Archive of August 2009
Wired has published an in-depth article about Craigslist that exposes the peculiar personality of the site, and its founder. I have never been a fan of Craigslist — its usability is terrible. The Craiglist management has a somewhat hypocritical stance. Supposedly, the site is simple because business growth isn’t a priority; it’s all about the users. Yet those same users (or potential ones) complain about how backwards the site is, with extremely poor technology running it. Worst yet, Craigslist actively discourages innovation by not offering any kind of API to external clients. Hopefully, just as newspaper classifieds were defated by newer media, Craiglist will eventually fall to companies willing to innovate.
(Via Merlin Mann)
Sorting algorithms (like Quicksort) are frequently represented visually, but they can also be represented musically. Through guitars and drums, a UCLA grad student has created auditory demonstrations of sorting algorithms. Showing what sorting algorithms sound like would be an excellent opener for a lesson. These demonstrations connect an abstract concept to something we can hear, making it far easier to grasp.
Are you a boodle? (That would be a stupid noodle.) Perhaps prothodaw more fittingly describes you as a prime simpleton, a noodle of the first rank.
The Oxford English Dictionary contains many of these amusing archaic definitions, including murinoid: resembling the mouse or its allies. Sadly, with the online revision begun in 2000, these definitions are going the way of the Dodo. In a recent column for the New York Times, Ammon Shea morns their loss and highlights some of the more humorous specimens. An excellent read for a lazy weekend.
A survey by RBC Capital and ChangeWave Research found that 99% of iPhone 3GS customers are satisfied with their phone. Of them, 82% are very satisfied. These numbers are simply astounding; only 1% of iPhone 3GS are dissatisfied. This shows just what kind of force Palm and Android are up against. Palm’s numbers — with 45% very satisfied with their Pre — are excellent, but pale in comparison to Apple’s astronomical customer satisfaction.
(Via Daring Fireball)
George Orwell posited that thought could be controlled and manipulated through the language we speak (in his case, Newspeak). Many other philosophers and scientists have pondered this question, while most politicians simply accept it as fact and use it to their advantage. However, there has been a disturbing lack of empirical evidence for this phenomena. A psychologist at Stanford has conducted a study showing that the gender of nouns in a language influence our perceptions of that noun. The French, who use the masculine pont for bridges, generally highlight their elements of power and strength, while Germans (who use the feminine Brücke) describe bridges as elegant and airy. You can see the bridge for yourself at NPR and see which set of adjectives matches your perceptions. Does this make English more neutral and accurate, since it largely lacks gender?
Via the excellent linguistic twit ThatWhichMatter.