Budcaddell

If you look at the layout of the number buttons on a phone -- smart, cell, landline, what have you -- the number buttons will feature, almost inevitably, a uniform layout. Ten digits, laid out on a three-by-three grid, with the tenth tacked on on the bottom. The numbers ascending from left to right, and from top to bottom.

This layout is so standardized that we barely think about it. But it was, in the 1950s, the result of a good deal of strategizing and testing on the part of people at Bell Labs. Numberphile has dug up an amazing paper -- published in the July 1960 issue of "The Bell System Technical Journal" -- that details the various alternative designs the Bell engineers considered. Among them: "the staircase" (II-B in the image above), "the ten-pin" (III-B, reminiscent of bowling-pin configurations), "the rainbow" (II-C), and various other versions that mimicked the circular logic of the existing dialing technology: the rotary. 

Everything was on the table for the layout of the ten buttons; the researchers' only objective was to find the configuration that would be as user-friendly, and efficient, as possible. So they ran tests. They experimented. They sought input. They briefly considered a layout that mimicked a cross.

And in the end, though, Numberphile's Sarah Wiseman notes, it became a run-off between the traditional calculator layout and the telephone layout we know today. And the victory was a matter of efficiency. "They did compare the telephone layout and the calculator layout," she says, "and they found the calculator layout was slower."

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The Federal Reserve is a powerful institution charged with shepherding the U.S. and global economy in the aftermath of an unprecedented financial crisis. The work of this organization is not exactly fun and games.

Except when it is.

Some of the 12 reserve banks across the country have taken it upon themselves to create online games — of varying degree of cleverness — to help explain the esoteric work of the nation’s central bank.These are the Games of the Federal Reserve.

“They really help to make the dismal science a little less dismal,” said Bob Jabaily, associate editor at the Boston Fed who has become the equivalent of the central bank’s Dungeon Master.

He is the brains behind the Fed’s first online economics game, “Peanuts & Crackerjacks,” which has become the second most popular feature on the Boston Fed’s Web site, after current job openings. He followed that hit with “Show Business: The Economics of Entertainment.” Jabaily writes the questions, scripts the dialogue and attempts to make the Fed exciting.

“Economists will talk mostly to one another and then they wonder why the public won’t engage,” he said. “We’re trying to broaden the economics conversation and make it more inclusive and reach a more diverse audience.”

So are they any fun? And do they teach you anything about economics? Here’s a rundown.

The game: Peanuts & Crackerjacks

The premise: Economics and sports trivia in nine innings. Get three answers wrong and you’re out!

From: Boston Fed

Comments: An appropriate theme for a game coming out of the Boston Fed. The game’s design was updated a few years ago and includes a cheering crowd and a satisfying thwack of the bat when questions are answered correctly. The topics range from basic economics (“Markets occur when ”) to sports arcana. (Do you know how Bill Veeck was? Ok, maybe you do. I didn’t.) But just like actual baseball games, this online economics version runs a little long. I only lasted through two innings.

The game: Escape from the Barter Islands

The premise: Trading is hard. Money is efficient!

From: Cleveland Fed

Comments: Learn the benefits of a monetary system as you trade oranges and other goods in search of a sail that will help your boat find its way home. This is for a younger crowd, but even some of us older folks had trouble making all the trades required in the allotted time. Point taken! The game goes by quickly enough to play during the boring parts of the Fed’s news conferences.

The game: You Look Like a Million Bucks

The premise: Make that money, literally.

From: Cleveland Fed

Comments: Design your own million-dollar bill. Choose a historical silhouette for the center, a personal motto and special touches like custom curlicues. Not really a game (and, sadly, not really legal tender), but great for sharing on Facebook.

The game: Show Business: The Economics of Entertainment

The premise: Rockenomics.

From: Boston Fed

Comments: Don’t skip the super snazzy intro. Answer enough trivia questions correctly, and you can move up from a garage band to a wedding singer to a platinum superstar. (What Top 40 artist doesn’t inherently understand economics?) The game also includes “bonus tracks” with fascinating history lessons on the business of entertainment industry.

The game: Fed Chairman Game

The premise: Can you beat Ben Bernanke?

From: San Francisco Fed

Comments: For adult users only! This game allows you to control interest rates for the U.S. economy for four years. Watch inflation and unemployment react to the rates you set with periodic alarmist headlines in the newspapers tracking your progress. My economy overheated with 9 percent inflation, even after I jacked up interest rates. Oops.

