This is what ...

This is what cell phones of the future might look like. Talk about convergence...

Sony announces Linux for the Playstation 2. Cool!

Hello ladies... [via susank]

Fool Post of the Day: Apple, it's not just about the OS anymore

I came to work this morning (I work right around the corner from Wall Street in Manhattan) and noticed a large number of cops standing around. There are a bunch of tents set up right in the middle of Broad Steet with barricades around them. I realized that today was the first day of the World Economic Forum (being held here in New York) which has a history of massive numbers of protestors who like to cause trouble. I didn't see any protestors this morning or at lunch and one of the cops I talked to said they don't expect anything to happen downtown and if there were going to be any incidents they'll likely happen in midtown at the Waldorf Hotel, where most of the Forum events are happening.

The makers of my favorite show, Junkyard Wars, are doing a new show called Ultimate Machine Combat. Cool! Cool! Cool!

Adobe has released ...

Adobe has released their Altercast product, which is a server-based image manipulation tool. It's interesting to see them do this, especially since people with this kind of a need have been using programs like ImageMagick for years. Altercast costs $7500 for a single CPU license. Ouch.

From a great thread on SOAP and XML-RPC for mobile devices:

I saw a talk last week in Mt. View where a company presented their experience with .NET. Lots of issues. C# is a hairball of a programming language. It combines Java, VBasic, and C++.. Also, the company says the response from a .NET service is incredibly slow. They basically used .NET because they already had a VBasic/NT backend, but wouldn't recommend it if you already have Java running back there. More interesting developments and feedback will be coming in the next couple of months as folks try mission critical services in the real world.

Are you going ...

Are you going to SXSW this year? Make sure you join us at Anil Dash's kickball game on Saturday, March 9. I'm now taking bribes to get me on the wining team. More activities and conversation are being planned at SXSWblog.com.

I can't wait to try out this new form of pool called SpeedPool2, where two players play a game of pool simultaneously.

Mr. Cheney, if you and the Bush administration have nothing to hide regarding the Enron debacle and energy compnanies' dealings with the White House, then why are you acting like you've got something to hide? Come on, if you and your buddies are innocent, then prove it. Let investigators and journalists know who the government met with last year and let the people decide for themselves. Do you really think that people are going to just believe what you tell them?

MsGeek: Is Verisign using questionable tactics? Of course they are. They definitely need to be "bitch-slapped by the Department of Commerce." When a company with a monopoly becomes incompetent, they do anything they can to retain the customers they have, and that includes anti-competitive business practices that makes it near impossible for their competition to do business.

Take a look at this old advertisement for an orange soda called Green Spot. Very Freudian. Now take a look at this ad I saw on Yahoo Mail. It looks like the art of subliminal advertising is alive and well.

So, if you're in Tokyo and you need to know where there is a clean public toilet you can use, look no further.

The Tolkien Crackpot Theories Page.

I can't stop ...

I can't stop thinking about the billions of dollars the government gave the airline industry last year after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. crippled the air travel industry. I'm looking for a chart or an explanation of where our money goes when we buy a ticket. What percentage goes towards fuel? What percentage towards payroll? Equipment and airplanes? I recall reading an article a while back that said the average profit margin for most airlines was around three percent, which is pretty small.

Airplanes use a lot of fuel. Thousands of gallons per flight. Is this fuel consumption enough of an incentive to the Bush administration, which highly favors gas and oil companies, to favor the airline industry by giving it billions of dollars in federal aid when it is struggling?

Here's an article about a fuel surcharge that some airlines added to the cost of tickets when jet fuel was more expensive than it is now. Even though the price per gallon has dropped dramatically the airlines have kept the surcharge. Why? Is it pure greed?

A reader sent in this link to EasyJet, a UK airline. Scroll to the bottom and check out the interesting info graphic.

Message to would-be crooks: Think twice about scamming people out of the money via eBay auctions.

I've lived in Brooklyn for two years and never knew its history. Fascinating stuff.

Thomas Veatch: Explaining the Mystery of Election Parity. How Enron's executives abused the nature of mixing business with politics. [via Interesting People]

Bush can read? Shocker!

