michael coates, a pragmatic evangelist
June 11, 2007 Leave a comment
Not the "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" or Hormel Spam variety, either.
Wired reports (2007) "May 1, 1978: Spam, From Novelty to Nuisance in a Couple of Decades". Over Arapnet, no less. In 2010, Wired posted “April 12, 1994: Immigration Lawyers Invent Commercial Spam”.
June 8, 2007 Leave a comment
Tchotchke, swag or gift bags; whatever you call them, they’re the heart and soul of conferences.
The best goodies usually come with the highest prices: providing your email address, sitting through a mandatory presentation or completing surveys.
Technical conferences tend to have techie-ish toys: balls that light up, USB ‘things’ and the like. But what about psychiatrists?
Wired stepped up to answer this one in "Psychiatric Pharmas Lay Out the Loot". From the post:
The next time you reach for a tissue in the middle of a weepy therapy session, don’t be surprised to see this reminder that depression is nothing to sneeze at. Effexor, an antidepressant, not only provides the tissue, but warns on the dispenser about rare side effects like life-threatening serotonin syndrome, sustained increases in blood pressure and "discontinuation symptoms" when people stop taking the drug.
With all that stuff, is there even room for a slip?
June 3, 2007 Leave a comment
I just installed Microsoft Expression Suite and Visual Studio "Orcas" on a Windows Server 2003 Virtual PC image and when running Expression Media, I get:
"Quicktime is not installed on this computer. Do you want to download and install Quicktime now?"
Why yes, yes I do. However the download page doesn’t allow an installation without iTunes.
Now, why would I want iTunes? It’s a server, built for a development environment and further, I don’t (and won’t) own an iPod; my phone is all I need.
Kudos to the bigger brains at Apple: despite being strong-armed into installing unneeded software, I was able to remove iTunes via Control Panel, Add / Remove Programs.
Of course, it required a reboot.
Update: I take the kudos above back. The uninstall process left behind a service called “iPod Service” with the description of “iPod hardware management services”.
Apple: I don’t own an iPod. Why do I need this service?
May 27, 2007 Leave a comment
Assuming clear skies, residents in Manhattan are in for a treat at sunset tomorrow: sun streaming northward through the urban canyons.
Direct sunlight is normally obscured by the tall buildings in the city. As the streets are aligned to 30 degrees of north, this event will occur twice a year: tomorrow and on July 12th.
NASA has a cool picture of the phenom in their Astronomy Picture of the Day from a few years back.
May 21, 2007 Leave a comment
Strike that. While I’d like to go into a pile of half-witty one-liners about it, I’m glad it’s here.
May 21, 2007 Leave a comment
CNET reports Purdue scientists have sorted a way to convert water into hydrogen.
Yes: we did this in grade school with a battery, two test tubes and a fish tank. Remember? The hydrogen tube would ‘pop’ turned it right-side up toward a lit match.
As if anyone in grade school could avoid getting suspended for lighting a match these days. I digress.
The grade school conversion method consumed more energy than the resulting hydrogen produces, hence is not a economically-feasible project in itself.
But what if we complete the deforestation of the planet and need the oxygen? I digress again.
These sharp cookies are doing this conversion by adding gallium and aluminum (as opposed solely by applying an expensive electrical current) to the water; converting into hydrogen in real time. This might just be precursor to a commercial implementation. From the article:
The process relies on the use of aluminum pellets, which are mixed into liquid gallium (a metal that liquefies at just over room temperature) to produce a liquid aluminum-gallium. When water is added to the compound, the aluminum reacts with the oxygen to form a gel along with free-standing hydrogen, which can be collected and used to power a fuel cell. According to EDN, an Indiana-based start-up already has a license to commercialize the technology.
Read the entire article: "Eureka! Purdue scientists turn water into hydrogen".
