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'Friday the 13th' scores largest horror-film debut (Article 1)

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By John P. Johnson, Warner Bros. Pictures
Friday the 13th, starring Jared Padalecki, earned $42.4 million this weekend.
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By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
Friday the 13th scared up the largest debut on record for a horror film, taking in $42.4 million this weekend, according to studio estimates from box office tracking firm Media By Numbers.

The debut was $17 million more than many analysts projected and trounced the record held by 2004's The Grudge, the previous highest-opening horror film with $39 million.

TOP 10 FILMS: See how your favorites fared at the multiplex

The 12th film to spring from the 1980 original is good news for studios rushing to reboot classic horror titles. Remakes of A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Wolf Man and The Last House on the Left are headed to the big screen.

The romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You was second with $19.6 million, bringing its 10-day total to $55.1 million.

The thriller Taken also held well, taking third place with $19.3 million. The Liam Neeson picture has done $77.9 million in three weeks.

The Isla Fisher comedy Confessions of a Shopaholic met most expectations with $15.4 million, good for fourth place, while the animated Coraline took $15.3 million and fifth place.

The only other major newcomer, Clive Owen's political thriller The International, was seventh with $10 million, meeting most projections.

Ticket sales surged 28% over last weekend and 43% over the same weekend last year.

Final figures are due Tuesday because of the Presidents Day weekend.



Google Sets Its Sights On Your Sight(Article 2)
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by Mark Hendrickson on February 6, 2009

Google has published a bit of an insider’s look on how the company conducts eye-tracking studies to evaluate the effectiveness of its search results.

In addition to holding interviews, field studies and live experiments to improve the usability of its products, Google has special hardware and software that tracks test participants’ eyeballs as they scan results for the perfect link.

The official blog post doesn’t detail any groundbreaking discoveries that have been produced by this testing technique. It sounds as though it has mostly helped Google confirm the obvious: that the first few results it returns are indeed usually the most relevant, and its so-called “universal search” effort (where it mixes rich media results like images and video thumbnails among the standard text results) doesn’t distract users too much but has actually proven rather useful.

Perhaps most intriguing is the following video provided by Google that shows how quickly users glance around result pages:

The bigger the dot, the longer the person sat looking at a particular part of the page.

This heatmap-like image, which is named the “golden triangle”, also suggests that people spend a lot more time evaluating the whole results at the top of the page than the ones further down.

For more, see our previous coverage of Google’s usability lab.



(Article 3)
CHARLESTON, TEXAS. Charleston is on Farm Road 895 some nine miles east of Cooper in southeastern Delta County. It is bordered by Evans Branch on the east and McGuyer Branch on the west. The area, originally part of the D. A. Sey Survey, was within Hopkins County until Delta County was formed in 1870. Settlers in 1854 traveled from Charleston, South Carolina, and named the site for their former home. Local residents exploited the abundance of oak and elm trees, and the first local industry was hardwood lumbering. In 1857 a post office opened at the community, with Zachariah R. Terrell as postmaster. In 1861, during the Civil War,qv local citizens organized the first Texas militia brigade and chose to fight for the Confederacy. The Charleston school district was organized in 1867. When Delta County and its county seat, Cooper, were established in 1870, the new shipping center attracted much of Charleston's business. In 1884 Charleston had 250 residents, three cotton gins, several stores, two wagonmaking enterprises, a flour mill, a sawmill, a gristmill, a church, and a school. In 1890 mail was delivered triweekly from Paris. The population of Charleston had increased to 400 by 1892, when the community also had a weekly newspaper, the News, and a new municipal government. From 1892 to 1897 A. J. Street conducted a teacher-training school in the community. In 1904 the town had 183 inhabitants. Near Charleston, on May 19, 1910, a 500-pound meteorite fell to earth during the passage of Halley's Comet, bringing some publicity to the community. In the 1920s and 1930s Charleston reported a population of 225, a school, a church, a cemetery, and five or six businesses, including a factory. In 1930 the local school was merged with the Vasco, Cleveland, and Long Ridge districts. Ten years later the school was in East Delta Number 2 District. By 1950 Charleston's population was 150. A 1964 map showed two churches, a cemetery, and a cluster of dwellings at the site on Farm Road 895. By 1970 local children attended classes within the Cooper Independent School District. The Charleston post office closed in 1972. By 1976 area residents had built the Charleston Community Center. In 2000 the community's population was 120.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cooper Review, April 8, 1976. Paul Garland Hervey, A History of Education in Delta County, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1951). Wilma Ross and Billie Phillips, Photos and Tales of Delta County (1976).

Vista K. McCroskey
Directions:
Cooper, Tx on W Dallas Ave go toward SW 1st st-go 0.6 mi
Continue on TX-154-go 0.8 mi
Bear L on FM-1529-go 3.7 mi
Turn L on TEXAS HIGHWAY 199(TX-19)-go 1.2 mi
Turn R on FM-895-go t.7 mi
Arrive at the center of Charleston, Tx
or
Lake Creek, Texas
starting in Lake Creek, TX on Fm-198-go 7.0 mi
Turn R on Fm-895-go 1.9 mi
Arrive at the center of Charleston, TX


Inhabitat(Article 4)

February 16, 2009
MOD.FAB: Stunning Prefab by the School of Frank Lloyd Wright
by Evelyn Lee

Frank Lloyd Wright meets modern day prefab in the stunning Mod.Fab home, developed by students at Taliesin West in collaboration with their Dean Victor Sidy and Inhabitat favorite Jennifer Siegal. The goal of the collaboration was to build a prototype prefab conducive to elegant and sustainable living within the heart of the desert landscape. It only took a single picture for us to become instantaneous fans, and from passive solar design to photovoltaic panels and SIPs we’re thoroughly impressed with the project’s sustainable elements.

The Mod.Fab prefab runs a modest 960 feet and currently stands nearly completed on the campus grounds at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture Taliesin West, located just outside of Phoenix, AZ. Sourcing suppliers local to the area, the Taliesin team decided to go with SIPs (structural insulated panels) for the surrounding structure of the Prairie Mod, which allowed them to cut down on on-site construction time while reducing construction waste.

In addition to the SIP skin, the project will use a combination of passive and active environmental control systems including natural ventilation and lighting, and a gray water recycling system along with water catchment. Solar panels are installed adjacent to the bedroom, providing both privacy and power to the project while keeping costs down since the panels did not have to get integrated into the roof. The hope is that the structure will be entirely self sufficient in the end.

The project, entirely built by the students, now sits nearly complete furnished with furniture borrowed from Design Within Reach.

+ Taliesin West

Via PrarieMod

All photos ©2009 Bill Timmerman

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