Climbers Jonathan Thesenga and Brittany Griffith are the first Americans to climb at Stolby, a central Siberian nature reserve, where the locals free solo en masse.

Comment:

Good afternoon! I live in Krasnoyarsk and itself each days off I go there. I confirm, many (a lot of, much) person there goes, but is far from being all climbing. Basically people rise on the simple courses, not representing to serious danger. They do not demand rocky footwear and cords. Complex (difficult) courses many go with equipment – cords, обвязки, delays, carbines. The basic danger on Columns not absence of a cord, but insects, the spiders called “клещами”, carrying fatal chronic diseases.

“We’re in the early phases of moving from being an information engine to a knowledge engine” – Google

That’s a quote from the video below where Google explains a new panel they are adding to search. Called the ‘knowledge graph’ it is basically a mini-encyclopedia. See the panels in the images below.

This is a big competitive move for Google. Not only are they taking on Facebook with Google+, Microsoft with Google Docs, and Apple with Android, now they have Wikipedia in their sights.

Of course, Wikipedia will still serve a huge purpose for in-depth information, but you can expect Wikipedia to experience a precipitous drop in page views once people are getting their basic information from these panels.

It also puts Google in an interesting position. While this is a natural improvement in search it also creates a conflict of interest for them. One of the many they are currently facing, some of which are in the courts facing anti-trust issues.

Will Google devalue Wikipedia in favor of their ‘knowledge graph’?

Or, lower its ranking if people begin using it less?

Hard to predict, but notice that in the images above Google clearly (intentionally?) shows Wikipedia as the top result. That may not keep.

Learn more:

• Blog post – Introducing the Knowledge Graph
• Site – The Knowledge Graph

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Rakuten (the Amazon of Japan) has led a $100m funding round into Pinterest, which values the online “curation” community at around $1.5 billion.

The Japanese ecommerce giant won out over major US venture capital firms who were vying for a piece of Silicon Valley’s new sweetheart, which lets users clip images to a virtual pinboard.

The FT spoke to Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of Rakuten, about how social discovery can boost ecommerce and the growing importance of images over text on the web.

“I met Pinterest’s management a few months ago and we got along very, very well….They said they were planning to raise capital. I offered to take all of it.”

“They had a prior arrangement with their angel investors so I told them I would like to get as much as possible. We talked about how we can help each other and we can help their presence in Japan which is one of the major markets in the internet industry. And they liked the fact they we would be able to help their business in Japan.”

via – Financial Times

// Photo – Alan Cleaver

If you’ve ever wondered what type of tree was nearby but didn’t have a guide book, a new smartphone app allows users with no formal training to satisfy their curiosity and contribute to science at the same time.

Scientists have developed the first mobile app to identify plants by simply photographing a leaf. The free iPhone and iPad app, called Leafsnap, instantly searches a growing library of leaf images amassed by the Smithsonian Institution. In seconds, it returns a likely species name, high-resolution photographs and information on the tree’s flowers, fruit, seeds and bark.

Users make the final identification and share their findings with the app’s growing database to help map the population of trees one mobile phone at a time.

via U-T San Diego

// Photo – flatworldsedge

The United States recently went through the hottest 12 months ever, since record-keeping began in 1895.

National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration said that for the period from May 2011 to April 2012, the nationally averaged temperature was 55.7 degrees, 2.8 degrees higher than the 20th century average. The national average temperature for April was 55 degrees, 3.6 degrees above average.

To be sure, the higher temperatures haven’t hit every region equally. The Pacific Northwest actually saw cooler-than-average temperatures over the past year, according to NOAA data. Much of California was also cooler than normal; Southern California had an average year.

But record averages for the year scorched central Texas — which saw a horrific drought last year — the upper Midwest, and much of the Northeast.

The last time the globe had a month that averaged below its 20th century normal was February 1985. April makes it 326 months in a row. Nearly half the population of the world has never seen a month that was cooler than normal, according to United Nations data.

via L.A. Times

Ellen Degeneres sells her Beverly Hills compound to Ryan Seacrest and buys a 1958 Hal Levitt-designed Beverly Hills home on less than an acre.

