You know the drill. Lots of links to stuff ... Hope you enjoy.
- 17.1 percent of US households have dropped their landline. Or, as Mike reblogged: "17% of the American public are not reflected in polling data because Federal law prohibits autodialing devices to be used on cell phone numbers. I wonder if the data from this survey could be combined with existing polling data to give a more accurate picture of the state of the race?" After a bit of searching it looks like Pew did a poll with cell phone users and found minor differences (48% Obama, 41% McCain with cell phones and 46% Obama, 41% McCain without them). They also found that "cell-only respondents are significantly more likely than either the landline respondents or the cell-mostly respondents to support Barack Obama and Democratic candidates for Congress this fall." Which isn't overly surprising.
- Copy Paste Character has all those random characters you need sometimes but can never find. I'm bookmarking it right now. (Via swissmiss)
- SEE stands for Stanford Engineering Everywhere. In their words, "For the first time in its history, Stanford is offering some of its most popular engineering classes free of charge to students and educators around the world." That's rad.
- I just posted this over at The Barbarian Group blog, but does anyone have opinions on those social media buttons that show up on every blog and media site? Have you seen any research on their effectiveness? Thanks.
- The story behind the Palin email hacking. As soon as I read all that stuff about her using her personal email for state business that she didn't want recorded I knew someone would get in there ... Was just a matter of when. (via Waxy.org)
- Rex wrote a quick post about Google's new audio search engine called Gaudi last week. Thought this was an interesting insight: "this could be enough for you to soon create supercuts like Jon Stewart's last night, which obsessed about the word 'blink.' This technique is usually considered Stewart's strongest rhetorical device, but does anyone else think it's starting to tire? And is it just format fatigue, or has the wonderment become less mystical as technology makes the ability to cull clips across years more common?" Not sure I have something to add, just thought it was interesting.
- While we're on the topic, though, is there a company in the world with more incentive to nail voice recognition than Google other than governments? Seriously, it's an arm race. Google needs it because it's a whole new way of serving ads and thus a new market for them to move into. The government needs it for other reasons. Who will win? (Unless the government already has and we don't know about it yet. Which is also possible.)
- How Things Work is a site that "explains the physics of everyday life." I love it. I have tons of question just like this and am so excited there is someone out there answering them. Some of the ones answered on the site: "My eight year old daughter asked me, 'If light is the fastest thing in the universe what is the second fastest thing in the universe?'" and "How do glasses work and the physics behind them?" It's even got an RSS feed. Sweet. (via swissmiss again ... she was on a roll this week)
- Back on politics, the latest New York Times/CBS poll results were pretty interesting. Mostly things are back to where they were pre-conventions/Palin: 48 percent Obama, 43 percent McCain. This was the most interesting part for me: "But the Times/CBS News poll suggested that Ms. Palin’s selection has, to date, helped Mr. McCain only among Republican base voters; there was no evidence of significantly increased support for him among women in general. White women were evenly divided between Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama; before the conventions, Mr. McCain led Mr. Obama among white women, 44 percent to 37 percent."
- Video time: Ninja cat makes me smile and Richie Hawtin's DJ setup is awesome.
- Last but not least, some New Yorkerness: Maybe the funniest thing I've read about Sarah Palin and a fascinating look at the ants that live in New York's medians.
That's it for now. Hope everyone had a great time at likemind today. Sorry I missed it.