Gadgets for 2008

Here are my predictions of devices and technologies that will become mainstream in 2008 (because I want them).

• A cheaper Optimus Maximus keyboard
• Quality 42" televisions for under $1k
• Cheap High def projectors
• e-Ink eBook Readers (better than Kindle or Sony)
• Mood clothes for women
• Mood response clothes for men (to project complementary emotions to women)

I received a USB-Hub with Notepad & Mood Light from Microsoft last week.  Now, it doesn't actually detect your mood from what I can tell, but it does attract attention.  I'm thinking mood-clothes with texting capabilities are the next big thing.

These technologies are sort of fringe, but are probably going to get developed a bit further to something mainstream and maybe even adopted by the general public next year.

• Mind-reading technology (that at least picks up positive or negative signals)
• Event-driven Cancer detector (that uses wireless nanotechnology combined with microscopic gold flecks to reflect signal)
• Clothes that change colour based on your blood alcohol level (or blood sugar level for diabetics)
• Heart-attack GPS alert that sends alert to paramedics
• Neuroeconomic Marketing tools (that influence your purchases based on an analysis of your brain's decision-making capabilities.)
• The Men in Black Mind Eraser - using Neuroplasticity regenerator
• Wii Mario with wii-brain - Brain-computer interface to play Mario.
• DIY Supercomputer scavenging the cpu cycles of your old PCs and whatever else is connected to the network
• Holographic 3D television
• Simple desalinization of water from the world's oceans will be possible.
• Cheap and safe methods of cooking will become available to the people who need it the most.
• Cheap and easy ways to harness wind power from the blowing trees themselves.
• Cheap and safe personal flight transportation
• Anything with Nano or Neuro in the name will be hot.
• Health Care, Alternative Food Sources, changes to currency, and Alternative Energy will be the hot topics of 2008.

These technologies just scare the heck out of me.

• Ion Colliders that may or may not destroy the universe next year, or at least the Earth in seconds.
• Voting machines, no explanation necessary.
• Seed vaults which will be discovered millions of years from now by intelligent dinosaurs.
• Program Trading that could tank the stock market just from one blue screen of death.

Invent something in 2008 with Phidgets.

Light something with LED Shoppe or  PhotonLights.

Create art with NewMindSpace.

Get started building your own Optimus Maximus keyboard, for the low, low price of $5,500.  (or just buy it above for under $500)

Screenkey Downloads Section - Programmable LCD key switches with multi-colour LED backlighting

Petoria comes true....

 

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

The Raw Story | Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

Facebook causes a recession

I went to a Facebook Developer Conference a couple months ago and they mentioned their top requested feature.  What was it?  Building new applications easily?  Launching ads & popups?  Buying stuff online?  Sharing my personal information with Google? 

Nope.  Categorization of friends. 

Now you can pile your friends into categories like "distant relatives" and "people who went to high school with people I know but I don't know them but I'll add them anyway" and "my dog's facebook friends".

The scary thing?  People can see when you're "Online Now" too.

The other scary thing?  Context.  Now whomever has access to these lists of friends also has access to any tags you assign to them. 

This is just a start. Expect to see lots of new Friend Lists features in 2008 that will give you more control over the information you share on Facebook and who you share it with.

Source: Facebook | The Facebook Blog

The problem?  Facebook, you just wiped about 2% more worth of productivity hours off the GDP of the US & Canada.  Any company that hasn't banned Facebook outright will inevitably have organization freaks sorting and filing their friends and relatives into various buckets. 

And the "Facebook whales"?  Robert Scoble, Donald Trump, Mark Cuban, Tila Tequila?  Something tells me they should hire somebody to manage their friends lists for them. 

Life's too short for Facebook Friends Lists.

$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

I refuse to buy ink from any retail store.  When I run out, I usually pick up another printer and give away the one I have.  Since I go through ink about once a year, the cost benefits are there, and I get new (albeit cheap) technology. 

Recently I picked up a 6-month supply of ink (or in my case a lifetime supply, if it didn't expire in 6 months).    This was shipped to me in a box as a set of generic ink cartridges and 20 refills.  It included a reset switch to fool the printer into using it.

The price on eBay?  $30 including shipping.  The quality?  Don't really care for that price, but it looks fine to my eyes.  The location?  China.. did you have to ask?  "The Ink Manufactory company, genuine ink.  Keep away from child!"

It would be interesting to find out whether there is a 'conspiracy' to hold back cheap toner out of retail stores from places like China.  Since Epson has a built-in feature that locks it from using 'non-genuine' cartridge refills, I wonder what the magic eight ball would say?

Question:  Is there a worldwide conspiracy to replace oil with price-controlled ink toner as the global force to dominate the world?

Magic 8 Ball:

A Boston man has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing hardware maker HP and office supply retailer Staples of colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. According to the suit, HP allegedly paid Staples $100 million to refrain from selling inexpensive third-party ink cartridges, although the suit doesn't make it clear how plaintiff Ranjit Bedi arrived at that figure.

Source: $8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

Mark Cuban is still my friend

For now... He's hit the 5k friend limit on Facebook.  Looks like he may have removed my dog though... 

Here's a secret, Mark... you can have more than one account on Facebook.

"i also had to make decisions on the 100 plus new friend requests I get per day. Could this person really be my friend ? Could this person really be someone i do business with ? Did I actually know this person ?

Its kind of a bizarre process of clicking on ignore and deleting friend requests. To any of you who I have deleted or ignored. Its nothing personal."

Source: Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog

I wonder if I'm in "the Power Layer?" :)

"The Power Layer is probably the group of folks that caused you to join Facebook in the first place.  These are the folks that you wanted to have some sort of easy way of tracking them down and talking to them because they are influencers or connectors in an industry or circle that you either are a part of, want to be a part of, or have an occasionally overlap into the world they influence."

Let me ask the magic eight ball...

Question: did i make mark cuban join facebook?

eerie!

 Anyone getting a Fathead for Christmas because of all their Facebook friends?

Resident Evil Redux

This is just plain spooky.  Haven't they seen The Thing?

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.
Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Source: Scary sh*t right here... :( - Gold & Silver Forum

Drama at MOMA

 I went to MOMA a couple of weeks ago.  I ran through at record pace, covering all the floors in less than 45 minutes. My plane was taking off in a few hours and I still wanted to see Grand Central & the UN building, so I decided I'd get the most of my CityPass and cover off as many things as possible.  Of course I didn't really get appreciate much of the art, but then again it was packed (on a Monday before US Thanksgiving) and I'm not a big fan of crowds, or modern art for that matter.

I was much more impressed with the Morgan Library than MOMA, but that was probably because I'm more into books than art, and Morgan had a cool hidden staircase put in behind a shelf in his 4-story library of books.  According to the security guard, he used to stand on the 4th floor balcony during parties, as guests below would try to figure out how he got there.

Apparently being a curator of MOMA has its dramas.  When Lincoln Kirstein decided to commission a few "Made in America" murals in 1932, he got some decidedly un-American results.  This caused some big disturbances between the cultural bigwigs of New York.

The “victory,” it soon became apparent, was not yet secured. No sooner had J. P. Morgan sanctioned the show than Conger Goodyear returned from vacation, declared his “furious” opposition to “the Communists,” and threatened to resign as MoMA’s president if the decision wasn’t reversed. The whole day of April 27, 1932, was spent in what Lincoln called “cross machinations.” Lincoln himself manned the barricades, dispatching runners in all directions. He sent Betty Bliss to persuade her father, Cornelius Bliss, guardian of Lizzie Bliss’s collection (which MoMA desperately wanted to secure), to intercede with Goodyear. He got from Gropper an actual count of how many artists were really prepared to secede (probably twenty-five, Gropper reported). He called Wittenberg “to make sure of an attempt to get an injunction to stop the show” should the three artists be excluded. He advised Nelson to try to make Goodyear resign; Nelson “was mad enough,” Lincoln wrote in his diary, “to do anything.” And finally, he tried, with limited success, to ascertain just how many trustees stood behind Goodyear.

Source: ARTnews

And with all of the effort, drama, and legal involvement, how did it pan out in the end?  Apparently scandal didn't sell as well in this case... well it was the Great Depression too.

