|
|
Saturday, December 30, 2006
|
|
| |
Top 10 Astronomy Images of 2006. The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomical observatories on the ground and in space return many terabytes of data every year. But which bytes are the best? I combed through thousands of pictures to find the Top 10 astronomy images of the year."
 [Slashdot]
10:18:15 AM 
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
|
|
| |
OK, so you gotta check out Neil Young's latest effort-LIVING WITH WAR
9:02:16 PM
|
|
|
|
|
Friday, December 2, 2005
|
|
| |
Another concept poached from Udell-Screencasting, here is grounbreaking article:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/
Screencasting's one-year anniversary
A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. It's not a new idea. The screencaster's tools -- for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files -- have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. What's new is the emergence of a genre of documentary filmmaking that tells stories about software-based cultures like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and content remixing. These uses of the medium, along with a new breed of lightweight software demonstrations, inspired the collaborative coining of a new term, screencast. [Full story at O'Reilly Network]
The O'Reilly Network asked me to define and explain screencasting for an article in its "What is...?" series. By a happy coincidence, it was published exactly one year1 after I chose the name screencast proposed separately by Joseph McDonald and Deeje Cooley, from among a wealth of delightful alternatives including dynavid, democast, and appflick.
Last week a reporter interviewed me about screencasting and asked: "Is this the next big thing, like podcasting?" I don't think so. It's true that the word has entered the vernacular: 200 Google hits for screencast in April 2005, 60,000 in June, 325,000 in November. But I don't expect screencast ever to reach podcast's 65,900,000 because the scope of the medium is inherently more bounded. Encompassing both music and the spoken word, podcasting addresses a large swath of human experience. Screencasting addresses the much narrower slice of human experience that's mediated by computers, software, and networks.
That slice is, of course, growing by leaps and bounds. The web is becoming part of the fabric of everyday life. In coffee shops, living rooms, and libraries, as well as in the workplace, our real experience of the world -- and of one another -- is increasingly augmented by virtual experience. Screencasting lives at the intersection of these worlds, I told the reporter. As virtual experience becomes part of everyday life, we'll want to document, describe, and share that experience for the same reasons we tell stories, sing songs, and show pictures.
10:28:43 PM
|
|
Stolen from Jon Udell's weblog:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Web 3.0: Peer-to-peer air travel and electric power
Although the internet seems to touch every aspect of our lives, its network effects have yet to transform two major infrastructures: electric power and air travel. In earlier items -- The energy web and Peer-to-peer air travel -- I wrote about how we'll expose these infrastructures to the kinds of network effects that we now take for granted when we use services like craigslist and eBay.
The visions are spelled out most clearly in the EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) roadmap, a lucid prescription for an intelligent power grid, and in James Fallows' Free Flight, which chronicles the efforts of Eclipse Aviation and others to create air taxi services that leverage thousands of regional airports like mine.
When I wrote those earlier essays in 2002 and 2004, I imagined two watershed scenarios. The first would involve networking my home appliances in order to itemize my electric bill, and to expose my electricity consumption to price-sensitive management both by me and by a management service. In the second scenario, I'd negotiate online for an air taxi that would take me and a handful of fellow travelers directly from my regional airport to its counterpart near my destination, bypassing both of the usual spokes as well as the Chicago hub.
While neither scenario is imminent, both are now more clearly discernible on the horizon. The June 2005 issue of Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 mentions two companies working to make these visions real: GridPoint and DayJet. GridPoint has two products. GridPoint Protect combines generator-based backup power for homes and businesses with demand-management software that enables (retrofitted) appliances to be scheduled for off-peak operation. GridPoint Connect uses the same demand-management technology in the same ways, but also offers intelligent management of renewable sources such as solar power. Writes Esther Dyson:
The idea is simple: to move beyond time-of-day utility pricing/consumption to something more granular, and to give users automated tools to control their usage in reaction to their own needs, to price/demand fluctuations of power supplies, and -- more novel --- demands of other users.
DayJet wants to use the same kind of peer-network negotiation to optimize air travel. The company's CEO is Ed Iacobucci, who I first met in 1989 when he came to BYTE to show us the original OS/2-based version of Citrix which he'd left IBM to create. In 2006 DayJet plans to take delivery of a fleet of Eclipse 500 jets and launch an air taxi service. The CEO of Eclipse, incidentally, is Vern Raburn, another veteran of the software industry (Microsoft, Lotus, Symantec).
In the Web 2.0 era, we're learning how to build and use software that enables us to collectively manage information resources. Those skills will serve us well in Web 3.0, when we expose other kinds of resources -- power, transportation -- to the same network effects.
10:03:08 PM
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
|
|
| |
Mac Mini Kaleidoscope Project Leaked. 
