A giant rubber duck was spotted in Hong Kong harbor this past week. For the safety of all Hong Kong residents, Mr. Bubble was not used during the duck’s tour of the harbor and there were no sightings of Ernie (or Bert) singing “Rubber Duckie, You’re the One”.

via Designboom

Nailed it.

The Korean “star” Psy showed up at Dodger Stadium last night and took the place over for a few minutes. Check out former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda’s reaction and facial expressions as Psy starts doing his thing on the concourse, right next to Lasorda’s VIP seat. Only in LA.

It is a remarkable accomplishment because the club was nearly bankrupt more than a year ago. In three of the last four seasons, Cardiff got tantalizingly close to promotion from the League Championship, only to fall short in the promotion playoffs. Those failures were called “doing the Cardiff.” With Tuesday’s result, a point from a scoreless draw with Charlton Athletic, the club can bury the phrase and look forward to resuming the fierce Welsh derby with Swansea, which was promoted two years ago.

They are kind of like the Red Sox of the EPL.

via NYTimes.

A total of 13 “experts” each selected their picks for the Final Four – so that’s 52 total slots (13 x 4) across all of them. Eleven of the 13 picked Louisville to make the Final Four, which really didn’t take much hoops knowledge to pick. However, if we removed that pretty obvious Louisville region/pick from the equation, a grand total of one Final Four slot across the remaining 39 was accurately predicted by these ‘experts’ – Dickie V picking Michigan. That’s a 2.5% accuracy rate for those of your scoring at home (or for those of you who are alone).

Yeah, yeah…it’s parody in college basketball. The talent is distributed to all the different teams out there. I know, I know…that’s the cover. But really, these guys are supposed to be experts and cover this sport daily so I would expect them to have a better take on who is really going to go deep into the Tournament and make the Final Four. But the reality is that I could have showed up in Bristol and sat in front of a camera and predicted the Final Four just as well as they could.

Wait, I did…I had Syracuse AND Louisville in my Final Four bracket.

For those of you who don’t know, the “SI Cover Curse” is an urban legend where those athletes or teams featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated are cursed and/or jinxed to suffer loss, injury or both within a reasonable time frame after the cover story/feature. As you will see in examples listed at the above linked Wikipedia page, this is not a passing fad and it goes back years.

With Final Four weekend upon us, I thought it would be interesting to look at the SI covers and see if the “SI Cover Curse” could be a pseudo predictor of who may cut down the nets this weekend at the Final Four down in Atlanta.

Cody Zeller and Indiana – gone.

To start, let’s go to the SI College Hoops Preview back in November. Cody Zeller and Indiana are on the cover. As we know, they were sent home in the Sweet 16 round by my Syracuse Orange. And wow, did Zeller look really really bad in that loss.

Next, let’s look at the SI issue from March 25. They had a regional split of covers that included Indiana (Victor Oladipo), Gonzaga (Kelly Olynyk), Kansas (Ben McLemore) and Syracuse (Michael Carter-Williams). Indiana fell in the Round of 16. Gonzaga lost to Wichita State in the round of 32. Kansas choked lost to Michigan in the Elite 8. Only Syracuse is still standing.

Indiana – Gone

Kansas – Gone

Gonzaga – Gone

Syracuse – Still Alive.

And this week, SI has another regional cover split that includes Wichita State and Louisville (along with Tiger Woods and we won’t get into his, ahem, transgressions).

Louisville – Still alive

Wichita St. – Still alive

So if we cross reference all of these recent College Basketball focused covers this against the Final Four teams of Syracuse, Michigan, Wichita State, and Louisville, we see that the only team which has not been featured on the cover is Michigan.

And in this case, I fear that the Michigan Wolverines may have the advantage of the “SI Cover Curse” in their favor, since they have NOT been featured to date on the magazine’s cover.

Now, another factor to be considered here is the fact that “magazines” as we have known them are not nearly as influential in the media world as they once were. However, for some strange, outer body reason, the influence of the “SI Cover Curse” seems to be pretty alive and well.

Based on the above details, and I want to be clear that this is not my prediction or how I want things to play out, it appears that the “covers” are telling us that Louisville will beat Wichita State, Michigan will beat Syracuse, and Michigan will beat Louisville in the Finals on Monday night.

Damn, it hurts to write that.

In 2012, Fenway Park celebrated it’s 100th birthday and this year, Wrigley Field is doing the same – the last two baseball shrines standing from that era of baseball. And if Mr. O’Malley did not move the Dodgers to Los Angeles, we may have been celebrating the same birthday for Ebetts Field in Brooklyn today.

On April 9, 1913, a cold, windy afternoon limited the attendance to about 10,000 as the Dodgers lost their season opener to the Philadelphia Phillies, 1-0, the run scoring when outfielder Benny Meyer dropped a fly ball in the first inning.

Four days earlier, in the stadium’s initial game, an exhibition against the Yankees in warmer weather, about 25,000 enjoyed a 3-2 victory as Casey Stengel, a young outfielder who later managed the Dodgers and the Yankees, hit the first home run in Ebbets Field. On March 4, 1912, when Charles Ebbets dug a shovel into frosty dirt to break ground in a Flatbush neighborhood known as Pigtown, the plan was to name it Washington Park, after the team’s old wooden home closer to downtown. But a reporter for one of the Brooklyn newspapers spoke up.

