April 2010

Some potentially interesting Twitter data for sale from infochimps:

For $300 you can buy the dataset containing an hour-by-hour breakdown of the occurence of hashtags, URLs, and smileys in the 1.6 billion tweets created between March 2006 and March 2010. For $250 you can purchase a dataset extracted from those same 1.6 billion tweets with all mentions of stock tokens and related keywords.

Younghee Jung on physical vs digital identity:

Socially and systematically our digital birth is not acknowledged. It only becomes valid when our physical and proven existence is linked to it. Will this change? Will we – digitally or physically – be freed from our permanent residence when so many of us are no longer in a position to claim a permanent residence?

I made this graph today showing the real value per tonne of New Zealand exports and imports by air freight. The real values are calculated using the CPI.

Interesting that the value of imports per tonne are about twice those of exports. A lot of air-freighted imports are probably pharmaceuticals. Also interesting that the real value of exports per tonne has increased about 5x over the past 20 years while the value of imports has fluctuated but not really increased.

This is surely a joke???

“I’m sorry sir, but you have reached your lifetime limit of iPad purchases and will not be allowed to buy any more.”

I like the Shirky Principle very much:

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky