All the sprinters

The NY Times put together a great comparison of all the Olympic sprinters. In particular, the gold medal winners of the 100 meter dash. Working backward from Usain Bolt to Francis Lane in 1896.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/05/sports/olympics/the-100-meter-dash-one-race-every-medalist-ever.html?hp

Very well done, the data tells the story!

Create your own Olympic light show

I saw Bernie's post yesterday:

According to Switched The ten, online user-controlled (yes, really, go ahead and try it while you still can) search lights currently installed on each side of Vancouver's English Bay is the work of none other than Major Fun Award-winner Rafael Lozano-Hemmer!

"Ah!" says I, and also "ha!" How satisfying it is to see a Major Fun award-winner earn something closely equivalent to gold medal Olympic recognition for playfulness.

And also that my buddy Rick Hamrick had tried one.

I did it myself this morning. It was quite easy to do, although I wasn't really sure what it would look like.

Note: I normally use Firefox but for some reason, the live video wouldn't show. I tried IE 8.0 and the same problem, it was loading and loading forever. I switched to Chrome and the live video popped right up without delay.

You can view my Olympic light show here:
http://www.vectorialvancouver.net/archive.php?id=13482

5 for Friday

Here are 5 items that I picked up this week that might be of interest to you:

1 - Zoho adds macro capability to their spreadsheet.

I am sure this is good news for someone out there. Zoho Sheet can now record and play back Visual Basic macros. It's the only cloud-based spreadsheet that can do that. In fact, the only other spreadsheet that can do that isMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Excel. Google (NSDQ: GOOG), are you going to ante up?

2 - Also from InformationWeek:

A security consultant for the Intrepidus Group claims to have found evidence that Chinese gymnast He Kexin, the gold medal winner on the uneven bars in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, is only 14 years old -- too young to compete in the Olympics.

Blogging under the name Stryde Hax, Mike Walker, a principal consultant for the security group, has posted screenshots of an Excel spreadsheet that was removed from an official Chinese government Web site but was still available through Baidu, China's most popular search engine. The file appears to show that He Kexin is not old enough for Olympic competition.

The search capability and particularly of cached websites can be revealing. In this case, the researcher was watching the information disappear while he was searching.

3 - Wind turbines have been generating negative press here due to the proposal for the area around Nantucket and Cape Cod. This story originates from Jiminy Peak in Western Massachusetts.

Nestled in the Berkshires, Jiminy Peak claims to be the first privately held company in the nation to have installed a megawatt class turbine. Its Zephyr (named after the Greek god of wind) sits on a 253-ft. tower, with each of its three blades reaching approximately 123 feet into the air, making the wind turbine taller than the Statue of Liberty.

The turbine generates 4.6 million kWh (kilowatt hours) of energy or enough to light up the TVs, DVDs, microwaves and refrigerators in 613 homes for a year. Most of the power is generated in winter, when mountain winds peak, and demand at the resort is at its highest, due to the demands of snowmaking equipment.

Read the full story here

4 - Scott Berkun is interviewed by bMighty on good vs. Bad Managers. For example, he reveals:

bMighty: How would you define a "bad" manager?

Berkun: Two criteria: 1) he fails and 2) people hate working for him. A mediocre manager meets one of these criteria. A good manager, none.

Read the full interview here.

5 - Chris Brogan says:

I think there’s a trend to observe here, and that it’s right in front of us: the state of podcasting and social media events is mirroring the media and technology these events cover. Some thoughts on a few of the events.

Read the full posting here on the trend toward fragmenation

What did you find this week?

Do you have anything interesting to share?

sherku: Amanda Beard

Amanda reveals a nip
no tuck, she bares her breast
stroking for Playboy gold




Yes, Amanda Beard, the 14 year old teddy bear clutching teen who first took medals in the 1996 Olympics has grown up.

The ESPN reaction to her Playboy article.

Amanda's own website can be found here.