“Call it Ebbets Field, Charlie,” he said. “You put yourself in hock to build it, and it’s your monument.

But alas, all we can do today is stare at a vapid apartment building on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and wonder ‘what if’?

Besides the article linked above, here is a nice gallery of pictures from Ebetts Field Then and now via the NY Times.

via NY Times

This past weekend I went to the NY International Auto Show at the Javits Center in Manhattan. When I made my way over to the BMW pavilion, I saw a small sign telling me that if I was one of the first 5 check ins via Foursquare, I’d receive a gift from BMW. Instantly, I remembered that I received a nice, compact umbrella from BMW when I did the same thing last year. I figured this year’s gift would be along the same lines – a nice parting gift with solid value and utility but nothing more than that.

Well, was I dead wrong.

See those nice Harman Kardon headphones? Yup, that’s what BMW generously provided to the first 5 people who checked in to their pavilion this year. Harman Kardon speakers and audio systems are baked into BMW autos (along with Land Rovers, Mercedes Benz and Mini Cooper), ergo the choice of headphones.

The use of social media and Foursquare to help demonstrate the partnership between BMW and Harman Kardon is really smart. To me, this is the real power of platforms like Foursquare. I’ve received a lot of value and incentives from various check ins and this is just another way that marketing and brands can deliver exceptional value and loyalty to people. No, I don’t own a BMW but let me tell you, little things like this definitely make me seriously consider giving BMW SUV’s a second look.

From an customer experience perspective, BMW giving away a few pairs of headphones demonstrates the quality of the sound systems that are baked into each of their cars in a unique and sustained way that will leave a lasting impression on a few lucky individuals. Implicitly, when I use the headphones to listen to music et al, I’ll have some sort of recall about how I got them. Smart. They are also making an extremely positive association for their brand (and Harman Kardon’s) not to mention talk value, WOM, and fools like me publishing a blog post about it.

I listened to some music with them and watched a few episodes of Game of Thrones with them last night, and the sound was fantastic.

So thank you BMW. I’ll be sure to drop by when I’m ready to replace my 2004 model car.

For all your Syracuse fans out there, I thought I’d whip up a quick Syracuse Final Four desktop background to use on your computer this week. Pretty straight forward – SU logo plus the 4 logos from the Final Fours we have been to.

Click through the image above to see and download the full size image.

Lets Go Orange!

PS – I have created many more “dekstop wallpapers” for your viewing pleasure if you want to check them out and/or download them.

For the fourth time, my Syracuse Orange(men) are heading to the Final Four. Syracuse has actually been remarkably consistent in it’s runs to the Final Four, going roughly once every nine years (1987, 1996, 2003, 2013) and once in each of the past four decades.

No matter what happens next weekend down in Atlanta, I’m still proud of the team. Now go out and bring back another championship to the Dome!!

Watch all six Star Wars episodes at the same time. Talk about overwhelming.

As one of the commenters on the YouTube page said THIS is why the internet was invented. :)

via Waxy Links

As seen in my kitchen. I have three witnesses in my house that can verify that this is legit.

“Neither banana can live while the other fruit survives”

As of Friday March 22 at 9pm EST, a grand total of 2 perfect brackets remain after LaSalle, Creighton won this afternoon. And with Florida Gulf Coast University (Florida GC! Really?) about to beat Georgetown, those lonely two will probably fall as well.

I love March Madness.

via ESPN.

A really great Tumblr site with a ton of photos from NYC Past.

via Kottke

Over time, it appears that the price per brick of Lego has actually decreased to the point where the nominal price per brick and the real price per brick is essentially even and on par with what they were in 1980.

So with the pricing of Lego bricks essentially staying flat from 1960 – 2013, Lego had to increase penetration and share by releasing more sets per year. As noted in the graph below, from about 1995 through 2013, the number of sets released per year has roughly tripled.

So even though it feels like we are spending more for Lego sets, what is really happening is that we are getting sucked in by our kids to buy more sets over time.

OK, I need to go to the local Lego store to buy the Chima set for my son.

via Reality Prose.

A stunning and beautifully detailed map of the Star Wars galaxy, including the travel routes of the space ships color coded for each of the six Star Wars episodes. Also available without markings.

via Nerd Approved

The remains of England’s King Richard III were discovered under a parking lot in Leicester, England. The bones were actually discovered in September of last year, however the team from the University of Leicester had to do some DNA analysis including comparing the skeleton’s DNA with descendants from King Richard III himself.

Before the DNA findings came in, Mr. Taylor and other team members said, the university team had assembled a mounting catalog of evidence that pointed conclusively at the remains being those of the king. These included confirmation that the body was that of a man in his late 20s or early 30s, and that his high-protein diet had been rich in meat and fish, characteristic of a privileged life in the 15th century.

Still more indicative, they said radiocarbon dating of two rib bones had indicated that they were those of somebody who died between the years 1455 and 1540. Richard III died in the Battle of Bosworth Field, 20 miles from Leicester, in August 1485.

