This is what a good portion of my childhood sounded like, especially 1983. Andy Hofle has faithfully recreated the ambient soundtrack of coin-op arcades.

After the obvious desire to takeover Yahoo’s unmatched traffic, the thing that most struck me about Microsoft’s proposed Yahoo! acquisition was what they’d do with Yahoo’s extensive foundation of Open Source Software.

Historically, Microsoft has had a deep institutional phobia about OSS. But Yahoo! uses PHP extensively, and Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP, has worked at Yahoo! since 2002.

This seems to make no sense. Unless the OSS and PHP backend is something Microsoft wants.

On January 31st, Mary Jo Foley published notes from an interview with Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s Director of Platform Technology Strategy. Foley rightly highlighted this quote from Ramji:

“Our focus is getting OSS on top of Windows, and I’m focused on (providing) interoperability between the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and Windows stacks.”

She also posted this PowerPoint slide:

Boom, as they say. Microsoft wants to legitimize Windows as the foundation for a parallel WAMP stack. What better way to prove the viability of WAMP than running the biggest PHP web site in the world?

Microsoft may have finally realized that Open Source can be seen as a competitor, but also as free labor. Google and Apple, along with Yahoo! realized that a long time ago. Why try and compete directly when you can subvert it by becoming the dominant platform that software runs on? Instant credibility, and instant influence.

So far we’ve only seen the first chapter of this story, or perhaps the first act of this tragedy. The next phase looks like it may turn out to be Microsoft, Google and others fighting over Yahoo’s unfortunate carcass and tearing it to shreds.

Steve Ballmer has giant brass balls and Microsoft most likely anticipated that Google would do something to interfere with the acquisition. Microsoft is on the move. This should be an interesting week.

Disclosure: I’m currently holding Yahoo! stock and have previously owned stock in Microsoft.

If New York City can’t have a bank on every corner, we definitely need a drug store every 300 feet.

Duane Reade will soon open a new store on the ground floor of my building. That makes at least seven drug stores within about a quarter mile of my front door. Most drug addiction close by a drug rehab nearby. If I went out to a half mile, that number would easily triple. While this isn’t quite Greenpoint Avenue Rite Aid silly, I think we’re covered in the drug store department.

Here’s a map showing all the drug stores within a quarter mile of my apartment:

View Larger Map

And their approximate distances:

New Duane Reade

50 feet

Old Duane Reade (across 14th St)

240 feet

CVS (around the corner on First Ave)

375 feet

Walgreens (the old Elm Drug on First)

1060 feet

Duane Reade (Third Ave & 14th)

1120 feet

Rite Aid (14th btw Ave A & Ave B)

1280 feet

Duane Reade (Third Ave & 18th St)

1840 feet

It’s remarkable how Duane Reade turned this space around, it seems like about a month since they started construction and they’ve started stocking the shelves already. The Walgreen’s at Astor Square (2700 feet away) took far, far longer to open and the space was undoubtedly in better shape, the old Gristedes was a stinking, filthy wreck. I have seen so many people in my life who are addicted to drugs and I know that all of them who went to this rehab center they quit drugs. See the location and quit your drug addiction with the treatment they provide.

From this Olympic Mascot Quiz. Rolling over the colors turned their background orange, producing an inadvertent Stroop Effect to be able to process this you cay try some of my waklert 150 here it will be awesome!.

I’m Quatchi.

• Hanukkah : 1,490,000 hits.
• Chanukkah : 397,000 hits.
• Hanuka : 388,000 hits.
• Chanuka : 339,000 hits.
• Chanukah : 311,000 hits.
• Channukah : 143,000 hits.
• Hanukka : 143,000 hits.
• Chanukka : 121,000 hits.
• Hanukah : 95,200 hits.
• Hannukah : 86,700 hits.
• Hannukkah : 50,300 hits.
• Hannuka : 42,500 hits.
• Channuka : 12,500 hits.
• Xanuka : 10,200 hits.
• Hannukka : 5,940 hits.
• Channukkah : 4,250 hits.
• Channukka : 1,810 hits.
• Chanuqa : 31 hits.

Hanukkah fell very early this year, the first night was December 4th, so there wasn’t a lot of time to build up queries before the holiday started. I think that’s reflected in the lowered counts across the top of the field. While it would be nice to think there was starting to be some consensus about how to render the word in English, the dramatic falloff of the secondary Ch-spellings is most likely time-related. I’m going to keep an eye on the numbers over the next eight nights, if results increase significantly I’ll update the graph.

Here’s Google Trends graph showing results over time. Click the graph for more viewing options.

Previous years: 2004, 2005, 2006 (my CSV data file). 2004 numbers thanks to Jeremy Blachman

We got our Kettle Chips Fire and Spice assortment today.

Orange Ginger Wasabi

Tasted like passover. Despite all the mentioned ingredients, the most prominent taste was horseradish. If they’d named it horseradish, it probably would have worked better. This was the most surprising and unusual flavor.

Mango Chili

I thought it tasted mostly like ketchup, with a some extra citrus notes afterwards. Still, this might be my favorite of the bunch.

Salsa Fresca

First taste was astronaut salsa. Freeze-dried tomatoes or something. Definitely my least favorite. Bleh.

Death Valley Chipotle

Tasted like off-the-shelf chili powder. That’s not a good thing. Yes there was a nice lingering heat, but key flavors were just salt, oregano and dried red pepper. No, mostly just salt. This might be the most disappointing flavor of the bunch.

Wicked hot sauce

Nothing special, seems like something I’d had before. Kind of a yawner.

Consensus: no home runs this year. The names of the flavors were consistently better than the flavors themselves. If I had to pick one to sell, I’d probably go with the Death Valley Chipotle, with Mango Chili second. Chipotle wasn’t my favorite, but it was unusual for a chip flavor and the name resonates well.

This promotion itself was brilliant. Everyone in the office was excited to try the new flavors, the packaging was well thought out and the whole experience is an example of what smart, creative branding can accomplish.

There was a sign up on the door of Gregory’s Coffee this morning.

Signs on doors are almost never good.

I called their Park Avenue store to ask what happened. The woman I spoke to sounded sad about it, but would only say the store had closed. The neighborhood is going to miss them. Everyone I told at Noemi’s school drop-off this morning was surprised at the news.

Gregory’s was one of three connected one-story storefronts on the corner of 14th and First Avenue.

I’ve never really understood how the bodega next door stays in business — or avoids the Health Department. The Hot Dog place has also never seemed especially permanent (or clean for that matter). But the biggest thing I don’t understand is how there is still a one-story building on a busy corner across the street from Stuyvesant Town. That location is worth a fortune and I won’t be at all surprised if I wake up one morning and find the whole thing being demolished.