nice. looks like we finally have another movie that will glam up the sci fi style as matrix did. I almost dont really care about the story, I just want to see the presentation.

And a live via jwz since he provided embeds of both tron legacy trailers.

Nice. I love the idea of a nice status board for the team. Would be great to find a way to do something nice and similar for my local team.

Hmm, was looking forward to Ion2 being a fast little beast. Let’s hope it’s all in the HW tweaks before production units make it to market.

yes, when I have to sit and understand this (which I dont) just to get how a computer chooses to efficiently do division by multiplication… you’ve lost me… forever. I like nice black boxes that just do it. The reasons scare me too much.

A great piece about Roger Ebert. Definitely an eye opener and a good lesson.

Ok, I’m pretty sure the above wont really come out if it gets embedded, and also part of the weirdness it to actually visit the site: chatroulette.com. well, cant say much about it other than the fact that you’ll run into complete strangers doing yes, very stranger type things. I guarantee you will run into some NSFW material, so be warned.

It’s akin to the “random” chat application that made its rounds a while back, just that this one adds video, and the results can be both interesting and frightening at the same time. It’s amazing what people will show when they’re pretty much anonymous, even if you can see their faces…

On Friday I set this puzzle

John is sent out to complete a census. He knocks on the door of house number 56 and Jane answers.
Here is the conversation:
John: How many children do you have?
Jane: Three
John: What are their ages?
Jane: I am part of Richard Wiseman’s Friday puzzle and so cannot tell you directly.
John: Oh

Jane: However, I am allowed to tell you that when you multiply their ages together you get 36
John: Oh
Jane: Not only that, see that house directly across the street? Well, the sum of their ages is equal to the number of windows in that house.
John: Oh
Jane: And my oldest really likes bears.
John: Oh
At that point John knows the ages of the three children. What are their ages?

If you have not tried to solve it, have a go now.  For everyone else, answer after the break.

This is actually a pretty interesting puzzle. Take a moment to think about it. Then think a little more outside of the box. The answer, despite the rantings of some of the commenters, makes fair sense to me.

Admittedly I did not get a solution, but I do understand the solution. And I do think that those that are a bit cross about the methodology of the solution are not quite understanding the nuances of human behavior over pure logic.

Enough, go try it. I liked it.

Most days, I lead a pretty happy existence.  I write code.  I meet with folks at HubSpot.  I talk to fellow entrepreneurs and generally try to spread goodwill and love. Today, however, it sucks to be me. 

So there’s no surprise that something like this will happen sooner or later. Twitter Grader got hacked and some enterprising hacker was able to get hold of access to users’ accounts and make posts on their behalf.

That’s about all there is to the bad part. The good part is that the system relied on OAuth so all that needed to be done was to revoke the keys for all apps connecting to Twitter Grader and problem solved. The rest is up to the developer to harden the new code and close that loophole.

But this post isnt all about that. The commenters are full of praise for the clarity of language and the explanation and the responsibility taken by Dharmesh for the error on his part. Which is nice. And makes for good PR. And makes everyone feel good about the people running the app are aware and able to handle the situation. It’s amazing how good communication and acceptance of the fact that he screwed up helps to continue to maintain and build an even better trust system with his users.

We do have to remember that he *did* screw up and that there was a loop in the code that probably sat there from oversight for months on end either unknowingly or even knowingly (with hopes that it just wont be found). Either way, no way around the fact that there was some poor choices made, but it’s amazing to see how far a little social engineering can go to mend relations. It’s a lesson to learn about how well good communications can work for both good and of course, for evil purposes also (hence all the phishers are still profitable).

a pretty entertaining compilation of various logoes set in a vectory world complete with a fun story line starring a joker-esqu version of Ronald McDonald. But this post isn’t really about that.

As you can probably see above, the video’s been taken down. I’m going to guess the Oscar police stopped by and told the Logorama folks (you can see a short trailer there) to take it down. Probably somethingto do with excess publicity or some made up story about protecting content and so on that’s available only for the Oscars.

If that is the case, it’s a rather sad state. There’s so few opportunities we get to see the short films that get submitted to the Oscars that it’s really a shame something like this happens. Now of course, if it had nothing to do with the Academy folks, then I guess that’s less evil, but in either case, there’s something fishy going on here and I can guess it’s not really a good rational reason behind it.

Apparently the derived size of diving into this mandelbrot is trillions of times larger than the known universe. the pretty colors. I remember having a screen saver similar to this in collage and folks would just sit it front of it and stare… though I think they were mostly aided by some other forms of hallucinogens…

So I know this isn’t a “real” site (yet?) but the effects employed on it are amazing. with just a bit of jquery and creative hacking, you get a beautiful faux 3D site powered over raw HTML/JS/CSS. Nicely done.

Worst winter ever? The second blizzard in less than a week buried the most populous stretch of the East Coast under nearly a foot of snow Wednesday, breaking records for the snowiest winter and demoralizing millions of people still trying to dig out from the previous storm.

yes, I get that it’s a lot of snow. But I think people are all too quickly “demoralized”… or maybe just the article writer is too quick to demoralize people on their behalf.

At this rate, we’re all being demoralized but too much snow, too much rain, too much sun, too much wind, too much weather. If that’s all it takes to demoralized us, we’re in bad shape when something a lot more serious than a little weather hits.

Google “Street” view up on top of Whistler. Only 4 more days till they can get enough snow… Whistler seems fine so most of the alpine events should be good to go. But Cypress is hosting the aerials and snowboarding and they *really* need the snow. At least nothing at Grouse cause that was bare. Visibly bare even from town, so that’s not a good sign.

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers.

Yep, it’s apple’s world and we only live in it. You have to realize that excluding flash isn’t a technology issue. It’s a formal tactic. Some may say it’s to get html5 video more into the mainstream light, but this is Apple we’re talking about, expect no formal generosity on their part.

Mistake it not, this is a formal and calculated plot my Apple against Abode. And I think this is only step one. In the iPhone/Touch area, HW could be excused as a limitation. But with iPad, the gloves are off and this is an offensive measure, not a defensive one.

Expect something big from Apple against Adobe in the future. Perhaps a severing of more ties. A better iMovie to compete with Premiere. Or perhaps there’s something brewing on the iPad that will directly compete with Photoshop. Something’s brewing. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out (or it could simply be Jobs forgot)

As an example, consider the question ‘How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?’ Most people answer ‘two’ despite knowing that the biblical actor was Noah, not Moses. Even when warned that some of the statements may be distorted, most people fail to notice the error because both actors are similar in the context of biblical stories. However, a change in print fonts is sufficient to attenuate this Moses illusion. When the question was presented in an easy-to-read font, only 7 per cent of the readers noticed the error, whereas 40 per cent did so when it was presented in a difficult-to-read font…

A little snippet from the blog which has this snippet from the book “Mind Hacks”. The context is about how superficial differences can actually influence how you may perceive and understand a situation. Even something “trivial” as a font change can make an interesting difference.

This sort of superficial “eye candy” difference is what people often chide about Apple produces, but in reality, this “worthless” eye candy is what improves not only the perception of use, but the actual use itself. Eyecandy, despite the connotation associated with its name, is actually pretty important. Think of it as a first impression. Doing it well (even in the case of tricking people, like in the snippet) is an important part of making your application feel like it’s usable and more important, worth the time to spend doing something on it.