Rational rants

Twitter authority frenzy led to Twitter phishing meltdown

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:18:08 +0000

Folks like to know where they stand, and in recent weeks people on Twitter have been, well, all a-twitter about the idea of Twitter Authority. They want to know who is most influential—a repeat of the phenomenon that swept the blogosphere a while back. It’s a human thing, but it is also the kind of [...]

Amazon’s “Remembers” feature needs to go further

Mitch Ratcliffe — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:28:03 +0000

Several of my ZD Net colleagues noted the launch to Amazon’s iPhone app this week. The feature that is most interesting, in my opinion, is the Amazon Remembers, which lets users snap a photo of a product with their iPhone and upload it refer to later, when shopping, and so that Amazon can attempt to [...]

Thanks to Google, writers’ lives may be even more thankless, unless….

Mitch Ratcliffe — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:21:17 +0000

The announcement that Google has settled its book scanning lawsuit with The Author’s Guild raises all sorts of hopes for digital use of new and previously published books. But without some radical changes in the publishing industry, the results of the settlement are not going to make it easier to be a writer for a [...]

eBooks: The first step of a long change

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:01:46 +0000

After polling all of you about the right price for an eBook device and the kinds of documents you are buying, as well as doing a lot of research over the last couple months, it’s clear that the eBooks market is growing. It’s also clear that there are huge hurdles to overcome before we, as [...]

Inner8.com launches: Here are 100 early access invites to new stock site

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 23:34:08 +0000

Inner8.com, a new investing intelligence site, goes live today. I’ve got 100 invites, so if you’d like to try it out, click below. Inner8 started out as Jambaz.com more than a year ago. I participated in their early testing and, after they tried some ideas, the team went back and built something really impressive, which [...]

LHC, Genomics and the era of massive data sets

Mitch Ratcliffe — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:37:36 +0000

The world won’t end when the Large Hadron Collider makes its anticipated first collision of high-energy particles later this month, but it will produce an explosion of data. The LHC will produce as much data in a single day of experimentation as many scientists dealt with in a lifetime only a decade ago. Genomics data, [...]

Social design advice for Starbucks

Mitch Ratcliffe — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:34:19 +0000

Starbucks announced today it will begin a daily “Good Sheet” of news about politics, health care and other issues that it will distribute in its stores as a way to start conversations. According to a Starbucks executive quoted by The Motley Fool, the company is looking for “conversation starters.” It is also looking at launching [...]

Microsoft builds $300M cathedral to Bill Gates, hires Jerry Seinfeld as Pope

Mitch Ratcliffe — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:47:26 +0000

I’m just having a little fun…. I don’t get the Seinfeld commercial. They are selling Bill, not Windows. What’s with that? Bill retired in July. This just in from Adweek’s commercials critic, Barbara Lippert: The Future. Delicious” is the sign-off, but I am permanently grossed out by the vision of Gates’ ass wink. Also, why would they [...]

Should political postings stay or go? A survey.

Mitch Ratcliffe — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:26:57 +0000

I’ve been blogging for ZD Net for several years, writing for ZD publications for almost 20 years. I’ve always found readers to be intelligent and thoughtful, which is why I continue to do this while doing other things as “work.” My posting, A virus in your genes, think about that, yesterday elicited an interesting range [...]

A virus in our genes, think about that….

Mitch Ratcliffe — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:10:27 +0000

Really fascinating news: Virus is passed from parent to child in the DNA. Researchers found that roseola, an infection that everyone apparently gets but only 20 percent of children develop the characteristic rash that gives it its name, is actually in our DNA. It co-evolved into us, which raises some very interesting today in particular. They [...]