September 2003 Archives
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Sep30
Yahoo! Search IMVironment
Yahoo! now has a Yahoo! Search IMVironment for its instant messaging client. Include a yellow page search, a map, news, whatever, and it shows up alongside your IM conversation. -
Sep30
The Meeting Place
The Meeting Place is a dating system using computer kiosks placed in large nightclubs and social venues. Rocky Mountain News has a detailed article on the concept. I like the ideas of clubs and bars listing themselves on Friendster and patrons add their regular hangout as part of their network. It works especially well if the bar serves a specific demographic such as bikers, lesbians, or heavy techno lovers. -
Sep30
Tech Job Certifications That Still Matter
Newsfactor has a special report on Tech-Job Certifications That Still Matter. I wonder if Java is one of the over-supplied certs. -
Sep29
Megaman vs Metroid
Megaman vs Metroid Flash game. I own a top-loading NES and just bought a bunch of new games. Now you can play a new game in Flash too... -
Sep29
Wall Street Journal : What Doomed the WUSA
Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Allen Barra. His focus is on building the game from the grassroots, like minor league baseball, instead of focusing on big market plays like the NBA. I agree. I have had a similar conversation with Dave Oster, GM of the Lake Elsinore Storm. They are successful by creating an experience. They work with the local community, and secure promotional partnerships. Corporate sponsorships are all over the stadium and the sponsors are treated well. Merchandising gives small teams a competitive edge and forces creativity. -
Sep29
John Wolyniec's goal
I just saw John Wolyniec's goal against the Columbus Crew on September 20. Wow. ( Windows Media | Real Video )
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Sep29
Interview with Google News creator Krishna Bharat
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Sep28
Alaska Airlines marketing
Alaska Airlines has a new parody site online. It speaks to people's frustrations with flying and leaves subtle clues that Alaska Air is different. They even take a shot at Greyhound. -
Sep27
Google filesystem
Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, and Shun-Tak Leung have authored a whitepaper on the custom Google File System. -
Sep26
Nick Rimando Suffers Torn Left ACL
"D.C. United announced today that an MRI exam performed today on Nick Rimando revealed that the goalkeeper has a torn left ACL. Rimando will undergo surgery next week and is expected to miss the remainder of the 2003 MLS season." Nick blocked a penalty kick earlier in the game. Tough luck Nacho. Gotta be a soldier. -
Sep26
Spidering Hacks available for pre-order on Amazon.com
Spidering Hacks is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. 304 pages. Scheduled release is on November 1. -
Sep26
Blogging as a personal research tool
This week I was introduced to a new use for my blog : people trying to find out more about me. I was having some Beamish after soccer practice on Wednesday and some of my players knew things about me that I had never mentioned to anyone on the team. Today I checked my logs and I had about 11 unique visitors from my Yahoo! profile. (I use Yahoo mail as a social account) A few people I work with read my blog. One person was introduced to RSS for the first time today and I helped point him to some feeds. Does my weblog define me? Not really. I write about what I think people are interested in reading. Search engines account for about 50% of my referrals. Sports and gadgets are the popular topics. I judge how well I am engaging a community by reading my comments. So why are you here? -
Sep26
Segways voluntarily recalled
Segway is recalling its human transporters for a software upgrage. If the batteries are near the end of charge you may fall. The software fix will probably decrease the allowed battery life. I assume all transporters are recalled, and Segway estimates 6,000 units. Are there only 6,000 Segways in the world? -
Sep26
Landmark Theatres, nation's largest art-house chain, purchased
Landmark Theatres, nation's largest art-house chain, purchased by Mark Cuban's 2929 Entertainment company. Landmark is my best choice for indie movies in San Francisco. I hope I still have variety of movies and not shut out movie houses such as Fox Searchlight. -
Sep25
SkyBox by Maytag
Maytag has a new home vending machine. 33 12-oz bottles, including longnecks, or 66 12-oz cans. Available exclusively at Amazon.com for $499. I want one for my cube... -
Sep25
Fedora : Savern test 2 available
Red Hat's recent changes on the desktop platform are pretty interesting. If you are interested in Linux, or OS concepts in general, take a look at the Fedora Project. Fedora is focused on the total solution : core OS + packages. High on my wishlist is an update notification and installation for all packages on my machine, combining concepts from Red Hat Network and Ximian's Red Carpet. Centralized updates in exchange for something either from the vendor or from my pocket. -
Sep25
Monopoly money
Hasbro released high quality PDFs of their Monopoly money. Print your own money! -
Sep25
FeedDemon Beta
Nick Bradbury posted a new FeedDemon beta last night. Aggregate your RSS feeds! -
Sep25
Intel Debuts Hyper-Threading Technology For Portable Notebook PCs
On Tuesday Intel debuted mobile Pentium 4s with hyper-threading. -
Sep25
Macromedia - Central
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Sep25
Amazon.com developing Web search technology
According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com has a new subsidiary, A9, to develop its own Web search technology. They are supposedly hiring 30 software developers but I cannot find the company's Web site and there is nothing listed in Amazon's jobs section. -
Sep24
Joel on Software - Bionic Office
Joel Spolsky has a very cool new office design, as well as ideas on what it takes to keep employees working optimally. -
Sep24
The Royal Society - Tim Berners-Lee
"The future of the World Wide Web", a speech given to the Royal Society by Tim Berners-Lee on Monday, is now available as video-on-demand. RealPlayer required. -
Sep24
Sun's software influence
The September 18 edition of The Economist carries an interesting article on Sun. "Sun is sending an unmistakable message to customers as well as to rivals such as Microsoft and IBM: software is shockingly overvalued." "Sun now sees Java, a software brand, as a prime asset to be exploited." Sun and Java have more brand weight in a corporate board than Red Hat. Sun is able to tout that it knows enough about security for its software to be deployed in the front lines of Iraq and inside the CIA that a corporation should entrust them with their data. The board members will be very familiar with Microsoft security challenges over the past year and relate well to military security requirements. Sun still lacks a strong database component. Sun's J2EE uses IBM's Cloudscape product. Q3 2004 should be interesting. -
Sep24
World-Wide Media eXchange
World-Wide Media eXchange is an experimental research project run by the Interactive Visual Media Group at Microsoft Research. Take a photograph, stamp it with longitude and latitude, and users can find your photographs on a map. -
Sep23
Cheeseburger fries
NY Times article today about cheeseburger fries, the beef industry's way to get more beef into snacktime. A beef industry R&D document shows the full ingredients and prep info. Sounds nasty, but I am curious to try one.
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Sep23
Fortune : Geek Eye for the Luddite Guys
The October 6 issue of Fortune examines a gadget makeover at the hands of a team of geeks. (Dean Heistad, Ted Larson, and Paul Ross) "all they wanted to do was send digital pictures of the kids to Grandma. Heistad came back with a shopping list that would get them that, plus a home theater, a wireless network, new computing, a tricked-out music system, and GPS positioning capabilities." -
Sep23
Anschutz Entertainment Group to buy Manchester United?
The Anschutz Entertainment Group admits to a meeting with Manchester United officials, but no word whether a club purchase was discussed. Manchester has been unloading some big salary stars, which should make them more attractive for a takeover. Current market cap (MNU.L) is £488.4 million.
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Sep23
Yahoo Comparison Shopping
Today Yahoo released its new and improved shopping site, complete with comparative shopping. A search for a Sony Cyber-shot camera on Yahoo yielded 89 merchants and a PriceGrabber search found 69 results. Lowest final price on Yahoo was $520 compared to PriceGrabber's $598, a 15% savings. Does this make PriceGrabber a prime takeover target? Yahoo and Google now have their own comparison service. PriceGrabber provides Ask Jeeves with a cobrand. AOL and MSN have the cash to spend. -
Sep22
Nature : Monkeys sense fairness
Nature profiles the work of Sarah Brosnan of Emory University teaching monkeys to exchange tokens for food. 80% of the monkeys rebelled if they did not receive an equal or better reward. Female monkeys were much more sensitive to the inequalities. -
Sep22
US News : How the Internet is Changing the American Dating Scene
U.S. News & World Report has a cover article covering Internet dating. It's long but interesting. One expert comments that online dating "is as important as the automobile was in the 1920s and birth control in the 1960s."
I have not had much luck with Match.com, Yahoo Personals, Craig's List or related services. Yes, maybe it is the product being sold and not the sales method that is the real downfall. Friendster tries to remove some of the online dating stigma but I expect them to fail once their business model kicks in.
Is there a better solution? Everyone everywhere complains how it is tough to meet people, and in urban areas especially we are distracted enough by other things to pass interpersonal relationships off as not so big a deal. We try different things, and people stay in unhealthy relationships because they are unsure they could do better. Another group is caught in a cycle of constantly wanting to "upgrade" their mate to something better. I am not a fan of the upgrade crowd since they probably would make me broke as well.