Equally conclusive was the evidence available at the time the bones were unearthed — that they were found exactly where a 16th-century Tudor historian, John Rouse, had identified as the burial place, in a corner of the chapel in the Greyfriars priory, and with a distinctive spinal curvature that pointed to the remains being that of a sufferer from scoliosis, a disease that causes the hunchback appearance that has come down through history as Richard III’s most pronounced physical feature.

Of course, Richard III was the subject of a Shakespeare play of the same name. While the play did not paint Richard III in anything close to a favorable light, it did grace us with the memorable line: “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.”

NYTimes

The letters appear here in the outdoor “boneyard” of the Neon Museum, just past a time-rubbed Aladdin’s lamp and a shattered signature of tubed glass that once heralded the Liberace Museum. A boneyard is an outdoor graveyard for discarded hardware and spare parts; in this case it contains the relics of an age of neon in a town that transmuted inert gases into things nearly alive.

The Neon Museum opened in the Fall of 2012 and seems to be worth a visit, along with the Mob Museum, on the Las Vegas Museum circuit.

via NYTimes.com.

Go here if you don’t know what Burning Man is.

via Vimeo

Here is a pretty fantastic article about the social centerpiece of growing up in the late 1970′s and 1980′s – the video game arcade. From the evolution of the arcade from pinball machines to Pac Man and Frogger, it has been a part of American youth for many many years, although it it could be argued that it did not hit it’s heyday until the 70′s and 80′s. Today, they are another casualty of the digital revolution with gaming consoles migrating to living rooms and basements around the world.

Whenever I visited an arcade, I usually found myself cursing at Galaxian, Galaga and every racing game within the joint. Today, I get my fix by heading out to the Pinball Wizards event, held every year at the Allentown Fair Grounds. And there is always the Silverball Museum in Asbury Park, NJ.

via The Verge

This new iteration seems to move Delicious back to it’s roots, centered around sharing and discovering content/links.

The interface has been streamlined and is meant to match the recently-released iOS app (and forthcoming Android app) and offer easier discover of content that’s been shared by the community. That comes via a new right-side widget that shows other users or content that’s similar to your selected bookmark. It also pulls up a quick image and preview of the link, as well, making it easier to preview and cull any links you may have saved.

They have finally brought back a replacement for their Popular links area, this time called Discover, which does a decent job of bubbling up new content to discover. The search field is also very useful, as they have enabled searches via @ (users) and # (tags).

Delicious is still a long way from the vibrant, lively community it used to be but hopefully this re-work will move it in the right direction.

via The Verge

Amazing prank pulled off by this guy.

“Instagram dat joint”

Hat tip to Liz

Users will also be able to send a POI or a destination to their car using a smartphone app, find the newest Kia dealership using Google Places, and control their on-board navigation system through voice commands.

I wonder if Kia will now be partnering with Google to provide cars for their ubiquitous Google Maps auto driving car or other such efforts.

In another Auto related move, Avis continues to try harder by this time snapping up the urban-ly popular ZipCar for a cool half a bil. To me, this move seems to be a bit of a defensive move on Avis’ part as it is clear that “traditional” rental car retailers are getting hit by these “quick rent” services like ZipCar, especially now that they have expanded up from hourly to the traditional daily rental space. In a way, Avis was probably a bit worried about the “WalMart Effect”, where a smart upstart competitor (ZipCar = WalMart) started eating away at market share by attacking a vulnerable area of the market (unserved market of urbanites/college kids who need a car to do quick errands or take a day trip = WalMart going after low income markets early on). Maybe Avis wasn’t in the mood to wake up one day and realize they were Sears.

And if we all really think about it, the car is just another device in the American household. Just a really expensive one.

Over the past few months, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame have bolted for the ACC, Rutgers to the Big 10 (or 14 but who’s counting), West Virginia to the Big 12 and on and on. Then this past week, the “Catholic Seven” of the league (those schools that are primarily basketball only) – Georgetown, St. John’s, Providence, DePaul, Marquette, Villanova, and Seton Hall – announced their departure from the conference, which has pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of the Big East.

Say what you want about the Big “East” adding teams to the league like Boise State, San Diego State, SMU, University of Houston, and that it will sustain itself for the near future until things settle down. But let’s be real…the heart and soul of the Big East Conference is gone and what is left is a vapid conglomeration of schools from all over the country. Rumor has it they will break the Big East into two divisions – the West and the East division…so you will have the Big East West and Big East East divisions. If they could only add Southwestern Oklahoma State University and Northeastern University to the conference, all corners of the compass would be accounted for. Schools from San Diego, CA, Texas, and Boise, ID in the Big East Conference makes as much sense as Chris Brown making a movie about relationships.

The history of the Big East was driven by basketball yet it’s demise was driven by football. For those, like me, who grew up watching Big East basketball in the years of Chris Mullen, Pearl Washington, Sherman Douglas, Derrick Coleman, and others, this is a sad sad time. The irony is that about 10 former Big East teams will now be part of the ACC when you also count Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech. Where is the sense in that?

So to commemorate this sad occasion, the fine folks over at Bleacher Report have put together a top 20 best moments from Big East history and I’m proud to say Syracuse had quite a number of spots in the top 20, including the following:

#2 – Six Overtime win vs UConn – 2009 Big East Tournament

#5 – Crazy unexpected run in 2006 Big East tournament as a #9 seed

#8 – Georgetown vs SU in Manley Field House, where the Hoyas snapped SU’s 57 game winning streak and thus started one of the great rivalries in College Hoops.

