Netflix awarded a $1 million prize to a developer team in 2009 for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of the company’s recommendation engine by 10 percent. But today it doesn’t use the million-dollar code, and has no plans to implement it in the future, Netflix announced on its blog Friday.

The post goes on to explain why: a combination of too much engineering effort for the results, and a shift from movie recommendations to the “next level” of personalization caused by the transition of the business from mailed DVDs to video streaming.

Netflix notes that it does still use two algorithms from the team that won the first Progress Prize for an 8.43 percent improvement.

via ars technica

It turns out that all the prize-winning work was perfect for DVD-by-mail where users add something to their queue and, best-case scenario, receive it the following day. But, now that instant streaming is taking over the parameters have changed. Viewers want something to watch immediately and like the option of flipping between several options.

That is why the Netflix updated all of its interfaces to show rows of movies giving you many, many options. It’s a subtle shift from finding the one movie you will love two days from now, to showing all the possible movies you might want to watch right now.

I guess that is the simplest way to put it, but if you want to know more the Netflix personalization science and engineering team, Xavier Amatriain and Justin Basilico, posted a lengthy and detailed, but interesting write-up, Beyond the 5 stars.

Six families of makers from the Bay Area are working on building a fully-operational motion controlled flight simulator based on the fighter ship from Battlestar Galactica.

Using the fuselage of a small plane, the team has already built a motion platform that rotates a full dizzying 360 degrees in both the pitch and roll axes. They’re still a ways away from finishing the project, including furnishing the interior of the cockpit to look like the ship from the show, and programming the open source flight simulator software to work with their rig.

The goal is to finish The Viper by this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire on May 19th.

The project is even more impressive when you consider that the team that’s building it mostly consists of middle and high school students, with some help from their parents and mentors.

via Tested

 

You can learn more about all this by visiting the project home, The Viper, or through the Kickstarter fundraising project. Oh, and check out my favorite part of the whole thing, the test model built using legos…I would love to see NASA doing that

Yesterday, I wrote about the need for women writers and artists in comic books, highlighting a very successful Kickstarter project, Womanthology. The project was so successful that they have an offshoot. A documentary about female super heroes that premiered at South by Southwest 2012:

Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines traces the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s, to the blockbusters of today, WONDER WOMEN! looks at how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.

The film introduces audiences to a cast of fictional and real life superheroines fighting for positive role models for girls, both on screen and off, and reminds us of our common human need for stories that tell us we can all be heroes.

If you’re like me, then you’re super excited about the new Avengers movie. After last weeks premiere (photos, videos) the anticipation is building.

To whet your appetite I found a full article about being on-set for the movie and green screen photos of the live action.

To the casual observer, Joss Whedon might seem like an odd pick to bring such a hugely anticipated project to the big screen. Known mostly for his TV work like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, some might have expected a more seasoned helmer…

“There was a moment a couple weeks after I had taken the job when I suddenly went, ‘Agh,’ and my wife just turned to me and said, ‘Honey, it’s just the next story,’” laughs the filmmaker. “I went, ‘O.K., thanks. I’m back.’ That was it, because ultimately it is. The financial burden is not on me. As I have said many times, ‘The first weekend is [the audience's] job. The second weekend is mine.’ If the story is compelling, if I got it right, if people want to come back to it, yay!”

There is a storm sweeping down the coast of California. Here in Southern California the rain is pouring down. Yesterday it hit San Francisco with some lightning…

They say that lightning never strikes twice, but this amazing photo proves otherwise.

An incredible eight bolts struck the Bay Bridge in San Francisco last night which was captured in this incredible shot by photographer Phil McGrew, who took the photo through the rain-soaked window of his apartment.

“You can count the strikes, the Bay Bridge has four distinct towers and you can see the lightning hitting each tower.”

via Mail Online

// Thx to Brett Lider

I read a lot of comics and it is always upsetting that there are no women creating them. There are female characters everywhere in the stories, many super heroines, and yet, nearly all the top female characters have all-male teams working on them.

It is pretty sad, and unfair.

The good news is that a few projects rumbling around are experiencing awesome success. The following Kickstarter project, one of the most successful on the site, covers this exact topic:

Womanthology; Massive All Female Comic Anthology!

Womanthology is a large scale anthology comic showcasing the works of women in comics. It is created entirely by over 140 women of all experience levels, including top industry professionals.

The purpose of the book is to show support for female creators in comics and media. There will be multiple short stories, “how to” & interviews with professionals, and features showcasing iconic female comic creators that have passed, such as Nell Brinkley and Tarpe Mills. A Kids & Teens section will also be included, showcasing their work, and offering tips & tricks to help them prepare themselves for their future careers in comics.

