Day: January 24, 2008

New LinkedIn Feature: Viewers Of This Profile Also Viewed

/ Adam Nash / 11 Comments

So, in case you are wondering, this feature was kind of tricky to name. 🙂

Steve Stegman has a post on the LinkedIn blog today announcing a new feature we’re testing, currently dubbed “Viewers of this profile also viewed…”

Steve does a good job explaining the feature. It’s located on the profile page, on the right side. (You have to be signed in, and if you are looking at your own profile, you have to click the link that says “View My Profile as others see it…”) In a nutshell, for this module LinkedIn is showing, in the aggregate, the other profiles that people are most likely to visit if they visited your profile. It sounds simple, but actually there is some significant complexity in cleaning out the data to get a good set of interesting profiles to browse.

I’ve clicked through over a dozen people in the past couple of days, and I continue to be surprised at how well it works. My results are excellent, but given my relatively public role at LinkedIn, I assumed my profile gets enough views to generate good aggregate results.

(In case you are curious, here are the 5 profiles you are most likely to visit if you visited mine, as of today)

Let’s see – Dan is our CEO, Jamie & Allen & I report to Reid, and Elliot is on my team. Definitely not hard to see the connections here. 🙂

As an example of a typical user, let’s look at my mother’s profile:

The first three are pretty obvious, but for some reason, Jonathan isn’t as popular as Elliot or Elizabeth?  Hmmm.  🙂

If I click through to Daniel’s profile, I see the following:

Now that’s 5 for 5!  Brother, sister, mother, brother, wife.

I’m finding that following just this module, I can browse LinkedIn in a really fun, new way.  Some of the results are pretty surprising.  It adds just a bit of serendipity (dare I say it?) into browsing people.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a quick post about the “People You May Know” feature on LinkedIn. This new module is yet another interesting way to look at the ways people are related – this time informed by the millions of clicks that hit LinkedIn every day.

Kudos to Steve and the analytics team for this new, interesting view.

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi (12.2 MegaPixel DSLR)

/ Adam Nash / 5 Comments

Canon launched today the latest successor to their successful line of digital SLR cameras, the Rebel XSi:

Gizmodo: Canon Expands Rebel Alliance With Live View 12-Megapixel EOS XSi

The rumors are true. Canon’s took power features from the high-end EOS models and creature comforts from the PowerShot line, and merged them into the 12.2-megapixel EOS Rebel XSi DSLR, with Live View LCD view-finding (previously only seen on EOS-1D Mark III), a 3″ LCD screen with 230,000 pixels, and the Digic III processor found in nearly every new Canon model. There will be two kits, body only for $800 and one with a starter 18-55mm lens for $900.

After over 6 years with point-and-shoot digital cameras, my friend Eric finally gave me the courage to jump to a full SLR a couple of years ago, and I haven’t looked back.  The pictures are so much clearer, the camera so much more responsive, I can visually see in my photo library the line between my pre & post DSLR days.  I can’t imagine going back – I’d rather just use my cell phone camera for quick shots.

I got the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, which was the 2nd generation.  The XTi moved the bar to 10MP, an updated processor, and some other features, but I could resist the minor upgrade.  The XSi seems pretty compelling, though.

I’ll have to ask Eric about it… 🙂

Yes, You Can Get 1080P out of a Mac Mini

/ Adam Nash / 66 Comments

As I posted last night, I’ve hooked my new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini to a Vizio 42″ 1080P LCD.

If you read the specs at Apple, it says the Mac Mini, with 64MB DRAM driving it’s Intel GMA 950 video, can support a 1920×1200 based resolution on a monitor.  I assumed that this meant it could drive any 1080P display, which is 1920×1080.

It turns out, there are a few hurdles that could get in the way of succeeding in getting a Mac Mini to drive a 1080P TV display.  Some of the hurdles are simple, but one was quite tricky.

Here is the solution, for all those intrepid Mac warriors out there:

  1. Getting the Max Resolution on the Vizio.  The Vizio display says on the box it only supports 1366×768 for computer display.  This turns out to be the onboard limitation for their VGA port.  If you use a DVI to HDMI cable, you can drive the full 1920×1080 through the HDMI port.  I used a 10ft DVI to HDMI gold plated cable from Fry’s.  (Price $19.99)
  2. How to Get Sound on the Vizio.  I bought a cheap 3.5mm Mini Plug to RCA Red/White 6 inch cable (Price: $2.79).  I then used a standard 12ft Red/White RCA Audio cable to plug connect the Mini to the Vizio TV.  The second HDMI port on the Vizio is paired with an auxiliary set of RCA Red/White jacks, seemingly designed for this situation where your HDMI does not actually carry audio.
  3. How to Get 1080P, not 1080i, out of the Mac Mini.  This is the tough one.  When you go to the Displays control panel on the Mac Mini (Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5), you are given lots of video choices.  However, the maximum resolution says 1920×1080 (interlaced) at 60Hz.  What gives?   I’m not sure, but it seems like a bug.  The secret is to enable the checkbox that says “Show displays in menu bar”.  If you do then, a displays icon appears in the menu bar.  Click it to get a drop down menu of all display resolutions.  Interestingly, there are now two 1920×1080 options, which are labeled identically.  Choose the other one!  You’ll now be driving full 1080P (confirmed by the Vizio).

I’ve searched the web, and this issue is tricky enough that lots of people complain about the lack of the ability to drive 1080P from the Mac Mini.  Most of the debates seem to argue that it depends on the TV.  I don’t buy it.  I think the issue is a bug in the Mac OS display detection in DVI/HDMI scenarios that is somehow hiding the 1080P option.  Either that, or the Mac Mini for some reason thinks that 1080P is too much for it for some other reason, and the drop-down menu is missing that filter to remove it from the list.

I’m not going to spend time on the why.  The point is, if you are looking for the how, you just got it.

BTW Leopard is a huge improvement for applications like this.  The improved network browsing and FrontRow application are incredibly well-timed.   It’s going much better than I expected.