Gadgetopia

For all my issues with .Net -- and there are many -- it does have a great caching system. With one line at the top of a page (the "OutputCache" directive), you can store a page in memory for X number of seconds. It's brutally simple, and just as effective. ...

Why tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine.: This is an interesting article on Second Life, which I think is the next YouTube in terms of its effect on the Internet. Really, really big things are going to happen with this. By early January more than 3,000 ...

Wells Fargo launches game inside 'Second Life': This is a few months old, but looks interesting. Video games to teach real-world skills? I wonder how it will play out. In an innovative new marketing effort, Wells Fargo Bank has launched a pilot of an online multiplayer video game built entirely ...

Crave Entertainment to distribute 'Tringo': This guy wrote a computer game...inside of another computer game -- the MMORPG Second Life. It's the world's first recursive video game. Tringo, a cross between Tetris and bingo, was created by New Zealander Nathan Keir in Second Life, an online game where players have ...

Two things I found in the last few days have got me thinking about online personas. Second Life The New York Times did a big article this week about the MMORPG Second Life and how many people are using that game as alternate versions of their own lives. From the ...

Sweden the First Country to set up an Embassy in Second Life: Um, what? Sweden is to become the first country to establish diplomatic representation in the virtual reality world of Second Life, officials said on Friday. "We are planning to establish a Swedish embassy in Second Life primarily as ...

Recently a couple of bloggers have discovered the unintended consequences of blogging. Greg Easterbrook made some comments regarding the favored religion of the heads of Disney and Viacom. He gets to keep his job with The New Republic, but his weekly Tuesday Morning Quarterback piece on ESPN's Page 2 is ...

Welcome to the 2004 NORAD Tracks Santa Website: For the 50th consecutive year, NORAD will be tracking Santa as he delivers presents tomorrow night. Let's hope a Patriot missile doesn't try to shoot him down by accident. It probably doesn't matter, because according to a seriously geeky analysis, he'll self-destruct ...

Never Ending TV - Welcome to neverending.tv: Interesting concept. Someone leaves a 30-second video, and you can "respond" to it with another 30-second video. From the starting video, you can navigate back and forth through time, with the idea being that the story is...well, neverending.

I posted a while ago on what a clever concept I thought the Smart car was. But there's a downside I failed to consider: I got woke up this morning at 6:30 by a phone call from my neighbor telling me that my smartie was laying on it's side in ...

Recent changes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Have you ever taken an opportunity to look at the "Recent Changes" page at Wikipedia. At the time of this writing, the last 50 changes were within a 1 minute, 50 second span. I'm seeing three changes in the same second. The last ...

Guinness World Records recognizes Cisco router: Ninety two trillion bits per second? I have no point of reference here, but that sounds wicked good. Guinness World Records certified Cisco's CRS-1 router as the highest capacity Internet router at 92 terabits [or] 92 trillion bits per second [...] The CRS-1, which ...

SQLite Database Speed Comparison: If you ever wanted to know which Linux database option was the fastest, the guys over at SQLite have done some tests. No surprises: SQLite wins, MySQL is second, with PostgreSQL trailing the pack. Note to Access users: MySQL can do 25,000 inserts in two seconds. ...

The magic that makes Google tick?: Good article about the miracle that is Google. Did you know they run 60,000 servers over there? That's a mighty big power strip. Google indexes over four billion Web pages, using an average of 10KB per page, which comes to about 40TB. Google is ...

Rail Guns: Navy Rail Gun Test DESTROYS Everything It Touches at 5,640 mph: With video awesomeness. As near as I can tell, the projectile is traveling so fast, it s just igniting the air around it. The US Navy has just completed a 10-megajoule test fire of their huge rail gun. ...

Google to test rival to Second Life : This would be something. You have to wonder to what end they re interested in this. Google is thought to be set to trial an online virtual universe based on its popular satellite imagery software that would rival Second Life. Arizona State University students ...

YouMayBeNext.com: The blood-sucking parasites known as PanIP may be up the creek. We can only hope. (See this entry for background.) This is from the site formed by a group of defendants: "In July, we received notice that the PTO has accepted our request for reexamination and agrees that we ...

For the geek who has everything, the DiskGO! USB Watch Flash Drive. The DiskGO! Watch is available in 128MB and 256MB capacities and serves as a fully functional watch with an integrated USB 1.1 Flash Drive.  The DiskGO! Watch plugs directly into any computer's USB port and is plug-and-play compatible ...

Computer Geek / Nerd Quiz: I actually didn't finish this quiz (I wasn't doing well), but they're not kidding when they claim it's meant to separate the geeks from everyone else. Some questions: ROT13 this: trrxfnerterng What does this do: echo $dorks==$geeks?"yes":"no"; As of right now, how long have you ...