Thankfully, it was just a game.

For a list of all the games on the Fed’s Web sites, click here.

Moves, the activity- and location-tracking app that has drawn acclaim on iOS, is today becoming a platform with the launch of an update that showcases a brace of integrations with third-party apps and services.

Fifteen integrations are already live, including the personal journal app, Narrato, exercise motivation service Earndit and location visualization tool MMapper. A ’Moves Connected Apps catalog’ will be available within the app by way of an update, and on the app’s website, acting as a directory for uses of the Moves API.

Until now, Moves has largely been an isolated experience, albeit an enjoyable one. Relying on you having your iPhone with you at all times, it tracks your location and movement to create an automated diary of where you’ve been and how far you walked, ran or cycled. It even knows when you’re traveling by other means such as a car. However, until now your data has been trapped within the app, without even a way to transfer it to another device if you upgrade your phone (although Moves Export recently launched to let you at least export the data).

The launch of an API that third-party developers can use to take Moves data in new directions is a first step in making the app more useful beyond the current device you have it installed on. I’m told that user accounts (so you can log in on your new iPhone and pick up where you left off) are coming next month, as is the long-awaited Android version.

The full list of integrations launching today is: Earndit, EveryMove, Tictrac, Narrato,Moves Export, MMapper, Nudge, We+, Walker  Tracker, CleverGeo, DiscipleXgames, GridDiary, Moves raw JSON Export, Quantid and HumanAPI.

➤ Moves | iOS

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Yahoo’s new logo will debut next week, and in an effort to drum up excitement, the Web-media giant has been running a “30 days of change” campaign, featuring a new logo on Yahoo's homepage and other properties every day in the runup to the unveiling Sep. 5.

But as it turns out, users aren’t that excited about another change.

A poll launched by the startup Polar shows that of the 24 logos showcased so far, just one logo is more favored than Yahoo's longtime logo, which replaced its original one in 1995. Over 84,000 votes have been collected from users wanting to voice their opinion of the redesign. 

Day 10’s logo (pictured) was the only one that garnered enough votes to beat out the original, 75 percent of voters prefer it to the current logo. Interestingly, of all the logos released so far, it is the closest match to the current one; the small changes include a sans serif font with a bolder look. 

The logos with the most drastic shifts away from tradition, Days Four and Six, were the most disliked among voters.

Poll Position

“We started running these polls because nobody was measuring sentiment, or which designs people really like the best,” said Dmitry Dragilev, lead marketer at Polar. “Data-based design is something [Yahoo CEO Marissa] Mayer holds dear to her heart.” 

The logo redesign is the latest in a series of changes that Yahoo has implemented since Mayer became CEO last year. In addition to going on an acquisition spree, the company rolled out a new look for its news and application websites this week that streamlines the Yahoo experience. The current logo has been headlining the company since 1995 and is no doubt in need of a makeover. 

The new logo will be a cherry on top of the sundae Mayer has rebuilt during her short tenure, and it looks like users are hoping for a modern take on Yahoo’s brand that doesn’t stray too far away from the look they are used to. That said, if Yahoo's trademark exclamation point were eliminated, users would probably celebrate. 

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In the darkest corner of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' wilderness, a shadowy figure emerges through the pixelated mist. Or does it? For almost a decade, some gamers have claimed that a virtual bigfoot wanders the plains of Rockstar's fictional landscape, echoing the real-life search for the mythical animal. In the same way that science has shot down recent "evidence" for Bigfoot's existence, GTA's creators have vehemently denied that such a creature inhabits their game. Just weeks before the release of the new Grand Theft Auto, an article in the New Yorker tells the story of the hunt for a virtual Bigfoot.

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Let's take a break from matters American to look westward across the Pacific. When my wife and I moved to China now (gasp!) seven years ago, I wrote that one of the biggest surprises was how much more hostile prevailing Chinese attitudes toward Japan had become, compared with when we were living in Asia 20 years earlier. Just to spell out the surprise value here, the most obvious reasons for Chinese hostility -- Manchukuo, the Rape of Nanking, and so on -- were that much more distant, yet resentment about them was only going up. 

Here's an unpleasant bit of new evidence, from a respectable Japanese think tank. The rising red line above shows Japanese people who don't like China. The rising purple line is Chinese people who don't like Japan. The plummeting blue and green lines are people in each country who like the other. 