Meg Ryan lists her classic Spanish-style house, built in 1931, described as having undergone a ‘museum-quality restoration.

Ben Stiller sold a house in the Hollywood Hills for $2.6 million.

The Spanish-style home was part of a two-house-plus-guesthouse compound they listed more than two years ago at $12.5 million. The larger home sold last year for $7.32 million.
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YouTube is getting smaller in a metric that used to mean everything: views.

Since December, views on YouTube have dropped 28%, and March views are only slightly above what they were a year ago, startling for a site accustomed to breakneck growth.

It’s an intended consequence of the Google-owned site’s shift from…snack-size content to a full-fledged, couch-potato-optimized entertainment destination. At YouTube, the “view” is out and “engagement” is in.

YouTube’s focus has shifted from directing viewers to videos of skateboarding dogs to enticing them into longer, more engaging videos—the kind that are, not incidentally, more appealing to advertisers.

On March 15, YouTube altered its recommendation system to make the time spent with a video or channel a stronger indicator than a click.

“Our goal is we want users to watch more and click less”

It appears to be working. While views have dropped of late, the amount of minutes users spend watching YouTube has grown over the past year by 57%. The average length of a video view has grown a full minute to four minutes in the past year.

via AdAge

 
// Photo – Mark Sebastian

“danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punk’s energy and attitude”

Welcome to the first episode of “Anatomy of a Swell“, Surfline’s new series that dissects the science of swell events and brings the very best footage and photos to your computer, smart phone, or tablet. Our team of forecasters and scientists will break down all you could possibly want to know about a swell, including the three main meteorological ingredients that lead to significant swell events:

The storm’s size, movement, and wind.

Told in a slide show of 29 photos. Here is #3:

Take the lesson – Anatomy of a Swell

Using results from the High Accuracy Radical Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) at the European Southern Observatory, the scientists say there are likely tens of billions of planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone that may be able to sustain life.

They estimate that one hundred of those planets are in the sun’s immediate neighborhood — which in space-speak is 30 light years away.

**The fastest known technology allows us to travel 1 light year in ~100 years

The generally accepted (though perhaps shortsighted) definition of a planet that can sustain life is one that has a mass between one and 10 times that of Earth, as well as a rocky surface, and the ability to sustain liquid water — meaning the planet’s surface temperature is neither too hot that water would evaporate nor too cold that it would freeze.

Although there are no planets that meet those criteria in our own solar system, the report suggests that they are common around other stars.

via LA Times

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// Thx – Michael Francois

We’re releasing a new “liquid” layout.

Flickr’s “liquid” design adjusts the photo page and image size based on the size of your browser window. With that your photos will look great on a laptop screen, and look even more stunning on larger screens.  With the new design:

• The biggest photo size is shown depending on your browser window
• There is absolutely no “upscaling”, and we try to avoid downsampling as much as possible.
• The title and the sidebar are visible without scrolling on landscape oriented photos. (which are the vast majority of photos on Flickr.)

via Flickr Blog

***

And, from Webmonkey:

Web developers, take note: Flickr’s new layout isn’t just eye-catching, it’s also somewhat responsively designed — adjusting to the myriad screens on the web today and displaying the best photo possible without clogging your tubes with huge photo downloads. Flickr does stop short of scaling pages down to phone-size screens — for which there is a separate mobile website — but it resizes nicely to handle tablets.

That’s right, Flickr is the latest (and perhaps the largest) website to embrace not just a mostly responsive design with a liquid layout and media queries, but also a responsive approach to images.

Are we seeing a new development in design, the – “take into account the iPad” ?

// Thx – Jon Jensen

If you use foursquare to check-in to your favorite locations and share those notifications on Facebook, then you’re in for a treat.

Foursquare has announced that your foursquare check-ins will now populate your Timeline map. Before, only actual Facebook check-ins as well as location tagged images would populate that map. This is a pretty nifty update.

