Coffee addicts rejoice! I just came across this excellent news at the Starbucks Gossip blog:
Next Thursday, all company-operated and licensed Starbucks stores in the U.S., Canada, and other countries will give away free Tall (12-ounce) cups of coffee to anyone who drops by for the second annual Starbucks Coffee Break.
What a great idea! I’m so there.
Read: Starbucks Gossip
There’s a new report out from research firm IDC that attempts to count up all the zeroes and ones that fly around our digital world. I remember reading about the last such report, from the University of California, Berkeley. That report found that 5 exabytes of data were created in 2003. The new IDC report says the number for 2006 is 161 exabytes! Why the difference?
[The Berkeley researchers] also counted non-electronic information, such as analog radio broadcasts or printed office memos, and tallied how much space that would consume if digitized. And they examined original data only, not all the times things got copied.
In comparison, the IDC numbers ballooned with the inclusion of content as it was created and as it was reproduced – for example, as a digital TV file was made and every time it landed on a screen. If IDC tracked original data only, its result would have been 40 exabytes.
Even still, that’s an incredible increase in just three years. Apparently we don’t even have enough space to store all that data:
IDC estimates that the world had 185 exabytes of storage available last year and will have 601 exabytes in 2010. But the amount of stuff generated is expected to jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes (closing in on 1 zettabyte) in 2010.
Pretty hardcore, huh? You can read about zettabytes at Wikipedia. I’m not too worried about not having enough space though, even if we were attempting to store all that data (which we aren’t). Hard drives are already approaching the terabyte mark, so who knows how big they’ll be in 2010. Then of course there’s also the ever falling costs of DVD-like media.
More importantly, I bet a lot of the storage we “have available” right now is totally underutilized. You’d be hard pressed to find a computer that comes with less than 80 GB of storage these days, and I can assure you there are plenty of users who never even come close to filling it up. Heck, even I am only using about 75% of the storage I have available on my computer (420 GB out of 570 GB) and I bet a lot of it could be deleted (I’m a digital pack rat).
Read: Yahoo! News
I was looking around for event listings for Edmonton recently, and yesterday I stumbled upon the Edmonton Festival City website. My first reaction was – wow, this is great! – and my second reaction was – how did I not know about this site?! From the about page:
The people of Greater Edmonton are physically connected to each other by streets, sidewalks and bridges. We are also united culturally through our sports teams, the arts, local media and — uniquely to Edmonton — by the range, depth and variety of our festival scene.
The site has photos and some general information, but the real gem is the calendar. All of Edmonton’s many festivals are listed, with dates, contact information, and brief descriptions. There are events listed right up to November 2008.
It’s a pretty good resource. They really should have a blog/RSS feed with festival-related news though, then it would be really useful.
Read: Festival City
If there’s one movie I am looking forward to this year, it’s Spider-Man 3. Even though I have high expectations for the movie, I am confident it will exceed them. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to learn that NBC.com would have a special preview available tonight after Heroes aired. I just downloaded and watched the largest option, a whopping 285 MB for seven and a half minutes of 720p HD content.
The preview contains a scene with Peter and MJ, a scene with Peter and Aunt May, and the rest is an action sequence featuring Peter and Harry. And yes, the preview does end with a bit of a cliffhanger. It’s a fairly good preview, despite not giving us the goods (no Venom, no Sandman, etc)! If you want to download the clip, you’ve only got until tomorrow at 9 PM pacific time. Though I’m sure it will be up on BitTorrent by then.
The video took me about 8 minutes to download, which is pretty good considering I wasn’t even using our fastest connection. Looks like Sony is using Limelight Networks to serve the video.
Read: NBC.com
Back in December I said that podcasters should gather and share as much statistical data as possible. It is now exactly three months later and, surprise-surprise, I still feel that way. The topic resurfaced on Saturday when Adam Curry from PodShow posted about the number of download requests the PodShow network has received:
For the record, In December 2006 the network produced 52 million download requests.
Earlier today, Paul Colligan picked up on the story, and said:
Yes, Virginia, Podcast download numbers are important. And these are important numbers.
Yes, they are important. And 52 million is an impressive number, especially for just one month. But stating download requests alone is useless. I think they are important to track, but you need to pair them with something else. Something like a completed download.
