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At first glance, thought the title of this book was The Impossible Dead Ian Rankin. This is why cover design is so important.

tehawesome:

“Hey guys, remember in 2006 when MySpace let you set your background image to any old ugly shit so it was harder to read everything? Let’s bring that back LOL.”

-Google, apparently

Marge: [gasps] Homer! You’ve got it set on “whore”.

…

Lisa: Dad, women won’t like being shot in the face.

Homer: Women will like what I tell them to like!

A well articulated article in Slate points out why Google+ has lost its chance to compete with Facebook

Google+ has lost its chance to compete with Facebook:

That launch-first, fix-it-later strategy has worked marvelously for Google in the past. Gmail didn’t match all of Microsoft Outlook’s features from the beginning—it didn’t even have a delete button—but the stuff it did have (lots of storage and fast search) was so compelling that people were willing to stick with it until it became the best email program in existence. In the same way, I switched to Chrome because it was faster than any other browser I’ve ever used—and I stuck with it even though it lacked add-ons or the ability to bookmark many tabs at once. (It has since added those features.)

But a social network isn’t a product; it’s a place. Like a bar or a club, a social network needs a critical mass of people to be successful—the more people it attracts, the more people it attracts. Google couldn’t have possibly built every one of Facebook’s features into its new service when it launched, but to make up for its deficits, it ought to have let users experiment more freely with the site. That freewheeling attitude is precisely how Twitter—the only other social network to successfully take on Facebook in the last few years—got so big. When Twitter users invented ways to reply to one another or echo other people’s tweets, the service didn’t stop them—it embraced and extended their creativity. This attitude marked Twitter as a place whose hosts appreciated its users, and that attitude—and all the fun people were having—pushed people to stick with the site despite its many flaws (Twitter’s frequent downtime, for example). Google+, by contrast, never managed to translate its initial surge into lasting enthusiasm. And for that reason, it’s surely doomed.

“These amazing photos were taken by the Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, which seeks to relocate rhinos to less-populated parts of South Africa. They move the animals via helicopter airlift, a new, more humane transportation technique which is much faster, allowing the rhinos to remain anesthetized for a shorter period of time. The effect is breathtaking and odd — something straight out of a Terry Gilliam movie.”

Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung Galaxy Note series - Wikipedia

Note from 2022 Rachel: I got this phone like six months later and I hated it so much. Also WHAT was the Dell Streak??

—

Oh my God I want this phone so much (in spite of the stylus). It’s exactly what I’ve been talking about wanting in a phone for like two years (since the Dell Streak looked promising and then flopped).

“If you want a huge, high-resolution and fantastically crisp and contrast-rich screen, the Samsung Galaxy Note is undoubtedly the best device in its class. It’s also great if you like the attention of strangers, many of them geeky. And if performance is paramount and you feel a tablet is insufficiently portable, you’re going to love the Note.” -TechCentral