Great! How to tell if you ass is too small. [stolen from dangerousmeta]

O'ReillyNet: Easing Web Application Development with CVS

You know, it would be really cool if Amazon accepted Paypal payments.

This is a pretty lame eBay auction. The sad thing is that people are actually buying this crap. I mean, it's not even good Photoshopping. Look at the poor choice of fonts and uneven detail. Also, I believe there is a anti-counterfeiting law that requires gag and joke money like this to be labeled as such using the phrase "not legal tender".

NTT DoCoMo in ...

NTT DoCoMo in Japan has a natural monopoly in the Japanese cell phone market with its i-mode technology. Critics have been asking them for a long time now to open up their network to competitors so that competing providers can offer services without such tight constraints. NTT DoCoMo decided a while back to do excatly this and open their network in the spring of 2003. They just announcd that they're pushing that date up to November of this year. I think that Microsoft could learn a thing or two from this company.

Happy Birthday Molly! Another year older, another year wiser.

I was digging around on the Web (Google, of course) for good resources for Project Management guidelines and I came across this URL. It's a good example of how not to name your URLs/files. Yes folks, that's a 97-character file name.

I recall seeing this Nokia Mobile Browser demo when it came out last year but it's worth looking at again.

Criminy. A former Enron executive has died of an apparent suicide. Any doubts I had that Enron executives were free of guilt are now gone. I think what it boils down to is that these Enron executives knew they were deliberately running the company in a way that would benefit them and ultimately harm their employees in the long run. What scares me most is that much of the Bush administration seems to think they can run the country the same way. Favor the rich corporations, ignore everyone else. But that's what happens when you elect businessmen to run the government...

Another article that points out that Microsoft's forays into distributed authentication and Web services is a huge gamble, especially if they do not do something about their inherently insecure software. "Trust is not something you are given, you have to earn it."

Check out this remarkable photo of the Himalayas taken from space with a standard 35mm camera.

A group of American Airlines pilots are urging the FAA to ground American's fleet of Airbus A300 airplanes. Hmmm. I'm flying American to Austin, TX in March. This article prompted me to go look up what kind of jet my flights are flying. Both the destination and return flights are on a McDonnell Douglas SP80 Jet, which I've flown on several times before. It's the same jet that Midwest Express uses, I think.

Modern Humorist: A Foreigner's Guide to America. Drop-dead funny!

I didn't know that Microsoft has an office here in New York City. That gives me too many mischievous ideas...

Extreme Programming vs. ...

Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design (Kent Beck vs. Alan Cooper)

NY Times: Many Ride Out the Recession in a Graduate School Harbor. So, when this "recession" ends, does that mean there will suddenly be a huge number of candidates fresh out of grad school applying for the same number of jobs? How long after a recession does it take for new jobs to be created. Surely, it's not an instantaneous process.

Every so often a story about RealNetwork's Rob Glaser comes out about his fight against Microsoft. The problem here is that people really want Glaser to succeed, but no one is putting any real faith behind him because, well, Real's software sucks harder than Microsoft's. I think most people gave up on Realplayer a long time ago.

The Official Ninja Homepage. No comment necessary. [via susank]

BusinessWeek has a special report (series of articles) on Apple.

Was Enron a cult?

I've been using ...

I've been using this site design for over two years now. When I designed it I did so with the idea that I wanted a design that was flexible, fast-loading, cross-browser, easy-to-read, and tailored to the kind of postings I'd been doing for over three years. Every once in a while I think about redesigning but usually end up leaving it alone because it works well and I know that my readers would probably revolt. They've come to expect the same user interface day after day and a drastic change would take a while to get used to. But I realize that there are some things that I would gain with a redesign (permalinks, auto-archiving, W3C-compliant CSS and HTML, etc.) and I've been putting it off for too long. Ideally, what I'd like to do is come up with a new design and then design a "transitional design" that uses elements of both the old design and the new design so the look-and-feel changes of the site are more subtle. When you think about it and look at some of the old archived screenshots of Yahoo, you realize that this is exactly what they've been doing for years. Small and subtle UI changes that are easy to learn and do not create unexpected frustration for the end user. And for the most part, Amazon too. Lots of small (and frequent) UI changes. Almost never a complete front-end overhaul.

