Oscar Predictions, Election-Style

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Having been invited to an Oscar viewing party tonight with a bunch of like-minded Twitter users, I was a little perplexed because I haven't seen any of the major films nominated this year. In my old age of thirty, I rarely go to the movies anymore, choosing to watch them on my home theater when they appear on iTunes for HD purchase. Thankfully, Nate Silver came through for me. Nate Silver, at FiveThirtyEight writes:

Twice before, in 2009 and 2011, I sought to predict the Academy Award winners in six major categories based on a mix of statistical factors. My track record? Nine correct picks in 12 tries, for a 75 percent success rate. Not bad, but also not good enough to suggest that there is any magic formula for this. So this year, I have sought to simplify the method, making the link to the FiveThirtyEight election forecasts more explicit. This approach won’t be foolproof either, but it should make the philosophy behind the method more apparent. The Oscars, in which the voting franchise is limited to the 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, are not exactly a democratic process. But they provide for plenty of parallels to political campaigns. In Nate Silver we trust. I will be blatantly stealing his predictions when filling out my Oscar Bingo Card tonight. You bet against Nate Silver at your peril.

The Magazine Launches Full-Article Sharing & Web Subscriptions

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Marco Arment, at Marco.org writes:

I hastily built a basic site while I was waiting for the app to be approved. I only needed it to do two things: send people to the App Store, and show something at the sharing URLs for each article. Since The Magazine had no ads, and people could only subscribe in the app, I figured there was no reason to show full article text on the site — it could only lose money and dilute the value of subscribing. That was the biggest mistake I’ve made with The Magazine to date. The short of it is that if you subscribe to The Magazine on your iPad, you can now read articles via the website too. Non-subscribers can read one article per month, for free, as many times as they wish as well as share it. Any further articles read require a subscription to view. You can also save your free articles to Instapaper for reading later. Check it out.

CBS Bans SodaStream's Superbowl Commercial To Appease Coke & Pepsi

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Thanks to John Gruber at Daring Fireball for spreading the word on this. More good news to help bolster CBS's new reputation for being a crummy company this week… Will Burns, at Forbes writes:

CBS banned SodaStream’s Super Bowl spot because, apparently, it was too much of a direct hit to two of its biggest sponsors, Coke and Pepsi. Please pause and read that sentence again. Here's the ad, which is quite humorous:

In Which I Review The New Podcast "Neutral"

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The term "Car Guy" does not fit me. Until two months ago, I couldn't care less about cars. I am not a fan of driving, and love being able to take Metro to work (the DC subway system for you non-locals). That was until Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin started talking about cars on Marco's now concluded podcast, Build and Analyze. The episodes, in particular, are: 1. Build and Analyze #66: Car Haters and Idea Guys 2. Build and Analyze #71: The Lottery Mindset 3. After Dark #155: After Build and Analyze #77 After Marco started talking about cars, and BMW vehicles in particular, John Siracusa followed up Marco's shows on his also now-ended show Hypercritical: 1. Hypercritical #61: I Ran Out of Bombs Long Ago 2. Hypercritical #63: Talking to the Bear A lot of what both Marco and John talked about really clicked with me. Despite not being a 'Car Guy' I was very interested in what they had to say and it clicked with the geek in me. When my wife and I decided late last November that we were going to buy a new car, we started looking at BMW. For one reason we live less than a two minute drive from the local BMW dealership. For another, Marco & John's episodes heavily influenced me to look to BMW first - and then to Honda, Lexus, and Audi - only to come back to BMW in the end). A lot of what Marco said about Camrys and Accords being 'boring' cars not being fun to drive (I owned a Honda Accord) clicked with me, and when I began test driving these nicer BMWs and Audis I found that having a car I was excited to drive really made the difference for me. Two months later, my wife and I own a new 2013 BMW X3 (as of about 10 days ago). I tell you all of this because I was very excited to be surprised a few days ago when John, Marco and Casey Liss announced their new (possibly) short-run podcast, Neutral. Marco hinted as something like this last year at the close of Build and Analyze, saying he might want to start some sort of new podcast in 2013 where he could talk about his other passions, such as coffee or cars. At the time it hadn't even crossed my mind that John might be a host on the show as well. The first episode of Neutral was delightful - Marco and John are always entertaining to listen to. I didn't know of Casey prior to this show, but am pleased to say that the trio of hosts have a great dynamic, each with their own sets of differing and agreeing opinions. A range of topics from car aesthetics to dealership service are covered, including a few topics I had no interest in but nevertheless enjoyed hearing about. Having grown up with parents who only buy white or black cars, I found myself in agreement with Marco on his outspoken opinions on car color (our new X3 is 'Deep Sea Blue') and found his argument regarding his old Nissan Maxima familiar (my first car was a Mazda 929 that my mother gave me at the age of 16). Overall, a solid first episode by three great hosts that was a pleasure to listen to. I am pleased that I have new episodes to look forward to each week with John & Marco on my iPhone and to be able to listen a new host as well. None of these guys profess to be car experts, just geeks who happen to like cars talking about cars. If this sounds like something that interests you, I recommend you give Neutral a shot. If you think you aren't a 'car guy' or 'car gal', give them a shot anyway. They'll surprise you.

Versailles Bubble

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David Atkins writes regarding this hilariously sad post from the Wall Street Journal:

These folks live in a Versailles bubble, modern day edition. But even they're not the ones with the real money. The real plutocrats outstrip even these jokers by exponential leaps and bounds. And they're the ones who drive public policy in this country. Charlie Pierce, TBogg and Xenos all each have good takes.

Sending Rich Text Email with Mail.app

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Like me, do you work in a corporate office environment or with clients who are Windows/Outlook users? Do you set your signature to a custom font/font size other than default plaintext? Ever notice that when receiving a reply from someone that your original email is default plaintext while your signature is formatted oddly? This is due to Mail.app's simplistic way of formatting (some would say sloppy) your email as it sends out, which Outlook interprets and renders badly for the recipient. Well, here's how you can fix that as well as a more detailed explanation of exactly what is going technically to cause this. Thanks of a friend of mine, Nancy Seeger for sharing this with me.