Links for 10-15-2010

• A VC: The Impact Of Priority Inbox - "If your email gets into the third section of the main page, called "Everything Else", I most likely won't see it unless I see it on my Android phone. And hopefully Google is working on bringing Priority Inbox to Android. When that happens, I won't ever see it."
• Gartner's 2010 Hype Cycle Special Report Evaluates Maturity of 1,800 Technologies - You can't take these things too seriously IMO, but they can stimulate some useful discussion.
• Another Year, Another Blogoversary - Chuck's Blog - Interesting meta-blogging piece by EMC's Chuck Hollis.
• HDRI Photography: Exciting New Frontier, or Gimmick to Avoid? - A Picture's Worth | PhotoShelter - Unsurprising general consensus. Useful tool but often overdone.
• IBM, Oracle and Java: The Q&A – tecosystems - Typically good writeup by Stephen O'Grady.
• By The Bell: Who really invented virtual desktops? - Pretty good rundown that, for the most part, accurately parses the different forms. (Doesn't clearly distinguish VDI from Terminal services.)
• Amazon Media Room: News Release - "Less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000: that is the choice writers have generally faced for more than a century--works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the "heft" required for book marketing and distribution. But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated--whether it's a business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event."
• Talking Business - For H.P. Board, a Double Standard - NYTimes.com - Tough stuff. "More important, for a company that professes to be concerned with ethics — so concerned that it had to get rid of Mr. Hurd, with his piddling expense account problems — it is astonishing that it would find Mr. Apotheker’s lapses acceptable. He may not have been directly involved in this brazen theft of intellectual property, but it defies belief to say he didn’t know about it. And he did nothing to stop it until it was far too late. Apparently, the H.P. directors adhere to the highest ethical standards — but only when it’s convenient. "
• What we can learn from procrastination : The New Yorker - "Not surprisingly, for the movie they wanted to watch immediately, people tended to pick lowbrow comedies and blockbusters, but when asked what movie they wanted to watch later they were more likely to pick serious, important films. The problem, of course, is that when the time comes to watch the serious movie, another frothy one will often seem more appealing. This is why Netflix queues are filled with movies that never get watched: our responsible selves put “Hotel Rwanda” and “The Seventh Seal” in our queue, but when the time comes we end up in front of a rerun of “The Hangover.”"
• Google sends multicore warning: wimpy cores don’t cut it « SoftTalk – multicore and parallel programming - Of course this will vary by application but for the most part, the mega-multi-lightweight-cores approach seems to be a niche.
• Rebate card comes with a catch | OregonLive.com - "In fact, behavioral economists chalk up my error to something called "mental accounting."" Yup. I've done this.
• First NYC/London cable in a decade promises sub-60ms latency - In case anyone had any doubts that even (very) extra-datacenter latency matters. "How can the speed of light vary among cable operators? It can't, but operators can plan their geographic routes strategically to keep the total cable length a bit shorter than the competition. According to the consultants at Telegeography, breaking 60ms would make Project Express at least 5ms faster than its closest competitor."
• Confessions of a used-book salesman. - By Michael Savitz - Slate Magazine - An eye-opening look into how high-volume used book selling works.
• 'Paradise' found: 70-ton elephant at S.F. Port - "The problem with the map is simple: it is huge and would cost a lot of money to move, restore and display it. The last estimate was in the range of $500,000. And that was 30 years ago. It is a classic white elephant, too valuable to scrap, but too expensive to keep."