Howard Stern in New York Times
For Howard Stern fans out there, here’s a good article.
Blog Posts
All my blog posts and articles
May 2004
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2004-05-03
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2004-05-01
Testing BlogJet
I have installed an interesting application – BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” — Pablo Picasso
And here’s the clever thing: the preceding two paragraphs are automatically offered to me when I install BlogJet, which encourages me to try it, and at the same time, advertise it. In fact, I found out about BlogJet when I saw this post. Very clever. I think I am going to like this utility! (And this last paragraph was indeed written by me, myself…)
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2004-05-01
Outlook Haters, anyone?
Read more →David Coursey writes an interesting bitabout how the competitors to Microft Office (i.e. Star Office, Word Perfect, what not) need to get themselves an Outlook competitor, because that’s the only (or main) reason standing in the way of folks switching from Microsoft. A couple of points:
I can’t believe that David feels that Outlook 2003 is so much better than the previous version (Outlook XP.) I am usually a Microsoft fan but in this case there are various really bad design choices which make Outlook 2003 a constant aggrevation for me to use. The Spam filtering is one thing that is new and goo...
April 2004
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2004-04-30
Thoughts about software licensing
Read more →Dan Bricklin’s written a bit on a topic that’s been indirectly on my mind lately. It has to do with BlogBridge, the Blogging tool that I’ve been developing as a back room project for a while now (I post periodic updates, so you might have seen them.) Anyway, the connection is that starting sometime next month when I wrap up my current consulting project I will be devoting more time on BlogBridge to see if I can’t get it to a real stable and usable form, and who knows, try to sell it? Progress has been accelerating lately – there’s another developer working on it part time now (Aleksey, in the Ukraine) and things ar...
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2004-04-29
Spain Security Situation
Read more →Several people asked me about what the security situation in Spain felt like. I have to admit it did give me pause to be going to Spain little more than a month after the terrorist attack on the trains in Madrid. In fact our travel plans included several long train rides. I checked with friends who live in Spain, and also looked at the various State Department notices, and all in all decided that the risk wouldn’t be major. I did expect to see a major security presence — you know, soldiers with machine guns in the airports, etc. But otherwise I wasn’t especially worried, but curious what we’d find. I remember how shell shocked we were in the U.S. two months after 9/11. Well, here’s the surpr...
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2004-04-29
Windows, Windows, Windows Everywhere
In the accompanying photo you can see one of the ubiquitous TV screens sprinkled all around the Spanish subway system. They display up-to-the-minute information about arrivals and departures, in real-time, also ads and other commercial announcements. Very useful!
But wait, look closely: This is a Windows based application, if you can believe it! There’s a big fat Windows error message displayed in the middle of the screen! If you look really closely, you can tell it’s in Spanish!
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2004-04-27
Great Read: Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
Read more →By sheer coincidence, the day before leaving for Spain, two people independently mentioned to me that Angels and Demons by Dan Brownwas good, even better than Da Vinci Code by the same author. So, I picked up a copy at Barnes and Noble as my light reading for the trip. This is a great, quick read. A page turner. I recommend it. And indeed I agree that it was better and more interesting than Da Vinci Code. Interesting as Angels and Demons is an earlier book, and still Da Vinci Code is the one that is selling thro...
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2004-04-27
Back from spain
So as not to leave you hanging, I just want to report that we are back and had a great time in Spain. We went from Granada to Sevilla to Madrid, by plane and rail in 8 days. Spain is a very interesting and fun country.
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2004-04-20
Hello from Spain
Geeking out from an Internet Cafe in Granada, Spain. We´re here for a short vacation, and we have a little time to kill this afternoon so I thought I´d quickly post an update for those of you who know (or care) that we are away. Granada is a nice little town in Southern Spain, with a Moorish or Middle Eastern influence. We spent hours yesterday wandering around the Alhambra, which was great, although we are paying with our feet today… Tomorrow we leave for a few days in Sevilla. See you there.
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2004-04-16
How does this work?
Office XP for $59.95! It must be some kind of bootleg, but it’s quite blatant. I wonder what the catch is…
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2004-04-16
Area codes become meaningless
A good little insight from Rafe Needlemanin his new column over at ZDNet. “The reason it won’t last: If you can get a telephone with any area or country code, the whole idea of a vanity area code will eventually evaporate. It won’t be like a real-world address, which for the most part still represents a physical location. While roaming cellular phones have already begun to make area codes irrelevant, VoIP will finish the job. Soon, area code will be one of those anachronistic telecom terms, like dialing, that doesn’t mean anything close to what it once did. “
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2004-04-15
GPS and Civil Liberties?
