January 2004 Archives
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Jan30
Galileo status
The Economist covers the current status of Galileo, a European Union system similar to our Global Positioning System. -
Jan28
Imaginary girlfriend
Would you like to pretend you have a girlfriend? There are over 60 women on eBay right now willing to be your imaginary girlfriend: write letters, talk on the phone, instant message, and even send underwear to the highest bidder. Most offer 4-8 week terms and include a break-up letter detailing how sad she is to see you go. Sounds like a great job for writers looking for work. Just create a fantasy and take in the money. Thank you Jason Kottke for the link. -
Jan27
Search engine relationship chart
Bruce Clay has a search engine relationship chart graphically illustrating (Flash) the relationships between many manjor search engines. -
Jan27
Torrentz BitTorrent directory
Torrentz.com lists files available for distribution using BitTorrent. You can pull down entire Simpsons seasons! -
Jan27
Hektor the spray paint robot
Jürg Lehni and Uli Franke of the Czech Republic created Hektor, a robot that spray paints an Illustrator image onto a flat vertical surface. -
Jan26
Joel Spolsky on Resumes
Joel's latest article is about what he is going through sorting through hundreds of applications for two internship positions open this summer at his company, Fog Creek Software. Joel offers some good advice on what not to do. I was hoping he would go into more detail about what does catch his eye in the résumé process. Fog Creek Software reads through résumés by hand, other companies parse and rank. One of the reasons I moved my weblog over to my domain is that I wanted to associate all of my work in one location. If someone sees an e-mail from xyz @niallkennedy.com they may check out the domain and learn a bit more about me. I think of a résumé as a document bound for HR in companies with hundreds of employees. In case there is a techie in the group, I have started putting together a more detailed description of what I have done in my tech career. Once you do not care that the résumé fits on one page, I want to provide a way to easily find out more. Sure it is not personalized, but it does challenge the employer to ask more interesting questions than the standard fare. I am looking for new work but not blanketing the world with résumés. If the back-end is well taken care of then marketing myself should become easier. -
Jan25
Opportunity lands on Mars
Opportunity landed last night and communicated back to Earth. It is on its side, 15 miles off the center of its target in Meridiani Planum. Arnold Schwarzenegger was at JPL to cheer everyone on. Total Recall takes place in 2084. If we do get to Mars in person by 2030, it would not be unheard of for someone like Coohagen to have the planet organized as a business 50 years later. -
Jan25
Bill Gates, honorary knight
Buckingham Palace is expected to announce tomorrow the planned knighthood of Bill Gates of Microsoft.
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Jan24
Haloscan comments moved
If you ever commented on a post at my old blog, I now moved the post to be a part of my new blog and its entries. The submit dates are off, but the main goal is to participate in a conversation. If you would rather have the comment removed just let me know. -
Jan23
RFID on the soccer field
The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Germany (yes, the MP3 and AAC people) is working on an RFID system for soccer balls and jerseys. The chip embedded in the ball has been worked down to the size of a fingernail. The biggest problem right now is suspending the chip in the middle of the ball to measure acceleration and protect against being pummeled as part of the outer skin. An article in German is available here, or you can use Google for the English translation.
This technology would be a great coaching tool. Right now in pro soccer there is a person with a set of binoculars sitting next to a person with a laptop computer in a skybox. The observer notes who touched the ball and where, and the computer operator enters that data point. Very tedious and expensive. Now imagine detailed data on where your plays develop, the speed and acceleration of different players, and even the strength of an injury causing tackle. You could also track the ball’s trajectory and your player’s ability to handle a ball from different angles. Very cool.
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Jan23
Atom news
AtomEnabled is the new site for everything about Atom. There is a special area for developers with detailed information. Last night Blogger announced support for Atom. I have an Atom feed. I tweaked my RSS feed a few times, and now that Atom information is more easily obtainable I might start tweaking Atom a bit as well. After tweaking my feed makes its way through the FeedValidator to make sure everything is well formatted. My Atom feed gets less hits (6% of aggregator traffic) than my unpublished (Meta reference only) RSS 1.0 feed. (11%) RSS 2.0 accounts for 83% of all aggregator traffic to my site. -
Jan22
Google gets social
Orkut Buyukkokten, a UI designer at Google, quietly put online today a social networking site named Orkut.com. According to News.com this social software was Orkut's personal project at Google, one day a week, but remains the property of Google. Membership is currently invite only. -
Jan22
Presidential Market 2004
Presidential Market 2004 is a simulated futures market allowing you to buy and sell shares of the major 2004 presidential candidates. The highest valued portfolio on election day wins a trip to the inauguration in Washington, D.C. -
Jan22
Google bombing
Tom McNichol of The NY Times covers the growing practice of Google bombing: engineering search results to your whim. -
Jan22
iTunes Music Store RSS feed generator
Apple now has its music store offerings available as a customizable RSS feed. Interested in the top rock songs? How about rock, alternative, and pop? -
Jan21
Eurekster searches social networks
Eurekster is a new search engine, currently in beta, that uses your defined social network to rank search results from Overture based on the search history of you and your network of friends. The social networking technology comes from RealContacts and the personalization technology is provided by SLI Systems. -
Jan20
Windows XP. Why not upgrade?
