On March 21, the PIMA Air & Space Museum successfully launched a 45 foot long paper airplane from a helicopter in the skies over Arizona (video).
By The Numbers: Larry Page’s First Year as Google’s CEO
Google has always been historically paranoid about any numbers it publicly releases. For many years even after it was publicly traded, the management triumvirate including Larry Page had to personally approve any numbers the company issued in public, a policy I believe still stands.
So it’s worth pointing out all the figures the company has decided to share in a letter to investors that caps off Page’s first year at CEO:
30: The number of products Google has shut down this year, including Knol and Sidewiki.
120: The number of Google+ integrations, which unsurprisingly mostly involve Google products.
100 million: The number of active Google+ users. Is this a sign of health? Or that Page is out of touch with reality and perhaps should be using a different engagement metric? Discuss.
850,000: Android devices activated per day. (It’s an old number from Mobile World Congress in February.)
55: The number of Android manufacturing partners.
300: The number of Android’s carrier partners.
200 million: The number of Chrome users.
350 million: Number of Gmail users.
5,000: The number of enterprise and educational customers that sign up for Gmail every day.
800 million: The number of monthly YouTube users.
$2.5 billion: The run-rate for the mobile advertising business in the third quarter of 2011.
2.5x: Growth over mobile advertising revenue in the same time period two years earlier.
$30 billion: Amount that Google has cumulatively paid out to content publishers on the web through the AdSense program.
64: Number of languages supported in Google Translate.
4032: Language pairs supported by Google Translate.
120: The number of Google+ integrations, which unsurprisingly mostly involve Google products.
100 million: The number of active Google+ users. Is this a sign of health? Or that Page is out of touch with reality and perhaps should be using a different engagement metric? Discuss.
850,000: Android devices activated per day. (It’s an old number from Mobile World Congress in February.)
55: The number of Android manufacturing partners.
300: The number of Android’s carrier partners.
200 million: The number of Chrome users.
350 million: Number of Gmail users.
5,000: The number of enterprise and educational customers that sign up for Gmail every day.
800 million: The number of monthly YouTube users.
$2.5 billion: The run-rate for the mobile advertising business in the third quarter of 2011.
2.5x: Growth over mobile advertising revenue in the same time period two years earlier.
$30 billion: Amount that Google has cumulatively paid out to content publishers on the web through the AdSense program.
64: Number of languages supported in Google Translate.
4032: Language pairs supported by Google Translate.
CRUNCHBASE
Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension into the social space. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing...
The Surreal Gravity-Defying Photographs of Philippe Ramette
Crisis of casualness
Irrational contemplation
Rational exploration of the undersea : irrational walk
Between 2003 and 2006, French conceptual artist Philippe Ramette created a series of gravity-defying photographs that show him in seemingly impossible poses. These illusions were not created digitally as Ramette explains to The Guardian in 2009, “You see a tension in my hands, my red face is far from serene as the blood rushes to it, my suit is ruffled.” Web Urbanist has images and a brief explanation of how Ramette’s illusion is accomplished.
Video of Tow Truck and Tractor-Trailer Rolling Down Cliff in Norway
On April 1, amateur Norwegian photographer Gunn Iren Johnsrud was filming a tow truck pulling a tractor-trailer up a snowy mountain road in Northern Norway when the rig slid off the road, rolling 200 feet down a cliff and taking the tow truck with it. The tow truck driver jumped free just seconds before his truck was pulled down the cliff. The tractor-trailer driver did not escape, but managed to survive his trip down the mountainside with minor injuries.
Russian Man Free Climbs Stalin Era Skyscraper in Moscow
Russian daredevil Tyomka Pirniazov free climbed the ornate Soviet star at the top of the 577 foot tall Stalin-eraKotelnicheskaya Embankment Building in Moscow. He recorded the feat and the dizzying view with a camera clenched in his mouth. We wrote about Pirniazov’s previous climb to the top of the nearby Red Gates Administrative Building.
