February 2004 Archives

  1. Feb29

    Personal publishing to paper

    While weblogs and e-books may be seen as personal publishing to some, there is still a large market for publishing-on-demand books. Gayle Feldman of the New York Times takes a look at new ways book publishers are focusing on smaller authors for publishing-on-demand. For $499 the Borders Professional Publication will get you an International Standard Book Number (ISBN), a listing on Amazon, and 5 copies made available on Borders' shelves.
  2. Feb29

    Defining yourself on Google

    Robert Scoble would like to be the top result for Microsoft tech blogger. Don Park is a phishing researcher. I have not given it much thought, but I will set up a Feedster ego feed now.
  3. Feb29

    Dinner at Jing Jing

    Last night I met Scoble for dinner at Jing Jing in Palo Alto. Don Park and Al Nevarez were also in attendance. Interesting conversations about the past and future of weblogging. Many people seemed to have tried out the trend, but the quality writing seems to have decreased. We discussed better methods of peer review and aggregation. Micah Alpern joined us at University Coffee Cafe. We talked about ways eBay should be preparing for Windows Longhorn. Reputation came up again, this time related to service reputation linked to a friend of friends or community. Does a weblog add eBay reputation? It certainly lets the buyer know you are real person with long-term interests.
  4. Feb27

    Major Indoor Soccer League expands to Stockton

    The Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) announced today that it has approved plans for expansion to Stockton, California. MISL teams play 162 games in 6 months.

  5. Feb27

    Apple Store San Francisco

    Apple's new flagship San Francisco store opens tomorrow morning at 10 A.M. Since May 2001 Apple has opened a new store every 13 days. An average of 1000 people visit each Apple retail store daily. Over 50% of purchases are from first time Mac buyers. Employees are trained for 3 to 7 weeks before they come to an Apple store. Apple had 1,352 applicants for the San Francisco store, and hired 70. 35 of these employees are trained in Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and similar software. 20% of the people who come into an Apple store visit the Genius Bar. Wired News has a story about the 200 "lucky bags" available for $250 Saturday morning. OSX FAQ has some pictures inside the store as well as the full audio from yesterday's press conference. The line outside the store started at 9 P.M. last night. I will try to visit the store sometime this weekend, most likely on Saturday when it is hopefully not as crowded.
  6. Feb26

    Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Carb Karma ice cream

    Ben & Jerry's has a new ice cream flavor for everyone caught up in the Atkins craze: Chocolate Carb Karma Ice Cream.

    It uses Sucralose (Splenda® Brand) instead of liquid sugar, more water than milk, and adds polydextrose, sorbitol, glycerine, carob Bean Gum, acesulfame to its ingredients list. Sounds very scientific and not the natural Vermont's Finest I am used to.

  7. Feb26

    Senators against marriage amendment

    Democratic Underground Forums has a list of senators who will vote against a constitutional marriage amendment, gathered from press sources and the senators' press releases.

  8. Feb26

    World snowball fight championships

    Showa Shinzan International Yukigassen, the de facto world snowball-fight championship, takes place yearly in Sobetsucho, Japan. Sebastian Moffett profiles the tournament on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. Players wear white jumpsuits and strap on a helmet for protection from the regulation snowballs between 2.56 and 2.76 inches in diameter. The game is combination dodge ball and capture the flag. Some teams practice year-round.
  9. Feb24

    Wired Magazine : redesigning Google's interface

    How would you redo the Google interface? Artists Joshua Davis, Jenny Holzer, Shepard Fairey, and Ideo all gave Wired Magazine their thoughts and drawings. I like Fairey's the best.
  10. Feb24

    Wired Magazine : The (Evil) Genius of Comment Spammers

    Steven Johnson writes in this month's Wired Magazine about the battle over content spam in weblogs. "[S]pammers weren't trying to win the attention of the bloggers or their readerships. They were trying to win the attention of Google, like the high school bully beating up the class nerd to impress the homecoming queen. The nerd feels violated, but the truth is that it isn't really about him at all."
  11. Feb24

    Security Information for Microsoft Windows XP SP2

    Microsoft has a new site online covering the security changes in Windows XP SP2. I installed the new build on my Tablet last night and started poking around. Included in the SP2 builds are Tablet-specific improvements to handwriting recognition as well. When you start the computer for the first time you are presented with an Automatic Updates screen before you even see your desktop. On boot there is a window front and center (similar to Windows Tour) reporting on your computer's current firewall, automatic updates, and anti-virus setup. Security Center is a new control panel, as is Windows Firewall.
  12. Feb24

