On September 11, 2007, the [tag]Boston PHP User Group[/tag] is meeting about “Building the PHP-stack for the [tag]enterprise[/tag]”: “PHP has become ubiquitous when it comes to personal blogs, content management systems, ecommerce sites and more. Take any list of Web 2.0 sites and you’ll find that more than 50% have PHP as back-end technology. What is less known is that PHP is also making significant inroads in the enterprise. Join BostonPHP, IBM and Zend as we discuss where “Enterprise” PHP (and OSS) is going and how it’s going to get there. : (from Boston PHP) If you are into [tag]PHP[/tag] you should check it out!
[tag]Funny[/tag]! I saw this in Dilbert this weekend. I’ve lived this myself. And I’ve been accused of “you make competing sound bad.” They may have a point, I don’t know.
Quick movie review: two movies of more or less the same flavor: [tag]The Bourne Ultimatum[/tag] with heart-throb Matt Damon vs. Live Free or Die Hard with old-dude Bruce Willis. Both good movies (for their genre), but I give the nod to [tag]Live Free or Die Hard[/tag]. Why? [tag]Bruce Willis[/tag] is funny and [tag]Matt Damon[/tag] (in this movie, and presumably as intended) has no personality.
Over on BlogBridge we just announced that release 5.10 just came out, you should try BlogBridge out! In the post there is also a review and explanation of the difference between our bi-weekly development releases and our full-fledged stable releases which come out every 6 or so months. Here is an exhaustive list of new stuff in BlogBridge over the releases. Of special note is the neat new and improved photo album view which brings the fun and pleasure of following photo blogs to a new level. At least I think so! Check it out, tell your friends, digg it, stumble it, and in general, help us get the word out!
Scott Kirsner writes about VC’s this post in his new blog Innovation Economy "[…] Though they like to portray themselves as omniscient and omnipotent, they’re actually quite anxious about missing the next big deal.[…]" (from: Dirty Little Secrets About VCs)
Far be it from me to comment on sports… In fact this is exactly the first sports related post for this blog in 4 years. Anyway, if you follow the Redsox, you know they/we have/had a great pitcher by the name of Curt Shilling. He’s well known by the pitcherati for his heroic performance during the 2004 World Series. Lately Curt’s become popular among the blogerati for his personal blog, 38 Pitches. So far so good. But did you know that he also heads up a high tech company called 38 Studios? Yes, “38 Studios is a game development company located in Maynard, MA. Founded by ...
I was chatting with my neighborhood iPhone (Cingular/AT&T) dealer and learned this interesting detail (which all you hard code iPhone fanatics out there I am sure know all about.) The price of an iPhone ($500 and $700) is the same whether you are activating a new service with Cingular or want to use the phone on an existing contract. This is sharply different from any other cell phone where you get a huge discount when activating new service. What’s the customer impact of this choice? The strategic impact? On the one hand, I happen to be an existing Cingular customer, and so for me the policy is kind of a backwards plus: I don’t feel like I would have to pay ‘extra’ to get an iPhone compared...
I am not going to write yet another long review or commentary. But I can’t resist a few crass words: It’s real and it works. They had 4 of them in stock at my neighborhood ATT/Cingular shop. It is indeed gorgeous. Sleek, star-trekky. It does everything you see in the ads (and I am sure, much much more.) I don’t want one (‘yet’ – never say never). It’s a little to precious for my taste. Kind of reminds me of how I feel about $3,000 Bang & Olufson stereo gear. Beautiful for a museum but not for me. Ok, but was it easy to use? Given that they’ve kind of invented a new paradigm for interacting with a computer, it’s darn impressive. All that functionality, yet no menus. I have to say though that ...
Hey, don’t blame me, I’m just posting a pointer to this interesting story over that the ever-legitimate Freakonomics Blog. The depths to which people will sink to get certain words and images on their blogs, it’s just outragous. Shameful. Check out this post from the always respectable Freakonomics Blog: “I blogged nearly a year ago about a study by the evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa whic...