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Sep22
Philip Greenspun's Weblog:
Philip Greenspun says "Java is the SUV of programming tools." -
Sep21
COMPAQ Support Library
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Sep20
InfoWorld: Baseball lessons for software teams: September 19, 2003: By Jon Udell: Application Development
Jon Udell writes about baseball lessons for software teams and the way we value developers. -
Sep19
Britains are Europe's top binge drinkers
Reuters : "A report by Downing Street's strategy unit found that while Britons drink less than most of the continental neighbors, they drink more intensively." Ireland is not even mentioned as a competitor.
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Sep19
Zagat's Guide to WiFi
LA Times (free registration required) : "Computer chip giant Intel Corp. and the leisure class bible Zagat Survey have produced a guide to the best restaurants and hotels in America that offer wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, Internet access." full article -
Sep18
Mozilla 1.5 RC1
Mozilla 1.5 RC1 is now available. -
Sep17
Milton Friedman interview
John Hawkins interviews Milton Friedman. "all of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment" "Roosevelt's policies made the depression longer and worse than it otherwise would have been." -
Sep17
Spidering Hacks goes live
Spidering Hacks is now available for pre-order around the world. $20 adds these 100 tips and hacks to your library. 400 pages. Currently ranked 432,937 at Barnes & Noble. ISBN is 0-596-00577-6. UPC is 636920-00577-3. ASIN is 0596005776.
As previously mentioned, I wrote a hack using Java to gather traffic statistics from Alexa.
It will most likely come out in November, not October, but it's still cool to see it hit the virtual shelves as a pre-order.
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Sep16
Google Code Jam
Google has a new coding competition, sponsored by TopCoder. Bypass Google HR and get your code recognized! -
Sep15
WUSA Suspends Operations
WUSA, the Women's United Soccer Association, suspended operations this afternoon. -
Sep15
Pirillo Power Pack
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Sep15
Canon PowerShot SD10
Tiny new 4 megapixel, 5.7x digital zoom camera from Canon : Canon PowerShot SD10. 3.6 x 1.9 x 0.7 in. and 3.5 oz. -
Sep14
$100,000
Ever wonder what a $100,000 bill looks like? -
Sep12
Johnny Cash is dead
Johnny Cash died this morning of heart failure stemming from complications from diabetes. -
Sep11
News.com interviews Janus Friis of Skype
News.com interviewed Janus Friis about Skype. -
Sep11
Skype your way around the globe
Skype is a new P2P telephony and instant message application created by Niklas Zennstr�m and Janus Friis, the creators of KaZaa. The IM capability sounds like a good fit so people will be used to logging on and staying connected even when they are not performing the service's primary use. Right now the app is ad-free but how long until it becomes infested like KaZaa? -
Sep11
Robert Frost on education
Robert Frost : "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence." -
Sep10
Moneyball and Billy Beane
Next week I will be attending an event with Michael Lewis and Billy Beane as part of the Moneyball book tour. The moderator is Roy Eisenhardt, the ex-VP of the A's back in 1985 who almost sold the team to Tampa for $37 million. What would you like me to ask on your behalf? -
Sep09
Blogger Pro no more
I received an e-mail from Evan Williams tonight. "We're no longer offering Blogger Pro as a separate product and we're folding most of the features into regular (free) Blogger." "You will continue to have access to features like RSS and post-via-email that are still not in the free version. You'll also have priority support from our expanded team and new support system" For supporting Pyra I am presented with a Blogger hoodie. Where will new users get their RSS from? You may want to take a look at TypePad. -
Sep09
We Want Your Soul
According to We Want Your Soul, I am worth �14678 and 50% of people have a purer soul than I do. -
Sep09
Bill Joy to leave Sun
Chief Scientist Bill Joy is leaving Sun. Bill has been working mainly from Aspen for the past few years, but I have not seen any reporters pick up on his already shifted work schedule. -
Sep08
Open Office 1.1 RC4
Open Office 1.1 RC4 is now available. -
Sep08
$87 billion
$87 billion for Iraq & Afghanistan. Can we build build "safe, stable, and self-governing societies" at home before we turn our sights abroad?
What really irked me about last night's speech was comparing the United States' invasion and rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan to the rebuilding of Germany and Japan after World War II.
In related news, I paid $2.45 a gallon for my turbocharged (92 octane needed) 29 mpg Jetta yesterday.