Rumors are swirling about Google Calendar. The theory is that Google is developing an algorithm to index events along with their dates. Thus, you could search for "oakland raiders" and get a list of game dates for the Raiders (which would normally be dates for mourning, but we got Moss ...

In 1976, a Frenchman made a film called "C'etait un Rendezvous" consisting solely of some guy driving a Ferrari really, really fast through the streets of Paris. The idea is that the guy wanted to meet his girlfriend (hence the title) and the film ends with him parking the car ...

Donating $5,000 to .NET Open Source: Last year, Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror promised to done some money from his advertising to open-source projects. He followed through on that today with a $5,000 check to the ScrewTurn Wiki project. This is like one of those giant promotional checks you see ...

No one belongs here more than you. Stories by Miranda July: This Web site is truly hysterical. I was ROTFLMAO by the second "page." Via Kottke.

ONLamp.com: Common Style Mistakes, Part 1: Very solid two-part article (second installment is here) on solid PHP coding style. Well done. I learned a thing or two.

ShooshTime.com: If you ever hated Clippy, the little animated paper clip, then this 10-second video is for you. Some adult language, and the sidebar content is questionable.

Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition: I'm not totally sure, but I think this Web site is a complete reprint of this book. I enjoyed the first edition; haven't read the second.

Two years ago, we posted about C etait un Rendezvous, a short movie shot in 1976 showing a supposedly breath-taking drive through Paris in the early morning. We said this: The entire film is shot from the bumper of the Ferrari (a 275 GTB) as it jams through the streets of ...

Movable Type is organizing a Worldwide Meetup. "The first Movable Type Meetup is scheduled for Monday, August 11 at 7 pm, and future Meetups are planned for the second Monday of every month after that."

Here's a usability boink that irritated me this morning. I was renewing a domain at GoDaddy. I added it to my cart and clicked "continue." After what seemed like a dozen screens of "Buy This Too," GoDaddy showed me a list of five domains I had with them that were ...

I went to a concert at the Washington Pavillion last night, and during a break my 7 year old needed to use the rest room. In the men's room they had just installed an LCD panel above each urinal that displayed animated ads. These may not be new, but it's ...

I was looking for a spam filter for my Exchange server. I had great luck with SpamAssassin on another box (just regular SMTP), and luckily I found two great resources today: How To Use SpamAssassin on Win32: This is a fantastic example of someone documenting something they know how to ...

Here's another little usability rant -- The image here shows the file operations buttons from Zend Studio -- a PHP IDE. The button on the left is a folder with a green plus sign, then a folder with an arrow up, and then a folder with an arrow down. These ...

l love Smarty, the PHP templating engine. It makes presentation development a lot simpler and more pleasant. However, there s always a guilt factor involved, because whenever you introduce an abstraction, you introduce processing overhead. Smarty is written in pure PHP, so there s extra processing post-parse, which will always slow things ...

We've talked before about some of the crazy search engine positioning we get on this site. The GoogleBot loves us. In particular, this page is second on Google for the term "bitlord," behind only BitLord's own site. I don't know how it happened, it just did. This weekend, we got ...

Joe and I had a 30-second discussion today about where the term "bin" came from, as in "cgi-bin" or "/usr/bin". Joe: it's short for "binary." Deane: it's like a bin where you throw stuff Anyone have an opinion or other resources?

'Big Mac' Ranked 3rd Fastest Supercomputer: Yeah, but just try finding software for it. "A supercomputer made from 1,100 off-the-shelf Apple Macs at Virginia Tech now ranks third among the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, many of which handle with ease 1 trillion calculations per second."

That's a lotta flippin' flops: The teraflops are popping as IBM's Blue Gene performs 135.3 trillion floating point operations per second running benchmark software. An IBM supercomputer clocked as the world's fastest has surpassed its own speed record, the Energy Department reported Thursday. Via InformationWeek.

Here s something content management vendors need to understand about scheduling and expiring Web content. This is a common feature request, but users don t always want to use it in the manner vendors expect. Sure, often users want content to appear at a certain time, then disappear at another time. However, ...

AskTog: Multiple Mistakes Drown Dishwasher: Bruce Tognazzini founded Apple's Human Interface Group and is now a principal in the Nielsen-Norman Group (with Jakob Nielsen, no less). This article is a pretty funny look at a dishwasher's interface and the problems it causes. Humor is in the first half, usability geek ...

OpenUsability:Welcome: This is good to see, since usability has always been the big problem with open source stuff. Usability always plays second fiddle to writing code. OpenUsability.org is a project that brings open source developers and usability experts together. The idea behind is simple: There are many Usability Experts who ...

Linux 2.6 Set for Release: More processors, greater interoperability, 64-bit support what's not to love? After a multiyear development effort, the 2.6 version of the Linux kernel is set for release in the second half of December. This is the first major Linux kernel release since 2001, when version ...

BRAND NEW VEEKER ML9 PAINTBALL MINI GUN: This paintball gun is for sale on eBay. It shoots 48 balls per second per barrel and weights more than 150 lbs. It's powered by a tank of compressed air carried in an attached backpack. The bid as I write this is 8,000 ...

Google puts coders to the test: The Google Code Jam has a winner. Jimmy Mardell, 25, of Stockholm, Sweden, was announced the winner Friday of Google's second annual Code Jam. He beat out more than 5,000 of the world's top programmers who signed up to compete in Google's contest to ...

Apple just announced a new wireless keyboard and mouse that use Bluetooth technology. They use adaptive frequency hopping to avoid interference with other like devices. "A robust 128-bit over-the-air encryption keeps sensitive information safe as it is being typed." $69 a piece, and the mouse still lacks a second button ...

Plasma TVs ease Gateway loss: I don't mean to keep harping on about the good things Gateway is doing, but.... "Gateway reported a smaller-than-expected loss in the second quarter, thanks to plasma television sales and cost cuts." If plasma televisions alone can have a positive effect like that, then wait ...

Steve Souders is Yahoo s front end engineer. He s the guy who wrote the article we discussed a few months back which brought us back to all those old tricks that make your Web site load faster. Consider this: say your page takes 700 milliseconds to load from request to final ...

PeopleSoft's Board Rejects Oracle's Second Bid: Last time they had two issues: price and anti-trust concerns. With Larry's new bid, they just have one: "PeopleSoft Inc. on Friday urged stockholders to reject Oracle Corp.'s unsolicited $6.3 billion takeover offer, citing the possibility of regulatory objections to the deal between the ...

PeopleSoft gives in, accepts Oracle's $10.3B bid: I knew Larry would get what he wanted eventually. Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle is snapping up bitter rival PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion to create the world's second largest maker of business applications software. I wonder how long it will take ...

Meet the Disintegrator: 24 barrels of rubber band minigun madness: Truly, without question, the greatest rubber band gun ever made in the history of the world. Unlike your dinky little six-shooter, this model boasts a 288-band capacity and 40-round-per-second firing capability, making it one of the most dangerous weapons to ...

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.: Take a look at this Web site. It belongs to Warren Buffet's company. He's the second-richest man in the United States (the world?). You'd think his site would be a bit more...professional? On one hand, this is refreshingly non-corporate. But on the other hand, it's very...1995-ish. Any ...

I was able to spam the Wankometer all the way to an 11 ("This level is classified as OFF THE SCALE!") using a page with these two sentences: "We need to create synergy among our business units using integrated, seamless, and robust features of our B2B platform. This will enable ...

The Deep Sky Frontier: Too much time on your hands? This page is 9 quadrillion pixels wide by 9 quadrillion pixels tall. Thus it contains a large number of pixels: Using the arrow keys to scroll, see if you can move the scroll button even one pixel. On second thought, ...

SpaceShipOne captures X Prize: Yeah, baby. What a great headline. SpaceShipOne climbed into space for the second time in a week to claim the $10 million Ansari X Prize. X Prize officials said the privately funded craft reached 368,000 feet -- well into space -- Monday to win the $10 ...

Here's another rss feed to add to your favorite aggregator: Ebay2RSS. I couldn't get the first option to work, but if you copy the search url from Ebay into the second part it will create an rss feed for the item you are searching for. The url does get a ...

Here s my second installment in a series of audio posts for Windows Mobile (if the audio widget doesn t come through in RSS, you ll need to visit the permalink for this post). This one is a bit longer, and digs in a little deeper about some of the issues I ve ...

At least according to benchmarks done by the guys who were able to pull of the trick of getting XP to run on the MacBook Pro. Now ain't that a kick in the pants! Of course, the question of why you'd want to run a second-rate OS like XP on ...

I just noticed something about Google Adsense. First, there are suddenly more "o"'s in "Google." Look to the right. It used to be spelled normally. [Note: it's gone back to normal since I wrote this.] Second, click on the "Ads by Goooooogle" link and you'll be taken to a page ...

I've started reading RSS feeds in Bloglines (and loving it, but that's another post). Bloglines has a snazzy feature which shows how many other Bloglines users are subscribed to the same feed you're looking at. The winner among my feeds? Slashdot, with 23,001. Second is Boing Boing with 14,767. Gadgetopia ...

Google will go public: It's like the second coming for tech investors. Internet search engine leader Google filed its long-awaited IPO plans Thursday, setting the stage for the company to make its stock market debut a move that could still be months away. Without specifying a price per share, ...

Microsoft: Europe iPod killer will debut in 2004: Sad as it makes me, let's just consider this an advance obituary for the iPod. The first handheld gadgets to play music and movies on Microsoft's "iPod killer" software will be available in Europe in the second half of 2004, the world's ...

We've been having a discussion about follow-up posts. One of the points we mentioned was that comments to an existing post get overlooked by people visiting the site, and people using the RSS feed get no comments at all. So, to this end, let's try this a second RSS ...

Drag & Drop for Images and Layers: Two things here. First, this is a truly staggering example of what can be done with DHTML. It left me slack-jawed at the possibilities. Second, hats off to Walter Zorn for developing something like this and putting it online. It's well-coded and ...

Microsoft's PHP initiative: This is interesting. Microsoft has recently released the second technical preview release of FastCGI for IIS, a new component for Microsoft's Web server platform. This release is available immediately for download to Windows Vista, IIS including IIS 6.0 in Windows 2003 Server and IIS 5.1 in ...

I don't like content management systems that try to handle the displaying of content. I alluded to this last year, when I wrote: There are two sides to publishing Web content: First you create the content, store it, edit it, send it through workflow, get it approved, then stage it ...

WordPress Wins Best Open Source Social Networking CMS: I was a judge on this panel. Packt is pleased to reveal that WordPress is the first winner of the 2007 Open Source CMS Award, picking up the best Open Source Social Networking Content Management System. In a very close category, WordPress ...

Microsoft millions back SCO case: More on the Microsoft money rolling in the back door of SCO. The SEC filing confirms that Microsoft, which has much to gain from dissuading businesses from adopting Linux, has paid at least two sums to SCO to licence Unix, the second for $8m. [...]James ...

PeopleSoft Offers Oracle Poison: (second story down). A "poison pill" is a move to make your company worth less to a buyer. PeopleSoft just swallowed one to try and fend off Oracle: "PeopleSoft said over half those sales would come from contracts covered by a new customer protection program that ...

My wife and I came to a realization the other day: a television without a DVR is fairly useless to us. The DVR is one of those things that changed everything in our house. We stopped watching live TV altogether. Annie and each like a half-dozen shows, and they re set ...

How to pick up and carry your iMac G5 In case you couldn't figure this out for yourself Apple provides clear concise instructions. A couple of sad comments here. First, I have to believe that in order for Apple to take the time to write this up, more than one ...

Example Web Page: Did anyone else know about this? "You have reached this web page by typing 'example.com', 'example.net', or 'example.org' into your web browser. These domain names are reserved for use in documentation and are not available for registration. See RFC 2606, Section 3." It's right there in the ...

Microsoft Xbox To Use PowerPC Chip: I hope they don't end up regretting this like that guy from Apple did. "Microsoft's second-generation Xbox game console will contain a PowerPC microprocessor, sources confirmed Monday. In a statement issued by Microsoft on Monday, the company said that Microsoft had licensed 'leading edge ...

From a CNN article about the Celtics beating the Lakers last night: It was a group effort by this gang in green, which bonded behind Rivers, who borrowed an African word ubuntu (pronounced Ooh-BOON-too) and roughly means I am, because we are in English, as the Celtics unifying team motto. ...

Online file swapping endures: What, exactly, is eDonkey? Despite entertainment industry attempts to curb online song and movie swapping with lawsuits and education campaigns, more people than ever are using peer-to-peer services. BigChampagne, which tracks Internet file sharing, says 8.3 million people were online at any one time in ...

USA TODAY Content Tree: While looking for an internal link for my last story, I Googled the content tree. The second result was interesting a taxonomy of all USA Today stories in a clickable, expandable tree structure. The following topic tree represents the entire USA TODAY story collection going ...

I've been involved with dozens of content management systems both designing and building them, and working with some of the big, enterprise systems. During this time, I hit upon a seemingly obvious point that it took me a while to grasp: content management and content publishing are two different ...

There's a fascinating contest afoot since 1996 called "The Obfuscated Perl Contest." The idea is to write the most needlessly complex Perl program your evil little mind can think up. According to the Wikipedia page, there are four categories which tend to limit the size of the programs to just ...

B2.0 Tries A 2-Minute Time Trick: Interesting attempt at subscriptions from Business 2.0: "A source in Time Inc told me that the free links only work for two minutes...which is why all the B2.0 stories have now been broken into chunks and have multiple pages...if say you are on the ...

Ubuntu Home Server Edition: This is very interesting. We re about to add a second PC to our home, given that we have five PC users and one machine. While Windows Home Server has gotten rave reviews, free is often good. Ubuntu Home Server (UHS) will be an edition of the ...

Anshe Chung: First Virtual Millionaire: Sell before the novelty of this stuff wears off. Anshe Chung, a real-estate tycoon in the digitally simulated world known as Second Life, has apparently become the first virtual millionaire--i.e., someone whose holdings in a make-believe world are legally convertible into genuine U.S. currency worth ...

Microsoft delays consumer launch of Windows Vista: When Sony delayed the launch of the PS3 last week, Microsoft jumped all over it. And now... Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to delay the consumer launch of its much-anticipated Windows Vista operating system to January 2007 from its earlier target ...

MySQL raises $19.5 million | CNET.com: Good news out of Sweden today: "MySQL announced Tuesday that it raised $19.5 million in a second round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. ... MySQL, which recently inked a deal with business application software giant SAP...." That last bit refers to MySQL's deal ...

Effort to Set Electric Car Record Delayed: These guys are having some technical problems this week, but I'm interested to see how it works out. Nevada agreed to shut down a state highway for the torpedo-shaped car's attempt to top 300 mph which would shatter the old mark of ...

Wanted: Master Lego Model Builder "Applicants will be given 2,000 Legos and 45 minutes to impress a panel of judges. Those chosen for the second round will be notified within 24 hours and asked to come to San Diego in late January. [...] Patrick DeMaria, a LegoLand master model builder, ...

More holes in Windows revealed: Three new "critical" security holes in Windows, even on machines patched with SP2. Keep patchin', folks. Symantec has also warned about a second vulnerability in a Windows component called "LoadImage" that is used to load desktop icons, cursors, or bitmap images. A flaw in the ...

Start-up launches low-cost Linux PCs | CNET News.com: With the advanced programming capabilities of Mozilla (check out XUL), I'd love to see a company unleash a couple hundred of these machines as thin clients. "The 30-person company, Linare, on Monday began selling systems for $199 with its own version of ...

The Great Hollywood Journey, Part II: This is direct from Bungie: They've secured an Executive Producer to help guarantee the creative integrity and technical excellence of the Halo film. And that Executive Producer's name is Peter Jackson. I'll give you a second to process. If you're having a strong, ...

What is it with the geek novels these days? It all started with Stealing the Network. This book is a novel and security primer rolled up into one. Stealing the Network is a book of science fiction. It's a series of short stories about characters who gain unauthorized access to ...

Linux, Open Source Remain Thorns in Microsoft's Side: Microsoft says Linux and open-source are its second-biggest concern. Microsoft's chief financial officer John Connors outlined the five largest risks and drivers to Microsoft's business going forward. ... 'The general economic environment is risk and driver number one, Linux and non-commercial software ...

Eastern Standard Tribe: Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow has released his second novel, "Eastern Standard Tribe." Just like the first, he's giving this one away in umpteen different formats. He makes this argument for his generosity: ...trying stuff and doing research yields a non-zero chance of success. The alternatives sitting ...

Google Photos Stir a Debate Over Privacy: Google s new Street View is making some people nervous. Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her ...

Kiosk changes how software gets sold How it works: An ATM-like device with touch screen lets CompUSA consumers shop for software by choosing an operating system and from categories like business, education and games.They are presented a list of titles, with description and price. Once a title is picked, an ...

PeopleSoft CEO: Oracle saga is over: The CEO of PeopleSoft is claiming that the Oracle bid is dead in the water. "As far as Conway is concerned, Oracle lost steam in July, after PeopleSoft sealed its $1.8 billion purchase of J.D Edwards. Oracle had initially wished to stop that deal, ...

Cell phones test positive on AA flight: The days of not being able to use wireless devices from airplanes in flight may be coming to an end. Qualcomm is working on making CDMA-powered devices airliner-friendly. Jacobs said San Diego-based Qualcomm would spend the next two years testing whether electronic signals ...

Space capsule crashes to Earth after chute failure: A few weeks ago we reported on plans to snag the Genesis capsule using helicopter stunt pilot (the post has a picture). Sadly, they never got the chance the capsule's parachutes never opened and it dropped like a rock. Retrieval helicopters ...

Get a First Life: A One Page Satire of Second Life: We need to send the Swedish Department of State to this site. America's teens, your First Life dream world awaits. Hang out at the mall! Embarass yourself in gym class! Get acne! Experiment with mind-altering recreational drugs! The First ...

(Audio is also here. Sorry about the quality I was using a different mic this time, and the input levels were all hosed up.) Navigation is often a pain when it comes to content management. Now, don t confuse navigation with information architecture that grand plan of what ...

The Apple Deathknell Counter shows that Apple Computer has been declared dead or dying 27 times in various major publications since 1995. And there are still articles almost weekly, especially following new product announcements, complaining about how Apple does business. But can you argue with a computer company whose 3-year-old ...

Since arriving in Iraq, people have been amazed at the ease of which I am able to communicate with my friends and family. I have to admit, I have been amazed, too. I never thought I would have this much access to home. Internet and phone technology is in the ...

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Spambot Hunters: Josh Clark is doing some crazy fun stuff to counter comment spammers on Big Medium. I love it. Big Medium counters this by covering its tracks, never using the same field names twice. Every time you visit the page, all of the field ...

LookSmart says losing key Microsoft MSN deal: LookSmart and MSN are going their separate ways, much to the detriment of LookSmart. "LookSmart said Microsoft chose not to renew its distribution and licensing deal with the company, which is best known for its paid-listing services that allow advertisers to pay to ...

Amazon wraps up best holiday season to date: Is the coming-of-age year for online retailing? Amazon.com said Friday it finished the best holiday season in its history, capped by a single-day record in terms of units sold...The nation's largest online retailer said it set a single-day record with more than ...

If you have Google Adsense on your site, here is the best piece of advice I can give you: don't put borders around your ads. I had a border around my skyscraper banner on the right here, so it sat in its own little box. A friend told me to ...

I m leaving tonight for FM s Conversational Marketing Summit. I m flying from Sioux Falls to Denver to San Francisco. I need to work from my hotel room, and I can t stand laptop keyboards or pointing devices, so I m taking a full-size keyword and trackball in my carry-on. So, in the luggage ...

Google tests local search "Google is experimenting with search results tailored to a person's geographic location, after a similar move by rival Overture Services. Mountain View, Calif.-based Google said Monday that Google Labs, the search company's research-and-development arm, unveiled a program that lets people type in a search term, along ...

Waiting For the Big One: People are talking about Google IPO as if it's the Second Coming. "It's difficult to precisely estimate the offering's potential size. The whispering in the Valley is that Google's revenues this year could be in the range of $700 million to $1 billion, with profits ...

Underscores are now word separators, proclaims Google: This is interesting for a couple reasons. First, because it s just good to know. Second, because it confirms the value of keywords in the URL, as I ve questioned in the past. One key development that Matt shared with the audience was that underscores ...

Adobe Systems Incorporated Terms of Use: When I was writing about the photographer who photoshopped his way out of a job, I remembered something about using Photoshop as a verb. I went back to Adobe s site, got sidetracked by Encore for a second, then found this: The Photoshop trademark must ...

Wired 11.07: McNealy's Last Stand: A fascinating, albeit long, article about the fate of Sun. "...the story reduces down to this: McNealy spent the second half of the 1990s monomaniacally obsessed with everything having to do with Microsoft, from its monopoly-like practices to the general unreliability of the Windows operating ...

Earth's Artificial Ring: Project West Ford: I can't believe this actually happened. Harder to believe is that it worked. In May 1963, the US Air Force launched 480 million tiny copper needles that briefly created a ring encircling the entire globe. [...] The first attempt at remote communications using the ...

Prioritizing Web Usability: Jakob Nielsen's early book, Designing Web Usabillity was a masterpiece -- it fundamentally changed how I built Web pages. It's the Bible of Web design, in my mind. This is the updated version. Not a sequel or a new edition, but: A second goal of the book ...

"Information Architecture for the World Wide Web" is considered one of the definitive books for developing usable, intelligently laid-out, easy-to-use Web sites. Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfield wrote the first edition in 1997 and it aged exceptionally well, even with the break-neck speed of technology. I read it in 2001 ...

Is virtual autopsy a forensic benefit?: There's a new trend in forensic science towards using technology to provide a "virtual autopsy" an examination of the body without touching it. Thali said technicians use advanced computed tomography CT scans to get an overview of the body, then follow ...

New 'NBOR' Software to Debut Next Month: This looks interesting, but I got confused halfway through. This guy has spent 15 years of his life building it. Here's to hoping it works out for him. The software, called "No Boundaries Or Rules," or NBOR, includes an intuitive user interface for ...

Anti-violence rules in effect at L.A. cybercafes: Apparently there's violence in and around "cybercafes" in L.A. I'm assuming "cybercafe" is a trendy way of saying "coffee shop with kiosk machines and wifi." Los Angeles is the largest of several Southern California cities to enact restrictions on Internet gaming parlors. The ...

Co. Finds Loophole on '.pro' Web Names: I'm not completely clear on how the ".pro" TLD was supposed to work. This article talks about how, if you were a lawyer, you could get a "mycompany.law.pro" name, provided you had the correct proof that were indeed a law firm. Well, good ...

'Big Mac' supercomputer one of world's fastest: Fast and cheap the Pam Anderson of supercomputers. "A supercomputer built by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from 1,100 dual-processor Macintosh G5 PCs looks likely to rank with the five fastest machines in the world, despite costing a relative pittance. In ...

Nigeria arrests 500 suspected email scammers: Nigeria finally took some action on 419 scammers. I hereby retract this post. Nigeria's agency against economic and financial crime said Monday that it had detained more than 500 suspects and seized property worth more than $US500 million from suspected fraudsters. [...] The EFCC ...

The Story of the PING Program: Finally, the guy who wrote the ping utility backs up my eternal assertion that it was named for the sonar similartiy, and not for some stupid acronym that no one remembers. I always knew this, but people kept trying to correct me. From my ...

Jobs May Fill Seat at Disney: Eisner and Jobs two egos that go great together. Eisner is under fire, and bringing a tech and creative legend like Jobs aboard may be enough to deflect some of the damage. As far as the entertainment industry and Wall Street would be ...

Software models death row outcomes: Two reseachers created a software program to examine the demographics of death row inmates. The results were highly predictive...which is bad, if you read the second paragraph below. The neural network, which learns by constantly scanning the data for patterns, was given 1,000 cases from ...

Trial examines role of dashboard electronics: Interesting legal case based around the latest road tech craze. In what may be the first trial of its kind in the nation, prosecutors have accused the pickup truck's driver of second-degree murder for watching a movie instead of the road when he crashed ...

Gotuit Media aims to reprogram radio and television habits: It doesn't exist yet, but I'd sign up for it in a second: "Just as TiVo digital recorders enable consumers to pause live television, skip ads, and easily store shows for later viewing, Gotuit Audio's product, marketed as "The Radio That ...

I got to thinking about this today, and so I'll throw it out there for comments. My vote is Wargames from 1983. That film introduced a lot of people to a world we never knew existed. Tron is a very close second. Surprisingly, The Matrix isn't even on my Top ...

Verbatim to To Intro Dual Layer DVD+R Discs : The folks in the MPAA can't be too happy about this one. DVD copying programs are everywhere but unless you get fancy with video compression, your standard Hollywood flick wouldn't fit on a DVD+R, until now. Verbatim has announced that "it ...

Cyber sleuths hunt file-swappers: Want to know how the RIAA is going to find you? Probably using this guy: "Mark Ishikawa, a former hacker, is the CEO of BayTSP, arguably one of the most recognised and biggest companies working in the business of patrolling the web to unmask violators of ...

Here s an interesting fact I finally broke down and looked up today I wondered what percentage of U.S. oil consumption could fit in one supertanker. The answer was a little scary. As of 2004, the U.S. consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day, according to the CIA. ...

Referer Spam Redux: A nice little wrap-up of ways to combat referrer spam, which is wicked annoying. I think it's so annoying because they count on the nacissism of someone checking or displaying their referrer logs, and we usually live up to their expectations. Personally, I'm fed up with them. ...

Outsource your job to earn more! - The Times of India: This cannot be legit. Please tell me this isn't true. Says a programmer on Slashdot.org who outsourced his job: "About a year ago I hired a developer in India to do my job. I pay him $12,000 out of ...

LitePC: IEradicator - the Internet Explorer Hitman!: This is perhaps a little extreme. And given the dynamic loading that Windows apps generally do, I wonder if you're going to wipe out some DLL that something else needs at some point? IEradicator is a tiny, script that uses the Windows setup ...

Software maker Oracle raises bid for PeopleSoft: We haven't talked about this one in quite a while, but it's still on the table. Business software maker Oracle Corp. raised its hostile takeover bid for rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 33 percent to $26 per share today. This is the second rasing ...

Wisconsin enters VoIP fray: Maybe I'm just sensitive to this because I started using Skype, but I worry that yet another cool thing will be ruined by regulation. "Wisconsin regulators have informed Santa Clara, Calif.-based 8x8 that its Packet8 Internet voice-calling service is subject to the same rules as traditional ...

Here's America's unquietest library: The first surprise is that this is a library. The second surprise is that it's in Salt Lake City, of all places. With all due respect to residents of the obviously great state of Utah, you're just not known for being this daring. "The $65 million ...

Wired News: RIAA Hits Students Where It Hurts: The RIAA is suing four college students for billions. The four operated larger-than-normal P2P networks through their college networks, one of them offering 1 million files. The RIAA wants $150,000 for each file. "'This round of suits is intended to send a ...

... you find yourself playing a video game for days on end. Like the South Korean guy who died of heart failure after playing Halo almost non-stop for 3 days. Of course, the first indication of trouble should have been when he quit his job so he could devote more ...

Microchip turns electric outlet into wireless link: I remember the stress I put myself under when I built my house to ensure I had data lines in every room. Between this and wifi, I don't know why I worried. Products are still being developed, but gadgets embedded with the chip ...

Rehab for Web addicts includes shock treatments: It was announced recently that China has the second largest number of people online, after the United States. Apparently some of them are online too much. While China promotes Internet use for business and education, government officials also say Internet cafes are eroding ...

GroupOrg - Features: Yesterday I mentioned that the PHPCollab project had forked. Today, I find out that my very own open source project, InfoCentral, which I handed off to someone else two years ago, has forked. There has been quite a bit of drama surrounding InfoCentral lately, with the guy ...

Homeland Security Survey Takes First Pass at LAMP: Some good news, though I think the bug density would skyrocket once they moved passed the top 1% of projects and into the second and third-tier of open source stuff. First results are in for the Department of Homeland Security's vulnerability survey ...

(Note: this post exists in both written and audio form. They re more or less the same thing, so take your pick. I elaborate a bit more in the audio, since I have a tendency to ramble, but I used the written post as an outline for the audio post, ...

Motorbike runs on hydrogen power: These look extremely cool. Apparently dead quiet too. [...] the motorcycle's fuel cell develops the equivalent of eight horsepower, good for speeds up to 50 miles an hour. The cycle has a range of about 100 miles on a tank of fuel. Currently, a hydrogen ...

Cray forecasts Red Storm for masses: It's about time that Cray re-entered the commercial market. I remember when Cray was a force to be reckoned with. Things were never quite the same after Seymour Cray the founder of the company died in a car accident back in 1996. ...

Monolithic Dome Institute: A year ago, we discussed a special type of dome home that survived Hurricane Ivan quite handily. A commentor to that post points us to this site, which is the manufacturer of that home. The site is filled with content about the "monolithic" style of dome -- ...

Drivesoft - Car Computing Hardware and Software Solutions: I saw this on Rides the another night. It's a roll-up of a bunch of toys into one unit TV, navigation unit, MP3 player, CD player, DVD player, etc. all wrapped in a patented user interface. The Drivesoft System was ...

DOM Tooltip: Here's a great little JavaScript library to create custom tooltips for your Web page. A tooltip, in case you didn't know, is the little popup box that appears when you mouseover an element which has a TITLE attribute. Put your mouse on this link for a second (don't ...

If the news that fingerprint scanners can be defeated weren't bad enough, how's this for an evil spin on things: According to an Australian news.com story, a Malaysian man lost not only his Mercedes S-Class equipped with a fingerprint recognition security system but also the tip of his ...

Get ready for another wave of Net IPOs: These two companies are apparently the Olsen Twins of IPOs the ones everyone is waiting for. "The best examples are Google and Salesforce.com. Google, less than five years old, now powers more than 200 million web searches per day, employs over ...

Collaboration Made Simple with Bracket Notation: This is interesting. It's kind of like "Track Changes" in Word, but it's for plain plain text. These folks used it to write a patent. In the end, we found our solution in the personal trick bag of Jef Raskin, the master of keeping ...

Geek squad to the rescue: I don't know why, but I hear a lot about these roving Best Buy tech support guys. I have no idea what suddenly elevated them above "normal" on-site computer techs, but Best Buy seems to have struck on a good marketing thing here. Best Buy's ...

Here's something that has happened to me twice now that just drives me nuts silent truncation of usernames. Two times now, I've created an account on a system and that system has taken the desired username I entered, chopped off the last few digits to fit it into their ...

Heavy metal umlaut: the movie: This is an awesome, awesome screencast from Jon Udell about the evolution of the a single page on Wikipedia. Jon scrolls through several years of this page, noting how it grows from one sentence to over a thousand words, and examining various editorial themes and ...

John Wiley & Sons, publisher of the infamous "For Dummies" tech books, is slated to release an unauthorized biography on Steve Jobs "iCon Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business'' and The Steve is not liking it a bit. So in retaliation Apple ...

Bionic Office: I've been waiting for this post for a while, ever since reading Joel's (hysterical) treatise on how he found his new office. He's now had it built out and here are the details and the pictures. "The monthly rent for our offices, when fully occupied, will run about ...

SCO's next target: SGI? "Chris Sontag, the senior vice president in charge of SCO's effort to derive more revenue from its Unix intellectual property, has said two things that suggest SGI is a likely target. First, Sontag said in June that SCO is contemplating legal action against another major North ...

Airbus bets on building largest commercial plane: The Airbus A380 is set to be unveiled next month. It will be the largest passenger plane in history. Its wings stretch nearly the length of a football field, about 50 feet longer than any plane in the air today. Nose to tail, ...