Posts
-
Go Text!!!
I knew that if I said something like this post at Gadgetopia I would just get accused of using it as an excuse to justify my very text-intensive site. But now that someone else has said it I have a foothold at least. Text rules!!! Graphics are nice, I just don’ want them sprinkled all over for no reason. When I m browsing sites over GPRS, I don’t want no stinking images getting in the way.
-
Weblogger Meeting
Jason Shellen invites webloggers in the San Francisco area to come join up for lunch on Jan 6th. C’mon out and git yer geek on. I’ll be there.
-
Vent Cerf on the Future of the Internet
An article over at BBC provides information from Vint Cerf. Dr. Cerf has been involved with the Internet since the very beginning, and continues to remain active in steering activities. I found his comments interesting because he also seems to think that hooking all sorts of devices to the Internet is the way of the future:
-
Personal Tracking Devices
There’s an article at textually.org, SMS ‘Smart Bracelet’ for Medical Emergencies, which made me think of the Wherify GPS watch and the planned project called Wheels of Zeus launched by Steve Wozniak. The world certainly seems to be converging on a “sensor network” view of computing, in terms of pervasive devices using wireless networking, sensors, and geolocation information in order to carry out tasks. These ideas have been around for quite a long time. I remember hearing the starry eyed pundits discussing Internet enabling just about everything back when I was in college. Most people laughed at the time, other people scrambled to figure out how to get wireless interfaces and sensors into just about everything they could get their hands on.
-
Paul Saffo in Palo Alto
Paul Saffo is going to be speaking in Palo Alto on January 15th. I’ve read a few essays by Paul that I was impressed by, in particular his Failure is the Best Medicine piece from last year. This speech is supposed to focus on the role of media in the recent bubble increase and I guess maybe bursting. His point seems to be that the whole issue is media, and that computing and technology are just playing supporting roles. Could be interesting. I’ve put in my registration.
-
Creative Destruction and Open Source
I’ve been reading Creative Destruction recently, and I just wanted to share some thoughts related to the points in the book, particularly with relation to open source. The title of the book is a reference to a concept which apparently seems to stem from Joseph Schumpeter. The idea is that capitalism works not so much because a set of firms competes against each other, but because radically new firms are allowed to enter and force the old ones into extinction. The new firms create a new order, but destroy the old. Critiquing the view held by economists, Schumpeter says:
-
Bookmarklet and Sidebar for WordPress
There’s a post at TechGnome describing how to setup a Blog This bookmarklet and sidebar for WordPress. The WordPress forum responses seemed to indicate that there was some bookmarklet code included with WordPress already, but I haven’t been able to find it. This version seems to work, but this is the first time that I’m going to try it out for submitting a trackback. This page is really usefull for adding a sidebar, I’ve never tried adding one before. It seems like it takes some Javascript in order to do it, and there’s no “Add this page as Sidebar” option in my version of Mozilla. Guess it’s time to grab a new copy and recompile. For the bookmarklet, you have to grab the example code and put it into a page with the correct URL filled in. Then bring up that page in Mozilla and select “Bookmark this Link” for the Blog This URL.
-
MozillaZine Year in Review for 2003
There’s an article at MozillaZine listing all the happenings month by month for the Mozilla project. I use Mozilla every day, I’m a Linux user and it’s my browser of choice. But I don’t have time to follow most of the goings on with the project. It does seem like there’s an amazing amount of activity. But I can’t help but feel that much of the Mozilla development is driven too much by developers. I take a look at the huge number of projects and releases, and the different version of the same browser code (Mozilla, Galleon, FireBird), and I don’t see any benefit to users there. While at the same time I still see the same issues that used to exist, like installing plugins being a pain, lack of a calendar function, and difficult configuration of other enhanced functions. I love the application, it’s my browser of choice. I wouldn’t trade the popup-blocker feature for the world, that is a fantastic function they came up with. I would just like to see 2004 bring some usability enhancements instead of as many new features.
-
The Open Palm Environment Project
I’m sure lots of people got shiny new Palm devices for whatever winter holiday it is they might celebrate. So I figured this would be a great time to pick back up the Open Palm Environment project. I started out by putting a page up as the home page at sourceforge and embedding a desktop bridge for the WINKsite that I created for it. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep working on it for a while, but there are a bunch of other contracting engagements I need to tend to also. I’ve also started cleaning the cruft out of the application downloader and there should be a build of that ready soon. After that the party invitations should go out, and we’ll see what kinda feedback we can get. Until then, feel free to drop by the site, poke around, leave some feedback, explore the little bit of content I have had time to drop in.
-
New MyPalmLife Site
The mobile computing site MyPalmLife has moved to its new home. Along with the new look, there are user forums as well. There’s usually quite a bit of interesting information there, and there are going to be three posters for the blog so that’ll probably even increase some. I particularly like that the site isn’t just a bunch of Palm fan-boy postings. There’s a decent amount of bitching about how lame Palm devices can be and how companies just can’t seem to fulfill their promises. Makes me feel like I’m not quite so alone in my pissing and whining.
subscribe via RSS