shahidhussain

Thanks for the note. Yeah, it was almost impossible to find the data without a ton of help. I’m sure things will change again as bot internet usage overwhelms human usage — maybe more silos, maybe more bot only interfaces. Interesting times!

Author here. I bought this CD in 2011 and spent 15 years failing to find out who made it. The band charted at #47 on the UK Independent Singles Chart in June 2006, so it was a real, professionally made, commercially distributed record, and I couldn't find anything online: no credits, no fingerprint match, no company registration for the label, nothing on streaming.

Part of the answer turned out to be that their website was Flash, so it was never meaningfully indexed, and their MySpace was never mirrored. A band can be entirely findable in 2006 and entirely gone by 2026 depending on which technologies they happened to pick.

It was eventually solved by searching on the producer's credits rather than the band's name, and then by two people replying to cold emails. Both the producer and the singer were generous enough to be interviewed, so there's some fresh detail in there about the recording session as well.

It's very good - limited volume though. CPCs are often efficient at low volumes with good targeting.

Why Chrome OS?

Is there anything like whited00r available for these machines? (I installed it on my original iPhone, and it's been a lifesaver.)

I'm going to guess at:

* Let the public markets know there's something good in the pipeline to keep the stock price as a decent level

* Let the distributors / carriers know (+ no worries about leaks)

* In some ways, it's better than the alternative of a leak, where all the marketing messages come from some crappy blurry cam mixed with a bunch of fake images

I agree it's a little risky from the consumer's POV. Bear in mind a couple things though:

* Even for consumers, when it gets released, they feel more positive towards a product they've heard of previously

* It's possible that the interest will be maintained over that period, although this is a stretch for anyone that isn't amazing at marketing.

Unless you're busy making or avoiding patents, I'd argue that the innovativeness of a feature shouldn't be a factor unless it works better than the normal solution.

"If I were Samsung's CEO or on its Board of Directors, I'd suggest dumping the mobile unit and focusing on consumer tech in televisions, home appliances and cameras and hope to God that no one sues us over those."

This is probably the dumbest opinion I've read so far on this lawsuit.

Wow - I disagree that this is well designed. It also looks half finished (lot of links are dead, many others are unclickable when they should be) - I'm guessing this is a work in progress from an agency?

I hear where you're coming from, but I think different people just like different things about games, and my bias is towards games that have strong stories. Take Mass Effect an an example - for me personally, the most interesting part of the game is making decisions and seeing how the story progresses as a result. I like to pew-pew the aliens as much as the next guy, but I'm most interested in seeing how character X reacts to action A. I'm not alone - the reason so many people were annoyed about the ending was that they wanted to find out what happens to the characters that they'd grown attached to over the last three games.

Now you're right that they could absolutely release the story of Mass Effect as a (really really long) film, but I like to have choice in how the story progresses, and I don't want to watch lots of different movies with all the choices played out. Having that control makes me feel more engaged in the story than watching it passively.

Not everyone will feel that's worth the price of entry for a game - I do.

"If a game is so boring and forgettable that watching a Youtube video is an effective replacement, a player who purchases it will not be satisfied with the game."

This I disagree with - the same goes for great games that are heavily story oriented (perhaps something like Alan Wake or Dreamfall). I'm not saying you get the full experience watching the YT video, but I think the OP's point is that you get enough value that the delta from actually playing the game isn't worth $50.

I agree that's a lot, but we need to bear in mind that active can have a lot of definitions. From the article:

"active in this sense means the number of accounts that were modified over a three-month period, including changes of avatar, subscribing to a new follower or tweeting"

Three months is a long time for activity - monthly / weekly / daily active user metrics are more common. Also, it (apparently) isn't counting a visit as activity, just these actions. That just makes this a weird metric to benchmark against.