Chuck claims that Microsoft is resorting to spam to hawk their wares. Looking at the email headers of the spam he received, it sure looks that way.

The random kitten generator! Cute and fuzzy goodness!

Slashdot: Tackling Open Source Book Projects

Applescript vs. The Bad Guys is an amazing story of how Applescript and Timbuktu was used to remotely delete files from a stolen iMac. [via MrBarrett.com]

Web accessibility expert Anitra Pavka has a good critique of the new Section508.gov site. Oh yeah, she's looking for a job.

I'm looking for good mailing lists on user interface design and technolgoies for wireless devices. I will compile and list the resources I receive. Email.

• Good Experience: Wireless Resources Page
• David Anderson's Dashdot

Pet peeve: Developers ...

Pet peeve: Developers who act like such complete A-holes online, it's a wonder that people even listen to their half-baked and hypocritical commentary anymore. Get a clue, dude. Pissing off your peers (though with you, it's more like pissing on your peers) doesn't do any good for you or your company. The sad thing is that people have been gently telling you this for years.

Winerlog has been great lately. Don't forget to notice the "custom two to three second editthispage.com delay unique to Winerlog" when checking out the site. It's worth the wait.

Fox is having trouble unloading all of the Superbowl ad spots for the upcoming event in two weeks. Here's a hint to Fox: Lower your asking price!

Sorry if I'm a bit ornery today. Too much work, too little time. The little things that I usually ignore are pissing me off. Like how a Windows file server locks a file you were working on when your computer crashes preventing you from opening that file again until the original process times out or you kill it. This especially sucks if you don't have admin control over the file server and have to wait for for your IT department to get back from lunch.

Forbes: Rebooting Apple

AOL/Netscape sued Microsoft today, something about anticompetitive business practices regarding the Web browser market. Jeez, that seems like such old news. What's more interesting (though also very old news) is that Microsoft owns a patent that seems to describe the key concepts of Casscading Style Sheets (CSS). How soon before Microsoft turns around and sues AOL/Netscape over this technology? Let the pissing match between lawyers begin.

A warning from the American Medical Association. [via FilePile, of course]. May be offensive to those with closed minds...

Business 2.0: The Case Against Knowledge Management. Hmmmm. I think that gathering knowledge is the first step. Then you need to filter it. And only then do you distribute it. Maybe the whole Knowledge Management field needs to coin some more specific phrases: knowledge filtering, knowledge aggregation, knowledge syndication, knowledge sharing, etc.

Microsoft Breaks MIME ...

Microsoft Breaks MIME Specification. But, is this is a real bug? Microsoft has a long history of making their products incompatible in order to force end users to migrate towards their platform. This "bug" may very well be an intentional flaw designed to force people to use Microsoft email clients. I would not put it past Microsoft.

Boing Boing turns two today. Congrats Cory, Mark and the gang. Keep up the good work.

The big news over the weekend was that AOL is in acquisition talks with Red Hat. This makes sense when you think about it. Microsoft's lock-in strategy works because they own both the OS and the browser and are able to combine them in ways that create a bigger monopoly. AOL, who clearly sees Microsoft as its biggest competitor, would like to do the same thing. Think about how easy it would be for AOL to distribute an AOL-customized version of Linux with an AOL-customized version of Mozilla (Netscape 6) all on a single CD, along with a mail client (an AOL-customized version of Netscape Mail) and AOL Instant Messenger. All of a sudden, AOL is free of Microsoft's tentacles. By shipping a unified OS, web browser, email client and IM client, AOL is going down the same path Microsoft has been going down for some time now. The only danger here is if both companies decided to not play fair and make their products incompatible.

A year from now, this conversation may be normal:

Person One: What kind of computer do you have?
Person Two: I have an AOL 9.0 computer.

O'ReillyNet: Think Twice, Red Hat

On holiday mornings, it's normal to watch cartoons and post to your weblog? Oh wait, I know what it is. The new neighbor upstairs used all the hot water and I'm waiting for the hot water heater to finish its job.

