November 2003 Archives
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Nov30
NY Times Magazine : Inside the iPod
Today's NY Times magazine has an in depth look at Apple's portable music player, the iPod. -
Nov30
SF Chronicle : Shame of the City
The San Francisco Chronicle's Kevin Fagan has the first of a five part series on the homeless issue in San Francisco. He will probably be up for a Pulitzer for this one, along with photographer Brent Ward. -
Nov29
Woman knocked unconscious by trampling shoppers
A woman in Florida was trampled by a herd of shoppers at Wal-Mart. In the 6 A.M. doorbuster she was pushed over in the rush to grab a $30 DVD player. -
Nov28
Miss Ireland wins Miss World Beach Beauty contest
Rosanna Davison won the Miss America Beach Beauty contest. Rosanna is the daughter of musician Chris de Burgh. Well done Ireland! -
Nov28
Mao Tse Tung on guerilla warfare
Mao Tse Tung handbook for guerilla fighters is still the basis for a lot of the ground fighting we see today in places like Iraq. -
Nov27
A Framework for Soccer Video Analysis
Ahmet Ekin of the University of Rochester has put together software that filters out less interesting parts of a soccer game and focuses on the perceived exciting moments. His Automatic Sports Video Analyzer will send soccer highlights to cell phones during the 2004 Olympics. -
Nov26
Orgasmatron having trouble finding volunteers
A new device is entering clinical trials that delivers an orgasm on demand through a spinal implant. Stuart Meloy is struggling to find volunteers for the program. Towards the end of the article it mentions that an orgasm is a reflex response, and people with spinal injuries can still orgasm. Interesting. -
Nov25
Home Depot Center scorecard
The Torrance Daily Breeze has a very interesting Home Depot Center scorecard. "The Galaxy will also make the first profit in its eight-year history, team officials confirmed Friday. The team turned last season?s $3.5 million loss at the Rose Bowl into a modest $150,000 profit." Doug Hamilton should keep Sigi Schmid as head coach. It looks like your revenue worries are not his fault, and you need to get some quality Latinos in your starting 11, not your head coaching position. Carlos Ruiz is the top Latino player in MLS and he was the work of Schmid. -
Nov25
Amazon to index British Library
Amazon announced a deal with the British Library to index its entire collection of 2.55 million books. I visited the British Museum last year and the library was amazing. It will be very cool to see more of these works uniquely identified. -
Nov24
Let them sing it for you
New site where you come up with the lyrics and each word is mapped to a clip in a music database. A new song is created with the clips taken from the word maps. -
Nov24
NY Times : M.L.S. Making an Effort to Attract Hispanic Fans
M.L.S. Making an Effort to Attract Hispanic Fans Some interesting stats in this New York Times article regarding Latinos and M.L.S. "In 2002, 30 percent of the people attending M.L.S. games were Hispanic. On the field, 20 percent of the players had Latino backgrounds." Anschutz Entertainment Group owns part of the rights to the Mexican national team as well as the Libertadores Cup. -
Nov24
John Mack: Demand to be Managed
In a speech to the Harvard Business School, John Mack emphasized different management approaches on Wall Street. He admits that Wall Street is a money culture, a lone wolf atmosphere, and companies use money as excuses to not care about employees.
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Nov23
Ditch the cubicle
San Jose Mercury News on how Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Sun are moving away from typical office designs and into shared work spaces. In a month my company will change office locations. Better location but smaller, more cramped workspaces. The noise of shared work spaces bothers me, and while an office is a status symbol, it is also a very good way to escape the noise pollution and actually get some work done. When will there be noise shields for the cubicle farm? -
Nov22
40 years later
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Nov20
BBC : 50 Places to See Before You Die
BBC has a list of 50 places to see before you die. The Grand Canyon is #1. I live in San Francisco, #36 on the list. Definitely a lot of interesting ideas. -
Nov20
Robotic tickler
Not sure whose turn it is to tickle? A Dutch company has the answer. A pinball with a nylon fringe hovers an inch or two above you and a computer creates a 3D map of your skin for optimal tickling. -
Nov20
Smartmoney.com: Hot Jobs for 2004
SmartMoney.com profiles their Hot Jobs for 2004. "According to a recent Monster.com survey, 82% of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs." There are a lot of people feeling trapped in their jobs right now. Some escaped to a M.B.A. or law program, hoping things would improve by the time they got back. Those graduates are coming back, as well as a stagnating group who are happy just to have a job. It will be difficult to explain to a new employer why you have been working in a less than ideal job for the past few years, whether it is a Starbucks or a different industry. -
Nov20
500 Songs That Shaped Rock
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Nov19
Wired News: FedEx Delivers New Tech Lab
Wired reports on the FedEx Institute of Technology, a joint R&D effort by Federal Express and the University of Memphis.
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Nov18
John Locke
John Locke : "I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts" Ah yes, if only women followed this thought. -
Nov18
20-inch Apple iMac
Apple released a 20-inch iMac today. Very cool!
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Nov17
Sigi Schmid fired?
