This is a great article that sheds some light on Newegg’s operation and how they managed to pull in more than $1 billion in sales last year. I’ve used them to buy stuff since they started out as a small internet retailer back in 2001. The key to their success seems to be proprietary logistical product routing technology developed in-house that ships almost any of their 60,000 products to customers within twenty four hours of a placed order. Newegg was also a pioneer in establishing individual product comment threads submitted by anyone that wanted to take the time to make them (similar to Amazon).Ever wonder why the boxes you get from online retailers just happen to pack your entire order into a box that perfectly fits the contents? It’s no coincidence. Checkout the automatic box maker they utilize.
Archive
My friend Steve, who reads AndrewSullivan.com religiously, sent me this link from Time magazine. A seemingly authentic letter from one of our soldiers in Iraq that shares the horrific, mundane and heroic side of the war.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1543658,00.html
| Name | Pay ($mil) | E-Score | Top Attribute | Secondary Attribute | |
| 6 | Steven Spielberg | 332 |
9 | Intelligent | Talented |
| 7 | Howard Stern | 302 |
90 | Rude | Creepy |
| 15 | George Lucas | 235 |
51 | Talented | Intelligent |
| 3 | Oprah Winfrey | 225 |
25 | Intelligent | Confident |
| 4 | U2 | 110 |
NA | NA | NA |
| 28 | Jerry Seinfeld | 100 |
23 | Funny | Talented |
| 2 | Rolling Stones | 90 |
NA | NA | NA |
| 5 | Tiger Woods | 90 |
41 | Talented | Physically Fit |
| 10 | Dan Brown | 88 |
82 | Intelligent | Talented |
| 42 | Jerry Bruckheimer | 84 |
40 | Intelligent | Talented |
Just out and laughable as ever…At least Dr. Phil didn’t make the Top 10.
Interesting story on how statistical analysis demonstrates that every living human on the planet descended from an individual living as recently as 2000 years ago.
With the help of a statistician, a computer scientist and a supercomputer, Olson has calculated just how interconnected the human family tree is. You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years — and probably on the low side of that range — to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant.
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71298-0.html?tw=wn_index_6
Microsoft is finally getting it. These screenshots of Office 2007 look like something from the Mac world. The biggest change from a UI perspective is the contextual tabs, which should greatly help users by reducing the number of menu choices available to those which are not object specific. This totally makes sense to me. If I want to modify the properties of an object, I should do so through right-click, not the main menu.
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/09/547281.aspx
Having recently recovered from the flu, I happened to stumble across this article in Discover magazine that shows new evidence for viruses in the pecking order of biogenesis. What has always fascinated me about viruses is the difficulty in classifying them as alive or not. Like most living organisms, a virus has the ability to reproduce, albeit in a much different way than other cellular entities. Basically, viruses replicate themselves by inserting their DNA into the nucleus of living cells, taking over the cellular functions to reproduce itself. It stands to reason that if viruses are dependent on living cells to replicate, then they must have evolved after single celled organisms. This article sheds light on how viruses may have been more influential on primordial bacteria to form the “mother cell” of all subsequently derived life on Earth.
A monstrous discovery suggests that viruses, long regarded as lowly evolutionary latecomers, may have been the precursors of all life on Earth.
This built in espresso maker looks very nice. I wonder how well it makes espresso and froths milk, though…
Zanussi’s built-in coffee maker
Kitchens were once such simple places; a cooker, a sink and a fridge. What else did you need? Well, following on from the flip down TV, you can now fit an integrated coffee maker into your ever-shrinking space. Zanussi’s ZCOF636 certainly looks the part with its modern brushed steel finish, it has a hot water dispenser for long coffee drinks or tea making and steam spout for frothy milk drinks, a built-in bean grinder and an accessory drawer for your cups and supplies underneath. And unusually for these machines, it can make two cups at a time. So no-one has to have the cold one. If you desire an endless supply of espresso or cappuccino, it might appeal. But before you dash down to the kitchen showroom, ask yourself when was the last time you used your existing coffee machine? Exactly.
One of the highlights of my Sonoma trip was a visit to Nalle Winery in Healdsburg. It’s a smallish operation (about 1700 cases per year) in the Russian River Valley. We made it a point to visit Nalle as my brother-in-law Guy, who regularly reads the Wall Street Journal’s wine column, saw this review (excerpted from The Wall Street Journal, Friday, September 16, 2005
© Copyright 2005 The Wall Street Journal):
A Winemaker’s Dozen
From Napa-Sonoma Tour, 12 Bottles to Remember; Going for the Charbono
by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher
Nalle Winery Pinot Noir 2003, Hopkins Ranch, Russian River Valley($38). We’ve been fans of Nalle’s Zinfandel for years, but this was a revelation: like fresh, ripe raspberry-cherry fruit warm from the sun and bursting inside your mouth. Light, fruity, with some spice and earth and totally winning, it’s the perfect wine for salmon. It makes us smile just to write about it.
Yes, the zin was indeed fabulous, but the pinot was outstanding and I ended up buying several bottles in addition to the zin.
New pictures are up in the Gallery.
Here’s an interview from Wired with Pulitzer prize winning author Jared Diamond on a new three part PBS series based on the books (thanks Kurk). The first airing is Monday, July 11th.