UK government report on operating systems and interoperability.

LA Times: Security Flaws May Be Pitfall For Microsoft. Um, industry people have been saying this for a long time now. It's interesting to see the mainstream press finally pick up on it. The other huge issue that may be Microsoft's pitfall is the lack of trust Microsoft has among its end users. Which, of course, is directly tied to security.

I had a great lunch today with Ed Vielmetti, Jeff Ubois and Cynthia Froggett. We talked about all kinds of things, most notably the differentiation between an online persona and the person themself.

Watching Scooby Doo cartoons this afternoon (for the first time in many years) and I can't help but notice how minimal the animation is. Entire 10-15 second scenes of nothing moving but the mouths of the Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy moving. Zoinks! Some dialogue from Sccoby Doo:

Velma: Hey look, someone left the door open.
Fred : Hey, let's go in.

Salon has a ...

Salon has a great article about the best sit-com ever, Seinfeld. I did not understand this show until I moved to New York. Suddenly, everything makes sense.

NY Times: Consuming Rituals of the Suburban Tribe. An interesting article that is basically an ethnographic study of consumer products. [from Michael Kay]

WebTechniques: Adobe's Foray Into CMS. Ev says "server-based Photoshop?" Hmmm...

Note: Sorry, I'm ...

Note: Sorry, I'm very busy this week. Apologies for the lack of updates. I should be back soon. I'm way behind on email too...

Thanks to yesterday's three very observant readers who contributed to the CamWorld tip jar (I borrowed this concept from Obscure Store). CamWorld will always be free. In fact, I was approached a few years back by an advertiser who recognized early on that popular weblogs had significant readership that was highly-educated and typically worked in the technology sector. The money offered to place ads on CamWorld was very tempting, and I thought about it for a while. I declined the offer of advertising money because I recognized that CamWorld is a place for me to share my thoughts, ideas, observations and commentary with the world and that paid advertising would only cheapen my words. But, as anyone knows, the costs of hosting a Web site can add up after a time, epecially if you have significant traffic, so I've adopted the "tip jar" concept that works similarly to that of the restaurant industry. The better your service, the bigger the tip you give to the wait staff. If you like CamWorld and appreciate the many hours each week I spend keeping it updated, you are welcome to send me a tip via PayPal to help defray the costs of hosting. But, I repeat: CamWorld will always be free as long as I am running it, and it will never accept paid advertising.

Oh yeah, CamWorld t-shirts are coming very soon. You will be able to buy them using PayPal.

I've been thinking about the ultimate Web geek and ego-boost product and I realized the other day how cool it would be to whip out a credit card with my own personal CamWorld logo on it. I would transfer all of my other credit card balances in a heartbeat to a credit card that was personalized in this way. Do any of my readers know of any banks that are offering this kind of service? I imagine they only offer it to customers who are capable of signing up numerous cards (accounts), to reduce production costs on the cards themselves. Or am I wrong? Maybe the production process has been fine-tuned enough that this kind of one-on-one service is something a bank can offer to differentiate themselves from their competition.

A couple of people have said that NextCard will let you do this. I used to have a NextCard, but I think I must have gotten it before they started offering this. I'm looking into it...

An astute reader dug up some shady reports about NextCard's somewhat perplexing interest rates and "ClickPay" service. Come to think of it, I experienced this exact same thing with them and eventually transferred the balance and cancelled the account.

Crummy: Captain Planet and the Planeteers

Note: Taking a ...

Note: Taking a few days off. Updates will resume sometime next week.

Richard Stallman: We can put an end to Word attachments

You know, I get a lot of flak for bashing President Bush. And rightly so, if you disagree with my political points-of-view. But you have to admit that this whole Enron debacle appears to be blowing up in his face. I don't think even daddy's friends, money and power can keep him out of this mess. I predict impeachment (not sure of the offense yet) within a year or so. It might turn out that Dick Cheney is more involved than Bush, but someone's going to take the fall for this. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Do you want ...

Do you want to to touch my monkey? Touch him! Love him!