Lincoln drew a sigh of relief—but then nearly choked on it. The show’s thirty-odd paintings barely got hung (and not very well) in time for the next day’s press opening, and the day after that, as the notices began to appear, it became clear that the show was in for a severe drubbing. Lincoln himself acknowledged that only a few of the panels were of any real distinction, but he also felt that those few, along with the experimental nature of the effort, fully redeemed the enterprise.

The critics disagreed. Every single reviewer lambasted the show.

And what did Lincoln think of how he rubbed everyone that mattered the wrong way?

Lincoln played out the disaster with bravado and humor. As he wrote Agnes Mongan, then the Fogg Museum curator, “The mural show was a shattering failure & ruined my, er, reputation with all those to whom reputation counts. . . . But I was delighted at the universal irritation & the general feeling of betrayal everyone seemed to feel that I provided, I who was so charming & bright, etc. No longer. Now I’m only an, er, Jewish Bolshevik with shocking bad manners.”

I would go back to MOMA again, though I'm still a bigger fan of the Met, and non-American art like the Great Masters, Group of Seven, and works out of Asia. 

I spent a ton of time in the Asian exhibits, and one piece really caught my eye... probably because I was catching it's 8 eyes.

Amero the free

Got my Ameros today.... will make good stocking stuffers. 

A currency union, similar to the European Union "Euro" has been proposed for North America. The name of the new currency is the "Amero". The Wikipedia encyclopedia article has additional details about the "Amero". This has been the source for many conspiracy theories tied in with other proposals such as the "Canamex Corridor".

Source: UNA Amero Pattern Coins

1000 'Ameros' are going for $1,100.00.  Does Lady Liberty have a ray gun in her hand?

Christmas gift idea - $99 Eye-Fi SD Card

When I went to New York a couple of weeks ago, I thought my memory card was corrupted.  I realized the PC I was using was so old it didn't like any flash cards larger than 1GB. 

This might have helped.  Stream your pictures from your digital camera directly to your PC, then the web. 

The Eye-Fi Card is a wireless memory card. It automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to your PC or Mac and to your favorite photo sharing, printing, blogging or social networking site.

No cables, no waiting, no hassles.

Source: Eye-Fi » Home

And it supports facebook, among others...

A significant advance in cancer detection

This 3D X-Ray machine provides stunning High Definition 3D visuals. 

"This scanner allows radiologists to produce high quality images and is also designed to reduce patients' exposure to X-rays," Steve Rusckowski, chief executive of Philips Medical Systems, said.

"It is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats."

Source: BBC NEWS | Health | 'Super' scanner shows key detail

Probably costs a bunch too.

Microsoft Sued; Christmas Comes Early for Z4 Technologies

This is the reason why you should patent everything.... and why innovation in the US is probably a bad idea.

Not that asking for 2 passwords is an innovative thing.  How did that get patented?

Microsoft is succumbing to patent trolls today, as they’re being ordered to pay over $140 million for, get this, asking for two passwords.

Microsoft Sued; Christmas Comes Early for Z4 Technologies

Brain Waves: The field of neurotechnology

A Scary Illusion - Mr. Angry and Ms. Calm

Posted by Zack Lynch

If you look at the above images from your seat in front of the computer, Mr. Angry is on the left, and Ms.Calm is on the right. Now, get up from your seat, and move back 10 or 12 feet, and PRESTO!! they switch places!! It is said this illusion was created by Phillippe G.Schyns and Aude Oliva. Hat Tip to Dan.

Source: Brain Waves: The field of neurotechnology, the focus of this blog, encompasses advances in brain science (neurons), information technology (bits) and bioengineering (genes). Up for discussion and analysis: the political, economic, ethical, and social forces that will shape the future of what will be one of the most important and fascinating stories of the coming decades.

George Bush is a robot from Mars

 

This explains everything...

In the enhanced photo of the first debate, Nelson says, look at the horizontal white line in middle of the president's back. You'll see a shadow. "That's telling me there's definitely a bulge," he says. "In fact, it's how we measure the depths of the craters on the moon or on Mars. We look at the angle of the light and the length of shadow they leave. In this case, that's clearly a crater that's under the horizontal line -- it's clearly a rim of a bulge protruding upward, one due to forces pushing it up from beneath."

The Time Vault: Bush wore a device during debate according to NASA

OCAD - Events Calendar - Book Arts Fair

Worth a look.  

Book Arts Fair
Ontario College of Art & Design

10:00am to 5:00pm, Sunday December 2, 2007

Work by book artists, printmakers, papermakers, and private press printers available for purchase

Every year in December, book artists, printmakers, papermakers, and private press printers gather at OCAD to show their work and demonstrate their skills in OCAD's Central Hall and Printmaking studios. The university community and general public are welcome to come and watch artists at work making paper, printing from litho stones, screen printing, hand typesetting, book binding, wood engraving, etching and much more. Many items are available for sale, providing unique ideas for holiday gift giving. Admission is pay-what-you-can.

Ontario College of Art & Design

100 McCaul St.

Toronto, Ontario

416-977-6000 Ext. 268

www.ocad.ca

bookartsfair@gmail.com

Source: OCAD - Events Calendar

Why the Kindle Will Succeed: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

 I have been wanting to get an e-ink reader for the last couple of years now.  Only recently have they become more mainstream, but they're still not ready yet in my opinion. 

The Amazon Kindle is unique in that it downloads subscriptions and e-books using EDVO rather than USB or Wifi.  EDVO is a cellular network technology, and Amazon is eating the wireless costs (for now).

With free access to Wikipedia and $9.99/book access to all the NY Times Bestsellers, and 80,000 other books, and access to Word documents, it really provides a case for buying an e-book reader, and could be a success on the level of iTunes.

The word Kindle seems to indicate that this is really the beginning of what is to come.  Now if only if I could use the thing to copy directly from my PDFs or even CHMs (Help files) to the Kindle, without any conversion steps or loss of formatting.

Truly innovative products should promote either a strong need for or a strong aversion to adoption.  Change both excites and frightens people, and a truly innovative product (the automobile, electricity, the computer) should provoke these reactions, and not a sense of mediocracy.

Plus it supports newspapers and blogs... and audiobooks... and photos.

And it provokes strong reactions, with over 500 reviews and a 2 1/2 star rating.   But it's #1 in the Kindle Store!

A disgrace to every book-lover! (no stars), November 21, 2007  

What I don't understand is why a supposedly "book-loving" person like Jeff Bezos can think that digitally "improving" books will work. If he is such a book-lover, then why would he disgrace the book by creating the literary equivalent of an iPod? Now, I myself am a big fan of the iPod but it is totally different. it's ok to have all your music in one place, but books? A book is one of the most priceless things on this planet. Books shouldn't even have a price, and only should to benefit the author, who, unlike many people, took time out of their lives to create this masterpiece for people to spend hours reading it, the spine cracking as the story progresses, the sweat of the hands smeared on the cover, its edge slowly curling up. How could anybody replace this with a wireless gizmo that doesn't even allow someone to buy an actual physical book ,let alone touch it, smell its pages. Surely there is an explanation and here's mine: humans are getting more stupid each day because of pointless technology such as this, which in turn keeps us from partaking in intellectual things like reading. Books are becoming extinct, and if this is the only way to help bring them back, then God help us. This device is not a helping hand...it's an abomination.

Source: Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

 

Good idea, but need to be improved., November 21, 2007

 

. I want touch screen.
. I want a electronic pen.
. I want audio.
. I want video.
. I want multiple language dictionary.
. I want it can store more books.
. I want it cheaper.
. I want the eBook cheaper.
. I want .....

Academic Productivity » Speech to Text: timesaver or time waster?

 

Could Microsoft One Note & a speech PowerToys be the ultimate idea capture tool?

Some advantages of Audio from the Academic Productivity blog...

1. The first advantage is that audio forces linearity on you.
2. The second advantage is that dictating also prevents multi-tasking; that is, when you are doing your audio recording, you cannot be working on all things at the same time.
3. The third advantage of audio is that it removes a barrier of entry for developing an idea.
4. A fourth advantage of dictating is that it is actually hands-free; so you could do something, -again, only if you really have to multi-task while you are dictating-.

Academic Productivity » Speech to Text: timesaver or time waster?

Start with Audacity.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Hit MS for the SDKs or grab Dragon Dictate.

http://www.microsoft.com/speech

Dig up a speech to text OneNote powertoy.

http://www.mperfect.net/oneNoteToys/

And see what happens...

More info here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2006/03/16/audio-transcriptions-and-annotations-with-onenote.aspx

Microsoft Sql Server 2008 & its ability to work with unstructured data may shine with audio and video-based applications.

There are plenty of applications for speech recognition as both an idea capture tool, and a transcription tool for things like voice mail (Skype's doing it now) & accessibility.  If you don't feel too strange about talking to yourself, that is...

Of course, it's probably more fun to make Holograms in One Note...

The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List: Mastering Business Through Self-Education (Recommended Business Books)

 

The path to higher learning is through... reading?  Do you learn better through listening, reading, or doing?

Business schools don’t have a monopoly on worldly wisdom. If you're serious about learning advanced business principles, the Personal MBA can help. The Personal MBA recommended reading list is the tangible result of hundreds of hours of reading and research, and features only the very best books the business press has to offer. So skip the fancy diploma and $150,000 loan - you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.
To learn more about the Personal MBA, read the manifesto.

The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List: Mastering Business Through Self-Education (Recommended Business Books)

New York Ghostbusters Tour

Google takes you on a tour of the shooting locations for Ghostbusters.

http://www.ironicsans.com/2006/04/the_ultimate_interactive_googl_1.html

and others

http://www.movielocationsguide.com/movie_location_maps/New_York_Filming_Locations.php

http://googlesightseeing.com/locality/continents/north-america/states/newyork/

MIT alleges flaws in Gehry building - Yahoo! News

Uh oh.  The Art Gallery of Ontario looks strangely familiar to this building...

So it has a few problems and cost over $315 million dollars.  It looks cool... 

The school asserts that the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.

Source: MIT alleges flaws in Gehry building - Yahoo! News

The AGO is estimating it will cost $500 million to redo their design.  I hope it will handle the snow load!

» Killer traffic: By the numbers • Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape

 

Something tells me we need to move... *cough* *cough* 

Cross-posted from Eye Daily.

1,700: The number of premature deaths in Toronto that exposure to smog pollutants contribute to each year.
6,000: The number of hospitalizations.
85, 69: The percentage of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide, respectively, that vehicles are responsible for emitting into Toronto’s air.
35: The percentage of the total greenhouse gas emission contributed by the transportation sector in Toronto.
75: The percentage increase in the number of vehicles traveling into and out of the city each morning over the past two decades.
67: The percentage of trips into Toronto made by single occupant vehicles.
20: The percentage of trips made by public transit (including GO bus, GO train, regional bus and TTC).
440: The number of premature deaths Toronto traffic pollution contributes to each year.
1,700: The number of annual hospitalizations associated with traffic pollution in Toronto.
1,200: The number of children estimated to experience acute bronchitis episodes per year as a result of traffic pollution.
67,000: The number of acute respiratory symptom days associated with traffic-related pollution.
200,000: The number of restricted activity days during which people spend days in bed or cut down on their usual activities.
30: The percentage reduction in motor vehicle emissions in Toronto that could save nearly 200 lives and result in $900 million in health benefits annually.

» Killer traffic: By the numbers • Spacing Toronto • understanding the urban landscape

dlM VST plugins - gotta have more cowbell

 Check out the demo track from Van Halen...  still needs more cowbell.

http://www.audiofudge.com/content/music/dynamite_demo_1.mp3

dynamite cowbell brings you more cowbell than even Gene Frenkle can deliver
6 cowbells mapped to midi keys
5 velocity layers
close and room mic levels
damping control
5 bonus digibells
1 cow

Source: dlM plugins

Slave to the machine

The PC is not yet a utility. It is not a light that you turn on when you want to read. It is a seemingly-aware piece of machinery that likes to piss you off.

Is it the machinery, or is it the software inside the machinery that really likes to mess you up? That depends on whether you've ever had a hard drive failure, your new monitor doesn't turn on, or it does but the screen turns blue every time you click your email icon. Mostly it's just self-installing spyware, poorly installed applications, viruses, broken updates, and other software bugs that get the best of us. Usually we do it to ourselves, though it's easy to blame the PC for why we don't have a backup of our important files or haven't updated our virus definitions since 2001.

I spent 3 days trying to reinstall Office 2003 after uninstalling a trial version of Visio 2007. When I installed the trial to learn more about the software for an upcoming exam, the Windows Installer kept popping up whenever I checked my email in Outlook. Visio 2007 must have some powerful Outlook 2003 integration, because I could not get rid of that popup box for the life of me.

I uninstalled Visio 2007. Piece of cake, except that now all of my Office apps except for OneNote (my favourite app) stopped working. This wouldn't have been a problem, if I didn't need to use spreadsheets, email, and documents every once and awhile. Reinstalling Office just hung the installation package. Uninstalling office failed with an unexplainable error.

I downloaded the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, which ominously warned that it shouldn't be used to uninstall Office 2007. No problems there, Office 2007 uninstalls like a champ. :) I ran the cleanup utility, checked off the Office 2003 install, and removed it.

Removing the add/remove programs link got me one step further, since I was now able to step through the install without it taunting me with a progress bar that went back and forth endlessly. I proceeded with the custom install (deselecting Office Assistant - die clippy, select everything else) and clicked the usual Next, Next, Next. As soon as it checked for free disk space, it told me I had 0 bytes free on the highlighted drive.

Since I have something like a terabyte and a half of disk space, I was a bit concerned. I checked the highlighted drive, and, sure enough, no disk space.

It was the DVD drive.

Not sure how you free up space on a DVD drive, but I put a blank DVD in anyway. No go. Not going to happen. I was not going to free up space on that one. There's no way I could find to disable the drive letter from software either. Power down the computer, unplug the DVD, power up. Run the reinstall. Now I was getting a failure on drive I:, my DVD drive. Search the registry for I:, see a bunch of references, give up.

Give up? Not quite. If the I: drive was missing, I had 26 other drive letters to choose from. Moving D: to I: solved the issue. Halfway through the install, the PC threw up another dialog in my face - can't find SKU11.CAB or something like that. Searching the install media I found no files called SKU11.

Searching Google brought me to a page where 1000 other people had the same issue. Apparently this is something to do with the DVD drive and caching of files during the installation process. Hacking the registry some more solved the issue, and I was able to reinstall.

Email? Check. Word? Check. Excel? Check. DVD Drive? Nope.

Power down, install DVD drive, power up.

My Leopard-meter just clicked over a few notches.

Link to Apple - Mac OS X Leopard

OneNote Testing : A tool to import texts from Project Gutenberg

Speaking of Project Gutenberg... if you're not using OneNote you need to get it. 

Here's the tool I wrote to import "Project Gutenberg" (link: http://www.gutenberg.org) texts into OneNote. The first link goes to the setup files, and the second has the code if you want to see that.

http://johnguin.members.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/GutenWinSetup.zip

http://johnguin.members.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/GutenWinSource.zip

OneNote Testing : A tool to import texts from Project Gutenberg

The Amazon Kindle e-book reader unveiled - TECH.BLORGE.com

Still have to convince me that it's worth the $400-$600... but with Project Gutenberg offering 17,000 e-books for free it shouldn't be too hard. 

Amazon is believed to be planning to launch an Amazon-branded e-book reader in October.

The "Kindle" e-book reader will go head to head with the Sony Reader, a 64 MB e-book reader with a six-inch "paper-like" display that can be viewed from nearly any angle in full daylight.

The Amazon Kindle e-book reader unveiled - TECH.BLORGE.com

Mozilla read my mind

The investment MS put into Facebook and the comments around Facebook turning to an OS got me thinking.  This morning I thought that it would be interesting for some people to have internet applications automatically available on bootup.  Things like Facebook, Flickr, Google Portal, etc.  There would need to be a replacement for the URL, which is sort of like having to dial a number to call someone, instead of just picking their name and messaging them.  It would also need to run fast, which would mean precaching as much as possible and thinking ahead by crawling links.

This new browser app doesn't look like a competitor to AiR or Silverlight to me, but Mozilla basically grabbed my idea.

Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur.

Source: Mozilla Labs Blog » Blog Archive » Prism

Really it's just a matter of hiding the toolbars and junk in the browser, and sticking with the basics.  One step closer to my idea of booting up directly into Facebook.  You could probably wrap it in a DOS-based browser and drop it on a bootable 5 1/4" floppy with the effect I was thinking of.  (remember those?)

Unfortunately, there will also be a few problems to overcome.  My favourites have become an enormous garbage pile that I rarely look in.  My blog reading list became totally unmanageable really quickly. How is this tool going to handle the 2 billion or so web pages out there?  Shortcuts on your desktop for every page? How do I share web pages with other people?  What about sites that pretend they are what they aren't?

On the plus side, how long do you think it would take to boot if the only thing you loaded was your video card drivers, a flash ram drive for caching & hosting a bootable browser, and your internet connection?

The world really only needs 5 computers anyway... and a dumb terminal to connect to them.

So why did MSFT's stock go up so much today anyway if my DOS-based Facebook Operating System is already available?

CrossingWallStreet.com: The First Day of the Month

Is this the Mutual Fund effect?  Direct deposits from 401ks & RRSPs on the 15th & 30th? 

October 23, 2007 The First Day of the Month

Here's a surprising stat. Since the beginning of this decade, all of the market's gain have come on the first day of the month. The rest of the time, the S&P 500 is down.

The blue line represents the first day of the month, the black line is the S&P 500. For the decade, the S&P 500 is up 2.52% and the first day is up 33%.

The last seven first days have all been up. In the decade, there have only been 94 first days out of nearly 2,000 trading days, or about 4.8% of the time.

Source: CrossingWallStreet.com: The First Day of the Month

Microsoft beats Google to Facebook stake - Yahoo! News

MS bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million.  My theory about Facebook becoming an Operating System is coming to fruition... FOS.

Actually FOS is taken... multiple times.. Full of Stuff eh? 

"The only way this works is if Facebook becomes sort of the users' operating system on the Internet -- everyone logs into Facebook every day to get in contact with their friends and use a multitude of future applications that will be developed for it," said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran.

Source: Microsoft beats Google to Facebook stake - Yahoo! News

Well, if Facebook has 50 million users, that means my dog is worth $4.80 as an ad eyeball?  woof!

TED | Talks | Amy Smith: Simple designs that could save millions of childrens' lives

And Shawn's mentor, who discusses the #1 killer of children under 5 in the developing world.  What is it? 

Fumes from indoor cooking fires kill more than 2 million children a year in the developing world.

Source: TED | Talks | Amy Smith: Simple designs that could save millions of childrens' lives (video)

Wobbly Wind Power - The Micro Wind Belt

A brilliant innovative concept - learning from the results of a bridge catastrophe to create wind power using kite material and stretching it.

http://www.digg.com/general_sciences/Microwind_Generator_30X_More_Efficient_and_Cheaper

 

Link to Third-World Wind Power: First Look

2007 Breakthrough Awards - Top Innovators, Inventors, Products, Tech Gadgets of the Year - Video - Popular Mechanics

These products are amazing.  I really want the 3D fab printer, and if I could waive the monthly fee the Zonbu would be on my list too.  How about a more expensive Zonbu with access to your own FTP server?  Corporations would probably pick up on this one.

Welcome to the worry-free world of Zonbu. Included in your subscription to the Zonbu service are automatic application upgrades, continuous data back-up, a Zonbu device replacement guarantee, 30 days of free live support, unlimited Internet support, remote data access and a network storage plan that fits your needs. Breathe easy.

And of course there's the Nintendo Wii Fit, that they need to port to xBox 360 so I can play Halo with an excuse.

Link to 2007 Breakthrough Awards - Top Innovators, Inventors, Products, Tech Gadgets of the Year - Video - Popular Mechanics

Numeric Domain Squatting?

Here's one I haven't seen yet.  The numeric DNIS (Dialed Number Representation System) version of popular .com domains are being registered for cell phone users.  Someone who attended the Facebook developers camp with me yesterday registered Facebook.com (32232665).

 

Alternatively, the same result can be achieved by entering the numeric-domain equivalent of the word 'facebook'. That sequence looks like this: http://32232665.com, which needs only 8 input clicks, almost 3 times fewer clicks.

As the owner of the 32232665.com numeric-domain, I was looking for some advice from those in the know as how to best incorporate the numeric-domain into the mix to make it easier for Facebookers to access the mobile version of the site. I proffered the use of the domain and am awaiting a response from their mobile team.

In the meantime, feel free to use 32232665.com.

Source: OnSpec - 667732: Facebook Developer Garage - Toronto

Deploying an app to Facebook with Silverlight and Popfly

 Yesterday night I received a bit of inspiration from attending FacebookCampToronto2 at the MARS centre in Toronto.  There were something like 400 attendees, young and old, and a couple of people even brought their newborn children.  It felt a bit like the "free money from the government" seminar I went to back when Trump came to town with his entourage.

The registration was easy - a biz card in a bucket or type in your name & email into a spreadsheet in a laptop.  There was no online preregistration, though this would have been easy to do with Facebook's events page.  Not sure why other shows can't get this type of thing going. 

No food or refreshments that I saw & Tim Hortons was closed, though they did provide 2 PSPs to a couple winners and a Facebook t-shirt someone probably received as swag from an event in May.  Plus we got to keep our reusable nametag badges. (or they forgot to collect them)

The first segment discussed mainly trends and demographics for Facebook apps.  The largest consistent usage outside of the US seems to come from London, UK & Canada, with Australia coming up.  The age demographics vary and seem to be fairly evenly distributed.

Ami Vora, from Corporate Communications & Developer PR @ Facebook from California attended. 

• She eloquently discussed some of the key stats & figures for application growth, and some of the funding channels available for developers
• $10 million offered as grants from the fbFund
• The Catch - fbFund has first right of refusal on formally funding your app in the future. 
• $25k - $250k is sitting on the table here...

There was no mention of Microsoft investing any capital though.

Some of these statistics can be derived from the AppsAHolic app on Facebook.  http://apps.facebook.com/appsaholic/index.php?act=viral

Another myth that I bought into was the selling of the WhereI'veBeen app for 3 million dollars.  One of the presenters mentioned that this did not happen.  Craig Ulliott, the creator of the application, confirms this (and is adding WhereI'veBeen to Myspace.)  My dreams of get-rich-quick with Facebook are shattered, and my hero Craig falls from the sky.  :)  Plus the fact that one of the presenters mentioned he spends $2500k+ a month on servers for his app. 

As the theory confirms, you usually remember the first & last presenters, and not the middle.  If any of these facts are incorrect, chalk it up to this.

I remember two presenters from Segal Communications, Janice Diner & Michael Scissons, (one of the sponsors of the group) discussing the TD Split application.

• It lets roommates split bills on Facebook. 
• There was the usual web 2.0 "to-the-extreme" video about marketing apps for Sony & the banks on Facebook. 
• The application was launched in August, with "between 1000 & 2 million users." 

Roy Pereira talked about How Many ways can you Market your Application Inside Facebook. 

• Try to add the Developer application and make a list of all of the data entry boxes to see. 
• There's at least 12 touchpoints according to Megan from Facebook.
• Advertise on Other Apps, Profile Page, App Directory, Status, NewsFeed, MiniFeed
• Use banner ads, flyers, sponsored news stories
• External email is also available to Facebook developers via anonymous mailouts

Jesse Hirsh talked about Top Applications and Why They Work.

• He's a reformed communist
• His presentation garnered the most laughs
• He's anti John Tory
• 87% of usage goes to 84 apps.
• 45 apps have over 100k users
• Adonomics is a good source of further metrics

Greg Thomson talked about Monetizing your Facebook Application

• He runs My Aquarium
• He has 8 million + users on his various apps
• Registered users grow exponentially, though active users usually stay flat
• He spends 2500k+ a month on servers
• He thinks Facebook "active" vs. registered users are worth $3/person when valuing a company.
• AppsAHolic pays $0.10/click.  Google adsense pays $0.07/click

Steve Prichard, a Facebook developer, put his friend's gift card business on Facebook (50% off restaurants in Toronto), and created a Paypal payment option.  