You can list explanations for these trends. Japanese leaders have made repeated inflammatory visits to the wartime Yasukuni shrine; Chinese state media have run nonstop anti-Japanese war dramas on TV; both sides have pushed the dispute over the Diaoyu / Senkaku islands. You can also think of officials in each country who would back off (and have, in the past few months) if the hostile attitudes threatened to provoke actual hostilities.

Still, this is a nastier situation than most Americans realize -- and nastier than prevails between any other pair of countries with whom the U.S. has such important ties. Not to mention that they are the second and third largest economies in the world. There is a lot more in the study worth checking out, for what we hope turn out to be purely theoretical reasons. [UPDATE: There is something obviously wrong with the graphics of the pie chart immediately below. The numbers don't correspond to the sections of the pie. I have written to the organization to ask what's up; for now I will assume that it is a chart-drawing blunder. Thanks to a reader in Beijing for the heads-up.]

And one more, which I find very interesting in what it suggests about each country:

Detroit's recent bankruptcy has exacerbated an old problem: stray dogs. A new Bloomberg report estimates there could be as many as 50,000 stray dogs roaming the streets of Detroit, roughly one for every 14 citizens. The problem is particularly severe because of the city's large number of abandoned homes, which the head of animal control says is "as if you designed a situation that causes dog problems." Detroit currently houses only three animal shelters, which collectively take in roughly 15,000 animals a year, but as many reports have shown, the meager supply is dwarfed by the sheer number of stray dogs now roaming the streets.

Some have disputed the accuracy of the 50,000 figure. One observer notes that, if it were true, "there...

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There's a stereotype about Whole Foods shoppers, and the grocery store appears happy to play to it: five of its Los Angeles locations are now stocking vinyl records on their shelves beside the organic legumes and GMO-free produce that you'd normally expect to find at the supermarket. Shoppers at those stores will see a "wide selection" of LPs, including records from Daft Punk, Bob Marley, and The Rolling Stones. The grocery store will also be selling headphones from LSTN, all of which feature earpieces lined with recycled wood.

Whole Foods isn't being shy about the fact that it's recognizing its shoppers' interests. "This launch isn't just about stocking our shelves with something new and different," Mike Bowen, an executive coordinator...

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One of Japan's favorite anime traditions has once again broken Twitter's record for most simultaneous tweets on a single topic. The August 3rd screening of Laputa: Castle in the Sky drew in 143,199 tweets per second at its peak — which is a carefully coordinated outcry of "Balse!" in sync with the film's climactic scene. It's a remarkable cultural phenomenon, to be sure, but it's also a great illustration of Twitter's exponential growth: back in December 2011, the same event set Twitter's record at 25,088 tweets per second.

Twitter's Raffi Krikorian has taken to the company's blog to both celebrate the new record and explain how it was that the new spike from Castle in the Sky didn't bring the network down. For his team, Twitter's...

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Bloomberg reports that Samsung will indeed announce its own smartwatch, the Galaxy Gear, at a press event on September 4.

Not that smartwatches are anything new—see Pebble and Sony. And the rumor of a Samsung device has been going on for months. But if the wire service's two anonymous sources are right, Samsung Galaxy Gear will be having its coming-out party next month—a week before Apple holds a similar launch event for its own new products.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on its own wristworn smart device, unofficially dubbed the iWatch. Both patent filings and job listings strongly suggest Apple's plans are real. 

Apple's not the only company supposedly trying to make our wrists smarter. Others—including Google and Microsoft—are reportedly racing to bring their own smartwatches to market. 

The reason why is obvious: If any one of these companies can blaze this trail, it offers a substantial advantage. The market for smartwatches isn't as saturated as tablets or phones, so the winner here has a better chance of standing out and locking even more users into its respective platforms.

The wrist, in short, is viewed as virgin territory for gadgets. Though ReadWrite's editor-in-chief may rail against wearable wrist-bound devices, he's shouting at the waves. Smartwatches now officially seem to be the "It" thing in tech.

According to this latest report, Galaxy Gear will be an Android device that makes calls, surfs the Web and manages email messages. It won't, however, sport a flexible screen, at least not in the this version, though Samsung's working on it for future devices. 

