Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 7/23/10

It’s Friday, and at some point – after you’ve finished tweaking that BI dashboard you’ve been working on — you have to do some recreational reading to brush up on snazzy topics for that BBQ on Saturday night.  Allow me to help.

Word nerd alert: go write your best love letter to whatever punctuation mark you like.

It’s OEM Windows all over again: mobile carriers are loading up new Android smartphones with all sorts of bloatware.

Zero marginal product workers: economist Tyler Cowen looks for a sane reason why economic output is up while jobs are down.

There are two ATMs in Antarctica, both owned and operated by Wells Fargo.  Who knew?

The Science of Sport looks at power output (wattage) from Tour de France riders.  If you’ve ever watched your own wattage on a stationary bike or Concept 2 rower, then you know how utterly mind-blowing these numbers are.

Khoi Vinh, former design director for the NYTimes, explains why he chose to leave his job. I applaud his honesty and acknowledgement that he’d be showing his daughter a horrible example if he were to stay in a job just for the sake of stability at the expense of his dreams and ambition.

Janet Fitch (author of ‘White Oleander’ and ‘Paint It Black’) has 10 writing rules that can help just about anyone.

Amazon’s quarterly results.  Good numbers (revenue and net income up, but a miss on EPS), but pay attention to how they seem to be positioning the Kindle – as a software platform rather than one of hardware.

A German nursing home uses a fake bus stop to foil wayward Alzheimer’s patients.

Finally, an excellent essay by Paul Graham about the act of thinking, entitled The Top Idea in Your Mind.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

###

MIPRO Consulting is a nationally-recognized consulting firm specializing in PeopleSoft Enterprise (particularly Enterprise Asset Management), Workday and Business Intelligence. You’re reading MIPRO Unfiltered, its blog. If you’d like to contact MIPRO, email is a great place to start, or you can easily jump over to its main website. If you’d like to see what MIPRO offers via Twitter or Facebook, we’d love to have you.

More Linkology posts.