Archive for February, 2009
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Listen to the Festival of New French Writing: Francine du Plessix Gray and Marie N’Diaye
Click here to listen to the panel discussion between Francine du Plessix Gray and Marie N’Diaye moderated by Lila Azam Zanganeh. This discussion took place on February 26, 2008, as part of the Festival of New French Writing.
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Listen to the Festival of New French Writing: E.L. Doctorow and Olivier Rolin
The Festival of New French Writing is happening at NYU’s law school this weekend. On Thursday E.L. Doctorow and Olivier Rolin were in a conversation moderated by Benjamin Anastas. Anastas was filling in for Sam Tanenhaus, who no-showed the event. And though he tried to control the discussion, he couldn’t do much as an unprepared replacement [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books, General by Rick
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-02-27
What if making the web more valuable means making it advertising-free? #
Finished “U and I” by Baker, keep getting distracted from Bellow. #
Don’t like the Strand, but like Moleskine, and Strand is the place to buy the notebooks. #
Visualize Obama’s State of the Union using Wordle: http://www.rickyopaterny.com/shorturl/sotu/ #
I don’t think they grant degrees, but there [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Who’s reading your blog in Google Reader?
Someone once said that weblogs contain a gold mine of information about your users, and it’s true. Between your logs and software like Google Analytics, you can find out where your users IP addresses are located, what keywords they searched for to find your site, how they arrived on it, how long they stayed, how [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General, Technology by Rick
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Engaging the unpleasant
Today’s New York Times features a profile of Zoë Heller in which she says: “The point of fiction is not to offer up moral avatars, but to engage with people whose politics or points of view are unpleasant or contradictory.” It’s uncomfortable, but true; this is exactly what good fiction does. I think the first [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Wednesday, February 25th, 2009
Capitola Book Cafe launching memberships
The Capitola Book Cafe is launching a membership program similar to the one used by Kepler’s.
The Book Cafe is instituting a membership program, in which they’re asking their customers to pay an annual fee in five levels from $25 to $250. Those fees will entitle them to a number of benefits — free food and drink, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Books, General, Save Kepler's by Rick
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Visualize President Obama’s State of the Union address
Perhaps, you’re watching President Obama’s address on CNN.com with Facebook Live or reading it faster than Obama can speak. Well, I dumped the text into Wordle, played with the colors and styles a bit, and produced the above word cloud. If Obama left any doubt about the themes of his speech, this visualization reinforces them, [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General, Technology by Rick
Friday, February 20th, 2009
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-02-20
“We are all failed youths.” –John Updike #
The PPT slide from the Kindle 2 launch that Amazon didn’t want you to see: http://www.rickyopaterny.com/shorturl/kindle/ #
SF4 bricked my Xbox with the red ring after only one match. Now I wait for Microsoft’s border repair center to turn it around. . . . #
“…the management consultant [is] the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
Moneyball comes to the NBA
I feel like every time Michael Lewis talks about Moneyball, someone asks him if Billy Beane’s approach to fielding a team based on statistical analysis has taken hold in other sports. Although people have calculated win shares in basketball based on other statistics, i.e. through regressions, no one has really told a Moneyball-like story of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Baseball, Books, General by Rick
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
Public, private, or pay?
When we post information online we often have the option to make it public or private. We can choose to share with some, everyone, or no one. My Flickr photos, my Facebook page, my Twitter feed, my Google Reader shared items–all of them involve making that choice. Well, how about offering another option? You want [...]
No Comments » - Posted in General by Rick
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
The missing slide from Amazon’s Kindle 2 launch: longevity comparison
I’ll buy a Kindle once Amazon’s device can win in a longevity comparison with a traditional book. As you can see from the PowerPoint slide above, it still has a long way to go, as the Kindle lasts about 14 months, while the 1766 edition of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet has lasted 243 years and counting. [...]
3 Comments » - Posted in Books, General, Save Kepler's, Technology by Rick
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Booksmith beats the odds
The San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a story about the recent success of Booksmith on Haight in San Francisco.Preveen Madan and Christin Evans acquired the store in 2007,
Evans said they think of their staff as “book concierges,” gently nudging browsing shoppers toward books they might not have considered. They group books in unusual categories on shelves. [...]
