2005

Better information is not always beneficial. For $795, LegalMetric LLC will tell you which judges rule most swiftly and which tend to favor patent holders. For lawyer and client, this knowledge can be very valuable. But does it increase the chances that the judge will come to a just decision? It is the sort of information that Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow labeled “socially useless but privately valuable.” It doesn’t help the economy produce more goods or services. It creates nothing of beauty or pleasure. It simply helps someone get a bigger slice of the pie. Sure, if the product helps win cases, then both sides will buy it – just as both sides in high-stakes product-liability cases invest in jury-selection experts and software – and neither will have an unfair advantage. But does that make the society better off? ...

PostSecret, where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on a homemade postcard. Showcases the extremities of human idiosyncracy.

Innocent in London. LONDON (Reuters): - A London underground train station was evacuated and part of a main east-west line closed in a security alert on Thursday, three weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 people on the transport network, police said. A Transport Police spokeswoman said Southwark station was closed and Jubilee Line services suspended between Waterloo and Canary Wharf in the east London business district. This Reuters story was written while the police were detaining me in Southwark tube station and the bomb squad was checking my rucksack. When they were through, the two explosive specialists walked out of the tube station smiling and commenting nice laptop. The officers offered apologies on behalf of the Metropolitan Police. Then they arrested me. ...

Google markets. It’s not a new Google service. Just Google “putting the wisdom of crowds to work” by using online markets.

AJAX-based personal home pages: Google’s personalised home page, Microsoft’s start.com, Yahoo’s My Web 2.0, and now, Netvibes.

Google Services. What’s that? Comments Scott Caplan 21 Sep 2005 8:25 pm: All I know is that when I typed in the URL my cache came suggested this: http://services.google.com/university/ Dhar 22 Sep 2005 12:19 pm: Even more interesting. They have something running on port 8882 . While connecting to port 8882 gives a blank page, you get something when you connect to http://services.google.com:8882/urlconsole/controller Dhar 22 Sep 2005 12:25 pm: More stuff 1, 2, 3 and more to be found by typing the query “site:services.google.com”

YubNub is a web command line. A starting point for a Web OS, as Jon Aquino suggests. via eHub

A 40-minute video preview of Office 12. I don’t normally watch videos this long. But it was worth it. Office 12 has a REALLY different user interface (critique). It’s also supposed to have a lot of new features. What struck me the most in the video is how Powerpoint creates diagrams. You type text, and Powerpoint can automatically convert that into value chains, org charts, etc. Julie mentions that a blind user was able to create graphics using this feature, and that this was the first time she has been able to create graphics in all her life!

Google Blogsearch. Comments Ok 28 Sep 2005 7:29 am: Nice!

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes will be released. (I’ve transcribed the quotes.) Comments Anonymous 20 Sep 2005 6:08 pm: btw its available at a website, all strips ever published Anonymous 20 Sep 2005 6:09 pm: and its searchable thru google, let me know if you want the link S Anand 21 Sep 2005 4:58 pm: YES PLEASE! Can you mail me at root dot node at gmail dot com?

I have an automated (and lazy) way of finding interesting sites. This is what I do every day. I get the del.icio.us tags of every URL I blog about. (It’s available at http://del.icio.us/rss/url/ followed by the MD5 hex version of the URL). I pick the most popular tags (at least 50 links must have this tag), and use them as my “preferred tags” I scan the most popular sites on del.icio.us, and get each site’s tags If a site has my preferred tags, I give it points (the number of points is equal to the number of times I’ve blogged that tag) I pick the top 5 sites based on my points, and read them. There are two problems I have now. Firstly, I will find sites similar to those I have blogged about – not discover anything new. That’s fine to start with – I can search for those manually. The bigger problem is, this is restricted to del.icio.us. There are two ways I can extend this (lazily). ...

Technorati Blogfinder tags blogs.

TechCrunch. A weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business, product and service

A hilarious chat on IRC about passwords. More at QDB. via Dhar <Cthon98> hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars <Cthon98> ***** see! <AzureDiamond> hunter2 <AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me <Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> ***** <Cthon98> thats what I see <AzureDiamond> oh, really? <Cthon98> Absolutely <AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2 <AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you? <Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as ***** <AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that <Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as ***** <AzureDiamond> awesome! <AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw? <Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ****'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw <AzureDiamond> oh, ok.

Tough learning. Excellent article (speech, actually) by a physicist on how to learn. Very readable, and has a quote I won’t forget: “A change of perception is worth 80 IQ points.” Comments Ramesh 10 Sep 2005 9:50 pm: That was really a good article would highly recomment others to read the same Arun 11 Sep 2005 3:20 pm: Illuminating. Needed that right now.Thanks.

How to turn text lists into structured maps using the Web.

BBC seems to be doing good work for developers at BBC Backstage. Tom Coates and Matt Biddulph are among those involved.

I just realised. Google Desktop Search is a HTTP server that works on port 4664. 4664 is what you need to type on a phone to spell “GOOG”. Incidentally, Google SMS requires you to send messages to GOOGL (46645). Comments Scott Caplan 4 Sep 2005 6:07 pm: That’s pretty darn awesome!

Kiko Calendar looks like a promising online calendar, offering “A powerful and flexible servlet API that allows third party developers to produce tools which enhance the value of your Kiko Calendar.”

WinAmp 5.1 leaked. Actually, the features were. The good part is, we will have 8X CD ripping in the free version, and ability to create WMA files. Wonder how the Predixis Smart Playlist Generator works. (It says “Mix your tracks based on what they sound like!”) Comments Dhar 31 Aug 2005 12:56 pm: Jet Audio too does some mixing based on what they sound like. Let me see if I can dig up that data. On the other hand, why use WinAmp for ripping? DB-Power-Amp is the way to go. Allows you to rip in various formats and no restrictions on the ripping speed.