    President Bush Calls for Constitutional Amendment Protecting Marriage

    President Bush announced this morning that he is calling for "an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife." Some choice quotes from his speech: "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence, and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization." "The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in all cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society."
  13. Feb24

    PassMark security

    PassMark Security is a new company founded by Bill Harris, former CEO of Intuit and PayPal, to tackle the problem of phishing, or emulating a trusted site. Their approach is to show you a picture you selected at registration to be your relationship identifier. If you choose a horseshoe and receive an e-mail without that horseshoe picture, you know someone is trying to trick you. You can personalize your PassMark or choose from stock images, similar to an instant messaging program's buddy icon. Mr. Harris serves on the boards of Earthlink, Macromedia, eOne Global, Yodlee, XTec, MyVest, and LowerMyBills.
  14. Feb24

    Wired News interviews Viet Dinh, USA Patriot Act author

    Kim Zetter of Wired News interviewed Viet Dinh, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy, and primary author of the USA Patriot Act.
  15. Feb23

    Giant video screens at New York Philharmonic

    Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times writes about large video screens making their way into some concert halls. A 15-by-20 foot video screen cutting the orchestra in two while they play Wagner and Brahms. How does this make the symphony more user-friendly? "[T]he younger generation is more responsive to visual stimuli" says Benjamin M. Rosen, a Philharmonic trustee who spearheaded and financed the experiment.
  16. Feb23

    TiVoToGo survey

    TiVo has a new survey online for TiVoToGo, a program export feature they plan to introduce in the fall. Would you like more ways to control your content? Take the survey!
  17. Feb23

    Is equity based compensation a good thing?

    Harvard Business School Working Knowledge columnist Stever Robbins addresses equity-based compensation as a motivator.

    You want people emotionally invested in the company's success. You can get that investment by giving them meaningful work in service of a worthwhile goal. Hire people who believe in what you're doing and match them to jobs. If you want to reward their commitment, then give them stock, but make it crystal clear you're rewarding their innate involvement, not trying to buy it.

    Stock ownership is also bestowing title upon key employees. You are becoming a partner in the business, however small your partnership stake is. Some companies charge a premium over the share price for this privilege.

  18. Feb22

    CodeCon

    I spent my entire weekend at CodeCon here in San Francisco. Most presentations seemed to focus on the different ways we present ourselves to the world. ZeroConf to help others find what you have to share. Social software to define relationships and grant privileges based on those relationships. Anonymizers to hide you from the world. Versioning systems to track your steps. The highlight of my weekend was talking to Donald Knuth on Friday night at the Google party. I also had a chance to talk to Craig Newmark about his ReplayTV battles and his blogging experience.
  19. Feb22

    Comment spam

    Last night I had my first massive attack of comment spam. All from 212.199.169.153 over 10 minutes adding up to 10 garbage messages. It would have been more if not for my throttle setup. Annoying, but at least I can delete each one pretty easily. All the posts hit were recent posts, so turning off comments for old posts would not have helped in this case.
  20. Feb22

    Predator remote controlled aircraft

    Draganfly Innovation put together a scaled down General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator B aircraft for hobbyist use. "[C]an even be equipped with a GPS flight control unit for long distance, pre-programmed reconnaissance missions (20 miles effective range)" Starts at $600 without the camera attachment, or $750 with a wireless video camera and lithium-polymer batteries allowing for a 90 minute flight time.
  21. Feb21

    MediaChest - social networking what you own

    MediaChest is a social networking application to hook assets to social trees. A new spin on Distributed Library. Books, CDs, DVDs, and games. The games interface is the strongest and seems to be responsible for most of the early adopters. I would like to see an export as XML feature supporting library standards and the ability to search for friends instead of relying on an e-mail invite. Distributed Library has the edge by allowing users to search for goods based on their location. Check out my MediaChest library.
  22. Feb20

    MozCC Creative Commons examiner

    MozCC is an extension for Mozilla-based browsers that adds a button to your toolbar to examine the Creative Commons license of a site where one exists.
  23. Feb20

    Convert Atom to RSS

    2RSS.com has a new PHP service (free) that converts Atom feeds to RSS. Since you are passing an Atom feed as a parameter you do not even have to own the feed you are converting. A good way to read all the Blogger weblogs in a RSS aggregator.
  24. Feb19

    Searching Google for local WiFi

    Google's Search By Location service provides a quick way to find WiFi access points near your zip code. Yes, there are more comprehensive lists out there, but a quick Google search is a good way to find more authoritative lists for your specific area.