#9 – The 1981 Big East Tournament in the Carrier Dome, where Leo Rautins led the Orangemen to their first Big East crown.

#16 – Jim Boeheim’s 900th win (last week)

So yes, this is a sad time for long time Big East fans. The long rivalry of Georgetown – Syracuse or Pitt – West Virginia will be replaced by Florida State and Clemson. At least the “Duke Sucks” chant won’t need to change.

The National Rifle Association has been largely silent since the shootings on Friday morning. On Monday, the home page of its Web site contained a blog post from Nov. 27, titled “More Guns, Less Crime in Virginia,” and the association’s Twitter account, which is normally active, has not sent a message since Friday.

More interesting to me though is what Jason Kottke posted on his site, referencing an article by John Lee Anderson, who asks “What is our national threshold for shame?“.

I’m thinking some crazy dude breaking his way into an Elementary school and gunning down 20 6 and 7 year olds, plus 7 adults, is pretty high on the shame threshold list.

The trailer for the new, upcoming Star Trek movie. Definitely seems to be a darker, armageddon-like storyline compared to the first one. I just wish they would give Shatner a cameo.

A photo set on Flickr of a bunch of old school video game consoles that have been left to the scrap heap.

via io9 and via Thomas Schultz’s Flickr account

And here is the same goal but from the other side of the field. I’m not sure what language the commentator is using but his reaction is awesome.

Here is a really interesting take on re-thinking the logos of NFL teams by Matt McInerney. This is just a side project however some of the designs are really well done. For example, I love the KC Chiefs logo with the “C” depicted in negative space. His version of the Rams, Seahawks, and Houston Texans are pretty awesome too and the thinking behind his re-do of the Bills logo is very insightful

Via FastCoDesign

But the key complication with turning grass into big business is that though states may give it the thumbs-up, it remains illegal at the federal level, creating a legislative gray area. …. Sellers of marijuana have no place to put the money they make. Because the drug remains federally illegal, banks can’t accept the profits from its sale; that would compromise their federal deposit insurance (FDIC) protection. Thus, growers and retailers will have to manage their income, their payroll, their bills and their taxes in cash. That makes it extremely hard, and dangerous, to run any business, let alone mirror the economies of scale enjoyed by Big Tobacco.

The people Colorado and Washington who will be smoking the ganja won’t really be concerned with these issues, but the folks producing and distributing it will have to ponder some of these issues. Or, they can just continue to run their dealings as they did before Tuesday: as a predominantly cash driven business where stacks of cash can be hidden in air ducts a la Walter “Heisenberg” White. All of these items are really minor challenges relative to the benefits folks are projecting to their state revenue and cost savings (i.e. local towns won’t need as many cops trying to bust marijuana dealers and smokers).

If I was the marketing manager for Cheetos or Bugles (and other munchies), I would heavy up the local marketing budgets in Colorado and Washington stat and target Boulder, Colorado Springs and other college towns.

Via Quartz

Apple really missed on the pricing for the new iPad Mini. The $329 price point for the 16GB flavor of the new “must have” iPad Mini feels too expensive especially when compared to the tablets of competitors Amazon and Google that each start at ~$200. You could even see Apple trying to justify that price point by having Phil Schiller make a very rare but overt “point, counter point” (Jane, you ignorant slut) comparison of the iPad Mini to the Google Nexus. As soon as he started in with that comparison, I had a feeling that the pricing was going to be expensive relative to the competition. His comparison was basically trying justify the benefits of the iPad Mini ahead of revealing the price, so to ease the pain. I never thought the iPad mini was going to come in at $200, but I was thinking somewhere in the $249-$299 range. If they came in at that range, I think that would have sealed the deal for the Tablet marketplace. Now, I think there is still a window for others to play in.

Secondly, I think Apple did some damage to their brand with how they have handled the “new” iPad (i.e iPad 3 and iPad 4). Releasing an updated version of their iPad on Tuesday, just six months after they released the “new” iPad (3rd Gen) is not going over well. Beyond a Twitter storm, a site called CouponCodes4U.com ran a flash poll on their site (granted, not exactly scientific but still…) that conlcuded:

Forty-one percent of the respondents, who all stated that they owned at least one Apple product, said they had bought the third generation iPad. Of these, 83% said they felt “cheated” by the announcement of the fourth gen tablet.

Not the kind of feedback I’d want around a product release.

And personally, I purchased a “new” iPad in late August, just about 2 months before the Tuesday’s announcement, because my iPad 1st Gen died but also because I didn’t think an another upgrade would be happening until early 2013. I have called Apple and even went to my local store to plead my case and to no avail.

For a company that takes such efforts to make sure things are done pixel perfect, you would think they would manage things like this a bit more effectively.

via Macrumors

“He would ask, ‘Do you think Lance is doing this?’ ” Leogrande said. “I would tell him: ‘He’s racing in these barbaric cycling races in Europe. If you were a rider at that level, what would you do?’ ”

More than a year later, in spring 2010, Floyd Landis, one of Armstrong’s former teammates, had come clean about his own doping, telling officials from the antidoping agency that he and other top riders, including Armstrong, had doped while on the Postal Service team. Landis also said he had information that Michael Ball, the team owner of Rock Racing, was involved in doping.

