Now that I have kids, I can more fully appreciate The Kid Should See This, a repository of “smart videos for curious minds” (and Kottke favorite). “Drawing Sharks With Pancake Batter” blew my mind.

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Great deal on Halls - these are normally $4+ everywhere including Walmart.

Stock up!

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B007EJ ... EEQB&psc=1

Statistics: Posted by kool1 — Feb 23rd, 2024 1:38 pm

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In just 10 minutes, Lady with a Fan becomes the most valuable work of art ever sold at auction in Europe.

The American Farm Bureau Federation and machinery manufacturer Deere signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday that ensures farmers have the right to repair their own farm equipment or go to an independent technician. From a report: As the agriculture sector accelerates its adoption of technology, the reliance on high-tech machinery such as GPS-guided combines and tractors has become more common-place. But equipment makers such as Deere have generally required customers to use their parts and service divisions for repairs and until recently, only allowed authorized dealers the means and tools to access the complex computerized systems of their tractors and other machinery. The Farm Bureau's memorandum of understanding with Deere "will ensure farmers everywhere are able to repair our own equipment," Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall said, speaking at the federation's convention in Puerto Rico.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was just browsing around in Costco and I see this cooler is selling for 39.97 what do you guys think about this cooler and is it good price to get one?

I took this photo from Calgary, Sarcee Trail Costco, they still have few in stock.

Please advise.

Statistics: Posted by Rajputana — Sep 13th, 2022 5:59 pm

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Gary Schroen, one of the first Americans on the ground in Afghanistan after 9/11, has died aged 80.

Do you have the desire to become a content creator, but not have the money to start? Here are 7 free websites every content creator needs to know.

1.Exploding Topics (Trending Topics)

Some examples can be:

• Use the most popular hashtags and keywords to get inspiration for ideas.
•  Find out what people are talking about in real-time.
•  Find new audiences you may not have known were interested in your topic.

There’s no excuse not to try this website — it’s free and easy to use!

Visit Exploding Topics From Here

2. Headline Studio (Headline Grader)

Headline Studio allows you to create catchy headlines for your content. After writing a title there is data on how often people view articles with similar titles and why they are involved with them.

This is a valuable tool when creating new blog posts because it generates catchy headlines for your blog post to catch a reader’s attention.

Visit Headline Studio From Here

3. Answer the public

Answer The public is an excellent tool for content creators. It gives you insight into what people are asking on social media sites and communities and lets you guess about topics that matter to your audience. Answer the public allows you to enter a keyword or topic related to your niche and it will show results with popular questions and keywords related to your topic. It's an amazing way to get insights into what people are searching online and allows you to identify topics driven by new blog posts or social media content on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter as well as the types of questions they ask and  also want answers.

Visit Answer The Public From Here

4. Surfer Seo (SEO Ranking)

With this tool, content creators can quickly and easily check the ranking of their websites and those of other competitors. This tool allows you to see how your website compares to others in different categories, including: 

• Rank Potential
• Organic Search Ranking

Surfer Seo is free and the interface is very friendly. It's a great tool for anyone who wants to do quick competitor research or check their site's rankings at any time.

Visit SurferSeo From Here

5. Canva (Templates/Graphics)

Canva is a free graphic design platform that makes it easy to create invitations, business cards, mobile videos, Instagram posts, Instagram stories, flyers, and more with professionally designed templates. You can even upload your photos and drag and drop them into Canva templates. It's like having a basic version of Photoshop. You can also remove background from images with one click.

Canva offers thousands of free, professionally designed templates that can be customized with just a few clicks. Simply upload your photos to Canva, drag them into the template of your choice, and save the file to your computer.

It is free to use for basic use but if you want access to different fonts or more features, then you need to buy a premium plan.

Visit Canva From Here

6. Facebook Audience Insights (Audience Research)

Facebook Audience Insights is a powerful tool for content creators when researching their target market. This can help you understand the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your target audience. This information helps determine the direction of your content so that it resonates with them. The most important tools to consider in Facebook Audience Insights are Demographics and Behavior. These two sections provide you with valuable information about your target market, such as their age and from where they belong, how much time they spend on social media per day, what devices they use to access it, etc.

There is another section of Facebook Audits that is very helpful. This will let you know the interests, hobbies, and activities that people in your target market are most interested in. You can use this information to create content for them about things they will be about as opposed to topics they may not be so keen on.

