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  • 1 min read

Come on over, the water’s fine! Look who is recommending Macs!

I love my Mac , as y'all know. I was amused to read about Intel CEO Paul Otellini who publicly recommended getting a Mac. He was being interviewed by Walt Mossberg at the "D" conference:

'… Asked whether a mainstream computer user in search of immediate safety from security woes ought to buy a Mac instead of a Wintel PC, he said, "If you want to fix it tomorrow, maybe you should buy something else.' (from Mac News Network, but I saw it in several other places.)

Meanwhile, in a related story, Dave Winer sounds like he's tempted to jump onto the Mac bandwagon. Come on over, the water's fine! For those who want to read more, here are some links to my experiences,

Technorati Tags: mac, microsoft

  • 1 min read

Great musical: Falsettos at the Huntington Theatre

HtcfalsettosprodI Just came back from seeing 'Falsettos', an unusual (and unusually good) musical, at the Huntington Theatre, in Boston. The themes cover the gamut from family, children, love, judaism, homosexuality, life and death. The music is unusual and complex and very nice. I recommend it highly. So much that I also just got the music from iTunes! Technorati Tags: music, recommended

  • 2 min read

VC: Rumors of its demise are probably premature

Not that I'm an expert or anything… In the last few days there have been several articles about the problems in High Tech Venture Capital. One particularly interesting one was in the New York Times on Sunday talked about the exodus of recently minted venture capitalists from the business:

"We can't really have people learning on the job anymore ," Mr. Kramlich said. Two-thirds of the partners who were at N.E.A. in 1997 are no longer at the firm, he said, and then cited an internal study that went a long way in explaining why: the surviving third accounted for 85 percent of the firm's profit." (from New York Times)

Another one, from Technology Review, a first hand report from Howard Anderson, about why he is leaving the business:

"Good -bye! We venture capitalists like to think of ourselves as giants striding across the technology landscape, showering money on terrific young entrepreneurs, adding value, creating jobs, nurturing real companies. We are financial samurai. But I am giving it up. Why? […] First, Technology Supply is bloated. […] Second, there's a good reason why technology spending is stagnant. […] Third, the financial markets for technology companies is no longer exuberantly stagnant. […] Fourth, these changes in Venture Capital are structural, not cyclical."(From Technology Review.)

For me, I'll say, I consider these bullish signals. The fact that there is public hand-wringing about the "VC Model" makes me predict that the next round of Venture funds will do better than the last few. But what do I know? I was wondering if any of my VC friends would care to respond? Technorati Tags: startups, vc

  • 1 min read

Sharing a keyboard, mouse and multiple screens

Check out Synergy:

"Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s)."

Cool! Technorati Tags: interesting

  • 1 min read

Boston is thinking about city-wide wi-fi access

Michael Feldman of Dowbrigade has a really interesting report on something that I didn't even know was going on in Boston. Apparently they/we are thinking about providing wi-fi access across the city:

"However, there are a number of important issues to be resolved before one of these plans becomes operational: opposition from current ISP's and wireless phone providers, differing business models for paying for and possibly charging for the service, which of several competing technologies to support, and the proper role of municipal and state government in regulating access and content."

Michael has some fun with the 3×5 cards that are apparently the only way to ask questions from the panel - in the expectation of getting answers by email!

"On our yellow card we carefully wrote "We feel like we are watching C-SPAN. Why are you afraid to face the opinions of the PEOPLE?" and handed it to an efficient-looking aide and left to look up another cup of coffee. If the second panel was anything like the first, we were going to need it."

Anyway, check out the whole thing. It's a good read! Technorati Tags: boston, wireless

  • 1 min read

Dowbrigade and Bridge BlogBridge

Just a quick note of the very nice mention of BlogBridge by almost-famous Dowbrigade blog by the incredibly prolific Michael Feldman.

(Emphasis mine, throughout) Blog Bridge is the amazing new RSS reader and aggregator from Pito Salas. Sure, it makes it easy to subscribe, arrange, view and blog from anything with an RSS feed. But what really sets it apart is that it is written completely in Java , which means that it is platform-independent, works on any computer connected to the interenet, and it remembers not only what you are subscribed to, but which articles you have already read, or saved, or filed to read later. From anywhere, on any machine. Being used to the much simpler aggregator built into Manila, it took us a while to discover the utility of moving feeds into channels and groups, but now it seems second nature. There are suggested sample groupings to get beginners started, pre-packaged packets of feeds, which you can easily modify by adding and dropping feeds. (from Dowbrigade)

Wow, thanks Michael! Technorati Tags: blog, blogbridge

  • 1 min read

[BLOGBRIDGE] BlogBridge tracks unread articles!

One of the cool things about BlogBridge's (free) companion service, is that keeps track for you what you have and have not read, even if you are using BlogBridge on more than one computer! In other words, please sign up for the service, and set your synchronization options the way you want them (daily, each time you run BlogBridge, or manually.) Each time you synchronize, not only will your subscription lists be kept in synch, but also which articles you have or have not read. Important note on new BlogBridge 1.5.__ For those of you who are running our 'weekly' release of BlogBridge, you are now experiencing a faster, smaller architecture. One of the known consequences of this is that when upgrading to 1.5 from a previous version in many cases articles unread state may be lost. Don't worry, this is a once only, known occurrence! Thank you for your patience! Technorati Tags: blogbridge

  • 1 min read

What happens when your car’s (software) crashes?

Just an amusing little bit from the Wall Street Journal about the Toyota Prius:

"Some buyers of Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius gas-electric hybrid cars are complaining that their vehicles are stalling or shutting down at highway- driving speeds, a problem Toyota attributes to software problems in the sophisticated computer system." (from WSJ, subscription needed)

And also:

In one complaint, a driver told NHTSA that the car shut down while driving at 60 miles an hour. The Prius continued to lose power as the driver pressed the accelerator. The car had to be towed back to the dealership for repairs.

Heaven help us! A whole new meaning to mission critical software! Technorati Tags: cars