That Girl Site

Nika Smith wrote a post on the Google blog today showing the evolution of Google chat before it launched in early 2006. Google does extensive testing of new products using employees as guinea pigs (see our post on the pre-launch evolution of Gmail) as well as outsiders brought in to test software and interfaces in their usability lab.

I had a chance to see the lab a few weeks ago. It’s a small room with a large flat screen monitor, along with a desk and computer. It also has a number of discrete cameras (and a microphone) that keep an eye on the user herself as well as the screen.

Around the corner is a second room where Google employees can watch people interact with the software real time. The room has a couch and a chair along with two screens and speakers to monitor the lab. See the image to the right.

The Gmail Labs team took us through some of the pre-launch iterations of Gmail chat that were tested in the lab. Most of these weren’t included in the Google post, so I’ve added them below. All of these were eventually abandoned as the team moved towards the much more low profile chat window at the bottom right of the Gmail screen we see today.

For all you recent college graduates entering the workforce, I realize that “Start Thinking About Your Savings” might be the lamest piece of advice uttered to you since, “Wow! There Is No Way You’re OK To Drive Right Now”. But I promise you, in both instances you’ll be very happy in the pants that you heeded both warnings.

First off, let’s take a little look-see at the financial future of our country. The way things are going, the idea of ‘Social Security benefits’ will be non-existent in the year 2041. Whoopsies! Therefore, if you’re 21 years-old right now, you’ll be royally screwed with a good few years to go before retirement age.

With medical advancements going the way they are, Super-Future-Year-2041-Viagra will be alarmingly good. And hot cougar retirees will be friskier and hotter than ever. Better have a little something put aside, if you want a piece of that ‘retired and ready to bang’ tail.

But forget about that for a second (if the imagery isn’t permanently burned into your brain already). The real point here is how saving just a little now, as I’ll demonstrate, gets you a lot more in the long run.

Case in point - you’re 21. You get your first job and wisely open an Independent Retirement Account (IRA). Now let’s say you take $2,000 out of your earnings each year and put that in your nice little IRA. You do this each year for four years until you are the ripe old age of 25. If at that point you sit on that IRA and let the magic of compound interest do its work you’ll have $552,625 when you are 65 years old and ready to retire. Insane, right?!

On the other hand, let’s say you’re a tool who acts like a jerk with your money throughout your twenties, ignoring that cleverly written and incredibly insightful WallStreetFighter article you once read. Then you miraculously wise up when you’re 35 years old.

But now at 35 after putting that $2,000 in the IRA every year until you retire at 65, you’ll only wind up with around a measly $361,000. Look how much less that is! Plus, you’ll have spent sooo much more money over the years paying into the IRA, whereas in the earlier scenario you’re only putting money aside for 4 friggin’ years.

So were all those cases of Keystone Light and bottles of KY jelly worth it in your 20s? Well, yeah of course they were, but imagine how much more of the future (and 10x more potent) versions of it you could buy with your $552k bounty in 2041. Gawd-dam, 2041 is sooo gonna rock!

Of course none of this is factoring in inflation, meaning money in the future will be worth a lot less than it is today. But still, the amounts will always compound the same. It’s like magic. However none of this is a fool-proof plan. The only way to be safe with any investment is to do your research and monitor what’s happening with your money. Then again with the stock market fluctuating like it is, you can’t completely rely on any investment to save your ass.

Here’s hoping that this advice, if it does nothing else, will at least get you thinking about saving your money. Save wisely, my friends.

From Abcnews.com

Just when it seemed Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen had finally tired of throwing punches, she pulled an uppercut a.k.a., a three-year-old, expletive-laced voice message from Sheen.

Sheen, star of “Two and a Half Men,” followed up by releasing an apology for what he called his “choice of words.”

The voicemail Richards made public Wednesday included a curse-filled rant from Sheen calling his ex-wife and the mother of their two daughters Sam, 4, and Lola, 3 a “f***ing c**t” and a “f***ing n****r.”

Sheen shouldn’t have been surprised by his ex-wife’s bomb-drop. In an interview to promote her new E! reality TV show (which features their children), Richards told the upcoming issue of TV Guide that she’s not taking the high road with her ex-husband anymore.

“The gloves are off,” she said. “When I keep my mouth shut, [Charlie] continues to fuel [the feud] anyway, so I’m not gonna sit back anymore.”

Richards, 37, and Sheen, 42, have been fighting over the custody of their daughters since April 2006. What provoked Richards’ latest attack? It could be that Sheen allegedly tried to take back some necklaces he gave to his daughters when they attended his May 30 wedding to Brooke Mueller.

“When they came home I was told by the nanny they had to give them back,” Richards told TV Guide. “I said, ‘But aren’t they a gift?’ The nanny said, ‘They are, but they can only wear them at his house.’ I said, ‘Have him call his lawyer then, ’cause I’m not gonna tell a 3- and 4-year-old, ‘You have to give back the necklaces Daddy gave you and only wear them at Daddy’s house.’”

“Now, I know this sounds f***ing crazy and it is. But this is what I deal with,” she ranted.

Sheen’s publicist, Stan Rosenfield, told ABCNEWS.com Richards’ necklace allegation “is not true” but declined to elaborate further. He did release a statement from Sheen in which he appeared to apologize to everyone but Richards for his outburst.

“I deeply apologize by my choice of words to all I have obviously offended; especially to Tony Todd, an African-American, who was my best man at my first two weddings,” Sheen writes. “And for the record, my children did not show up today for a custodial visit without explanation. So three and one-half years later, the reasons that caused the anger and frustration displayed on that voice mail continues to be manifested on a daily basis.”

Richards’ publicist did not respond to ABCNEWS.com’s requests for comment.

From PCWorld.com

Over 5 billion songs have been sold through iTunes music service Apple announced today. It also notes that iTunes has over 50,000 movies downloaded either as purchases or rentals every day, making it the premier online movie store.

It’s hardly a surprise that iTunes is such a dominant force in the online market, after all iTunes beat out physical retailers in January and February to become the primary music retailer in the US. But still, 5 billion is a huge number. That would mean that, on average, each of the 8 million songs offered on iTunes would be downloaded 625 times.

The movie download numbers are even more startling to me though. Call me old fashioned, but I like having a physical DVD, or at least I don’t like clogging up my hard drive with downloaded video files. But I must be one of the few left, given 50,000 movie downloads per day.

More and more we’re seeing that physical media is already on the way out, and this iTunes announcement just helps to solidify the online force that is now driving the music industry.

Here are some pics of Pornstar chicks at the FAME Awards aka who can have the best sex awards. A lot of people consider the porno industry a cesspool of depravity and disease…..which in all honesty is probably true but it brings a lot of pleasure to my life and is keeping me from taking the last step off the ledge off my 5th floor building.

Well today I discovered Flickr. It’s pretty awesome. Here are some pics i found while doing a quick search. I’ve got some big projects coming concerning  Flickr. Stay tuned.