Even when it was happening, can anyone truly, honestly say that Lance Armstrong winning seven straight Tour De France’s wasn’t just a teeny weeny bit suspicious? As Lewis Black noted on the Daily Show, “I don’t care that Lance Armstrong was doping, I care that he didn’t admit it.”

via NY Times.com

If someone else comes in, we may have to move. And here, it has been observed that lift-travellers unthinkingly go through a set pattern of movements, as predetermined as a square dance.

On your own, you can do whatever you want – it’s your own little box.

If there are two of you, you take different corners. Standing diagonally across from each other creates the greatest distance.

When a third person enters, you will unconsciously form a triangle (breaking the analogy that some have made with dots on a dice). And when there is a fourth person it’s a square, with someone in every corner. A fifth person is probably going to have to stand in the middle.

Now we are in uncharted territory. New entrants to the lift will need to size up the situation when the doors slide open and then act decisively. Once in, for most people the protocol is simple – look down, or examine your phone.

via BBC News.

Canada’s long national nightmare is over.

Back in September, about 10 million pounds of Canadian Maple Syrup, worth an estimated $30MM, had been stolen from Canada’s national strategic reserve in Quebec (USA has a national strategic reserve of oil, and Canada has a national strategic reserve of maple syrup. Which one has it’s priorities in order? :P).

I am happy to report that all the stolen Maple Syrup has been recovered and returned to Canada’s national reserve:

We can all breathe a sweet, sweet sigh of relief: authorities may have recovered the syrup. They discovered somewhere between 600 and 800 barrels of unknown origin with an importer in New Brunswick. The investigation continues, but the syrup is safe. It’s currently under police protection.

via The Consumerist.

Really neat infographic of how the Nest self learning thermostat and how it is engineered. I definitely want one of these things in my house sometime soon.

via NYTimes.com.

Are you an Apple fan boy who has to know what the next free app is available in the App Store, there is an IFTT Recipe for that will send you an email. If you use Instagram and can’t keep track of all the photos you are taking (a big issue for me), there is an IFTTT recipe that automagically pushes your Instagram pix to Dropbox. Another does the same for your “Liked” Instagram pix.

But the true beauty of IFTT is the dead simplicity of it’s site and how easily you can connect seemingly random services. All of those recipes that I mentioned earlier can be set up in about a minute on the IFTTT site.

So if you are feeling like your online life has gotten away from you, check out IFTTT. It may help you reign everything in and help bring order to your universe.

Oh, and here’s one more IFTTT recipe for those of you lucky enough to buy Facebook on it’s IPO day: It will send a Tweet out from your account when Facebook’s stock price reaches it’s $38 IPO price.

Via Forbes.

The uproar over the debacle that was the Seahawks – Packers game on Monday night brought this to a national stage, where even the ladies from The View discussed it.

The NFL is big, big business to the tune of billions of dollars. So what is the sticking point over this negotiation between the NFL owners and the Refs?

The officials work about 36 hours a week — nearly full time — and pension benefits have become an important issue to them. It would probably cost each team about $100,000 to settle the pension issue.

The NFL rakes in billions and the cost to each team to come to agreement with the Refs and end this football nightmare is $100K per team (or a grand total of $3.2 Million)?!? In the context of the NFL, this is a rounding error. The $100K per team impact equates to 1/10 of 1% of Larry Fitzgerald’s 8 year contract with Arizona or Peyton Manning’s contract with Denver. $100K a year per team is probably what each spends on washing the player’s jock straps and towels.

And these jokers can’t figure out a solution? Yes, maybe Roger Goodell should be fired.

Trouble could be brewing in Brazil as the country’s demand for cocaine has grown rapidly over the past few years and now represents 18% of global demand. That is still less than half of the US demand. However, from a raw usage perspective, Brazil has grown past the US and it’s 2.6 million coke users.

The country today consumes 18% of the world’s yearly supply of the drug, with 2.8 million Brazilians, or 1.4% of the population, snorting or smoking a combined 92,000 kilograms in 2010, according to estimates provided to us by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Party like it’s 1988.

PS – I found this on a new site called Quartz, from the folks at The Atlantic. It seems like a really smart and interesting site/publication…check it out.

Via Quartz.

Some pretty neat water bridges from around the globe.

via Amusing Planet

So once a bike has been stolen (hopefully not yours), what happens to it? Well, it all depends on the level of sophistication and professionalism of the thief or thieves. The most amateur ones, which might be homeless or drug addicts looking for a few bucks for their next meal or hit, will sell bikes for a small faction of what they are worth. They’ll sell it on the street, or exchange it directly for what they need, or fence it at a pawn shop or maybe a flea market or whatever.
More professional thieves want to get better prices, and they have more bikes to sell, so they can’t use the same strategy. They target more expensive bikes and will often try to resell them online to get a better price. They usually will go sell bikes where there’s a bigger market for them, so they might sell a bike from San Fancisco in Los Angeles.

