June 2009
28 posts
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MJ and the Zombieconomy, via Umair
If the world’s biggest pop star only made $12 million a year from his recordings, why would anyone make serious music? Where did the rest of the money go? Why, straight into record labels’ pockets.
…
No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or [insert beancounter here]. There’s no money left in anything else.
That’s the big problem behind the...
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MJ Dominates the Amazon Top Selling Albums
Top 10 selling Amazon albums, from my inbox:
Jeremih (Amazon MP3 Exclusive Version) [Explicit] by Jeremih $2.99
In The Hands Of God by Newsboys $3.99
Number Ones by Michael Jackson $9.99
Essential Michael Jackson by Michael Jackson $16.99
50 Essential Classical Film Moments by Various Artist $7.99
Thriller by Michael Jackson $9.99
Thriller (25th Anniversary Edition CD/DVD) by Michael...
“A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between...”
– Watts, Way of Zen (via hv23)
- Sounds like a book I may have written in another life
(via alimentary)
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The here and now
alimentary:
…
Hindu ascetics and Buddhist monks don’t believe in acheiving stillness through connection with the material world, but you can’t really be a contributing member of society that way.
Long story short, “listening to the sound” seems to be working. I focus on making music, on doing research, on cooking, et al., and I try to forget about the useless feeling of wanting to be...
Beastie Boys in my Inbox
Ladies and Gentleman, We, the band collectively known as Beastie Boys, are contacting you, in regards to our 5 point plan: 1. The reissue of “Ill Communication” is imminent. ….
Aw yea.
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Paperless Checking
I finally investigated paperless checking with my bank (TD) today to pay a monthly bill at my alumni club. I’ve been fed up with the Penn Club’s refusal to automatically bill my credit card or checking account each month, but after speaking with the board, it seems automated, electronic billing will not be happening anytime soon.
Traditionally, I’ve paid my monthly balances like...
“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the...”
– Wilfred Peterson (via affremblequotes)
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A Microsyntax for Getting Thumbnails Given a URL
I don’t know if this classifies as a microformat/microsyntax, but this would be cool: standardized URL structure for photo thumbnails. Eg, the thumbnail for http://twitpic.com/7qb91 is http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/7qb91 You could imagine thumbs being useful for videos, product pages, album artwork for links to songs, etc. Standardizing syntax for thumbnail URLs given any URL would make...
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Labs Cookin This Evening
Preparing to setup some new production boxes this weekend, which won’t be so much fun. This evening I’m taking a break to do some fun stuff before all the looming sys/ops/deployment work. I’ve been all over the place playing with different APIs. Some fun links:
Wolfram Alpha: http://bit.ly/UhmwL XMPP Calendar Bot: http://bit.ly/NZCzO A New Google Blog to Follow:...
Domain Names
gbattle:
kellyreeves:
rickyv:
Naming a new company. Anybody have any great domain names they’d want to sell? Preferably one word?
I impulse bought zeitguyst and zeitgirlst.
I have sicktarded.com and muthaphucka.com.
kortina’s bit: This inspired me to look at some of the domains I’ve got. Best of 38: getspartan.com habanerocheese.com shopalytics.com snoozetext.com...
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Crayola Bomb
navsmusings:
“Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn’t go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes...
“How about instead of saying “it must be something going around” that instead we...”
– Some good bits about changing the things you can, via http://bit.ly/XGoDU
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“Wonga is an ethically bankrupt investment. Venture investors have a duty to...”
– via Umair http://bit.ly/m1DwE
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“I had expected that the time away [from the internet] would allow to
forget...”
– On disconnectedness: Alone in the woods (via Mike) (via fascinated)
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“There were many things I loved about college, and among the best was the...”
– Jonathan Zittrain’s Shady Side Academy Commencement Speech
Do yourself a favor and read the whole article, it’s hilarious. This is one of my favorite quotes from the speech.
(via thegongshow)
Also:
The fact is that we can become prisoner both to our regular life scripts, the somnambulant...
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Thinking About Launching a Branded Energy Drink -...
Dear 20th-Century Business,
You blew it. Instead of doing stuff that mattered, you ended up doing stuff like this:
“The Jonas Brothers sat backstage recently at the El Rey Theater here, politely answering questions from a small cluster of reporters about their new CD….
…The band’s outside efforts include a line of branded energy drinks and starring roles in...
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Creating Value vs. Optimizing Revenue
Typically, the entire discussion around landing page optimization is just one about conversion rates, and all the different possible candidates to get to a conversion. Instead of this perspective, you might ask: What value does an optimized landing page generate in the first place? Ultimately, I think this optimization makes it so that people can grok what they’re signing up for better. It helps...
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Mark Gerson Wisdom: 15 Mistakes and Misconceptions...
gbattle:
Taken from @jonathanglick today (I just reversed the order for easier reading). These are all spot on. Unfortunately, most can only be anchored through experience. ==== I’m going to be live-Tweeting Mark Gerson’s 15 Mistakes and Misconceptions of Entrepeneurship to the Zell Students at the Smoke Chop House. Misconception 1: We have no competitors. Misconception 2: My idea is complicated,...
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Stevie Wonder - Misrepresented People
Bring the...
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alimentary:
This is the song I was working on...
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Searches I want from Google (a reply to Andrew...
good local search results for businesses - search results comparing prices offered for items at local businesses - contextual meaningful restaurant reviews just as broken as product reviews ( ie, only show me those authored by my friends / contacts ) - SMS search - this is a personal search, but still search. All my email and chat is indexed in Gmail. SMS must be as well. - Facebook Message and...
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“Bottom line: ditch industrial vegetable oils such as corn, soybean, safflower...”
– via Whole Health Source http://bit.ly/3FOtDB