“YouTube is shelling out $100 million to producers, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The money is an advance on advertising money the videos will bring in, and Google will recoup its portion first before splitting the proceeds. Advances are as high as $5 million per channel, said another person familiar with the arrangement, also speaking on condition of anonymity.”
“Facebook says its new server farm on the edge of the Arctic Circle — its first outside the U.S. — will improve performance for European users of the social networking site.
After reviewing potential sites across Europe, Facebook confirmed Thursday it had picked the northern Swedish city of Lulea for the data center partly because of the cold climate — crucial for keeping the servers cool — and access to renewable energy from nearby hydropower facilities.”
“Talk to any film-maker and they’ll say the same thing: Morris, who was born in 1948, is a revolutionary. His documentaries create reality as much as they capture it. He sees them as art, as essays, as anything but anthropology. Railing against cinéma vérité and its philosophy of “shaky camera equals truth”, he opts instead for dramatic reconstructions, obtrusive soundtracks, striking angles. He also invented and employs a machine called the Interrotron (its name a synthesis of “interview” and “terror”) that makes interviewees appear to be talking directly to the film viewer.
Tabloid, his new film, is as strange as any Morris has ever made. It’s the story of Joyce McKinney, a beauty queen and former Miss Wyoming who in 1977 hired a private aeroplane and with accomplices travelled to England to track down her boyfriend Kirk whom she believed had been abducted by the Mormon church. After kidnapping him, she whisked him off to a cottage in Devon where, depending on whose story you believe, she spent the next three days either raping him as he lay spread-eagled in bed or having a merry feast of “fun, food and sex”.”
“In a low-budget early effort to compete with satellite and cable TV providers, YouTube is set to announce Friday that it has partnered with several entities to roll out television-style channels with professionally produced shows that will strike a sharp contrast to the short videos of crazy cats, skateboard wipeouts and other amateur content that made the site famous. Read the rest of this entry »
A healthy heart is important to us all and especially key for people that have a heart attack. I’ve added emphasis to the following article. [HT Marta]
Calgary, AB –New research from the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine has found that patients who have experienced a heart attack are more likely to participate in, and complete a cardiac rehabilitation program when they have access to it within 14 days of hospital discharge. Cardiac rehabilitation is a series of educational and exercise components aimed at teaching participants how to live a healthier lifestyle, subsequently reducing risk factors for future heart related illness. Components include topics such as nutrition, physical fitness and mental wellness.
“The proven benefits of participation in cardiac rehabilitation are multi-faceted,” says Dr. James Stone, co-author of the study and member of the University’s Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta. “They include living longer, less-frequent hospital admissions, requiring fewer heart procedures and having better control of the risk factors that cause coronary artery disease.”
The study, published in this month’s issue of Canadian Journal of Cardiology, included a total of 469 patients, Read the rest of this entry »
The crux of my ideas came from a heated & insightful debate I read in National Post in Dec 2000 between Nobel economists Robert Mundell and Milton Friedman. The following are quotes from Friedman (emphasis added to original text used in my presentation),
“Bob and my disagreement about the euro is identical with our disagreement about Bretton Woods. The euro encompasses 11 politically independent countries, differing in culture, resources and economic development, and subject to divergent influences. There are bound to develop among them differences about appropriate monetary, fiscal and other policies. Flexible exchange rates offered a way of adjusting to such differences through the market without political conflict. The euro closes that possibility. Bob is confident that other adjustment mechanisms will rapidly develop—greater internal flexibility in prices, regulations, and the like. I hope he is right, but I fear he may not be. If he turns out not to be, the euro will generate more political conflict, not political unity. [...]
The members of the euro have accepted restrictions on their fiscal policy, but it remains to be seen whether they will be honored, and if they are not honored, whether the monetary community can enforce them. Those tests are yet to come.“
I doubt any of my classmates remember this but it is cool for me to look back and think that I picked an interesting and important topic to discuss even for a simple class presentation. Feel like patting myself on the back a little.
“Here’s to the crazy ones”,
a timeless Apple Computer advertisement that showcases
the core DNA of ideas Revolutionaries. We aspire to Think Different
This chapter now completes my knowledge of the back story re the creation of the Think Different campaign. For this alone is probably worth the price of the book for me as I’ve spent many hours (without success) to find out the info in this chapter.
To me, this excerpt in the Think Different chapter is very telling in Jobs’ thinking (emphasis added),
Jobs couldn’t decide whether to use the version with his voice or to stick with Dreyfuss. [...] When morning came, Jobs called and told them to use the Dreyfuss version. “If we use my voice, when people find out they will say it’s about me,” he told Clow. “It’s not. It’s about Apple.”
