2011 February | What I Learnt Today

Feb 03 2011

Today, on the iTunes store, you can download songs for a standard 69c, buy the latest episodes of MadMen Series 4 for $2.99, rent The Social Network for $4.99. You can also download the new Daily newspaper app free of charge.

Best of all, you can buy the first episode of Mr Ed for $1.99.After all, a horse is a horse, of course, or course.

But all of this is only available in the US iTunes store,.

There are some things that aren’t yet available on the Australian iTunes store, or cost considerably higher here.

Generally, you can’t access the US store unless you create a new AppleID using a US credit card and a US address. But there are ‘ways and means’, especially if you have a iTunes gift card from America, or can access one.

There is a video and instructions, and also some US iTunes gift cards available (at a premium), from http://itunesdirect.com.au

What I Learnt On 3rd February in other years

3rd February 2012

Rock, Paper, Scissors – Serving Decision Makers since 5000 BC

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Feb 02 2011

Why the Mona Lisa is Smiling – GoogleArt

The world record for the fastest visit to the Lourve museum stands at 3min 37 secs, held jointly by Peter ‘Besty’ Best, Richard ‘Hendo’ Hendriks and Mark ‘Wombat’ Williams, who visited on their first evening in Paris during the Syndey University Rugby Club Tour on January 11th, 1984. Stumbling across the Palais du Louvre by chance, they decided to ‘get the Mona Lisa thing’ over and done with as quickly as possible.

The world record for the longest visit to the Louvre museum is 9hs 47 mins, held by Sean ‘Franga’ Francis, also a member of the same Sydney University rugby tour. On their arrival in Paris early on January 11th, 1984, Sean was delayed by an unsceduled convenience stop and became disconnected from the touring party. Having no idea where his teammates were billeted, he came up with the brilliant idea that if he sat by the Mona Lisa long enough, someone he knew was sure to come along sooner or later. Not a bad plan for a forward. Luckilly for him, Besty, Hendo and Willo ………

You can now recreate either of these great moments in Louvre history without leaving the comfort of your own home.

Employees at Google are expected to spend 20% of their time on a project of their own choosing, and many of these have resulted in new google products. The Google Art Project http://www.googleartproject.com/ is an example of one of these Google 20% projects, an dit was announced today in the Google Blog.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/explore-museums-and-great-works-of-art.html

Using it you can ‘explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces.’

The site uses Google street view technology to allow you to walk through some of the world’s great museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Ufizzi Gallery, Florence. You can zoom in on the displayed artworks to ‘brushwork’ detail.

You can read more about it in the google blog

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/explore-museums-and-great-works-of-art.html

or check it out at

http://www.googleartproject.com/

NB On checking, the Louvre is not one of the currently available museums. I claim poetic licence.

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Feb 01 2011

Happy 10th Birthday, Wikipedia

When I was a lad, we were told “Go look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls”
Now, in turn, I can look up ‘Funk and Wagnalls’ in Wikipedia, which turns 10 this week.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk_%26_Wagnalls

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopaedia. It contains 17 million articles (over 3.5 million in English), which have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site. Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and has become the largest and most popular general reference work on theInternet, having 365 million readers. (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia )

A BBC documentary to commemorate the occasion asks the question ‘Can Wikipedia be trusted?’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2011/01/110111_wikipedia_at_1…

Given the fact that anyone can edit an entry, **can** it be trusted? In practice, we all trust it all the time.
However, this 2009 version of the Alstonville entry possibly contained some slight inaccuracies about the naming of the town’s ‘Sporting Facilities and Parks’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alstonville,_New_South_Wales&oldid=295753724

Oliver’s claim of sporting immortality was short lived. The page was revised by some spoilsport within 43 minutes.

And this, the very first entry about Caroline Chisholm, was posted in 2004 by an enthusiastic Alexandra, aged 11. It was the only information about ‘the convict’s friend’ in Wikipedia for three months. Now, there have been more than 500 revisions, which have perhaps made it a little more sophisticated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caroline_Chisholm&oldid=2555621

What I Learnt On 1st February in other years

1st February 2012