The URL for the MC Media Player RSS feed has changed. I'm moving over to feedburner.com and I've updated the feed to:
http://feeds.mcmediaplayer.com/mcmp
Please update your subscription to the new address and accept my apologies for the hassle. The new URL should be permanent so I don't think I'll ever have to ask you to change again.
Labels: MCMediaPlayer
posted by Dave Owen @ 21:52
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California company Xcor Aerospace plans to enter the space tourism industry with a two-seat rocket ship capable of suborbital flights. Named Lynx, the vehicle is about the size of a small private plane and is expected to begin flying in 2010.
Labels: Space
posted by Dave Owen @ 10:33
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Quirky news story of the week is the case of the Italian supermarket checkout operator who was hypnotized by a cunning criminal into handing over a wad of cash. Apparently she didn't realise what had happened until her till didn't balance at the end of the shift.
Interestingly I haven't see any news stories tackle the question of whether this is a plausible story. I suspect we'll hear more, but allow me to pre-empt the result with my guess...
First of all, you can't just approach someone and hypnotise them instantly to do your bidding. Many people are immune altogether, and only the most suggestive are likely to be controllable in the reported fashion. The thief would probably want to select and groom the victim before the main event, just to make sure she was going to react as needed.
Hypnotism can't make you do anything that you consider morally wrong. If the girl was genuinely hypnotized, the criminal must have been even more cunning than most people would think. Perhaps he could have suggested that the money was for a worthy cause, or that he had been given permission to take it. However it does smell fishy - the ease of the apparent hypnotism makes me suspicious.
I have no strong gut feeling either way, but if I had to put money on it, I'd bet that the cashier was an accomplice. I wouldn't convict her without hard evidence of course, but I'd certainly be looking at her closely if I was on the investigative team.
I must emphasize this: I do believe that the hypnotism reported in this story is unlikely but certainly possible. "Innocent until proven guilty" and all that. Let's see what happens.
Labels: Paranormal, Ponderblog
posted by Dave Owen @ 12:22
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If you use Google Analytics for your website statistics, you might be interested in the new benchmarking option. If you agree to share your data (anonymously), Google will give you a comparison showing your traffic stats against other similar sites.
The benchmarking service has been collecting data for the last couple of weeks and it went live today. I had a lot of fun seeing my stats against industry standards. However it's pretty much a once-off buzz at the moment. There's not much to look at, and once you've seen how a site fares there's not much point going back to that report again.
Still, Google has a solid record of starting simple and building things into something no one else saw coming. This could be the beginning of a revolutionary way to measure statistics. I'm optimistic.
Categories
Importantly, all sites are divided into three categories: Small, medium and large. Statistics for a site can only be compared against other sites in the same category. The trouble is, you don't know which category your site is in, so how can you tell what you're really being compared to?
I don't have the whole answer (yet) but I've got a reasonable estimate. Because I have a few dozen websites that get various levels of traffic, I've been able to pin down the range of statistics in each category to some extent. It's still quite rough, and the data will change anyway as the service matures, but here's how I see it:
Small: The benchmark for sites in this category is around 5 visits per day. It includes sites that get up to somewhere between 15 and 50 visits per day.
Medium: The benchmark is around 200 visits per day (2100 page views). The range is from around 50 to somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 visits per day.
Large: The benchmark is around 10,000 visits per day. The range is from somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 visits per day upwards.
I currently have one site in the large category (Google thinks I'm large - now there's an aphrodisiac :)). The site is of course mediacollege.com, which is ranking 57% higher than the benchmark for large sites. Woohoo!
Now here's an interesting idea for Google - what about being able to share data between consenting accounts, so for example, I could agree to share data with some of my competitors and we could all measure up against each other. I don't know how many people would buy into it but I'd be a starter for sure. Nothing like a bit of in-your-face competition to get you motivated.
Labels: MediaCollege, WebEntrepreneur
posted by Dave Owen @ 22:20
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Stanford electronics researchers are developing a camera built around what they call a "multi-aperture image sensor." Pixels are reduced in size and grouped in arrays of 256 pixels. The fascinating thing is how image depth metadata can be stored with the image, allowing photo editors to select objects in the image based on their distance from the camera. Apparently this opens up lots of other new opportunities as well.
Full article at news-service.stanford.edu.
Labels: 3DNewZealand, MediaCollege
posted by Dave Owen @ 12:09
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More "Types of Photography" articles:
Commercial Photography
Event Photography
Large Format Photography
Macro Photography
Nature Photography
Night Time Photography
Satellite Photography
Sport Photography
Stock Photos
Ultraviolet Photographs
Underwater Photography
Labels: MediaCollege
posted by Dave Owen @ 20:52
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Here are a few new articles for the "Types of Photography" section at MediaCollege.com:
Astrophotography - Space photography.
Digiscoping - Photography through a telescope or binoculars.
Forensic Photography - Police and legal.
Infrared Photography - Photography in which the recording medium is sensitive to infrared light rather than the normal visible light spectrum.
Travel Photography - This article includes some basic tips on travel photography.
Labels: MediaCollege
posted by Dave Owen @ 21:28
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Dave Owen thinks he knows it all. He's got a hundred projects on the go but he never seems to finish anything. He's full of talk about getting rich from the internet but he owns no boats.
If you're still interested in following any of Dave's projects, or if you just find yourself chortling at his plebeian prose, you can subscribe to any of the topics below.
If none of this makes any sense, try reading What the hell is this? (it probably won't help).
