Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, September 21, 2007

MatchMine Takes $10 Million From Kraft Group

from TechCrunch by Duncan Riley

Media discovery startup MatchMine has raised $10 million from original seed investor the Kraft Group.

Boston based MatchMine launches Sunday with a product that is advertised to "unlock a whole new world of music, movies, video and other cool stuff to match the tastes of the original, quirky, one-of-kind inner you."

MatchMine's "MatchKey" technology uses demographic information about a user and a ratings system to deliver suggested media, and can also be plugged into third party sites to deliver recommendations. Three sites will support MatchKeys at launch: Peerflix, FilmCrave and Fuzz.com.

Th Kraft Group (not to be confused with Kraft Foods) is best known in the United States for its investments in Gillette Stadium and the New England Patriots.

(via Boston.com)

Mandelbrot Demo using a WorkerPool

from Ajaxian

Nick Edgar started to play around with the Workerpool component and decided to build a distributed Mandelbrot generator:

A UI/administrator task would farm out work (columns in the Mandelbrot set) to different worker tasks, possibly running on different machines. As each worker sent in its result, the UI would draw the column, and respond with more work for the worker. It was a cool example, and looked cool too: due to different machines running at different speeds, you would see the results kind of shimmer in, with faster machines generating the leading edge, and slower machines trailing and filling in the blanks.

He put together a demo using Workerpool and without to compare.

After you start the simulation, click on the toggle button to see how the UI can remain responsive in the Workerpool case. Although you would be foolish to rush to use Workerpool thread for every little thing you do, it is nice to have this in the arsenal for truly long running actions.

some things are better left un-sent

Augustine: if such an error did make it through QA of marketing pieces, suck it up and honor the price for those customers who DO come in to buy the unit. This would lead to such positive and rapid viral spread across the internet that would amplify the intended outcome of the ad in the first place (drive-to-store, plus sales). And, economically speaking, how many more people would jump to buy the 50-inch HDTV between Sept 23 - 29 anyway? So the "costs" are limited, while the positive upside is unlimited.

Instead, by sending this email to "valued Best Buy customers" they have created the exact opposite -- they may have limited their costs of selling 50 inch TVs at $1799 but the PR and word of mouth downside is unlimited. And they might have a while longer to continue looking forward to my next visit to their store.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Best Buy <BestBuyInfo@emailinfo.bestbuy.com >
Date: Sep 21, 2007 2:14 PM
Subject: Important 9/23 Ad Correction

As a valued Best Buy customer, we want to inform you of an error that will appear in the September 23, 2007 Best Buy^TM ad. On the front cover we mistakenly listed the price of the 50" Panasonic Plasma TV (TH_50PZ77U- 8501711) at $1799, before $90 savings. We intended to advertise the 42" Panasonic Plasma TV (TH-42PZ77U-8501757) at $1799, before $90 savings.

Best Buy will not be honoring this price on the aforementioned 50" Panasonic Plasma TV.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and we will offer a $100 Instant Rebate on all Plasma Televisions from Sunday, September 23, 2007 through Saturday, September 29, 2007. This Instant Rebate will be deducted from the price you see in the store, including our regular sale prices.

Thank you for your understanding. We look forward to seeing you in our store soon.

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Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings (Jakob Nielsen)

Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings (Jakob Nielsen)

A new research by Jakob Nielsen proves: users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.

Sparkling Salt

from IDEAS IN FOOD by Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

I had the pleasure of watching brilliance this morning. Aki came into the kitchen, muttering to herself, and finally asked where our neutral pop rocks were. In the meantime she had pulled out our togarishi and maldon salt and blended them together. When I handed her the pop rocks, she added them to the mix and then ground everything into a fine powder. She had me taste and it was amazing. I experienced a ton of tastes and sensations in just a few grains.

Aki had taken inspiration from Oriol Balaguer's presentation at the Star Chefs event, ICC, where he passed around chocolates seasoned on the inside with pop rocks. The effervescent chocolates seemed to bring a quiet to the audience as chefs chewed and then seemingly melted into smiles and childhood memories.

Aki's seasoning blend brings a whole new approach to salt and spice blends added to dishes at the last moment. The addition of the pop rocks adds motion to the dish. The spices and the interplay of textures and motion creates a much more complex blend of well, anything we choose. While today we have sparkling spiced salt tomorrow could be carbonated coffee crumbs and the next day popping pistachios.

Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, September 21, 2007