is smoothed but you can't switch it off. Even if you were to be able to switch off the text smoothing, which effectively reduces the screen resolution by a factor of 2, you would then encounter the fact that you can't change the default OS font and the default is not designed to be 'unsmoothed' text, kerning letters so that they merge together or are unreadable. Back in the days of System 7, Apple had already solved this, while Microsoft were still to develop screen ready fonts such as Verdana.
Now all this may seem anally retentive, but reading text on screen is a fundamental issue and one which Apple used to be a leader in. Anyone following the evolution of UI design would notice that easily readable non-aliased fonts such as Jason Kottke's Silkscreen are important on the web, but Apple have ignored unaliased fonts altogether.
Apple should stick to hardware and media software applications, their OS no longer competes with Microsoft's on the desktop and ironically, letting it disappear may increase the chance of a challenge to Microsoft's monopoly, the Apple OS is kept alive only to serve the purpose of deflecting anti-trust allegations away from Microsoft.
One of the differences between Overture and Google is that whereas Overture rank keyword based ads on the amount bid, Google rank them according to a function of this plus clickthrough/impressions history.
In other words, does Google have a clickrank algorithm that is analogous to pagerank?
A bit sick, but still...
"...The rules of this contest are simple: Start with this image of her cell, and decorate it in a way that would be suitable for the queen of gracious living. Keep in mind, this is not a regular b2b contest - you must redecorate this provided image of a jail cell for Martha... "
"A recent study by Dr. Daphne Bavelier... just published in the journal Nature, adds enhanced attention skills, the ability to follow multiple objects, and split-second tracking skills to the list of benefits experienced by video game aficionados."
... er OK, so having autistic children that can catch flies is a good thing?
The New York Post "panned Victoria's singing career and said David was the star of a sport that, in America, 'is largely played by young girls'."
Headline news from Sky News - Witness the event
An article that suggests that for the 'IM' generation the ability to write is disappearing:
"in many other classrooms, traditional cursive is on its way out. So many students have trouble with it that teachers are increasingly adopting a simpler style known as Italic or print cursive"
The last exam I took to become an architect was a professional exam on legal practice issues - all the people in the room had been working as architects for several years and over half of us had forgotten how to use cursive writing legibly, and so had to do entire essays in uppercase print.
I now never use cursive writing, and notice that many of my friends do not, as this article suggests, perhaps it is becoming a legacy.
Keyboards may replace cursive, some warn
MSNBC reports on user experience of the new field of genetic genealogy:
"I clutched the phone and started the trans-Atlantic countdown: Thanks to a mail-order DNA test, I was about to find out whether my Irish cousin was really my cousin. On the other end of the call was my cousin's fiancée, who read off 10 numbers while I compared them. The first number? Check. The second? Check. So far, so good..."
DNA tackles a family's mysteries
MSNBC reports on user experience of the new field of genetic genealogy:
"I clutched the phone and started the trans-Atlantic countdown: Thanks to a mail-order DNA test, I was about to find out whether my Irish cousin was really my cousin. On the other end of the call was my cousin's fiancée, who read off 10 numbers while I compared them. The first number? Check. The second? Check. So far, so good..."
DNA tackles a family’s mysteries
This month's Skeptic column in Scientific American elegantly debunks Bible Code claptrap.
One of the things that Shermer points out in the article is that a 'prediction' is a statement that something will happen in the future. To look at something written in the past and say that it could possibly be restated to fit something that has already happened is not a prediction. The Bible Code did not 'predict' anything, but with a suitably contrived descramber it can 'postdict' almost anything, true or false, sense or nonsense.
Following the success of Bible Code I comes Bible Code II, such is the power of the parasitic meme. This is bullshit that people want to believe, but no matter how hard they try to, it will always provably be bullshit.
Via Boing Boing: Scientific American: Codified Claptrap -- The Bible Code is numerological nonsense masquerading as science
I liked Marc Canter's observation that anything beyond 1 degree if separation is just that - separated.
However, I finally gave in and signed up to Friendster a while back, my tactic being to assume that by choosing one person who is a consumate networker, I would now have a PDNA a Personal Digital Networking Assistant and wouldn't have to do anything (except be like those selfish peer-to-peer software users who never share anything).
My Friendster account now says "You are connected to 12729 people in your Personal Network, through 1 friend." - Hilarious.
Can anyone guess the identity of my PDNA?
In the early seventies people were nice, even sarcastic Brits behaved like earnest Northern Californians, and Mike Oldfield, looking like a biblical Christ, produced his Masterpiece, Ommadawn
I just found my copy, aaah.
For no other reason than I am personally bored with being pessimistic, I have a feeling that others may be too and that this rally may last.
Dow Closes Above 9,000 for First Time in 8 Months