TimesSkimmer was very good when it came out. But gradually, it has become very slow and somewhat unusable. I definitely think the Chrome version is much far ahead of the Skimmer. Skimmer used to open the article in an iFrame, which spoils the entire motive of decluttering. There were also needless animations that made it a bit slow. Plus the lack of any social functionality that made sharing articles difficult. I really like that they took care of all of these issues in the Chrome version!
Facebook Platform, Graph API, Like Button, Social Applications - a few truly transformative things that have come out of facebook in the past few years. Saying facebook doesn't innovate is rubbish. Though they do tend to borrow an idea here and there, they have sometimes left it better than they found it (exceptions of Quora and 4sq)
I agree with the poster, but doesn't $150 an hour seem unusually high for a freelance developer? It is equivalent to about $300k yearly - no developer makes that kind of money by programming alone.
How did the authors of the visualization get the checkin data for every venue in SF and NYC? I have been trying to do the same for another project, and it is not supported by foursquare..
Aside from the fact that this guy has produced some decent software, I can't believe that hardware/software configurations of random people is interesting discussion matter.
CORRECTION: Amazon Prime free for anyone with a .edu mail address. I graduated long ago, but my .edu mail address is for life, so I occasionally mooch on these discounts. Too bad I already ponied up for an Amazon Prime this year :|