Scoble is wondering what Microsoft could do to evangelize Windows XP to users of Windows 98. My comment entry was getting a bit long, so I will post it here instead.
Ask the average user and they have no clue when the support life of Windows 98 ends and why that might matter to them. I assume that Windows 98 users are mostly home users. The real question is will my stuff still work, how much will it cost me, and is all this change worth the chance that my stuff will not work as it is supposed to?
What are the Windows XP sales channel breakdowns? Home vs. Pro? OEM versus retail?
I would target families wanting better control of individual experiences on their shared computers. Everyone has their own accounts, you can set up quotas, only the parents can install new applications, etc. With multiple logons you can keep one person’s connection alive while still taking care of something else in your own space. Windows XP allows for a more complete entertainment experience to keep your kids happy even with the lockdowns. Play on the fact that this OS is frequently kept up-to-date and expanded by service packs that are really like an OS upgrade.
Most people find it annoying that Windows Messenger is there by default and asking you to associate yourself with a .Net Passport. How many people register their copy of XP after they activate? What about this distrust leads you to believe they want to sign up for a Passport too?
Assume the upgrade user takes a trip to Best Buy and looks for more information on the upgrade. What reasons are you giving him to spend his $90 and take the chance of everything not working the way he wants? Common tasks, visual cues, music jukebox, movie maker, redesigned Start menu. Nothing overly compelling. How does it make my computing experience more reliable relative to the old ways? What does it bundle that saves me money and hassle of integrating other apps?
Windows XP makes me more secure, reliable, and gives me the most current features. Emphasize the new more secure underbelly. Offer a family pack like Apple. I would also like to see a Windows XP Home + Office for Students and Teachers bundle at a discount, similar to the desktop license for a business.
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Jan20
State of the Union 2004 transcript
President Bush has just concluded his 2004 State of the Union address. The White House published the transcript online. -
Jan20
Change in RSS 2.0 feed
Today I changed my RSS feed from excerpt to full text. I did not realize this was the default MovableType setting, but I do appreciate full text in other people's feeds, especially for offline viewing. I would like to follow the best practices of blogging and incorporate any community tools that are out there, so please let me know if there is something I should be aware of. -
Jan20
IBM attempts to patent code separation
IBM filed a patent application last week for a "method and apparatus for conducting business via the worldwide Web in which business programming is isolated from Web user interface programming." Can JSP + Java Beans + J2EE backend really be patented? Guess we will have to wait and see.
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Jan20
MusicPlasma
MusicPlasma is a search engine to help you visualize your musical taste. Enter a band's name and you will see that band's near neighbor relation. The "more the artist is famous or representative of a specific style of music the more the halo (circle) around the artist will be large." For some reason Norah Jones eclipses Bob Dylan. Overall a very cool tool. Flash required. -
Jan20
Technorati beta
Technorati is now faster than ever before! Try out the new beta. Nice work Dave and Kevin! -
Jan20
Yahoo! Research Labs
Yahoo! established Yahoo! Research Labs yesterday. They have an implementation of Nutch and hot searches of the day. Some good research papers on clustering as well. I would like to see a university partnership, similar to what Google has going on with Stanford. -
Jan20
Cingular makes AT&T Wireless bid
USA Today reports that Cingular submitted an offer to the AT&T Wireless board of directors over the weekend. The board is currently in session to consider the deal. AT&T Wireless has a current market capitalization of $27.9 billion.
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Jan19
A rush to block pop-up online ads
NY Times covers the move to create software to block pop-up advertisements on the Web. Microsoft claims that Windows XP Service Pack 2 will not block pop-ups unless users enable the feature. DoubleClick is developing technology that will work around Microsoft and other software vendors' attempted blocks. "In December 2001, 1.4 percent of the Web ads measured by Nielsen/NetRatings were pop-ups or pop-under ads, which appear behind the main browser window. That rose to 8.7 percent in July 2003. But it has declined since, to 6.2 percent in December." Microsoft already has anti-spam technology in client software such as Outlook that updates itself as the advertisers change their methods. Any client software designed to block these ads should probably be updated in a similar manner. -
Jan19
Bill Gates' Medina privacy buffer
Bill Gates has built a privacy buffer around his Medina estate according to an article by Warren Cornwall in The Seattle Times. The city will not let gates use the properties solely to house his cars, but some Microsoft employees occupy the houses to keep the codes alive. He now has a corridor to the main road, which makes sense to me. -
Jan18
Lego Mars Exploration Rover
Lego has an 858 piece set for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers. $90. CalTech receives a portion of the profits.
