Warston Links

Could These Start-Ups Become the Next Big Thing?

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:04:10 +0100

Could These Start-Ups Become the Next Big Thing?:

NYT reporters and readers are trying to find the next Instagram. Airtime, Path, Quora, Square and Dropbox are on the list.

Filmmaking tips from Martin Scorsese: Get in the taxi with...

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:02:49 +0100

Filmmaking tips from Martin Scorsese:

Get in the taxi with Robert De Niro driving. Take a ride-along on an ambulance. Have the experiences that will help make your story sing.

Or, more simply: how to shoot an ambulance scene in New-York

"It is now well accepted that too much sitting is unhealthy. Studies in the last few years have found..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:53:00 +0100

“

It is now well accepted that too much sitting is unhealthy. Studies in the last few years have found that death risks rise when people watch spend more leisure time in front of a computer screen or TV or simply sit too much.

Its most striking finding was that people who sat more than 11 hours a day had a 40% higher risk of dying in the next three years than people who sat less than four hours a day. This was after adjusting for factors such as age, weight, physical activity and general health status, all of which affect the death risk. It also found a clear dose-response effect: the more people sat, the higher their risk of death.

”

- Confirmed: He Who Sits the Most Dies the Soonest by The Atlantic.

"Of the many and conflicting stories about how The Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:02:02 +0100

“Of the many and conflicting stories about how The Huffington Post came to be—how it boasts 68 sections, three international editions (with more to come), 1.2 billion monthly page views and 54 million comments in the past year alone, how it came to surpass the traffic of virtually all the nation’s established news organizations and amass content so voluminous that a visit to the website feels like a trip to a mall where the exits are impossible to locate—the earliest and arguably most telling begins with a lunch in March 2003 at which the idea of an online newspaper filled with celebrity bloggers and virally disseminated aggregated content did not come up.”

- Extremely long and thorough article by the Columbia Journalism Review. Gives good resource to understand what’s up with The Huffington Post

How The Huffington Post ate the Internet

"When at work in one of the most sensitive secretive organisations, Gareth Williams was a maths..."

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:03:05 +0100

“When at work in one of the most sensitive secretive organisations, Gareth Williams was a maths genius carrying out “world class” work for the intelligence services.
But at home he had a penchant for womens’ clothing, dancing naked in leather boots and visiting bondage websites.
Over the course of an eight day inquest in to his bizarre death an extraordinary picture of this seemingly unassuming, quiet man emerged.
A devoted son and brother, the 31-year-old codebreaker appeared to have a bright future ahead of him until his untimely and very strange demise.”

- The perfect murder?

Skate video, nice angles.

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:44:00 +0100

Skate video, nice angles.

Stats: Facebook Made $9.51 in Ad Revenue Per User Last Year In The U.S. and Canada

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:04:25 +0100

Stats: Facebook Made $9.51 in Ad Revenue Per User Last Year In The U.S. and Canada:

It shows that Facebook made about $9.51 in advertising revenue per user in the U.S. and Canada. Europe was about half that much with $4.86 in ad revenue per user. Asia and the rest of the world follow that at $1.79 and $1.42 per user. What this shows is the revenue trajectory that other more economically developed markets like Western Europe and Japan could get to if Facebook successfully grows there or convinces more regional brand advertisers to come on board.

But these revenues are also affected by seasonal and macroeconomic trends. The average price per ad in Europe actually declined in the first quarter from the holiday season because the weak economy there, according to Facebook’s most recent IPO filing.

Photo

Sun, 13 May 2012 17:01:27 +0100

"Presidential popularity hinges primarily on several factors. There is, for many presidents, an..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 13:52:49 +0100

“

Presidential popularity hinges primarily on several factors. There is, for many presidents, an inexorable decline in popularity that comes with time. The longer a president is in office, the less popular he is. Popularity is also affected, positively or negatively, by salient events like scandals, wars and foreign policy crises. Finally, and most important, there is the economy.

We also allow the effects of the economic indicators to depend on how long the president has served, assuming that presidents might not be credited or blamed for the economy they inherit when taking office, but would be later in their tenure. We can use this model to predict Mr. Obama’s approval from 2009 through 2011. The question we can then answer is this: Based on the historical relationship between presidential approval and the economy as well as these other factors, is Mr. Obama more or less popular than the model would predict, given the economy and other circumstances during his first three years in office? Here is a graph depicting Mr. Obama’s actual approval and expected approval:

”

-

Is Obama More Popular Than He Should Be? - NYTimes.com

"En juillet 1518, une épidémie de danse toucha près de 400 personnes à Strasbourg. La 1ère fut une..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 11:03:34 +0100

“En juillet 1518, une épidémie de danse toucha près de 400 personnes à Strasbourg. La 1ère fut une femme du nom de Frau Troffea, suivie par des dizaines de personnes qui se mirent à danser sans raison apparente, jusqu’à l’épuisement ou la mort”

- Useful knowledge.

Savoir-Inutile.com

Alberst Einstein Flash Drive

Sat, 12 May 2012 17:02:51 +0100

Alberst Einstein Flash Drive

The bat-stache.

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:47:32 +0100

The bat-stache.

explore-blog: Characters you need for an epic tale by Tom...

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:47:45 +0100

explore-blog:

Characters you need for an epic tale by Tom Gauld, who brought us the wonderful Both.

"Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents, still the record. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:52:47 +0100

“Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents, still the record. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months. Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when he was sick or exhausted. Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music. Einstein is best known for his paper on relativity, but he published 248 other papers. T. S. Elliot’s numerous drafts of “The Waste Land” constitute a jumble of good and bad passages that eventually was turned into a masterpiece.”

- Briefly:

Recognizing the common thinking strategies of creative geniuses and applying them will make you more creative in your work and personal life. Creative geniuses are geniuses because they know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think.

How Geniuses Think by The Creativity Post

beirutloves: BEIRUTLOVES 50 days left!!! See you on the 29th of...

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:01:00 +0100

beirutloves:

BEIRUTLOVES 50 days left!!!

See you on the 29th of June 2012

Mona Lisa as a data plot.

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:01:04 +0100

Mona Lisa as a data plot.

The world's 50 best restaurants

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:01:28 +0100

The world's 50 best restaurants:

A recent ranking. Top 10:

1. Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark
2. El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain
3. Mugaritz, San Sebastián, Spain
4. D.O.M, Sao Paulo, Brazil
5. Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy
6. Per Se, New York, USA
7. Alinia, Chicago, USA
8. Arzak, San Sebastián, Spain
9. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London, UK
10. Eleven Madison Park, New York, USA

And France you ask?

12. L’Atelier Saint-Germain de Joël Robuchon, Paris, France.

Stanford’s Carol S. Dweck on how the two different mindsets,...

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:59:53 +0100

Stanford’s Carol S. Dweck on how the two different mindsets, Fixed and Growth, pave different pathways to success and lead to a deterministic view of the world or a greater sense of free will, respectively

Unfortunately, I think most of us will recognise themselves with the fixed mindset.

"Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections...."

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:49:48 +0100

“Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered François Hollande as a figure of menace. He is “rather dangerous,” declared The Economist, which observed that he “genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society.” Quelle horreur!”

- A rational and courageous take on the current economic problems in Europe.

Those Revolting Europeans by Paul Krugman for the NYT.

Reconfigured sheet music. See also reconfigured cassette tape...

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:02:15 +0100

Reconfigured sheet music. See also reconfigured cassette tape and old film.