Below are this site’s statistics following the seventh month of regular publication. Past stats can be found for January, February, March, April, May, and June.

Most Visited Posts

• Nike+ FuelBand Review
• Sticking With Dropbox
• Blogging With Second Crack
• How To Auto-Post On Facebook
• Apple’s Third Quarter Financial Results

Most Visited Linked Posts

• Not Tailored For The U.S. Audience
• Christopher Nolan: Escape Artist
• Four-Minute Mile
• No … Samsung Doesn’t Copy Apple
• Regrets Of The Dying

Visitors

• 1,276 page views (19,542 for 2012)
• 733 unique visitors (11,860 for 2012)
• 71% visits were from U.S., including all 50 States + D.C.
• Top international traffic included Germany (8%), United Kingdom (6%), and Canada (5%).

Platforms

• Macintosh (53%, up from 50%)
• Windows (39%, up from 37%)
• Linux (8%, down from 12%)

Browsers

• Chrome (32%, up from 26%)
• Safari and WebKit (30%, up from 29%)
• Firefox (23%, down from 27%)
• Internet Explorer (8%, down from 9%)
• Mobile Safari (4%, unchanged)
• Other (3%)

Visits to the site remained steady for the month of July. The number of new readers increased, as did traffic from international visitors. The Mac platform remained steady and Windows usage increased at the expense of Linux. The Chrome browser topped Safari/Webkit in a monthly back-and-forth. while Internet Explorer continued its downward march.

July was busy for me personally, with two conference trips and the release of my company’s first iOS app. Thanks to everyone who made it a successful launch. Once again, I appreciate everyone who visited the site and offered feedback via Facebook, Twitter, and email.

If you have any suggestions or comments, do get in touch or feel free to follow me.

Sharif Sakr, Engadget:

Just when we needed a modern-day equivalent of sailing down the Nile while being fanned by Assyrian slaves, we get this: the Black Element Cyclone Edition gaming mouse, which has a 6,000 rpm rotor directed right at the point where slick skin meets plastic.

‘Murica!

In October 2011, I posted a link to preliminary findings from the Berkeley Earth Project in which they concluded warming was indeed occurring. Why was this a big deal given that the scientific community had long been in consensus on climate change? The study was largely funded by Koch Industries - a company owned by conservative oil magnates, David and Charles Koch.

On July 29 of this year, the Berkeley Earth Project released new analysis of warming over the previous 250 years:

The good match between the new temperature record and historical carbon dioxide records suggests that the most straight forward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions.

The principal investigator, Richard A. Muller, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in conjunction with that report. In his essay, Dr. Muller details the study’s methodologies, the findings, and how his personal worldview on climate changed has evolved:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Maybe now we can shift partisan nonsense from the science to the policy surrounding climate change. Given the political climate in this country and the fact that many have been told what to think on the subject by career politicians, my guess is that isn’t likely anytime soon. Still, the thoughts from Dr. Muller offer hope.

Back in May, I posted a story in which Christopher Chabris reviewed Jonah Lehrer’s new book “Imagine” for the New York Times. In the scathing review, Chabris said:

This may sound like nitpicking. But science writers, like teachers, have an obligation to get the facts right. When enough details are wrong, readers may lose confidence in the big picture.

I then posted Lehrer’s response, in which he admitted to making a few minor factual mistakes while defending the book as a whole:

The question of how to write about science – especially when the science is unsettled and provisional – is something I struggle with every day.

It turns out there were more than just a few minor factual mistakes. Lehrer admitted to blatantly fabricating quotations from Bob Dylan in the book, as reported by Julie Bosman of the New York Times:

The lies are over now. I understand the gravity of my position. I want to apologize to everyone I have let down, especially my editors and readers. I also owe a sincere apology to Mr. Moynihan. I will do my best to correct the record and ensure that my misquotations and mistakes are fixed. I have resigned my position as staff writer at The New Yorker.

My thoughts on Mr. Lehrer are contained in an actual quote from Bob Dylan:

People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.

Matt Macari and Nilay Patel, reporting for The Verge:

After over a year of drama, the patent battle between Apple and Samsung heads to trial in California today.

