Karu's blog

arrival of the music dialtone: last.fm offers 3.5 millions songs on demand

Karu — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:21:19 +0000

You can listen to all of last.fm’s 3.5 million songs which includes the big 4 record labels.

http://www.cbscorporation.com/news/prdetails.php?id=2943

wegame

Karu — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:49:35 +0000

This will likely soon replace Hollywood! A well packaged client and website for sharing video of videogames.

http://wegame.com/
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9847826-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1035_3-0-5

Pioneer of BBC Micro (the 1st computer I ever used) honoured

Karu — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:18:10 +0000

One of the designers of the classic BBC Micro computer, Steve Furber, of the University of Manchester, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7162935.stm

The BBC Micro was the first computer I ever used – hence this post

National Academies book on evolution and creationism

Karu — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:42:18 +0000

The National Academies has just released a short book (88 pages) on evolution and creationism, documenting the science behind evolution and commenting on the creationism “debate”.

…a book designed to give the public a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the current scientific understanding of evolution and its importance in the science classroom.

URL: http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20080104.html

ethereal internet experience!

Karu — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:12:25 +0000

I had a $250 American Airlines voucher I got about a year ago for a flight that got cancelled. Finally I decided to use it and called AA on the phone to make a reservations. The agent made the reservation and gave me instructions on how to redeem the voucher. She said I should simply mail the voucher to the following address: “American Airlines, BOX 1096223, Highway 90, Milton, FL 32570-1708″. And said I should include my name, flight #, and dept date below the return address on the envelope. I was a little confused about the BOX ###, so I went to google and searched for : “american airlines box 1096223″. Google gave nonsensical links and said, Did you mean: “american airlines box 109 6223″. I clicked on that link and got this page: www.flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Vouchers_(AA)

The page has line by line instructions on redeeming the voucher and the address to send to!!!

Just typing those 3 words got me exactly the information I wanted – a perfect example of the search engine inferring user intent from keywords!

joost open to everyone

Karu — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:52:18 +0000

Joost now open to everyone. Just downloaded and installed on my machine. It is totally kickass – the interface is amazingly simple and slick. Easily in my top-5 most favorite software.

itunes update download is 54MB

Karu — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:52:00 +0000

This rant is a long time coming. Before I begin, I think Apple sucks as does most of its “CLOSED” products. This was the last straw – itunes update download is 54MB! WTF!

Halo3 sells $170 million in first day!

Karu — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:06:50 +0000

Amazing numbers and this slightly older Wall street journal article has data on growth in game sales and Holloywood movie sales.

Filmed entertainment, which includes box office and DVD sales, took in $81.2 billion in revenue last year, dwarfing the haul for game sales, which grossed $31.6 billion in revenue last year. But game sales grew 14.3% in 2006 from the previous year, compared with 2.9% for movies, according to estimates by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Generally, far more people attend movies than purchase typical games, but games cost between $50 and $60, far more than movie ticket prices.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118662363769092549-rzvX5I5krFTML7QqeGfA5gI1BJ8_20070907.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

Extrapolating, games will overtake Hollywood by 2014 and then the gap will begin to widen dramatically.

Notebook

Karu — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:01:32 +0000

Now this is out of the blue – I read “The notebook”. It was a gift and I surprisingly (to myself) liked it. If you plan to read one romantic love story a decade, this would be a good one to pick. Well since my sampling is essentially 1, this is not statistically significant recommendation!

one laptop per child can be bought, give 1 get 1 free

Karu — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:57:25 +0000

I was never a big fan of the one laptop per child. But the hardware in the laptop was just too cool. Now I can legally and without ethical qualms buy one. There is a “give 1 get 1 free” program – neat concept just philanthropy wise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/business/worldbusiness/24laptop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The marketing program, to be announced today, is called “Give 1 Get 1,” in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.

One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.