Alexander Becker Shares

The Spider Awards: Wired.com’s Arachnid Hall of Fame

2009-11-10T01:11:59Z

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We admit it. Spiders have become an obsession at Wired Science. It started in September when we reported on a spider-milking machine that was built to extract silk from a million golden orb-weavers, two dozen at a time, to make a 44-square foot cloth. After that, we were hooked, and we’ve found ourselves writing about an inordinate number of arachnids, and googling plenty more. But, really, who could blame us?

We wanted to share the fruits of this spider frenzy with you, so we’ve created a Hall of Fame for our eight-legged friends. Who’s the biggest, meanest or most stuck-up spider around? Read on to find out, but be forewarned: Some of these photos are guaranteed to give you the heebie-jeebies.

Largest Spider
The award for the most astronomically sized arachnid goes to the Goliath Bird-eating Tarantula (Theraphosa blondi), who lives in the rain forests of northern South America and grows up to a whopping 12 inches across, including legs. Females can live up to 25 years and can weigh nearly a half a pound.

Although this giant is called the Bird-eater, named by Victorian explorers who witnessed the spider devouring a hummingbird, the tarantula doesn’t have particular preference for birds. Like other spiders, the Goliath’s favorite foods are small insects such as crickets and beetles. However, he’s also an opportunistic eater: When faced with a delectable reptile, bird or small mammal, what’s a hungry spider to do? Apparently, the Goliath will gobble up just about anything that’s smaller than itself.

Image: Flickr/snakecollector

The Berlin Wall, 20 years gone - The Big Picture - Boston.com

2009-11-11T12:46:20Z

Twenty years ago, on the night of November 9, 1989, following weeks of pro-democracy protests, East German authorities suddenly opened their border to West Germany. After 28 years as prisoners of their own country, euphoric East Germans streamed to checkpoints and rushed past bewildered guards, many falling tearfully into the arms of West Germans welcoming them on the other side. Thousands of Germans and world leaders gathered in Berlin yesterday to celebrate the "Mauerfall" - the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and German reunification - and to remember the approximately 100-200 who died attempting to cross the border over the years. Collected here are photographs both historic and recent, from the fall of the Berlin Wall. Be sure to pause on photos 12 - 15, and click them to see a fade effect from before to after. (38 photos total)

Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal

2009-11-11T12:43:42Z

The original Mandelbrot is an amazing object that has captured the public's imagination for 30 years with its cascading patterns and hypnotically colourful detail. It's known as a 'fractal' - a type of shape that yields (sometimes elaborate) detail forever, no matter how far you 'zoom' into it (think of the trunk of a tree sprouting branches, which in turn split off into smaller branches, which themselves yield twigs etc.).

It's found by following a relatively simple math formula. But in the end, it's still only 2D and flat - there's no depth, shadows, perspective, or light sourcing. What we have featured in this article is a potential 3D version of the same fractal. For the impatient, you can skip to the nice pics, but the below makes an interesting read (with a little math as well for the curious).

The Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge

2009-11-09T22:38:48Z

Like the Hoover Dam wasn’t enough of a difficult project to built. These pictures are amazing and give you a great perspective of the size of this project. Hats off to the construction crews who often risk their lives to build these structures.

Via LikeCOOL

The Torres House

2009-11-09T23:00:57Z

Via Thecontemporist

NYC Flagship Store 2nd Anniversary

2009-11-10T20:23:16Z

To celebrate the NYC Flagship store’s 2nd Anniversary we plan on releasing a limited edition t-shirt. We will unveil the final design in the coming days but the shirt will be released on November 27th. Sk8thg definitely had some fun on this design.

Crazy creative ads in XL size - Holy Kaw!

2009-11-11T11:54:35Z

Advertising comes in all shapes and sizes, occasionally showing up in a size so large, it nearly swallows up an entire building. Take a gander at some of the most clever advertising campaigns using buildings and try to think up ways to makeover that boring aluminum siding on your house to make it the coolest duplex on the street.

Fifty states of Street View

2009-11-10T01:10:00Z

In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state admitted to the union. Today, 50 years later, we're including Hawaii as the 50th state in Street View on Google Maps. With our imagery of Oahu and Maui, you can now take a virtual vacation to white sandy beaches, revisit special places from your honeymoon, or plan your next getaway. We've worked with the Hawaii Visitors and Conventions Bureau to create collections in our new Street View Gallery featuring Hawaii's best beaches and hometown favorites of President Obama.

Being born and raised on Oahu, I like to think we saved the best for last. I'll get you started with a tour around some of my favorite places from home.

Waimea Bay is famous for 30-foot winter waves. In the summer, as you can see in Street View, it transforms into a calm bay for snorkeling and swimming:

View Larger Map

If you're a history buff, you can also visit Iolani Palace, a national historic landmark that was the official residence of the Hawaiian Kingdom’s last two monarchs:

View Larger Map

This is just a small taste of all the beautiful sights in the Aloha State. Check out the gallery to see even more stunning high-resolution imagery. And now that we have imagery from all 50 states in the U.S., we've created tours of the 50 state capitol buildings for the gallery.

One of the great things about Street View is that it lets you virtually wander the streets of a diverse range of cities around the world, whether you want to gaze up at the Tokyo Tower in Japan or explore ancient Roman ruins in Italy. In addition to expanding our coverage in the U.S., today we're also adding imagery from Mexico for the first time, covering Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel:

View Larger Map

As we keep working to bring Street View to new countries and cities across the globe, we want to hear directly from you about the places that you want to see featured in Street View next. A few weeks ago, we asked you to submit your nominations for places that you want our Street View trike to visit. We combed through more than 25,000 submissions and today we're unveiling the finalists. You can read more about the competition and the finalists on the Lat Long blog, and head to www.google.com/trike to cast your votes for the special locations we should add to Google Maps next.

Posted by Laura Melahn, Product Marketing Manager

10 most heinous hoaxes on the Net - PC World- msnbc.com

2009-11-11T08:44:30Z

Most online hoaxes are mildly annoying, and a few are hilarious.

Twice the storage for a quarter of the price

2009-11-11T02:17:00Z

(Cross-posted from the Google Photos Blog)

People today have more personal data online than ever before. More and more people are starting to move the bulk of their data off the desktop and into servers "in the cloud," where it's accessible from any computer or mobile device and easily shareable with friends and family. At the same time, digital photo technology is making it easier and cheaper than ever to take a lot of pictures, and client software like Picasa 3.5 makes it easier than ever to move photos from your camera to the cloud. That's why we've always given you lots of free storage in products like Picasa Web Albums and Gmail, and why for the past two years we've offered additional storage you can purchase if you need even more space.

While the cost of hard drive storage has continued to drop in these two years, we've also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce your costs even further. Today we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage even more affordable. You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year — that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera. Since most people have less than 10 GB of photos, chances are you can now save all your memories online for a year for the cost of a triple mocha. If you need more than 20 GB, plans range all the way up to 16 TB, which is enough room for 8 million full resolution photos! And Google paid storage offers an extra level of security, protection and accessibility that you can't get with an external drive — at a similar cost per gigabyte.

As always, extra storage acts as an overflow that you only start using when you reach the limit of your free storage, and people who have extra storage will be automatically upgraded. So if you need more space for thousands of photos of your toddler, or if you're running out of room in your overflowing inbox, visit www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage to see all the plans and to buy more storage.

Posted by Elvin Lee, Software Engineer

UTILITY PORN

2009-11-10T08:01:00Z

Any one of these three vehicles could slide right into my garage if I had my way... Perfect for the surf gear and a road trip... Got my eye out for that next whip... SS

10 Extraordinary Child Prodigies - Oddee.com

2009-11-09T12:44:49Z

Shared by Alexander Becker
... take a look at the differences between the 10.

tompeters! management consulting leadership training development project management

2009-11-09T12:41:38Z

Good customer service can help differentiate you only if it is a gateway to building relationships with customers. Customer relationships differentiate you from the competition in a way that customer service (or products) never can.

Aim high ... beyond customer service.

Escape the City » Blog Archive » 52 great (borrowed) bits of advice for any start-up

2009-11-09T12:37:26Z

The heart of any start-up is your customer, not your ‘cool idea’

Stay focused on your mission

Enter the ‘experience economy’ by providing “customised service with showmanship“

Engage with your customers on your blog through 1) entertainment, 2) education, 3) escapism, 4) aesthetic appeal

Businesses sell experiences when services are personal, enjoyable, and memorable

A network of 25 people can account for 33 million possible connections (Reed’s Law)

Businesses should give customers what they want… fulfill their passion

Test, Test, Test – find out what content attracts / repels your audience

Recruit people who are waiting to hear from you rather than converting people who aren’t

Be hyper-selective and only filter for customers that add value

The only way to spread the word about an idea is for that idea to earn the buzz by being remarkable

Make it easy for people to send you their problems / worries / challenges

Work out whether you want to build a channel or a community (i.e. who dictates the content?)