Lately I've been researching ways to add a Mac Mini to my home theater set, and maybe even replace my second-generation TiVo in the process. Now it looks like I won't have to work very hard: Apple is set to unveil a new Mac Mini at MacWorld that includes Front Row 2.0, DVR functionality and an iPod dock. This project is dubbed Kaleidoscope and will be aimed at the living room, according to ThinkSecret. The Mini will have Intel inside, like lots of other machines being unveiled at the show (six months sooner than expected). Processor speed and other specs are unknown, although it's a safe bet that the hard drive will be larger.
I hate to give up my TiVo—the remote control alone makes it a keeper. But TiVo Desktop has not panned out like I'd hoped, and I'm looking for a way to get my music library, photos and the DVR functionality on my living room set. So, what would you do—keep TiVo, wait for the Mini, or something else?
Road to Expo: Reborn Mac mini set to take over the living room [ThinkSecret] [Gizmodo]
7:58:13 PM
|
|
|
|
|
Thursday, November 24, 2005
|
|
| |
EcoModo - The Best of Treehugger.  This week at Treehugger: A Weapon of Mosquito Destruction: The Mosquito Magnet. A Hand-Powered Night Vision Monocular that allows you to see in the dark without batteries. Hewlett Packard decides that having toxic flame retardant on the outside of its laptop casings might not be such a good idea. Also, from the Crazy But Cool Department, a man builds a private island out of empty soda cans (can this be called a Do-It-Yourself island?), and finally, we have a look at how Google and PowerEscape fight runaway energy consumption.
 The person who invented this cross between a barbecue and a motorboat really hates mosquitoes! Lucky for us, he or she also had a dislike for insecticide and these glowing traps that vaporize insect dust in the air we breathe. The way this "biting insect trap" works is by emitting a fake "breath" of CO2 with a scent that is attractive to the little vampires (mosquitoes locate their victims primarily with exhaled carbon dioxide). The device then sucks in the bugs in a radius of up to 1.25 acres (around 5,000 square meters) and dehydrates them (and then turns them into MREs?).
 This device is a night vision scope, and quite fortuitously, it doesn't require any batteries. Instead, it's has a lever-activated power supply, so you can generate your own power ad hoc, and thereby see in the night, without fear of energy failure (that is, unless a sudden lassitude engulfs you).
 Hewlett Packard has announced that it will remove a bromated flame retardant (BFR) from the outer case parts of all new products released after December of 2006. BFRs have been associated with endocrine disruption and impairment of mental skills, and have been found in women’s breast milk. Bromated flame retardants in electronics can also make e-waste more hazardous. For something that is supposed to make the product safer, it sure seems dangerous.
 We couldn't make this stuff up: this man, Reishee Sowa of Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, apparently grew tired of trying to live self-sufficiently on dry land, and did what any of us would have done. He built his own island out of used pop bottles. 250,000 of them, plus some construction leftovers and bags of leaves, make up "his island," though he's quick to point out that it's technically not an island by traditional standards. "You see not even the president is allowed his own island in Mexico," he says, "but technically I don’t have an island, I have an eco space-creating ship."
 Google vice president of operations Urs Hoelzle told us in a TG Daily article a little about Google's energy efficiency problems and how it tries to solve them, and this post is about PowerEscape Insight, a way to optimize software so that the hardware it runs on requires less power. It can of course be applied to computers, but also certainly to all kinds of electronic that might run software that makes chips run hotter than they should.
Treehugger’s EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.
[Gizmodo]
5:12:32 PM
|
|
Freesound Reaches 10000 Files. Bram writes ""The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, -not songs-... released under the Creative Commons Sampling+ License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing and browsing these samples." In less that 7 months we've grown to 30000 users and today we finally reached the first goal of the project: we've collected over 10000 samples, added by various people around the globe: only a slashdotting would be a suiting birthday cake. If you do visit Freesound, don't forget to have a look at the Geotagged Samples as they are well worth it." [Slashdot]
4:38:10 PM
|
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
|
|
| |
Library won't buy Sony CDs. Cory Doctorow:
Edward Vielmetti reports that his local library system in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is declaring a moratorium on buying CDs from Sony:
I've passed word on to our selectors not to buy any Sony/BMG copy-protected CDs for the forseeable future. Not only is this reprehensible, but we could get into some support nightmares if people try to remove the rootkit since it's gotten so much press.
Link
Sony Rootkit Roundup: Part I, Part II, Part III
(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank) [Boing Boing]
6:11:49 PM
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
|
|
| |
Hauppauge Live TV Tuner. 
Add live TV to your PC with the WinTV HVR-900 TV Tuner, a very small USB 2.0 stick that plugs right into your laptop or any computer to let you receive analog and digital terrestrial TV. Not a bad thing to have when you're stuck at the airport and don't feel like watching Fox News, the HVR-900 comes with a high-gain aerial, letting you receive up to 40 digital channels. It also lets you record live TV to your hard drive and burn DVDs at 1.68GB per hour. Of course, the bundled travel aerial, which is really what you probably bought the thing for, may not bring video up to your usual standards. Plug-and-play and easy to install, check for the HVR-900 by end of month.
