PUNYWEAKLING

I’ve wanted to do this for a while. Today was a good day, lots of stuff in the bag!

Jordan VII re-issues and associated gear for a basketball game
MacBook Pro, 13″ & Power cable
Micro USB cable
Pay Through the Soul by Guzumo Comics
Galaxy Nexus
Recycled wallet made of truck tire inner tube (wozwaste.com)
Reading glasses and Marc Jacobs aviators
Griffin capacitive stylus
Random hotel pen
Notebook, the

This shit is next level.

For 2 or 3 days every February, if the weather is right, the sunset over Yosemite hits Horsetail Falls and sets it on fire.

Photo: E. Howe.

More:
Google Images
Flickr
YouTube

The Former Chicago Bulls player Bison Dele was an enigma.

The 6’11″, 260-pound Dele, however, never showed a sustained passion for basketball. He was sidelined for most of his 1992-93 season with the Orlando Magic with clinical depression, swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills on one occasion and crashing a car into a pole on another. Late in the 1996-97 season he joined the Chicago Bulls and helped them win an NBA title, the only time, his friends say, that he was happy in the league. He signed as a free agent with the Pistons, but after two solid seasons in Detroit, where Dele tried to escape the winter doldrums by snorkeling in his wall-sized home aquarium, he suddenly quit the sport.

He went missing in the South Pacific in 2002.

In July 2002, Dele and his girlfriend, Serena Karlan, sailed on the South Pacific Ocean along with skipper Bertrand Saldo on Dele’s catamaran, the Hakuna Matata. Dele’s brother, Miles Dabord (born Kevin Williams), was the only person involved in the voyage who was seen or heard from after July 8, when the party was in Tahiti. On July 20, Dabord was by himself when he brought the boat into Tahiti.

* Bison Dele – Wikipedia
* The Mysterious Case of Bison Dele – Sports Illustrated

Warren Ellis espousing what is completely missing in 99.9% of consumer facing businesses in the world today:

Isn’t it strange, to be so shocked by actual efficient, friendly and delightful customer service? To have a global electronics company say, “well, hell, we’re sorry about this, how about we sort this out quickly and cheaply for you instead of humping you right in the eyesockets and stealing your wallet?”

Do you know what’s more important than this quarter’s results? What you did 12, 18 or 24 months ago to ensure your results this quarter.

And do you know what else is more important than this quarter’s results? What you did this quarter to ensure your results 12, 18 or 24 months from now.

The customer experience is everything. Treat them right and they’ll never buy from anyone else.

Via: Android and Me

When consumers were asked if they’d “like to carry one device that included a real writing experience,” Samsung gathered that over 70% would.

Both genders responded that a device with handwriting-type functionality would help to lighten their load.

Sorry people, but this is fucking MENTAL. It’s a prime example of users not knowing what they really want.

Handwriting does ABSOLUTELY NOT solve the input riddle on mobile devices. It’s slower and more clunky than a good virtual keyboard (which, while improving, are still less than ideal).

While great stylus input would be excellent in several use-cases, to say it would “lighten the load” is patently insane.

(An aside: the Note looks like a great device, but enough with the bullshit surveys).

In June 2011 Google rolled out +1 buttons: cute little web buttons that you click if you like/agree with/value the content.

I remember reading an opinion piece from MG Siegler 10 days later entitled “The +1 Button Is Like A Button You Push For A Treat — Without The Treat”.

From the piece:

I can’t help but get the feeling that it’s a bit like a cruel experiment we’re running. We put up a button, you click on it because it’s there, expecting you’ll get a treat. But there is no treat.

At the time I could tell he was monumentally missing the point. I wrote:

+1 buttons [have] an advantage over web-wide Facebook Like buttons: +1′s from your friends show in Google search results. As well as assisting Google in “ranking” useful content, the real benefit of +1 buttons is slow-burn.

My point was that the “treat” MG was missing would become evident over time.

It’s six months later so let’s take a look.

Here’s a crop of the first page of Google results for street art:

I can tell at a glance that two of my connections have shared links from the results – these immediately have more value for me. Not only can I see that Dave shared the Wikipedia link for Exit Through the Gift Shop, I can click through to see the post and read what he wrote at the time.

It’s been 6 months and already I have +1′s and shares showing on about half the Google searches I make. Over time these results will only be more valuable, and eventually they’ll spread to other Google properties too, like items in Reader and results in YouTube, and it’s already on Android Market.

What’s been missing in search is relevant context when it matters. It’s more valuable to me to know what a social connection thinks about street art today when it’s what I’m searching for, regardless of when it might have been posted.

There’s the treat.

Watch my mate, Stan, record the drum track for this 8 minute song by The New Caledonia live in one take!

Click to image to view the full set!

The fascinating case of a dead body and attempts to identify him and determine the cause of death. Was he a soviet spy?

The Taman Shud Case, also known as the “Mystery of the Somerton Man”, is an unsolved case revolving around an unidentified man found dead at 6:30 a.m., 1 December 1948, on Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia.

Considered “one of Australia’s most profound mysteries”, the case has been the subject of intense speculation over the years regarding the identity of the victim, the events leading up to his death and the cause of death. Public interest in the case remains significant due to a number of factors, the death occurring at a time of heightened tensions during the Cold War, the use of an undetectable poison, lack of identification, the possibility of unrequited love and the involvement of a secret code in a very rare book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case