Watch ultra-light metal in action s biggest stories of 2011, literally, as measured by height One of the best things about Techmeme is how "huge" or "big" stories can literally be that: conveyed through a stack of headlines several times taller than your screen size. (Unless you hate this, in which case it's one of the worst things, but moving on…) For our 2011 wrap up, for a change, we're going to ignore all our other, mostly invisible relevance metrics, and focus on this visible and nonmetaphorical type of "bigness". What follows are 2011's 25 biggest stories in terms of the number of headlines (not counting "Discussion") contained in Techmeme's clusters of related stories. To elaborate on how we present the list: since Apple's announcement of a Verizon iPhone 4 sat atop a 12-story cluster focused on that news, it appears in the 10th position of our table, behind taller story clusters, but ahead of shorter ones. What do the "biggest" tech stories tell us about 2011?
Microscopic Images of Alcoholic Drinks All of these impressive photos of alcoholic beverages under a microscope uncover the elements that make up some of our preferred tipples. Similar to photos of snowflakes, each and every beverage is unique, while observed below when zoomed about 1, 000 times under a high tech lab microscope. Created by United States company Bevshots, these are available as artworks for potential buyers which recognize the concealed beauty of alcoholic beverages. Vodka and tonic Whiskey Vodka Tequila Sake Pina Colada Martini Dry Martini Champagne Red wine German Pilsner inevitable Coca Cola
meeting client specifications. (do you think he used to work for mi¢ro$oft? :)... v2.0 :: a geekier, faster way to bulk add quality followers 1. Optimize Your Twitter Bio Make sure that your account's identity and voice has great branding. 2. If you want to engage more people on Twitter, whether they're your followers or unfollowers, then you'll need to engage with the content that they tweet, so you get noticed, which in turn will help you get more followers on Twitter. 3. It is important that you retweet your followers tweets too here and there because it will help them feel valued if you share what they have tweeted, especially if it is of value to other followers or even people not following you. 4. If you intend to engage more people and get more followers on Twitter, then you have to keep your tweets concise and to the point. 5. It is always good to include a link to your website in your tweets as they can help increase referral traffic to your website, but social media is not only about you. 6. 7. 8. Being a brand you simply cannot post whatever pops up in your mind rather you have to seek value. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 1.
Meghalaya, India: Where women rule, and men are suffragettes 19 January 2012Last updated at 15:26 By Timothy Allen Meghalaya, India In the small hilly Indian state of Meghalaya, a matrilineal system operates with property names and wealth passing from mother to daughter rather than father to son - but some men are campaigning for change. When early European settlers first arrived here they nicknamed it "the Scotland of the East" on account of its evocative rolling hills. Coincidentally, today the bustling market in the state capital, Shillong, is awash with tartan in the form of the traditional handloom shawls worn ubiquitously since the autumn chill arrived. Not far from here the village of Cherrapunji once measured an astonishing 26.5m (87ft) of rain in one year, a fact still acknowledged by the Guinness book as a world record. But the rainy season is over for the time being and it is Meghalaya's other major claim to fame that I am here to investigate. Tartan, and pipes, are popular in Shillong "The same is true of many of the nouns in our language.
Marital Tragedy made in India “@sami2073: @jaavedjaaferi satya vachan... Don't Just Ask: Why Women Don't Negotiate - Megan McArdle - Business One of the reasons that women are paid less than men is that they don't negotiate. The advice that follows is usually, "Well, negotiate!" But in fact, women don't negotiate for very good reason, as Kevin Drum points out: I apologize for sticking around, but there's a reason. I've run into this before myself, and have always told women "Just ask! The worst that can happen is that they say no." Their study...found that women's reluctance [to negotiate] was based on an entirely reasonable and accurate view of how they were likely to be treated if they did...." So listen up, boys: there's a reason women don't negotiate as hard as men. When I was in business school, I learned about a case that had been run experimentally. But what a difference a name makes! No woman is unaware of these dynamics. 1. 2. 3. Someone will also probably hypothesize that I am, in fact, an unbearably pushy person. I don't think it's true that women can't negotiate. * Note: I have not made any demands.