To me, this excerpt in the Design chapter is extremely telling (emphasis added),
They [Jobs and Ive] began to have lunch together regularly, and Jobs would end his day by dropping by Ive’s design studio for a chat. “Jony had a special status,” said Laurene Powell. “He would come by our house, and our families became close. Steve is never intentionally wounding to him. Most people in Steve’s life are replaceable. But not Jony.“
I admire Steve Jobs and have bought many Apple products over the years but I am not an Apple “fan boy”as I removed Apple from my list of admired companies last year.
But I still eagerly picked up a copy of Steve Jobs (biography) yesterday so that I can learn from it. I think Steve Jobs is an important book that it should be made required reading for all serious and self-respecting competitors of Apple. There are many good insights that entrepreneurs and business executives can learn from Apple and Jobs. It will be foolish to think we can replicate and copy Jobs but it will be stupid to not to try to understand, to learn, and may be to be inspired.
‘She [Laurene Powell, Steve Jobs' wife] is one of the smartest and most grounded people I have ever met. ‘There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” she told me early on. “You shouldn’t whitewash it. He’s good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I’d like to see that it’s all told truthfully.”‘ Read the rest of this entry »
Wiebo’s War is one of the best documentaries I have seen this year, I highly recommend it. The film is especially relevant to Albertans as we thought we know a lot about Wiebo Ludwig from TV news but David York’s Wiebo’s War, with intimate access to Wiebo and his family over two years, will show you a lot more.
“This feature documentary focuses on Wiebo Ludwig, a suspect in a recent string of pipeline bombings. The bombings echo a campaign of sabotage he waged against the oil and gas industry in the 90s – barricading roads and blowing up wells. And when a 16-year-old girl was fatally shot on the family farm in 1999, Wiebo’s fight with the industry was thrust further into the media spotlight.
The Ludwig family are part of a Christian community that lives in close adherence to their religious values. The community is comprised of 5 married couples, 7 unmarried adult children and 38 grandchildren. They are self-sufficient in food and energy, but live in isolation and believe that those that don’t share their religious beliefs, like filmmaker David York, are living in terrible darkness.“
“Hyperlinking to defamatory material on the internet does not constitute publishing the defamatory material itself, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday.
The ruling will alleviate fears that holding someone liable for how they use hyperlinks on websites, personal ones or others, could cast a chill on internet use.
The responsible use of the internet and how traditional defamation law applies to modern technologies were at issue in this case, which was watched closely by media organizations and civil liberties groups.”
My insightful friend & former co-worker Sarb recently launched Luboh (in beta) with his partners. Here is my text interview with Sarb to tell you more about the cool Luboh.
Kempton: For people who haven’t heard about Luboh yet, can you talk about how they can use Luboh? How will Luboh help people?
Sarb: The idea behind Luboh is to help users share their buying experiences. While there are many online reviews and customer feedback and opinions on many consumer products, the authors are typically strangers. Instead, we as humans place far higher importance on opinions of people we know. Our friends and family. Let me give you an example. Say you’re looking for a new TV and it just so happens that when you mention it to your friend while at the pub. He tells he just got a fantastic deal on a Sony model XYZ TV from a shop down the road. No doubt you’re interested. More so than perhaps reading an online review from an effectively anonymous individual. Luboh.com lets you easily find a product that you’re interested in and then to either ask your Facebook friends what they think of it or if you’ve already bought it, to tell your friends what a great deal you got! You can try Luboh at www.luboh.com
Kempton: Can you share a few screen captures to explain some of the Luboh features or functions?
Sarb: Here is a screen sample showing what search results look like. If you login with your facebook account, we’ll also show you what your friends have recently bought. (Click to zoom in to large image)
And here’s another one that shows how you share information with friends. (Click to zoom in to large image)
Kempton: Does the name Luboh have any special meaning?
Sarb: Well, other than “lu-boh” being a really cool name for a website, the word “lub-oh” in Punjabi (pronounced slightly differently to the website) actually means search-for.
Kempton: Future plans?
Sarb: The site is still in a beta mode and there is still some work left to iron out the wrinkles. In the future we hope to keep on increasing the number of products and services that we have access to, to make it more and more useful to our users.
The following tweets are viruses that try to infect you and steal your passwords, etc. Forewarned is forearmed. You are now vaccinated again these stupid Twitter viruses.
* “Hey theres a bad blog going around about you, seen it yet?“ <a-link-to-infect-you>
* “lmao…omg i am laughing so hard at this pic u i just found” <a-link-to-infect-you>
If you have come across other twitter virus, please share the text (skip the link) in the comment section.
“A Twitter hashtag was fired off on July 13 this summer from a house in Vancouver’s quiet, leafy Fairview Slopes neighbourhood — 17 characters that would ignite anti-corporate protests in New York and other North American cities: #OccupyWallStreet. Read the rest of this entry »
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