background preloader

Jma

Facebook Twitter

John

dad, married, photographer, musician, sailor

Myipublish.com. Book Printer Providing Book Printing, Plus InstantQuote Pricing! Book Printer Providing Book Printing, Plus InstantQuote Pricing! Rewire the web. Your dashboard on Wakoopa. Goggles for Android.

Cool stuff

Pearltrees videos. Help. Revisiting conspicuous consumption. The reason you have a front lawn? It's a tradition. Lawns were invented as a way for the landed gentry to demonstrate that they could afford to waste land. By taking the land away from the grazing sheep, they were sending a message to their neighbors. We're rich, we can happily waste the opportunity to make a few bucks from our front lawn. Conspicuous consumption has a long history. Wasting millions of dollars on a shark in a tank, or on $50,000 platinum stereo cables that sound an awful lot like $2000 stereo cables (which sound a lot like $200 stereo cables). In fact, the origins of the luxury goods industry lie in this desire to waste, in public. 350 years ago in France, Jean-Baptiste Colbert dreamed up the idea of bespoke, rare goods as a way of improving France's balance of trade.

(Interesting note: it's estimated that 20% of all the women in Japan in their 20s own a Louis Vuitton bag... scarce?) Spending on and investing in time, not stuff. All marketers tell a story. LifeCaptured - Personalized Photo Books, Scrap Books and Greetin. The Secret Life of Testimonials. Lévy flight. The term "Lévy flight" was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot,[1] who used this for one specific definition of the distribution of step sizes. He used the term Cauchy flight for the case where the distribution of step sizes is a Cauchy distribution,[2] and Rayleigh flight for when the distribution is a normal distribution[3] (which is not an example of a heavy-tailed probability distribution).

Later researchers have extended the use of the term "Lévy flight" to include cases where the random walk takes place on a discrete grid rather than on a continuous space.[4][5] A Lévy flight is a random walk in which the steps are defined in terms of the step-lengths, which have a certain probability distribution, with the directions of the steps being isotropic and random. The particular case for which Mandelbrot used the term "Lévy flight"[1] is defined by the survivor function (commonly known as the survival function) of the distribution of step-sizes, U, being[6] for some k satisfying 1 < k < 3. Feisty Frugal & Fabulous. Childrens Book of the Month Club Gift -Gifts for Kids by Mail -T. Blippy / Purchases by people I follow.

OneRiot.com – Realtime Search for the Realtime Web. A few weeks ago, a small team from @WalmartLabs visited the offices of OneRiot in beautiful Boulder, Colorado. OneRiot has developed some pretty nifty technology that analyzes social media signals from popular networks like Twitter and Facebook to deliver ads that are relevant to consumers’ interests.

As our teams debated the finer points of Big Data, Fast Data, and machine learning technologies, it became clear to us that we could find no better colleagues than the guys at OneRiot. As a part of Walmart, we're continuing to work with the intensity of a technology startup. Today I’m pumped to share the news that, within 30 days of that first meeting, we have closed a transaction to acquire the key assets of OneRiot. As I have written before, here at @WalmartLabs we’re doing some amazingly interesting and impactful work at the intersection of social, mobile, and retail.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Tobias Peggs and the OneRiot team to @WalmartLabs! 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines - Smashing Magazine. Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key.

Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work. Here are 10 useful usability findings and guidelines that may help you improve the user experience on your websites. 1. A study by UX Matters1 found that the ideal position for labels in forms is above the fields. 2Tumblr3 features a simple and elegant sign-up form that adheres to UX Matter’s recommendation. Positioning labels on the left also poses another problem: do you left-align or right-align the labels? 2. People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view.

Eye-tracking heat map of a baby looking directly at us, from the UsableWorld study4. And now the baby is looking at the content. 3. 4. 5. 10 Fantastic Websites for Spotify Fans. With Spotify bound for the U.S. later this year, now is the time to start getting ready for all that music goodness. Which is why, in addition to our getting started guide to Spotify, and our hints, tips and tricks for getting the most out of the music streaming service, we like to offer up a selection of great Spotify-themed sites from across the web.

Current and future Spotify users are well taken care of online with nearly a hundred sites that have sprung up around the service offering anything from news to stats to playlists to social networking. Many of them you can take advantage of now, even if you don't have access to Spotify. If you're a fan of Spotify then have a look through the sites and services we've selected below, as they should prove more than useful, bringing an extra dimension to your Spotify usage, and do let us know about any other great Spotify-related online properties that you visit in the comments. 1. The Pansentient League 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Market. Simple, thorough, and safe, Clean Master is the world’s most downloaded Android optimization suite designed to boost memory, enhance speed, and protect against malicious apps. Brought to you by Cheetah Mobile (formerly known as KS Mobile). More than 200 million people worldwide use Clean Master to remove junk from their devices and to prevent malware infections. Clean Master improves performance by optimizing device memory, unclogging storage and offering security against viruses, trojans and malware.

