Amanda pointed me to an Economist article about the dabbawala, a food distribution group in India that is being noticed for their ingenuity in business structure and supply chain logistics. The group pays all 5000 members equally, and has achieved a 99.9999% delivery accuracy. Watch them in action:
Category Archives: Technology
The Wire, Google Maps edition
You may have come across a Google Street View shot of a fellow getting caught counting money. Some folks over at reddit have done some sleuthwork to uncover multiple angles, and multiple different deals done by the same fellow. With multiple license plate numbers.
Fixing NPR’s pledge drive
I swear that every week is an NPR pledge drive. I know they say they only do it a few times a year, but every time I feel like one just ended. Every time my response to the whole affair is, “if you really want me to pledge, give the option of paying my wayContinue reading “Fixing NPR’s pledge drive”
Echonest audio API
The Echonest, a startup out of the Media Lab located in Somerville, MA, just launched an Audio Analysis API which processes MP3s and returns an XML document with a number of features including tempo, loudness, time signature, fades, timbre and a whole lot more. These can be used in a number of different cool demosContinue reading “Echonest audio API”
Google computing mini-lectures
Google has published slides and videos from a 2007 tutorial series for new interns covering distributed computing, MapReduce, GFS and a few algorithms. This seems to be part of Google’s efforts to engage universities in their code, probably to give future Googlers a head-start. (via Geeking with Greg)
Sony Ericsson’s annoying auto-keylock patent
Have you ever spent hours looking for the auto-keypad-locking feature on your Nokia phone? Wondering why you have to manually engage the lock function on a Blackberry? It turns out that Sony-Ericsson has a patent on the “activation and automatic inactivation of keys on a mobile telephone terminal keypad.” Please Sony and Ericsson, for theContinue reading “Sony Ericsson’s annoying auto-keylock patent”
Today I cancelled my MySpace account
I’m not one for being rash and I am not particularly worried about privacy online. I used Friendster frequently for a couple of years and I remember when people’s accounts started mentioning “moving to MySpace because it’s better,” and frankly I can not remember for the life of me what the argument was. Nonetheless, IContinue reading “Today I cancelled my MySpace account”
Most hated things on the web
There are a lot of angry people in the world. These people typically have a number of gripes, and sometimes one of them stands above everything else. Those who have web savvy might even take it to the rest of the world through a passionate blog or unifying community website. I was interested in whatContinue reading “Most hated things on the web”
Flickr spam email
I received a strange email this morning, addressed to my blogdex email address which has nothing to do with Flickr, but exceptionally high SpamRank: From: Dee (Barry@nishikoi.com) To: blogdex@media.mit.edu Subject: question about your photo I’ve accidently found your photo at a flickr and i’m very interested in it. Can you tell me what place iContinue reading “Flickr spam email”
Google news, meet spam
I’ve been a long-time user of Google news and news alerts. For certain topics, it’s the only way for me to stay informed, and the quality of their index has generally kept these updates to high-quality, on-topic news that matched some keywords. Over the past six months I have noticed a diminishing returns on theContinue reading “Google news, meet spam”
overstated 