A few years ago I got the idea to get myself a label printer for around the office. Turns out that it’s been really really handy. Almost all the labels that I’ve printed have been for the myriad of cables, chargers and other doo-dads that one accumulates in this business. Labels like: “Sprint Sanyo Phone”, “Garmin GPS data cable”, and “iPod Firewire” become incredibly useful when you are trying to figure out what goes with what. More mainstream uses are for labeling files in my filing system (such as it is), my wiring closet (such as it is), and various expensive electronica (like my laptop.) Suffice it to say that these things are great. The one...
Check out this post from WSJ.com: Health Blog: Contrary to the earlier paper’s assumptions, Dr. Godar et al. found that children aren’t outdoors more than adults: “Surprisingly, it is adults over the age of 40, i.e. 41–59 and 60+ years, especially men, who get the highest UV doses.” They added that a rise in incidence of skin cancer “may have occurred because adults assumed that they no longer had to worry about getting too much UV exposure because they were told that most of the damage was done before 19 years of age. (from: A Summer Myth Debunked)
Check out this post from Freakonomics Blog: ** In order to buy a home, one typically needs to save 10 to 20% of the purchase price for a down payment. The remainder of the purchase price is typically financed by a mortgage. The need to save for a down payment is one of the biggest barriers for someone wanting to be a home owner. It involves living below one’s means; saving for several years; and discipline. To the bank, however, this all means that the new home owner has a vested interest in making their mortgage payments since their life savings is invested in the home from Day 1. (from**: Another Look at “Sellers’ Concessions” in Real Estate) Read the article, it poses an interesting connundrum.
With all the unbelievable hoopla around the imminent release of the iPhone my thinking turns to the APPL stock price. Right now the Apple stock price at an all time high of $123.00 per share. The iPhone is coming out in one week. What will the stock price do? Arguments for shorting AAPL: Right off the bat, my bias and superstition is that if a stock is at an all time high, then odds are better that it goes down than up. You might say that “Buy on the rumor and sell on the story” doesn’t exactly apply here, given that it’s no rumor that the iPhone is going to come out next week. You can hardly miss it. Yes, but there are rumors that will be proven righ...
Check out this post from The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): ** "Among the methods featured in the document to help ease the situation and control the crowd, is an outline of a mock conversation where AT&T store managers explain to the stores near them why they need to stay open late and what steps they will be taking to help ensure the crowds don’t spill into the surrounding stores and do all kinda damage. The document also reveals the super-secret method that will actually accomplish this miraculous controlling of the crowd. What is this miracle you may wonder? Stanchions. Yes, the proverbial "velvet rope" they use to keep people in line at events across America will be standing guard and providing security for the giant iPhone launch event." (from: iPhone Crowd Control) Can we just get a life** already?
A friend of mine has been experiencing debilitating back pain for a year now. He’s seen pain specialists, surgeons and so on, and so far the only treatment has been pain medications, strong ones. He is desperate. He recently came across an advertisement for treatment with a device called the DRX 9000. I’ve been reading about this treatment on the web and find positive reports apparently concentrated on a few sites, and then sporadic reports of shady dealings, FBI investigations and so on. Here are some links and quotes I was able to find. Do you know anything about this one way or another? Please comment or email me! ...
I’ve been doing quite a bit of traveling lately and have been experimenting with those noise cancelling headphones. Actually I couldn’t convince myself to spend $350 on the Bose headphones who, by reputation anyway, set the standard. I spent about $50 on a pair of Sony noise canceling headphones (at RadioShack no less.) My assessment: I give them a solid “B”. They do cancel noise, but not all of it. And having nothing to compare themm with, I am always wondering how much better the better ones are. So, today, in David Poque’s column in the New York Times comes this article: ...
I just returned from a very brief visit to Madrid (4 days) and came back enamored of the city. Madrid is beautiful and vibrant, always busy with people that seem to be having constant good time. People seem to be eating constantly and yet no one is fat 🙂 And the weather is fine! It seems (see AP photo to the left) that I didn’t experience everything that was going on this weekend though 🙂
I like this snippet of the art work from a new 
I blogged 