August 2003 Archives
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Aug31
Robotic Freedom
Marshall Brain has a long but interesting article about what might happen when robotics and automation become as cheap as computers did in the late 1990s. -
Aug31
AppleLore
The Computer History Museum is hosting an event to celebrate Apple Computer's historical contribution to the computer industry. The event is named AppleLore. -
Aug28
Location based services
MIT's Technology review profiles some interesting location based devices and their use. -
Aug27
Tethered by a high-tech leash
MSNBC has a series of articles on "punching the clock in the new economy." Especially interesting to me is Tethered by a high-tech leash. "[P]eople with Web access at home log in and work an extra 5.9 hours per week on average." What causes someone to stay constantly connected? Fear of losing their job? A hope that doing so might single them out as an exceptional employee and get them the bonus, raise, promotion they desire? -
Aug27
O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
I would love to go to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I downloaded most of the audience videos I could find last year and read the write-ups of the speeches. Now to actually place myself in the room and have some great ideas. Call for Participation proposals are due September 24. I will aim towards social software and see where it leads. -
Aug26
Did Blaster Cause the Blackout?
Did Blaster Cause the Blackout? "there is a very good plausibility that the recent East Coast power outage was due to an attack by an MSBlaster variant on the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system at the power plant master terminal, or more likely at several of the remote terminal units (RTUs). SCADA runs under Win2000 / XP and the telemetry to the RTU is accessible via the Internet." -
Aug26
Irish Fat Tax
Reuters covers a move by some to cut down on obesity in Ireland. Cutting Irish alcohol and happy hours seems like a very dangerous endeavour for any politician. -
Aug26
Microsoft's Big Role on Campus
Washington Post covers the molding of campus curriculum by Microsoft. Any language where the IDE is not free or relatively cheap to students will stifle learning. In one of my econometrics classes at UCLA students were offered scaled down versions of Stata for $50. I do not know one person who purchased the program for use at home. The professors were bound by lab hours and available workstations and their curriculum suffered as a result. Visual Studio .Net 2003 Academic is $100 at the UCLA Store. Visual C# .Net is $60. Yes, you could have students write in Notepad, vi, or Emacs, but I have yet to it happen on a college campus. -
Aug25
Java is a language, .NET is not
Philip Brittan writes that Java is a language, .NET is not. -
Aug25
Soccer Conditioning
I just bought Sigi Schmid's book on soccer conditioning. Looks like I will have to wait until October 25 until I get it autographed. It should come in handy as a refresher as I work towards my coaching license. -
Aug25
The Ghost in Your Machine
Business Week interview with Chris Forsythe of Sandia about cognitive machines. The Sandia news release is pretty interesting as well. -
Aug25
Community Books
There is a local San Francisco project where people can share books and videos. "The Distributed Library Project is an experiment in sharing information and building community in the San Francisco Bay Area." Seems interesting and worth checking out. I posted most of my books online tonight. It was pretty simple to enter a ISBN and have the author, genre, and even a review from Amazon filled out for you. -
Aug25
WiFi in retail business
Today's New York Times covers the use of wireless technology to improve retail experiences. -
Aug25
Toyota Prius parks itself
Toyota plans to release an optional feature for its Prius cars sold in Japan, according to Wired coverage. "A car will probably always require a driver for liability reasons." A lot of people are uncomfortable with parallel parking, especially in tight spots, or a spot on the driver's side. Although the article mentions the price tag as a downfall, I know some people who pay for a parking spot just so they do not have to parallel park. -
Aug23
FeedDemon gets top mark
ExtremeTech reviewed 6 RSS readers and gave FeedDemon the top mark (8 out of 10). "the Cadillac of RSS readers." Congrats Nick! I am a regular user and even mentioned the product in Spider Hacks. I should participate more in the newsgroups to make this a really good app. -
Aug23
James Gosling: on the Java road...
James Gosling : One of the nice things about developing in Java on the MAC is that you get to develop on a lovely machine. I thought James would be using something like the SPARCLE. -
Aug23
Henry Hunan Weblogger Dinner
Anyone for a Chinese dinner at Henry Hunan's next Saturday? So far it looks like at least Dave Winer and Scoble will be there. -
Aug20
Career Calculus
Eric Sink has some really good analysis of looking at acquired knowledge over a career span.
