I’ve been trying out some old-school Ask.com natural language queries on Google lately. This little gem sprang up fully-formed when I was in the middle of typing “When will the Narnia books be in the public domain”? (Answer: 2033.) I reproduce it here verbatim. Notice how the last stanza gently reprises the themes of the first …
News
What’s the future of startups? Just one word: Dopamine
Marc Andreessen, the father of the modern Web! Today he announced that he’s launching a $300 million venture capital fund with his old biz partner from back in the glory days of Netscape, Ben Horowitz.
This is interesting on a number of fronts that have nothing whatsoever to do with Nerd World (raised $300mm in worst fundraising …
Hot Mile High Trivia Action
Forget Call of Duty 5: World at War. I’ve discovered an online multiplayer game that’s more thrilling than Halo 3 and GTA: IV put together. Grand Theft Halo 7? No: Delta Coach In-seat Trivia.
I discovered this massively immersive game on a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta. You compete live against other flyers on the …
Tuesday’s Nerd News Top 5
See, I’m running with this new top 5 format. It’s for days when I’m having trouble finding a blogworthy item, so instead you get five items that aren’t blogworthy. Let’s go!
1. This video from the Watchmen Blu-Ray, where Snyder breaks down how he made the best 3 minutes of movie released this year:
Awww … it was a rubber …
Google is The Matrix
It’s true! Google needs us to provide energy to the system, which it gets whenever we use the Web. And, to get us to use the Web even more, it keeps giving us cooler and cooler, free stuff. Search, email, then Docs. And now?
Google Voice, which I’ve been playing with today. It’s almost as useful as Search. And soon, just like …
Now We Are 40
As a housekeeping sidenote, I’m going to be 40 years old on Friday.
Heck, 40. It’s just a number. Like any other number. Well, I guess it’s a Størmer number. Oh, and also half my life is over and probably more and I’m going to be dead soon.
Rejected schemes for becoming immortal:
…
Prototype: First Impressions
I can’t tell whether or not I’m the only one who has been waiting all year for Prototype to come out.
I don’t even know why. I don’t even know that much about it. The story seems to be about this hoody-wearing hipster-looking guy in his 20s named Alex who wakes up in the morgue one day with unbelievable kick-ass powers. He’s …
Thoughts About the Great Iranian Twitterstorm
I am not much for commenting on politics. They’re sort of mushy and non-rigorous in a way that I have trouble parsing with my nerdy brain. But I have been asked to have some thoughts about Twitter and the protests that are going on in Iran.
I read Douglas Rushkoff’s piece in The Daily Beast, which I think does a good job of summing up …
Monday Morning Nerd News Top 5
1. German teen struck in hand by meteorite. Still waiting for hand to develop sentience, superpowers, bloodlust.
2. The trailer for The Time Traveler’s Wife is out. Millions of unsuspecting women are exposed to CGI for the first time. Controversial footage of Erica Bana time-traveling to halt production of Ang Lee’s Hulk before it …
The Death of Nirvana
[Updated with pictures! And bad HTML.]
Last week an e-mail went around at Time announcing that they were shutting down Nirvana.
This is not something that affects anybody anywhere. Not even here. Nirvana is, or was, the part of Time‘s internal network responsible for shuttling files and documents and memos in between Time‘s various …
Top 5 Nerd News Items
1. Futurama is coming back:
“When we brought back Family Guy several years ago, everyone said that it was a once in a lifetime thing—that canceled series stay canceled and cannot be revived,” the executives said in a joint statement. “But Futurama was another series that fans simply demanded we bring back, and we couldn’t
…
The 500 Most Frequently Used Words on Twitter
With their frequencies, as compiled by the lexicographers of Oxford University Press, based on a sampling of 1.5 million tweets.
the=407614
i=401053
to=350737
a=298042
and=190859
is=186112
in=170708
it=169459
you=168292
of=167362
tinyurl.com=160107