  25. Feb19

    NY Times : Inventing the TiVo remote control

    Katie Hafner writes about the design process of TiVo's remote control. I own a Sony TiVo SVR-3000 with a Harmony Remote SST-768. My main complaint with my SST-768 is the overlap of the directional buttons and the number pad, leading to never getting the action I really wanted.
  26. Feb18

    Ireland ties Brazil in soccer

    The Republic of Ireland has just tied world champion and #1 ranked Brazil 0-0 in Dublin. The game was just a friendly, but Brazil did bring their full squad. Brazil's starting 11 were: Dida, Cafu, Lucio, Roque Junior, Roberto Carlos, Kleberson, Gilberto Silva, Ze Roberto; Ronaldinho, Kaka, and Ronaldo. Ireland was ranked #15 in the world as of this morning according to FIFA.
  27. Feb18

    Yahoo! Search lists RSS feeds

    Yahoo! Search locates RSS alongside the Web page results. A search for Dave Winer allows you to view Scripting News' RSS feed as XML, or add to My Yahoo!. I do not have the same luck with my feed.
  28. Feb18

    Orkut Member density map

    Datawhorehouse put together an Orkut Member density map by crawling Orkut's member database. Map of the Bay Area is pretty interesting.

  29. Feb18

    Yahoo! Slurp

    Yahoo! dumped Google yesterday and started using a new crawler, Yahoo! Slurp. Maximum index size is now 500K and includes PDF and Microsoft Office documents. Personalization is next.
  30. Feb17

    KeyComputing Xkey

    KeyComputing's Xkey incorporates a microprocessor, a database, an application server, an Exchange client, a crypto engine, an embedded VPN, and 256 MB of flash storage onto a keychain device. Remote users can now carry a keychain and have access to their full Exchange store with no need for a client application or VPN install.
  31. Feb17

    Mainsoft Visual MainWin

    Mainsoft Visual Mainwin allows Visual Basic and C# developers to compile J2EE bytecode. It also supports ASP.Net and ADO.Net class libraries. Supports BEA Weblogic 8.1, IBM Websphere 5.1 and Tomcat 5.
  32. Feb17

    Apple RSS information page

    Apple now has a RSS information page. NetNewsWire and FeedDemon get a mention too.
  33. Feb16

    ConCon aftermath

    Tonight I attended ConCon, a one hour briefing of talks and ideas from O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Kevin Marks introduced Technorati's services. Ralf Muehlen introduced me to SFLAN. Cory Doctorow thinks that e-books now are where online music was in 1996: no one saw a reason why anyone would give up the tangible quality of a work. Kevin Burton is working on a plugin for Mozilla to export Orkut data for import into other formats such as FOAF. Scott Draves talked about his Electric Sheep project which is a very cool distributed genetic graphics engine. Tantek gave a quick overview of his semantic web presentation. Extensible Open XHTML Outlines was new to me. Rx Gallery was packed. I was amazed given how quickly the event was thrown together. WiFi was plentiful and Mac users were using ZeroConf to introduce themselves to each other over iChat. I am surprised there are not more ZeroConf applications available.
  34. Feb16

    Washington Post on the search of the future

    Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post writes about the features of the search engines of tomorrow and what role, if any, Google may play.
  35. Feb14

    Alex Rodriguez a Yankee?

    Newsday reports that the New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers are finalizing a trade of Alex Rodriguez for Alfonso Soriano and a minor league pitcher. Yankees would pay $112 million of Rodriguez's remaining salary, the Rangers would pay $40 million. Alex Rodriguez would play third base.