I agree that learning over time is vitally important, there needs to be someone there to realize the value of your cluefulness.
There are also free ways to increase cluefulness.
- I look to user groups and their SIGs. Java user group, Microsoft regional site. If you are interested in more San Francisco Bay area resources let me know.
- I check out conferences in the area I may be able to browse during a lunch break or an evening. Exhibition passes and keynotes are usually free and some sessions are easy enough to sneak into without the expensive passes.
- Read through the source code of a respected open source software project. Look for both style and content. Sourceforge is a good starting point.
- Loiter at Borders. Most big bookstores now have a cafe where you can sit down and drink some coffee while you read about a new concept that interests you. I wanted to learn about Acrobat SDKs but did not want to buy a book, so I spent an afternoon at Borders instead. Yeah, it's pretty nerdy, but I at least fill semi-social because there are other people bustling about.
- Network to find fans of your cluefulness. It is nice to have people to bounce ideas off of and hopefully they may know a way for you to capitalize on your skills.
- Be the boss of something. It's easy to be bitter at managers always holding you down. I started my own sporting goods business because I wanted to have absolute control over something. I learned a lot about what it takes to run a business and I now have management experience without waiting for someone to promote me.
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Aug19
Motion Hardtop Keyboard
Motion Computing has a new keyboard available that allows for a docked slate. Looks more flimsy than my Compaq dock, but much better than the standalone keyboard. Last month on a flight from Chicago I sat next to someone with an M1300. We compared Tablets, what we look for in a notebook, and our frustrations with the first generation technology. He was playing a balancing act with his keyboard propping up his slate as it moved around. I envied his 12.1" screen and he envied my battery life and dock. I just lost my dock edge. -
Aug19
Higher level programming
Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about the current state of programming. Languages seem to be more and more designed for high level interaction with the heavy lifting done at the compiler level. This allows for bad programmers to not do things that will be too harmful. At the same time it allows for sloppy and imprecise code. Most people do not consider clock cycles, memory usage, or disc usage writing code or designing a database. Embedded systems like a cell phone may be different. The use of an int to store a Gregorian year value. String versus StringBuffer. Tagging your garbage for collection. Efficient code is lost and instead there are now a small number of advanced programmers trying to optimize within their distributed compiler. There is now code generating code and WYSIWYG GUI editors. Just as HTML coding has splintered into those who code by hand and work out the smallest footprint, the same might hopefully happen. Fight for your byte! -
Aug18
Secret blog
Chris Pirillo has a secret section of his site up. Same content as his normal weblog, just with a different background. -
Aug16
Heather Mitts
Heather Mitts has a pictorial in this month's FHM magazine. For those of you not keeping track, last year the WUSA put together modelling packages for a select few women and shopped them around to men's magazines. Although none of the women were featured in Playboy, Heather won the Playboy Online poll for sexiest WUSA player. The FHM shots look mostly the same, just with different outfits. I think Heather looks more sexy in her soccer gear, but that must just be my weird fetish. -
Aug15
Crash Different
I found an Apple testimonial video that had me rolling in my cube. If you are a member of the Mac cult, you may be offended. Otherwise, laugh your ass off. -
Aug14
Spidering Hacks
I have been busy over the past week writing for a new O'Reilly book. Look for me in chapter 4 a to be released book named Spidering Hacks, part of the O'Reilly Hack Series.
Interestingly enough I was the only person to author to use Java. I have a feeling this is going to be a book full of a lot of Perl. There is only one Python example.
I wrote a hack that gathers data about Alexa toolbar users traffic to your Web property on a daily basis. Alexa collects subdomain information as well as property rankings, and I grabbed it all. The information is then saved to an RSS feed.
After speaking with Tim O'Reilly at Gnomedex I had a pretty good understanding of some of his frustrations with usage data. So I am hoping O'Reilly & Associates can use my code internally and also sell more books.
I wrote a total of 5 classes, which is too large to stick in the book. So the entire source code will be on the O'Reilly Web site for everyone to play with.
