- The legends of tech companies are shaped by stories of their weirdest early traditions. (Think Bill Gates having Burgermaster on speed dial.) We predict that this New York Times story about Mark Zuckerberg’s awkward walks with job prospects will someday be part of the Facebook canon … for better or worse.
- “Hi Future Man! … Hope your world is a little bit better than ours.” So reads part of a note from 1973, recently found by the Second Use salvage company behind a decorative beam inside a home in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. See the rest here. (Via Shelterrific)
- Fascinating contrast in this post yesterday by William Carleton, featuring pictures of the latest Obama and Zuckerberg news conferences.
- Here’s the official transcript of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s speech to students at the company’s Imagine Cup finals in New York tonight — offering his take on the company, the industry, and the future, plus some classic Ballmerisms, i.e., “When I get excited, I get noisy and volatile and rrrrrr —.” No, really?
- Amazon CTO Werner Vogels posted this on Twitter today: “scaling data systems in real life has humbled me. I would not dare criticize an architecture that the holds social graphs of 750M and works.” Translation: When you live in a glass cloud, don’t throw stones.
Connected States of America: What the state lines would look like if drawn based on who talks and texts with whom, according to an MIT study. (Via Alex Goldmark)
- Music service Spotify is coming to the U.S., finally, and Peter Kafka of AllThingsD.com got his hands on the marketing material — including details on the expected Facebook integration, and projections of 50 million users in the country in its first year.
- Check out this awesome time-lapse video of Seattle on the 4th of July — including the fireworks show over Lake Union — in 2 minutes, 10 seconds. (Via Isaac Alexander)
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