  36. Feb14

    The Economist on the science of love

    Scientists believe that love is little more than an influx of bonding hormones, namely oxytocin and vasopressin, according to The Economist. "[A] relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship." "Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction."
  37. Feb13

    Google Toolbar Valentine's Day edition

    Google Toolbar My Google Toolbar has altered itself for Valentine's Day.
  38. Feb13

    O'Reilly Emerging Tech San Francisco

    Next week is a small event in San Francisco, ConCon, for all of us who could not go to O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference last week. RX Gallery 132 Eddy Street @ Mason Monday, February 16, 7-10 P.M.
  39. Feb13

    Jürgen Klinsmann joins Los Angeles Galaxy as Technical Advisor

    Jürgen Klinsmann officially joined the Los Angeles Galaxy yesterday as Technical Advisor. Jürgen has been working witht he Galaxy for some time, but the new title gives the Galaxy and Jürgen more recognition for their work together. One of Jürgen Klinsmann's new interests is how technology can be better used to promote soccer, and I hope to work with him on such projects in the future.
  40. Feb13

    Selling phone numbers on eBay

    With number portability in full effect, eBay has some listings for phone numbers. Would you like to own 212-867-5309? I have thought about wanting this number (in the 415 area code), but you would get so many crap calls it might not be worth it. I would rather have 362-4368 from AC/DC's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap than a Tommy Tutone song.

  41. Feb13

    Gnomedex 4.0

    Gnomedex 4.0 is going to take place from September 30-October 3 at Harrah's in South Lake Tahoe. I should actually be able to drive this time! I will wait to see the conference schedule before confirming.
  42. Feb12

    First same-sex marriage in the United States

    Today Del Martin, 83, and Phyllis Lyon, 79, took their wedding vows in San Francisco's city hall, becoming the first same sex couple to be officially married in the United States. The couple will celebrate their 51st aniversary this Saturday.
  43. Feb12

    Exploding water balloons without gravity

    Ever wonder what would happen to an exploded water balloon in zero gravity? NASA answers the question with 3 liter balloons.
  44. Feb12

    New York Times interviews Bram Cohen

    Seth Schiesel interviews Bram Cohen in today's New York Times. Bram created BitTorrent while unemployed. His solo effort led to a job at Valve Software starting in October 2003.
  45. Feb12

    August 14 Northeast blackout caused by software bug

    SecurityFocus.com reports that the huge blackout of Northeast states on August 14 spread from Akron, Ohio due to a software bug in GE Energy's XA/21 software system. 50 million people in eight states without electricity. The North American Electric Reliability Council is now directing power companies to be sure their software has the latest patches installed.
  46. Feb12

    Fighting your parking ticket by phone or Web

    If you live in San Francisco, New York City, or Washington D.C. you can now fight your parking ticket over the phone and/or Internet using ParkingTicket.com. They claim 75% of parking tickets submitted through their system are completely dismissed. Designed for corporate fleets, but good for the individual as well. They guarantee the ticket will be dismissed. They take 50% of the parking fee in return for its dismissal. Interesting idea, and they might be able to pull it off with a New York staff applying similar ticket tactics across the country. Looks interesting enough to try out. I wish the service could hook into the city's parking system and retrieve all outstanding tickets for my car after providing adequate identification.
  47. Feb12

    Dave Winer's Microsoft Research talk

    Dave Winer's lecture at Microsoft Research is now available online. Addresses "Weblogs, RSS, aggregators, OPML, content management, how we can work together, and the care and feeding of online communities."
  48. Feb10

    Apple Store San Francisco

    Apple's new store in San Francisco's Union Square is scheduled to open on Saturday, February 28 at 10 AM. It will have an Internet Café with 12 computers, a 32 foot Genius Bar, and a nice theater.
  49. Feb09

    Searching for confidential documents

    On the front page of today's Washington Post is an article by Yuki Noguchi about Google's proficiency at locating confidential documents that may have publicly revealed themselves for only a brief moment in time.
  50. Feb09

    Graw Group Longhorn social networking

    Microsoft Watch: "Four former Microsoft executives have banded together to form a new company that is developing social-networking software and Web services that will build on top of .Net and Microsoft's forthcoming Longhorn Windows operating system." The principals behind Graw Group include Jeremy Jaech and Ted Johnson, the co-founders of Visio. Dennis Tevlin and Peter Mullen are the other two members of the group.
  51. Feb09

