links for 2009-05-16

"For each group of parts, we’ve added text and pictures to better explain why and how you’d want to use those parts in larger systems."

This is a distinct improvement over the previous version. Though I would like to see even more visual guides to exploring the catalog.

"The sheer size and diversity of the DNA samples collected allowed the researchers to construct a human family tree based on their analyses. Not unexpectedly, the tree they constructed fits well with current theories on the genetic relationship between Africans and non-Africans; namely that all non-Africans are descended from a particular group or groups of people who were the first humans to migrate out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago."

"People actually read, and many of them are willing to pay to support their habit, as the multi-billion dollar publishing industry would attest (and this is just in U.S., and quite frankly, we aren’t the most reading-intensive country in the world)."

Pretty nifty. A computational command line on the web with a really nice graphical summary. Information rich without being cluttered.

"Wolfram|Alpha just went live for the very first time, running all clusters. This first run at testing Wolfram|Alpha in the real world is off to an auspicious start, although not surprisingly, we’re still working on some kinks, especially around logging."