The basic premise is that it is such a low value crime, most of the time the perp is not a priority for the Police. One video from the NY Times in the original article demonstrates this as a NYT reporter stages several bike thefts where close to 100 witnesses walk by him “in the act” yet no one stops to ask what he is doing.

The net takeaway is probably targeted towards city Mayors and Police Cheifs to have the Police pay more attention to these sorts of crimes, the way Rudy Gulliani did in the early 1990′s in NYC. Reduce these “petty” crimes and the “bigger” crimes will also fall.

Via TreeHugger.

The redhead fest was launched somewhat by accident in 2005, when a local Dutch painter was recruiting 15 ginger-haired models for a painting. When he received 10 times the number of responses than what he needed, he decided to amass them all for a photo shoot. And the number of redheads present each year has grown exponentially — as has the number of boring-haired spectators. These nonginger gawkers numbered more than 7,000 in 2009, the BBC noted, although that total hasn’t been updated since.

According to the article, us redheads are said to make up 2% of the world’s population, although I’ve heard differing reports that the number is closer to 5%. I think I need to put this event on the calendar for next year.

Via Time by way of NextDraft

I just felt like sharing this photo I found on Flickr. It is such a neat shot.

via NikonHiker’s Flickr account

Camden Yards From Field Level

Camden Yards From Left Field Club Level

Camden Yards From Center Field

Another huge growth quarter for Google’s Android mobile OS. According to a recent market share release from the research firm IDC, Android’s market share in Q2 grew to 68% while Apple’s iOS grew 26% to capture 17% of the market. On the other side of the spectrum, Blackberry’s installed base fell a massive 41% to under 5% of the market, while Nokia’s one’s eponymous Symbian OS dropped 60% to 4.4% of the market. Sadly, Windows Phone OS begged for the scraps and was bundled in the “Other” category that represented 6% of the market.

Now it should be noted that these numbers represent the installed base and do not reflect revenue or any financial numbers. When you look at it by that metric, which in my mind is the real number that needs to be highlighted, then Apple is clearly crushing everyone including Android. And I have to say that it feels like the iPhone has a much larger share/footprint and social impact on the market than what these numbers indicate.

via CNN Money

This year, WalMart was Defcon’s victim:

A Wal-Mart store manager in a small military town in Canada got an urgent phone call last month from “Gary Darnell” in the home office in Bentonville, Ark. Darnell told the manager Wal-Mart had a multi-million-dollar opportunity to win a major government contract, and that he was assigned to visit the handful of Wal-Mart stores picked as likely pilot spots. First, he needed to get a complete picture of the store’s operations.

For about 10 minutes, Darnell described who he was (a newly hired manager of government logistics), the outlines of the contract (“all I know is Wal-Mart can make a ton of cash off it”) and the plans for his visit. Darnell asked the manager about all of his store’s physical logistics: its janitorial contractor, cafeteria food-services provider, employee pay cycle and staff shift schedules. He learned what time the managers take their breaks and where they usually go for lunch. Keeping up a steady patter about the new project and life in Bentonville, Darnell got the manager to give up some key details about the type of PC he used. Darnell quickly found out the make and version numbers of the computer’s operating system, Web browser and antivirus software. Finally, Darnell directed the manager to an external website to fill out a survey to prep for the upcoming visit. The manager dutifully plugged the address into his browser. His computer blocked the connection, but Darnell wasn’t fazed. He said he’d call the IT department and have it unlocked.The manager didn’t think that was a concern. “Sounds good,” he answered. “I’ll try again in a few hours.”

After thanking the manager for his help, Darnell made plans to follow up the next day. The manager promised to send Darnell over a list of good hotels in the area.

Then “Gary Darnell” hung up and stepped out of the soundproof booth he had been in for the last 20 minutes. “All flags! All flags!” he announced, throwing his arms up in a V-for-Victory symbol. His audience of some 100 spectators at the Defcon conference in Las Vegas burst into applause. They had been listening to both sides of the call through a loudspeaker broadcast.

via CNN Money.

The best of the bunch was sold in three lots — one, which sold for $286,800, was a nearly complete E98 set, the name of the the series the cards were issued under, and another was a Honus Wagner card that was judged to be in perfect condition by Professional Sports Authenticator, a company that grades cards on a 1-to-10 scale based of their condition. It brought $239,000.

Karl Kissner, who unearthed the cards in February in the town of Defiance with [Karla} Hench, his cousin, said they belonged to their grandfather, Carl Hench, who died in the 1940s. They think he gave away the cards at his meat market and stashed the extras in his attic and forgot about them. One of Hench’s daughters kept the house until she died last October, leaving everything inside to her 20 nieces and nephews.

The cards were auctioned off Thursday evening during the National Sports Collectors Convention being held in Baltimore, MD.

via ESPN.

Boston is well known for it’s distinctive neighborhood residents and the sheer insanity in which the streets in that city are laid out. And with this combination comes the question of what are the streets that define the “boundaries” each neighborhood?

Some cartographers over at Bostonography took to crowdsourcing the answer to that question by asking people/residents what their definition of specific neighborhoods were and then plotting the results based on the confidence that the people expressed of their point of view.

It is a wicked pissah analysis.

