1. My friend and former roommate Seth Goldin is working on a film called Honor Stories. It’s a really cool project, and worth your consideration going into the holiday weekend. The trailer is embedded, and the site is: http://honorflightstories.com.

  2. Rocky Ground sounded incredible when I saw The Boss live a few weeks back. It’s one of the songs on Wrecking Ball that has really grown on me. This morning the music video was released, and its great. The handwriting totally works. The different penmanship styles are strangely interesting to watch in action.

    (Source: youtube.com)

  3. A 4-inch diameter pencil cup from Office Depot just arrived in a 14x11 box. I guess I should have ordered from their “Greener Office” section.

    A 4-inch diameter pencil cup from Office Depot just arrived in a 14x11 box.

    I guess I should have ordered from their “Greener Office” section.

  4. I saved the recipe for Ian Knauer’s Sticky Balsamic Ribs from Gourmet Magazine to Evernote in May 2010. Two long years later I finally decided to take on the recipe. Below is the recipe and above are some photos of the process. It takes some time and patience to make these ribs, but the payoff is well worth it. The flavor is pure and the meat falls off the bone.

    Serves 8 / Active time: 30 minutes / Start to finish: 24 hours

    FOR RIBS

    • 8 large garlic cloves
    • 2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary
    • 2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
    • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
    • 1 teaspoon cayenne
    • 8 lb baby back pork ribs (8 racks)
    • 1 cup water

    FOR GLAZE

    • 2 cups hot water
    • 1 cup balsamic vinegar
    • 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar

    EQUIPMENT

    • 2 large roasting pans

    MARINATE AND ROAST RIBS:

    1. Mince and mash garlic to a paste with 1 tsp salt. Stir together with rosemary, brown sugar, vinegar, cayenne, 1 Tbsp salt, and 1 tsp pepper. Rub evenly all over ribs and transfer to roasting pans. Marinate, chilled, 8 to 24 hours.
    2. Preheat oven to 425°F with racks in upper and lower thirds.
    3. Pour 1/2 cup water into each roasting pan and tightly cover pans with foil. Roast ribs, switching position of pans halfway through, until meat is very tender, about 1 3/4 hours. Remove pans from oven and transfer ribs to a platter.

    MAKE GLAZE AND GRILL RIBS:

    1. Add 1 cup hot water to each roasting pan and scrape up brown bits. Skim off and discard fat, then transfer liquid to a 10-inch skillet. Add vinegar and brown sugar and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Boil until reduced to about 1 cup, about 15 minutes.
    2. Prepare grill for direct-heat cooking over medium-hot charcoal (medium heat for gas).
    3. Brush some of glaze onto both sides of racks of ribs. Grill, turning occasionally, until ribs are hot and grill marks appear, about 6 minutes.
    4. Brush ribs with more glaze and serve remaining glaze on the side.

  5. fastcompany:

    Pinterest users not only buy the products they pin, but spend more on average than their Facebook counterparts, according to new data from Shopify.

    Proof That Pinterest Drives Sales, And Its Fans Spend Big

    This seems sustainable. Unpopular opinion alert: I applaud Pinterest for adding affiliate marketing codes to their links. It’s encouraging to see a startup that has actually thought about revenue generation.

  6. thenextweb: During Facebook’s IPO event, which the world is watching, a company closely tied to it called Zynga wasn’t celebrating. Its stock dropped over 13% and trading has been halted. (via Zynga’s Stock Drops, Halts Trading) Live by the Facebook, die by the Facebook.

    thenextweb:

    During Facebook’s IPO event, which the world is watching, a company closely tied to it called Zynga wasn’t celebrating. Its stock dropped over 13% and trading has been halted. (via Zynga’s Stock Drops, Halts Trading)

    Live by the Facebook, die by the Facebook.

  7. In two months I’m going to be driving down the road and I’ll receive a text. I’ll reach for my phone, but stop myself because I’ll remember that when I un-boxed the phone it had a protective cover that said “TXTING & DRIVNG — IT CAN WAIT.” Oh yeah, no I won’t. This is silly packaging. But I guess if it helps AT&T and HTC sleep at night…

    In two months I’m going to be driving down the road and I’ll receive a text. I’ll reach for my phone, but stop myself because I’ll remember that when I un-boxed the phone it had a protective cover that said “TXTING & DRIVNG — IT CAN WAIT.”

