Saturday, May 11, 2013

Consumer Reports: Tesla Model S

Tesla Model S outscores every other car in Consumer Reports ratings | VentureBeat



“This car performs better than anything we’ve ever tested before,” Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports’ director of testing says. “Not just the best electric car, but the best car. It does just about everything really, really well.”

schema.org, Generic Hypermedia APIs

Finally, some attempts to "properly" define (Service) APIs based on "vocabulary"
of known, shared, concepts.

SOAP web service have significantly delayed optimization of web services,
and now with REST / "Hypemedia" there are attempts to make service more evolve-able and generic.

Full Hierarchy - schema.org

presentation: Generic Hypermedia and Domain-Specific APIs: RESTing in the ALPS @ InfoQ

Microsoft vs.Google Docs / Drive

Microsoft: Google Docs Is Not Worth The Gamble, Makes You Less Productive | TechCrunch




In reality, format of MS Office documents is just too complex.
Plain HTML is much better, with styles separated from content.
Getting text and data from Office is difficult.

Is format of Google Docs / Drive better and more "open?"
In fact it is, at least in simple cases.
All formatting is defined as CSS classes, at the start of the document.
So it is a better separation, and cleaner HTML format.

Yahoo! Mail + Dropbox

Yahoo! Mail Partners With Dropbox To Add File Attachments, Can Help Bring New Audience To The File Hosting Service | TechCrunch

US Housing Market Rebounds?

podcasts: Should A Home Be An Investment As The Housing Market Rebounds? | On Point with Tom Ashbrook

Karl Case — professor emeritus of economics at Wellesley College — and Professor Mayer also spoke to a 34-year-old caller’s concern that home-ownership as an investment goes against the central tenants that guide retirement investing: “diversity” and “reduce fees:”



As usual, this is a "Big Data" question.

And as usual, this is also "social / social" question, since people are not quite rational...

How Global Tourism Changes The World

podcast: How Global Tourism Changes The World | On Point with Tom Ashbrook


"In 1960, we humans, from all over, took 25 million trips abroad. 
Last year?  2012?  We took, collectively, one billion foreign trips. "


Tourism "industry" is 11% of economy, with many positive and also many negative "side effects"

Paris alone is making more on tourism than whole of USA.
And that is deliberate, planned, and managed.


New Book Will Open Your Eyes About Travel @ National Geographic Traveler

book: @ Amazon

Professional Productivity (Part 2.3) - Scott Hanselman

Professional Productivity (Part 2.3) - Scott Hanselman - YouTube:

NoSQL Databases comparison


Two names that are easy to be confused:  Riak Versus Redis



Redis is primarily something you’re going to use to move data in and out at crazy fast speeds. (C/C++)


Riak isn’t always the fastest database, but it’ll withstand serious hits and still maintain integrity of data. (Erlang / C)


Another nice list and comparison of most of popular NoSQL databases:

Cassandra vs MongoDB vs CouchDB vs Redis vs Riak vs HBase vs Couchbase vs Hypertable vs ElasticSearch vs Accumulo vs VoltDB vs Scalaris comparison :: Software architect Kristof Kovacs:

(He also has a list of things before he dies :)