FSP 1.1

e billion by google

Today's filing SEC filing shows google filed to sell an e billion (2.71828183 x 10^9) dollars
of stock.

Google profile by Fast Company.

Irony wears a suit

Alanis Morissette, who was hosting the Juno Awards in Edmonton on Sunday,
wore a cartoon-style bodysuit in protest at TV and radio censorship in
the US. Story at BBC.

Yay Canada.
I wonder to what cartoons the BBC refer ?

better pic.

Ten Minutes with Karen Hughes

Karen Hughes talks to the White House practically every day, prepares
speeches and media strategies for the president, flies to Washington every
few weeks and whistle-stops the country giving speeches. Besides all that,
she wrote this book and, once her book-tour-cum-campaign-swing ends,
will join the president in August for his round-the-clock run for re-election.

I'm not sure where the tough choice was -- to me, it looks as if she cashed
in some loyalty tokens and traded up, multiplied her pay, cast herself as a
spokeswoman for working mothers and left others to try to ''counterweight''
Karl, a thankless task. One wonders if we haven't been spun from the get-go.

So, everyone's happy. Except maybe the reader. George W. Bush remains
an enigma who guides world events by letting actions speak. And Hughes,
maybe the person who knows him best, has used our desire to know the
president to plant carefully hewn tales of the goodness and integrity of her
family-friendly boss in the public mind.

Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the
White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

Disgusting Train ?

BBC's survey of disgust asks if you fear a lonely, ready-to-board train or an overcrowded train.

click on image above for screenshot Source: Slide 11

Source: Slide 15

From the BBC's Science and Nature: Body and Mind series.

A9 as tiny url, feeling lucky

The new a9 web search from Amazon/Alexa[*] nicely repackages
google's safe search results.

Try a9.com/transit blog and you will find the top listing for
transit blog right here.

So if you are looking for a top ranked site, a9 is almost tinyurl and
google feeling lucky all at once.

Try it again: a9.com/fsp 1.1.

[*] A9: A + nine oher letters makes AmazonAlexa.

price vs warranty

When buying online, consumers should check both the reseller's return policy and
the manufacturer's warranty. Refurbished products often have shorter warranties
than new products. HPshopping.com, for example, which sells both new and
refurbished Hewlett-Packard merchandise, provides a 90-day warranty on
refurbished desktop PC's, compared with one year for new products. KitchenAid
backs its refurbished small appliances for six months, versus a year for new
ones.

Shorter warranties help keep the price down.

"We believe that our typical refurbished customer is less sensitive to the length of
the warranty and more sensitive to price," offered Elaine Gasser, a marketing
manager at Hewlett-Packard.

Sheldo Fingerman, 56, a computer consultant from Aspen, Colo., says he can
accept a shorter warranty if the savings are substantial. The refurbished
Panasonic digital voice recorder he bought online two years ago is still going
strong, he said, despite the abuse it takes riding around in his pocket. The only
indication that it has been refurbished is a small "2" engraved on its case, he
added.

"I always weigh the warranty that they are giving for the refurbished unit against
the price," he said. "If I can buy something that retails for $100 for $50, and it
has a 90-day warranty instead of a one-year warranty, my feeling is that it's a
pretty good gamble."

A browse through secondary-market Web sites turns up two popular claims: that
refurbished products are often better than new ones because they undergo more
rigorous inspection and testing, and that the defect rate of refurbished products is
far lower than that of items sold as new. Several of the sites contacted could not
provide statistics to back up those claims.

But Mr. Gomer said that the lower rates made sense, "because they test
everything before it is sent out; defects are all weeded out on
manufacturer-refurbished products."

(NYT)

gmail by google

Google knows nothing of its new almost April Fool's joke of an e-mail service.

All mail in one place, easily searchable. That's very desirable.
I expect lot's of Cc: user@gmail.com for a last
resort backup.

Very odd that the launch is on the front page of the New York Times
but not on google.com.

Gmail will be "soft launched," they said, in a manner that Google has followed with other features that it has added to its Web site, with little fanfare and presented initially as a long-running test. --NYT

Click on thumbnail for pop-up enlargement.

Earlier post about

Update 2004 April 02: google finds Gmail, even affording a sponsored link.


Results 1 - 12 of about 17 from google.com for gmail. (0.25 seconds)


Gmail - New From Google
gmail.google.com Introducing a Free Webmail Service: 1000 MB of Storage & Google Search Sponsored Link

Welcome to Gmail


Link: (NYT story 2)