Developed by Cheetah Mobile (formerly KS Mobile), Clean Master is the world’s most reliable companion for Android devices. Highlights of Clean Master - Optimization & Antivirus Features of Clean Master- Optimization & Antivirus ► JUNK FILE CLEANING Delete cache and residual files to reclaim memory and improve performance on your device and SD card. ► MEMORY BOOST Boost all games and running apps, free up memory (RAM) and speed up your device. Stay connected! -- Supported languages. Getting Started | Metricly Blog. This week we are letting new companies into our private beta program – we started earlier today and the rest of the invites should go out by the end of the week.

For those of you who will be using Metricly for the first time, we hope to help you run your business better. You’ll find a number of built-in connectors for data sources like Google Analytics, Salesforce, Twitter, Pingdom, and more (and we’re adding more practically every week). You’ll also find it’s easy to create your own graphs and dashboards with that data. But here are a few other tips to help our beta users get started - Drill into your data with subtotals and filtersZoom in to view your data more closely by dragging to select ar area on a graphAdd trendlines and view totals for each metric on a graph by clicking on each insightInvite others to share your company dashboard under ‘User Access’ on the Settings PageLoad your own internal data using the Custom Data Import API, or Plugin API.

Top 10 Funny Cat Videos on YouTube. We've already brought you ten hilarious canine-themed YouTube clips, but dogs shouldn't be the only ones to have their day. That's why for this funny roundup we've gone the feline route and collected some of the funniest cat videos on YouTube. Whether you want talking cats, surprised cats, dramatic cats or nom-noming cats this lists should tickle your funny bone with ten examples of the finest feline vids on the internets. Scroll down and hit play now for some priceless cat action and let us know your fave kittehs in the comments below. 1. We don't know about you, but this cat had us at "oh long John.

" 2. Real cat, or an incredibly realistic animatronic? 3. Say it with us: cats don't like water, cats don't like water, cats... wait... huh? 4. Shame a glass jaw stopped this cat going pro. 5. Pardon Mr Cat? 6. Nora makes Keyboard Cat look like the cheeky young upstart he is. 7. Call us prospectors, 'cos this here is YouTube gold. 8. 9. 10. BONUS: Cat vs Dog Know your place, you big, dumb mutt. 10 Simple Google Search Tricks. 12 Awesome Tools For Efficient Twitter Searches - by Dumb Little.

Tagwhat Social Augmented Reality. 80 Best Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials, Part III | Photoshop T. What’s A Startup? First Principles. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill Everyone knows what a startup is for – don’t they? In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist: a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business ModelOk, but what is a business model? A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value. Or in English: A business model describes how your company makes money. Think of a business model as a drawing that shows all the flows between the different parts of your company.

While this is a mouthful, it’s a lot easier to draw. Drawing A Business ModelLots of people have been working on how to diagram and draw a business. Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Template (At Stanford, Ann Miura-Ko and I have been working on a simplified Silicon Valley version of this model. But What Does a Business Model Have to Do With My Startup? Stay tuned. No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers – Business Plans v. No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy Field Marshall Helmuth Graf von Moltke I was catching up with an ex-graduate student at Café Borrone, my favorite coffee place in Menlo Park. This was the second of three “office hours” I was holding that morning for ex students. He and his co-founder were both PhD’s in applied math who believe they can make some serious inroads on next generation search. Over coffee he said, “I need some cheering up. I think my startup is going to fail even before I get funded.”

He said, “After we graduated we took our great idea, holed up in my apartment and spent months researching and writing a business plan. I said, “Congratulations, you’re not failing, you just took a three and a half month detour.” Here’s why. No Plan Survives First Contact With CustomersThese guys had spent 4 months writing a 60-page plan with 12 pages of spreadsheets. A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value. Lessons Learned. Businessmodelgeneration_preview.pdf - Powered by Google Docs. No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers – Business Plans v. No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy Field Marshall Helmuth Graf von Moltke I was catching up with an ex-graduate student at Café Borrone, my favorite coffee place in Menlo Park.

This was the second of three “office hours” I was holding that morning for ex students. He and his co-founder were both PhD’s in applied math who believe they can make some serious inroads on next generation search. Over coffee he said, “I need some cheering up. I think my startup is going to fail even before I get funded.” Now he had my attention. I thought his technology was was potentially a killer app. He said, “After we graduated we took our great idea, holed up in my apartment and spent months researching and writing a business plan. I said, “Congratulations, you’re not failing, you just took a three and a half month detour.” Here’s why. No Plan Survives First Contact With CustomersThese guys had spent 4 months writing a 60-page plan with 12 pages of spreadsheets. Lessons Learned.

Going It Alone: How to Make Your Stuff In China. Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government’s SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam’s writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here. It’s Saturday morning at 6am. Such is the life of a gadget manufacturer and if you think all of these Kindles, Blackberries, iPods, and even Nixie tubes are made by robots in some far off factory, you’re wrong. Where I’m going in China, I don’t go as a tourist. The best way to source a factory in China is to go there.

Before I tell you how I sourced those first three factories, I want to speak to the cover article of last month’s issue (Feb, 2010) of WIRED magazine about the “New Industrial Revolution”. CE Printed Products Opens New Atlanta Division - - Ensoft Mail. Site Updates - - Ensoft Mail.