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everyone's blog posts
Dear Lazyweb, Perl unpack question
So I have a string that has a binary data structure in it, and I want to use Perl's unpack() on itThe binary structure is a 32bit int, followed by N 8 byte chunks. And I don't have quadwords in this build of Perl, so I cant treat them as 64bit in...
links for 2008-11-20
Poladroid project | the easiest and funniest Polaroid Image Maker Makes any photo a Polaroid photo. (tags: photo) Tabbloid A free service that lets you receive your RSS feeds in newsletter, or rather, tabloid form via email at a set time an...
November 20, 2008
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered sizable deposits of buried water ice.
November 20, 2008
How to be a Programmer: a solid, comprehensive article on useful strategies of thought and behavior for computer programmers.
Welcome to Nine By Blue!
Hi Everyone! Welcome to the new site. I’m still working on moving everything over, so you may find that a lot of the links don’t work and that other things are a bit wonky. Please let me know if you run into construction! Special thank...
Finding task boundaries in search logs
There has been more talk lately, it seems to me, on moving away from stateless search where each search is independent and toward a search engine that pays attention to your previous searches when it tries to help you find the information you seek...
Free CSS book from Sitepoint
The folks over at Sitepoint are giving away a free PDF of their book, The Art & Science Of CSS (co-written by one-time Digital Web columnist and all-round nice guy, Jonathan Snook). All you have to do to bag a copy is follow them on Twitter &#...
Client Video: Windows Live.com
Common Craft was hired by Microsoft to help explain the new Windows Live.com. We were so excited to work with a local organization on a project that highlights a new direction for the company. Share this video with this code:
Tweets for Today
16:17 Note to self:M-x indent-region on source code is good.M-x sort-lines on source code is bad.M'kay? #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
Yahoo! BOSS Adds Key Terms Feature
In July Yahoo! launched their BOSS API, which enables you to “build your own search service”. Today, they’ve expanded the functionality of that API by adding a Key Terms feature. The technology used in Key Terms is the same used for Search Assist,...
Going to Seattle Mind Camp 5.0
After having been out of town for four Seattle MindCamps prior to this one, I'm excited to finally get to attend. MindCamp, as it's described on the home page, is: "The self-organizing, digitally minded, entrepreneur-driven, overnig...
November 19, 2008
This is a very nice picture of Mars, taken by the ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.
Detecting spam just from HTTP headers
You have to love research work that takes some absurdly simple idea and shows that it works much better than anyone would have guessed.Steve Webb, James Caverlee, and Calton Pu had one of these papers at CIKM 2008, "Predicting Web Spam with HTTP S...
Growl, Skype, and Adium
Both Skype and Adium use Growl to announce connections by people on my contact list. The notification bubbles look exactly the same.When you click on an Adium Growl announcement, the focus flips to an IM window with that user, so I can type at th...
New Issue: RESTful CSS
We have a very interesting article this week from new contributor Steve Heffernan, who brings us RESTful CSS. Our last few CSS articles sparked quite a row in the comments, so I hope the same audience takes a long look at Steve’s proposals,...
Social Media Recap
This category contains fundamentals and case studies about online social media. You might also want to check out these blog posts I’ve written: Finding Out Where Your Customers are Talking About You Online Everything You Always Wanted to K...
Search Engine Optimization Recap
This category contains fundamental building blocks about search engine optimization (SEO). You might also want to check out the following blog posts I’ve written: SEO Basics The Power of Search: Driving Traffic to Your Blog The First Rule o...
Open SQL Camp experiences
Open SQL Camp was a success.It was hosted by Baron "Xaprb" Schwartz, who I learned is one of the few people I don't have to look down to look in the eye.There were maybe 100 people over the whole the weekend, including the upper echalon of MySQL a...
links for 2008-11-17
What a Lovely Name, The perfect name for your baby. Baby names broken out into tags, so you can find interesting names based on attributes. (tags: baby name)
Van Jones “Green Collar Economy” Biznik Live Interview
To you faithful Biznik blog readers, sorry I've been behind on my Biznik Live updates. nbsp;If you didn't get a chance to listen to the ...
Tweets for Today
20:03 Ticket to Ronkonkoma - Photo: bkite.com/02rBQ # 20:05 I'm at Penn Station (USA) - bkite.com/02rC0 # 22:02 I'm at Residence Inn by Marriott (25 Middle Avenue, Holtsville, NY) - bkite.com/02rJF #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
WebPro News: Making Your Social Media Campaign Work
Social media has taken over. Companies now realize how powerful it is for raising brand awareness and engaging with customers. But a lot of money can be lost if a social media campaign is not efficiently conducted. Watch the video
Video: Crowdsourcing author Jeff Howe explains how to make it work in your business
BNET has a great video today: Jeff Howe, the originator of the term “crowdsourcing,” explains the phenomenon and suggests what motivates people to work for something more important than money. The key to making it work, he says, is put...
Introducing: The Common Craft Explainer Network
A few weeks ago, we posted "Seeking Producers of Video Explanations" and wrote: We see an opportunity for a win-win. Every day, we receive multiple emails from organizations that are looking for custom explanatory videos... The opportu...