Via Bostonography

via Hi Consumption

Mark Dermul, a big time Star Wars fan, has been taking the lead over the past few years in an effort to restore the Lars Homestead and other sites (including one of my favorites, the Moss Eisley Cantina) in Tunisia that were used to film the original Star Wars: A New Hope in 1979. Over the years, the sites have fallen into dis-repair so Mr. Dermul and other volunteers from around the world have baned together to fix these sites.

More about the project can be found at the Save Lars site.

via Green Prophet.

A really really interesting project by Andrew Kim where he re-thought and re-designed Microsoft’s entire brand and branding system. And right now, the company really needs a shot in the arm.

Kim’s core hypothesis is that when you compare Microsoft to Google and Apple (the “big three”), Microsoft is perceived as outdated, slow, corporate, conservative, while its only positive brand assets are its gaming (XBox) and Kinect. Compare this to Apple’s brand that is centered on design and engineering, and Google’s that is focused on the search engine and “don’t be evil”.

From a visual design perspective, he addressed this gap by taking the “traditional” old school, antiquated view of a (four paned) window and looked at it through a different lens. He thought about it through a more hip, urban perspective and visualized how people look at windows on an angle while looking at a skyscraper from the ground and used that as the core element of the “new” brand concept.

Hit this concept up against the generally bland, Finland flag like new Windows logo and it is definitely a fresh perspective on where Microsoft/Windows could go.

The other day while at a local mall, I was surprised to see the Microsoft Store had opened up. And the thing that completely dominated the experience was the gaming consoles – XBox, Kinect, etc. The PC’s, phones and peripherals that Microsoft “owns” were taking up space in the store and were complete afterthoughts to the customers. To me, that spoke volumes.

via Waxy Links.

Amazing Lego build of the Colusseum in Rome. The model was created in Sydney, Australia and includes all the trimmings – Roman Gladiators, Senators, Legionaries, Toga clad commoners and the Arch of Constantine. Just amazing.

A full set of photos are here

Via The Sydney Morning Herald

• I just reached Level 2 of the "Baker’s Dozen" badge on @foursquare. I’ve checked in at 5 different bakeries! http://t.co/gt269DkM 2012-06-27
• @helloericho Right…that is my level of expectation. Getting the "cult movie" tag from you puts it over the top. :P in reply to helloericho 2012-06-26
• @helloericho Good to know…was debating on wether to go see it or not! in reply to helloericho 2012-06-26
• RT @sportsguy33: David Ortiz is now the last man standing from 2004. Kind of fitting. http://t.co/244KPpgl 2012-06-24
• @RogerClark41 Penalties to decide a game should be eliminated from all sports. Play until someone wins. How hard is that? #vpofcommonsense in reply to RogerClark41 2012-06-24
• Brit's choked it…again. #euro2012 2012-06-24

• I miss Don already. #madmenwithdrawel 2012-06-17
• I just reached Level 4 of the "Mall Rat" badge on @foursquare. I’ve checked in at 15 different malls! http://t.co/KBJw2lJ3 2012-06-15

On top of the general buzz about Peter Jackson’s latest Middle Earth project The Hobbit, slated to be released in December, film geeks and insiders are chattering about the way Jackson is filming the legendary Tolkien story:

The four-day [CineEurope 2012] conference, aimed primarily at European theater operators, kicked off with exhibitors and distributors hearing that the filmmaker’s decision to shoot his fourth J.R.R. Tolkien adaptation using 48 frames per second rather than the current 24 fps (25 in some parts of Europe) will cost them more. Still, exhibitors have largely signaled that they want to show the hotly anticipated movie.

Filming at that quick a frame rate will bring out much richer detail and color to the movie, so long as your local theater has the proper equipment to show it at that frame rate. And it is in this “last mile” of the content delivery where things break down.

Many local theaters can’t handle this frame rate, although the big studios like Sony and Warner Bros are rapidly upgrading theaters they own. The movie studio will have to distribute multiple versions of the film to accommodate all theaters that can’t handle this. And while filmmaking at the higher FPS rate may be a big deal in Hollywood (i.e the movie industry) however I have to wonder how big a deal this really is to the general marketplace?

I would argue that today’s theater user experience is not materially better than watching it from your couch on your big screen TV. So will the opportunity to watch a movie like The Hobbit at a higher frame rate and quality of picture really drive a materially significant attendance lift in the general marketplace? I am skeptical.

But movie theaters and the studios will have to come up with something. The relevance of the movie theater is tied to their ability to deliver a far superior film consumption experience (and I don’t mean by the amazingly annoying and overpriced trend of delivering fried food to my seat). And as we all know, that is under intense pressure as the once exclusive distribution channels (i.e movie theaters) are no longer so, with so many folks consuming media in multiple form factors (HDTV, iPads, Netflix, Hulu, etc.).

The folks over at NPR have compiled a list of the top sings from each of the past 50 summers (1962-2012). They were inspired by a similar list over on Billboard Magazine’s site that listed the top summer songs from 1985-2011. There are more than a few songs in this list that I just shake my head at, and wonder what the collective ‘we’ were thinking. Ah, hindsight.

Both of these fine journalistic institutions kinda missed the musical boat on this one by not including a Spotify playlist of each of these lists. So, in about 20 minutes I was able to pull together the Spotify playlist for many of the songs from the NPR list, with a few additional songs from the Billboard list added for good measure.

Spotify Songs of Summer: 1962-2012 Playlist

While the Macarana was included in the top summer songs of 1996 by both Billboard and NPR, I refused to include it in Spotify playlist just on principle.

• How on earth is Juwan Howard still getting paid an NBA paycheck? #miamibench 2012-06-07
• RT @JonasTSK: The Truth!!! Heart of a Thief! #Celtics 2012-06-05
• Oh man. Pierce!!!! #nailsit 2012-06-05
• @jeffatdowjones Cool. Don't have a WSJ Premium account tho. in reply to jeffatdowjones 2012-06-05
• @jeffatdowjones You are a Twitter machine! Where are the links to your stories? :) in reply to jeffatdowjones 2012-06-05
• Been noticing a huge uptick of photos being shared across my @facebook News Feed over the past few weeks #interesting 2012-06-05
• Google Is Buying Meebo. Maybe now #GOOG will improve its chat client. http://t.co/sikadFW7 via @sai 2012-06-05
• Don't Mean To Be Alarmist, But The TV Business May Be Starting To Collapse – Business Insider http://t.co/TIyYNXrK (via Instapaper) 2012-06-04
• Hey StetsonClowes, Thanks for the mention! http://t.co/PCDH3uaG 2012-06-03
• I think this is good 4 Twitter in long run –> Twitter user growth slows but engagement grows http://t.co/XenlnBl7 http://t.co/dpf158vV 2012-06-03
• AppleInsider | Android cedes ground to iOS in U.S. smartphone market during April http://t.co/GpUjSncu 2012-06-03
• @TweetCaroline As a fellow redhead, I am curious why we need to be saved? in reply to TweetCaroline 2012-06-02
• Hey sparrowhelp, Thanks for the mention! http://t.co/VPspED7d 2012-06-01

Despite the slightly morbid nature of this, I could not help but laugh at the inventiveness of the Orvillecopter.

I love the internet.

Between 2003 and 2010, Yahoo basically demolished Flickr, along with Delicious – two groundbreaking services. But we all know that. What this article did for me was put it all out there in all of it’s gory detail. It was like reading Bill Simmons’ pice about the Los Angeles Clippers of a few years ago. Once you are done with the article, you sit back and say “How the fuck could these people be some utterly inept?”.

It’s hard to remember, but back in 2005, Yahoo seemed like it had its game on. After losing out on search dominance to Google, it snapped up a bunch of small-but-cool socially oriented companies like Flickr (social photos), Delicious (social bookmarking), and Upcoming (social calendaring). There was a real sense that Yahoo was doing the right thing. It was, to some extent, out in front of what would come to be widely known as Web 2.0: the participatory Internet.

The funny thing is that in reading this article about how Yahoo focused on integrating Flickr into the Yahoo “ecosystem”, I said “Oh, that is what Lycos was so focused on when they acquired companies when I was there.” Where is Lycos these days?

I could go on about how Yahoo crushed the lively community within Flickr, how they still have yet to get it right with mobile, and some other amazing oversights, but just read the article. But there are two paragraphs that hit home for me and pretty much justified my decision to walk away from Flickr this year.

Illustrating just how bad the Flickr mobile effort was:

Among other problems, it wouldn’t let you upload several photos at once, you had to go in manually submit them one at a time. It was downscaling photos to 450 x 600, murdering image quality. Users had to log in via Safari rather than in the app itself. It was striping EXIF data from photos as they uploaded—precisely the kind of thing Flickr’s photo nerds wanted to see.

Today, it all seems too late. The iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Flickr isn’t even among the top 50 free photography apps in iTunes. It’s just below an Instagram clone in 64th place. By way of comparison, an app that adds cats with laser eyes to your photos is 23rd.

And illustrating how the once vibrant community within Flickr has fled to Instagram, 500px, Facebook and others, while at the same time describing in exact detail how I currently utilize Flickr:

As a result, Flickr today is a very different site than it was five years ago. It’s an Internet backwater. It’s not socially appealing.

Recently, Flickr rolled out a “Justified” view, a way to scan your friends’ recent photos where they are all placed together like puzzle pieces. It’s similar to the way Pinterest lays out images. It’s a dramatic, gorgeous way to look at photos—that mostly highlights how rarely many people update now.

As I scroll down I note that friend after friend has quit posting. At the bottom of the page I am already back in mid 2010. So many of my friends have vanished. It feels like MySpace, circa 2009.

This is anecdotal, sure, but I follow many of these same people on other networks (Path, Facebook, Instagram) where they tend to be very active. I see photos of the same people, with their same children and their same dogs—all looking a year or two older than on Flickr.

This justified view also serves to highlight just how many of my friends’ photos are formatted in perfect squares—the tell-tale sign of an Instagram snap that’s been exported. Many of my contacts’ entire photostreams are made up of Instagram photos. In other words they are mere duplicate streams—with fewer comments and activity—of content that exists in primary form elsewhere. The only reason they are active on Flickr at all is because they automatically export there.

The leadership of Yahoo should be fired. Oh wait. They have been. And again. And again. And again.

Taken today with Instagram while I was at the NJ Historical Fair