… instead of saying “no”, hoping to raise even more money later. Such is the case with the social network Friendster, whose founder was offered $30 million from Google but refused it a few years ago. A very interesting read from The New York Times (free registration required). (via Digg)
Don’t Click It
Do you know these websites that challenge the basic things in our daily lives? Don’t Click It is such a website, which attempts to demonstrate how user interfaces can be implemented with zero mouse clicks (except for the initial click to enter the website). It’s actually a test, and if you look around you’ll find interesting statistics about how much people click the mouse by mistake. (via Download Squad)
I can recite Pi to 9 places…
… but this guy can recite Pi to 100,000 places. It only takes 16 hours and some rice balls, apparently. (via Slashdot)
Online Dating Study Published
A study called “Online Dating: When Do You Like Someone Like Yourself?” presents some interesting data, which is summed up in this Tasty Research blog post. I wonder how accurate it is, considering that many people don’t exactly tell the truth about stuff in their online profiles. A link to the study’s PDF is in the blog post, in case you’re interested in reading the entire thing.
I wonder what freakonomics Levitt and Dubner would say if they had this data. (via Slashdot)
Vending Machines Of Japan
Would you buy flowers from a vending machine? How about flight insurance? Fishing equipment? All can be found in Japanese vending machines. (via Digg)
Marco Tempest – PhoneCam Magician
Marco Tempest (website, YouTube user profile) is a magician who uses his video camera phone to do magic. He posts his one-minute videos on YouTube. Here are the 5 currently available videos:
The Umbrella
Did you see it…?
How to shrink a human
Freefall stunt
The Kiss
He also does other magic stuff (not just “PhoneCam Magic”) like The Prediction, which is also cool.
PC World’s Worst 25 Web Sites
PC World posted an list of the 25 worst websites. On the list are some of the weirdest ideas (anyone want to bid for an operation?) and a very surprising number 1. Check it out. (via Slashdot)
Software engineers sometimes see life as a program
It happens to me once in a while… something in life looks very much like a piece of software. I guess it happens to many people with relation to their profession. A great example you can in Mike Stall’s post “My baby, the finite state machine”, which is a short, funny and interesting insight about his baby.
The Stanford Prison Experiment Video
I heard a lot before about the Stanford Prison Experiment (read about it in Wikipedia). In short, it was an experiment conducted in 1971 where a group of students “played” the roles of both guards and prisoners in a prison. The experiment was supposed to last 2 weeks, but instead was stopped after 6 days because of concern for the prisoners’ and guards’ health.
Someone posted a 50 minute TV program about the experiment, including amazing videos from the experiment, showing the behavior of both prisoners and guards. (via Digg)
Crows Using Cars To Crack Nuts
Crows can sometimes be very smart, as this video shows. (via Digg)