The importance of data visualization

Hans Rosling’s talks are data porn for me. He illustrates a very important concept – our perceptions can be very far from the truth, and nothing illustrates the truth like good visualizations of data. Let’s hope that one day, enough data will be freed up, and will be in the hands of people in an [...]

Glee is just a serialized Bollywood movie. Seriously.

I’ve been watching the first season of Glee on Netflix, and while I think that the story is over the top and there’s too much suspension of disbelief, I can’t stop watching it, mainly because it’s just so much fun – Which is precisely how I feel about most Bollywood movies too. Which kinda makes [...]

Amazon nearly takes down the Web… and what we can learn from it

A collection of stories from around the Web about the Amazon AWS failure and the lessons learned.

Interview on The Takeaway

On Monday morning, I ended up talking with the hosts of The Takeaway, a morning news program from WNYC. You can listen to the segment here.

The prime meridian isn’t where it used to be…

One of the interesting things I found out when I visited the Royal Observatory in Greenwich this week is that for practical purposes, the prime meridian isn’t exactly where it’s marked as such. The prime meridian (0 degrees of longitude) is a completely arbitrary line and for historic reasons, it’s located in Greenwich. However, the [...]

Selling the system, not just the hardware

The thing about Apple that I find so impressive is that they understand the importance of selling a complete system. While other companies tout the specs of their hardware, Apple sells the complete experience. Yesterday’s iPad2 launch was a great example – Not only did they improve the hardware specs (A third thinner, faster, yada [...]

Sim-City China

A look at some amazing Sim-City style imagery being used in Chinese map websites.

Freedom of all speech

The Supreme Court today ruled that the Westboro Baptist church could not stopped from protesting at the funerals of dead soldiers, however offensive it may be. The church has been notorious for their hateful protests and their claims that the deaths are because America tolerates homosexuality and ‘God hates fags’. The ruling is notable because [...]