Steve jobs does Operation Enduring Freedom.
Hogwash
BBC News reports that
Gordon Brown says he is “truly humbled” by the scale of the backing given to him by Labour MPs as their choice to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister.
Aw shucks. I prefer Simon Hoggart’s observation that “Gordon Brown does humility like he does ballet lessons”.
WordPress hits its first million
Hooray! WordPress.com is about to celebrate its millionth free blog. What’s the secret? Robert Scoble says
It’s audience per blog is much higher than Microsoft’s Live Spaces, for instance. The audience that hangs out on WordPress is a lot more engaged, too, and I believe that blogs on WordPress.com get more than their fair share of Google traffic. Matt told me that more than half of the traffic that comes to WordPress.com comes from Google — the HTML is automatically SEO’d (optimized for search engines).
Indians don’t blog, apparently
So Foreign Policy magazine claims:
India is known for its vibrant public discourse on everything from politics to Bollywood. But in this nation of 42 million Internet users, those conversations aren’t happening online. Recent research suggests India has just 1.2 million bloggers. By comparison, China has around 30 million. One northern India-based blog-hosting company, Ibibo, has even resorted to offering cash prizes to entice people to blog regularly. Indians’ tendency to be bashful about blogging appears to stem in part from a problem of perception. “The perception [is] that blogging is for people possessing superior writing skills,” says Ibibo executive Rahul Razdan. In a country where nearly 40 percent of people are illiterate, that perception spells trouble. Before blogs can burgeon, Indians may need to learn their ABCs.
Contractor Deaths in Iraq Soar to record levels
From today’s New York Times
WASHINGTON, May 18 — Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone, according to new government numbers…
Inside the Digital Dump
Foreign Policy has published a sobering photo-essay on what happens to our digital junk after it’s been dumped on the developing world.
Thanks to Nick Carr for the pointer.
Numbers: the movie
Sean French pointed me to this:
Like him, I’m baffled by how anyone could have such an encyclopedic knowledge of film. This is not the kind of stuff you find by Googling.
More… Quentin (like Sean, a movie buff) writes: ” I wonder if somebody had access to the close-caption text transcripts for a large movie library – you could search that…”
Life’s little necessities
From Quentin’s blog. Seen in an Antipodean airport.
School and creativity
I often wish I could afford the $6,000 conference fee for the TED conferences.
Here’s why — a riveting talk by Ken Robinson on how School stifles creativity.
Here’s a thought. And another one, and another one …
This morning’s Observer column…
PG Wodehouse wrote the best evocation I’ve ever read of what it’s like to be totally astonished. He describes the expression on the face of a chap who ‘while picking daisies on the down line, has just received the 4.15 in the small of the back’. Well, I saw that expression this week. It crossed the visage of a friend who is a grizzled veteran of the print business, a man who was once deputy editor of one of our more disgraceful national newspapers. No more cynical observer of human depravity can therefore be imagined. But he was, for an instant, genuinely taken aback…