Nice old skool rave tune for a Tuesday...Renegade - Terrorist

Amazon's recommendation secret

Amazon's recommendation secret Much is made of what the likes of Facebook, Google and Apple know about users. Truth is, Amazon may know more. And the massive retailer proves it every day. FORTUNE -- When Amazon recommends a product on its site, it is clearly not a coincidence. At root, the retail giant's recommendation system is based on a number of simple elements: what a user has bought in the past, which items they have in their virtual shopping cart, items they've rated and liked, and what other customers have viewed and purchased. Amazon (AMZN) calls this homegrown math "item-to-item collaborative filtering," and it's used this algorithm to heavily customize the browsing experience for returning customers. A gadget enthusiast may find Amazon web pages heavy on device suggestions, while a new mother could see those same pages offering up baby products. Judging by Amazon's success, the recommendation system works. The company reported a 29% sales increase to $12.83 billion during its second fiscal quarter, up from $9.9 billion during the same time last year. A lot of that growth arguably has to do with the way Amazon has integrated recommendations into nearly every part of the purchasing process from product discovery to checkout. Go to Amazon.com and you'll find multiple panes of product suggestions; navigate to a particular product page and you'll see areas plugging items "Frequently Bought Together" or other items customers also bought. The company remains tight-lipped about how effective recommendations are. ("Our mission is to delight our customers by allowing them to serendipitously discover great products," an Amazon spokesperson told Fortune. "We believe this happens every single day and that's our biggest metric of success.") Amazon also doles out recommendations to users via email. Whereas the web site recommendation process is more automated, there remains to this day a large manual component. According to one employee, the company provides some staffers with numerous software tools to target customers based on purchasing and browsing behavior. But the actual targeting is done by the employees and not by machine. If an employee is tasked with promoting a movie to purchase like say, Captain America, they may think up similar film titles and make sure customers who have viewed other comic book action films receive an email encouraging them to check out Captain America in the future. Amazon employees study key engagement metrics like open rate, click rate, opt-out -- all pretty standard for email marketing channels at any company -- but lesser known is the fact that the company employs a survival-of-the-fittest-type revenue and mail metric to prioritize the Amazon email ecosystem. "It's pretty cool. Basically, if a customer qualifies for both a Books mail and a Video Games mail, the email with a higher average revenue-per-mail-sent will win out," this employee told Fortune. "Now imagine that on a scale across every single product line -- customers qualifying for dozens of emails, but only the most effective one reaches their inbox." The tactic prevents email inboxes from being flooded, at least by Amazon. At the same time it maximizes the purchase opportunity. In fact, the conversion rate and efficiency of such emails are "very high," significantly more effective than on-site recommendations. According to Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester analyst, Amazon's conversion to sales of on-site recommendations could be as high as 60% in some cases based off the performance of other e-commerce sites. Still, although Amazon recommendations are cited by many company observers as a killer feature, analysts believe there's a lot of room for growth."There's a collective belief within the e-commerce industry that Amazon's recommendation engine is a suboptimal solution," says Mulpuru. Trisha Dill, a Well's Fargo analyst, says it's hard to fault Amazon for their recommendations, but she also says the company has a lot of work to do in offering users items more relevant to them. As an example, she points to a targeted email she received pushing a chainsaw carrying case. (She doesn't own a chainsaw.) Besides refining the accuracy of recommendations themselves, Amazon could explore more ways to reach customers. Already, the company has begun selling items previously sold in bulk that were too cost-prohibitive to ship individually like say, a deck of cards or a jar of cinnamon. Customers may buy them, but only if they have an order totaling $25 or over. But the company could actively recommend these add-on products during check-out when an order crosses that pricing threshold, much like traditional supermarkets have impulse-purchase items like gum and candy bars at the register. At that point, the Amazon customer, just as they would in the supermarket, might think, "It's just a few more bucks. Why not?"

Microsoft to take on iPad with British chips

(Telegraph.co.uk) But ARM, the Cambridge-based firm behind the silicon, says not even it knows for what will be unveiled, with the event surrounded by unusually strict secrecy for Microsoft. Warren East, ARM’s chief executive told The Telegraph he hadn’t been told what to expect from the big reveal, which will take place in Los Angeles. “We’ve heard about this event on Monday but we don’t know anything more about it,” he said. “It’s a Microsoft product and they’re responsible for development and marketing. We haven’t been involved.” Microsoft announced a new ARM-compatible version of Windows 8, dubbed Windows RT, at the Consumer Electronics Show last year. It represents a shift from x86 processor architecture and a weakening of Microsoft historic alliance with Intel, which makes most of the microchips in desktop and laptop computers. The move therefore underscores Microsoft’s desire to break the iPad’s stranglehold on the tablet market, which is encroaching on its corporate IT stronghold. ARM architecture has come to dominate mobile computing because it is designed to consume as little power as possible, extending battery life. “We obviously welcome Microsoft moving to ARM architecture,” said Mr East. “Windows will be an exciting new market for us.” Both the ARM and x86 versions of Windows 8 have been designed with Microsoft’s touchscreen-friendly “Metro” user interface, adapted from its smartphone operating system Windows Mobile 7. It does away with the familiar start button and presents information from apps in constantly-updated “tiles” on the home screen. Some reports ahead of Monday’s announcement have suggested Microsoft will introduce an own-brand tablet before licensing the software to third parties manufacturers such as HP, in an echo of the way Google makes its own “Nexus” Android smartphones. Tim Anderson, a journalist and expert on Windows, said such a move would make sense. “Microsoft wants to make a splash with Windows RT, the ARM version, and there is evidence that it is having difficulty communicating its benefits or convincing its [manufacturing] partners to get fully behind it,” he wrote. He added that Windows 8 on x86 appeared to be too expensive and too hard to use to be an iPad-beater. “Windows RT is critical to Microsoft and if it has to make its own hardware in order to market it properly, then it should do so,” Mr Anderson wrote.

First Painters May Have Been Neanderthal, Not Human

(Wired.com) European cave paintings are older than previously thought, raising the possibility that Neanderthals rather than Homo sapiens were the earliest painters. That’s not yet certain: The paintings may have been made by humans at an unexpectedly early date, which would itself raise intriguing questions, though none so tantalizing as Neanderthal painters. “It would not be surprising if the Neanderthals were indeed Europe’s first cave artists,” said João Zilhão, an archaeologist at Spain’s University of Barcelona, at a press conference on June 13. Researchers led by Zilhão and Alistair Pike of the United Kingdom’s University of Bristol measured the ages of 50 paintings in 11 Spanish caves. The art, considered evidence of sophisticated symbolic thinking, has traditionally been attributed to modern humans, who reached Europe about 40,000 years ago. Traditional methods of dating cave paintings, however, are relatively clumsy. Even the previous best technique — carbon dating, or translating amounts of carbon molecule decay into measurements of passing time — couldn’t discern differences of a few thousand years. Instead of carbon, Pike and João Zilhão’s team calibrated their molecular clocks by studying mineral deposits that form naturally on cave surfaces, including paintings. The thicker the deposits, the older the painting. And as the researchers describe in a June 14 Science paper, some of the paintings are very old indeed. Some handprint outlines are at least 37,000 years old. Several red circles are at least 41,000 years old and may be several thousand years older. That’s 10,000 years older than paintings in France, which until now were considered the oldest cave art. If H. sapiens made the Spanish paintings, they would have needed to arrive in Europe already possessing a symbolic art tradition, something for which there’s no other evidence. Alternatively, humans may have arrived in Europe and promptly learned to paint, raising the question of why such an important cultural leap occurred so suddenly, in that particular place. Maybe something about the environment, such as competition with Neanderthals, made symbolic thinking important. Or — and this is still just a hypothesis, one that needs to be tested by dating of many more paintings — the artists were not human. Maybe they were Neanderthals. If so, the paintings would be a pièce de résistance addition to a decade of Neanderthal research that’s showed how our closest evolutionary relatives, long considered less intelligent than humans, were truly sophisticated thinkers capable of symbolism, social planning and empathy. Paintings would provide the last bit of evidence needed to throw out the image of Neanderthals as archetypally dumb, Zilhao said. “What’s really exciting about this possibility,” said Pike, “is that anyone, because it’s open to the public, could walk into El Castillo cave and see a Neanderthal hand on the wall.”

Tune of the summer - thanks Zane Lowe

Wow

I'm ready

New Order - World in Motion by Tunashaker

Sergey Brin finally lets someone else wear Google Glass

(WIRED) -- Sergey Brin has once again hit the town with Project Glass -- but this time he let someone else wear Google's augmented reality headset. California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom wore the specs on "The Gavin Newsom Show," and later told Wired about his brief experience with one of the world's most rarefied pieces of technology. "You can easily forget you have them on, and sense the capacity of use in the future," Newsom told us, adding the headset felt incredibly light, comfortable and inconspicuous on his head. Brin and his wife, Anne Wojcicki, appeared on Newsom's Current TV talk show Wednesday May 23 to discuss Project Glass and Sergey's work in the Google X labs. On the show, Brin also provided our first glimpse into how the Google Glass interface is navigated. In the video, Brin navigates the system via a touchpad on the right side of the headset behind the display. He slides his finger forward and back to locate a photo he took of Gavin Newsom with the contraption. He then places the headset on Newsom's face, and continues to navigate until the photo is located. He also tells Newsom, "Don't touch the pad on the side" while setting up the headset for the talk show host. Unfortunately for inquiring minds, when Newsom asked how the photo was taken, Brin didn't answer. Newsom told Wired that he was impressed by the image quality of the display in the glasses. The politician-slash-talk-show-host noted that the lighting on his set is less than ideal for demoing a display, but nonetheless the "image was remarkably clear." As for interacting with the real world while wearing the glasses, Newsom said he found it easy to quickly focus on Brin and Wojcicki sitting across the desk, and then refocus to the image of himself displayed in the headset's screen. After returning the glasses to his own face, Brin swiped down on the touchpad of the glasses and continued the interview. The down-swipe could possibly be used to exit the photo album he was demoing to Newsom. Whatever the case, Brin's swipes answer questions about how the interface is navigated. Brin told Newsom that he brought a rough prototype. "I have some hopes to maybe get it out sometime next year," he told Newsom, "but that's still a little bit of a hope." With this in mind, it's possible that what Newsom demoed on Wednesday could change radically before the final production model hits the market. Nonetheless, even at this early stage, the glasses are impressive, Newsom says. He told Wired that the headset was "a heck of a lot further along than people have imagined." The Google co-founder told Newsom that Google X is now his primary focus at Google. His team has been working on the glasses for two to three years, and Brin as been involved for the past year. Brin also explains why Google is working on the technology: "The idea is that you want to be free to experience the world without futzing with a phone." One concern with wearable computers is that they're cumbersome wardrobe additions. To this point, Newsom told us that he was surprised by "how unremarkable the glasses are except for the remarkable feature." That said, when asked if he would actually wear the glasses himself -- you know, in public -- the lieutenant governor replied, "I haven't seen the video yet, so I'll withhold judgment until I see myself. I'm hoping this isn't my Dukakis moment." If you want to watch the full interview, the show airs on Current TV at 11 p.m. ET (8 p.m. PT) on Friday and throughout the weekend.

I like this - A$AP Rocky - Goldie

Zulu Winter — Silver Tongue

Fred V & Grafix - Just A Thought

Skrillex — Breakn’ A Sweat (Zedd Remix)

Sub Focus — Falling Down

Madeon — Icarus

MINI: Fan the Flame

The Bark Side

Resolutions! Five tech behaviors to drop in 2012

(CNN) -- If your New Year's resolutions have lasted this long, congratulations. You're 1/366th of the way home.
But it's not too late to throw a few more on the pile. And since half of us spend an hour or more online every day, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, it's worth considering a few Web resolutions to go along with those vows to drop some pounds or put down the smokes.
Here are a few suggestions for digital behaviors you might want to resolve to drop in 2012. You can feel better about yourself while making the Web a happier place.