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Jan16
Family Guy quiz
Which Family Guy character are you? Take the quiz! -
Jan16
Oldest active PC in the world
An IBM 5160 and its Intel 8088 processor (from 1983) is still in use today by PHI Data in the Netherlands. HP and Intel gave the company some new Pentium 4 computers with LCD screens, but they will continue to use the IBM 5160 to test matrix printers. Note to Scoble: Microsoft should have a press release and a party in the Netherlands when PHI Data purchases their first copy of Windows. -
Jan16
Xbox Live connecting the troops
Microsoft has set up Xbox Live connections at U.S.O. centers around the United States as well as overseas bases. Not only does this allow for good rest and relaxation time, but Microsoft gains loyal users. Using the same product every day in the helps sell products back home when those troops are on leave. It has helped Jeep and Coke, and should help the Xbox as well. -
Jan15
A machine can now do science
Economist.com reports on an article in the January 15 edition of Nature. "The robot scientist developed by Ross King of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, and his colleagues, does everything a flesh-and-blood scientist does?or, rather, it does what philosophers of science say that scientists ought to do. That is, it formulates hypotheses from observations, conducts experiments to test them, and then formulates new hypotheses from the results. And worse, from the point of view of the human researcher, it does so as effectively as a person." -
Jan15
Yumemi Kobo dream workshop
New from Takara Co, the company that brought you bowlingual and meowlingual to translate your pets, comes Yumemi Kobo dream workshop. Look at a photo of what you would like to dream about, record a story line, and the device helps to direct your dream. -
Jan15
Personal Firewall Day
Today is Personal Firewall Day. Visit Microsoft's Protect site to make sure you are doing everything you can on your PC. I use Norton AntiVirus 2004 on my computers. If you plan on using tax software this season there are often deals combining tax preparation software and antivirus solutions. Resolve to keep your computer and others free up-to-date and clean! -
Jan15
Intel upgrades Centrino Wireless
Intel announced the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG network connection, a 802.11g compatible part for their Centrino bundle. It supports WiFi Protected Access (WPA) and can be updated via firmware to handle future standards such as 802.11i. -
Jan15
Math and Physics Applets
Paul Falstad has some sweet math and physics Java applets. Demonstrate the kinetic theory of gases, a 3-D quantum harmonic oscillator, and lots more! -
Jan14
Eric Rudder
Eric Rudder, Senior VP of Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft, will be speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California on Thursday, February 5 at 6:00 P.M. $10 for members, $18 for non-members. -
Jan14
The Sims Mafia
Hiawatha Bray of The Boston Globe writes about the underworld of The Sims Online, complete with mafia justice and underage brothels. -
Jan14
TunesAtWork
TunesAtWork is a specialized server for Mac OS X allowing you to stream your iTunes music collection to the world. Great idea and it is free. -
Jan13
Philips eXp5371
The Philips eXp5371 is a MP3-CD player with a LCD screen capable of playing Java games downloaded to the device via a USB connector. the eXp5371 can store up to five Java games at a time, in addition to the built-in games on the unit.
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Jan13
Topix.net
Topix.net is a targeted news site using artifical intelligence algorithms to read stories from over 2,000 sources and classify them into 30,000 US cities and towns, 5,500 public company and industry verticals, 48,000 celebrities and musicians, 1,500 sports teams and personalities and more. -
Jan12
Cubs to receive portion of rooftop revenue
The Chicago Cubs will receive 17% of the gross revenue from rooftop businesses surrounding Wrigley Field, according to a report on ESPN.com. An extra $2 million a year for the club, or 2.5% of last season's opening day payroll of $80 million. -
Jan10
RipDigital music conversion
RipDigital will take your entire CD collection and send you back DVD-ROMs full of 224kbs MP3s. $129 for 100 CDs, postage included. You can also have all of your music placed onto an external hard drive or music player. -
Jan09
Start your college coaches
Bobby night has added advertising to his coaches' sweaters and Adidas now has larger logos on their shirt collars. ESPN examines the new trend of advertising placed on coaches, and which coaches may benefit the most. -
Jan09
TiVo announces TiVoToGo
TiVo is coming out with software in the fall which will allow you to move your recorded shows from your TiVo to a PC. A hardware key is required to view the files. You will also be able to program your TiVo from a cell phone or PDA. I am guessing that this software is written in J2ME. -
Jan08
NY Times review of MSN Direct (SPOT)
David Pogue of the NY Times reviews MSN Direct. "[T]he Microsoft Smart Watch is, to put it bluntly, for gadget freaks. It's for early adopters, guys who love "because it's there" technology, people whose pupils dilate at the mention of the word "wireless." Others are likely to give these watches the backs of their hands - and not in the way Microsoft is hoping." -
Jan08
MSN Direct (SPOT) watch review
Microsoft officially released their MSN Direct watch line after some delays.