Overall, this is pretty much a huge book showcasing what women in comics have accomplished, and what we are capable of We are also hoping that by doing this book, it will encourage a new generation of women to pick up the pencil and create!

What if the world’s greatest works of art, when seen one after another, told a story? A story of people, places, nature and motion. artCircles from Art.com brings you “Van Gogh to Rothko in 30 Seconds,” an epic journey of discovery through the world’s most inspiring art collection.

// Thx to Mara Mascaro

“We looked at each other and knew in that moment that we’d be crazy not to move here,” says Ciarán O’Leary, a partner at the German venture capital firm Earlybird. “There was just so much happening—founders everywhere, in every bar, cafe, every corner.”

Berlin…has become a global tech hub, one which foreign money discovered years ago. According to data from Thomson Reuters, 103 Internet startups received global venture capital funding in Germany in 2011, more than in any country besides China and the U.S. Although the numbers are not broken down by city, Berlin is where most German startups congregate.

Encouraged by all the interest—and the money—many Berliners have gotten startup fever. The Berlin Chamber of Commerce reports that 1,300 Internet startups have been founded in the city since 2008, 500 of them last year alone.

 

keep reading at Bloomberg BusinessWeek

A post from Aaron Hartmann, a marine biologist, describes some of diverse of ocean-related jobs out there:

Fisheries observers: Want to improve your sea legs? Fisheries observers live aboard fishing boats and ensure that the animals being harvested are big enough and not in numbers exceeding legal catch limits. Their work is critical for managing ocean harvesting in order to ensure that we don’t drive species to extinction.

Oceanographer: Open-ocean ecosystems, deep-sea communities, hydrothermal vents, oxygen minimum zones, garbage patches, currents, winds, and global seawater circulation—oceanographers do it all (not surprising given their title).

Engineers: Submarines, remote sensing buoy systems, remotely operated underwater vehicles and ocean-scanning satellites—engineers make them all. Thanks to their work, we are constantly going deeper and farther, discovering more about the ocean’s unknowns.

Aquarist: The survival of animals that live in public aquariums worldwide depends on professional aquarists. These people know more about what makes marine critters happy than anyone else, and I know this from experience. Working alongside aquarists at Birch Aquarium, I’ve learned an incredible amount about corals over the past few years.

via Science Minded (w/ 4 more careers)

Robert Rodriguez‘s long-awaited sequel to Sin City, his 2005 adaptation of the Frank Miller comics, is finally moving forward.

Dimension Films announced that Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, has secured financing from AR Films, the company founded by Alexander Rodnyansky, and will be released domestically by Dimension. It will begin casting next week with a plan to shoot this summer at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin.

“The first question I am always asked is, ‘When will you make another Sin City?’ ” said Rodriquez. “I have wanted to reteam with Frank Miller and return to the world he created since the day we wrapped the original but have felt a duty to the fans to wait until we had something truly exceptional that would meet and exceed what have become epic expectations. A Dame to Kill For will certainly be worth the wait.”

As in the original Sin City, Rodriguez will co-direct with Miller, who will share screenplay credit with William Monahan.

via THR

// Photo – WeI-chieh Chiu

Radioactive particles released in the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami were detected in giant kelp along the California coast, according to a recently published study.

Radioactive iodine was found in samples collected from beds of kelp in locations along the coast from Laguna Beach to as far north as Santa Cruz about a month after the explosion, according to the study by two marine biologists at Cal State Long Beach.

The levels, while most likely not harmful to humans, were significantly higher than measurements prior to the explosion and comparable to those found in British Columbia, Canada, and northern Washington state following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, according to the study published in March in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The highest levels were found in Corona del Mar.

via LA Times

If you’re a fan of W hotels then the new W Paris Opéra is going to delight you.

Among the many artists brought in to remodel the 1870s Haussmann era building was French artist Zevs, known for his style of “exploring not what is seen, but what is left to the imagination.”

For the Suite 112 installation, Zevs worked with invisible ink that he created in a laboratory in New York City, mimicking the special red pigment used by police at crime scenes. “This red reminds you of the blood of a crime scene, but it’s also the most visible color, so I like the extreme aspect between the invisibility of the ink and the extreme visibility of the color,” he says.