Hauppauge Digital 'TV Stick' [Bios Magazine]
Pricing and reviews for Hauppage TV tuners [CNET] [Gizmodo]
6:32:09 PM
|
|
Microsoft adds e-mail, IM hosting to Windows Live. (InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has introduced a test version of a hosted e-mail and instant-messaging service (IM) as part of the beta release of Windows Live. 
As part of its set of free online services, Microsoft will host the e-mail and instant messaging for a domain an Internet user already owns, according to a Web site describing the new Windows Live Custom Domains service, http://domains.live.com/. Users also can sign up for the service on that Web site, which allows them to configure Custom Domains through a Web-based wizard.
By signing up for the Custom Domains beta, users receive up to 20 e-mail accounts within their domain, each with 250 megabytes of memory; junk e-mail filter protection through Microsoft SmartScreen technology; and e-mail virus scanning and cleaning.
The service also enables users to check their domain e-mail from any PC via the Web, and access MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces through their domain so they can link up with users of those services, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft introduced Windows Live on Nov. 1 as part of its strategy to offer more ad-supported, Web-based services in an effort to compete with rival Google Inc. The service, which offers a range of services through a portal that users can customize, is in beta now. Though Microsoft said it will maintain its MSN portal, Windows Live is expected to replace MSN as the go-to portal for e-mail, search and other Internet-based services.
Microsoft plans to add more services to Windows Live later this year; a list of them can be found at http://ideas.live.com/. Windows Live services currently in development that are not in beta yet include Windows Live Messenger, a next-generation IM client with peer-to-peer file sharing enhancements; Windows OneCare Live, which offers virus scanning, firewall settings and software backups; and a version of Windows Live Search for mobile devices.
SEE ALSO:
MS boosts Live with FolderShare buy
ADVERTISEMENT
 MKS
Best Practices Webinar Series: Visibility, Productivity, Compliance By Elizabeth_Montalbano@idg.com (Elizabeth Montalbano). [InfoWorld: Top News]
6:57:27 AM
|
|
Still in the First Coming of Library Feeds. The Second Coming of Content and RSS Feeds “Dave Winer recently pointed to a post by Adam Green, which explored similar territory. Adam thinks 2006 will be the year the Web explodes: "The explosion I am talking about is the shifting of a website's content from internal to external. Instead of a website being a ‘place’ where data ‘is’ and other sites ‘point’ to, a website will be a source of data that is in many external databases, including Google. Why ‘go’ to a website when all of its content has already been absorbed and remixed into the collective datastream."
His post specifically referenced Google, but I think this trend is much larger than even Google. The thing which is going to tie all this together is of course feeds. Mainly RSS, but perhaps Atom's much-vaunted extensibility will come into play too. This gets to the heart of the matter and I think Feedburner is onto something big here. Feedburner now views the item (e.g. a single post from your blog, or a specific search result in a topic feed) as ‘the atomic unit of measure in the feed’, which will in turn lead to Feedburner managing syndicated content ‘at a more atomic level by attaching 'threads' to the item.’ It reminded me of the Design for Data and ’content will be more important than its container’ themes I was big on at the end of last year and beginning of this (and which I will be re-focusing on now)[sigma]. If you think about it, focusing on the feed item is a profound change in how we think about RSS feeds. Up till this year, most of us thought of RSS feeds as a way to subscribe to single sources of content. But over 2005 it's become apparent that content is being remixed, mashed up and re-published across many sources - leading to heated ethical debates over content rights and confusion amongst publishers on how to 'monetize' (sorry I can't help but use that word) their content. Fred Wilson had a nice post on this theme recently, entitled The Future of Media (aka Please Take My RSS Feed).” [Read/Write Web]
Ask yourself if your library is ready for this type of shift, because overwhelmingly, the answer is no. Librarians just aren’t thinking like this yet, and we need to change this. It’s at the very core of the whole “Library 2.0” discussion, and this is why it’s so critical. If we keep our content locked up on our own websites and don’t get it out there for people to use as they want to use it, then our content will fall by the wayside. [The Shifted Librarian]
1:34:14 AM
|
|
|
|
© Copyright
2007
Ted Ritzer.
Last update:
1/1/07; 4:31:28 PM.
|
|
| January 2007 |
| Sun |
Mon |
Tue |
Wed |
Thu |
Fri |
Sat |
| |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
| 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
| 14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
| 21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26 |
27 |
| 28 |
29 |
30 |
31 |
|
|
|
| Dec Feb |
|
Yahoo! News: Top Stories