Visit Facebook Audience Insights From Here

7. Pexels (Images)

Pexels is a warehouse for any content creator with millions of free royalty images who wants to find high-quality images that can be used freely without having to worry about permissions or licensing so you are free to use the photos in your content and also there is no watermark on photos

The only cons are that some photos contain people, and Pexels doesn't allow you to remove people from photos. Search your keyword and download as many as you want!

Visit Pexel From Here

So there you have it. We hope that these specially curated websites will come in handy for content creators and small businesses alike. If you've got a site that should be on this list, let us know! And if you're looking for more content creator resources, then let us know in the comments section below

A collection of the worst volume control UIs. [uxdesign.cc]

20 simple sauces "that will transform any meal", including nuoc cham, Buffalo sauce, tartar sauce, and whipped cream. [nytimes.com]

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Students in one of the world's most expensive cities get stunning views of Zurich in a former business hotel.

India captain Virat Kohli promises "high voltage" action in the four-Test series against Australia, which gets under way in Adelaide on Thursday.

Hot deal on pressure treated in Kitchener only regular price is over 52.99

I bought 10 to do my gazebo all brand new stock no warps

Statistics: Posted by sassysue — Oct 11th, 2020 9:20 am

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Washington on Friday spurned an Iraqi request to prepare to pull out its troops, amid heightened U.S.-Iranian tensions after the U.S. killing of an Iranian commander in Baghdad, and said it was exploring a possible expansion of NATO's presence there.

The state is set to become the first to offer government healthcare to people living in the US illegally.

The prime minister has won re-election on a tide of violence, fake news and resentment.

The tight U.S. labor market is not drawing new people into the labor force, but merely reducing the number dropping out, according to research published on Monday by the San Francisco Federal Reserve.

So Virgin Mobile is basically copying Fido's latest move (see similar thread with Fido, posted lately), with BYOP plans at $35/month for 2gb and $45/month for 4gb.
This is for Quebec, they seem to also be adding bonus data for other provinces.

Koodo is likely to follow in the next few days.

http://www.virginmobile.ca/en/plans/pos ... V:6#!/BYOP

Statistics: Posted by s_giguere — May 9th, 2018 2:25 pm

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Senator Edward J. Markey tweeted earlier today that Democrats will force a floor vote to restore net neutrality rules on May 9th. "[Democrats] had the signatures in favor of restoring the rules since January, along with a companion House bill (with 80 co-sponsors)," reports Engadget. "Senator Edward J. Markey also introduced a formal Congressional Review Act 'resolution of disapproval' in February." From the report: Of course, this last-ditch attempt to save net neutrality can only help congressional supporters of as they move into mid-term elections. "We're in the homestretch in the fight to save net neutrality," Senator Chuck Schumer said in a statement. "Soon, the American people will know which side their member of Congress is on: fighting for big corporations and ISPs or defending small business owners, entrepreneurs, middle-class families and every-day consumers." Still, even if the Senate passes the Democrat's proposal, notes Politico, it's unlikely it would get through the House or avoid a Trump veto. Also taking place on May 9, net neutrality activists and websites like Etsy, Tumblr, Postmates, Foursquare and Twilio will post "red alerts" to protest the FCC's effort to roll back net neutrality protections.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Architecture firms Hassell and MVRDV have imagined a scheme featuring floating stadiums, emergency castles and pop-up restaurants, which aims to build resiliency to flooding in South San Francisco and foster the local community. Read more

I have been waiting with bated breath for The Sims 4’s Cats & Dogs expansion since it was announced in September. I didn’t realize that it would give me something else I’ve been waiting for: curly hair.

Read more...

Doom's apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve. Gamasutra recently caught up with Id Software's Marty Stratton and Hugo Martin to talk demon-slaying game design. ...

Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is overrated. Why? For starters, the director of the Louvre said that 80% of the museum’s visitors are there just to see the Mona Lisa. 80%! We’re talking about one of the finest museums in the world, overflowing with some of the world’s greatest artworks, and people come to only see one thing. Overrated. The story of how that happened involves a passionate art critic and a crime.

Tags: art   crime   Leonardo da Vinci   Mona Lisa   video

 Simplilearn, a company helping customers get certified in areas like PMP (project management) and Android development, has raised $15 million in Series C funding. The company offers courses both online and in classroom workshops and says there are more than 200 courses and 40 accreditations. Since launching in 2010, more than 400,000 people have been certified through Simplilearn courses. Read More

It's been an up-and-down week on the web. "George R. R. Martin" sang some Taylor Swift and Twitter reacted to Harrison Ford's plane crash. Read it all here.

