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Author Archives: GilPress
The InfoStory Quant: 20% of US population playing social games
According to NPD, 20% of the US population (56.8 million) reports having played a game on a social network. This is good news, according to a new study claiming video gamers make faster and more accurate decisions.
Posted in The InfoStory Quant, Video Games
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This day in information: Birth of the disk drive
Today in 1956, IBM announced the 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting), the first disk storage product. It came with fifty 24-inch disks for a total capacity of 5 megabytes, weighed 1 ton, and could be leased for $3,200 per … Continue reading
Posted in Information storage, This day in information
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This day in information: Film
Today in 1898, the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin was granted a patent for his invention (in 1887) of a method for making transparent, flexible film.
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This day in information: Lascaux cave
Seventy years ago today, four French teenagers and their dog, Robot, discovered the 17,000 year-old cave paintings at Lascaux. In 1947, LIFE’s Ralph Morse went to Lascaux, and became the first photographer to ever document the paintings.
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Starting information businesses: 1979, 2009
At Startup Bootcamp today, two presenters represented two different eras and two different approaches to starting an information technology business. Before Bob Metcalfe started 3Com, he met, one by one, with all the VCs on the West Coast (going through … Continue reading
Posted in Information Economy, Startups
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The Internet of Things: From Soda to Data Fountain
“[Coca-Cola’s new soda fountain] Freestyle keep table on its supplies via an RFID inventory system….it also comes with Wi-Fi, which it uses ti send Coca-Cola headquarters in Atalanta both inventory and marketing data.” IEEE Spectrum, September 2010
Posted in Data growth, Internet of things
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Rapid spread of information vs. behavior change
MIT’s Damon Centola: “The networks that make information spread more quickly actually make behavior spread more slowly.” The “Strength of weak ties” (i.e., random networks) does not impact people’s behavior. Conclusion: Twitter good for rapid information dissemination and Facebook good … Continue reading
Posted in Information diffusion, Social Networks
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InfoStory Quotes: What technology does or doesn’t do to us
“It’s technology, not business or government, that’s the real driving force behind large-scale societal shifts.” —Sean Parker, quoted in David Kirkpatrick, “With a Little Help from His Friends,” Vanity Fair, October 2010 “The invention of new communications technologies—especially the Internet—is … Continue reading
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This day in information: Software bugs
Today in 1947, operators of the Mark II traced the cause of the computer’s malfunction to a moth caught in a relay and wrote in their logbook “First actual case of bug being found.”
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InfoStory Quotes: Dog mail
“Sniffing a fire hydrant or a tree along a route popular with other dogs… becomes a means of keeping abreast of current events. That tree serves as a large canine tabloid containing the latest news items in the dog world. It may … Continue reading
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