As The New York Times struggled to get its site back online, the paper turned to often ephemeral social media to put out its stories. Earlier today, the site began suffering unknown technical difficulties, pulling it completely offline for over an hour. Unfortunately, while the outage wasn't long, it was enough to threaten reporting of one of the week's biggest stories: a violent clash in Egypt that left over a hundred people — and possibly many more — dead. To get out news of the Cairo protests, the Times turned to a system that's usually supplemental: posting updates on social media.

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It was a late night in May. Renderman, the computer hacker notorious for discovering that outdated air traffic control software could be used to reroute planes mid-flight, was feeling shitty. The stress of digging himself out of debt he’d accumulated during years of underemployment was compounded by the feeling of being trapped in a job he hated. He was forgetful and couldn’t focus on anything. “Depression has sapped my motivation and lust for life,” he later wrote. “I can't remember the last time I worked on a project ... it's like I'm a ghost in my own life. Just existing but with no form ... I’m most definitely not myself.”

Feeling slightly buzzed after a few beers, he decided to speak out. “My name is Renderman and I...

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While Google is experimenting with self-driving cars, balloon-powered internet, and wearable computing, it hasn't mastered the art of time travel just yet. That hasn't stopped the internet giant from trying. A recent addition to Google Maps Street View will transport you from a London street to a TARDIS straight out of Doctor Who. Inside is a full 360-degree view of a detailed replica of the Doctor's time machine.

The Easter egg can be accessed from this Google Maps link by clicking on the double-white arrows that appear in front of the police telephone box outside the Earl's Court subway station. If you're having trouble accessing it with the new Google Maps interface you can always head straight inside, but be warned you may end up...

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The Department of Energy has a new report (pdf) out taking a look at the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid to blackouts. One notable fact: Outages caused by severe weather have become much more common over the past decade:

Power outages of all sorts are becoming more frequent since 1992, but the real action has come from weather-related outages.

The report notes that "thunderstorms, hurricanes and blizzards account for 58 percent of outages observed since 2002 and 87 percent of outages affecting 50,000 or more customers." (The rest are caused by things like "operational failures, equipment malfunctions, circuit overloads, vehicle accidents, fuel supply deficiencies and load shedding — which occurs when the grid is intentionally shut down to contain the spread of an ongoing power outage.")

Since the big uptick in 2003, the report estimates, weather-related outages have cost an average of about $18 billion to $33 billion per year, adjusted for inflation. (Obviously in some years, like last year with superstorm Sandy, the costs are much higher.)

It's not entirely clear from the chart why these sorts of blackouts are becoming more common. Is severe weather on the rise? Or is the grid getting older and becoming more vulnerable to storms? There's certainly some evidence in favor of the second hypothesis. Here's a useful look at when various U.S. transmission lines were built:

Much of the existing power grid was built in the 1970s and 1980s — and there's been a slowdown in construction since then. As a result: "Seventy percent of the grid's transmission lines and power transformers are now over 25 years old." As the dashed lines show, there are plans for upgrades in the future, but those haven't happened yet.

The rest of the Energy Department report lays out the case for modernizing the grid and making it more resilient in the face of storms—that involves everything from "smart-grid" technology to replacing wooden poles with concrete or steel structures to elevating substations in flood-prone areas. (The report notes that burying power lines underground, a favorite topic of discussion, represents "significant challenges, including additional repair time and much higher installation and repair cost.")

That certainly won't be cheap. But the report argues that in certain parts of the United States — particularly in places where severe weather events are expected to become more common as a result of climate change — grid upgrades could avoid even higher costs over the long run.

Spotify, Pandora, and other streaming music services might destroy the music business, forcing artists to trade the reliable margins of album sales for a few pennies of royalties. Or they might save it, appealing to a new generation that's not interested in owning music at all. Or, most likely, we won't have any idea what's really going on until years later. At The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones speaks with Gang of Four's Dave Allen and other members of the music industry about how (and if) musicians should make a living from their work online. Unlike many other discussions, it doesn't treat artists as one group, nor does it simply focus on the economics of streaming. Instead, Frere-Jones and his interviewees discuss how to consider "the...

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Honda has launched a campaign to help secure the fate of the drive-in movie theater. With 35mm film distribution on the way out, digital projection has been hailed as a potential savior for the theaters, but the equipment and installation makes for a costly transition at around $80,000.

The "Project Drive-In" campaign aims to raise awareness of the threat to drive-ins, saying that hundreds are at risk of closure, and the company will provide at least five theaters across the country with digital projectors. Where exactly the donations go will all come down to an online vote.

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