vanderwal's miscellaneous stuff

As an artist who probably makes a substantial income from licensing his music, you might think Neil Young would frown on piracy and file-sharing, but that appears not to be the case, according to an interview he gave at the Dive Into Media conference in Los Angeles. Instead of railing against file-sharers, Young called piracy “the new radio” because it’s “how music gets around.” The musician’s comment puts a lot of the hysteria about copyright infringement into perspective — as we’ve pointed out before, file-sharing and monetization aren’t mutually exclusive, and in many cases a certain amount of so-called “piracy” can actually be good for business, as authors, musicians and even game developers have come to realize.

It’s not just that experts are vulnerable to confirmation bias—it’s that they’re especially vulnerable to it.

Twitter‘s global advertising revenues are forecast to grow to $540m by 2014, according to eMarketer, up from a projected $260m this year. However, Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, indicated at a US conference this week that he was in no hurry to take the company public.

You can also e-mail a copy of all your notes. Just tap the iPad’s screen to call up the iBook controls and tap the Contents icon in the upper left corner. On the book’s Table of Contents page, tap the Bookmarks button and tap the Action icon (which looks like an arrow) in the upper right corner. Tap the Email button to stick all your notes in a fresh mail message.

Starting a business is easier than ever, thanks to advances in information technology. Budding designers of smartphone apps can rent space when they need it on a remote server rather than buying huge amounts of computing power. “The internet has democratised the right to innovate,” says Mr Vardi.

He also said that social media presents a danger to the artist. Artists have, traditionally, created best “in a vacuum,” hearing only their own instinct, and hearing instant feedback through social media could threaten that. “At the end of the day you are expected to lead. You cannot be whipsawed back and forth by how your audience feels. Ironically, if you follow what they tell you, they won’t like you soon enough.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

I actually have the last PointCast 2.6 win32 installer just for posterity. Ah I miss the good old days when first year marketing interns ruled the world with their fresh new ideas. Oh wait…

An executive in a really nice suit from an up-and-coming display company tells me they plan to ship a half a million units this year. I try to figure out how much that is in kilograms of rare earth metals, but I can’t. Wolfram Alpha turns out to be pretty useless for this kind of thing. The CEO is available for interviews.

More than half of them log in to Twitter each day to follow their interests. For many, getting the most out of Twitter isn’t only about tweeting: 40 percent of our active users simply sign in to listen to what’s happening in their world.

Inspired by discussions with Thomas Vander Wal, Gray draws an insightful parallel between the complexity of today’s organization and the human organism, and the ultimate system of human organisms — a city. Cities are complex systems, which can grow and support their own growth organically. Gray takes the following lessons from city design and adapts them to the enterprise.

The pilot of a passenger jet, thought to be an Air New Zealand flight, was on his descent to Christchurch International Airport on Boxing Day when he radioed ground control with an unlikely sighting – a shark flying at several thousand feet.

Some 90% of the world’s data have been generated in the past two years

(1) Shibui objects appear to be simple overall but they include subtle details, such as textures, that balance simplicity with complexity.

OThe Bodleian Libraries are 40 libraries serving Oxford University, including the Bodleian Library founded in 1602.

BBC News - Bodleian Libraries completes Swindon move - There is a good reason I kept getting the Bodlian Library / Libraries confused. But, They now have space for their 7 millionth book.