2003

Interesting statistics on pizza purchases and tips.

Google news map

Virtual property rights in the online gaming world.

print.google.com. Lets you search for books. It looks like a blank page, but there’s a lot behind it. via New Scientist

Saddam captured. He looks pretty cool, unshaven.

Good discussion on inflation. Talks about how currency used to be a way of exchanging stuff, a way of storing value and a measure of wealth. Today, it’s just a way of exchanging stuff. It’s value keeps changing (inflation or deflation), so it’s not much good for the last two.

Google doesn’t think it’s the top [search engine](http://www.google.com/search?q=search engine) any more. via Anders Jacobsen

Chess Set designed by Karim Rashid, next to the piece I photographed a couple of months ago. They’re identical. via Markose

However, Apple doesn’t make money on iTunes. It goes to the RIAA and credit card companies. Update: 24 Apr 2007 – Looks like Apple is making money on iTunes after all. They’ve renegotiated agreements, especially with credit card companies, and make as much as 10 cents per song. Comments drew 15 Feb 2011 2:08 am: it obviously does its a company from what revenue they get get say 1.5 B they would give alot to companies (who then takes some and gives it to the artists) and they’re left with around 500 M and then thats what they earn

PC iTunes hits 1 million downloads. Apple also announced a promotion with PepsiCo Inc. starting in February in which 100 million winning bottle caps on certain Pepsi drinks grant the winner a free song. When I read that, I said, “That’s 99 million dollars!” Then I said, “No, it costs just the royalty… which may be a fixed cost anyway.” Then I figured, “Lots of people will buy Pepsi. Maybe Pepsi paid Apple for it.” Smart move, Jobs.

The Internet is fast.

Skype – the software I’ve been looking for. It permits VoIP across corporate networks.

Google lets you search by location in the US. via GoogleBlog

Schwarzenegger is the new California Governer. I wonder how many Californians can spell his last name…

Robert Engle and Clive Granger won the Nobel Prize for their work on ARCH and something-or-the-other-I-ought-to-have-studied-at-B-school. I was outside Engle’s office last month (somewhere within 100m of the corridor in the photo), and that’s the closest I’ve been to an Nobel laureate. Of course, some people know him personally and discuss ‘stupid problems’ with him.

Recognising the problems with PageRank. via RobotWisdom

Retire early.

Neat prank on the RIAA. Intruiging, though, about their contact address being hard to find. So I tried the same, by Googling RIAA First hit: www.riaa.org/index.cfm -> The Page Cannot Be Found Second hit: www.riaa.org. No contact info on 1st page. Tried “About us”. No luck. Searching for “contact” on the site gave 704 useless pages. Google search for “contact” in www.riaa.org gives www.riaa.org/contact.cfm -> The page cannot be found I give up. But this guy John Hargrave is good.

NASA is thinking of a space elevator, a la Clarke. On one hand, I think… can’t we save poor children in Somalia? On the other hand, 500 years from now, would you remember this generation for saving children or building a space elevator? Do you remember the Egyptian pyramids or slavery? Then again, to quote Groucho Marx, “Why should I worry about posterity? What has posterity ever done for me?” ...

Proce55ing: “context for exploring emerging conceptual space…” Looks like a modern graphic programming language to me. Neat, but not a quantum leap. “The Unbearable Lightness of being a Pixel” is an interesting exhibit, though (for its name, not for content).