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Aug12
Blog from a Smartphone
News.com reports that the new Mio 8380 phone from Mitac will "keep a diary." Sounds like a blog to me! -
Aug07
Pick your own college roommate
NY Times profiles some interesting roommate matching programs. I wonder how long until similar ideas make it out into the apartment or house sharing worlds? Most of San Francisco relies on Craig's List for apartment listings, and some sort of profile matching system would be very welcome! -
Aug07
TypePad is expensive
I like TypePad, but wow it is expensive! $50 a year is about what I paid for Blogger Pro and BlogSpot. Blogger Pro is supposed to have a lot of new features and I am supposed to be lucky to have gotten in at the price I did. It has Google magic now as well. I like being able to edit the HTML of my template. This feature allows me to put in things like AIM Remote and Yahoo!'s button. To do the same I would have to use TypePad Pro and pay $150 a year. Domain mapping would be very good as I currently have a URL redirect on niallkennedy.com to my blog. Trackback is great because I always feel like no one is reading this. Tom Bridge is offering 20% off codes. $72 for a year. Tempting, but I already have my Blogger investment. Six Apart might have a good marketing campaign on its hands if it offers a competitive upgrade. I might try the trial plan tomorrow. -
Aug06
PDC
Can't afford it. My current company has no idea what makes Yukon better than database XYZ from 1991. PDC would be an investment in my personal future in the software and database development industry. Will I still be working at my company in 2005? Probably not. I will still be affected by the 800 pound gorilla's new toolsets that change the software development landscape.
I could drive the 400 miles to the show and take vacation days from work ($80 + 5 vacation days). I could sleep on a friend's couch ($0). I could pay $10 a day for parking at the convention center ($30). The networking is priceless. The DVDs will eventually surface. I am sure I will learn a lot and be hyped to develop in the Microsoft sharecropping universe. I just cannot place the actual hard cash ROI.
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Aug06
Phish for free using iMac
Last weekend Phish headlined the It Festival in Maine. They set up a 100,000-watt radio station and hooked up their fans with a CD-R and a selection of 150 live tracks to choose from. Now that Pearl Jam has left Epic, I wonder if they will do something similar? Very cool. "In addition to performing, the band set up a tent where fans could make their own free custom mix CD of live Phish tracks with iTunes. The tent ran at full capacity, with lines outside until 4AM each night." -
Aug05
Larry King and Howard Dean
CNN has a full transcript of last night's Larry King interview with Howard Dean online. I think King was inappropriately dragged on the gay marriage issue. Dean stated marriage is a religious ceremony, and Vermont had enacted equal rights for gays, but not termed it marriage. Favorite quote : "That's how you beat a president who can get as many $2,000 checks as he wants, is to bring three or four million new people into the process, give them a reason to vote, and then you can beat George Bush." -
Aug05
Howl for a Rendezvous
Howl is an implementation of Zeroconf (popularized as Apple's Rendezvous) for Windows and Linux platforms. -
Aug04
Bentley College on Tablets
Bentley College has a marketing class focused on Tablet PCs, profiled in today's Boston Globe. "Because it lacks the capability to show DVDs, the introductory version of the Tablet failed to ''match student lifestyles outside the classroom,'' in the words of the Bentley project's first research report. Subsequent versions of the Tablet are being designed to accommodate DVDs." Will slate models ever contain DVDs or is the added weight not worth it? It makes sense for a Tablet similar to the Toshiba, which is essentially a regular notebook computer with a swivel screen. I do not want a desktop replacement. I want a desktop complement. It should have sufficient speed running one or two applications: such as Windows Media Player playing an MP3 or streaming a radio feed and typing in Microsoft Word or scrolling PDFs in Adobe Reader. Battery life matters, especially as the proliferation of WiFi and my hunger to use it cuts my normal usage battery life in half. Weight matters most to me. There are a lot of feature packed notebooks out there weighing in at around 10 pounds. Compare that to a 12" Ti PowerBook at 4.6 pounds or my Tablet at 3 pounds. Adding DVD functionality is simple at the docking station, where power is not an issue. Too bad my docking station costs $300 and is proprietary. -
Aug01
Readily available technology
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Aug01
Tablets as a readily awaiting business tool
The Seattle Times has an article today about Tablet PCs used in the luxury suites of Mariners' games for food ordering, updated score charts, and on-demand instant replay. "The laptoplike Tablet PCs can be loaded before each game with special messages for clients, PowerPoint slide presentations and contracts that are ready to sign with a stylus." Cursivecode is leading the initiative.
