Body This kind of blew my daughter’s mind: a US$0.99 iPhone app that simulates a FaceTime call from her favorite Sesame Street monster, Elmo. I offer it here because what I generally hear about FaceTime is that no one uses it. But what I see is that it’s one of the most successful bits of technology that the rest of my family have taken to; in our house, FaceTime calls are a regular feature of almost every weekend. Thuy’s grandparents, aunts and cousins all relish the ability to talk with her via FaceTime. It seems unlikely we’re alone in this, which is borne out in the fact that this app mimics the FaceTime look and feel, and not Skype or Google Hangouts. It’s a useful ... Continue reading →
Simplee will send you many helpful alerts, like when an insurance claim is ready to review, when a medical bill is due, if there is a billing error, when you use out of service doctors, or if you could be taking advantage of certain medical services. You will also get personalized insights related to your FSA or HSA account. Continue reading →
May 25 Nytimes_ebooks Like a large swath of the Internet, I have become increasingly obsessed with the nonsensical tweets of the @horse_ebooks spambot twitter account (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, here are some links: Know Your Meme; The Ballad of @Horse_ebooks; The Human Being Behind @Horse_ebooks; and the Web Comic). I also love the @nytimes twitter account, which is now 5 years old and over 5 million followers strong. I felt like it would be fun to do something silly to commemorate how far @nytimes has come… And thus, @nytimes_ebooks was born. If you are interested, this is how it works. First though, I must restate my usual caveat: I am a developer at the New York Times who works on twitter ... Continue reading →
Subway systems are marvels of engineering and design, even more so for the ones (like London’s or New York’s) that were built in the early 20th century. But still, any rider of a mass transit system has no doubt cursed its design at some point. Why doesn’t the train go here instead of there? Why should an express line reach this neighborhood and not that one? Who’s to blame (or praise) for mass transit system design? According to a French physicist named Marc Barthelemy, nobody is. Barthelemy and his fellow researchers published a paper depicting the design of subway systems as an "emergent phenomenon" of large cities. "Each network is the product of hundreds of rational but uncoordinated decisions that take place over many years," ... Continue reading →