Akkam’s Razor

Yesterday, the NY Times covered Google Flutrends, a tool that checks the frequency of searches for keywords related to influenza, and then maps them over time for both attention and geography. Pretty cool, and eerily accurate as compared to official governmental results.

You can actually approximate the same thing with any other concept as well (previously, regarding economics news). Step-by-step instructions are after the link…

Popularity: 4% [?]

A great FireFox extension - Extension List Dumper - if not new, than new to me, allows you to get a list complete with version data, descriptions, and URLs of all of your installed extensions by hitting the Dump List button in the Add-In (or Extensions) box.

(Side note to the FireFox team - sharing extension lists between users via social networking has some value to it, doesn’t it?)

My list, as currently installed, is after the jump.

Application: Firefox 2.0.0.5 (Portable)

• ColorfulTabs 2.0.11http://www.binaryturf.com/

  Firefox 2.0 - 2.0.0.*

  Colorful Tabs colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appeal of the interface.

• Nokia’s Dream Phones - BusinessWeek
  On innovation and diversity…
  (tags: design Nokia mobile digitaldivide phones ethnography innovation)
• Cusack aims to offend with war satire film - Yahoo! News
  “He said when he made “MASH” he wanted to be as politically incorrect as the war was obscene,” Cusack said. “I don’t think we even went far enough.”
  (tags: film movie)
• THIRD RAIL » Blog Archive » Thurday at Noon is the best time post and be noticed (PST)
  (tags: blogging marketing)

• Paul Kedrosky: Map of Entrepreneurs Around the U.S.
  (tags: startup visualization entrepreneurship entrepreneur cartogram)
• Rearming the world - The Boston Globe
  [New weapon] spending is concentrated among the biggest consumers [and producers] of resources, which are trying to protect their [energy interests] at a rate that would have been unthinkable for a developing country until recently.
  (tags: war energy oil power military)
• Father Sez » Archive » Are YOU ready for a 1930’s strength recession?
  Whatever the final expert opinion may be, rather than being the frog in slowly heated up water, it should be mandatory for us to prepare and run through a checklist to see how well prepared we are.
  (tags: Recession money depression)

• Nick Denton “Pruning” Gawker Media, Ditching Three Sites - Silicon Alley Insider
  You can interpret this two ways. Either [Gawker owner Nick] Denton is dumping three weak sites to concentrate on his strong ones, or he’s worried about the online ad market in the face of a looming recession.
  (tags: gawker blogs media business nickdenton politics statistics)
• When Your Personal Life Is Your Business, Is Everything a Tax Write-off?
  “I hadn’t really thought about bloggers, but they’re basically making their personal lives their businesses,” said John Robinson, an accounting professor at the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business.
  (tags: web2.0 business work taxes)

Although we often complain of absent or bad leadership, we do not pay enough (or any) attention to bad followership.

At some point in the near future, some industries will state that the giving away of product 'for free', as in the open source movement, is in fact a violation of Fair-Trade practices and might be a form of price-fixing. 

Globalization weakened local markets, strengthened export markets, and lowered both wages and prices.  A pending energy crisis will do the inverse. 

The political press in the United States is a creature not obligated to give the people what they want; The press assumes that the people are incapable of understanding the truth.

• Journal of Computer Mediated Communication
  (tags: socialnetworking research academic social journal web2.0 culture)
• The Big Picture | Countrywide Led Mortgage Cos in Risk Taking
  Some more chart porn for you Countrywide (CCF) fans: Note the outsized-risk Countrywide was taking as insiders were dumping shares worth $100s of millions of dollars . . .
  (tags: charts infographics bigpicture Coutnrywide housingbubble mortgages)
• OpenSocial Sandboxes for hi5, Ning, and Plaxo Go Live. Dig In.
  So add hi5, Ning and Plaxo to your list of OpenSocial-compatible sandboxes, right next to Orkut. We’ve seen the first (buggy) implementation of OpenSocial on Plaxo and hi5, and we were pretty excited when OpenSocial finally opened its doors.
  (tags: opensocial partners hi5 Plaxo Ning)

• Sinking Currency, Sinking Country - Yahoo! News
  The chickens of free trade are coming home to roost.
  (tags: money currency politics government economics america economy)
• The end of the middle?
  (tags: wages middleclass income salary economics graphs)
• “‘We Do Not Torture’: The Lies Started in 1967″ by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)
  A former president of Delta said that the branding is done with a hot coathanger. But the former president, George Bush, a Yale senior, said that the resulting wound is “only a cigarette burn.”
  (tags: georgewbush yale torture branding)