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Sony LCD 3DTV Gets Disappointing First Look

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5561454/sony-lcd-3dtv-gets-disappointing-first-look

Sony LCD 3DTV Gets Disappointing First LookGary Merson at HD Guru has seen Sony’s new KDL-55HX800 LCD 3DTV live and in person. His first take? Even a slight tilt of the head makes you see double and lose the 3D effect. Uh oh.

Merson found a whole range of things to be troubled about in his time with the Sony: double-vision, color shift, relatively shallow depth. But the main issue—as Mark reported at this year’s CES—is that LCD and OLED screens just aren’t up to 3D. At least not in the way that plasma displays clearly are.

It’s also worth mentioning that the HX800 Merson viewed is actually the lowest end 3D model Sony offers, and in fact is technically a “3D-ready” set, meaning that it uses a separate sync transmitter instead of the integrated 3D functionality of the LX900 series. We won’t know how big, if any, a difference that makes until we’re able to compare the two side by side. But for now, the early returns suggest that plasma’s still the early king of 3D technology. [HD Guru]

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Sunday, June 13th, 2010 news No Comments

Google’s New Indexing System Is Fully Caffeinated

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5559015/googles-new-indexing-system-is-fully-caffeinated

Google's New Indexing System Is Fully CaffeinatedGoogle’s latest web indexing system, the tool that pre-scans the entire web to have a ready answer to your search query, promises “50 percent fresher results for web searches.” It’s called Caffeine. And it comes with staggering Google search stats.

The main difference with Caffeine is that, rather than search one entire group of sites (represented in that lead graphic as a layer), then another, less prioritized group of sites, then yet another less prioritized group of sites, everything with the Caffeine algorithm is pretty much indexed constantly. Teased for several months now, Caffeine is the sort of update Google needs to follow the pace of searching services like Twitter. And indeed, Google will need to maintain/continue such innovations to keep up—our world is translated from analog to digital in more, quicker ways every day.

So now for those wicked Google stats:

• Every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel.
• If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second
• Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database
• Caffeine adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.
• You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information
• If these iPods were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

[Google]

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Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment

JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet Pass – how viral can be manufactured (easily)

http://bit.ly/13sF7E

landing 780 allyoucanjet JetBlue All You Can Jet Pass   how viral can be manufactured (easily)

Enjoy unlimited travel with our All-You-Can-Jet Pass! For just $599* you can take JetBlue anywhere you like, as often as you like, from September 8 to October 8, 2009. Use your All-You-Can-Jet Pass for business, for pleasure, to visit your favorite cities or to meet with a client. You might as well just do it all! With more than 50 cities to choose from, and for just $599, it’s a deal you can’t pass up.

About the Pass

  • $599 for a month of unlimited travel, any available seat
    • Domestic taxes and fees included
    • International and Puerto Rico taxes and fees not included
  • On sale through Friday, August 21, 2009, or while supplies last
  • Travel Dates: Tuesday, September 8, 2009 through Thursday, October 8, 2009
  • Each flight must be booked no later than 11:59 p.m. MDT three days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure.
  • Nonrefundable/nontransferable/no name changes permitted
  • Customers who already have a flight booked during the pass travel period can pay the difference to upgrade to the pass by calling 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583), prompt 4.
  • Each All-You-Can-Jet Pass is eligible for 35 TrueBlue points. Flights booked on the pass are not available for additional TrueBlue points.

To purchase an All-You-Can-Jet Pass:

Call 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583), option 4. You do not have to be a TrueBlue member at the time of purchase, but a TrueBlue number is required to book all flights.To join TrueBlue, click here; it’s free.

To book flights with your All-You-Can-Jet Pass:

  • Before calling to reserve your flight, please visit jetblue.com to check availability and select flight times.
  • Call 1-800-JETBLUE (538-2583), prompt 4.
  • Provide your pass number which is your original reservation number.
  • Provide your TrueBlue number.
  • You may only book one flight per city per day; if a violation of this policy is found, JetBlue will honor only the last booking made and cancel the customer’s other bookings from that city on that day.
  • Each flight must be booked no later than 11:59 p.m. MDT three days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure.
  • You can change/cancel flights for no fee with three (3) or more days notice; changes or cancellations to flight bookings made after 11:59 p.m. MDT three days prior to the flight’s scheduled departure will be charged standard JetBlue change/cancel fees.