The post While You Were Offline: The George R.R. Martin/Taylor Swift Mashup of Your Dreams appeared first on WIRED.

Streaming videos of people playing video games is big business. Right now though, there isn't much competition -- Twitch pretty much dominates the scene. But, if there's one company that can topple the king it's Valve. Today it took the wraps off Ste...

Vimeo user Subterminally appears to have had the worst 13 seconds of his life last week when he hit the cliff off of which he was base jumping. Subterminallyill received a "Compression Fracture of the T12 Vertebra, 5 stitches to the eye, 6 stitches to the chin, severely sprained Back, wrist and hand. multiple bruised areas," which is not too bad considering he FELL OFF A FUCKING CLIFF.

Alternate copy for this post, "No. No, no no no no no no. No. No. No. No, no, no, no, no. No."

(via just about everyone)

Tags: slow motion   video

Photograph Lukas Farlan offers us snapshots of incredible beauty. Particularly good for capturing landscapes, the artist living in Italy comes with a series of images taken in the Alps to capture our attention and make us instantly travel. To discover in the future.

As Valve celebrates the first birthday of Steam Greenlight's launch, company founder Gabe Newell keeps his eye on when such an approval process will cease to exist.

Launched a year ago tomorrow, Greenlight was initially met with broad fanfare - this was a new feature of Valve's powerhouse Steam distribution platform that would allow its audience to have a say in what games were released on the 50 million-user-strong storefront. It purpose was to -- and remains -- to help break down walls between developers and players.

But even the term "Greenlight" itself implies a gatekeeper - that someone, or some group, holds the authority to give you the go-ahead. That gatekeeper mentality goes directly against what Valve has in mind for Steam. For Valve, the endgame is to remove all bottlenecks, including Greenlight, and give game developers a platform to reach their audiences directly.

"The immediate goal [of Greenlight] was to give us more data in the selection process as we ramp up the tools needed to get us to our longer term goal of improving the overall throughput of the system," Valve founder Gabe Newell tells us.

"Before Greenlight, folks would send mail to us mail or fill out the posted submission form, hope that someone saw it and liked it, and waited in the dark for a reply. While it is not perfect, Greenlight helped us pull that process out of the dark and help with the selection process."

Unwanted bottleneck

Valve has recognized for a while now that the Steam approval processes are a blockade. Newell has expressed that Steam's future is as a web API that any developer can call, and allowing anyone to create a Steam storefront page.

Breaking down those walls is tricky, to say the least. Valve announced yesterday that it approved 100 titles via its Greenlight program, which is a big jump in volume, and the biggest batch of approvals yet.

That signals progress in Greenlight's efficiency. But at its most efficient, the Greenlight approval process will completely disappear.

"Ultimately, we hope to increase our throughput so significantly that the conversation about selection becomes antiquated," says Newell. "Then we can debate our ability or inability to properly aggregate and display the increased volume of titles being offered."

The Greenlight reality

Greenlight's initial vision was totally in line with one of Valve's pillars of success: Putting the community first and giving players and game developers a voice.

But when the service launched, and the flood of games poured in, reality hit: Developers weren't ready to game the popularity contest, the selection process has become confusing, good games were getting buried, and perhaps worst of all, it was still a considerable bottleneck between developers and the people who wanted to play their games.

What was at first going to be something that would give the community full say in what came to Steam became a situation where Valve had to come in and play gatekeeper once again - Greenlighted games are decided by both the community and by Valve nowadays. That initial vision combined with the current reality tends to lead to confusion about what games are Greenlighted, and why.

"Votes on Greenlight provide a useful point of data in gauging community interest, but we're aware that votes alone may be an inexact form of gauging customer interest," Newell explains. "So we also try to incorporate additional information we have about factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other similar platforms, and awards and contests to help form a more complete picture of community interest in each title."

The solution to the bottleneck

In other words, Valve still does have the final say, a fact that Newell, an always-self-aware businessman, can readily acknowledge. As Valve continues to chip away at its own self-imposed bottleneck, the company is coming to grips with the daunting challenge of game discoverability.

"Much of the evolution of Steam and Greenlight is driven by what the community of gamers and developers tell us they want to see made possible," says Newell. "Right now, we're focused on expanding the depth and breadth of our catalog. That expansion and addition of content is going to come with a need to innovate and iterate on how customers browse for games and evaluate potential purchases."

