The Freakonomics blog, launched two years ago by the authors of the book, Freakonomics (Amazon.com link), has moved to NYTimes.com — geez, first Fake Steve Jobs moves to Forbes.com and now this.

Stephen Dubner, one of the book’s authors, used to be a writer and editor at the NY Times magazine and the book started as a magazine profile of Steven Levitt, the University of Chicago economics professor who is the books other author. Since the publication of the book, the NY Times magazine has also run a column called, duh, Freakonomics.

Perhaps I missed an earlier announcement, but there is no information in Dubner’s post regarding whether or not the blog was “purchased” or anything regarding why the blog is now a part of the NYTimes.com domain.

I assume the reason is money, however, as I’ve read the book Freakonomics, I know that sometimes the apparent cause of something isn’t the actual cause. However, I am going to go out on a limb and speculate there’s some correlation between the authors receiving some amount money and their blog moving to its new location.

Be sure to check out the video section for Levitt’s comments on how a blog is different from academic writing — and how, sometimes, it’s not.

(Thanks, Lewis.)

Via Engadget, today’s Steve Jobs Show reveals some new thinner, sleeker iMacs.

Also, a .Mac feature called .Mac Web Gallery that marries “.Mac and iPhoto” — iPhoto “08″ has some enhancements also. Jobs says, according to Engadget, that “users will get a rich Web 2.0 experience.” (ugh). As I am a long-time .Mac subscriber who has always wondered why. This sounds — conceptually, at least, like an attempt to add Flickr-like features to it. There’s much more mojo to Flickr than mere display of photos, so I’d hesitate to suggest there is the least bit of threat to that service. Even if I use .Mac Photo Gallery, I can’t see it replacing what I do on Flickr.

Later: As it requires an iPhoto ‘08 upgrade to use, I’ll be delaying my experimentation. However, the video on Apple.com provides a preview of an impressive way to post and share photos and videos. Doubt they’ll have the ‘community’ aspects of Flickr, but the user interface and animated commands are very iPhone/iPod-like. Like on iTunes album-flipping feature, you can sweep through dozens of photos. Also, you can post to .Mac and then view on an iPhone — a significant feature. For the “first month of iPhone,” “streaming” video via iPhone has been limited to a sub-set of YouTube — and there was no way to upload to YouTube and be guaranteed that your video would show up — unless, say, you threw an iPhone in a blender. This indicates that “streaming” will be coming to the iPhone in a myriad of ways.

Later II: I was just thinking back that a base-model Mac in 1984 (my first Mac) cost $2,495 (the equivalent of $5,000 in 2007 dollars*) for a computer with processing speed of 8MHz and 128 K of memory (I bought lots of floppy disks).

The base model of the iMac announced today costs $1,200 and has 2.0 GHz of processing speed and 250 GB of memory (hard disk storage).

More staggering (to me, at least) is the ability to purchase a tricked-out iMac for about $3,500 that has 2.4 GHz of processing speed and 1 TB of memory (storage). In 1984, such a machine would have cost, what, millions? I’m out of my league here, but for any hardware geek out there, how does today’s desktop iMac compare with a “supercomputer” of 1984 — say, a Cray X-MP, in terms of memory/processing?

There are textbooks of economic principles and laws packed into the evolution of the desktop Macintosh as it is one of the few consumer computer hardware product lines that has been in the marketplace for 23 years using the same (Mac) brand. Lots of classroom fodder related to principles related price / performance / demand / scale / efficiency / competition / productivity / innovation.

*In 1984, a Mac retailed for $2,495. According to this ‘cost-of-living’ calculator on the American Institute for Economic Research website, the rate of inflation reflected int he US. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index estimates that $2,495 in 1984 is equivalent to $4,939.57 today.

This post is a recurring feature on the decisions wire service headline writers make. I just ran across these back-to-back headlines in my newsreader:

Reuters - “Productivity slows“

AP - “Productivity rebounds“