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….
Category Archives: Uncategorized
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….
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….
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….
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….
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…
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.”…
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….
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….
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…