Competition can be scary but it helps to validate the market

Work only on things you can genuinely add value to (outsource the rest)

Assume that the viewer has the attention-span of an espresso-crazed fruit fly

Find a word or a phrase that you can own in Google

Do you want customers or members? The web likes businesses that have members

Show don’t tell. Sell the dream.

Be bigger than you really are

Create a compelling story and be remarkable

Find some peers and push each other

Inspire, Educate, Entertain

Solidly address the concerns and problems of your target audience

Links are the currency of the internet – Link to your brand

Have top-notch content

Market based on your customer’s need to buy

Create credible, original content in as many forms as possible

Provide valuable, timely information

Custom-tailor your service to your users’ preferences

Be easy to read, interactive, well-organised, fill a niche, dominate a subject

Use an appropriate and memorable metaphor

Start. Start small. But start.

‘Someday’ is a disease

By spreading ideas that help others you get credit and people get the help that they need

Use customer service as an opportunity, not a cost centre

The future of business is social

Build informal armies, get your soldiers to internalise your goals and your efforts

Transparency is a business model

Organising information to make it more accessible to other people is a business model

Worry about users not money – because on the web money follows consumers

Think of yourself as a means, not an end

Living your business in public is a matter of enlightened self-interest

Customer service is the new marketing

Don’t build a community – build a platform for a community that already exists to interact

Small is the new big

The cost of independence has dropped

Ignore everybody

Invent your own business model

Google is not an enemy, Google is a model

Life is too short not to have an ‘evil plan’

Got a dream? Live it…

Inside one of the world's largest data centers | Beyond Binary - CNET News

2009-11-09T12:36:32Z

CHICAGO--On the outside, Microsoft's massive new data center resembles the other buildings in the industrial area.

Even the inside of the building doesn't look like that much. The ground floor looks like a large indoor parking lot filled with a few parked trailers.

It's what's inside those trailers, though, that is the key to Microsoft's cloud-computing efforts. Each of the shipping containers in the Chicago data center houses anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers, each of which can be serving up e-mail, managing instant messages, or running applications for Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud-based operating system--Windows Azure.

Dark Roasted Blend: World's Strangest Theme Parks

2009-11-09T12:35:39Z

Referral Friday: Bowls of fire, buckets of ire | communicatrix

2009-11-09T12:35:21Z

I’d dipped into the work and writing of artist John T. Unger years ago, when I first started blogging.

An inventive and talented artist with a generous spirit, Unger not only makes a good living by using the web, he shares his knowledge and experiences out loud on his blog for the benefit of other people on the same path. What’s more, he does it with as much style, humor and care as he seems to put into his art; I’m a sucker for any fine artist who can also write his ass off.

Photoshop For Android

2009-11-09T12:34:31Z

Yes, I admit that I was jealous when Adobe released their mobile Photoshop version for the iPhone last month. But now I’m happy again, because Adobe just released an Android version.

The application is only available in the US Android market at the moment, but that should change shortly. Together with a Photoshop.com account this application brings a good and easy way for some easy photo editing and backing up your photos to your Photoshop.com space.

[NEWSFLASH] HOLD MY TRAINER!

2009-11-07T13:00:00Z

Need a new storage idea for that holy grail? Check out Hold My Trainers display hands from UK designer Jo Cope. A simplistic yet quirky idea, Hold My Trainers can be mounted up on any wall to create the look and feel of a sneaker store, right in the heart of your own home. With the festive season upon us, make sure these finger lickin' frames are on your wish list! Cop yours here

Four short links: 6 November 2009

2009-11-06T11:00:00Z

Red Laser -- "impossibly accurate barcode scanning". Uses Google Product Search to identify products that you scan using the camera on the phone. I remember Rael and I talking to Jeff Bezos about this years ago, before camphones had the resolution to decode barcodes. The future is here and it's $1.99 on the App Store ... (via Ed Corkery on Twitter)
The Art of Community For Free Download -- Jono Bacon's O'Reilly book on community management now available for free download (still available for purchase!).
Gov Hack -- Australian government ran a hack day with their open data, this is their writeup.
Android Mythbusters -- slides for talk by Matt Porter at Embedded Linux Conference Europe. A (long) catalogue of the kludges in Android.