After finishing the fourth month of my goal to publish a daily website, I thought it would be fun to again share the monthly statistics. Past stats can be found for January, February, and March. Visitor information is given for both April and the cumulative totals for 2012. Page views, unique visitors, and international traffic all saw significant gains.

Most Visited Posts

• Sticking With Dropbox
• Follow-Up On “Sticking With Dropbox
• Storm Spotter 3.0 Review
• Nike+ FuelBand Review
• Blogging With Second Crack

Most Visited Linked Posts

• A Faster Fourier Transform
• This Is How Much It Costs To Own A Vagina
• The Youngest Lego Master
• I’m Comic Sans
• Apple’s Second Quarter Financial Results

Visitors

• 11,245 page views (768% increase; 14,616 for 2012)
• 8,758 unique visitors (8,660 new to site; 9,625 for 2012)
• 75% visits were from U.S., including all 50 States + D.C.
• International traffic exploded, with Germany, U.K., and Canada comprising 17% of visits.

Platforms

• Windows (62%, up from 30%)
• Macintosh (29%, down from 64%)
• Linux (9%, up from 6%)

Browsers

• Chrome (34%, up from 32%)
• Firefox (28%, up from 18%)
• Safari and WebKit (14%, down from 30%)
• Internet Explorer (14%, up from 6%)
• Mobile Safari (3%, up from 2%)
• Other (10%)

In April, professional obligations limited a few stories that I had hoped to post. They included the story of how I lost 110 lbs. and my first 60 days of using the Nike+ Fuelband. I will publish those in May. In addition, I will also share my journey of completing a marathon with my wife - which I kept quiet about during training (I didn’t want to jinx myself). Perhaps I will even share a few popular workflows I use when writing academic papers. I am still working on adding search capabilities and cleaner URLs for paginated content, both of which should be completed shortly.

April was the busiest month so far this year in terms of correspondence with readers. Thanks to everyone who has visited the site and offered feedback via Facebook, Twitter, and email. I am continually amazed at the audience’s clever and thoughtful comments - engaging me in viewpoints that I might otherwise fail to consider. I look forward to yet another month of sharing and hope that May will offer an abundance of interesting material. If you have any suggestions or comments, do get in touch or feel free to follow me.

Presented by the ever awesome McSweeney’s is a monologue by Comic Sans - the always polarizing typeface. It is equally entertaining as it is not-suitable-for work. Enjoy.

Adam Mann, Wired.com:

Opening on the ISS cupola, the largest window ever used in space, the video takes you on board the station, showing you what the astronauts see each day. The scenes fly over oceans, continents, lakes, and rivers, showing off beautiful cloudbanks and cities at night.

Is it too late to be an astronaut?

Chris Ziegler, The Verge, offers a look at the original Google Phone prototype:

Exact specs for those first concepts aren’t detailed, but Google does spell out what it had in mind for the least common denominator across Android devices. An ARMv9 processor of at least 200MHz, GSM (3G preferred), 64MB of RAM and ROM, miniSD (yes, mini, not micro) external storage, a 2-megapixel camera with a dedicated shutter button, USB support, Bluetooth 1.2, and a QVGA display with at least 16-bit color support — a far cry from today’s 720p screens. At that time, touchscreen support wasn’t a requirement — in fact, the baseline specs required two soft menu keys, indicating that touchscreens weren’t really in the plan at all.

I’m sure touchscreens were not in the plans - their support only became a requirement once the iPhone was launched in 2007.

It is still an interesting design and shows how far phone design has evolved over the past six years.

Mark Anderson, Technology Review:

In the mid-1960s, a computer-friendly algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT) was developed. Anyone who’s marveled at the tiny size of an MP3 file compared with the same recording in an uncompressed form has seen the power of the FFT at work.

With the new algorithm, called the sparse Fourier transform (SFT), streams of data can be processed 10 to 100 times faster than was possible with the FFT.

I’m sure many of meteorology colleagues would be interested in this new algorithm (if they haven’t already played with it yet).

In my day job, I numerically simulate atmospheric boundary layer flows. The spectral density (energy per unit wavenumber) of a variable offers an important window into how well the model reproduces the cascade of energy from large to small scales. To calculate the spectral density requires use of the FFT algorithm.

As an example, I recently conducted simulations on a numerical grid with size 512x512x100 points, over a window of twelve hours, with data collected every one minute. To calculate the one-dimensional spectral density, I take the FFT in the along-wind direction, that is to say, over 512 points. The sum of all FFTs are averaged in the cross-wind direction. This is repeated for every vertical level and at every time.