I just registered for the SXSW conference in Austin, TX. If you're going this year, I'll see you there.

Interesting proof-of-concept virus for Microsoft's .NET. [via onepointzero.com]

Pick-up lines for engineering chicks. (A bit dated.)

Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python

Cameron the Alien: ...

Cameron the Alien: Hanging with the 'Bloggers

Busted!

Seen on a mailing list:

The problem of computer security is like the problem of teenage pregnancy. With communication, education, and responsibility there's a good chance it won't be *your* problem. - Casey Schaufler, SGI

American Spectator: The Ghosts In The Machine: Can Technology Find Terrorists?

From Ford: Real-life Tonka truck. For that kid in you, I guess.

Michael Buffington: Cinnamon Challenge 2001

She's a geek. She has a funny weblog. She has a mini-bar. Heterosexual men in Chicagoland should be lining up at her door.

I never noticed ...

I never noticed before how similar the Go Army logo was to the Mozilla hack t-shirt logo. Check it out.

Excellent NY Times article about the recent glut of office space in New York City, caused by the recent economic downturn and the post-9/11 unloading of real estate by companies who were looking to replace some of the 20 million square feet lost when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

FindLaw: "LOCKWARE": The Promise And Peril Of Hollywood's Intellectual Property Strategy For The Digital Age

Cameron the Alien: Macworld San Francisco 2002. He's kind of like my alter ego.

I've long said that you must pass an intelligence test before you are allowed to use email. This guy just reinforced my point. Entertaining!

Go Nader!

File away for another day: The etiquette of writing love letters.

Byteswap: Writing Cross-Platform Software - Getting Started

Rowwr, grrrrr, roooowrrr! ...

Rowwr, grrrrr, roooowrrr!

Damien says I should buy a new Apple iLamp. What I really want is a Ghz Titanium Powerbook. My year-old 400 Mhz TiBook is feeling pokey now.

How soon before e-commerce Web sites start restricting access to their sites to users using Internet Explorer? You have to wonder why Microsoft keeps making such dumb mistakes around such important issues as Web browser security architecture.

Somehow, I missed ...

Somehow, I missed seeing a movie called Miracle Mile when it came out in 1989. It's been playing on cable for the past few days and I watched it last night. Starring Anthony Edwards (before ER, but after Revenge of the Nerds) the movie starts out very well with an amazing premise revolving around the hours before nuclear war (set in L.A. of course). You get hooked on it for the first half hour but it gets sillier and sillier as it progresses. If you can stomach the cheesy Tangerine Dream 80's soundtrack, the acting that gets increasingly bad as the movie plays out, and the over-manufactured scenes, this movie can be fun to watch, though I don't think it was meant to be a comedy. It's even got a stereotypical sex-in-an-elevator scene.

Time to start planning my April Fool's joke. Only three months to think up something better than last year.

MIME-RPC: RPC over MIME Transports. Interesting!

Hey, you know those one or two people who keep hitting your site with Netscape 4.x and Lynx? Well, that's me! Just keeping you on your toes...

Analysis of Microsoft's ...

Analysis of Microsoft's 'Competing with Linux' Document

Computerworld: Survey: Java breezes by .Net for web services

Check out this graph of Bay Area housing trends from Craigslist, a popular non-profit online communtiy bulletin board.

Craigslist Best Of: One bedroom apartment plus boyfriend

My brother continues to speculate about what Apple might be releasing next week. His consensus sure does fit neatly with the hype Apple is churning.

I think I linked to this last year, Save Your Site From Spambots by Steven Champeon, but it's worth linking to again. [via Zeldman]

Things I learned ...

Things I learned in 2001:

• If it feels right, go for it. Listen to your gut.
• No matter how carefully you write, someone will inevitably misinterpret your writing. This is especially true if you write about religion or politics.
• When you talk to journalists, make sure they don't quote you out of context.
• Don't pay good money for shitty software. Most of the time there is an open source or low-cost alternative that does the same job ten times better. Ask around.
• Some people are petty. Others are kind. Figuring out who is what is one of life's challenges.
• Death to Microsoft. No, just kidding. I'd be happy if they were forced to compete fairly in the marketplace. They do make some good software.
• The best way to get over a writer's block is to make a drastic change in your life, whether it's taking a different job, moving to a new city, or trying new things that excite you.
• If someone makes you mad or upsets you, just ignore them. Some people purposely antagonize others to get a rise out of them. Refuse to let them push your buttons.
• Modern medicine kicks ass. I used to hate going to the doctor. My faith in doctors and modern medical treatments has been restored.
• It is good to have a muse.
• Good friends are a valuable thing. If you take them for granted, you will lose them. Like relationships, friendships are two-way streets.
• It is OK to agree to disagree. (I learned this a long time ago, but it's worth repeating.)
• No matter how good your idea may sound, chances are someone else has already thought of it. Accept this as a kind of self-compliment.

I wonder how many of those things I actually learned in kindergarten but am now only just realizing them.

Creating knowledge management systems.

CamWorld Mail for January 3, 2002

Dan Lyke on Microsoft's .NET:

I read a bunch of executive summary level papers on .NET last night. Wow. If you're not funded by Microsoft, run away! .NET is largely a half-baked reimplementation of technologies already available on open source platforms like Apache (the discussion of "compiled ASP" is completely mod_perl--), and Microsoft says, flat out, that if you're using .NET in a profitable market they will try to take that market away from you.

I just saw some pictures and movies of what might be Apple's product release for next week. If these are fake, they are very impressive fakes. If these pictures and movies are real, we will not be disappointed. [MacSlash debunks this...]

Damien: Well, this is interesting. Spymac.com is registered to a guy named Holger Elhis, who used to be a graphics guy for a German Mac magazine called MacLife. He apparently has a history of creating realistic-looking renderings of fictitious Apple products.
Me: Yeah, Apple probably paid him to create the iWalk photos and movies (needs username/paswwd) [mirror] that have been circulating. Apple is very smart.
Damien: Hmmm, drawing attention away the real thing, smart...

CamWorld Essay: How ...

CamWorld Essay: How to Make Money From Spam (Legally and Ethically!)

If you are an ISP or corporation that wants to hire a firm to filter your spam, check these guys out. Referred by Matt Haughey.

O'Reilly book: Chapter 8: The Web's War on Your Privacy

My brother, easily one of the best Apple technicians in Manhattan, weighs in with his predictions for next week's Macworld Expo.

An Insecure Feeling About Microsoft's Security. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Until Microsoft can win the trust of the decision-makers, more and more people are going to abandon the platform for use with mission-critical services and information storage/transmission. I know that if I were in charge of choosing a secure technology for storing private data about millions of my customers, Microsoft's technologies and solutions would be way down on my list, no matter how useful and easy they are to use. Microsoft does some pretty cool stuff, but they severely lack in the security department, (mostly because of some really bad software architectural decisions made a long time ago). Perhaps companies and individuals who have lost money and information due to any one of the Outlook-centric virii can start a class-action lawsuit to deplete some of Microsoft's $36 billion in cash reserves.

People compalin all the time about how bad Network Solutions is. Well, there's lots of reasons why they suck so hard as a registrar. Here's a new one.

I drank a huge cup of Starbucks hot chocolate a few hours ago. I think maybe that was a mistake. Stomach doth protest.

Damn dyslexia is cropping up again, for those of you who noticed. I suppose if I ever learned how to type properly, I'd make a lot less spelling mistakes.

It's a new ...

It's a new year. Time to stop dwelling on the past and start looking to the future. I've got a lot of exciting side projects in the works. Stay tuned over the next couple of months.

Fray: A Year of Stories

Again, lots of speculation and hype about what Apple may be announcing next week at Macworld. I think it may be time to buy more stock in AAPL. Not a lot, but enough to give me a tidy little profit if their stock spikes. If not, well it can't hurt to own more stock in a company you believe in. I don't expect the stock to go down at all. It's been fluctuating around 15-20 for over a year now.

Must...not...break...New...Year's...resolution... Must...not...read...certain...Web...sites.... Must...stay...away....