And why single queues, like those at Sydney Credit Union branches and Empire Theatre concession stands, work better. The Engineer Guy explains: H/T: Silas....

26 December, 2010

An early Contrarian post told the amazing story of how Kevin Miller got his iPhone back after he misplaced it in a Chicago bar. Miller got crucial help from an Apple app called "Find My iPhone," which can remotely track an Apple phone's geo-location information and send it to the registered owner in real time. There's no such app for an ordinary desktop—unless you happen to steal the beloved computer of clever hacker called Zoz. He recounted the story, replete with poorly disguised NSFW nudity, at Def Con 18, the underground hackers' conference. (The actual story begins at the 3:15 mark,...

26 December, 2010

Mount St. Vincent PR students looking for a case study on how not to do an interview may want to file away this CBC-Cape Breton year-end interview with John Lynn, CEO of Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. Interviewer Steve Sutherland comes off as polite, patient, and persistent. Lynn's obvious beefs with local media coverage may or may not be valid, but he undercuts his message by appearing peevish and evasive. Anger rarely works on radio or TV. This guy needs to dial it back....

22 December, 2010

Who uses email? According to the New York Times, it's the same people who "still watch movies on a VCR, listen to vinyl records, and shoot photos on film." At left, Comscore, the Internet rating agency, graphs the startling demographic split in email use. The drop is sharpest among the Internet generation, while email use by those over 55 showed a sharp uptick, perhaps reflecting the fact that more and more, ahem, old people are getting on line. Total email use is falling too. The Times says the total number of unique US visitors to major e-mail sites like Yahoo and Hotmail peaked in November,...

22 December, 2010

Contrarian reader Ritchie Simpson upbraids me for whining about prime ministerial ivory tickling to the tune of John Lennon's Imagine. If you don't our political system to be reduced to an unending morass of partisan sniping and snide asides where nothing is accomplished because it may benefit the other side, then please refrain from making small minded comments. The shadow of pettiness covers more than just our politicians. if you want our politics raised out of the morass of point scoring then you must judge yourself as you judge others. I hate to sound like some overly pious prig or worse your...

22 December, 2010

Our old friend Hans Rosling, the Swedish public health statistician whose Gapminder software brings demographic trends vividly to life (previous menions here and here), is back with a new BBC video tracking the health and wealth of nations over two centuries: If you'd like to drill down into the data and watch a particular country's progress or compare two or three countries, the Gapminder file on which this video is based will let you do that. You can also download the software to your own desktop. Amazing stuff, and should give pause to those who are certain the world is going to...

19 December, 2010

Another leader with image problems takes a page from PM Harper's fakebook: Remarkable parallels here — similar image problem, similar soft-soap remedy. At least Putin didn't sully John Lennon's memory....

18 December, 2010

Speaking of the weird and homemade, D. Brown, a carpenter in Canning, makes guitars out of cigar boxes. John Dunsworth, an ardent fan, interviewed him, and Mike Swain filmed it. Seems there's quite a movement behind these rigs. [Update] If a $200 cigar-box guitar is out of your price range, Dave Atkinson recommends the cardboard upright bass....

17 December, 2010

That's what Atlantic tech blogger Alexis Madrigal calls Google's Books Ngram Viewer. Google has scanned about 10 percent of all the books ever published. Enter any word or phrase into the search box, and the viewer returns a graph of its frequency of appearance in books published over the last two centuries. Note that the searches are case sensitive, and you can compare the relative frequencies of up to four five different words or phrases, separating them by commas in the search box. Say, "Nova Scotia" and "Ontario," for example: Try it yourself, and please send me any interesting pairings you come up with. Madrigal's...

16 December, 2010
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