Digitivity » News

Google Homepage Christmas Doodle Sings Jingle Bells

Digitivity — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 17:34:00 +0000

Google wishes you ~~Merry Christmas~~ Happy Holidays with an interactive Christmas Eve homepage doodle. You click on the lights, and notes play. Once you complete the “puzzle”, the Google letters animate, and you get to listen to the tunes of Jingle Bells:

Then you get sent to a Google search for “Happy Holidays”.

4.74 Degrees of Separation Between You and the Rest of Humanity

Digitivity — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:10:00 +0000

You know how it’s commonly said there are six degrees of separation between you and anyone else on the planet? Meaning you know a guy who knows a guy … who knows the guy (six times). It’s based on a 1967 study by psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Now the NY Times says scientists at Facebook (they have scientists at Facebook?) determined there are an average of 4.74 acquaintances between any two people.

That’s based on a dataset of 700 million Facebook users.

That’s really quite interesting if you think about it. I think it adds perspective to the people you hear about in the news, either the notorious (Osama bin Laden, Conrad Black) to the rich and famous (Bill Gates, Barrack Obama).

Google Homepage Doodle Honors Mary Blair

Digitivity — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:41:00 +0000

Posted in Images

Ever heard of Mary Blair? Neither had I until today’s Google home page doodle honoring her on her 100th birthday. Mary Blair was a pioneering artist in the early days of Disney. She did work on Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and Cinderella. She explored the use of new techniques like putting multiple shades of [...] Related posts:

Virus Hits US Drone Fleet

Digitivity — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:43:00 +0000

We’ve all had enough of viruses on Windows. Then we had to get used to malware on phones. Now there are viruses for airplanes, too. The drone system being used to fight the US’s war in Afghanistan and other countries has been hit with a virus, specifically a keylogger.
Unanswered questions:

Is it possible the keylogger was actually installed by another segment of the government?
Is this payback for the Stuxnet virus that crippled Iran’s nuclear program?

Slideshare Dumps Flash for HTML5

Digitivity — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 19:02:00 +0000

Posted in Images

Slideshare, the appropriately named site where you share presentation slides, has ditched Adobe Flash. They redid the whole site in HTML5, which means you can access it with iPhones and iPads now, because iOS doesn’t have Flash. Sometimes the Slideshare widget takes a lot of CPU time, so here’s hoping it’s speedier. Related posts:Kingston’s DT-310 [...] Related posts:

Rite Aid Starts In-Store Virtual Doctor Visits

Digitivity — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:16:00 +0000

One of the largest drug store chains in the US, Rite Aid, has started up a virtual doctor consultation kiosk program. Customers will pay $45 for a 10 minute consultation. What’s interesting is that virtual consultations appear to have the same success rate as normal consultations.

The system even sends the diagnosis to your primary doctor.

So is this the beginning of the end for high-paid doctors?

HP Paid $80 Million to Get Rid of Its CEOs

Digitivity — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:06:19 +0000

Robert McGarvey writes that HP has paid $80 million over the years in severance pay, stock options, and so on to fired CEOs Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd, and Leo Apothekar.

Meanwhile, Eric Jackson calls the HP board pathetic, and I agree.

It would have been better to spend the $80 mil to flood the market with subsidized-cost TouchPads.

Facebook Timeline Will Let You Know Who Unfriended You

Digitivity — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:10:00 +0000

Up until now you’ve been able to find out who friended you on Facebook, but not who un-friended you.

But with the latest Facebook update, the Facebook Timeline feature, you can. You just click on a given year in the timeline. There’s a list, “Made x New Friends”. If someone un-friended you (or you them), there’ll be a link next to his name.

Via

Meg Whitman to Become HP CEO

Digitivity — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:45:41 +0000

Meg Whitman, former CEO of EBay, and fresh off a failed gubernatorial bid in California, is set to become CEO of HP, which just fired Léo Apotheker. Apotheker is the one responsible for the disastrous (in my opinion) decision to drop WebOS and HP’s entire hardware business.

Whitman was behind the purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion, which EBay later had to sell for basically a loss to Microsoft.

Could Whitman be the savior of HP? It seems HP board has been making one bad decision after another. It would be great if she would have the guts to reverse Apotheker’s decisions.

Google Homepage Doodle Honors Jim Hensen, Muppets Creator

Digitivity — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 14:57:00 +0000

Posted in Images

The Google homepage had an interactive doodle today honoring Jim Henson‘s 75th birthday. Henson is the creator of The Muppets. You can play with the doodle, and the “E” muppet on the end even gobbles up the “L”, but there’s no sound. Related posts:Google Homepage Doodle Honors Jorge Luis Borges Google Homepage Honors Freddie Mercury [...] Related posts: