October 31, 2006
BarCamp Manchester
I just signed up to attend BarCamp Manchester NH. It's Saturday November 18.
October 28, 2006
Tiny Gas Turbines
Another example of a generator replacing a battery:
MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios and other electronic devices.
Internet audience measurement
Since I've started producing the Uncontrolled Airspace podcast I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how to measure the audience, and how it compares to other podcast's audiences.
It's a very slippery subject.
Mike Arrington of TechCruch weighs is with this analysis of the feud between ZeFrank and Rocketboom.
There's still a lot we don't understand about this.
This Week in Media - pigs and sheep
I'm not sure why this so caught my attention, but the TWIM gang, in the latest episode, #25, drifted into a brief series of confessions about childhood cult memberships.
I still can't always recognize by voice who is speaking, but a majority of the panel admitted to belonging to the cub and/or boy scouts, which led to the admission that some were in 4-H too, and owned pigs and sheep.
Maybe it's just the city boy in me, who thinks it's remarkable that these uber-geeks have this agri background.
October 27, 2006
Thinking outside the cell
Maybe the solution to powering our portable devices isn't to build better batteries, it's to make smaller generators.
From an article last spring at TechnologyReview.com:
Today's portable electronics (except for self-winding watches and crank radios) depend on batteries for power. Now researchers have demonstrated that easy-to-make, inexpensive nanowires can harvest mechanical energy, possibly leading to such advances as medical implants that run on electricity generated from pulsing blood vessels and cell phones powered by nanowires in the soles of shoes."When you walk, you generate 67 watts. Your finger movement is 0.1 watt. Your breathing is one watt. If you can convert a fraction of that, you can power a device. From the concept we've demonstrated, we can convert 17-30 percent of that..."
October 26, 2006
TWiT changes
On this week's MadBreak Weekly Leo Laporte said that Merlin Mann would be hosting a TV show "on the TWiT network". A couple times in the past Leo has said that he was only doing audio, and he was leaving video to his friends at iptv and revision3. Is this a change in strategy?
Leo panicked the faithful this past weekend. He was unable to gather a quorum in order to record an episode of TWiT. In his announcement that there'd be no episode he made a thinly veiled reference to the possibility that TWiT might be coming to an end. Well this caused a firestorm of diggs and comments.
A few days later Leo clarified things, and said TWiT would go on. But I have to wonder if he did this on purpose in order to whip the TWiT gang into shape.
October 25, 2006
Not good
My MacBook just crashed for no real reason. I was typing a blog posting and it just froze up. Everything stuck. I waited about ten minutes for it to "unstick" but it didn't. I had to do a hard reboot.
Some of the early MacBooks apparently had this problem a lot. I hope this isn't that. I've been running this one for three weeks now, and this is the first time anything like this has happened. Hope it's not a problem.
October 23, 2006
Pi visualized
This is pretty geeky. But this guy has rendered the number pi as a field of colored pixels. Pretty cool.
Biohol
Good story in the current Wired Magazine about advances in the refining of ethanol:
WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY, the best way to change the world is not by revolution but by evolutionary steps. Change must follow from step to step, from innovation to innovation, as technology matures, each step justifying its economic viability and attracting investment. So while ethanol may not be ideal, I’m convinced it’s the best first step on the biohol trajectory. Ethanol offers one thing no other oil substitute can: a clear path from where we are to where we hope to be.
October 17, 2006
Just add info
Sun has announced this new product, which has been rumored for awhile.
Server and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc. has a novel twist on the data center: a portable version of the hulking outposts that house nothing but computers and equipment needed to store and process raw data.The concept project dubbed Project Blackbox is a "data center in a box" with all the necessary servers, storage and networking equipment packed into a cushioned and cooled 20-foot-long cargo shipping container. Sun was unveiling the system Tuesday.
This is the sort of thing that will be needed to keep up with the ever accelerating rate of innovation and change. The Singularity is near.
October 16, 2006
Google Maps improved NH satellite images
I don't know when this appeared, but Google Maps now has much better quality satellite images of New Hampshire. This has always been one of the disappointments of this excellent mapping system. Especially considering that the Mass. images have always been terrific.
I can now resolve individual houses all over the state. Couldn't do that before.
October 10, 2006
Just testing the wifi
Just testing the wifi here at the library.
Firefox 2rc2
I'm using the new, prefinal version of the Firefox web browser. One new feature I like is the way, when you close a tab, it doesn't display the tab to the left of the deleted one, it displays the tab you were on most recently before entering the one deleted.
Does that make any sense? It's a good feature. I like it.
October 08, 2006
iMic USB odd behavior on MacBook
This morning my iMic audio converter dongle stopped working on my MacBook. At first when I'd plug it in only the output connection would appear in the Sound control panel, then, neither input nor output.
I tried all sorts of workarounds, logging out then in, plugging in other USB devices (others worked fine), quitting then reopening sound apps. Nothing helped.
I tried the iMic on my desktop Mac (G4, same OS) and it worked fine.
I finally ended up rebooting the MacBook and the iMic started working normally again.
October 07, 2006
AJAX replacing FLASH?
This post summarizes some research that indicates that web developers are expecting/planning more AJAX development than FLASH in the coming year. PHP is still the predominant server-side language.
October 06, 2006
They'll make it up on quantity.
Reports are that Google is considering paying 1.6 BILLION dollars for YouTube. It's like 1999 all over again.
Boom. Boom. Boom!
Everybody drink.
[Thanks 37 Signals]
October 02, 2006
Out on the bleeding edge
Turns out it's not just me. Boston Globe:
Forget three guys in a garage -- that was your father's startup. Today it's three people spread out across the country or even across continents, each in their home offices or back porches with laptops, mobile phones, and WiFi.
What a difference an A makes
MGA points us to this news story that says that a sound engineer has uncovered the controversial word "a" which Neil Armstrong intended to speak in his famous first-words-on-the-moon, but may have left out in the excitement of the moment.
He intended to say "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." For years it's been thought that he mis-spoke and left out the "a". But now it's been found.