"Evolving our tools to allow us to publish more titles more frequently is the solution for the bottleneck," he adds. "We're working on it, and the 100 [Greenlighted games batch] was a big step towards the long term goal. This latest batch is both a celebration and a stress test of our systems. Future batches may not be as large but, if everything goes smoothly, we should be able to continue increasing the throughput of games from Greenlight to the store."

[written by sister site Gamasutra's EIC Kris Graft]

This is the third article in a series of guest posts from Tim Wicksteed. In the first he looked at the Free to Play (F2P) vs Premium Dilemma and decided that Ionage, his first commercial title as an indie developer, would be F2P. In the next article he looked at implementing and evolving the F2P design pattern; here he described the manner in which he planned to implement F2P in Ionage.

Ionage has now been released, as of a month ago, and since then he has been busy promoting, updating and analysing. This third article is on how his proposed F2P implementation performed.

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The IAPs in Ionage work a little differently to the majority of F2P games. Although the exact implementation is a little different to the plan I laid out in my last article, the main goals are the same. I wanted to create a system which had no tedious grinding mechanics but which still gave the player a good reason to spend.

To achieve this Ionage has no in-game currency, all IAPs are permanent one-time unlocks. Crucially, there is no way to grind your way to unlocking anything covered by an IAP. My argument for this is that permanent unlocks give the player a greater sense of ownership/value than consumable ones and that with no alternative but to pay there is a good reason for the player to spend.

The major consequence of this tactic though, as spotted by Ben Sipe in his Improving Freemium Design article looking at Ionage, is that this strategy limits the Life-Time Value (LTV) of the player. In Ionage, it’s not currently possible to spend more than £9 and really you can get 90% out of the game for just £2. This was a deliberate, if potentially misguided, design decision. The aim of my bizarre experiment was to see if I could create an IAP policy that promotes higher conversion rates but lower LTV because, quite simply, I’d rather make my money from a lot of people paying a little than a few people paying a lot.

To see how it went let’s delve into the statistics. The following is true as of 26/08/13, exactly one month after launch.

Conversion rates – Ionage’s lifetime conversion rate worldwide is 2.3% which seems to be in the middle of the pack quoted for Android games, albeit almost two years ago, on GamesBrief. An interesting addendum is that in the UK, where 20% of my users are based, the conversion rate comes in at 3.7% and at times over the last month has averaged over 4%. This suggests to me that my policy of permanent IAPs is particularly attractive to the UK mindset.

ARPPU – So far, the worldwide Average Revenue Per Paying User is £2.25 and is led by the USA who spend £3.65 on average. Interestingly, while UK users convert at a higher percentage than the USA, they spend 28% less on average at £2.61 per user.

ARPU – So far, the worldwide average lifetime revenue per user (including those that pay nothing at all) is 5p. Despite having a lower ARPPU than the USA, UK users top this statistic at 10p per user. Clearly the higher conversion rate in the UK makes up for the slightly lower spend per user. In terms of lowest ARPU, that prize goes to Russian users at 0.22p. To put that into context, that’s 45 times less than my UK users. I also have some fairly compelling evidence that Russian users have managed to trick the game into thinking purchases have been made, as the numbers from my analytics service don’t match with the actual revenue statistics. It’s not a huge problem given the very low conversion rates and a non-paying player who enjoys and publicises your game is better than no player at all!

Engagement – The graph below shows the game’s Daily Active Users (DAU) as well as DAU/current installs since launch. These graphs are heavily affected by the number of new users joining the game each day. Therefore, I prefer to look at returning users as this removes the effects of promotional activity and just looks at how effective the game is at engaging with and holding onto its users. The graph below it shows returning users over days as well as returning users/current installs.

Ionage is able to pretty consistently pull back 10% of its current user base into the game each day to play. I believe this suggests that the game has highly addictive qualities. Given that the user base is increasing each day, the number of returning users has to increase as well to maintain the same percentage. This suggests that the game is able to keep people coming back day after day, not just once or twice.

The elephant in the room

Given that Ionage is my first commercial title as well as my first foray into the world of F2P, I’m pretty happy with the metrics. When you note that I’m a one-man team with just a single salary plus artwork and music costs to pay for, the metrics don’t need to compete with the number one grossing app on the chart for the game to be a financial success for me.

However there is an elephant in the room. So far I’ve been talking mainly about percentages or averages rather than straight figures. However you might have noticed the number of users on the last two graphs. No, unfortunately they are not in thousands!

The truth is that while I believe the metrics are strong, the overall numbers are not. At just under 8500 downloads at this point; the total numbers are just not large enough to sustain full-time development. The good news is, at least so far, the numbers are still going up, just not very quickly.

The revenue over the equivalent period is plotted on the graph below. The 7 day moving average shows that the game makes roughly £15 per day and so far isn’t showing any warning signs that this is dropping off.

Promotional activities

So if user acquisition is my biggest issue, it begs the question: what have I done to gain users and how can I get more? Well like most indies bringing out their first game, I did my research. I read all the articles about how to contact the press and I spent time crafting emails and contacting people from all over the industry. Here are the success stories:

• Ben’s great article that I mentioned earlier led to a triple whammy record of new users, daily active users and revenue the day it came out
• I appeared on Guy Cocker’s Video Games Podcast a couple of weeks ago which seemed to give a modest boost to downloads over the following week
• The game was spotted by Stuart Dredge in his regular column for the Guardian online newspaper and was featured in both the ‘20 Best Android Apps this Week’ and ‘50 best Android games from 2013’

• The game was featured and critically praised by a few Android review sites

• The game seems to be almost universally enjoyed by my users with 87% opting to leave a 5 star review

Unfortunately the game failed to make a splash in any of the big online publications that I targeted: One which focused on hardcore mobile titles, one that focused on indie games and a large mobile gaming site. Let me make it very clear, I don’t begrudge any of these sites for not featuring the game. I know journalists and editors have a difficult job and when an email appears in the general editors@onlinesite.com inbox then it’s tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. The advice I’ve been given since is to forget the publically available ‘catch-all’ inboxes and concentrate on cultivating selective, more personal relationships with individual journalists. If there are any journalists reading this then feel free to drop me a line if you are keen on the strategy or Android scenes. I’d love to hear from you.

Over the last week I’ve been experimenting with advertising via Google’s Adwords service. Although based on a relatively small sample size – I’ve only spent just over £10 – the outlook doesn’t look good. Even with tightly focused slogans and only paying for actual clicks, the cost per acquisition has been well over £1 per user in the UK. This warrants further scrutiny of my metrics. While I am perfectly happy with an ARPU of 10p when I gain users organically, it’s clearly not sufficient for any type of paid acquisition. With the top grossing games able to pull in average revenues greater than £1-2 per user (that’s including all the people who play for free) I am effectively being priced out of the paid acquisition market. I’m going to have to find another way to find users.

New markets

My first goal moving forward is to maximise the market penetration of version one of the game. To do this I’m taking the game to the Samsung Apps store, where it is currently awaiting approval, via 100% Indie – a scheme created by the founders of Chillingo.  I’m also thinking about taking the game to the Amazon marketplace as tablet oriented games are rumoured to do well there despite the smaller number of users. The game is also currently being translated into Korean and I’d like to do the same with Japanese. These are the largest Android markets, in terms of revenue, alongside the USA [REF] but so far I’m seeing very few users. This suggests to me that in general, Korean and Japanese Android gamers like to play their games in their own language. Fair enough!

Although I’ve considered taking the game to iOS, it is difficult to make the business case when you look at the game’s current revenue pitted against the cost of porting. I’ll monitor this and if I make the judgement that it is worth it in the future, then it is definitely something I’d like to do.

New features

The final option I have to increase my user numbers is to add new features to the game.  The Ionage community has already reacted positively to the suggestion of a split-screen multiplayer mode, endless mode and the integration of Google Play Game Services. However, making the business case for them is difficult based on current user numbers. I will focus primarily on features/game-modes that have social aspects as these have the potential to drive additional users to the game as well as extra revenue from existing ones.

Conclusions

Looking at the F2P implementation specifically, Ionage has strengths and flaws. It has a moderate conversion rate but the ARPU is too low to justify paid user acquisitions. To make up for this, the game really needs social mechanics to drive user downloads; it is here I believe the game’s biggest flaw lies.

Gameplay-wise the response has been almost unilaterally positive. The worst comments I’ve had were from users who complained the game was pay-to-win, however one user was kind enough to prove this is not the case. Based on this I’m keen to continue to develop the IP and I’m confident, that if I can find the right platform/marketing strategy/business plan then I can make it a success.

 

Anyone who was a child once upon a time has probably dreamed about making their bicycles fly across the full moon like in E.T. Awesome photographer Philipp Schmidli actually did that. He recreated the iconic E.T. movie poster by snapping an awesome picture of a biker riding off a ramp against the backdrop of a giant moon.

Read more...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will sit down with the leading U.S. financial market regulators on Monday to discuss their progress in implementing the 2010 Wall Street reform law, the White House said on Sunday.