In short, to calculate the spectral density of one variable for the entire simulation requires using the FFT over 36.8 million times. I generally do these computations for six variables, meaning the FFT is needed over 221 million times! Needless to say, this can be rather time consuming. The promise of a new FFT algorithm that is 10 to 100 times faster than traditional methods is welcomed. I look forward to testing this out in the future.

On Tuesday this week, Google announced Drive, a personal cloud storage system. I was intrigued by the offering, but a quick perusal through the Terms of Service left me uneasy. So, I wrote a quick post comparing similar terms from Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive. Based on feedback from some readers, I felt the post required a follow-up for clarification.

It wasn’t my intention to selectively parse Terms of Service in order to frame some personal worldview of technology companies. I write in a terse manner and leave a lot of reading to the user. If people often think that I could say more, then they are probably right. My style, however, is to introduce people to interesting topics, briefly mention my thoughts, and then let them form their own opinions. I don’t wish to misguide or preach to my readers. In short, I simply hope to start conversations.

Many people have relayed that each company’s Terms of Service “all say the same thing.” This is largely true. Let’s look at a few phrases.

Dropbox

We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at your direction. This includes product features visible to you, for example, image thumbnails or document previews. It also includes design choices we make to technically administer our Services, for example, how we redundantly backup data to keep it safe. You give us the permissions we need to do those things solely to provide the Services.

Microsoft SkyDrive

You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service.

Google

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.

These all say the same thing. Each company requires permission from you in order to operate their respective service. For instance, without these terms, they would be unable to move your files in their system, work to efficiently store your data, display thumbnails, or share content with your friends. They are reasonable requests so that you can use the service as expected.

It wasn’t my contention that the terms differed in this way, although it is my fault that people were confused. I was partially wrong when I said:

I am not too thrilled with the idea of giving Google (and their unnamed associates) a worldwide license to create and own derivative works of my content. Especially when that content could contain sensitive information. It is an easy choice to stick with Dropbox.

I was wrong in my use of the phrase “derivative works” because it was presented in a context that implied Google alone was copying user data to do with whatever they like. The truth is that Google simply used more legally-descriptive terms than other companies. By “derivative works”, Google merely means that they require the ability to modify your work for particular purposes, such as generating thumbnails or similar. That is a practice all of the above companies employ.

However, there is one distinct difference in Google’s Terms of Service:

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.

What does Google mean by promoting? Can they use your content in an ad for their services? Would they? Probably not, but their language is vague enough to allow it. Similarly, I have a problem with Google not clarifying what they mean by “and those we work with.” Given that Google is an advertising company whose main customers are advertisers, it would be prudent to further explain what they mean.

The problem that Google faces is that they have one Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that span all of their products. That is an issue when the purpose of those products conflict. Take for instance YouTube. Users upload videos with the sole purpose of publicizing their content. On the other hand, Drive can serve as a place where people store content intended to remain private. When the same set of permissions are granted to Google for both services, people become uneasy.

Perhaps the largest unanswered question revolves around whether Google will index the contents of your personal Drive in order to facilitate targeted ads or similar. Many have pointed to the following clause in the Privacy Policy to alleviate such fears:

We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy.

Sounds great, right? They will ask for your permission. The problem is that delivering targeted ads is directly stated as a purpose in the Privacy Policy. That means no permission is needed to index your private Drive contents in order to improve personalized advertisements:

We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads.

To reiterate, I do not think Google has malicious intent with its Drive service. It is just another service to lure customers to their platform. That said, Google has one Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that applies site wide. Such practice fosters a vagueness that leaves some users uncomfortable. Google Drive has served as a stress test for the Terms of Service - a test that has elucidated several concerns.

My post was meant to highlight those concerns, not to selectively paint Google in a negative light. My phrase “It is an easy choice to stick with Dropbox” was short and perhaps deserved more explanation. It is an easy choice because Dropbox is a one-trick pony, it has years of reliable service, and they have never given me pause to trust their company. The same cannot be said for Google. Given the vagueness of Google’s Terms of Service, I simply choose not to upload personal content to Drive. That choice was easy and it was based on principle.

If you have any comments or found the article helpful, you may wish to follow me on Twitter or shoot me an email.