No Kitchen Required, An Adventurous Cooking Competition TV Series
No Kitchen Required is a cooking competition television series “that follows three chefs who are dropped off in remote locations where they must work with the locals to hunt, forage and collect ingredients for a locally-inspired meal.” The show, hosted by Dr. Shini Somara, premieres on BBC America on April 3, 3012 (10/9C).
Join New York restaurateur Michael Psilakis, first ever “Chopped” Grand Champion chef Madison Cowanand international chef Kayne Raymond as they prepare dishes from ten very different and remote locations including Dominica, New Zealand, Belize, Fiji, Chiang Dao, Thailand, Koh Lanta, Thailand, as well as Hawaii, New Mexico, Louisiana and Florida.Each chef is free to choose the indigenous ingredients he wants to use—the challenge comes when he must acquire and prepare the ingredients in the same manner as the locals. The chefs’ meals will ultimately be judged by the community and one will be chosen as winner in each episode.
Animals Inside Out, An Exhibition of Animals Preserved by Plastination
“Animals Inside Out” is an exhibition of animal corpses that have been perfectly preserved with plastic polymers in a process called “plastination” (video). The exhibition is by plastination inventor Dr. Gunther von Hagen. Von Hagen is best known for his Body Worlds exhibitions of plastinated human cadavers. “Animals Inside Out” is on display at theNatural History Museum in London through September 16, 2012. To see more photos of the exhibition, see this gallery by The Guardian.
Identical quadruplets born in rarest of rare case
In a rare instance of identical quadruplets, which doctors say happens once in 13 million births, four such males were born on March 11 in Kerala's Kasargod district.
MANGALORE: In a rare instance of identical quadruplets, which doctors say happens once in 13 million births, four such males were born on March 11 in Kerala's Kasargod district.
Considering their delicate state - they were also premature - the quadruplets were moved to a Mangalore hospital's ICU, where one of them died on Monday night. The rest of them are doing well. Dr Ali Kumble, chairman of Indiana Hospital, said that the case can be considered rare since the babies were identical and also had an average gestation period of 26 weeks as against 40 weeks. The average weight of the babies was 740 gm as against 1.3 kg as per medical literature and recorded cases.
"Such cases are extremely rare. Quadruplets occur once in 70 lakh births and identical quadruplets are born once in 13 million births. There are only 60 such cases recorded worldwide and it is a challenge to ensure their survival,'' Dr Kumble said. While two babies weigh 900gm the other two are 580gm each. They were born to Aysha Tahira, 30, and Latheef of Kasargod after 10 years of marriage.
Kumble said the three babies are healthy. "I hope that they do not have any neurological complications later. The babies have different blood groups, while two of them are B+, one is O+. The child who died was A+. As the babies are from the same zygote, the third and fourth babies will be weak and more prone to infections. Moreover, there is scientific data that male babies have higher infection rate than female babies,'' he said.
The country last had such rarity in Chennai at the Apollo Hospital on April 25, 2006, when a software professional delivered four baby girls.
Considering their delicate state - they were also premature - the quadruplets were moved to a Mangalore hospital's ICU, where one of them died on Monday night. The rest of them are doing well. Dr Ali Kumble, chairman of Indiana Hospital, said that the case can be considered rare since the babies were identical and also had an average gestation period of 26 weeks as against 40 weeks. The average weight of the babies was 740 gm as against 1.3 kg as per medical literature and recorded cases.
"Such cases are extremely rare. Quadruplets occur once in 70 lakh births and identical quadruplets are born once in 13 million births. There are only 60 such cases recorded worldwide and it is a challenge to ensure their survival,'' Dr Kumble said. While two babies weigh 900gm the other two are 580gm each. They were born to Aysha Tahira, 30, and Latheef of Kasargod after 10 years of marriage.
Kumble said the three babies are healthy. "I hope that they do not have any neurological complications later. The babies have different blood groups, while two of them are B+, one is O+. The child who died was A+. As the babies are from the same zygote, the third and fourth babies will be weak and more prone to infections. Moreover, there is scientific data that male babies have higher infection rate than female babies,'' he said.
The country last had such rarity in Chennai at the Apollo Hospital on April 25, 2006, when a software professional delivered four baby girls.
