Horrifying First Person Footage in HD of Tsunami Hitting

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I first saw this video posted on Saturday, March 12. This video made the rounds on sites like Reddit & Twitter due to is spectacular nature. Apparently the author managed to get access to a good internet connection since then and post an HD version of the video. This video illustrates just how powerful the Tsunami was and how quick it struck. As you can see, this town went from dry to almost completely destroyed in less than 5 minutes time.

In Focus with Alan Taylor

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It has come to my attention that not everyone has gotten the memo that Alan Taylor, creator of the fantastic The Big Picture photography blog over at Boston.com left the site several months ago. The Atlantic was smart enough to make him a good enough offer to bring him over to their site, making him a Senior Editor and allowing him to start a new photography blog there, called In Focus. Alan has said previously that this move has allowed him full editorial control in a way that he never had at The Big Picture, doing things like increasing the resolution the end-user is allowed to select for the photos. In Focus allows the viewer to select either 1024px or 1280px width images. In Focus has been a wonderful source for powerful images from Japan in the last week since the earthquake. This particular image, below, was particularly moving to me. REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan McCord You should subscribe to In Focus. It's good.

The Fragility of Free

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Ben Brooks writes:

The fragility of free is a catchy term that describes what happens when the free money runs out. Or — perhaps more accurately — when the investors/founders/venture capitalists run out of cash, or patience, or both. Because at some point Twitter and all other companies have to make the move from ‘charity’ to ‘business’ — or, put another way, they have to make the move from spending tons of money to making slightly more money than they spend. Kyle Baxter wrote a follow-up to Ben Brooks' article: Twitter’s value lies in it being a communication utility, where anyone and everyone can quickly communicate information. That’s incredibly powerful, and it simply couldn’t exist if it wasn’t a free service. This doesn’t mean the strategy Twitter pursued is correct; rather, it means their error was in being so cavalier about a business model. They assumed if they reached a critical mass of users, turning it into a profitable business would be easy—and they’ve discovered that isn’t really true. It takes just as much thinking as building the actual product does. Read the first article, and then the second one. Done? Good. You may now resume your normal #dickbar bitching.

MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

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This MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub blog has been the best, most accurate, resource that I've been able to find during the last few days to get accurate and fairly up-to-date information about the nuclear plant disaster going on in Japan. The quick blurb description on the blog bills itself as:

Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan hosted by http://web.mit.edu/nse/ :: Maintained by the students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.

Who's Knifing What?

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Horace Dediu wrote an a nice piece over at asymco entitled "Who's Knifing What?":

Apple has maintained its attention steadfastly on products while Microsoft has maintained unwavering focus on the distribution and control over value chains. During the 1990s one strategy worked and the other didn’t. During the following decade they changed places. The locus of the two strategies did not change. What seems to have changed is what the market values. What incenses me the most by Android/Google fans/apologists who hate Apple is that I feel Apple was the victim to Microsoft's bullying during the '90s. Apple managed to come back and win during the 00's by executing with superior products that succeeded because they were the best. They didn't use their monopoly to strong arm the industry into their business model, but instead they won by making a better product than everyone else. I believe Macs/iPhones/iPads are better products than any Android device that has came to market so far. I feel so many of these people have no appreciation for this history that Apple has had to go through to get where they are today.