Understanding the difference between a download request, a partial download, and a completed download can be somewhat confusing, so let’s try this metaphor on for size.
Download Request = Walking into the grocery store with a shopping list in hand
Partial Download = Filling your shopping cart with some of the items on your list
Completed Download = Filling your shopping cart with everything on your list
Partial Play = Eating some of the things you purchased
Completed Play = Eating everything you purchased
It’s important to note that each one is harder and harder to measure. It’s fairly trivial to count the number of people entering the store. It’s a little harder, but still fairly easy to count the number of people who have at least something in the cart. It’s much harder to count the number of people who have everything on their list. And to count the number of partial and completed plays? Much, much harder.
When you have all of these statistics, you get a really nice picture, don’t you? You can see a nice comparison of how many people entered the store and how many people actually bought something. Having just the number of people who entered the store is not that useful though. Sure it has some useful implications – if tons of people come in but don’t buy, maybe we don’t have what they want, or they didn’t like what they saw, etc. That makes sense in the offline world. In the online world though, it’s not just people that make download requests – it’s other applications and services too. It’s like counting every person, stroller, cart, bag, and box that enters the store – and clearly, only people can purchase something! To make matters worse, some applications will make multiple requests for a single download. Imagine a person walking into the store, putting something in the cart, exiting the store and walking back in again to put the second item in the cart.
So download requests are interesting, but they are really only valuable alongside other information like completed downloads. Or a list of which applications made the requests (this would allow you to tell the difference between a person and a stroller, for instance). Citing just the number of download requests will do nothing but mislead.
Smart move Microsoft! It’s no secret that one of the biggest selling points for the Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live service, and specifically the Arcade which contains relatively simple games. Now Microsoft is making moves to further increase the importance of XBLA:
Microsoft plans to announce a contest akin to the television show “Project Greenlight” that will award a cash prize and a potential slot on Xbox Live Arcade to the best new game created with XNA tools. The company intends to announce the winner of the contest, called “Dream-Build-Play,” in August.
That’s pretty cool! Imagine seeing your game in the Xbox Live Arcade…that would be sweet. You can learn more about Microsoft’s XNA tools here.
Read: NYTimes.com
Here are my weekly notes:
Regular readers of my blog will know that I don’t worry about online privacy all that much. My gut reaction to new technologies or products is generally not “what about my privacy!” As a result, I was pretty surprised to think about privacy right after seeing the new television commerical from Shaw! A quick search didn’t turn up any videos, so here’s a quick rundown of the commercial in case you haven’t seen it:
The commercial is shot in the familiar “Apple white” environment, with lots of people running around. The voiceover starts talking about Shaw’s technology, noting that Shaw is there “for every conversation, every web search, and every online purchase.” The video depicts these scenarios. The commercial concludes with something similar to, “the greatest thing about our technology, is the people behind it.”
It’s a good overall message, and I think I understand what they were going for. It’s too bad it comes off as kind of creepy. The thought process might go something like this:
Maybe I’m just reading into it too much, but I think Shaw would have been better off not highlighting all of the various things they could keep track of.
This is a busy time of year for birthdays in my family. Dad, Kim, Papa and Mom, all within about two weeks! She isn’t a blogger herself, but I know she reads mine sometimes, so feel free to wish my Mom a happy birthday in the comments.
I’ve had my Xbox 360 since the console launched, but I have never purchased a game from the Xbox Live Arcade. I was tempted with Dig Dug, but ended up just playing with the trial for a bit. I might have to lay down some cash this month though, because Worms is coming to XBLA:
I’m very excited to be able to confirm that Worms is coming to the Xbox Live Arcade next Wednesday. This is one of those games that seems like it was designed for the service with easy-to-learn gameplay, attractive graphics, and cute worms who are all out for blood.
Ah yes, good old Worms. I remember playing it on the computer back in high school – what a great game! According to the Wikipedia entry, the first public demo of the game happened back in January at CES. Worms will cost 800 Microsoft Points when it is released.
Also on the topic of upcoming releases for the Xbox Live Arcade, it looks like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is also going to available this year!
Sweetness.
Read: Ars Technica
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