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Sep08
20 and 40 GB iPods
Today Apple released two new iPods. Press release here. I want one. I keep thinking that I should wait until a Windows version of iTunes ships, or until after the next MacWorld until I place my cash on the table. Last week I attended an event sponsored by Mercedes USA. At the event I got to experience Sirius satellite radio for the first time. I am not inspired to buy a satellite radio unit or a subscription because I feel my money and playlist would be better served by an iPod. I can grab NPR radio shows online and sync them to my iPod. I can also download lots from Audible.com. I also like Intel's personal server vision. Most of what we relate to as our computer is really a hard drive configuration. We would like to keep our configuration the same and utilize whatever devices are available to us. The iPod is introducing the world to the idea of carrying 40 gigabytes worth of data in a shirt pocket. The personal server idea should catch on now that Apple has warmed up the crowd. -
Sep08
sunspot.net - nation/world
Guantanamo Bay inmates will confess secrets for a McDonald's Happy Meal. -
Sep07
Happy birthday Google
Happy birthday to Google. -
Sep05
College students fined for infected computers
Some colleges have started fining students for not properly maintaining their own systems against a virus attack. I am sure Apple will pick up on it and market the fines as monetary proof that Apple is a better total cost of ownership. -
Sep05
Workers need help turning computers on
One in seven workers need help turning their office computers on or off according to this study. "Research showed that about a fifth of staff asked for help to save or print a document and could not create a table on their screens to make it easier to write data." On my first day at Callan I was told to wait for a member of our IT staff to turn on my computer for me. I write code, so I must not know how to work the machine? There are plenty of support nightmares out there. -
Sep05
IBM kicks off global Linux ad push
IBM is launching a global advertising campaign for Linux. I like the idea of experts in each of their fields contributing to one learner. The idea of a child may work against IBM as companies view Linux as new and unproven. -
Sep05
It's good to be king
King Mswati of Swaziland has 10 wives and a fiance, and he holds a yearly festival where 50,000 bare chested women compete for his attention. Sounds like an interesting way to meet women. I hope he has better taste than Bill Clinton. -
Sep03
New Microsoft mice
Today Microsoft officially announced their new mice and keyboards. The wireless devices are available by the end of the month and the new wired Intellimouse Explorer is not available until February 2004. If you take a look at a close-up of the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer you will notice more well defined finger grooves and a scroll wheel chamber. My scroll wheel seems to always be blocked with gunk of some form, so hopefully the new design is more gunk resistant. There is a leather Wireless Intellimouse Explorer as well. -
Sep03
Israeli Scientists Crack GSM Mobile Call Security
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Sep03
Tips for Candidates re Weblogs
Dave Winer has been doing a lot of research about political candidates and how they should be using weblogs. -
Sep02
Pimp Juice
Now you too can own your very own can of Pimp Juice. -
Sep02
Chinese food and Pirillo party Saturday night
On Saturday night I had dinner with Dave Winer, Robert Scoble and his family, Jake Savin, Brad Neuberg, Don Park, Steve Gillmor, Phil Wolff, Cheyenne, Pat Delaney, Bryan Bell, and a few other names I cannot remember. If I left you out leave a comment and I will edit you in. Brad is working on some really cool JXTA project named Paper Airplane which he plans to release into beta this week. Steve Gillmor is a little too RSS crazy and would like to do away with all e-mail and instead turn to RSS. I argued that his gripes with e-mail are a result of largely unneeded features and if he really wanted security he could use Pine with no problems and have a lot of the RSS features without the security issues. Bryan and I discussed the applications of community based blogging versus everyone on their own. Userland is pretty open to new feature suggestions and implementations. After dinner we went over to Gretchen Pirillo's house cooling party. The Pirillo's are leaving a pretty sweet apartment in the Castro behind to move down to Woodland Hills. I had heard that Gretchen is a good cook and the rumors are definitely true! They practice technology impartiality with both a Xbox and a GameCube, Palm and Pocket PC, Mac and Windows. Tantek brought some great magnets depicting Sprocket's well known habit. -
Sep02
Ticketmaster Auction Will Let Highest Bidder Set Concert Prices
NY Times reports that Ticketmaster will now start scalping tickets. "Ticketmaster will be able to compete with brokers and scalpers for the highest price a market will bear." -
Sep01
Revolve : The Bible meets Cosmo
Tommy Nelson has a brand new version of The New Testament geared towards teenage girls: Revolve.ABC News has a pretty comprehensive review. As a child I had a version of the Bible (old and new testaments) rewritten to appear as a comic. If I had been given a King James version it would have never been read. So I think different inroads for the same content is a good thing. In case you are wondering...I was raised Irish Catholic but I am currently consider myself agnostic and in defiance of any dogma. The last service I attended was Zen Buddhist at the Green Gulch Center.
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