    Oh yeah, no I won’t. This is silly packaging. But I guess if it helps AT&T and HTC sleep at night…

  8. For $75, This Guy Will Sell You 1,000 Facebook 'Likes' →

    NPR’s Planet Money dives in. Apparently Fiverr vendors are leaving money on the table

  9. Yesterday Google announced that they just released new 2012 mobile research data, available via the Our Mobile Planet data visualization project. The data is incredibly interesting, but also very incomplete. Many segments are missing data points, and all the outputs are in terms of “% of total population.” I was really interested in narrowing down on more specific data about smartphone penetration from this database, so I cross-referenced these percentages with the 2010 populations (via The World Bank) of each of the countries in the study (note: since population data is all from 2010, it obviously doesn’t account for population change). The countries (40 total) in the study account for a little more than 67% of the world’s population, but only 15 of those countries have data points for both 2011 and 2012. I can only assume the 0% data points mean that the data is unavailable — particularly in the case of smartphone population decreasing year-over-year. The 15 countries with 2011 and 2012 data points available make up over 12% of the world’s population. These countries saw an increase in smartphone penetration from 211M to 317M (50.4%) from 2011 to 2012, with the highest increase coming at 233.3% (Japan) and the lowest at 16.7% (Italy). Remarkable. Now onto some guesswork to try to get a broader picture of the global mobile market… If we were to assume that all countries with 2011 data points and no 2012 points saw a population increase that was on the extreme low end (Italy at 16.7%), the countries in this study have a combined smartphone population of 1.37 (29% of their combined population).  Let’s also assume that the rest of the world’s population (32.7%) had a smartphone penetration in line with the lowest figure charted (Japan in 2011, 6% of total population). I’m assuming such a low number because most developed countries are covered in the study — the remainder is largely undeveloped. This assumption would make “rest of the world” the fourth largest smartphone market, and would bring the total smartphone penetration in the world to 22%, or 1.5B smartphones. That is 4.8 times greater than the entire US population. There is tons and room to grow and opportunity to be had. If you’d like to grab my data, I made it a public Google doc. Have at it.

    Yesterday Google announced that they just released new 2012 mobile research data, available via the Our Mobile Planet data visualization project.

    The data is incredibly interesting, but also very incomplete. Many segments are missing data points, and all the outputs are in terms of “% of total population.”

    I was really interested in narrowing down on more specific data about smartphone penetration from this database, so I cross-referenced these percentages with the 2010 populations (via The World Bank) of each of the countries in the study (note: since population data is all from 2010, it obviously doesn’t account for population change).

    The countries (40 total) in the study account for a little more than 67% of the world’s population, but only 15 of those countries have data points for both 2011 and 2012. I can only assume the 0% data points mean that the data is unavailable — particularly in the case of smartphone population decreasing year-over-year.

    The 15 countries with 2011 and 2012 data points available make up over 12% of the world’s population. These countries saw an increase in smartphone penetration from 211M to 317M (50.4%) from 2011 to 2012, with the highest increase coming at 233.3% (Japan) and the lowest at 16.7% (Italy). Remarkable.

    Now onto some guesswork to try to get a broader picture of the global mobile market…

    If we were to assume that all countries with 2011 data points and no 2012 points saw a population increase that was on the extreme low end (Italy at 16.7%), the countries in this study have a combined smartphone population of 1.37 (29% of their combined population). 

    Let’s also assume that the rest of the world’s population (32.7%) had a smartphone penetration in line with the lowest figure charted (Japan in 2011, 6% of total population). I’m assuming such a low number because most developed countries are covered in the study — the remainder is largely undeveloped. This assumption would make “rest of the world” the fourth largest smartphone market, and would bring the total smartphone penetration in the world to 22%, or 1.5B smartphones.

    That is 4.8 times greater than the entire US population.

    There is tons and room to grow and opportunity to be had.

    If you’d like to grab my data, I made it a public Google doc. Have at it.

  10. Salary Guide for Creative and Technology Professionals [pdf] →

    Just found this PDF on Hacker News — helpful figures and beautiful design.

    Clicking the link will trigger the PDF download.