Indian education, employment sector - a study in contrasts Nov 26, 2011, 03.23am IST Sonalde Desai The yin and the yang of Indian education and employment sectors present a fascinating study in contrasts. Speak to an educationist and you will be swept away on the rising tide of optimism generated by a groundswell of enrolment. Talk to anyone in the private sector and you will get an earful about labour shortages. Labour market outcomes also present a similarly confusing picture. How do we reconcile these contrasting pictures? The India Human Development Survey, conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research and University of Maryland, provides a striking example. However, even on rudimentary skills such as ability to converse fluently in English, these new college graduates appear to fare more poorly than the college graduates of their fathers' generation. Of male graduates born in the 1930s, 53% are fluent in English compared to only 31% among those who were born in the 1970s. What accounts for this decline?
Twitter, Facebook take the lead in blogosphere as blog searches fall by half - The Economic Times Ameya Chumbhale, ET Bureau Nov 17, 2011, 05.53am IST MUMBAI: Blogging is old hat. A prominent trend-tracking tool shows that blog searches around the globe have halved, while micro-blogging platforms Twitter and Facebook have grown, suggesting a seminal shift in online communication. Google Insights, which tracks search terms on Google search engine worldwide, shows a 50% decline for blogs in 2010. While the number of blogs on the Internet, as tracked by BlogPulse, rose just 21% from 126 million in 2009 to 152 million in 2010, the Tweets on Twitter were up 160% over the same period, according to Internet monitoring website pingdom.com. A comparative figure for Facebook was not available, but the social networking site showed a 74% rise in users during the period. Celebrities such as Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, and even the more regular Ramgopal Verma haven't blogged for over six months now. Blogging, which requires ideas to be bunched to make paragraphs, gained popularity in the early 2000s.
Facial monitoring: The all-telling eye We know what you’re thinking IMAGINE browsing a website when a saucy ad for lingerie catches your eye. You don't click on it, merely smile and go to another page. Yet it follows you, putting up more racy pictures, perhaps even the offer of a discount. Finally, irked by its persistence, you frown. “Sorry for taking up your time,” says the ad, and promptly desists from further pestering. Uses for this technology would not, of course, be confined to advertising. Advertising firms already film how people react to ads, usually in an artificial setting. Some consumer-research companies also employ goggle-mounted cameras to track eye movements so they can be sure what their subjects are looking at. This work is now moving online. One of the companies doing such work, Realeyes, which is based in London, has been developing a system that combines eye-spying webcams with emotional analysis. As similar gimmicks become widespread, privacy concerns will invariably mount.
Firefox & You There are two ways to stay secure using Firefox. OK, I know we just told you there are six, but they're split into two camps: three things that Firefox does for you, and three things you can do to protect yourself. So we did some simple security math (and checked our work) to bring you six great tools and tips! First, here's how Firefox has your back: Instant Website ID Easily see which sites you can trust and which you might need to be suspicious of with a color-coded system. Anti-Phishing & Anti-Malware Trojan horses, spyware, fraudulent sites — these are all real online concerns, but Firefox helps warn you when you're in danger. Anti-Virus Integration If your computer gets a virus, it's not something a little lie-down and a bowl of chicken soup is going to fix (liquids and computers generally don't mix well). And now, a look at how you can have your own back: Plugin Check Plugins like Flash, Quicktime and Java can make your computer vulnerable if not up to date. Secure Passwords
Measuring The Google Effect on People's Memory - Can You Google Where You Left Your Car Keys? Over the recent Independence Day weekend the family and I were driving down a coastal Maine road enjoying a delightful conversation when the inevitable happened - no one could remember the name of the actress who played the lead in Dr. Zhivago. "I'll google it!" offered my daughter, taking out her brand new iPhone 4. "No!" I shouted, "Let's do this the old-fashioned way and try to remember her name." Too late! Well, it turns out that I was onto something. Betsy Sparrow, assistant professor at Columbia University is setting out to prove that all of this googling, binging, dogpiling and yahooing around the internet is impacting how we remember things. The abstract for Sparrow's report, published on-line this week at Science Magazine titled, "Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips" is this: The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. Now, where was I?