[…]

So let’s review what Apple and Samsung are really fighting over, as well as the stories each company will try to tell. There’s a lot going on.

Macari and Patel give an exhaustive overview of the trial between Apple and Samsung. This should be an interesting case to follow. I’m sure Apple’s lawyers will have a lot of pictures to show the jury.

Daily Kos member, Christian Dem in NC:

Olympic opening ceremony included a tribute to all victims of terror–specifically the victims of the bombings that took place in London on July 7, 2005–the day the Olympics were awarded to London.  But if you watched it on NBC, you didn’t get a chance to see it.  Instead, you got treated to a Ryan Seacrest interview with Michael Phelps.

So why would NBC decide against airing a tribute to terror victims in favor of a Ryan Seacrest interview? NBC spokesman Greg Hughes:

… our programming is tailored for the U.S. audience.

Thus implying that a United States audience isn’t interested in such a tribute. I am left wondering exactly how out of touch NBC executives must be to reach such a misguided conclusion. How they could think that we – a country that saw the World Trade Centers attacked in 1993, the Murrah building blown up in 1995, the Columbine tragedy and numerous other gun attacks, and the Towers again attacked and destroyed in 2001 - would rather watch an empty interview over an opportunity to remember those people around the globe who have suffered at the hands of terror is beyond reason.

This decision can only be described as disgusting and insulting. #NBCFail indeed.

Peter Radford, The Guardian:

There were no celebrations on May 9 1970 to mark the 200th anniversary of the first four-minute mile, and no tours were organised to visit the gates of Shoreditch Church in London, where James Parrott, a costermonger, completed his measured mile in four minutes.

Radford details numerous examples of 18th-century runners performing in times consistent with today’s athletes. Yet, as is the case with the four-minute mile, our society largely discredits their efforts. An interesting insight into our modern athletic arrogance.

(via: Keith Olbermann)

Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, presents photos of the Olympic torch’s journey to the 2012 London games:

Today marks the end of the 70-day Olympic Torch relay through the United Kingdom, leading to the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. Since arriving in Cornwall on May 18, the flame has been carried through villages and cities, across lakes and mountain ranges, on foot, by train, on horseback, and through the air, from Cornwall to central London. The torch has passed through the hands of more than 8,000 torchbearers on its 8,000 mile (12,800 km) journey.

Best relay ever?

Dieter Bohn, The Verge, on Google’s announcement of their high-speed fiber network in Kansas City:

Google Fiber has finally arrived in Kansas City, offering crazy-fast broadband speeds and a new television service on both sides of the Kansas / Missouri state line. After hinting that it would be unveiled today, the company has made it official. Google is touting 1,000 Mbps download and upload speeds, positioning its service as “100 times faster” than traditional “broadband.”

This is the part of Google I love. What did Apple do when they had services they wanted to give consumers despite the incumbent distributors having no reason to innovate? They built the iPhone, created the App Store, and told carriers to kiss their ass. Likewise, Google is telling incumbents, “You don’t want to help us deliver awesome content to our users in the United States using a modern distribution network? Oh really? Okay … keep your monolithic infrastructure that is a global embarrassment - we’ll build our own means of distribution. Good luck.”

John Gruber takes a look at the broader implication of Mountain Lion:

Mountain Lion, and the incremental approach Apple has taken with recent OS X updates, highlights the growing schism between Apple’s and Microsoft’s philosophies. Windows 8, in contrast to Mountain Lion, is a radical update — years in the works and it introduces a slew of truly disruptive changes to the user experience. Mountain Lion and iOS 6 certainly share a slew of features and code, and through iCloud are growing to support a single cross-device experience. But they are very much two different and distinct systems, one for traditional keyboard and pointer device personal computers, and another for touchscreen mobile devices. One for trucks, one for cars, to borrow Steve Jobs’s analogy.

[…]

That mindset and development schedule — “What can we do to make this nicer by next year?” — may well be the most important thing from iOS that Apple has taken back to the Mac.

I agree completely. People do not like change. By introducing incremental changes - largely in lock-step with iOS - Mac OS X is becoming a much more friendly experience for users. Many will disagree¹, but I like the approach that Apple is taking with their annual development schedule.