    NY Times on social networks

    Today's New York Times tackles the question whether people will pay to get friends. The article missed a couple important points about social networks beyond the typical sales, dating, or job lead. Social networks also determine product purchases, such as a book or DVD, and can enable a secondary market for exchange of such goods on a sale or loan basis. Some large companies like Microsoft have intranets and mailing lists that cover topics similar to Tribe.net's tribes or Orkut's communities. There are also internal book recommendations and the sale of second-hand goods. Unsolicited e-mail is a hot topic and social networks provide an easy to obtain safe sender affiliation. If you take the determination of relationship strength used by Spoke and combine it with a hosted service such as Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, or Google's rumored offering you have a new spam filter customized to each user. I already receive unsolicited messages on Orkut advertising various things, but these messages are usually sent to a broad list instead of friend-of-a-friend. The thought that Match.com and Monster will integrate features into their offering and win the social networking came seems to ignore the "not overly trying" aspect that made Friendster a success. Friendster grew because a member of a group of friends joined and invited all of his or her friend so they were not in cyberspace isolation. No one had to admit they wanted something more in love, or a new job, they came along and performed in front of a comfortable audience: established friends. Social networking will excel when these informal networks are established and there is an opportunity to branch out and explore different interests you may have. It may be legal advice, love, lust, or a new baseball team, but users will be more comfortable establishing an identity and expanding it within their own comfort levels and controlling the publicity of their actions.
  52. Feb08

    Watching your laundry over the Web

    A laundry room operator in Boston, Mac-Gray, has started installing a Web based tracking system for users of its washing machine facilities. You can monitor the minutes left on a cycle, see who is waiting to use a particular machine, and check usage data for an entire building's facilities.
  53. Feb07

    NY Times Ethicist on open WiFi networks

    Randy Cohen, Ethicist for the New York Times magazine, says it is ethical to use an open WiFi network for casual Internet usage. Time Warner Cable disagrees and encourages you to personally sign up for their services.
  54. Feb07

    Orkut launch party

    Last night I attended the birthday party of Orkut Buyukkokten, which he cleverly double billed as an Orkut launch party so Google would pay for everyone. We were downstairs at suite one8one for most of the night. Interesting mix of people, including some Tribe.net crashers. The video projectors at the club were playing content licensed under Creative Commons. Suite one8one had no beer on tap and served me Guinness in a can: an act of sacrilege to an Irishman. This was my first social networks gathering. It was interesting to try to figure out how you may be connected through friends of friends to the person I was talking to. Some people had Hiptop devices and other geeky things and they introduced themselves and queried their network for me right away. The music was an interesting mix. I think I heard 50 Cent mixed into The Safety Dance.
  55. Feb06

    2003 Google Zeitgeist

    Google released its Zeitgeist for 2003.
  56. Feb06

    Samsung adding satellite TV to cellphones

    Samsung is planning a cellphone with the ability to receive satellite TV broadcasts. 70 channels in Japan, 40 channels in South Korea. It will also support pay-per-view services. Trial service starts in April with a commercial launch in July.
  57. Feb06

    New Kind of Science for free

    Stephen Wolfram is offering A New Kind of Science online for free. Wired wrote a long article in June 2002 about the book and the years of isolationist thinking that went into its creation.
  58. Feb05

    Eric Rudder on Microsoft's past and future

    Tonight I attended an event featuring Eric Rudder of Microsoft. The Commonwealth Club of California gave Eric an award for being a person who will shape the upcoming century. I sat in the second row with my Tablet PC and have the whole hour recorded, if only I can clean up the sound from my built-in mic. It was interesting to hear Eric speak about software engineering as a profession in its infancy and therefore very prone to making mistakes. Brown’s computer science department will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. Ten years ago computer science degrees were still not common and it was hard to imagine the usage of things like networking today. Eric was involved in the OS/2 and eventually the Windows networking groups when he first started working for Microsoft in the early 90s. He mentioned that Windows 3.11 was the first networked OS and was created by 7 guys with an idea about connecting data. Compare that to the thousands of people working on Longhorn and you can see how software is just starting to evolve. I asked Eric why Microsoft has stayed out of the social networking and personal publishing arena, two of the hot topics of the past 12 months. It seems to me that both have the potential to generate a lot of server sales as well as services. I also asked why he only has two blog entries. Eric responded that he has too many other things to do that would benefit the community more than a blog entry. He oversees microsoft.com and helped created RSS feeds over the past year. He has been working to open up MSDN to third party tools. He wanted to post some blog entries to let his employees know that it is okay to blog and there is no company position against the practice. I asked again about social networking software such as the emergence of friend-of-a-friend networks and how they might be used to define trusted communities to assist in problems such as spam. He said he was familiar with the format (I assume he was referring to FOAF instead of hosted networks like Friendster or Orkut) but had not really looked into it and thought it better left to groups such as MSN. Longhorn was mentioned twice. Once as a solution to some security problems and a new way of thinking of relationships (WinFS) and again as Microsoft preparing to beat Linux on the server. Overall I was not too impressed. I had just listened to a senior VP in charge of "evangelizing the extended Microsoft platform" and I was less impressed with Microsoft than before. The employees of Intel, IBM, and some journalists in the audience I spoke with afterwards agreed. The perception was that Microsoft seems to be slipping in innovation and the fact that Longhorn keeps getting pushed back will help the rest of the world look to other platform choices.
  59. Feb05