How would you like to be able to “implant a GPS-microchip in the body of a human being”? I came across this link. It just has to be a prank.
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2004-04-15
Follow-up to Subservient Chicken
The true story comes out about the most excellent subservient chicken gimick. I mentioned ita few days ago when I first saw it; it was amazing how quickly it spread. Here is an articlegiving some background on how it was done, where it came from and what the thinking was: “In fact, CP+B came up with about 400 different actions that the chicken could do, and then filmed them in the course of a day in Los Angeles.”
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2004-04-10
Your morning chuckle
Thanks to Chris Shipley for this link, and you can read her post for the thoughtful commentary on this. As for me, well this is really funny: Subservient Chicken
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2004-04-08
[GEEK] Web Rich Text Editors (Apropos of nothing)
I’ve had occasion to look into what kinds of rich text editors are availble out there, and I thought I’d use this as a place to record the results, for myself, for you, and for posterity. Basically I am looking for a Rich Text Editor that can be embedded in a browser based application. Here are the requirements:
– Needs to run cross platform (IE, Mozilla, Safari) – Doesn’t need to be hugely featureful – The less of a download the better – Avoid stepping into a cross platform testing quagmire
So far, here’s what I’ve come up with:
This onelooks nice, is lightweight and sufficiently functional.
This one is much heavier weight, and is very functional
I will post more results of my research as I continue. If you know of any that I should take a look at, please drop me a line or post a comment.
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2004-04-06
Identities (WTF Series, 1)
Read more →Some say that it’s very important that they be able to use one identity while doing one thing, and a different one for another. In ‘cyberspace’ they want to be able to express themselves without that expression being tied back to them. My gut reaction is that I don’t like this. It seems dishonest. It’s contradicts what is possible in meat space, where I have to stand behind what I say and do. Do they have something to hide? Shouldn’t they be held accountable for their statements?
Yes, but, some say, the net doesn’t forget. You can do a search on something you said or posted at the beginning of (internet) time and it will still show up. Don’t you ever say something that you later regret? Or ...
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2004-04-06
Outsourcing and Immigration (WTF Series, 3)
What’s the relationship between offshore outsourcing and immigration? Here’s an interesting connection. Immigration brings workers from other countries to this one. With outsourcing, we send the work to them (because with fast networks, we can…) For years Immigration was a hallmark of U.S. society, the melting pot and all that. Its fair to say that it’s been viewed positively. The people that are against offshore outsourcing today would have been against immigration in the past. (And I say that as an actual immigrant 🙂
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2004-04-06
Virtual People? (WTF Series, 2)
One of the reason that society needs people to transact with each other using real identities, maybe, is that in the end, virtual digital persona can’t own and transfer ownership. I can’t buy or sell or trade with a virtual digital persona. Corporations in fact are virtual people in some sense, and indeed they are legally regulated much like people are. Maybe in the future the law will expand to allow my virtual identity to own and transact separately from me, with it’s own ‘social security number’, the ability to have a checking account, to own property and generate income. But for that to happen it would seem to me that the law would have to catch up and regulate digital personas as a third actor along with natural people and corporate-like entities.
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2004-04-06
Welcome to Movable Type
If I did things correctly, you should not have noticed too much different. But today, with the help of Dennis Doughty, I’ve switched to using Movable Typeas my blogging software. It’s no picknick, let me say that. My only reason to switch really was to make it easy for me to post from different computers. Other than that, I was happy with Radio Userland, and in fact I will miss certain things I’ve gotten used to in Radio. We’ll see how it goes. Please let me know if anything breaks!
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2004-04-06
Some miscellaneous links and pointers (WTF Series, 4)
I am at the WTF conference (more of a retreat.) IN addition to the more cogent posts that follow, here are some links and pointers that may be of interest.
About Venture Capital and Innovation: http://www.signallake.com/innovation/ About Telecom: http://www.telepocalypse.net/ Lof details about the WTF meetingFast Company Blog. Blog about Iraq: The Iraq War Reader
Books: