Today’s Doonesbury

Stanford Internet Study

Results answered, What do users do on the Internet?:

1. E-mail is by far the most common Internet
   activity.
2. The Internet today is a giant public library with a decidedly commercial tilt.
3. The current Internet is also emerging as an entertainment utility.
4. Chat rooms are for the young and the anonymous.
5. Consumer to Business transactional activity.

The more time people spend using the Internet…

1. … the more they lose contact with their social environment.
2. … the more they turn their back on the traditional media.
3. … the more time they spend working at home – and at the
   office. 
4. … the less time they spend
   shopping in stores and commuting in traffic.

“The Dip” by Seth Godin

If Seth Godin’s new book the dip leads you to ask what, instead of a who, read Guy Kawasaki’s interview.

Guy asks Seth 10 questions on his theories of why and how the when is best evaluated in deciding whether to stick things through or let them go.

"It’s time to quit when you secretly realize you’ve been settling for mediocrity all along."  ~ Seth Godin

Twittervision

Watch live Twitter "tweets" (IM messages) from around the world.

NYC’s Penn Station & Grand Central Station, Circa 1910

See more at Shorpy’s 100-Year-Old Photoblog. (Click on image to see full-size.)

Need an Emergency Siesta? Five Napping Options

Check out these five ways to nap now. My two favorite: the NapPod and SleepGrass.

New Einstein Biography

Lately I’ve been fascinated with interviews by Walter Isaacson on Fresh Air and Leonard Lopate about his new book Einstein: His Life and Universe. He has a wonderful talking style, elegantly and eloquently composes Einstein’s work in an approachable fashion while describing a life that still feels alive, though gone for more than a half century. Regardless of your ability to comprehend Einstein, you’ll certainly enjoy his conversation on Einstein.

The
new narrative of Albert Einstein’s life provides hope to every
underachiever out there: He was slow to start speaking, his
teachers predicted early on that he’d never amount to much, and when he
completed his graduate work, he was the only student in his class who
couldn’t land a university position. (Solely due to his life-long intractable difficulty with authority, he had completely put off all of his professors who wrote the recommendations!) And so he wound up working at a
Swiss patent office. The young Einstein was apparently "no
Einstein."

But it was at the patent office that young Albert fleshed out his
theories on relativity, working on the math with his first wife, and conversating with a good friend who was a fellow patent clerk; eventually winning the Nobel Prize. Later,
when he traveled to the United States, he was welcomed as a rock star.

(For more, get the free audio book of Einstein’s Relativity: The Special and General Theory.)

Help Others = Happiness for a Lifetime

An interesting Chinese proverb that Christine Comaford distributed in her Mighty Minute email.

If you want happiness for an hour – take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day – go fishing.
If you want happiness for a month – get married.
If you want happiness for a year – inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime – help others.

Where Were You When The Blackberry’s Went Out?

This NY Times article summed up the general public’s reactions pretty well:

When the service went
down: “I
started freaking out. I started taking it apart. Turning it
off. Turning it on. I took the battery out and cleaned it on my shirt.
I was running around my hotel like a freak. It’s very sad. I love this
thing.”

White House spokesman on stopping email: “We’ve already started a 12-step program.”

“I quit smoking 28 years ago, and that was easier than being without my BlackBerry.”

“I have reached the point where I get phantom vibrations, even when I’m
not carrying the thing. That sure doesn’t sound too healthy,
does it?”

One user said the disruption left him with “a lot of free time on my hands to spend with
my wife, although I couldn’t find her since her BlackBerry was off.”

“You Know You’re from New York City When…”

I couldn’t resist. Here’s my faves, (complete list after the jump):

• Your closet is filled with black clothes.
• You have never been to the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.
• You can walk a mile in 13 minutes and think that everything should be open 24/7.
• You see nothing odd about the speed of an auctioneer’s speaking.
• You’ve been to New Jersey twice and got hopelessly lost both times.
• You have 27 different menus next to your telephone.
• $50 worth of groceries fit in one paper bag.
• You don’t notice sirens anymore.
• The most frequently used part of your car is the horn.
• You run when you see a flashing "Do Not Walk" sign at the intersection.
• You’re willing to take in strange people as roommates simply to help pay the rent.
• There is no North and South… It’s either Uptown or Downtown.
• You’re not in the least bit interested in going to Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
• Your internal clock is permanently set to know when Alternate Side of the Street parking regulations are in effect.
• You know how to fold the New York Times in half, vertically, so that
  you can read it on the subway or bus without knocking off other
  passenger’s hats.
• Someone bumps into you, and you check for your wallet….
• To cross the street, you
  wait inches away from speeding traffic waiting to cut through it, rather than waiting safely on the sidewalk .
• Your doorman is Russian, your grocer is Korean your deli man is
  Israeli, your building super is Italian, your laundry guy is Chinese,
  your favorite bartender is Irish, your favorite diner owner is Greek,
  the watchseller on your corner is Senegalese, your last cabbie was
  Pakistani, your newsstand guy is Indian and your favorite falafel guy
  is Egyptian.