    Chris Pratley on bug fixing

    Chris Pratley writes about bug fixing within Microsoft and how Watson, a software reporting tool, has changed their debugging process. He follows up with a second post about attention to detail and how hardware obscurities sometimes lead to buggy software.
  60. Feb04

    Java 1.5 Beta 1

    J2SE 1.5 (Tiger) Beta 1 is now available. New for loop, metadata, and generics support among lots of other improvements.
  61. Feb04

    Robert Scoble on WinFS search

    Scoble might be taking a break from his weblog, but Andy Beal of Search Engine Guide posted an interview with him today. The article focuses on WinFS and some specific issues such as metadata for photographs and contacts.
  62. Feb04

    TheyTookEverything.com

    TheyTookEverything.com is a gift registry for the recently divorced. Smart idea.
  63. Feb04

    Windows XP 64-Bit Edition

    Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for AMD Athlon64 or Opteron processors is now available as a customer preview from Microsoft. 450 megabytes to download, and the software expires in 360 days.
  64. Feb03

    The answer to music piracy?

    HBS Working Knowledge on the answer to music piracy. A few good points:

    1. Ted Cohen of EMI Music said that EMI is trying to convince Apple that WMA needs to play on iPod and AAC needs to play on WMA devices. He sees this issue as "critical for consumer acceptance."
    2. Few users could afford to purchase the thousands of songs you can fit on an iPod. The assumption is you steal the music.

    My legit music collection is around 20 GB. Most are MP3s encoded at 192Kbps using LAME. Enough for a mid-range iPod without room for growth.

  65. Feb03

    MSN Search Beta

    MSN has a beta version of its new search engine online. Better differentiation between paid and ranked search results. Categories are from Zeal (LookSmart), paid listings are from Overture, and ranked results are from Inktomi. Two of the three pieces are owned by Yahoo. Microsoft needs to step up and buy LookSmart. They are without a CEO. At around $2 a share their market capitalization is $214. Yes, Looksmart's properties are mostly written in Java, but there is some C++ in there as well.
  66. Feb03

    Dynamap

    Dynamap: Manhattan shows three views of Manhattan (streets, subways, neighborhoods) based on viewing angle.
  67. Feb03

    How to manage smart people

    Scott Berkun on how to manage smart people.
  68. Feb02

    NY Times : Airline Self-Service Kiosks

    David Jones of the New York Times writes about the growing popularity of self-service kiosks at airline check-in and their growth into the hotel sector as well.
  69. Feb02

    SWIPE toolkit

    The SWIPE Toolkit demonstrates "the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses." Covers how to decode your driver's license and request your data from large data warehouses.
  70. Feb02

    NY Times : The coming search wars

    Sunday's New York Times took a look at the upcoming search war between Microsoft and Google. There is no doubt in my mind that Internet search will be built-in to Longhorn. Google will offer their deskbar, and you may even be able to choose your default search technology similar to your media player, instant message client, browser, etc. today. Google will change once it enters the public market. Employee perks will be scrutinized, and there might be some employee shuffle. Google and Yahoo! are the first names techies think of when it comes to search, and MSN Search will have a more difficult time accepting top talent. I interviewed with MSN Search in December 2000, before the company dedicated itself to its own search technology. They were proud that they were #2 in search and they felt something is obviously going right. I asked where they placed in Internet searches from a browser other than Internet Explorer and was told that statistic does not matter since Internet Explorer has such a huge market share. Sharepoint carried the search torch the last three years. Maybe things have changed for the better, but Microsoft still does not have its key pieces in place (keyword advertising, Intranet) to compete anytime soon.
  71. Feb02

    Mac lovers of Microsoft

    Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes about Mac lovers within Microsoft. You can also follow along with updates via their blog.

Niall Kennedy Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California in the United States. I am very interested in the world of... MORE »

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