We caught up with the artist at the opening night party, where a man dressed as a CSI expert shone a UV light slowly over the walls to reveal patterned Louis Vuitton wallpaper with Zevs’ signature dripping logos. “With the idea to place logos into a crime scene, I think simply the idea is to continue to investigate the territory of this fashion victim project I did last year,” he says, referring to a Sao Paolo Fashion Week event in which a naked model was “murdered” by a Louis Vuitton logo and Zevs outlined her body on the street in chalk.

via Cool Hunting

Members of the Google Art project and the Google Street View team recently came to the White House to create a new way for people to tour the White House.

Take a look at the process that went into creating a 360 degree virtual walk through of the White House public tour.

Take a look inside the White House at http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/the-white-house/museumview/

This year’s surge in gasoline prices appears over, falling short of the record highs some had feared heading into peak summer driving season.

Prices have held at a national average of $3.92 a gallon the past week, below 2011′s $3.99 high and July 2008′s record $4.11.

“By the behavior of the market, things are just running out of steam,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior analyst for price tracker gasbuddy.com. “Barring any major event — refinery problems, Iran — I think prices have peaked.”

DeHaan said the national average could dip to $3.70 a gallon by early May.

via USA Today

High in national average each year.

The Full Infograph

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An interesting story from the New York Times shows how current president of Harvey Mudd College, Maria Klawe, turned her school into a computer science powerhouse for women.

She started her work in 2006, amidst a big downturn in female computer science graduates. “As recently as 1985, 37 percent of graduates in the field were women; by 2005 it was down to 22 percent, and sinking.”

Harvey Mudd was even worse with graduates in the single digits. This year that rate is nearly 40% and here’s how it happened:

In 2005, the year before Dr. Klawe arrived, a group of faculty members embarked on a full makeover of the introductory computer science course, a requirement at Mudd.

Known as CS 5, the course focused on hard-core programming, appealing to a particular kind of student — young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. This only reinforced the women’s sense that computer science was for geeky know-it-alls.

To reduce the intimidation factor, the course was divided into two sections — “gold,” for those with no prior experience, and “black” for everyone else. Java, a notoriously opaque programming language, was replaced by a more accessible language called Python. And the focus of the course changed to computational approaches to solving problems across science.

“We realized that we needed to show students computer science is not all about programming,” said Ran Libeskind-Hadas, chairman of the department. “It has intellectual depth and connections to other disciplines.”

Dr. Klawe supported the cause wholeheartedly, and provided money from the college for every female freshman to travel to the annual Grace Hopper conference, named after a pioneering programmer. The conference, where freshmen are surrounded by female role models, has inspired many a first-year “Mudder” to explore computer science more seriously.

via NY Times

Key Points:

• 13% of Blackberry developers have made more than $100,000.
• iPhone app sales were 4x that of Android.
• Android has more free apps than iTunes.

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On this episode of The Downshift, we tour Bentley’s landmark factory in Crewe, where engineers, mechanics and artisans have been designing, building and sculpting Rolls Royce and Bentley motors and vehicles for over 70 years.

It’s the Chocolate Factory for tech nerds.

Search the web for “Apple HQ,” and most of the results you get will be pictures of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters — from the outside. Usually with some fanboy standing next to the “1 Infinite Loop” sign. But what we really want to see is what’s inside the ultra-top-secret place where all our favorite gizmos are dreamed up.

This discussion will be moot a few years down the road when Apple opens its gigantic new wheel-shaped campus. But for now, this is the ultimate Nerdvana.

via Apple Gazette (w/ 20+ more photos)

Reception Desk

Wireless Testing Lab

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Ranunculus, with their layered, crepe-like petals that explode in blooms of red, yellow, orange, white and pink, are cheery in the Fall and equally festive in the Spring. The bright beauties spread their rainbow happiness in small pots on tables, as part of larger plant containers and along the front of home borders. They are also a favorite among Spring brides.

Those available during bulb season in October and November are sold as dormant tubers, and grow into the beautiful, tall plants that make excellent cut flowers. These start their lives right here in Southern California in the famous “Flower Fields’ of Carlsbad. When planting these “bulb” varieties, known as Tecolote ranunculus, in flower beds, it’s best to place them in the middle so other plants can conceal their shaggy bases.

Flower Fields of Carlsbad, CA

In England, the common name for Ranunculus is “Buttercup,” apparently because of various legends linking it to dairy cows and butter. There’s also supposed to be a Native American myth associated with the varieties that grow in the Pacific Northwest: Coyote was tossing his eyeballs in the air for fun, and either Eagle or Buzzard swooped by and took them. So Coyote took Ranunculus to use as his new eyes. Hence, the common name in that region, “Coyote Eyes.”

via, my favorite nursery, Roger’s Gardens

// Photos – Kanonn, Superfem, Sakura Chihaya+, Hello-Julie