When you visit someone’s map on their Timeline, you can see pins of all of the places that they’ve been without you having to dig through their actual profile to find location-style updates. Adding foursquare check-ins will certainly make this a more enjoyable experience.

via The Next Web

If you’re wondering about all your past check-ins, I only show about two months worth of history on my Facebook map. This could mean that only the check-ins since Foursquare integrated with Facebook Timeline are included.

Verizon already has 100Gbps (gigabit-per-second) connections over its optical core networks across continents. Now the carrier is bringing that speed to its metro networks, which enterprises tap into for high-speed data connections. The metro networks so far have been limited to 10Gbps or 40Gbps.

Though the carrier doesn’t expect many customers to start ordering 100Gbps connections soon, it is preparing for the future.

Verizon’s 100-gigabit U.S. backbone technology forms the basis of a high-speed, low-latency network for financial trades that was inaugurated between Chicago and New York last month. It can complete a stock trade in as little as 14.5 milliseconds, according to the carrier.

***

Verizon said it has begun to use the same general architecture for high-speed land-based networks that it already uses for its connections across oceans. That architecture, based on a mesh of cables, gives traffic across its core network more alternate routes to take if one cable breaks. This is a step up from a ring architecture, in which the network recovers by sending bits the other way around the ring if one spot on it is damaged.

Verizon already has mesh networks across the Pacific and across the Atlantic, each with eight alternate paths.

via Network World

// Photo – sz.u.

Handplane Art.

Program Cover for the Festival.

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All across America you can find beautiful front lawns with green grass and sprinklers. Even in places where water is scarce, like Southern California and Arizona. Those areas import water at a great expense and in some cases dry up the source.

In response, many living in these areas have developed new ideas about front lawns. There are many plants that require a fraction of the water that grass does, and can still be as green. Or, in some cases provide a variety of colors, shapes, and designs.

Most of these plants are called drought resistant, meaning they don’t want to be watered. I have a few of them growing in pots and they wilt when I water them. So far, the occasional rain that comes has satisfied their needs.

Here are a few photos of these new types of lawns:

Stepping stones edged with succulents.

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The Department of Transportation has approved four more long-distance flights from Reagan National Airport.

- Alaska Airlines will fly to Portland, JetBlue Airways will fly to San Juan, Southwest will fly to Austin and Virgin America will fly to San Francisco.

- Four dominant carriers were granted permission earlier to extend long-distance flights. United now flies from National to San Francisco. Delta was given approval for service to Salt Lake City, American to Los Angeles and U.S. Airways to San Diego.

via Washington Business Journal

// Photo – Nicola since 1972

The Peanuts skateboard gang (at 1:10) and Snoopy surfing.

An autographed photo of Edward, Prince of Wales, surfing in Hawaii in 1920 has been unveiled by the Museum of British Surfing.

Prince Edward – later to become King Edward VIII before abdicating to marry American Wallis Simpson.

This is considered the first photo so far of a Briton standing on a wave.

via Surfer Today

***

On his first official trip to Waikiki in April he was taken out in an outrigger canoe, then later in the day was coaxed into standing up on a surfboard to ride the waves for the first time by the great Olympian and father of modern surfing Duke Kahanamoku.

However, the future King Edward VIII was so stoked on surfing that he ordered the royal ship HMS Renown to return for 3 days in September just to surf! On this secret surf trip he hooked up with Duke’s brother David Kahanamoku, and along with his great friend Lord Louis Mountbatten, they went surfing every day. The photos were signed by the Edward and Louis as a thank you to their hosts.

Mountbatten was taught to surf by Prince Kalakaua Kawananakoa, the only son of Prince David Kawananakoa who had surfed in Bridlington on England’s east coast in 1890. One of the photos in the gallery below shows the foursome taking a break from surfing and resting on their surfboard.

HMS Renown was even late leaving… because the prince was still out in the surf! As you can see he got quite good in a short time – and remember the surfboard he was riding was a finless, solid wooden plank of native Hawaiian koa weighing around 100 pounds.

via Museum of British Surfing

From left - David Kahanamoku, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Edward, & Duke Kahanamoku.