Blog – Page 167 – Niall Kennedy

World-Wide Media eXchange

World-Wide Media eXchange is an experimental research project run by the Interactive Visual Media Group at Microsoft Research. Take a photograph, stamp it with longitude and latitude, and users can find your photographs on a map.

Cheeseburger fries

NY Times article today about cheeseburger fries, the beef industry’s way to get more beef into snacktime. A beef industry R&D document shows the full ingredients and prep info. Sounds nasty, but I am curious to try one.

Fortune : Geek Eye for the Luddite Guys

The October 6 issue of Fortune examines a gadget makeover at the hands of a team of geeks. (Dean Heistad, Ted Larson, and Paul Ross) “all they wanted to do was send digital pictures of the kids to Grandma. Heistad came back with a shopping list that would get them that, plus a home theater, a wireless network, new computing, a tricked-out music system, and GPS positioning capabilities.”

Anschutz Entertainment Group to buy Manchester United?

The Anschutz Entertainment Group admits to a meeting with Manchester United officials, but no word whether a club purchase was discussed. Manchester has been unloading some big salary stars, which should make them more attractive for a takeover. Current market cap (MNU.L) is £488.4 million.

Yahoo Comparison Shopping

Today Yahoo released its new and improved shopping site, complete with comparative shopping. A search for a Sony Cyber-shot camera on Yahoo yielded 89 merchants and a PriceGrabber search found 69 results. Lowest final price on Yahoo was $520 compared to PriceGrabber’s $598, a 15% savings. Does this make PriceGrabber a prime takeover target? Yahoo and Google now have their own comparison service. PriceGrabber provides Ask Jeeves with a cobrand. AOL and MSN have the cash to spend.

Nature : Monkeys sense fairness

Nature profiles the work of Sarah Brosnan of Emory University teaching monkeys to exchange tokens for food. 80% of the monkeys rebelled if they did not receive an equal or better reward. Female monkeys were much more sensitive to the inequalities.

US News : How the Internet is Changing the American Dating Scene

U.S. News & World Report has a cover article covering Internet dating. It’s long but interesting. One expert comments that online dating “is as important as the automobile was in the 1920s and birth control in the 1960s.”

I have not had much luck with Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Craig’s List or related services. Yes, maybe it is the product being sold and not the sales method that is the real downfall. Friendster tries to remove some of the online dating stigma but I expect them to fail once their business model kicks in.

Is there a better solution? Everyone everywhere complains how it is tough to meet people, and in urban areas especially we are distracted enough by other things to pass interpersonal relationships off as not so big a deal. We try different things, and people stay in unhealthy relationships because they are unsure they could do better. Another group is caught in a cycle of constantly wanting to “upgrade” their mate to something better. I am not a fan of the upgrade crowd since they probably would make me broke as well.