links for 2009-05-15

"The Labor Department says the number of people requesting rose to a seasonally adjusted 637,000, from a revised 605,000 in the previous week. That’s above analysts’ expectations of 610,000." Isn't it fun.

"While Nielsen reported 8.9 million visitors to Hulu in March, another measurement firm, comScore, counted 42 million. Exacerbating the confusion, Nielsen’s numbers for April show Hulu losing audience while still managing to add video views, also known as streams." Web metrics are some of the worst set of data out there, the only ones that work are the internal ones.

"This is the fundamental difference between what JJ Abrams did with Star Trek, and what George Lucas did with Star Wars. Lucas told us, 'Hey, you know all that stuff you love so much? That stuff that's been a huge part of your life? Well, you're stupid for liking it because I didn't mean it. These are my toys, always have been, and now I'm taking them back. Ha. Ha. Ha. Fuck you, now give me more of your money.'" Wil Wheaton on the new Star Trek movie.

Hubble got a new camera.

It's about time Android let you scan barcodes to do a product search.

"An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our web traffic through Asia, which created a traffic jam. As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions." Google's response to the great GoogleFail of 5-13-2009.

When I tried out Amazon's service to publish my blog to the Kindle, Amazon said they would verify I was the owner but looks like they really don't.

"A California police officer has been caught on camera apparently aiming a sharp kick at the head or neck of a suspect who has already surrendered." To top it off they high-fived each other.

"Thau joined Twitter in mid-January, since then, he said the company has brokered about a dozen business deals with partners like mobile service providers, handset makers and even media companies." Good for Twitter.

"If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernanke, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us. But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages."

"So what does it look like when 5% of the Internet disappears on an otherwise uneventful Thursday morning? The below graph shows average traffic across 10 tier1/2 ISPs in North America from Google’s network (ASN 15169)." Lots of traffic gone.

"There was a milestone buried deep within the earnings tables in this week’s first quarter results from Rackspace: the San Antonio company has become one of a select number of companies that have more than 50,000 servers." Good job Rackspace.

"The search giant, which until now has prohibited the use of trademarked brand terms in ad text on its search-results page, except when permitted by the brand itself, is now allowing the use of trademarked terms in AdWords copy — under some circumstances, that is. Those that won't be able to use brand names include sites that sell counterfeit goods, retailers that primarily sell a competitor's products, advertisers that criticize the trademarked brand and those that do not refer to a landing page with a purchase option."

"The new agreement, the International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, requires all vessels to carry detailed, regularly updated inventories of hazardous materials throughout their years of service, and for this information to be provided to recycling facilities. The convention calls for workers at these centers to be equipped with a wide range of protective gear, for the centers to have disposal procedures for hazardous materials and for emergency response plans to be prepared."

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