Forrest Wickman, Slate.com, on the storage potential of human brains:

Most computational neuroscientists tend to estimate human storage capacity somewhere between 10 terabytes and 100 terabytes, though the full spectrum of guesses ranges from 1 terabyte to 2.5 petabytes.

And processing power:

It may be best to say that the brain is a much more powerful machine made up of much slower processors. Each neuron seems to have a “clock speed” on the order of kilohertz, which are a million times slower than gigahertz. (A smartphone’s processor speed is around 1 gigahertz.) For this reason, computers are often much faster at completing specialized tasks, even though they can’t replicate all the varied functions of the human brain.

Yeah, but is it a Mac or PC?

Today, Google announced Drive, a personal cloud storage service. It is supposed to integrate tightly with Google products and serve as a competitor to Dropbox¹ or Microsoft’s SkyDrive. It sounds pretty cool with affordable pricing.

However, a quick comparison of the Terms of Service for each company tempered my enthusiasm.

Dropbox

By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below. … To be clear, aside from the rare exceptions we identify in our Privacy Policy, no matter how the Services change, we won’t share your content with others, including law enforcement, for any purpose unless you direct us to.

Microsoft SkyDrive

Except for material that we license to you, we don’t claim ownership of the content you provide on the service. Your content remains your content. We also don’t control, verify, or endorse the content that you and others make available on the service.

Google Drive

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services.

I am not too thrilled with the idea of giving Google (and their unnamed associates) a worldwide license to create and own derivative works of my content. Especially when that content could contain sensitive information. It is an easy choice to stick with Dropbox.

Update: Please read this follow-up where I expand on this post in order to clarify a few things.

Today, Apple released financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2012. The results are a very successful follow-up to the record-setting first quarter of 2012.

The Numbers

• Revenue was $39.2 billion, an increase of 59% year-over-year
• Profit was $11.6 billion, an increase of 93% year-over-year
• Earnings per share were $12.30, an increase of 92% year-over-year
• Cash flow was increased by $14 billion
• Gross margin was an amazing 47.4%, up from 41.4% year-over-year

iPhone

Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, representing an increase of 88% year-over-year. The iPhone accounted for $22.7 billion in revenue, increased by 85% year-over-year, and comprised 58% of the total quarterly revenue. They probably would have done better if it weren’t for the “disappointing” iPhone 4S.

iPad

Apple sold 11.8 million iPads in the quarter, a mind-boggling increase of 151% year-over-year. The iPad accounted for $6.6 billion in revenue, increased 132% year-over-year, and comprised 17% of the quarterly revenue. Not bad for a device that only tools buy.

iPod

The one slumping product line was iPod. Year-over-year sales dropped 15% to 7.7 million units, with iPod touch comprising around 3-4 million.¹ People are simply buying devices with built-in iPod functionality instead of stand-alone devices.

Mac

Apple sold 4 millions Macs - 1.2 million desktops and 2.8 million laptops - representing a 7% year-over-year increase. This is the 24th consecutive quarter - or 6th straight year - that Apple has outpaced the PC market.

Apple TV

The Apple TV numbers were not mentioned.

Take-aways

Apple nearly doubled its profits year-over-year. The company’s gross margin is nearly 50%. Apple’s cash-on-hand is over $110 billion now - alone worth more than only 35 companies in the world. Their market cap is over $522 billion.

The iPad grew by over 151% year-over-year and iPhone sales nearly doubled. Apple has now sold a combined 365 million iOS devices and currently has over 125 million iCloud users. On top of that, iTunes revenue was up nearly 35%.

To state things clearly, Apple is on top of the world. They are making tons of money. The company is growing their user-base and creating an ever-improving integrated experience. How long will it last? Who knows? One thing is clear, Apple just shot the Law of Large Numbers to hell.

Seattle-based technology company, Planetary Resources, Inc.:

Planetary Resources, Inc. announced today its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals. Through the development of cost-effective exploration technologies, the company is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible.

Resource extraction from asteroids will deliver multiple benefits to humanity and grow to be valued at tens of billions of dollars annually. The effort will tap into the high concentration of precious metals found on asteroids and provide a sustainable supply to the ever-growing population on Earth.

The company is backed by several notable adventure capitalists, including Larry Page and Eric Schmidt (Google), James Cameron (director), Peter H. Diamandis, M.D. (Founder of X Prize), and Ross Perot, Jr. (rich dude).

I am excited to see what comes from this venture - especially since our government doesn’t deem science very important.