To change or cancel All-You-Can-Jet Pass travel:

  • Greater than three (3) days before a flight: $0 change/cancellation fees
  • Less than three (3) days before a flight: JetBlue’s standard change/cancel fees apply

In the case of a no-show, the customer’s pass will be placed on hold, any reserved pass flights will be canceled, and no new flight segments wil be able to be booked until the customer pays a $100 no-show penalty.

*Other important restrictions apply. For complete details, please read the Full Terms and Conditions.

18,000+ clicks in 4 hours

jetblue all you can jet JetBlue All You Can Jet Pass   how viral can be manufactured (easily)

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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 Uncategorized 1 Comment

Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising

Taking the top box office results for each of 52 weekends from the past 10 complete years (1998 – 2008; Source: IMDB.com) we see consistently that occasions like Valentines, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Thanksgiving show increased movie going activity. People have more time during these holidays to go to the movies and Valentines is a date+movie occasion. Also, during the summer, many people go to the movie theatre to escape the heat so there is an overall hump every year during the summer months — from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

movie box office 2 Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising


People go out during Valentines, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Thanksgiving. And they still spend what they planned to spend — 2 tickets for movie — they didn’t buy 2 more tickets and see a second movie on the same date or holiday weekend.  If they had several good movies to choose from (often, they don’t), they would choose to spend the finite dollars on the one movie they really wanted to see. The overall movie spending “pie” did not increase much, if any, year over year.

1998 $4,055,194,733 n/a

1999 $4,253,601,768 5%

2000 $4,496,554,005 6%

2001 $5,003,433,737 11%

2002 $5,489,974,199 10%

2003 $5,581,797,720 2%

2004 $ 5,697,299,530 2%

2005 $ 5,524,566,579 -3%

2006 $ 5,660,826,625 +2%

2007 $ 5,968,027,963 +5%

2008 $ 5,887,193,490 -1%

The chart below shows a red line which is the average of all 10 years. The 10 thin blue lines are the annual lines from1998 – 2008, inclusive and these are plotted as actual dollars. They come out right on top of each other.

movie box office 2 overlay Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising

Movie advertising, which runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, has failed to noticeably increase the overall spending year-round or even during specific times. The chart below shows the differentials (difference between an annual line and the 10-yr average line). These all hover closely in the +$50M and -$50M band. The amplitude of the 10-yr average (red line) is larger than $50M in the summer hump — implying that the average change in movie ticket sales due to normal seasonality is larger than the change in amplitude caused by ALL movie advertising combined.

movie box 2 differentials Occasions and Holidays Drive Movie Box Office Sales, Not Advertising

And the summer “hump” is due to actual demand (people going out to movie theatres, some to escape the heat) not due to advertising. The only effect of advertising is to share-shift from one movie to another — the total spending remains consistent and even seasonal variations are consistent — a “zero-sum game.”


All-Time USA Box office

Source: IMDB.com

Rank Title USA Box Office
1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824
2. The Dark Knight (2008) $533,316,061
3. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
4. Shrek 2 (2004) $436,471,036
5. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
6. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace(1999) $431,065,444
7. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006) $423,032,628
8. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
9. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,262,555
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King(2003) $377,019,252
11. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
12. The Passion of the Christ (2004) $370,270,943
13. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) $367,614,540
14. Jurassic Park (1993) $356,784,000
15. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $340,478,898
16. Finding Nemo (2003) $339,714,367
17. Spider-Man 3 (2007) $336,530,303
18. Forrest Gump (1994) $329,691,196
19. The Lion King (1994) $328,423,001
20. Shrek the Third (2007) $320,706,665
21. Transformers (2007) $318,759,914
22. Iron Man (2008) $318,298,180
23. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) $317,557,891
24. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull(2008) $317,011,114
25. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring(2001) $313,837,577

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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Widget, gadget, app – what’s the difference?

no difference. they are all small “windows” in on specific information that users want — e.g. sports scores, news feeds, local weather, etc.  – that users install on pages that they own or control.  The difference is what the makers choose to call it.

Yahoo -widget

Google – gadget

Facebook – app

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Saturday, July 4th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments