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17 January, 2003

Creating Bad Charts With Keynote

Matthew Thomas points out an incredibly bad chart used at Apple's Keynote web site. Here's the chart, cropped a bit. Ignore the horizontal and vertical lines, they're irrelevant.

This pie chart depicts a company's market share for a six-year period. The only problem is that a pie chart is completely inappropriate for this type of comparison. A column chart would be a better choice.

OK, it's no big deal. It's just a picture designed to show off the software. It doesn't need to make sense.

But, unfortunately, I suspect that a meaningless chart such as this would not even raise an eyebrow if it were presented at a board meeting. Why? Because a sizable number of people -- even highly education people -- don't understand numbers. And an even more sizable number of people don't understand charts, even though charts are supposed to make numbers easier to understand.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Simpsons Renewed by Fox

Woo-hoo!

The best show on TV will be around for at least two more seasons.

"The Simpsons" renewal through May 2005 means the show -- Sunday night's top-rated series among adults 18-49 -- will make it through a jaw-dropping 16th full season and roughly 360 episodes, allowing Homer and Co. to edge past "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" to claim the mantle of longest-running laffer in TV history. "Watch out, 'Gunsmoke,' you're next,"; quipped Al Jean, showrunner and executive producer of "The Simpsons." ("Gunsmoke" ran for a record 20 years.)

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Internet Connection Speedometer

Measure your Net connection speed at the McAfee site. After getting the results, you can refresh the page for get another measurement.

I'm not sure what use this is, because the results vary wildly. In my case, the speed ranged from 255 Kbps to 925 Kbps.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Microsoft Woos the Film Industry

According to this CNET article:

Microsoft plans to screen four independent movies at the Sundance Film Festival with its Windows Media 9 Series software, as part of the company's ongoing efforts to warm Hollywood to its technology.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

New From McDonald's

Is $0.99 too much to spend on fast food? How about McDonald's new Dime Menu?

We tried the Dollar Menu thing, but it didn't work well. It seems Wendy's has corned the market on people who want to spend a dollar on a fast food item," said McDonaldland national spokesman Chuck Lartasse. "But what about those who have less than a dollar to spend on food? Huh? That's where we come in. If you have one thin dime, one tenth of a buck, well partner, we got some truly tasty food for you!"

Sample menu items: The "Shake Shot," Three French Fries, Hot Fudge Sundae Cherry, and the ever-popular Fancy Ketchup Combo

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Dream Comes True for the Microsoft Kid

Ajay Puri (AKA "The Microsoft Kid") is a six-year old whiz kid in India. He started using computers before the age of 2. He created his web site using FrontPage. I must say... his site looks much better than many I've seen that were created by adults.

Two months ago, his dream became a reality. He met Bill Gates, who gave him an autographed copy of his book. It's unfortunate that the photo turned out so bad.

Ajay is an impressive guy, and I wish him the best.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

The Relative Value of Money

The Economic History Services web site has an online form that computes the relative value of money for a particular time period. For example, $100 in 1945 is equivalent to $985 in 2001. You can choose among several different estimation types, and answer questions such as What's the current equivalent to Babe Ruth's salary? Answer:

Babe Ruth's salary in 1932 was $80,000. In 2001 the CPI was 13 times larger than it was in 1932 and the GDP deflator 11.4 times larger. This means that if we are interested in Ruth's purchasing power of housing or meals, then he was "earning" the equivalence of about $1,000,000 today. The relative cost of (unskilled) labor is 39 times higher in 2001 than in 1932. So if we wanted to compare his wage to what someone selling hot dogs would earn, we could say his "relative wage" is over $3,000,000.

GDP per capita and GDP are 78 and 173 times larger in 2001 than they were in 1932. Thus Ruth's earnings relative to the average output would be $6,230,000 today. Finally, as a share of GDP, Ruth "output" that year would be $13,800,000 in today's money.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Send a Retro-Gram

For $0.99, you can send an email that looks like an old-fashioned telegram (i.e., a Retro-Gram). Here's a sample:

Posted on 17 January, 2003

The Best Place to Live

Answer a bunch of questions, and Money Magazine will give you a list of cities that are suitable.

In my case, it failed miserably. All of the suggested cities in my list were in New York or New Jersey -- two states that I would never live in.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Media Choices by Microsoft Employees

Amazon.com has a feature known as Purchase Circles. These are specialized bestseller lists that are compiled using a subset of customers. For example, you can view the bestsellers for a particular city, and even for a particular company.

Currently, the top-5 books purchased by Microsoft employees (all non-fiction titles) are:

  1. Yookoso! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese, by Yasuhiko Tohsaku, Yasu-Hiko Tohsaku
  2. Trust on Trial: How the Microsoft Case is Reframing the Rules of Competition, by Richard B. McKenzie
  3. Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: What I Learned in Ten Years As a Microsoft Programmer, by Adam Barr
  4. The Person and The Situation, by Lee Ross, Richard E. Nisbett
  5. Communicating and Mobile Systems: the Pi-Calculus, by Robin Milner

The top-selling DVD at Microsoft is Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan, followed by The Tigger Movie. The top-selling CD at Microsoft is Lemonjelly.ky, by Lemon Jelly.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Counting My Book Sales

Last night I created a spreadsheet to add up the total sales of my books. The result? 1,245,201 copies have been sold.

That sounds like a huge number, but it took 11 years to get there. It all started with the 1991 release of my PC World 1-2-3 For Windows Complete Handbook. That Lotus program was probably one of the worst spreadsheets in the history of mankind. And it was reflected in the book sales. According to my publisher's records, that book sold 158 copies!

My biggest seller? It wasn't an Excel book. My top-selling book was 1-2-3 for Windows 5 For Dummies, 2nd Edition.

Posted on 17 January, 2003

Making a Statement Via Calvin

I've seen hundreds of decals that feature the Calvin cartoon character peeing on something. You can buy customized decals in a variety of sizes and colors.

I've spent a fair amount of time sitting at traffic lights wondering why anyone would put such a decal on their vehicle. Somebody named Kilwag offers some explanation, and has even compiled a gallery of these images. Not too surprisingly, the creator of Calvin has nothing to do with it.

Bill Watterson quit producing the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" at the height of it's popularity. He was somewhat of a recluse when it came publicity and mass marketing. As a result, every Calvin and Hobbes t-shirt that you've ever seen has been a bootleg. The characters of Calvin and Hobbes have been co-opted by by popular culture to a degree that surpasses any other phenomenon, with the possible exception of the smiley face.

Posted on 17 January, 2003