The current incarnation of the device delivers news, weather, stock quotes, calendar, and instant message capabilities as part of the subscription fee of $9.95 a month or $59 a year. The $150 watch will still tell the time and sync itself to local time servers without service activation, but you lose all of the personalization and data. There are tens of choices of watch faces (ways of displaying time and date) to choose from, and an option to receive a new face monthly is available. You must dock your watch into an MSN Direct charging station at least once every two days to charge the batteries. The charging mechanism transfers power through the wrist-facing side of the watch and nothing is plugged in to the watch itself.
All channels are configured via the MSN Direct website and updates sent to your watch approximately every 20 minutes as long as your watch remains within the service area. As of October 2003 100 service areas were covered. Maps of coverage in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York are good examples. The watch’s antenna is the watch band’s brilliant copper.
The calendar function is simple enough. You download a small application that works with Outlook to synchronize your Outlook calendar with your MSN calendar. Your calendar alerts appear on your watch just like they would in your desktop version of Outlook.
Standard news feeds are available in business, entertainment, headline, health, international, local, sports, technology, and weather. Sports scores are in development in partnership with ESPN.
Stocks is the most interactive channel. As long as you have a ticker for the stock or index of interest, it will be sent to your watch. You can even view a 7 day graph of price changes.
The weather view allows for both the weather in your current city as well as places you frequently travel to or would like to keep an eye on. Current temperature, a small graphic for what the weather is like outside, and wind speed are all included. There is even a three day forecast.
Instant messages work well but with a noticeable delay. Using MSN Messenger 6 a user can opt to “Send a Message to an MSN Direct Watch” for users who own and have associated the device with their Passport used by MSN Messenger. There are no per message charges for these messages.
Who will pay $150 plus $60 a year for these services? Anyone who wants to track their stocks and indices in a more interactive and wrist bound ticker seems like a good candidate. I leave my watch in cycling between the weather and the stock channels until the U.S. stock market closes. Once more devices are available using the MSN Direct technology the subscription fee will seem more worthwhile spread across your alarm clock, coffee maker, and maybe even your refrigerator.
I usually do not wear a watch. The first watch I purchased in years was the Nike Triax Stamina for its sporty yet modern look, slim watch face, chronograph, and countdown timer. Both the Nike Triax and the Fossil FX3001 communicate a lifestyle to curious onlookers. (Athletic and geek respectively) The Triax Stamina remains my watch of choice, but for people who have always worn a watch and are looking for more information always available to them at a glace, check out the new watches featuring MSN Direct.
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Jan07
The numbers of a football game
According to NY Times analysis the Sugar Bowl had 16 minutes and 28 seconds of live action, or 7.3% of the 3 hour and 43 minute game time. In the NFL the Colts vs. Broncos had 12 minutes and 18 seconds of action in a three hour broadcast. (6.8% of the game was action, not counting replays) Soccer gives you close to 90 minutes of action in a 120 minute broadcast. -
Jan07
Intel to Invest $200 Million in Home Media Networking
Intel plans to invest $200 million in companies that are creating digital home entertainment technology. -
Jan07
NY Times : Low-Fare Airlines Add Frills
NY Times article covers low cost carriers adding frills to their flights. Simpsons episodes, gift baskets, Kate Spade uniforms, all to spruce up economy class. -
Jan06
Apex to roll out game console
Apex to roll out game console with a 1.2 gigahertz Via C3 processor, and an Apex DVD drive for about $300. Interesting idea for competing with the consoles, until PS3 and Xbox 2 take it all away again. -
Jan06
Fending off virii
Caption: "Japanese businessmen hold a service aimed at fending off viruses and glitches for their computers in a purification ceremony conducted by a Shinto priest according to Shinto rituals at Kanda Myojin shrine in Tokyo January 6 2004."
Where are the Macs in this picture? Are they pure of virii and glitches?
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Jan01
Economic Scene: Avoiding Previous Blunders
NY Times reviews a new Encyclopedia of Economic History.
