Category Archives: Uncategorized

O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

I am thinking of attending the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, February 9-12, 2004. It will probably be $1200 out of my own pocket. ($766.50 for the conference plus Emergent Democracy Forum, $360 for four nights with shared room at Westin Horton Plaza, and I will be driving there and back from San Francisco) Have you been before? I am interested in learning new things and networking with really smart people not afraid to live life on the technological edge. I was one of the 230 proposals, but not one of the people accepted for the 45 slots. (Similar speaking topic…

Swastikas in the bookshelf

Steven Sinofsky apologizes for the inclusion of a clockwise swastika in Microsoft’s Bookshelf Symbol 7 font. Character code 0x7E. Star of David is 0x74. Microsoft released a tool to take the offending character off of your system. Yes, the symbol was used by the Nazi party, but has a history of a few thousand years. It was also part of Rudyard Kipling’s coat of arms!…

Pretty women scramble men’s ability to assess the future

“Both male and female students at McMaster University were shown pictures of the opposite sex of varying attractiveness taken from the website ‘Hot or Not’. The 209 students were then offered the chance to win a reward.” “When male students were shown pictures of pretty women, they discounted the future value of the reward in an “irrational” way – they would opt for the smaller amount of money available the next day rather than wait for a much bigger reward.” New Scientist article about the ability of men and women to think rationally after being presented with a picture of…

Following around a Tablet PC user for a day

Scoble writes : “Maybe we should have a film crew follow a Tablet PC user around for a day.” An entire day would not be necessary. Just a typical meeting I think. Microsoft aims at the information worker and increasing productivity. It would be cool to define the purpose of the device in infomercial style. Have someone walk into a meeting with a 17″ PowerBook and someone with a Tablet PC. Both are very cool, but it is nice to compare functionality. The same method of questions you used to describe a sale at Best Buy could also apply here….