Even this guy.

Copy-and-pasted Facebook statuses

Guess what? We can pretty much promise that even more than 97% of us won't copy and paste the Facebook status update that you copied and pasted from someone else (who, in turn, predicted that 97% of people wouldn't copy and paste it).
First, some math. If 97% of Facebook's purported 800 million users don't copy and paste your status, that means that 24 million people will. Congratulations -- you just created one of the most popular things ever on Facebook.
Seriously. Feel strongly about a cause? Write your thoughts about it. Once we've seen the same thing five or 10 times, we'll stop being sympathetic even if you're taking a stand against the cudgeling of baby seals or something.
And the ones that claim to share some tidbit of shocking information? The vast majority are bunk.
We'd say about 97% of them.

Mangling the English language on Twitter

We get that Twitter is meant to be quick. And that sometimes you have to tighten up the spelling to get your words of wisdom down to 140 characters or less.
But for the love of Bieber (16 million followers), take five seconds to get "it's" and "its" or "they're," "there" and "their" right.
You'll probably hold onto more followers in the new year if your tweets don't hurt their brains. And, if you're a celebrity, take the time to avoid reminding us that your clever dialogue came from a screenwriter or those meaningful lyrics were penned for you by a songwriter.

Lame online comments

We get it. When you combine "people" and "sheep," you get "sheeple." And, at some point, somebody probably felt proud of the new portmanteau he dreamed up to insult folks on the Web whose opinions differed from his own. (Pardon the pronoun ... but you know it was a guy.)
Look ... the Internet gives us the ability to communicate in real time with people we've never met, all over the world. Is "This is Obama's fault" -- on a news story about a lost kitten -- really the best we can do?
And don't get us started on "First!"
We'd love to see online commenting take a step forward in 2012 and have people shoot for the kind of conversations we'd like to have if we were all sitting together over a cup of coffee or cold beer.
But we'd settle for not seeing "LULZ" used as a noun.
(Note: We're well aware this item guarantees that all the bad behavior we just mentioned will now appear in the comments below. Go for it if you must -- just don't think we didn't see it coming.)

Inviting Internet karma

Do you run an online business? Are you hoping to get elected? Heck ... do you do just about anything that involves dealing with other human beings?
Then don't be a jerk. It will just make the watchdogs of the Internet have to waste time taking you to the digital woodshed.
Remember the customer service rep who recently told a customer whose video-game controller order had been repeatedly delayed to "grow up"? (The rep also helpfully called him a "complete moron.") The guy was fired after sites such as Penny Arcade got their hands on the e-mail chain.
Did your airline break a musician's guitar? Pay him for it, or he'll write a catchy country song and post it on YouTube, where 11 million people will see it.
Want to charge your customers $2 just to make their payments online (the quickest, most environmentally friendly and easiest-to-process way)? They'll hound you online so mercilessly that you'll have to change your mind the next day. Yes, Verizon, we're looking at you.
We've got this great big tool to tell lots of folks about your wrongdoings really fast. So resolve to be nice. Or you will pay.

Smartphone misbehavior

Just because your phone lets you get on the Internet doesn't mean you have to tweet -- or heaven forbid, make a call -- on the toilet. You don't have to bury your face in Words With Friends while you're walking down the hall, putting us both at risk of a collision and concussion.
We get it. Boy, do we ever get it. Those super-computers in our pockets are alluring in a way that not much technology has ever been. We get hooked ourselves sometimes.
But you can put your phone away once in a while. If you try hard, you can make it through 2012 without texting in front of us in the movie theater or while weaving through rush-hour traffic.
And while we're at it, here's a tip for you Apple employees: Try to get through 2012 without leaving any iPhone 5 prototypes in bars. Really, you can do it.

Cinkoza — Solid

Wander Jackson - Funnel of Love