Thursday, September 6, 2012

Binking of Bing


Microsoft is challenging Google today with the slogan "Bing it on!".  Granted, I am not a very big Bing user, but I just went to bing.com and found that it is surprisingly (or perhaps not) similar to Google - minus a whole  bunch of interesting developer stuff.  So I challenge the Bing development team to 

"Bink up something new!"

Conspiracy and more non-essential ramblings

Do you ever wonder if the news is connected in some way similar to some those mystery stories from the book store (yes I did say store, translate Amazon).  Take today for instance, there are two stories that seem completely unrelated, but suppose they were actually linked.

"French police have assigned 60 officers to investigate yesterday's shooting near Lake Annecy, which claimed the lives of four people -- a father, mother and grandmother in a British-registered BMW estate and a passing cyclist.
Three of the four people were shot in the head in what the prosecutor in charge of the case called an act of "extreme savagery." No weapon has been found.
A four-year-old girl who was found eight hours later crouching beneath her mother's corpse has been talking to psychologists about her trauma.
A seven-year-old girl found by the side of the car is "slowly improving" in hospital after being shot in the shoulder and suffering multiple and "extremely violent" blows to the head.
The people in the car are thought to have been the family of Baghdad-born Saad al-Hilli, who has a home at Claygate, near Esher in southern England.
Prosecutor Eric Maillaud says investigators are not ruling out any possibility, including that all four people who died were collateral victims of an unidentified crime."
Sounds like a terrible event and those poor children.  I truly feel awful for this family.  God help them.  With that said, take this next reporting and suppose that their is some connection.
"(Reuters) - A US Airways plane bound for Dallas was ordered back to Philadelphia International Airport early on Thursday after police received a call about explosives on board that they later determined was a hoax.
The incident began with a phone call to Philadelphia police at about 7:30 a.m. local time (1130 GMT), when a caller reported that a passenger on board the flight had illegal devices or a hazardous substance, according to authorities.
The plane, Flight 1267, which had taken off for Dallas a short time earlier, was diverted back to the airport, authorities said. One passenger was taken from the plane for questioning.
Authorities evacuated and searched the plane, found no explosives and later determined the initial call appeared to be a prank being played on the passenger, who was in his 20s.
"There was no emergency. There was a threat, but that threat was unfounded," Philadelphia Police Inspector Joe Sullivan told a news conference.
"That flight was never in any danger. And I just want to stress right now that the male that was briefly taken in for investigation has committed no crime... This is an ongoing investigation, but at this time all indications are that this was a hoax."
He added, "a pretty nasty trick was played on a passenger.""
Ok, yes this was a terrible joke, but suppose there was a connection between the two stories.  Suppose the killings in the Alps actually prevented a terrorist event from happening on Flight 1267.  Of course this is ridiculous, but when one story reports a crime with collateral victims of an unidentified crime, and the other story reports a hoax or a prank being played, its hard not to stop and think about it.
Yes, I think I should stop reading those mystery stories late at night...
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On to my next, non-essential item to discuss:
Just found this, and will likely add it to my bag of conspiracies.
111,111,111 * 111,111,111 = 123,456,789,876,543
Hmmm... curious that there are 9 1s and the product counts up to 9 then down to 3, which is of course a multiple of 9.
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Also, If you ever wondered why or think that your growth has been stunted for some reason a recent reporting from "those researchers" has proof that you grow by about 8mm (O.3in) every night when you are asleep, but shrink to your former height the following day.  

Tuesday, September 4, 2012


Notes and Links from a lazy day surfing yesterday

Yesterday I downloaded Google Currents to my tablet and starting getting caught up on all the news and interesting things that people are thinking about.  Before I knew it three hours had gone by and I had forgotten to eat breakfast.  Currents is a collection of free online magazines and rss feeds. I was amazed at how many magazines were available and how many I would likely read on a daily basis.  I added Fast Company, 500px, Smithsonian, Green Car Reports, and PRI to name just a few.  On top of all the magazine articles Currents also provides a customized top trending news stories listing (much like Google News).  I enjoyed getting lost in my new stack of magazines and newspapers and about 1 hr in I started to take notes of other things I wanted to look up or people I wanted to reach out to.  Here is a snipet of my notes.

  • Learn from Anytime Fitness how to be an enlightened company where the people that work there "love their job".  Are You a Level 5 Company
  • What is Gecko from Mozilla and why would I put it on my phone?  
  • What are the top 10 Electric Vehicle cities in the US based on count of charging stations in total (data of DoE).  Out of the totle 4364 stations here is the top 10 cities.
    1. Chicago (92)
    2. Portland (80)
    3. LA (75)
    4. Orlando (75)
    5. Austin (73)
    6. Houston (65)
    7. SF (64)
    8. Seattle (62)
    9. Honolulu (59)
    10. NYC (57)
  • Send my friend Paul an email regarding the articles that quoted him in the Green Car Reports magazine- Nice job Paul!
  • Look up the difference between Google BigQuery and HADOOP
  • Learn more about Nokia Maps and why they are being chosen over Google maps.  Also what about UpNext, a mapping company that recently was purchased by Amazon
  • Share the info on the Java Zero Day flaw with friends at work.
  • How cool is OpenStreetMap... Can it be used to perform routing functions
  • 90% of top paid iOS apps have been hacked.... dont feel bad Apple, 100% of the top paid Android apps have been hacked.