Oct. 7, 1956: Yogi Berra’s hands were the focus of an article titled “Hands of Catchers Take Battering,” published five days after the photo was taken. “These catchers’ hands will win no beauty prize,” the reporter wrote, “but as functional implements they rate special awards.” Photo: The New York Times
Future is bright
Solar energy all over the place. Think about windows with transparent oled’s that act as solar panels, think about a car all “painted” of “solar panels” so to speak, and on and on
Smart windows, at your home, at your car… no more boredness on the kitchen nor on the backseats.
New energy sources coming of age (e.g. geothermal comes to the house)
Nice..
Uruguay campeón!!
Building Success in a connected world
How To Use CSS3 Pseudo-Classes
Global earthquake activity since 1973 and nuclear power plant locations
(via mikehudack)
A beautiful thing about Apple is how quickly they obsolete their own products
brilliant, brilliant post from Matt Mullenweg
(Source: bit.ly)
On why social networks interoperate… and why not
I came across an interesting analysis about why a social network would open itself to interoperate with other networks… and why not.
As Buth Bebo mentions,
The economic logic behind these positions is a straightforward application of Metcalf’s law, which states that the value of a network is the square of the number of nodes in the network*. A corollary to Metcalf’s law is that when two networks connect or interoperate the smaller network benefits more than the larger network does. If network A has 10 users then according to Metcalf’s law its “value” is 100 (10*10). If network B has 20 users than it’s value is 400 (20*20). If they interoperate, network A gains 400 in value but network B only gains 100 in value. Interoperating is generally good for end users, but assuming the two networks are directly competitive – one’s gain is the other’s loss – the larger network loses.
I liked this analysis as for what would happen if Google Me becomes a success…
A Brand is what the whole game is all about
“If you as a company tell me that you have a brand name, I’m going to ask you a question: ‘Do you have the power to charge a higher price for the same product?’”
“If your answer is no, I don’t think you have a brand. You may think you do, but I don’t think your brand has any value.”
Prof Aswath Damodaran
I recall on my MBA days, we were discussing about strengths and weaknesses of a company that was a cookies outsourcer (“real”, tasty sweet cookies). When speaking about weaknesses, a colleague mentioned “They lack a brand”. And I still recall that as sort of lighthouse principle. A brand is what the whole game is all about
At the L2 Innovation Forum, Finance Prof. Damodaran, delivered a very insightfull presentation about the real value of a brand, and what it takes to build one.
Some highlights:
- A Brand Is the Most Sustainable Competitive Advantage
- Luck and Serendipity Are Just as Important as Advertising
- Brand Value is an Illusion
- Even Valuable Brand Names Lose Value
You can view his presentation here:
The Value of a Brand Name by Aswath Damodaran
Presentation from Erica Swallow.
Via [Mashable]
Why Web Performance Matters
If there one guiding principle present on every Google-owned project, that is “speed”. As thinking of speed inherently provides the necessary perspective that balances form and function, so to speak. It’s all about user expericence, let me explain:
Think about a very nice webpage, that blows your mind visually, but that’s painfully slow to load. You use that page to get some information (be it view videos or new photos, be it a news service, a place where you buy something, etc). Now think about a bare bones, old looking website, that has similar information or products, but it is razor super fast. Now, where would you go next time?
Now think marketing: What website would you want to be recommended? Or, would you recomend the slow website?
And now think business: Where would you place your ads if you had the choice? What is the website that has the chances to get more page-views, and as such, the one that gets the most exposition and more revenue generation opportunities?
Now… see why speed is a Google search ranking factor?
The field of web performance is a complex space. There are many interesting books, blog posts and discussion forums. mod_pagespeed is a project at Google that assembles a good set of pages related to web performance and organizes it in terms of contribution to the speed of a web page, whether by serving less bytes -through better compression or caching-, minimizing round-trips and optimizing the order of resource download for the browser.
They are assembling a very nice Performance Guide, updated regularly with new rules and updates to how the rules apply to modern browsers.
[Via @joomlaworks]
