widget – Andy Sternberg

PBS Newshour’s Deepwater BP Oil Spill Widget

Andy Sternberg — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:15:27 +0000

I’ve been tracking and writing about the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for Live Earth but I thought I’d note the excellent widget that PBS Newshour created to help users track and visualize the apparently unstoppable horror that has been ongoing for more than a month off the coast of Louisiana. Great work by one of the finest multimedia teams in the land.

It’s horrible and embarrassing that we’d give oil companies such extensive liberty so as to contaminate our waters knowing that there was no available technology to avert the inevitable disaster that we are facing right now. Personally I hope to see Obama get serious and put his foot down even more — this is the ultimate cause for concern about climate, energy, and the future.

Register to Vote – or Hate Yourself for 4 More Years

Andy Sternberg — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:11:14 +0000

There is no reason to NOT vote. Why register to vote even if you just moved somewhere new? Because you can. It’s fun. And, unless you vote by mail (which is increasingly common in many states), you’re bound to meet some awesome neighbors that you never knew you had. Rock the Vote has a cool widget this year. Click on it. Do it.

Amazon’s US Site Goes Down… Millions in Sales Forfeited

Andy Sternberg — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:57:22 +0000

Very disturbing to come across THIS at http://amazon.com — generally believed to be one of the strongest and most stable web companies with servers so trusty that thousands of businesses lease space via Amazon’s S3 Web service.

UPDATE: It’s been shaky, but back up after nearly two hours of all systems down. AdAge estimates that Amazon lost about $2 million in sales:

E-comerce site Amazon went down this afternoon around 1:30 EDT and stayed down for at least an hour. Attempts to access Amazon.com were met with the following message: “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable.” It’s hard to know exactly how many dollars a minute Amazon loses in sales for every moment its site is down, but simple math pegs it at about $1.8 million an hour, based on Ad Age estimates.

Amazon’s Canadian, UK, and German sites are all fine — appears to be only U.S.-based.

Twitter is also down. Cloudy day on the internet? Or is it something else? more at CNET.

Amazon Releases MP3 Clips Widget

Andy Sternberg — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:50:24 +0000

I’ve been an Amazon associate for years and have yet to reap any rewards, however, I’ve always had fun playing with their new tools, from the Omakase ad widget to clicking on my own ads to (eventually) get an additional 5% off and now to testing their new MP3 clips widget.

Let’s have some fun!

Amazon.com Widgets