Measuring offline ads by their online impact
Googlers Diane Lambert and Daryl Pregibon had a paper at AdKDD 2008, "Online Effects of Offline Ads" (PDF), with a fun look at how far we can get measuring the impact of offline advertising by increases in search queries or website visits.Some exc...
Why do we blog?
Don’t usually do memes, but this one ain’t half bad 1. What is your blog about? It’s a moving target. The general theme is how we can bring the worlds of information technology and the life sciences together. Favorite themes in...
Watching some Daily Show fans from across the room...
... while listening to the comedians yell.The show used to be funny.Now it's just nothing but cheap shots, preaching to their own choir.Maybe they will be just as cheap to the new crop the next 4 years.But I really doubt it.
November 15, 2008
I’ve been playing with a DJ program called Mixxx which mimics a pair of CDJs and a mixer. I have a mixer, and have been thinking of getting a D2 Director in place of decks; Mixxx is basically the same thing but all done in software. I’...
links for 2008-11-15
Spreed News Speed read news feeds by displaying a few words at a time, quickly. (tags: web news rss iphone)
Tweets for Today
17:01 I'm at Charlottesville Design Center (100 5th St NE, Charlottesville, VA) - bkite.com/02p2c # 17:14 there is no Budget car place in Charlottesville! crud! # 17:26 listening to @PeterZ talk about Sphinx full text search at #OpenSQLCamp # 19:...
Selections from Open SQL Camp
Open SQL Camp, originally uploaded by krow. Click through to the flicked set. Drizzle, MySQL, Postgres, Infrobright, SQLite, and other database developers were in attendance.
Sun's Restructuring, personal impact, still employeed
Sun announced a significant layoff and restructuring yesterday, shedding between 5K and 6K staff, out of 30K. 20% is significant.Lots of people, including friends and family, have asked what effect it has had on me.Not much. What I have been doi...
At OpenSQLCamp, Day Zero
I'm at OpenSQLCamp this weekend.Just like every traveller eventually has to do ORD at a dead run (BTDT), every traveller has to deal with DC commuter exodus traffic. And that's what I did last night. I got out of the gig at the Intelset Building...
Early morning airport musings
I am sitting at RDU airport, waiting for my plane to board heading back to the Pacific Northwest for a day before heading out to Supercomputing 08. Yesterday was a blast. Chris Lasher and Co pulled out the red carpet and were wonderful hosts. I ...
Tweets for Today
19:26 network went down at the client. so glad to have my EDGE modem #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
Got an idea for how to improve Biznik? Introducing the Biznik IdeaExchange
Biznik is first and foremost a community. And communities are built on communication - from us to you, you to other members, and you to us. From day one, we’ve worked hard to keep those channels wide open. But now that Biznik is pushing 20,0...
Keeping History
Growing up in Boston means I'm used to lots of historical buildings making up a city. Living in Seattle means the city has to take what it can get. After all, when cities back East were building subway systems, Seattle in parts still had dirt road...
Science Big, Science Connected
The first attempt at distilling some of my thoughts on Big Data and the Networked Future of Science. Thanks to Chris Lasher for the invite to speak at VA Tech. I had fun, although in my jetlagged, uber-caffeinated state I spoke at 200 mph Scien...
Learning not to advertise
Andrei Broder and a large crew from Yahoo Research had a paper at CIKM 2008, "To Swing or not to Swing: Learning when (not) to Advertise" (PDF), that is a joy to see for those of us that are hoping to make advertising more useful and less annoying...
A reason I still care...
The democratic tendency to make gods of successful politicians makes it all the more necessary to oppose them vigorously. -- H.L. Mencken
Django URL template tag follow-up
After reading the comments on my last post, about my beefs with Django’s URL template tag, it sounds like I made an assumption that was incorrect: I had understood that the {% url %} tag is now considered a best practice, and using the get_a...
Tweets for Today
23:21 nothing like discovering the product i am here to set up, that the salesman promised the client, doesn't actually exist #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter
What is an Explanation?
Sachi and I been talking about this and we're curious what you think. What is an explanation? What are the skills required to be a good explainer? What makes a good explanation?
Baidu on next generation search
Baidu Chief Scientist William Chang gave an industry day talk at CIKM 2008 on the next generation of search where he predicted an industry-wide move toward personalized web search.William first described two earlier generations of search, then sai...
As the Internet grows, so does Google
In two insightful posts, "The Omnigoogle" and "The cloud's Chrome lining", Nick Carr cleanly summarizes how Google benefits from the growth of the Web and why expanding Web use makes sense as a large part of their business strategy.Some excerpts:[...
links for 2008-11-12
http://api.outside.in/ The outside.in API lets you easily integrate Radar results into your own applications. This means that you tell us where you are right now, and we will give you all the most recent news stories, blog posts, twitter tweets an...
Coast to Coast Bio #3 is now available
Dropped the latest podcast earlier today. Heavy discussion around the Saunders principle and the tension between bioinformaticians and bench scientists
Tweets for Today
14:44 gig is in the old IntelSat building. really slick, all the money intelsat got went into an overly nice structure #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter