You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 28th, 2008.
One would think that given the wide array of professions represented on Jeopardy!, eventually a psychic would show up. I’ve never seen one. Seems like a psychic would have an advantage over the other contestants. But even if the soi-disant psychic promised he wouldn’t use his powers during the show, should there not have been a psychic or two over the many years of Jeopardy! episodes? Why is that business so statistically underrepresented on this particular game show?
My crystal ball says that psychics suck at memorizing world capitals.
Perhaps you thought when you bought a book via Amazon that you were beating the system. You paid no tax, no shipping (due to an order over 25 bucks), and your book was cheaper than it was at your nearby bookstore. And yes, you did save money. But could you have saved more?
An online engine called Add All compares book prices at dozens of online stores, factors in shipping, and then tells you where the best deals are. Folks, if you buy a lot of books and want to save some cash, check out Add All.
Here’s an example of the output from Add All’s the search engine:
One of the best iPhone applications I’ve tried so far is Shazam. This utility will listen for several seconds to a song that’s playing wherever you happen to be. Shazam uploads audio data to a server, waits for a response, and then tells you the name of the song, the album on which it’s found, the name of the group, etc. You also get a picture of the album cover. Further, a log is kept of all the songs you’ve analyzed so that you can decide later whether to buy the CDs. I tested the application with several songs in iTunes and with some background music in a movie or two. Shazam’s ability to detect which song is playing – even with distracting foreground/background noise – is amazing. The only flaws I’ve found so far involve its inability to identify jazz and classical music. Many songs from those genres appear not to be in the company’s database.
Check out Shazam in action. Then get it from the Apple app store. The application is currently free!
