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The Internet Big Five: Up $272 Billion in Six Months : Last December I posted on “ The Internet Big Five ,” noting their relative strengths and the market cap of each. Since that time, the Five have only gotten stronger, adding a cumulative $272 billion in market cap (much of that is Apple, but Amazon and Facebook – assuming the offering does as expected on Friday – have also increased quite a bit). All in all, nearly 30% increase in value for these five companies – sort of makes me wish I was an investor, rather than a writer and entrepreneur. I’ll also check the number of engaged users for each platform, to see if there are any significant shifts, though I don’t recall seeing any in the news recently (save Facebook crossing 900 million users). It is interesting to note that Facebook, should it hold its supposed valuation, will be more highly valued than Amazon. A reminder as to why I’ve made a point of watching the Big Five, from my original and secondary posts: ..there’s more to

কমিউনিটির জন্যই কাজ করে যেতে চাই : গতকাল ছিলো ইবানের জন্মদিন, আর মাইক্রোসফট বাংলাদেশের সাথে কাজ না করার সিদ্ধান্তটাও বাস্তবায়ন করলাম গতকালকে। বেশ কিছু পত্রিকা/অনলাইন মাধ্যমের বদৌলতে এই খবর এখন পুরাতন, কিন্তু অনেকেই প্রশ্ন করছে কেন এই সিদ্ধান্ত আর ভবিষ্যত পরিকল্পনা কি। মাইক্রোসফটের সাথে কাজ করে আসছি সেই ২০০২ সাল থেকে, মাইক্রোসফটের তৈরী করা ছোট বড় প্রায় ১২০টি পণ্য ইন্ডাস্ট্রিতে ব্যবহৃত হয়ে থাকে। ২০০৯ সালে যখন সুযোগ হয়, তখন  এক্সপ্লোর করার সুযোগটা হাতছাড়া হতে দেইনি। কাছে থেকে গত আড়াই বছরে বহু কিছু দেখেছি এবং শিখেছি। সে এক অসাধারণ অভিজ্ঞতা। আমার পরিচিত অনেক ডেভলপার আছে, যারা কি করবে, কিভাবে করবে বুঝতে পারছেনা। অথচ মাইক্রোসফটের একটি প্রযুক্তির উপরে অভিজ্ঞতা অর্জন করলেই ভবিষ্যত নিয়ে আর চিন্তা করতে হয়না। গত জানুয়ারি মাসের একটা ছোট্ট জরিপে দেখানো হয়েছে যে উন্নতবিশ্বে প্রায় দেড়লাখ ডায়নামিক্স ন্যাভ ডেভলপার দরকার ছিলো ২০১১ সালে এবং তিনগুন ডেভলপার দরকার ২০১২ সালে, একই জরিপে শেয়ারপয়েন্টের কথাও এরকম বলা হয়েছে; তবে শেয়ারপয়েন্টের ডেভলপার দরকার আরও বেশী। এদের পারিশ্রমিকও কিন্তু কম না, প্রতি মাসে বে

From Today’s Ride: 20 Miles O’ Smiles : A good push on a demo’d 29er Marin this morning. A few highlights: Mt. Tam, where I was headed, from Blithedale Ridge. Tons of folks at West Point Inn today, which is about 2/3rds up Tam. It was the 100th anniversary of the Marin Municipal Water District and there was a band playing. But this shot looks South, away from the Inn, toward Tam. Lastly, the view from near the top, on the way down Eldridge, toward Bon Tempe Lake and the open spaces of Fairfax and beyond. I do not recommend bombing down Eldridge on a hardtail 29er. Ouch. Remember, Searchbloggers, I’ve got a  new RSS feed that you can consume  so as to miss these non-work related posts.

Performing Mars : [Image: Image via Karst Worlds ]. An ice cave in Austria was recently used as a test landscape for experimental spacesuits and instrumentation systems—including 3D cameras—that might someday be used by humans on Mars. The Dachstein ice cave was chosen, Stuff explains, "because ice caves would be a natural refuge for any microbes on Mars seeking steady temperatures and protection from damaging cosmic rays." [Images: (top and bottom) Photos by Katja Zanella-Kux; middle photos via Karst Worlds ]. Many images available at the Dachstein Mars Simulation Liveblog —including this series of 25 images courtesy of the Austrian Space Forum —document the testing process, which ranged from the beautifully surreal, as a fully space-suited man rolls strange devices down slopes of ice inside the planet, to the nearly postmodern, as crowds of normally dressed tourist onlookers are revealed at the edges of the show cave, watching this odd performance unfold. And al

Books Received : [Image: A riverboat library in Bangladesh; image courtesy of the Gates Foundation ]. Many, many books have arrived at the home office here since the last, shockingly distant installment of Books Received , and I'm thus once again woefully behind in tallying up all the titles that have come my way. Accordingly, there are still many more write-ups to come, but it will be next month, after some upcoming travels, before I get to those other books. Meanwhile, as has always been the case with Books Received posts, I have not read all of the books linked here and not all of them are necessarily new. However, in all cases, these are included for the interest of their approach or subject matter, and the following list should easily give just about anyone at least one good book to read over the coming summer. 1) City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age by P.D. Smith (Bloomsbury) — P.D. Smith's voluminous look at the history of urbanism stretches from the Sumerians

Buncefield Bomb Garden : [Image: The Buncefield explosion, via the BBC ]. In one of the more interesting landscape design stories I've read this year, New Scientist reported back in March that the massive, December 2005 explosion at a fuel-storage depot called Buncefield in England, might have been strongly assisted by the site's landscaping. "A few years ago no one would have predicted that a row of trees and shrubs could make the difference between a serious fire and a catastrophic explosion," the magazine suggests. But now, it's becoming a reasonably accepted notion that the physical layout of the Buncefield site's plantlife—from the "shrubs and small trees" down to their individual "twigs and branches"—can work to contain and concentrate, and, worse, add explosive surface area to what would otherwise have simply been a gas leak. Indeed, the ongoing investigation at Buncefield "might change the way storage depots, refineries

Venue : I'm excited to be launching a new project called Venue , a 16-month collaboration with the Nevada Museum of Art 's Center for Art + Environment, Columbia University GSAPP's Studio-X NYC , and Future Plural , the small publishing and curatorial group I'm a part of with Nicola Twilley . We kick things off this Friday, June 8, with a launch event at the Nevada Museum of Art in downtown Reno, from 6-8pm; if you're near Reno, consider stopping by! [Image: The tools and props of surveying; courtesy of the USGS ]. In brief, Venue is equal parts surveying expedition and forward-operating landscape research base, a DIY interview booth and media rig that will pop up at sites across North America through September 2013. Nicola Twilley and I will be traveling on and off, in a series of discontinuous trips, over the next 16 months, visiting a variety of sites including infrastructural landmarks, science labs, factories, film sets, archaeological excavations, a