michael coates, a pragmatic evangelist
June 5, 2006 Leave a comment
Cassandra is so proud.
Captured here for digital eternity: her first bubble gum bubble!
Sugar-free, of course, AND she got it back into her mouth without it winding up on the furniture.
Way to go Cassie!
June 5, 2006 Leave a comment
Did you know that Zircon is the oldest known material on earth? I didn’t. Scientists discovered bits of Zircon in Western Australia that are 4.404 billion years old. The Earth formed a scant 150 million years prior to that. Older bits were discovered in a meteorite in Chile, clocked at 4.6 billion years old.
How can this be? From the article:
Zircon contains its own internal atomic clock. Its crystal accumulates atoms of uranium, which decay to lead at a known rate. By measuring the relative abundance of two types of uranium and lead in a zircon, geologists can determine old it is. Zircon is also incredibly durable. It remains unscathed while other rocks and minerals melt and re-form under the tremendous heat and pressure of continental shifts, mountain-building, and violent asteroid impacts.
Yowzah!
In fact, like most of us, I assumed Cubic Zirconia (imitation diamonds) were derived from Zircon. They’re not. The cubic variety is laboratory-grown for your inexpensive pleasure.
Read “Zircon” from the “Add more color to your life” site.
June 2, 2006 Leave a comment
The Wall Street Journal says we are.
‘Captcha’ is an acronym (of course), for ‘completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart’. You and I will recognize them as the funny images with strangely-shaped letters we see on some sites. The intent is to prevent automated registration to credentials and to sites. Yeah, they’re annoying, but I get why they’re necessary.
Not everyone is so pragmatic. WSJOnline: “Codes on Sites ‘Captcha’ Anger of Web Users”.
June 1, 2006 Leave a comment
I learned WAY too much about 419 scams when I published “Microsoft teams with Nigera to fight scammers” (on my birthday, no less).
I was able to read a ground-level dose of 419 reality when The New Yorker published “THE PERFECT MARK”.
The resource links from my earlier article.
Don’t fall for these. These are always false and always a scam. If you get one you think is compelling, check out the sites. If you still think it’s the real deal, call or write me, and I’ll help you research it.
June 1, 2006 Leave a comment
Another scary phish in my mailbox (my last was “Scary Chase Online Phish”). This one, targeting Washington Mutual (WaMu) customers showed up yesterday:
Looks pretty darned good. The message is consistent with a phish, especially the “If we do not receive the appropriate account verification within 48 hours” part, where they threaten to suspend the account. Sense of urgency, and all that.
Let’s look for trouble. Mousing over the renewal ‘IdentityManagement’ URL reveals:
You’ll note that while the link looks legitimate (https even), the mouse over shows you’d be sent to an IP site that redirected to another (now-defunct) IP site.
The other URLs on the page are legitimate:
Which is typical; these sites will pull content from legitimate links to support their illusion.
Don’t be fooled by these.
May 31, 2006 Leave a comment
Accounting is going to have a chuckle (if Microsoft accountants ever chuckle, that is) when going through my expense report this week. First of all, it’s mostly cash (we normally use a corporate credit card for business travel) and secondly, most of the meals are titled ‘street food’.
Street food rocks.
It’s the stuff that you buy from street vendors in New York City. There is a huge variety, and I make a point to try something new each time I visit. As a result, I wind up ‘eating my way’ across Manhattan. This trip was no exception.
Gyros stands provided most of the manna from heaven for me this trip. Not the gyros themselves, but the ‘carb friendly’ alternative that served the meats and vegetables atop a bed of seasoned rice (memo to vendors: rice has carbs). However, in a word: Yumm.
Mister Softee played a big part as well (I posted about this in in my “NYC Trip” post) and good old Starbucks made sure I kept my circadians all fouled up with too many night walks around the city.
My diet? Noted, but not forgotten this trip. I still snacked during the day, keeping my metabolism high. Memo to self: do the diet and workout posts I’ve been meaning to write for the past few months.
There must be a hot dog stand somewhere on campus. Perhaps I should just follow my nose.
April 30, 2006 Leave a comment
I had the pleasure to visit the Big Apple this past week to work with a partner. It’s been a few years (almost eight) since I was there. Naturally, I had to visit my old haunts on the Upper East Side. Unhappily, most of them had closed, were being renovated or just plain gone.
Quick inventory:
The good news:
I took the MTA NYC Subway most places; there was a stop a half block from my Sheraton hotel.
The construction site formerly known as Ground Zero is solemn and stirring, at the same time. There was quite a crowd down there (take the E Train to the WTC stop, also known as Church Street). This temporary stop connects to the PATH trains to New Jersey and lets you off at the fence surrounding the excavation. A single wreath in this station reminds us of what happened here. If you’re not passing through to Jersey, you can walk most of the way around the site and read the signs describing the timeline of 9/11 and history of the site.
April 30, 2006 Leave a comment
I found this interesting. This guy says he can diagnose an injury by reaching back in time to the moment of the injury.
MSNBC: “Chiropractor claims to travel in time”.
“Back”, chiropractor, get it? Sorry for the awful pun.
Seems his state (Ohio) regulators are very interested in him as well.
March 29, 2006 1 Comment
It’s all about the user. I addressed this earlier in “What do you call the uber personalized site for information snacking?” and I’m starting to see more and more in the ‘sphere about what is getting to be a monumental shift.
I’m still thinking about this and am looking for partners interested in working on it with me.
The user wants to snack on their data; whenever, wherever they are. This could be email on the PC or SmartPhone, video on the phone while on a plane or on the big screen while at home, a Personal Control Panel that aggregates all the user’s desired content with access from anywhere (think MyMSN or My Yahoo).
This PCP could include digital content that’s best presented in a 10-foot view, accessible with Windows Media Center and your wide-screen TV. Or it could include links to your music, downloadable to your PC or phone from your place on the web.
It’s bigger than a portal; it’s our user’s life. The user at the center is the main tenet of Information Snacking.
What do you think?
February 28, 2006 Leave a comment
Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation software written on the .NET 2.0 Framework. It’s designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft.
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