Friday, March 23, 2007

don't ask me to change my im



there are so many im's out there like aim, yahoo messenger, icq, msn that it is hard to keep up with friends if you don't have 10 of them installed. it's just too bothersome to download all of them and log into them all. but no more. you can use this meebo thingy that lets you log into to all of them at the same time. it doesn't require you to download any of them, it is a web based app.
all you have to do is log into meebo, and that's it. all the messages you get are contained within you browser page. this might also let you circumvent some firewalls if you are at work.
this app does have some limitations, for example some of the fancy features like picture icons may not work, but overall for normal chat and conversation it works very well.

meebo.com

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

image is everything: naughtiest nation in the world




bbc conducted a poll to see which countries were viewed to have positive (negative) influence in the world, and the result is interesting.
as you can see, canada, japan, and eu had the most positive ratings, while israel, usa, north korea, and iran had the most negative ratings. the article was found here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6421597.stm
the full report is also downloadable in pdf format. the full report gives the breakdown by country,
for example, only 11 percent of people in philippines gave a negative vote, while 78 percent in greece gave a negative.
what is interesting about these polls is that it gives you a clearer view of world. it is a mild surprise to me that israel would be perceived more negatively than north korea (i live in the usa). also surprised to see usa getting more positive feedbacks than, ....actually not many are behind the usa.
interesting way to play with these poll is to look at how some countries are looked very differently by different people. while more people in china see north korea as positive (39 vs. 34 negative), overwhelming majority see japan negatively (63 vs 18 positive). this is a stark contrast to the usa's view of north korea (73 negative vs 8 postive) and japan (65 postive vs 15 negative).


from these observation, i'm going to validate my suspicions without any empirical evidence; that these perceptions are created and influenced heavily by media, and that the media itself is influenced by politicians.
image from
http://www.economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8810655

fun links that may be relavant
- White House Accused of Censorship
A former CIA analyst says the agency was told to cut parts of his op-ed column.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/67/24573

-great firewall of china
http://greatfirewallofchina.org/test/

Saturday, March 17, 2007

cucumber ham pretzel bread salami monster



this is a cucumber ham pretzel bread salami monster. or maybe it is a cucumber ham pretzel salami monster bread. either way a tasty looking treat.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

freedom fighters will get you out of your cell phone contract




the phone companies always come out with new promotions, each one being better than the one you currently have.
for example, sprint started offering a plan that gives you unlimited texting and calls for 120 bucks. for anybody(like myself) who find this an attractive offer, there were no way of taking advantage of these offers, because in american you cannot break your current contract without paying a hefty penalty. but now here is a clever service called cellswapper.com that will let somebody else take over the plan.
this is how it works. you list your current plan on cellswapper (free). if somebody takes over your plan, you pay 14.99. thats it. your name and personal info is switched out completely to the new owner of the plan, so it is safe.

very nice idea.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

brain deterioration cont 2




boy, this is fun

brain deterioration cont



another one from manyeyes.
this one is height of major league baseball players in 2006

brain deterioration




did you know that your brain mass shrinks as you age? i didn't.
chart is one of many interesting 'visualization of data' at manyeyes.
good place for random information.
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/browse/visualizations

Thursday, March 8, 2007

my company oonyx corporation internal memo




OONYX is the industry leader of robust obfuscation. Imagine a combination of SVG and IIS. Our technology takes the best aspects of XSL and XMLHttpRequest. We will expand our aptitude to morph without diminishing our capacity to syndicate. Think extensible. A company that can deploy correctly will (one day) be able to morph elegantly. If you reinvent globally, you may have to deliver holistically. Quick: do you have a blog-based plan for dealing with emerging users? We will repurpose the industry jargon "transparent". We believe we know that it is better to recontextualize seamlessly than to leverage intra-intuitively. What does the industry jargon "C2C" really mean?



does this make any sense? of course not. company name was created by a web 2.0 company name generator here.
http://www.lightsphere.com/dev/web20.html
the paragraph was created using the corporate gibberish generator and full article ( paragraph above is just the first part of whole article) can be found here.
http://www.andrewdavidson.com/gibberish/?companyname=OONYX

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

premium gas regular gas




do you ever wonder what the difference is between the premium and regular gas? i'm sure many have, especially with the retail gas prices rising of late.
well, scientific american has done the work forus. i didn't feel like reading the reasoning, but the conclusion they arrive to is this. if your car manual doesn't say that you need premium, you don't need premium.
here is link.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId=sa003&articleId=373086C9-E7F2-99DF-385F3705197C1D4F

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

big money little effort



economy is at near full employment now. but in case anybody is levered too heavily into real estate or got burned in the market lately, here is a sample of high paying jobs that do not require a college degree taken from this link.
http://www.nextstudent.com/NextPath/nextPath-Online/Highest-Paying-Job-With-No-Degree.asp
Air Traffic Controller – Average Yearly Salary: $100,000+
Nuclear Power Plant Operator – Average Hourly Pay Rate: $31+
Telecommunications Equipment Installers – Average Hourly Pay Rate: $22+
Computer Software Engineer – Average Yearly Salary: $52,000+
Computer Programmer – Average Yearly Salary: $55,000+
Gaming Managers – Average Hourly Pay Rate: $36+
Immigrations and Customs – Average Yearly Salary: $59,000+
Firefighting Supervisor – Average Yearly Salary: $60,000+
Real Estate Broker – Average Yearly Salary: $76,000+
Ship Engineer – Average Yearly Salary: $57,000+
Elevator Repair – Average Yearly Salary: $58,000+
Power Distributor – Average Yearly Salary: $59,000+

another option is to start a internet business that require little effort.
examples of this taken from '10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich'
http://nichegeek.com/10_totally_stupid_online_business_ideas_that_made_someone_rich
Million Dollar Homepage.com
SantaMail.org
LaserMonks.com
FitDeck.com
PickyDomains.com

or, the ultimate option is to become the chief economist for the national association of realtors. i'm not sure how much he makes, but i'm sure he is well compensated. besides, there are not many occupations that will allow you be wrong more often that your weatherman.
the jpeg, taken from minyanville, is his recent track record.
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/index.php?a=12177

Monday, March 5, 2007

Friday, March 2, 2007

fly in toilet



great ideas are sometimes simple ideas that nobody really scrutinizes. as a male, we all know that we tend to aim at the urinal cake if present when we pee. but thoughts never go further than that.
time of urination is a time of relaxation and relief, so that many people don't critically analyze anything.
but here is an example of person or group of people that did and are therefore better off for it. amsterdam airport has put a little fake fly in the urinals. according to this article, they say the idea is saving them a alot of money in cleaning cost.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/u/urinal.htm

so shen you get an inspiration to 'think outside of the box', don't just think of original ideas, but think at an original time and environment.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

six flags = not enough flags




are you annoyed by those pesky pennies in you pants pocket? here is a way to lose them fast.
ride the 'eejyanaika' roller coaster at fuji q highland in shizuoka, japan.
here is the specs of this beast.

total distance 1153m
lift height 76 m
max speed 126km/h (approx. 80m/h)
angle of descent 89 degrees (that's 90-1 degrees!)
number of invesions 14 times (guiness world record)

steal it back




if you have had anything stolen recently, one place you can look for it is
propertyroom.com (along with ebay and your local flee market).
this site auctions off police seized properties such as laptops, jewelry, laptops, bicycles, and even land.
the interesting feature of this site is that there is a 'steal it back' section. if you notice that an item stolen from you is listed here you can claim it back for no cost.

of course you can always take advantage of other people's misery here, as there are ton on interesting items for sale.