Linked List: October 27, 2009

Tuesday, 27 October 2009

I Dare You to Read This and Not Start Humming the Theme From You-Know-What 

You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

(Via Jim Ray.)

Unmasked 

Chris Ware’s Halloween-themed cover and comic for this week’s issue of The New Yorker. So good.

Microsoft’s Online Services Division Losses Grow 

Charles Arthur:

But what about the Online Services division? Different story. $490m revenue — which is down from $520m in the same period last year — and losses of $480m, an increase against last year’s $381m loss.

In other words, for every $1 that Microsoft’s online services division brought in, it spent $2.

The harder they chase Google, the worse it gets for them.

Update: Silicon Alley Insider has a graph of Microsoft’s online division results since 2005.

Android 2.0 Highlights 

Tons of new features and improvements in the imminent new version of Android. The web browser appears to have caught up to MobileSafari in several ways, including HTML5 database and geolocation support, and double-tap to zoom. The email client adds support for Exchange and, moving ahead of the iPhone’s MobileMail, adds support for a combined “all accounts” inbox view. Check out the official video for a tour of the new features.

(Via Daniel Sandler.)

Mets Fans Have Choice of Two Evils in World Series 

A.G. Sulzberger on the dilemma faced by Mets fans:

Chuck Rose, the owner of the Pine Restaurant and Sports Bar near Citi Field, said he was so disheartened that he could not even choose between the Phillies and the Yankees. “I hope it rains for 40 days and 40 nights,” he said, adding that he might dedicate one television in the bar to a replaying of the 1986 World Series, when the Mets last won the championship.

As a Yankees fan, that’s how I felt about that ’86 Series.

Another Genius Move From Microsoft Marketing 

AdAge:

Turns out Seth MacFarlane isn’t PC enough to be a PC. Microsoft was set to sponsor a prime time special by the “Family Guy” creator as part of its Windows 7 media blitz, but was somehow surprised when the typically MacFarlane-esque fare didn’t exactly “fit with the Windows brand.”

Did they sign up to sponsor MacFarlane’s special without any familiarity with his work? I thought it was a good match, in that MacFarlane serially rips off The Simpsons, and Microsoft serially rips off Apple.

More on Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS) 

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels on where Amazon’s new hosted MySQL Relational Database Service fits in with their other cloud storage services. (Via Dan Benjamin.)

El Vetica 

Mule Design’s latest t-shirt:

Celebrating the career of Mexico’s only typographer/luchador. El Vetica, also know as El Kernudo, held the Mexican Inter-Continental belt for an unprecedented 7 years, from 1977–84.

Amazon Relational Database Service 

MySQL as a web service from Amazon. Interesting.