July 2003 Archives
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Jul31
Privacy Economics
Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota has released an interesting paper on the discriminatory pricing and the privacy implications. From railroads to Amazon.com, the history of the concept is well covered. -
Jul27
C# and Longhorn
I want to learn C# so I can create some really awesome applications for Longhorn. I have a good knowledge of SQL which should give me a pretty good head start. How do you plan for a platform that is years away when you do not know what tools we be already available and where will there be a niche to fill. I cannot afford to attend PDC, so I will already be behind in the tool development. Regardless of Longhorn, learning some C# seems like a good idea. I am a Java guy, so it should not be too tough. So far Scoble has not been able to convince me why I should start planning something big for this product launch. I would rather use the best of what's out there now, and wait until the Longhorn vapors start to solidify before acting on anything. -
Jul27
FeedDemon
Nick Bradbury has put together a pretty cool RSS aggregator called FeedDemon. Written entirely in Delphi. It's tough to code to .Net when the CLR is over 20 MB. You can bundle a Delphi or Python runtime, but I rather pull off of common libraries. Can a developer ship and require a 20 MB+ required library download? It's tough in the small app world. I would love to roll out something that uses Microsoft's P2P libraries, but I doubt anyone has that installed right now. If you build it, they will come... -
Jul26
Tim O'Reilly speech
Tim O'Reilly gave a great speech here at Gnomedex on open source software. Makes me want to go to Emerging Tech, and some of the other conferences he puts on. -
Jul26
Cute girl for governor
Georgy Russell, a programmer from Mountain View, is running for governor of California. Buy a thong and support her cause! -
Jul25
Gnomdex
Day 2 of Gnomedex and so far so good. Nelson Minar had a good speech on an overview of Google, but was nothing I did not know already. Learning more about AdSense was something new for me. Cost per click and past click relevancy are both used to determine page position. Nelson hopped on IRC for the rest of the day, but I couldn't find him at the Meet the Speakers part of the day. Eric Sink was interesting, and reaffirmed that I want to take a look at C#. Rob Malda was great, and unscripted. Met the wife. They stayed for the Microsoft party but left after some really bad karaoke. Kyle Bennett is a nice guy and definitely knows his stuff. Worth showing up early for. Didn't really enjoy the Microsoft speech. They showed off Halo for PC as well as Gotham Racing 2. Nothing all that new in either of them. Would have liked to see more detail about why my entire music collection should be in WMA instead of MP3 or AAC. -
Jul25
MIT Media Lab's take on corporate integrity
MIT Media Lab has a new geiger counter-style device that scans a barcode and emits noise based on a database query for environmental and corporate ethics. Pretty cool! -
Jul25
MSFT Analysts Day
Today was Microsoft's day-long brieifing of financial analysts. Lots of information out there, and I have not read through or watched any of it yet. Visual Studio 2005 is code named Orcas? Must be a Pacific Northwest thing. I need Whidbey so I can code for Longhorn. -
Jul22
The search for a Tablet camera
I was hoping that the Veo Traveler for Pocket PC would work with my Tablet. After contacting their sales department I find out that no, it will not work. I have a flap over my USB connectors, so even if I did find something like the Paceblade camera I would have to bend back the cover. PC Card slot and CF slot are exposed, so I am trying to find a camera to attach there. -
Jul22
Mobile thoughts
TigerDirect is selling my Compaq TC1000 for $999. I have been questioning how much the Tablet's handwriting recognition abilities matter to me and whether I should sell my Tablet on eBay and buy a Sony VAIO or an IBM ThinkPad instead.
Intel has done a really crappy job marketing their Centrino brand. Most people have no clue that Centrino is a bundle and not a chip. The clock speeds are notably lower than the mobile P4 processor, and the AMD and Apple have already struggled with educating consumers about clock cycles.
Wireless Internet is the driving force for notebook sales in my mind. I explain 802.11 wireless Internet to people by relating it to a cordless phone in your house. If you are within range, your voice travels over radio waves to a base station that passes on that information to a large grid, en route to your final destination. Lots of people want to be able to plop a business laptop anywhere in their house and get their work done. Or lay out in a hammock accessing the corporate Intranet over VPN.
I write software targeted at Microsoft Windows, so I will not be buying a PowerBook any time soon. Plus I get whatever software I need from Microsoft for free or next to nothing.
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Jul21
Creative's new webcam
Creative has a new mobile WebCam with swivel that docks to the top of a laptop screen (or in my case, my Tablet). Smaller than an iSight, but with Windows drivers, and a third of the cost. Still looking for mobile still capture for my Tablet. -
Jul18
Premier Pizza on Saturday Night
Scoble is organizing a meeting at Premier Pizza on Saturday night. I've never eaten anywhere featured on late night TV before. -
Jul18
IBM Tablet, I feel Outdated
Looks like IBM is going to have their own Tablet, with their own handwriting software. Software competition on the base modules could be a very good thing, since I have been frustrated with the handwriting recognition on my Tablet so far. When I write on paper I often realize that I did not make the fourth leg of an "x" quite long enough, so I will go back and elongate the leg. On a Tablet I have not figured out how to concatenate the ink to enforce the "x" and not have it come out as "y". All of my "I"s seem to come out as "T-" as well.
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Jul14
My New Tablet
I have had my new Compaq Tablet PC for a little over a week now. I have an 802.11b network set up at home with 128-bit WEP and MAC address security.
I bring my Tablet to work with me every day. My company is worried about having any devices it has not fully configured hooked up to its network, so I am not able to take advantage of wireless Internet, or any Internet, at work. The best use for my Tablet is loading something on the device and bringing it with me to someone's office to illustrate the code, the document, or the data structure I want to discuss. Instead of asking someone to pull up a document on their computer, I hand them the Tablet with the document already pulled up, and I start walking them through what I want to do.
Handwriting recognition is pretty good. I have read my Tablet stories so it may recognize my voice. I download free eBooks from Microsoft weekly.
I am often asked "Can you only take notes or can you do other things too?" I pull up Office 2003 and show people my cached Outlook mail, calendar, and task lists. I will record a meeting and encode it in WMA just for fun.
The Crusoe seems to be a bit slow, even with 512 MB of RAM. This is my first computer since my Commodore 64 which does not have an Intel processor.
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Jul11
Jerry Springer the next Ohio senator?
Jerry Springer plans to run for Senate in Ohio. Why he has taken bought airtime for 30 minute infomercials in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, San Antonio and New York I have no idea. Seems like a publicity stunt that will not amount to anything. -
Jul10
Work at Google Blogs
Google has a job posting up for a Blogger Programs Coordinator. -
Jul10
UK Hulk is anatomically enhanced
Spanish toymaker Play By Play is supposedly shipping a 12-inch tall Hulk doll with a 2-inch penis according to this article in the Sun. -
Jul01
Self-healing minefield
DARPA has a cool new demo of a self-healing minefield online. The machines will rise...
