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The ultimate irony. Amazon has written an API that invokes humans. Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call - the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work. ...

What economists can learn from currency traders.

Bill Gates in a Coca Cola ad. In August 2005, Bill Gates starred in a Coca Cola commercial. He wanders in the halls of Microsoft late one night looking for someone to loan him change for the Coke machine. “I’ll pay you back,” he promises.

Film songs by Bombay Jayshree. Vaseegara, Narumugaye and Ondra Renda being my favourites. Try this: search for any song and listen online. Comments Arun 3 Nov 2005 3:34 am: Vaseegara is heaven. :-) Graffiti 1 Dec 2005 7:13 am: I plan to sing that for a competition here…:) anu 18 Apr 2010 5:26 pm: vaseegara,narumagaye,ondra renda(kakaka) wer awesome ;) i love those songs sung by Jayasree ;) Krishna 15 Apr 2010 8:39 am: Vaseegara….truely amazing. kumaran 29 Sep 2010 4:13 am: realy superb voice of bombay jayshree mam..i rely impress wit her voice. manam manam engilum etho ganam ganam,,thinam thinam unpaadalthaan vanthu sugam sugam thanthathe……………….. Kannan 11 Aug 2010 5:41 am: Wow! What a voice… Really I admire her voice a lot and lot.. Very nice.. Beautiful voice is given to her by God… She has sung vaseegara song… But really avanga voice vaseegaramathan iruku (tamil) madhan 7 Oct 2010 10:29 am: excellent voice mam. i like your voice. my work , family all of tention relaxe only your voice mam. bombay jayasree = singing god. daily your sing the song. madhan erode 13 Nov 2010 8:51 am: mam your voice amzzing. your voice places of the heaven to god. narumugaya excellent voice. The word singing " Thiru magana" wov,. your all information i get my friend geetha mam. specially Thanks geetha., my Train friends thanks your profile detail collect. madhan erode 9 Nov 2010 8:35 am: mam.i am waiting for your voice singing illyaraja music album (sai baba).your lot of singing song of the 2010. why 2010 super female play back singer you winner.i will drems god of the gift of the your voice. madhan erode 9 Nov 2010 8:40 am: mam partha muthal nalay song very excellent. really the first word of you sing (partha ) excellent. voice excellent sound very nice. madhan erode 29 Jan 2011 4:44 am: mam, lot of sing songs to the year 2011. you most of the song singing to the year my wishes not lot of audiences wishes include me. madhan erode 29 Jan 2011 4:48 am: mam, you fist singing song illayaraja film viyatnam colany " kailyil veenai yandhum “very nice. include m s v sir film singing. A R razhuman film 1000 gingals ( back round voice )you singing songs very nice madhan erode 29 Jan 2011 4:55 am: sorry mam, you fist singing song thampathikal film M S V MUSIC you singing songs . next you singing film viyatnam colony illayaraja film. next A R RAHUMAN film irruvar next harris jayaraj film minnala vasikara.next lot of singing harris sir music thanks harris sir….. raman 18 Nov 2011 7:04 pm: madam i love ur voice its very beautiful, i love ur all songs especially cheli manohar song madam nisha 20 Jan 2013 3:59 pm: i really impressed… i love u jayashree… my ever green favt song vaseegara…

Talent wars. The interesting part was the first three paragraphs. Flying on the Delta Shuttle with Bill Gates 12 years ago, I asked, “What Microsoft competitor worries you most?” “Goldman Sachs.” I gave Gates a startled look. Was Microsoft about to try the investment banking business? “Software,” he said, “is an IQ business. Microsoft must win the IQ war, or we won’t have a future. I don’t worry about Lotus or IBM, because the smartest guys would rather come to work for Microsoft. Our competitors for IQ are investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.” ...

What Lies Beneath New York.

Cluster your del.icio.us bookmarks.

The Economist on Business Continuity Planning. The effect on Ericsson, a Swedish mobile-phone company, of a fire in a New Mexico chipmaking plant belonging to the Dutch firm Philips, has become a legend. The fire, in March 2000, started by a bolt of lightning, lasted less than 10 minutes, but it caused havoc to the super-clean environment that chipmaking requires. Ericsson, unable to find an alternative source of supply, went on to report a loss of over $2 billion in its mobile-phone division that year, a loss that left it as an also-ran in an industry where it had once been a leader. ...

An interview with the creators of InFlow (a software to map social networks) shows how social network analysis is used. Comments Dhar 30 Oct 2005 6:10 am: Anand, do you know of any freely available Social Network Analysis tool? S Anand 31 Oct 2005 6:16 pm: Afraid not. I’ve only done this twice in projects, and I just used Excel and Perl both times.

Video sharing service round-up.

The Economist explains why Emirates Airlines is so cheap. It’s not just the Government subsidy. Zero tax, low interest rates (Government-backed), and low staff cost without unions. Apparantly, they are the only low-fare long-distance flyer. Comments Arnab 30 Oct 2005 8:04 pm: “low-fare” you mean. S Anand 31 Oct 2005 6:22 pm: Fixed that typo. Thanks!

How ATM fraud nearly brought down British banking.

Indian Railways introduces e-ticketing. Comments ritzkini 25 Oct 2005 1:16 pm: wouldnt it make more sense for them to introduce it on on a pilot basis in one of the more e-savvy states ? rather than amritsar,kalka and lucknow..bu then again we are talking indian railways here..

Romance on the cricket pitch. Fan proposes. Zaheer Khan gracefully accepts. Watch it on Google Video. Comments Dhar 23 Oct 2005 10:47 am: I have had great difficulty in watching videos from Google and this one is no exception. I wonder if I am the only one facing this problem. AlphaGeek 23 Oct 2005 6:26 pm: Me too.. Facing the same problem !!! Anyone can u pls help us ? Amit 24 Oct 2005 6:47 am: the India head of Google said this a few days ago that video.google.com is not allowed in countries like India, Germany, etc because of some compllicated laws. Guess thats what is causing these problems. Dhar 24 Oct 2005 9:13 am: Wow… this is very interesting. I tried accessing this through a proxy server in Britain and was able to view the video. There may be something in what Amit said…. S Anand 24 Oct 2005 9:17 am: Hey, that explains why my family is not able to view my videoes!

Now, Google search history lets you tag and bookmark.

How to buy nothing and What not to buy first-hand (like books, CDs, and cars)

Lal Bihar formed a society of dead people. In 2003, he won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize. … to prove that he was living sought arrest, tried to run for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had stolen his property, threatened murder, insulted judges, threw leaflets listing his complaints at legislators in the state assembly and demanded a widow’s pension for his wife.

Netflix doesn’t charge you if you lose DVDs in the mail. Nice of them. The only way I see it work is if they have the right to copy a DVD if they lose it in transit. Do they?

What Teens Want. From a session at Web2.0. The big laugh line of the session was when Safa asked them how they’d go about researching information on a CD player they might want to buy. They looked at him in silent puzzlement, as if to say, “why would we buy a CD player?”

How to convert a black & white photo into colour using Photoshop. The result looks remarkably good.