I am so looking forward to dropping my text plan once iMessage comes out.
I am so looking forward to dro…
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Cell phone use is way up. So why did brain cancer rates fall?
In 1990, brain cancer rates in US were 70 per million. Today, there are roughly 60 times more cell phones, and each one is used for an average of about 20 minutes per day, up from just a minute or two in the industry’s expensive early days. so 600-1200 times more cellphone usage but brain cancer rates have not gone up at all. In fact, they are down to 65 per million.
iMessage will make SMS redundant (for me at least!)
Once iMessage launches, I am cancelling my SMS family plan ($30). Almost everybody to whom I send text messages is on iPhone anyway.
Should companies track the hours put in by their employees – just to set the right expectations?
I’m sure we’re not alone, but Expensify is the only startup I know that tracks hours. (If you do, please share your data.) Unless you’re actually billing hours to clients, there might seem little reason to. But tracking hours gives two, extremely powerful benefits:
- Everybody knows, objectively, when they’re not living up to the team’s expectations, and by how much.
- Everybody knows, objectively, when they’ve gone above and beyond their obligations, and by how much.
What do you think? does it make sense to track hours (on an honor system) not for billing but to “tweak” expectations?
Being a Parent is like being in a bootcamp !
Babies act as boot camp…Even though I’d heard a million times that “being a parent changes you!”, I’d never put it in the context of it changing behaviors the same way that other boot camp-style processes do.
Corruption Presents An Uncertain Future for Rapidly Growing India
There is one crucial missing link in India’s otherwise thriving and robust democracy, the absence of which will complicate the country’s political response to this economic problem: principled, motivated political parties. There is no party in Indian politics that could genuinely build a reform-oriented agenda crossing the country’s left-right political divide.
Rather, each of the major, viable parties is what political scientists call a brokerage party. As David Frum defined them, they are “a political entity without fixed principles or policies that exploits the power of the central state to bribe or bully incompatible constituencies to join together to share the spoils of government.” No party such as this will be able to responsibly solve the problems of corruption and inequality.
- Vivek Dehejia in Atlantic
On the 10th anniversary of its stores, Apple sends a poster to its store employees
Our first store, in Tysons Corner, taught us our first lesson within the first 30 minutes. We had just opened the doors when we noticed the steel already needed polishing. With a special polishing solution. And a special polishing tool. That’s when we learned that blasting steel with virgin sand makes it less prone to scuff marks. We’ve also learned that glass can be much more than just glass. We’ve learned that a 32’6” transparent glass box can stand tall even among the giants of the Manhattan skyline…
Did not know that my local Tysons’ Corner store was Apple’s first.
It’s Not About You
NYT has a great article on what challenges await today’s generation:
Life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.
Kern.js – bookmarklet to kern visually
Kern.js is a simple javascript bookmarklet that adds powerful functionality to Paravel’s first-rate Lettering.js. Rather than having to guess-and-check CSS and make repeated, tedious adjustments, Kern.js allows you to kern letters like you would in a desktop app like Photoshop — simply and visually. It then generates the CSS for each individual letter, which you can plug directly into your stylesheet.
If you do not know what we are talking about here – dave rupert provides a great intro to lettering.
DHH advises on Groupon IPO: Pass on this deal
Groupon has filed its S-1 and hopes to raise $750M in its initial public offering. Given they’re currently losing a staggering $117M per quarter, despite revenues of $644M, they’ll be burning through that cash almost as soon as it hits their account.
At the moment, it’s costing them $1.43 to make $1, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any cheaper. They’re already projected to make close to three billion dollars in revenues this year. If you can’t figure out how to make money on three billion in revenue, when exactly will the profit magic be found? Ten billion? Fifty billion?