May 21, 2007 Leave a comment
I worked on a DOE contract at Hanford some years back, doing IT support for technical staff. At the time, the site was just becoming more ‘open’, as various ‘hot’ sites were shutting down, their contents consolidated into other sites.
i was tickled to see an post in Wired about bus tours to various places in the Hanford site, including a few I worked in myself. From the post:
The main attraction at Hanford is B Reactor, which was built in just 13 months spanning 1943 and 1944 in the sprint to supply plutonium for the Manhattan Project. Before we enter, a woman in jeans and a US Marines sweatshirt assures us that we "won’t get contaminated on this tour." What we really need to watch out for, she warns, is lead paint, uneven floors, and the occasional bat or spider. Walking inside, the air is cool, and the entryway is decorated with poster-size photographs of Hanford operations from the 1940s. Also on display: a copy of Einstein’s 1939 letter to President Roosevelt recommending research into a new resource — a nuclear chain reaction — that could produce "extremely powerful bombs of a new type."
Read the entire article: "Fission Trip".
May 21, 2007 Leave a comment
’twas back in August 2005 that I posted "Competition: Watching the Perimeter". I was inspired by an article in Baseline Magazine "Barbie Lost Her Groove, Competitors Picked It Up".
Seems Mattel is keen to bounce back in a big way: online. Additions to their Barbie ‘fleet’ include plastic "Barbie Girls," an MP3 player that can be accessorized like a doll. The ‘girl’ has an online component; social networking and shopping in a virtual world on the web. From the post:
The overall audience for Barbie sites has declined slightly over the last year, and has failed to grow over the last three years. According to Nielsen NetRatings, the Barbie site attracted about 1.9 million unique visitors from home and work in April 2007, down from 2.1 million in April 2006. Those numbers are in line with about 2 million visitors in the same month in 2004.
Meanwhile, online competitor Webkinz (virtual plushies) has increased market share significantly, usurping Barbie and and Neopets (all targeting roughly the same age demographic).
May 17, 2007 Leave a comment
I just celebrated my second year at Microsoft (see "Redmond Monsoon Season / Some New Directions").
That aside, no one ever tried this bit of hazing on me when I joined Microsoft. However, I heard about it from multiple sources: despite that, it could be a thing of Redmond legend.
As I heard the tale, you’ve just joined Microsoft, been through new employee orientation (NEO; your first week onsite is in this three-day meeting) and you’re settling in your office or cubby. You’re setting up your shiny new PC with all the MSIT stuff on ProductsWeb and the phone rings:
"You have a meeting in Building 7 in 30 minutes!"
You grab the nearest map of campus (online or printed; it doesn’t matter) and note the group of ‘X" shaped buildings, 1-8 in the center. You realize it’s walking distance, so you set out straight away.
Not that you would know this in your first week, but there is no building 7.
The thinking person would assume it’d be in the group of buildings 1-8, but it isn’t.
CIO says more in "The Mystery of Microsoft’s Building Seven Lives On".
May 15, 2007 Leave a comment
Well, when I was working at Microsoft, I hoped not. I wanted us to get there first. 😉
It’s not any more functional than MyMSN, but is a logical next step; but what’s next-next? At what point is will this extend to other devices and include data from outside a walled garden?
I referred to this paradigm in “What do you call the uber personalized site for information snacking?“, “The next thing: Minis, Flakes, et. al“, “The User at the Center” and most recently “Information Snacking in the real world“.
In these posts, I’m guessing this concept would emerge as the next big thing on the web: a ‘blank slate’ where users could connect to the data that matters to them, no matter the source.
I christened the concept “Information Snacking“, describing a user-centric view of a user’s own data, aggregated from multiple sources; likely outside the sources’ native interfaces. Data that is available on multiple devices through layers of abstraction.
Heh. See why I call it “Information Snacking”? The description is practically a thesis.
In a few words, your data, when and where you want it:
The page that can pull all these sources together will win the much-coveted Home Page position on all my browsers. It might also net a blog post or twenty-two.
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