• It uses 4 different levels of threading, speaks to the gift card server, Paypal, Facebook, and even handles the browser closing. 
• It deals with over 12 race conditions 
• It has a Java/PHP backend. 
• It handles window popups and uses iFrames
• It does multiple ajax calls to get what it needs
• The geekspeek was flowing... I figured it took him months to build from the way he was talking

Turns out it took a week to develop, and much of the time he said was learning the Facebook & Paypal APIs.

This in itself is pretty impressive, but it also says that Facebook and Paypal have a ways to go with being able to integrate their solutions as seamlessly as eBay. (Well, even eBay has a ways to go) 

Geoffrey B. Roche talked about Dogbook, Catbook, and now Babybook.  He was one of the last presenters because his Mac just messed up the tech support people when dealing with the projector.  Some interpretations of his presentation:

• Slides just look better on a Mac
• My dog has a Facebook account and possibly soon to have a Dogbook account too
• In a $41 billion industry in the US alone for pets, his sites should do well by default and would also impact the greatest audience 
• The site now offers to help find your lost pet and post other people's lost pets
• He is going to be working with the humane society to publish adoption information
• I see a tie in with Family Guy sponsorship.  Who wants this dog?

Bogdan Arsenie talked about WishList, a screen scraping tool which takes the URLs from over 30 retailers and captures images, prices and descriptions for gift registries that your friends can purchase. 

• Stole my screen scraping idea.  :)
• Someone asked if what it was doing was illegal or violated terms of use on certain sites
• Does Google violate terms of use? 
• What about PriceGrabber? 

Phil Tucker talked about DreamBook, a dream analysis and sharing tool, that tags your friends in dreams. 

• Stole my word analysis idea. :)
• He said it's his 3rd or 4th app, and every time he builds one someone else comes along and finishes a similar app before him.  
• The app itself looked pretty impressive. 
• Lately I have been dreaming a lot, since we got a new mattress last week, and the singing drunk guy hasn't been walking up and down the street outside our house at 12am. 
• I won't be tagging any of my friends in my dreams anytime soon.. even if they do show up...

All of these apps open up different privacy "touchpoints" that the user should be aware of. To name a couple.

• Your wants (and the fact that you had a 50" plasma TV on your wish list that disappeared because someone bought it)
• Your dreams (and a psychological profile of you based on them)
• Your paypal ID
• Your postal code
• Your birthday
• Your pet's names
• Your mother's maiden name
• Your bills
• The fact that you are a vampire or zombie

Facebook's recent focus on developers vs. users, and opening up the brand to _Monetization_ has led to some backlash against their privacy policy, or lack of, and the glut of new applications flooding the platform.

Robert Scoble doesn't like his 5000 friend cap, and the poorly designed apps that can't handle him joining.  He commented on another blogger's posting around the tech industry's recent hyping of Facebook, and offers to beta test apps for you with his 5000 friends.

Nick O'Neill thinks Facebook needs a Golden App.

Doc Searles recently bashed "Buttbook", since they're not following an opt-in privacy policy and dumping your ass on all the major search engines.

Facebook should be around for awhile longer.  It is the #1 photo sharing web site now.  It is the #6 most trafficked site after Google.  It's now easier to use than eVite, according to my friend who plans events with hundreds of people.

Here's a job offer for a Principal Product Strategist - Social Network if Mark Zukerberg is looking for a job.  Somehow I don't think he'll apply just yet...  

 

Link to FacebookCampToronto2 on Facebook

Facebook API Update — Circle Six Blog

Facebook worried about losing market share to www.twitter.com ?  Not anymore... 

Well, they did it. Facebook is allowing status updates through their API. You have to get “Extended Permissions” from the user, which is pretty scary for the user, but if you want to update your status from an external app, it shouldn’t be that scary. And since I’ve already done most of the work to get MoodBlast working with a homebrew Facebook app, it shouldn’t take too much to get it moving in this direction. Thanks to Reid for the tip! This will delay the next release of MoodBlast a little, but I’m sure you’ll all find it worth it in the end

Source: Facebook API Update — Circle Six Blog

I see a gadget that tells everyone in Facebook when I'm opening my fridge, or cooking dinner, or hitting snooze on my alarm clock.

Kinda like Big Brother on 'roids.

I won't sell my Facebook app for $99 billion. $100 billion though...

 You'll probably need a Facebook account to read this blog entry below.  When you add your new account, Facebook will be worth $100,000,000,010.  Why?  Because it has my wife's eyes.  And my friends.  And their friends.  And one of my friends friends is a venture capitalist with friends.  And his friends golf with Steve Ballmer, who would pay $10 billion for an equity stake, even though there are Facebook user groups dedicated to leaving if Microsoft bought them, and the real Steve Ballmer isn't even on Facebook, and if he is he doesn't have any friends. 

And then Google would probably bid up $20 billion.  Or maybe Rupert Murdoch would trade up Myspace and some Fox stock.

$100 billion probably won't be worth as much in a couple years anyway, what with the US dollar and all...  MS would be getting a bargain.

They could even bundle Facebook + MS Office Live.

The only problem would be getting all those sysadmins to unblock Facebook.com from their firewalls.  Windows Update anyone?

Others have asked, "Don't you really mean to say that Facebook will have a valuation of $100 billion at some point in the future?"
No, I'm saying that Facebook is worth $100 billion right now because that is my estimate of the price it would take to get Mark Zuckerberg to sell. I'm also saying that Facebook's IPO, which I predict will be between Oct. 2008 and Dec. 2009, will value them at $100+ billion. Shortly after that date, their common stock will be liquid and individual VC's, founders and employee shareholders can begin to cash out a portion of their shares.
Valuation is simply defined as what a willing buyer and willing seller will agree to.

Source: Facebook | Valuation, Shmaluation -- How to Win Big When Mr. Market is Wrong

After Facebook is gone the way of a .com pet sock puppet, is it possible that this new site called Story Of My Life will go on?

http://www.storyofmylifefoundation.org/

The Story of My Life Foundation exists to do nothing else but to store and safeguard your life Story and those of people you love: FOREVER.

DVDs have a shelf life of about 20 years. Papers and disks (even hard drives) are destroyed or lost. Companies come and go, as do leaders, boards of directors, even purposes for original creation change. In an ever-shifting corporate world where the volatility and uncertainty of long-term viability of online software companies, a non-profit whose mission is to safeguard your Life Story for time in-memorial is the safest way to ensure future generations will be able to learn about you.

Sounds like freezing my head for future generations...  what about just blogging & using www.internetarchive.org?

I think I'll just go bury a USB key with my life story in my backyard.  Don't USB keys last forever?  It would probably be a bit more secure.

But where do I leave the map to the key?  Maybe www.flickr.com will be around in 200 years.

Stixy: For Flexible Online Creation Collaboration and Sharing

Sort of a webified One Note.

Stixy: For Flexible Online Creation Collaboration and Sharing

Jiglu: Tags that think

I'll be applying this to all my blogs, I think.  The treemap visualization is one I have been looking for. 

Jiglu is a super-smart engine that pieces your site together, intelligently tagging and linking your web content

Jiglu: Tags that think

Invite Share - Everyone is invited!

Looking for invites to Grandcentral.com, Google's new call fowarding service?  How about Joost, streaming TV?  48 different invite codes are available here. 

Link to Invite Share - Everyone is invited!

What jobs are Iraq war veterans coming back to?

Letter openers apparently... according to Remote Control Mail's CEO.  Interesting and useful service too.

We are entering into an agreement with a national network of non-profit employers of disabled veterans to supply us with scanner operators nationwide - all of whom will have DOD clearances. When this arrangement is up and running then customers will actually be able to select “conventional” or “super high security” scanning, the latter being handled by mostly-Iraq war veterans who have Secret or Top Secret clearances. They will be issued pocketless uniforms (similar to the kind used in federal vaults), will be disallowed from having any personal items like cell phones, or even pen and paper in the operating area, and will be working in a “clean room” environment. The entire process while the envelope is open will be filmed on a proprietary witness video system we have developed called Documentary(tm) which literally makes a movie of your document being handled, and that movie can be watched up to 30 days after a document has been scanned, through the web, by the customer. We set out to really, really solve this problem once and for all, and for the law firms, healthcare facilities and government agencies already testing our service or planning to use it in the future, this is a key feature. No one else does this that we’re aware of. Stay tuned to the website to find out when we bring this element of the service live. Besides the “double bottom line” of creating high paying jobs for disabled vets, this offering makes it possible for government agencies to meet their “set aside quotas”, and in some cases is the only way they can contract out their mail processing to the private sector.

Source: Remote Control Mail: Check Your Postal Mail on the Web

10 Best Facebook Applications For Business Professionals — Facebook Observer

Voicemail, Conference Calls, Biz Cards, Phone books, referrals, testimonials, market research, biz profiles, all you need is a 1-800 number and an assembly line and you're good to go.

10 Best Facebook Applications For Business Professionals

Source: 10 Best Facebook Applications For Business Professionals — Facebook Observer

Presentation Zen: Living large: "Takahashi Method" uses king-sized text as a visual

Good (1)

Takahashi uses only text in his slides. But not just any text — really big text. Huge text. Characters of impressive proportion which rarely number more than ten, usually fewer. The goal, he says, is to use short words rather than long, complicated words and phrases. Last year Takahashi gave a presentation at a conference using the method or style that he created. People were deeply impressed by his presentation — not the content, but his slides. Over the past year, blogs across Japan have been buzzing about Takahashi and his presentation style and people began calling it the "Takahashi Method."

Source: Presentation Zen: Living large: "Takahashi Method" uses king-sized text as a visual

Dear Me: Get to work | 43 Folders

How to delegate to your future self... 

Pack winter clothes in corner of bedroom into airmail box

Ask Bob for the date of the next website revamp meeting

Review “Page Design” book for three examples of three column page layout

Send Cherry second quarter income statements (doc link in notes)

Source: Dear Me: Get to work | 43 Folders

Mini-Microsoft on Halo 3

 My wife and I went to Costco last weekend and I dropped an XBox 360 Elite into the shopping cart... and then took it out after reading the $500+ price tag.

Somehow I think I'll stick with MAME games and SNES on my PSP for awhile longer... though I really want to check out the new Halo 3.

Master Chief, Baby! Do we have a big release of some sort next week? I think we'll see a lot of sick days on the 25th and 26th. Followed by the high-fiving neener-neeners from Xbox leadership about having a profitable quarter. Yeah. $250,000,000 in the bank, what, mmm, $5,750,000,000 to go?

Source: Mini-Microsoft

Once you go Mac - Blog Maverick

Yet another net geek is raving about the Mac.  Mark Cuban's a fan.

Is the computer turning into an appliance?

Its not that there arent hassles with the Mac. There are two. One there isnt a version of Outlook for the Mac. As someone who has more than 10 years and gigabytes worth of emails in multiple outlook files, the concept of exporting and importing wont fly. So i am keeping my PC Desktop purely to download my emails into Outlook so I have a master database. But I only do so after deleting unimportant emails from the server using my Macbook.
The 2nd problem is the lack of the right mouse click. I know its a Mac thing to only have one button, but its a hassle. Sure there are work arounds, none of which are quick and easy for a longtime PC user.
Both of these are easily offset by 3 simple Mac elements that make me very happy.
First is that when I close my MacBook without turning it off, it doesn't lose power. It can sit there for hours and then work when I open it up.
The 2nd is that it rarely freezes up. Maybe 3 or 4 times in months.
Finally, i LOVE the fact that it boots up in 1/1000000000 of the time it takes my PC. It probably will add years to my life .. (ok an exaggeration).
Im not an Apple fanboy, but I love me some MacBook

Source: Once you go Mac - Blog Maverick

Wavesmash's Jottit Page: Home

Create a web site by filling in a text box.  Of course, the text box has instant preview, supports html tags, did I mention the instant preview?

It is one of the most minimalist web sites out there, next to www.zombo.com

http://jottit.com/

Link to Wavesmash's Jottit Page: Home

scottberkun.com » Asshole driven development

Which methodology does your company use?  I have worked for a couple of companies that used this one... 

Asshole Driven development (ADD) - Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. Asshole is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.

If you liked it, there's over 200 more where that came from...

scottberkun.com » Asshole driven development

Facebook backers create $10 mln fund for start-ups: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Need another reason to build a disruptive Facebook app?  How about $100k? 

Facebook is working with its primary venture backers, Accel Capital and The Founders Fund, to create a way for people with new ideas to receive an initial funding grant of $25,000 to $250,000 that does not require the entrepreneur to give up any equity in the business they create, as venture capital does.

"We are looking for innovative and disruptive things," Mark Zuckerberg said of projects the grants might fund, in a keynote presentation at TechCrunch 40, a conference showcasing Web start-ups taking place this week in San Francisco.

Source: Facebook backers create $10 mln fund for start-ups: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

Over 200+ Mac Apps

For whenever I decide to break down and buy a Macbook Pro. 

Software

Bootstrapper » Top 100 Foods to Improve Your Productivity

Will I eat Eggplant?  Probably no?

Everything else on the menu sounds good to me.

Besides eating to lose weight, why not eat to improve your productivity? Whether the following foods help sharpen your eyesight, keep your brain focused, or just fill you up without making you feel lazy, you’ll find they’ll help you keep your day on track.

Source: Bootstrapper » Top 100 Foods to Improve Your Productivity

Jerry Seinfeld likes prison?

This time management tip sounds like something out of Shawshank Redemption.  Oddly enough, didn't Seinfeld end with the gang going to prison?

He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker.

He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."

"Don't break the chain." He said again for emphasis.

Source: Motivation: Jerry Seinfeld's productivity secret - Lifehacker

Ted On Flex

 

Microsoft has removed my example streaming SWF/FLV from their streaming service. Looks like I violated the terms of service in streaming FLV and SWF files.
The example no longer works but this is how it was done:
1. Create an account over at Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service.
2. Upload this ZIP file.
3. Looks at the results page look at the JS in the last call:
function CreateSilverlight(){
Silverlight.createHostedObjectEx({
source: "streaming:/27498/SWFStreaming",parentElement: Wrapper_SWFStreaming});
}
4. Take the highlighted URL and open it in a browser like so:
http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/27498/SWFStreaming/iframe.html
5. You will get a 301 redirect, similar to how YouTube.com works to a much longer URL into the cluster at the Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service.
6. Chop off the files and you are in the ZIP file you uploaded as a file system. From here on out simply call the URLS relative to the base path.
For all the talk about how the formats work together, it is a shame they do not allow the streaming service to serve FLV and SWF.
So this is the end of the experiment. A day of blogging and exploring on one of Microsoft's most state of the art services. At the end I guess I am little frustrated at the lack of a solid definition of "Streaming" by either company. "Streaming" means different things to different people. I guess in some cases "Streaming" is progressive download, "Streaming" is playback before the file is complete, full control over skipping forward in a file without delay, or others full RTSP and other protocols.

Source: Ted On Flex

Is the CN Tower shrinking?

My wife's father's brother (uncle-in-law?) worked on the electrical system for the CN Tower's exterior lights.  A former co-worker's uncle's father helped to install the antenna.  Small world just got smaller.

The Burj Dubai tower is now 555 metres (1,831.5 feet) tall and has surpassed the 553-metre- (1,824.9-feet) CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, which held the record for the world's tallest free-standing structure since 1976, developers Emaar Properties said in a statement.

Source: Dubai tower now world's tallest free-standing structure - Yahoo! News

Girl Power - Whateverlife.com - Ashley Qualls - Nabbr

She's raking in $70k/month with sponsorship and her site gets more traffic than Oprah.   Makes her money from Google AdSense and Valueclick traffic, and direct sponsors.  And Nabr, which bills itself as the 1st Social Promotion Network.  (Sounds like Amway but without the expensive products.)

She contracted some developers from India to build her a sitebuilder app - that raked in 28,000 users in the first week.  She's brought in more than $1 million dollars - and she doesn't even have a drivers license yet.

And she won't sell.

Whateverlife just sort of happened, another accidental Web business. Originally, Ashley created the site in late 2004 when she was 14 as a way to show off her design work. "I was the dorky girl who was into HTML," she says. It attracted zero interest beyond her circle of friends until she figured out how to customize MySpace pages. So many classmates asked her to design theirs that she began posting layouts on her site daily, several at first, then dozens.

By 2005, her traffic had exploded; she needed her own dedicated server. Ashley, who had bartered site designs for free Web hosting, couldn't afford the monthly rental, not on her babysitting income. Her Web host suggested Google AdSense, a service that supplies ads to a site and shares the revenue. The greater the traffic, the more money she'd earn.

"She would look up how much she had made," says Jen Carey, 17, one of her closest friends. "It was $50. She thought that was the coolest."

I'm doing what everyone says they want to do, "live like there's no tomorrow." --Ashley in her blog, "The Daily Life of a Simple Kind of Gal," July 1, 2006; 2:43 a.m.

The first check, her first paycheck of any kind, was even cooler: $2,790.

"It was more than I made in a month," her mother says.

Source: Girl Power - Whateverlife.com - Ashley Qualls - Nabbr

» My Media Center parts and price list | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

 

Several readers have written to request a list of parts and prices that I used for my Vista Media Center system. Here it is, with the caveat that the prices are bound to fluctuate. A few parts are more expensive now than they were then, some are cheaper, and the Dell C521 has been discontinued but can still be ordered from the Dell Outlet.

The system itself cost a total of $668. Here’s a detailed breakdown of parts and specs.

Dell Dimension C521: $422 (Dell Outlet)

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+
• 1GB DDR2 RAM 667MHz
• 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
• Onboard 10/100 Ethernet
• 160GB SATA drive (replaced with Samsung drive below)
• 16X DVD+/- RW w/ double layer write capability

Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA drive: $110 (Newegg.com)

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE: $32 (Amazon.com)

Sound Blaster Digital I/O Module: $16 (Amazon.com)

AverTV Combo PCIe (m780): $88 (Amazon.com)

In addition to those parts, I used a Logitech Harmony Remote 680 that I purchased for a bargain $105 in late 2005. It’s no longer made, but Logitech makes plenty of other Harmony models that should work just fine. They just won’t have the green button.

I also added a Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 Bluetooth keyboard. At $124 (Amazon.com), it’s a little pricey, but it’s so smoothly integrated with Media Center that it’s worth it to me. Any Bluetooth keyboard should work just fine.

Update: As a reader pointed out via e-mail, I left out one part, a Media Center remote control with IR receiver. These are typically available for around $30; this model from PC Alchemy has all the hardware needed to connect additional IR emitters to two TV tuners. Although I use the Logitech Harmony 680 remote, the IR receiver is required to operate the system via the 10-foot interface.

» My Media Center parts and price list | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - The FreeMiniMac has arrived and will the fun ever start?

So I'm thinking about a Mac. My sister just recently purchased a Macbook Pro, and even though I didn't bother trying it (I was afraid I would like it and get one) I still wanted to get more info just in case I may want one in the future. Plus I liked the box. Scott Hanselman (post below) talks about the OOBE (out of box experience). I like the ITBE (In the Box Experience) better right now. You can use it as a travel case.

To me, owning a Mac is like my dream of owning a Mercedes. I go to work every day in my Nissan. It works. It's worlds better than my Ford Escort was. I don't have to work for a mechanic to keep it running. I can't justify upgrading to something with a leather seat that remembers my last ass groove position, and wipers on the headlights.

Plus the parts on a Mercedes can be expensive. And the oil change is $300 at the dealer, not that I would go there. (Applecare anyone? If your warranty comes in it's own fancy box you know there is trouble a-brewin')

Plus you have to pay extra for a nice case to keep the nice shiny finish clean. I bought a pressure washer for the Nissan that gets about 3 uses a year... and for some reason I have 2 power car wax buffers that aren't even used. Somehow I think a Silver Mercedes, like a Silver Mac, would cry out to stay clean and scratch free.

I work everyday on a PC. It doesn't work how I like it some (lately most) of the time, but I can't justify spending my own money to get what would really be just a toy for me.

Anyway, for the time when I go ahead and buy a Mac (or when MS ends up buying them out to upgrade Silverlight to OS-X) here is a link to some software with reviews.

I bought a powerbook a few weeks months ago just for the sake of deviation and exploration. .NET day and night felt a little droll even with the new things.
My take: oh my, just typing on the thing is somehow more pleasurable than typing on my wonderful A64 X2 pc will all the goodies. There's just some sort of feng shui that XP lacks in its core.
(That said, some of the keyboard nav still vexes me...)
So I decided to try and do everything that wasn't work on OS X for a bit.
I've been "using" since Win286. Flipping everything on to the mac really wasn't that hard.
I was actually amazed at how much decent small-shop software there is over there. I knew about a few things, but most of the time, when I went searching for something I liked on Windows for OS X, I found something close enough or better.
I don't know what you've found so far, but here are some of my random notes, they're free :)
- iTerm - good term replacement. Free.
- The dock goes on the left. Iirc you have widescreens, this placement seems natural to me.
- Quicksilver is totally cool, they hype seems warranted. I mainly use it launch apps right now (it makes the dock sort of an afterthought for all those second level apps you might go to the start menu for or whatever), but I've done some of the 10 minute tutorials and it's pretty cool... Nothing really like it on Windows right now.). Double command key triggering is my flavor. Free.
- FolderShare is awesome, I use it to synch my mac to a windows server that can then do the network backup thing along with the rest of my crap.
- quicksilver purists seem to grouse about spotlight a lot, but I actually use it a fair amount, it works better than any of the search I've used on windows (but I haven't used X1).
- TextMate - I thought I would use it just for ruby, but I ended up using it for text, html, everything. It's my emeditor for mac. It's even better actually, very CR-like with it's templating. Would love to see a windows version. Trial -> $45ish
- CSSEdit - best css editor I've ever used, better than TopStyle. Trial -> $25.
- RSyncx - This took some doing, but my mac came with a bad memory slot so it went back to Apple after the first week. RsyncX will let you clone your full drive onto a firewire (or other available) drive as a bootable copy. I don't know if this is as important to have laying around as it was with OS9 and earlier. Anyway, I ended up springing for one of the LaCie externals because my USB enclosures and firewire enclosures weren't working with RSyncX. Basically it was finnicky--buy other things like Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper flailed for me. Free.
- Adium - Coolest looking IM client I've ever used. Makes trillian look like a pig. Gratis.
- NNW. First I was a NewsGator lover, then FeedDemon won me over. Then I started dinking with NNW and, there it is again, it just feels nicer. I'm a NG subscriber, grandfathered or whatever... I emailed them, they will have it linked into NGO soon, but no dates. They don't have a licensing route for existing NGO subscribers yet, their advice was use NNW Lite for a few months (or pony up the $25 on the old Ranchero site)
- Speaking of NNW, Brent Simmons (the developer) is manning the support channels over on the NewsGator forums if you want to ask him about how Mac devs really do it (this is not a bumper sticker suggestion)
- I don't know how they do it. I like TextMate and I've got my little rails rig working well and so on. I do a lot of typing, I have to lean on tdd so fricking hard because I feel naked without a nice compile check, intellicrack, etc. Basically I run my tests after every third keystroke, or so it feels.
- Consolas, Vera Sans Mono... Must have even with nice complement of mac fonts (Lucida Grande is great). Mac proportions are different, so sometimes Vera is too big, Consolas to stout. Georgia is great on any platform or serif.
- DEVONthink - sort of like OneNote. I like it better, but I'm actually not a huge OneNote fan (I want to like it, It's just a little too loose for me, I like more folders and notes). I'm using it for a lot of other pim-type stuff and as a document manager. Was $70, overpriced but good.
- Cocoalicious. Don't know if you do the deli.cio.us thing. Like Bloc Party, I didn't get this the first time around, but it won me over (and I own OnFolio). Cocoalicious adds a lot of automation hooks, most notably you can do post to blog from in NNW and throw it into delicious. Free.
- Fugu. Tried transit. Tried Yummy FTP. I have an account with TextDrive so I do the scp/sftp thing for file transfer. Transit really barfed a lot and the other two didn't. Fugu's free but awkward and doesn't do remote editing that well (WinSCP blows all three away for my money). Maybe Yummy is worth paying for, jury's out over here.
- ecto - the Ranchero folks make a blog client that also might come into NGO subs hands someday. Ecto is one of the better blogjet type clients, I've used but it's been a bit flaky for me lately--it's wysiwyg/html modes can be annoying for things like bullets. I may revisit this one, but it has some neat things that some of the Window clients could learn from, at least as far as UX and tagging go.
- Mail- Mail.app is neat sometimes, I've used t-bird for personal mail for a while. But my friend/host moved me onto Exchange for personal mail recently and Entourage->Exchange is the best thing going. It's not as good as Outlook, but it's pretty much better than everything else (and now I have contacts, tasks, cal, etc for personal--before it was tedium on my main box because of profile limits).
- CandyBar - It's not a mac if it's not pretty with cute icons.
- RDC, VNC for remote. Regular old shell beats putty any day. Keys can be a pain, SSHKeyManager helps with this.
- Xcode. Do this first, do this before Fink. Save mostly obfuscated headaches. Once I got Xcode installed, Fink went on fine and then I could start fixing OSX's default ruby install.
- I switched up and installed lighttpd to do my local webdev instead of apache. Lighty is pretty cool. I still haven't grokked this whole fastcgi world where we bang rocks together and don't have a reliable worker process.
- CocoaMySql makes the shame of working with mysql more bearable.
- Synergy is your MaxiVista. I haven't gotten to this yet, but it's apparently about the same deal. There's a service piece and a Cocoa GUI piece iirc.
- KVM. I ended up getting this addlogix powerreach unit. I'm not wild about it, the keystroke switching is cumbersome compared to the Belkin SOHO I've used for several years and liked. I couldn't find something that was dual-dvi, usb k+m and supported at least 1920x1200. This was my best option.
It's good, but it was pricey at like 250 and I use the front buttons to switch. Also, some of the higher order mouse buttons get caught in the wash.
I lost mouse 5 and 6 or 6 and 7 on my logitech on the mac, they work directly. Good news was: at least I didn't need to buy a bunch of kvm cables, just another dvi cable.
I didn't intend to right a novel, but you're "good tools people", what the hell. You'll find one thing useful in here, you've done the same for a lot of the other folks out there :)

Source: Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - The FreeMiniMac has arrived and will the fun ever start?

Facebook is a pyramid scam

With built-in email functionality. 

Facebook is a multilevel marketing platform where you agree to pay attention to people's gestures in the hopes that those people will pay-attention to your gestures in the future. It's a gesture bank.

Source: Social Network Exhaustion (or Facebook Bankruptcy Redux)

"The world needs only 5 computers" comes true

 Only it will be millions of computers connected to 5 'clouds'.  Is this The Matrix in real life?

Ozzie describes five separate target customers for its web services. First are consumers, who will be offered entertainment, commerce, and communication. Second are "information workers," who will be offered collaboration tools: "Seamless Office scenarios that span the PC, the Web and even the phone. Documents that go wherever you want them, news scenarios, sharing scenarios, meeting scenarios, note-taking, presentation scenarios that use PCs for what they're really good for: for document creation and editing and review. That use the Web for what it's really good for: publishing and sharing and universal access."

Third are IT staffs, whose main benefit from the shift to utility computing will be cost savings, says Ozzie: "For enterprise IT in the short term, this is mostly going to be about moving IT infrastructure to the cloud, either in whole or in part. Things like e-mail or content management, information sharing, and so on." The fourth target customer group consists of business managers, who will gain greater speed and flexibility in deploying IT resources as applications turn into services. Finally, there are the software developers, who by drawing on the utility computing grid will be able "to run applications and store data at very, very low cost [and], for all practical purposes, with infinite capacity that's shared with other people like themselves."

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Microsoft's forecast: cloudy

Silverbrook Research - Technology

The fastest full colour printing I have ever seen.

Not sure how it can be environmentally sound - it will kill trees at 10x the rate of conventional printing.  It's still incredible to see 30ppm full color.

I wonder how long it would take to empty a toner.

Memjet technology, supplied by Memjet Home and Office, will reshape the office workgroup and home photo printing markets by enabling companies to design, manufacture and sell Memjet-based office printers and home photo printers that deliver high-quality, high-speed color printing at breakthrough costs. Additionally, the technology provided by Memjet Home and Office will enable brands with little or no printing technology to enter the imaging and printing market on a level playing field, while allowing established brands to leverage a compelling new printing technology.

Silverbrook Research - Technology

De Lorean on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

With new and improved Mr. Fusion

View jasonEscapist's map

Taken in (See more photos here)

Not a De Lorean. THE De Lorean.

Source: De Lorean on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Crushed glass to be spread on beaches - Yahoo! News

Why does this sound like as good an idea as dumping old tires in the ocean to make an artificial reef? 

"You talk about glass beach and people have images of sharp glass shards but it's not that way at all," he said.

Recycled glass also has been used for beaches along Lake Hood in New Zealand and on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao.

It's unclear how much the project would cost Broward County, or if the project is even feasible. The state and county have so far spent about $600,000 just on tests and engineering.

The county tested a small patch of glass sand on a dry patch of beach last year, using sensors to measure effects of heat and moisture. Scientists have also conducted laboratory tests that show organisms and wildlife can thrive in the material just like natural sand, they said. The county is awaiting a permit to test glass sand in the surf zone.

Some people are raising caution flags.

"There's no way that you can predict all the environmental consequences of an action like this," said Dennis Heinemann, a senior scientist with the Ocean Conservancy. "There always will be unforeseen consequences."

Source: Crushed glass to be spread on beaches - Yahoo! News

Tips for Searching Google

They missed one... want to find out things happening near an address?  Search for 000..555 anystreet ave. replacing a range near your address number.  The .. searches between numbers.

Limiting by date can be a problem. Genie Tyburski and I wrote an article about this last year. Date searching is reliable only when Google can consistently identify them as it does with Usenet message (Google Groups) and news (Google News).

A potentially useful way to limit the scope of a search is to use the syntax for file type (filetype:). For example, filetype:ppt google finds mention of Google in PowerPoint slides. Other formats include .pdf (Adobe Acrobat), .doc (Word) and .xls (Excel). Other search engines also let you query these formats.

You can use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard. Example: "George * Bush" finds George W. Bush. Example: "To * * * to be" finds "To be or not to be". I've used this strategy to find email addresses: "email * * <domain>".

Some documents are not completely indexed by Google. Indexing of the text in Web pages stops after 101kb (For PDF, it's 120kb.)

Google limits the number of search terms to ten.

Not every Google version offers all of Google's features. For example, Google via the Washington Post does not offer the cache or similar page options.

Finding out who links to a Web page is popular. You use the link (link:) syntax. However, you cannot limit the search using additional syntax. For example, you cannot discover which .edu sites link to  the home page of The Virtual Chase. The search link:www.virtualchase.com site:edu does not work. AllTheWeb, on the other hand, lets you add additional syntax to a reverse link search.

For the most part, search engines display one result per domain. For example, enter "competitive intelligence" "new york". Google returns two listings from SCIP. To see additional pages from the same domain -- scip.org, you have to click the "more results" link.

Search terms are linked to dictionary definitions via Dictionary.com. Find the link near the top of the page in the blue bar. Other engines also offer this feature.

Using Google UncleSam, limits your search to material from government sites.

Findlaw also offers a focused version of Google. The filter boosts the relevancy of legal and government information. See LawCrawler.

Google is wonderful, but it is not the only Web search tool. Take a look at Teoma, AllTheWeb and Vivisimo.

Finally, learn about and bookmark specialized or, as a professor at Penn State calls them, niche databases. This can save you time and aggravation. Examples include the new keyword searchable version of The Wayback Machine or the even newer SMEALSearch, which indexes freely available, scholarly business information.

Source: Tips for Searching Google