links for 2009-09-17

"So with that caveat, here is my list of ten traits I see in great companies. This is aimed at web/tech companies but I believe it can and should be applicable to all companies."

"We analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on our dating site, OkCupid. Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online." Be literate, have specific interests oh and atheism wins you points.

"This is history through the veil, again. It's virtually impossible to be a black person and believe that Americans were somehow more humble in the past. Our very existence springs from an act of immodesty. I can't even begin to imagine the Native American read on this one." Excellent point.

"The Dubuque effort stands out not only because it is in the United States, but also because it marks I.B.M.’s most comprehensive approach to these digitally enhanced public services — water, electricity and transportation. “We’re trying to make Dubuque into the first integrated, smart city,” said Robert Morris, vice president of services research at I.B.M."

Funny photo.

Another customer support tool.

"The advertisement commits to greater investments in Sun hardware and Solaris software, but has absolutely nothing to say about MySQL. Is this a necessary omission to appease European regulators, or is it a sign of Oracle's intentions?" Nothing about MySQL or Java.

"And for each eight years you age, you double your chances of dying. That’s the Gompertz Law of human mortality, which is actually sunnier than you think. If you’re 24 today, you stand a 0.3 percent chance of dying in the next year. That chance doubles, to just 0.6 percent, by the time you’re 32. But the compound interest of your corporeal decay mounts quickly. By the time you’re 89, your chances of expiring before the end of the year rise to 86.4 percent."

"As the proposed Google Book Search lawsuit settlement is debated, I’ve read calls from various critics that everything should go back to “square one” for a solution. Would Google be willing to do this? Google CEO Eric Schmidt says he’s open to ideas, but none of the critics are putting forward new solutions that would resolve the legal case that was filed against his company."

"The House ethics committee said it would put off for now an expanded investigation into whether Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois or his representatives tried to buy President Obama’s former Senate seat. The committee acted at the behest of federal prosecutors who already are investigating former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois."

"As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world. It's a large number, but the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone. We're also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I'm pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term." Awesome news for Facebook.

"Yes, Linux servers have been broken into manually. There is not, I repeat, is not, any malware that automatically convert Linux desktops or servers into virus-spreading boxes. All that has happened is that someone, as many others have in the past, has busted into improperly secured Linux servers."

"The people who make desktop software are making themselves obsolete. When you start developing on the web, your default is to be smart, to interact and to be open (with other software and with your users). Desktop software (like Word) is insanely unaware of what I do, why I do it and who I do it with. Right now, the desktop folks have the momentum of the incumbent. Not for long. Time to hurry."

"Find friction and embrace it, don't ignore it." Indeed.

Love in almost real time.

"The next time you find yourself using professional text, or professional stock images, consider the value of this "professionalism". Is it legitimately helping you communicate? Or is it getting in the way? " I'm totally in favor of less corporate attitude for a small business.

"Five current and former directors of Bank of America have been subpoenaed by the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, according to sources. Earlier this week, a US federal judge ruled the bank would have to go to trial to settle allegations it misled shareholders about bonus payments."

"Computer engineers topped the list of those professions making the most accident claims in the last three years, according to figures from Churchill Car Insurance." The agent quoted attributes it to stressful jobs as well as working in more urban areas.

"And for someone who has often been accused of playing fast and loose with facts, he seems to have an almost pathological precision about dates and specific incidents, framing sentences with, “The first reports came across the wire on Saturday morning in Traverse City, Michigan” and “Dana Milbank wrote about this on Page 10 of The Washington Post … .”"

"Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like."

"Making sure the door isn't locked if users choose to leave a service is a required, if less exciting, part of the data portability movement. Just as important as a bulk dump of user data is the option for users to easily and securely port data online from service to service for immediate personalization based on past activity at a legacy site. Google is a market leader in that kind of data portability as well."

"As of 10:30 a.m. EDT today, September 15, the Kindle edition is ahead of the hardcover edition in Amazon's own hourly-updated sales rankings."

"The World Food Programme says US curbs are in part behind its move to shut its Somali feeding programmes for more than 100,000 acutely malnourished children. The US restrictions affect funding for areas controlled by groups designated as terrorist. Washington has imposed sanctions on the hardline Somali Islamist group, al-Shabab. But the WFP says it is doing all it can to get the aid through without it being controlled by the Somali insurgents."

"In this way, reCAPTCHA’s unique technology improves the process that converts scanned images into plain text, known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This technology also powers large scale text scanning projects like Google Books and Google News Archive Search. Having the text version of documents is important because plain text can be searched, easily rendered on mobile devices and displayed to visually impaired users. So we'll be applying the technology within Google not only to increase fraud and spam protection for Google products but also to improve our books and newspaper scanning process." Great news for an awesome product.

Pretty much says it all.

"We’re growing at a rate of over 400 new users and 1000 new repositories every day and these rates are only increasing with time. We need to take drastic action now to put in place the kind of infrastructure that will allow us to provide you with a top-notch user experience." Awesome news for consumers and GitHub.

"
My advice would be to completely ignore this poll. There are pollsters out there that have an agenda but are highly competent, and there are pollsters that are nonpartisan but not particularly skilled. Rarely, however, do you find the whole package: that special pollster which is both biased and inept. IBD/TIPP is one of the few exceptions."

"Has the time come to kill the “Remember me” check box and just assume that people using shared computers will simply logout?" No.