Billy Poobah Lives

inothernews:

From the New York Times:, a notable passing:

N. Joseph Woodland, who six decades ago drew a set of lines in the sand and in the process conceived the modern bar code, died on Sunday at his home in Edgewater, N.J. He was 91.

His daughter Susan Woodland confirmed the death.

A retired mechanical engineer, Mr. Woodland was a graduate student when he and a classmate, Bernard Silver, created a technology — based on a printed series of wide and narrow striations — that encoded consumer-product information for optical scanning.

Their idea, developed in the late 1940s and patented 60 years ago this fall, turned out to be ahead of its time. But it would ultimately give rise to the universal product code, or U.P.C., as the staggeringly prevalent rectangular bar code is officially known. The code now adorns tens of millions of different items, scanned in retail establishments around the world at the rate of more than five billion a day.

The bar code would never have developed as it did without a chain of events noteworthy even in the annals of invention etiology:

Had Mr. Woodland not been a Boy Scout, had he not logged hours on the beach and had his father not been quite so afraid of organized crime, the code would very likely not have been invented in the form it was, if at all.

Great read —BP

fastcompany:

Before Twitter became a microblogging sensation it was a podcasting business. YouTube’s founders were convinced they’d hit the jackpot with a video-dating site. PayPal’s original mission was to beam IOUs from Palm Pilot to Palm Pilot. Flickr grew out of a massive multiplayer online game as a way for players to drop photos into text messages. Groupon emerged from a community promoting political action while online flash retailer Fab.com came out of a failed gay social network called Fabulis. Instagram’s founders created a check-in technology called Blurbn before settling on photos. Pandora was a B2B music recommendation service. Yelp transitioned from email recommendations from friends to a local search and user review web site.

Our new series examines the “do-overs” of today’s most successful startups. Read more->

Cool! I can see Mabel’s transmissions!! —BP

theatlantic:

Infographics Say It All in Facebook’s Latest SEC Filing

In the amendment Facebook filed Monday to its S-1 SEC filing, some of the best information about the company is embedded in the infographics it used to illustrate its points. They show a company that’s booming, with rampant growth of users and revenue, but they also show a behemoth that’s saturated much of the globe save for one glaringly dark patch where China sits. […]

Look at the mass of darkness where China is located, the stark border of Russia, the largely un-Facebook penetrated Africa, and the bright slash of Indonesia (at one point,Indonesian became the most-used Asian language on Facebook). That dislocation between population and Facebook users bears out some of the projections the company follows with in its filing, in particular its expansion plans.

Read more at The Atlantic Wire. [Image: Facebook]

photojojo:

So that coffee addiction is good for something afterall!

Use a coffee sleeve as a DIY lens hood when you’re in a pinch. It’ll save your photos from lens flare. (The one here is by Nick Cool.)

DIY Coffee Sleeve Lens Hood

••••• Great Idea —BP

via DIY Photography

photojojo:

New in the Photojojo Shop: The iPhone Shutter Remote

This small remote lets you shoot photo and video from 30 feet away!

It comes with a stand, too, so you can shoot self-portraits, time-lapses, long-exposures, and more.

splatf:

What should Apple do with the iPod?

soupsoup:

I sat down with David Karp, founder of Tumblr to discuss how the company has dealt with massive growth. I asked about the missing-e and brands who feel they’ve been neglected. I’d love to hear what you think.

••••• So, we ask you: “Would YOU rent a car to this man?” —BP

(via tanya77)

inothernews:

Steve Jobs filed 313 patents in relation to his products at Apple, right down to one for the spinning beach ball status indicator thingee.

(via the New York Times)