My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on November 18, 2008

I’ve figured out that Twitter is down … again (Tuesday AM). I’ve been wondering just what the business plan is for this popular social networking site and suspect that we’ll eventually see deep pockets google gobble it up.
😛

It seems that the many of the media outlets are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and the growth has been quite amazing. Will they continue to be able to support or need to seek more cash in order to survive and keep up the pace? I’m thinking that 2009 will see some kind of change for Twitter.

From TechCrunch

October was a good month for Twitter. All those election Tweets brought a 25 percent increase in U.S. visitors from the month before, to 1.45 million unique visitors, according to comScore. (Worldwide, the number was 5.6 million in September). Since January, Twitter has experienced a 16-fold growth in the U.S. And that is just visitors to Twitter.com. These numbers don’t count all the people who send and read Tweets from other Websites, desktop apps, or their mobile phones.

Twitter is having its hockey stick moment in terms of its growth just shooting up. Last week it may have delivered its billionth Tweet, at least nominally. And it looks like it is approaching escape velocity. If it doesn’t break up from all the pressure and is able to keep its service up and running more or less, it could soon—gasp!—break into the mainstream.

That little red line at the bottom of the chart, just for reference, is FriendFeed. It is still scraping the ice in terms of growth. Comscore only measures 150,000 unique U.S. visitors in October (550,000 worldwide in September). But that’s just below where Twitter was last January. And FriendFeed is a lot younger than Twitter, having launched publicly only last February, compared to July, 2006 for Twitter. Maybe a year from now it will be hitting its hockey stick.

Category: Computer, Social Media | No Comments »
Tags: twitter

Posted By RichC on November 17, 2008

A little public announcement if you enjoy a nice evening, a little dinner, some local talent in the form of Holiday Music and “perhaps” a little local shopping. Be sure to plan to visit the Streets of West Chester 6 pm to 8 pm in December as the Lakota West High School Band will be playing December 5th thru the 20th. The shopping area is located just off I-75 at the Union Centre exit just north of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Category: Misc | No Comments »
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Posted By RichC on November 16, 2008

While watching the poorly performing and ulcer producing Cincinnati Bengals tie with the Philadelphia Eagles in suddlen-death overtime, I did some catch up on my links from friends.

One of the links was a great driving video Twittered by sbilik — Thanks Scott.

Category: Sports | 4 Comments »
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Posted By RichC on November 16, 2008

I’ve noticed the Christmas ads are starting to make their way into the Sunday afternoon football games, and one of them by Kay Jewelers caught my attention. The ad features a deaf girl (or actress playing a deaf girl) and her boyfriend using American Sign Language while sitting under the Christmas tree. It caught my attention, because my son’s language classes in both high school and college have been in ASL or Ameslan.

Category: Entertainment, Video-TV | 8 Comments »
Tags: asl, commercial, kay jewelers, television

Posted By RichC on November 15, 2008

I was tinkering with my aging Palm Treo 700p smartphone and the cellphone quality camera lens and sensor (1.2meg) while killing time trying to directly post a message to my blog. (the steaks and asparagus were great, but the phone-to-blog post didn’t work correctly)

Category: Misc | No Comments »
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Posted By RichC on November 15, 2008

I’m not sure why I continue to keep several different browsers updated on my notebook computer since am pretty loyal to Mozilla Firefox, but its interesting to compare the latest version of Firefox — which I updated to 3.04 this past week — with Google’s Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Apple’s Safari and Opera 9.6.

Category: Computer | No Comments »
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Posted By RichC on November 14, 2008

The space shuttle Endeavor is schedule for an evening liftoff at 7:55 PM on Friday night if all goes on schedule. The STS-126 mission is to do some “Extreme Home Improvements” to the International Space Station. The seven member crew of commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Eric Boe, Mission Specialists Donald Pettit, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, Steve Bowen, Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus will take up about 14,500 pounds of supply making it “one of the heaviest modules in shuttle history.”

The 15-day mission will deliver an additional sleeping quarters, a second toilet  and and exercise device. The four scheduled spacewalks will focus on the  two Solar Alpha Joints which are used to track the sun to provide electrical power to the space station. Godspeed Endeavor. ( I always wanted to say that before a NASA launch!)

