Chris Hanrath » Cool Stuff

Wine Carbon Footprint

Chris — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:36:53 +0000

Interesting visualization from the National Geographic on the Carbon Footprint of Wine consumption in the US based on numbers from a study by “Dr. Vino“.

Larry Page’s Commencement Speech

Chris — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:56:05 +0000

Larry Page’s speech at the University of Michigan graduation ceremony addressing the class of 2009 to “be lazy and get a little crazy“. There is also a transcript available.

Windows 7 Tray Progress Bar

Chris — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:46:03 +0000

Windows 7 now visualizes progress right in the system tray even when the window is minimized. I like it!

New ratings to improve Netflix

Chris — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:50:49 +0000

After logging in to Netflix today, i experienced a recently added feature to improve movie recommendations. These ratings are asking users to make statements about their taste for movies based on mood characteristics such as: “romantic, goofy, sentimental, dark, controversial, steamy, mind-bending, violent…”

These taste preference can be categorized into “never, sometimes and often” and are supported by six example movies to understand what netflix considers to be classified under the mood. These can be changed later on.

Citation Infoviz

Chris — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:43:35 +0000

I just discovered a neat interactive beta visualization for citations in scientific publications that i found on isiknowledge.com

Silent Contextual Google Toolbar Update

Chris — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:13:07 +0000

I just opened a blank new Tab on my browser and Google presented me with a context sensitive page suggesting most visited pages, recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs… uhm, Thanks! …I guess…

I wonder about the missing thumbnail screenshots, why an icon of a broken camera? Did i break something, or do i have to get my digital camera out and take a picture of each screen so that Google can post it? I am also not sure what the recent bookmarks are, since i don’t bookmark pages or click on bookmarks…

European Gadget

Chris — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:41:57 +0000

On my trip back to Germany i treated myself with a little toy for christmas. I bought the Nokia e51 and i think this is the best phone i have ever owned. It has all the features i need, is amazingly small and has a sleek design. The key specs are: WLAN, 2M Camera and Video, SD Slot and Symbian OS…

Revealing Analytics

Chris — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:40:03 +0000

I was just checking the Google Analytics reports for my portfolio and found interesting referring keywords that send people to my page. Take a look at this one search term that was typed in by someone who visited my portfolio page:

“(intitle:~cv or inurl:~cv) and (“ui developer” or “developer ui” or “user interface developer” or “developer graphic user interface” or “gui developer” or “developed gui”) and (pa or pennsylvania or “new jersey” or ny or delaware or de) -jobs -careers -sample”

Fashion your Firefox

Chris — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:48:55 +0000

Mozilla just put up a new website that let’s users discover more add-ons for Firefox. It’s an interesting way of helping users to identify extensions that are of interest to them by relating the suggestions to persona-style categories like these:

Finder and Seeker: “I want to make finding information on the Web simpler and more relevant to me.”
Rock Star: “Music and the Web go together like rock stars and leather — I love to listen while I surf, work, email or research online.”
News Junkie: “I want to know what’s happening in the world as it happens. And the weather helps me plan my week — temperature, please!“

Red is here!

Chris — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:32:05 +0000

I’m excited to announce that my friends and former mentors Trek and Jesse from Backtik have released the first version of Red. In their screencast they show us how to build an AJAX photobucket similar to the one from Facebook just using Ruby without writing any Javascript at all.

Update: Now featured on Ajaxian.com.