Health Retreats: Get an Easily Accessible Out of Town Location
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Back in August, Gmail launched what is perhaps my favorite new feature ever: integration with Google Voice, which lets you make and receive calls directly from your computer.
Earlier this month, there were some initial reports that Google had improved on this feature with a nifty addition: the ability to record inbound Google Voice calls directly from Gmail. Now it looks like Google is rolling out the feature more broadly — we've polled a few people and they're all seeing it, and there are plenty of reports on Twitter of people noticing it for the first time.
After announcing a partnership with Best Buy a few months ago, Shopkick is debuting a new implementation of its geo-coupon system at Target today. Users can now unlock coupons via Shopkick's app in 242 stores in the Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, and San Francisco/Silicon Valley markets. Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare or...
Source : TechCrunch
Explore : Internet, TechCrunch, Technology, Technology Blogs, Web 2
Remember last Friday's payrolls numbers--the ones that blew away expectations about the number of jobs created and got everyone talking about recovery again?
Well, even at the time those payroll numbers were confusing, because the other part of the jobs report--the "household survey"--showed yet another crappy number.
But by pointing to the crappy household number and ignoring the payroll number, the bears seemed to be trying to make lemons out of lemonade.
But it turns out that there was a simple reason why the payroll numbers looked so good--a reason that had nothing to do with underlying strength of the jobs market.
What was that reason?
The government changed the "seasonal adjustment" it made to the payroll numbers--and, in so doing, boosted the number of "jobs" created in October by 100,000.
Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens (via John Mauldin) explains:
" 'The seasonal bar which the payroll data must jump was (inexplicably and dramatically) lowered from prior Octobers.
" 'Thus, in October 2009, the BLS set the bar at 870,000 jobs, similar to the 840,000 it anticipated in October 2008. This year, by contrast, it lowered the bar to 768,000. Mumbo, jumbo, payrolls presented "an upside surprise" of 100,000.'
Alan Abelson of Barrons (again via John Mauldin) adds the following:
"According to John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics, the BLS' fiddling with the figures via what he calls 'seasonal-factor games' actually created 200,000 phantom jobs last month. John cites such finagling as the reason his prediction of an October decline and a rise in the jobless rate was wrong. It also explains why seasonally adjusted payrolls were revised upward by 110,000 in September, including 56,000 in August."
In other words, it wasn't that there were a surprising number of jobs created in October. It was that the government changed its "seasonal adjustment" assumption in a way that made it look as though there were a surprising number of jobs created in October.
Now, seasonal adjustment is an art not a science. And maybe the new seasonal adjustment is more defensible than the old one. But if our government is going to publish a number like this that represents such a major "surprise," we would expect it to at least be upfront about the reasons for the surprise. And in this case those reasons had NOTHING to do with the jobs market, and EVERYTHING to do with the seasonal adustment assumption.
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Google’s switch to its own map data, compiled from various sources, for the United States and Canada has not been without its problems, but this week the company has made the switch in 10 more countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and Switzerland. (Yes, Liechtenstein — what, was Luxembourg holding out on them?) Hilarity will no doubt ensue in the short term, but keep in mind that this is clearly a long-term play on Google’s part.
Google Rolls Out New Map Data in 10 More Countries first appeared on The Map Room: A Weblog About Maps on November 11, 2010. Copyright © 2010 Jonathan Crowe. Distributed under a Creative Commons licence.
new trends biz geolocation social shopping location-based service
The general manager of hot local-news site TBD, Jim Brady, is out after what sounds like a disagreement with TBD publisher (and owner) Robert Albritton.
The cause of the departure appears to have been an argument about whether TBD should grow by adding more "content" (original reporting) or "aggregation" (links to third-party content).
(Brady disputes this, but Albritton's memo makes it sound like it was an issue.)
In a reversal of the usual positions in this argument, publisher and money-man Albritton appears to want more original content, and Brady, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, wants (or wanted) content AND aggregation.
In case anyone's wondering who's "right" about what TBD should do, the answer is...Brady.
The online medium has made the distinction between "content" and "aggregation" irrelevant. Or, more specifically, it has turned aggregation into a form of content--and a very valuable one at that. The most successful online media companies, such as Huffington Post and Gawker Media, incorporate both original content AND aggregation. And that's why they are drubbing both the pure aggregators and the pure "content" companies.
And before you fall for the whining about how "aggregation" is a sort of parasitical behavior that steals the work of others, note that "aggregation as a form of content" is nothing new: TV and radio news outlets have been "aggregating content" for decades--by broadcasting news gathered by newspapers. And newspapers themselves have been reporting the work of other newspapers for centuries.
So this whole argument about "content vs aggregation" is silly, especially in a world in which millions of sources are only a click away.
If Albritton wants TBD to win a couple of Pulitzer prizes, fine, he should hire a few more Washington Post reporters. But if he wants the site to become a huge, influential commercial success that helps support a network of hundreds of local bloggers, he should ALSO keep investing in aggregation and technology.
Fishbowl has Albritton's memo >
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Just in time for the 2010 GeoINT event in New Orleans, LA, Seattle-based LizardTech announced the release of version 8 of their flagship image compression software, GeoExpress®. At R 8, GeoExpress enables geotechnology end-users and industry professionals to compress, manipulate, and enhance large raster datasets, including aerial imagery, satellite imagery, and [...]
Post originale: http://blog.gisuser.com/?p=8007
A total safari newbie, I wasn't sure what to expect when I packed my duffel bag to head to the bush in Zambia. So, I tried to have few expectations. Everyone kept asking me what animals I wanted to see, as if it were a menu. I'll take one of everything, please? I was just looking forward to seeing animals that I'd only seen before in a zoo or circus in their natural element. And, of course, to be in Africa.
The Dell Streak is clever device, but with its 5-inch screen, a touch on the large size for a phone and a touch on the small size for tablet. Still, a good amount swear by it saying it's the best of both -- like this commercial. It cleverly shows all the usefulness that comes with the larger screen like games, navigation, Facebook, video capture -- really everything -- but in true marketing fashion, does so without showing the downside transporting the large device.
Not that you can blame them, though. It's the job of marketing to point out all the pros while minimizing the cons. Still, a 5-inch slate might seem like a great product until you try to put it in your pant's pocket. Or in the cup holder of your car. Or in a shirt pocket. Or on your hip in a holster. Yeah, the Streak is a clever device, but it's also a big device. Your call whether it's a pro or a con. The commercial after the break will try to sway you to the former though.
... All Facebook, "One of the major criticisms of many of the existing check-in services (Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Facebook) is the lack of incentives for checking in to various locations." What's to stop people from tagging friends who aren't really there? In theory, even if a person was falsely tagged as present at a place - they would still receive a word of mouth promotion of the...
Source : ReadWriteWeb
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TechMeme's Mahendra Palsule recently visited Facebook's offices in Hyderabad.
As it turns out, the geeks who keep the social network running for all of South Asia are also pretty talented artists.
The office is "beautifully designed and decorated with paintings made by the employees themselves." With permission, here are Palsule's photos.
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