Click for PDF Media Kits

Category: Misc, Space | 2 Comments »
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Posted By RichC on November 14, 2008

I do enjoy seeing biodiesel and aviation come together and last week the BioJet flew 1776 miles of a 2496 mile flight from Reno, Nevada to Leesburg, Florida on a blend of soy and animal fat biodiesel.  According to Scientific American, “the Aero L-29 jet kept the biodiesel from congealing at high altitude by continuously heating it—and landing every 300 miles or so to refuel. The flight is a proof of principle, according to Green Flight International CEO Doug Rodante, and is aimed at addressing the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning jet fuel — roughly 3 percent of total worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but released in a very bad spot—high in the atmosphere.” Publicity like this is a good for renewable fuels and good for the environment.

Green Flight International Record-Setting Biofuel-Powered Jet Flight

Orlando, FL – November 1, 2008 – Green Flight International President and CEO Douglas Rodante and Chief Pilot Carol Sugars became the first flight crew to successfully cross the U.S. in a jet powered predominantly on environmentally-friendly Biofuel.

The record-setting flight originated in Reno, NV and concluded in Leesburg, FL on Nov 1, after a total flight time of 11 hours, 13 minutes, flown at altitudes ranging from 13,000 to 17,000 feet.

“This transcontinental flight was distinctive in that 1,776 miles of the 2,486 total miles flown were powered on 100% Biofuel,” said Rodante. Only 710 miles of the flight were powered by a mixture of 50% Biofuel and 50% standard jet fuel.  The 50/50 fuel mix was used to compare performance data and demonstrate the capability of blending Biofuel with existing jet fuel supplies.

Rodante and Sugars made aviation history in October 2007 when they became the first crew to pilot a jet aircraft powered entirely on Biofuel.  The pair has once again demonstrated the viability of renewable fuels in aviation by completing their more recent Biofuel-powered coast-to-coast flight.  “These flights prove that we have the capability of supplementing our energy requirements with safe, environmentally-friendly alternatives to petroleum,” said Rodante.  “And the Biofuel is produced in the U.S., which essentially negates our dependency on foreign fuel supplies.”

The Federal Aviation Administration has expressed an interest in using the Orlando-based Green Flight’s Biofuel test program as a template to assess future generations of aviation fuels. “There is absolutely no room for error in a single engine jet aircraft operating on ¹⁰⁰% Biofuel,” said Chief  Pilot Sugars. “The extended cross-country experimental flight operated to stringent specifications required by the FAA in order to ensure public safety.”

Green Flight International’s flight was sponsored in part by Erie, PA-based companies, Lake Erie Biofuels, LLC., and Logistics Plus, for assuming fuel supply and transport responsibilities; and Lockheed Martin Corporation’s [NYSE: LMT] Missiles and Fire Control business unit of Orlando, Fla., provided laboratory testing and support.

The Green Flight team is dedicated to continue their work in promoting the use of eco-friendly renewable fuels in aviation, and is currently developing another record-breaking flight.

Category: Aviation, Biodiesel | 4 Comments »
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Posted By RichC on November 13, 2008

Copyright infringement … its a big problem for content creators as the Internet continues to expand by email, blogs and forums — but how big is the problems?

Attributor, a company that monitors the re-publication of content, indicates that unauthorized online copies of a content creators’ articles are nearly 1.5 times larger than the readership from the original web site. The study was conducted from September 12 through October 12, 2008 reviewed 30 billion web pages in order to market their monitoring services. They looked at more than 100 major web site and included only licensed content discarding any page that copied less than 50 percent or fewer than 125 words of a copyrighted story. They concluded that if publishers were to be able to monetized their stories with online advertising, that a major web pubisher could add $150,000 in additional revenue. (based on an assumption that advertisers would pay $1 for every 1,000 pages of unauthorized material)

Category: News | No Comments »
Tags: copyright, internet, media, News

Posted By RichC on November 12, 2008

Ok, so this post is sort of a tease to North American Volkswagen enthusiasts, but it is still interesting to see what “might” eventually make its way to our shores. In the following short video clip, the “self-park” or “park-assist” feature which was only available in the Lexis is also available in the VW Tiguan — overseas. The Australian based reviewer, from AnyAutoTV, demonstrates right-hand drive Tiguan TDI self parking ability earlier this year in his YouTube video review. It is a pretty advanced feature that might eventually make its way to the U.S. … perhaps along with the ‘new’ clean diesel engine? The last word I’ve heard on the new Tiguan TDI was it didn’t meet the EPA requirements without exhaust gas after treatment — AdBlue or perhaps the new Honda system. (note that the TDI engine in the video has the traditional diesel clatter, unlike the the newer 2009 VW Jetta TDI Sedans and Sportwagens)

Category: Misc | 1 Comment »
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