For the first time in over a decade, Microsoft just might have delivered the best browser.
It’s markedly faster than Chrome.
Microsoft set out to do four things with IE9. The browser had to be fast, it had to be standards-compliant, it had to be trustworthy, and it had to put the focus on sites and Web content, rather than the browser. …
Glee has been a commercial success, with over twenty-one million digital single sales and nine million album sales. …
In 2009, the Glee cast had 25 singles chart on the Billboard Hot 100, the most by any artist since The Beatles had 31 songs in the chart in 1964. In February 2011, Glee surpassed Elvis as the artist with the most songs placed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart …
I’m surprised the novelty hasn’t worn off.
Like many others, I’d watch an hour long show only for Sue.
And some of the characters: Kurt, Santana and especially Brittany have really grown on me over time. Coach Beiste, too.
This week we bring you backstage with comedy writers at The Onion. They start with over 600 potential headlines for their fake-news newspaper each week, and over the course of two days, in the very tough room that is their editorial conference room, they select 16 to go in the paper. …
Tech pundit Leo Laporte bet fading tech pundit John Dvorak it would sell 5 million units in 2010. It sold nearly 15 million, even more than Apple projected.
Steve Jobs says 2011 will be the Year of the iPad 2.
He’s right. But competitors will begin to catch up as they have in smart phones. Catching up to Apple in profits will take years longer.
Eventually Google Droid devices will surpass Apple in sales and popularity. The only question is, how long will that take?
related – The best take on the iPad 2 launch I’ve read was by the unofficial blogger for Apple, John Gruber – The Chair
Note: The Kindle sold about 10 million units in 2010. But it’s really not an iPad competitor. Many folks have both a tablet and Kindle.
But you kind of have to hold the iPad 2 to really get the redesign. It’s thinner by a third, plus its edges taper to a thin line of metal. It’s almost inconceivable that this thing you’re holding is a multicore tablet computer. The Xoom tablet is trim, light, and very pretty … but when you place it next to the iPad 2, it looks as though it was designed and built by angry Soviet prison labor instead of by Motorola.
If you’re an annoying Apple fanboy, get the iPad 2.
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I’m an annoying Apple fanboy and there are some things superior with the Xoom.
… The Xoom is not a tablet you would hand to your mother; it is cold and complex and industrial and vaguely foreboding, the look and feel resembling a glossed up slice of Blade Runner. Everything is black, with glowing blue accents. …
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon, whose structure is one-atom-thick …
… a stack of 3 million sheets would be only one millimeter thick.
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010 was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene …
Doctor, my eyes have seen the years / And the slow parade of fears …
… As people age, their ability to focus is lessened and many decide to use multiple-focus lenses, which can be bifocal or even trifocal, to cover all the situations in which they use their sight. Traditional multifocal lenses have two or three distinct horizontal viewing areas, each requiring a conscious effort of refocusing. Some modern multifocal lenses, such as progressive lenses (known as “no-line bifocals”), give a smooth transition between these different focal points …
The worst thing I can report is that I need to have a ‘head on a stick’ (vague sports cliché) … For each focal length I need adjust my head position exactly. When I get it wrong, the world is plenty blurry.
Imagine yourself on a ship in stormy seas, drunk. … That’s what progressive lenses are like when you don’t focus.
I do find myself fatigued end of day after concentrating so much positioning my head.
Also, lens cleaner is essential with these, once or twice a day.
Rick McCharles 