Friday: April 9, 2010
Always wondered what America's top fifty franchises are? Wonder no more.Wow, look at all those orange slices. If you're thinking that McDonald's is the top American franchise, your close - but try again. I'll give you a hint: their best-selling product rhymes with Shmurpee.
Wednesday: January 2, 2013
Avis acquires Zipcar for a mere $500 million.Avis says it expects to generate $50 to $70 million in ‘annual synergies’ as a result of the deal. FYI: The company booked $7.3 billion in revenue for the full year 2012, and employs roughly 29,000 employees today. The transaction is expected to close in the spring of 2013.
Tuesday: December 18, 2012
TIME pulls the curtain back on short list for 2012 Person of the Year.All eight candidates appeared on TIME’s online reader poll, but none took first place. TIME’s online voters have already revealed their choice for this year’s top newsmaker: Kim Jong Un. More than 5.6 million people voted for the supreme leader of North Korea, although his results and those of other high scorers got a boost from members of Internet forums like 4Chan.
Why Google's GMail outage may be a sign of things to come.The answer is that most of the coders behind today’s popular websites and services are deploying their code when it’s ready—not at some pre-determined point when downtime may not be noticed. It’s called continuous code deployment, or some variation on that theme, and everyone from Facebook and Netflix to smaller services do it. While it may occasionally cause a few blips, those blips should be shorter and less catastrophic.
Friday: December 14, 2012
University of Chicago receives mystery package addressed to one Henry (Indiana) Jones Jr.An interesting read if only for the care and detail that went into the package itself. The package was received by the admissions department and reportedly almost thrown out until a student worker made the discovery. Could this be some new viral marketing in the making or a student with a really unique application package? Who knows - but either way, this is pretty neat.
Tuesday: December 11, 2012
Yahoo pulls the curtain back on a brand new version of their mail client.Definetly looking forward to giving this a whirl as I'm starting to grow weary of the GMail interface these days. Microsoft Outlook, which I use for work, is moderately simple yet has power features for people (such as myself) who are little overboard in terms of organization. I'd also like to point that GMail's labels versus folders paradigm does absolutely nothing for me. GMail looks like a stream of people shouting at me.
Monday: November 14, 2011
Wired would like you to know Amazon's Jeff Bezos owns more of the web than you think.An interesting read for those of you who want to have a little more insight as to just what Amazon does these days on the Interwebs besides selling everything under the sun. There's an interesting chart about half-way down he page that discusses how some important companies rely on Amazon's web services to power their products. If AWS shut off today, well - it's best not to think about it.
Tuesday: November 8, 2011
- Daily Grind: Ebullient
Name: Anthony (aka Alpha to an Ant)
How Anthony feels today: Ebullient @ 3:31:44 PM
What Anthony really wants today: To go to sleep as its after 11pm where I am right now. Can I say what I want for tomorrow?Music Stuck in Head: Jeremy Enigk - Been Here Before
Its the lead singer of Sunny Day Real Estate doing solo work where he plays almost every instrument himself, composes everything... Its beautiful stuff. This guy is a hero of mineStuff to do today:
- play around with base64 encoded images
- prove that sprites are still more efficient than base64 from a page performnace perspective
- avoid meetings in NY office because I am 7 hours ahead
- Joke that i living in the future to my friends in NY
- Learn more about Microformats and create a plan to implement some updates to current ones on our websites
- Eat dinner with great friends in Romania
- Help my best friend Vin test the new GLM multi user system
- Post this as a test
- Go to sleep
Wednesday: August 3, 2011
Push Pop Press is the latest acquisition in Facebook's growing design talent roster.Mike Matas, one of the co-founders of Push Pop Press, is one of the designers behind some of the most familiar iPhone and iPad user interfaces that you've come to know and love. This kind of talent acquisition doesn't come along simply to tweak the look of an iPhone app. They must be working on something big. On a sadder note, Push Pop Press has announced that they have abandoned their planned publishing platform. However, their one offering is still available in the App Store - search for Al Gore's 'Our World'.
Monday: August 1, 2011
New York City according to various scenes from American Psycho.Scouting New York has an awesome article entitled 'Patrick Bateman’s New York: What Happened To The World of American Psycho' in which they investigate the many top NYC spots mentioned in the movie. You'll get a look at some of the locations used in the movie and what they've become today as well as expected difficulty in getting reservations at each place. And no, you will never get a reservation at Dorsia (spoiler alert, it doesn't exist).
Tuesday: July 26, 2011
McDonald's takes a stab at making Happy Meals a healthier option.And just how will McDonald's pull off this healthy task you ask? By shrinking the size of the french fries portion that comes with the meal, of course. And believe it or not, the fast food chain even toyed with removing french fries all together from Happy Meals. According to the LA Times, families in this test group rebelled (non-violently) against this idea. Take that, healthly diet!