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Sanjeev Narang notes about poetry, quotations, scrabble, trivia, vocabulary, word lists, word oddities, word play, seattle and washington lists.

Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye

Tuesday, January 17, 2006
news @ nature.com - Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye - Potential readers can make snap decisions in just 50 milliseconds.

"Lindgaard and her team presented volunteers with the briefest glimpses of web pages previously rated as being either easy on the eye or particularly jarring, and asked them to rate the websites on a sliding scale of visual appeal. Even though the images flashed up for just 50 milliseconds, roughly the duration of a single frame of standard television footage, their verdicts tallied well with judgements made after a longer period of scrutiny. "

Hack your socks

Monday, January 16, 2006
Salon.com editor Scott Rosenberg shares a tip on how he avoids the
pointless waste of time that is sorting socks:

(1) Throw out all your old socks (or donate them, if they're presentable).

(2) Decide what color socks you need. The fewer colors the better.
I've gone minimalist-retro: there's the black socks, and there's the
white socks, and that's it.

(3) Purchase large quantities of socks in those colors. You can get
different brands/makes for each color, as long as all socks of the
same color are exactly the same.

(4) Just dump the socks in your dresser drawer as is from the clean
wash -- don't sort or pair them. When you need a pair, grab any two of
the same color -- they're guaranteed to match!

This approach also conveniently guarantees that The Missing Sock that
got eaten by the laundry machine won't unbalance a pair, too.

Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment

Mass. startup to pay writers

Blogging is too popular and and easy-to-start and, with Google AdSense, too easily monetized to be coralled to a one-stop site process.

One-stop site for blogs offered - The Boston Globe

One-stop site for blogs offered

Mass. startup to pay writers

A new Boston website aims to bring order to the tens of millions of weblogs proliferating online and provide one-stop shopping for overwhelmed Internet surfers. In the process, it could put some cash in the pockets of Internet scribes pecking away in obscurity.

The site, Gather.com, positions itself as a kind of eBay for online writers and their readers -- a gathering spot for musings and discussions on everything from wine and computers to fitness and spirituality. And, with a business model that could shake up the writing profession, executives from Gather Inc. are recruiting bloggers by offering them a share of the company's advertising revenue.

Eventually, popular writers will be able to earn a living by posting their work and attracting eyeballs to advertisements, said Gather's founder, 35-year-old technology entrepreneur Tom Gerace. That won't happen right away, though .....

NetGear : 54Mbps Wireless Travel Router for $10 after MIR



NetGear : 54Mbps Wireless Travel Router : $60

Rebate : $50

Happy Birthday Wikipedia : Wikipedia Day

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, turned 5 years old January 15, 2006.

The English Wikipedia alone now has more than 920,000 articles, with over 340,000,000 words. The millionth article is expected to appear in late February or early March. The combined Wikipedias for all languages have an estimated total of over 3,100,000 articles in some two hundred languages. Eighty-four of the non-English Wikipedias have over 1,000 articles, thirty-six have over 10,000 and seven have over 100,000.