NewsArchive

Easy to learn and addictive "conquer the world" game. Very dinky.

Barry Schwartz discusses how more choice makes people miserable. Video on the Paradox of Choice

• Too much choice can lead to people not choosing, worrying that their choice will be the wrong choice.
• They then feel miserable that they didn't make a choice.
• More choice leads people to expect too much, and so they don't chose as nothing meets their raised expectations etc..

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google
Video offering a couple of tidbits on what Google thinks it is doing right in UI

Following on from Google's Adsense, other companies are making it easy for sites to monetise content. Ebay now has contextual adverts

• CNN's coverage of ebay's contextual advertising
  
• WebMasterWorld's discussion of ebay's contextual advertising

Amazon also have contextual adverts in UK and DE (Amazon's explanation from their German site)

• WebMasterWorld's discussion of Amazon's contextual advertising

Zillow.com the pretty US property info site - Details of Ozzy Osbourne's mansion that he bought for $6.3m in 1999.

I have also put up a page on Prefab Sprout, an 80s pop group I like.

Youtube, the video download site, is closing in on Myspace, the contact site, in terms of numbers of visitors. Myspace is way ahead of Friendster and facebook. I think youtube is fantastic, but their bandwidth costs must be massive. It's easy to find grabs of (presumably copyrighted) television content. Something has got to give.

Chernobyl 20 years on
"and from the centre of the building, an unearthly, delicate, blue-white light shot upwards into the night - a shaft of ionising radiation from the exposed core."

Alexaholic offers comparative graphs on reach, rank and page views for multiple sites using Alexa.com toolbar user data:

Comparison of UK price comparison sites Kelkoo, pricerunner, ciao and pricegrabber (Alexa doesn't split out subdomains well, so uk.shopping.com and uk.nextag.com aren't graphable).

UK news site comparison that includes the BBC, the Guardian newspaper and tech sites The Register and the Inquirer.

Amazon to start a contextual ad network:
Techdirt's coverage or Amazon's developments

Sitepoint's original article on this

Two talks from mid/late 2005 I hadn't seen before. Primarily academic, but insightful into their approach to problems. They want to have teams that master all the software that runs on their hardware, from the OS, to the networking and the parallel algorithms that sit on top of that.

Behind the scenes - various insights into their large-scale architectures
Google: A Behind-the-Scenes Look UWTV

Big Tables - how they are solving large-scale database problems
BigTable: A System for Distributed Structured Storage UWTV

Microsoft classifieds ads Beta now live in US
Test Versions of New Windows Live Services Arrive - PCWorld.com article
Windows Live in Public Beta thread on WebmasterWorld

Google now accepting payments on Google Base
- a "convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card"
Google Base starts taking cash - VNU net
Google offering payment option on GoogleBase thread on WebmasterWorld

"A cow jumped on my quad bike."
Strange insurance claims, just how did you damage your bike? - Frozen squirrels pose car threat BBC News

He "didn't look that odd"
The photofit wasn't terribly good, in fact it was downright odd - Victim's concern over 'odd e-fit' BBC News

On the theme of Wikipedia's Citrus heaven
Wiki's Tangelo versus the Limecat.

Huf was featured in the UK Channel 4 TV programme "Grand Designs".  This is their carbon-neutral solar house with specs.  I am always disappointed with the green-ness of the houses I rent.  It's a nice dream to imagine living in a pretty, energy-efficient house, but would it be practical in anywhere but suburbia?  Urban living is so convenient.