Month: March 2005
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Statistically Improbable Phrases
Via Paul Bausch is news of a feature in Amazon.com that runs analysis on books scanned into Amazon’s Search Inside index. From Amazon’s site: Amazon.com’s Statistically Improbable Phrases, or “SIPs”, show you the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books in Search Inside the Book. Our computers scan the text…
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Blogging and Meetup
I’m going local on you, I know but I just wanted readers in the San Francisco/East Bay area know that Ginevra and I have taken on organizational duties at two local blogging meetups and will be hosting events next month. If you’re in the area, stop by, we look forward to meeting you! The San…
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Ketchum on Blogs
Nicholas Scibetta and Adam Brown at Ketchum discuss how the art of Public Relations can benefit from blogs in this interview style post on the Ketchum website. Their observations show that they understand the power of blogs to initiate a dialog and their insight into the future points to a rich set of opportunities for…
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Fluid Market for Ringtones
In the March 7th New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones writes about the cell phone ringtone industry which, in 2004, generated $4 billion dollars in worldwide sales (only $300 million from the US). In Korea, the ringtone market outsells the CD single market. There is a newer, higher quality version of the ringtone that is just gaining…
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Little League
Tyler debuted on his little league T-ball team this past weekend. In Japan they have something called a koen debut which is the first time a mother takes their child to the park. It’s a stressful occasion because this is the time when mother and child learn if they are to be accepted into the…
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Collective Loan Network
The internet is a wonderful catalyst for busting apart black boxes that mediate experience, knowledge, or commerce. My co-worker Sippey, points to Zopa, a UK exchange network which hooks up lenders to borrowers and, because there’s no middleman, takes only 1% as a fee. Their approach is fresh and they’ve got a few ideas on…
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My Grandfather Died Last Night
My Japanese grandfather passed away last night. Oji-chan was of the generation that lived through the war and helped rebuild Japan. No matter how tough things got, this generation always managed to dig a little deeper and work a little harder. Employed by a concrete factory as an onsite mechanic, he was great with his…
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Microsoft to Acquire Groove Networks, Ray Ozzie Will Join Microsoft as New CTO
Wow. This news took me totally by surprise. Groove is peer-to-peer collaboration software developed by the creator of Lotus Notes. What does this mean for the future of Microsoft Sharepoint? “Peer-to-peer collaboration solutions through Groove’s Virtual Office, which let any Windows-based PC user instantly create. ad-hoc, virtual work spaces that securely and easily span organizational,…
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Yahoo API plugin for Movable Type
It was only a matter of time. Ken McCloskey over at Pixelabra has developed a plug-in to allow you to search Yahoo! using their new API from within Movable Type.