Sigi Schmid has been supposedly fired and is meeting with the Dallas Burn today about a new job. Jurgen Klinsmann as new coach? When has a top quality player other than Franz Beckenbauer been a good coach? I was not impressed with Klinsmann's NSCAA speech on coaching strikers, but Jurgen is a nice guy and has been an assistant with the Galaxy for a few years now. -
Nov17
NYTimes : Pearl Jam, on Its Own, Seizes the Moment and Sells CD on the Web
Pearl Jam, on Its Own, Seizes the Moment and Sells CD on the Web. I didn't even know about this single! PearlJam.com was one of the first sites I know to have iTunes links for its discography. They really need to get full lyrics on their site. -
Nov17
Berklee Shares
Berklee Shares is a collection of free course lessons from the Berklee College of Music. Movies, MP3s, and PDFs to help you learn bass, brass, DJ, drums, guitar, keyboards, voice, and winds. They even have lyrics analysis. -
Nov17
Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas
Microsoft released the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas today. WordprocessingML is out now and SpreadsheetML and FormTemplateSchemas will be available on December 5. Should make OpenOffice projects a lot easier! I currently use Apache Jakarta POI to generate Excel documents. -
Nov14
x-ray specs
The dream of seemingly every young man, including Bart Simpson, teasing you in the back of many magazines, is now closer to reality. $2400 buys you infrared googles for color voyeurism. -
Nov14
Fast Company : The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
Wow. Charles Fishman and Fast Company have put together a kick ass article on Wal-Mart. "It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined." 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States go to Wal-Mart. "It also is not unheard of for Wal-Mart to demand to examine the private financial records of a supplier, and to insist that its margins are too high and must be cut. " -
Nov14
Is your work/life balance off kilter?
Is your work/life balance off kilter? "Datamonitor claimed that 12 million European workers are asking for a cut in salary or seeking to work fewer hours because they're too stressed." "70 per cent of IT managers are worried that their staff are approaching burnout due to their work loads." -
Nov14
Seattle Art Museum: Stories of Krishna
Explore the adventurous and exciting world of Krishna, the Hindu god. Flash animated stories. -
Nov13
Feedster Builder
Feedster Builder will help you construct an RSS feed for sites without one. If you have a free Blogger account, this means you! -
Nov12
Reasons Not to Invade Iraq
Time magazine carried an interesting essay by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft in its March 2, 1998 issue. Interestingly it has diappeared from the Time magazine archive, but the reprint is still available. -
Nov12
Bombardier hydrogen powered Embiro
Bombardier has a prototype named Embrio. What will personal transport look like in 2025? Looks a lot cooler than a Segway! -
Nov11
MobyDock
MobyDock is a Mac-like application dock using DirectX. Interesting! -
Nov10
Chris Hayes on Tablet PCs
Chris Hayes talks about how Tablet PCs can be used in sports. Good for player meetings and to illustrate plays. I agree, I just wish I had a better way to illustrate a play progression. I can illustrate a corner kick in soccer, but I think the lines representing player runs can be a bit confusing. -
Nov10
NY Times : Great Tunes, but Where's the Cover?
New York Times covers the digital adaptation of liner notes and art that has accompanied music for decades. I will have an entire CD downloaded (pirated) but I will still go out and buy the CD for the artwork and lyrics. Pearl Jam usually thinks outside the jewel case. John Mayer's site rocks because there are lyrics posted for every song. Too bad it's in Flash. How long until download sites like Napster and iTunes embed lyrics in their media files? -
Nov09
RecordStoreReview.com
RecordStoreReview.com reviews music stores in the U.S., Canada, England, Japan and more. Special tilt towards mail order, but good to see Amoeba Records is the third store added to the list. -
Nov07
Ireland gets black boxes in cars
Ireland now has driving data recorders, similar to an airplane's black box. It is not mandatory, but there will most likely be a large reward in your insurance premium. -
Nov07
Google Deskbar
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Nov06
Google spidering IRC
Google has supposedly been spidering IRC channels. Source IP is 216.239.45.4. -
Nov06
Bill Cosby quote
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby -
Nov05
BBC News : US raises spectre of conscription
US raises spectre of conscription by recruiting volunteers for the Selective Service System's regional boards "to decide which young men are eligible for deferments, postponements or exemption from military service." -
Nov04
Microsoft Wallop
Part of Longhorn is Wallop, where you can share photos, blog, and interact with your friends. It's invite only and I do not have an invite. :( This project was presented by Lili Cheng at the PDC. It is part of MS Reasearch's Social Computing Group. Scoble? Any help? -
Nov03
Shattered Glass
On Friday Lions Gate Films will release Shattered Glass, a movie about Steven Glass and The New Republic. To quote Charles Lane : "For the press, truth is, or should be, an absolute value." Steven Glass fabricated sources and therefore stories for TNR. The best known case is "Hack Heaven" from the May 18, 1998 issue. Forbes broke the original story. -
Nov03
Borrusia Dortmund: The biggest club in Europe?
Borrusia Dortmund averages nearly 78,000 fans a home game. WOW. The average crowd in Germany is 36,492. In England 34,816. In Spain 29,345. In Italy 26,084. In the United States the MLS averages 14,677. -
Nov03
Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram on women sports idols
Today's Dallas Fort Worth Star-Telegram has an article about women sports idols, specifically in the WUSA. Before WUSA there were leagues in Japan and Norway that provided opportunities after college if any players were interested. The idols were there, just not in person. -
Nov03
Everyone's a Programmer
MIT Technolgoy Review profiles Intentional Software, a new company funded by Charles Simonyi. They aim to make writing code as easy as a PowerPoint presentation.
